325 replies to this topic

[Void Angel]

JumpingHunter, on 29 August 2023 - 12:53 PM, said:

light mechs are actually supposed to be a hard mode for pilots in direct combat, both canonically and logically.

Incorrect on both counts. First, because tabletop and fluff canon doesn't apply to this game format. You can't have a 'mech that simply cannot perform in combat when combat is the whole game. Your second point is wrong for the same reason.

I'm not going to bother to quote individual/entire posts because that wastes people's time and clogs posts... but man. You've got your head on exactly backwards here. Lights are not equivalent to Heavies and Assaults in either survivability or firepower. They can't go toe to toe with those 'mechs, and shouldn't be able to do so - what they can do is leverage their mobility to harass heavier elements while dealing enough damage that the enemy needs to pay attention to them. This is a good thing.

Hit registration issues happen - but the idea that they happen enough that Lights "take no damage" is a fantasy, and shows that you don't spend enough time in Light cockpits to know what you're talking about very well. That conclusion tracks with your assessment of 'mech effectiveness. For example, at my level, I never see a Jenner. Once in a blue moon, maybe - but the thing is huge for its tonnage and doesn't carry near enough firepower to make up for its hit boxes. Cougars are not unknown, but they're not exactly dominating the battlefield either. Some Lights may be overquirked, or undersized; Urbanmechs come to mind. But if you go into the game and mouse over the Quickplay button, Light 'mechs will not be dominating the match queue. There's a reason for that.

Your assertion that Lights should be rebalanced to take advantage of game mechanics that don't actually exist is nonsensical. I wouldn't dignify it with a response, except that it illustrates a real problem with your reasoning. You're not actually criticizing game balance here. You're wishing that the game was dramatically different than it is, and affecting to be concerned with balance.

If you want your analysis to be taken seriously, go pilot some Lights and maybe stop insisting that big guns are "anti-armor," or that Machine Guns are "antipersonnel" weapons in Battletech - when they have always damaged 'mech armor, were present when the game didn't include any infantry, and still damage 'mechs to this day, so far as I know. That novel you read one time doesn't trump what the actual game entails.

PS: "Let them take inferior 'mechs so they can get double the c-bills for losing" is not as useful a suggestion as you might believe.

Edited by Void Angel, 29 August 2023 - 04:09 PM.

[C337Skymaster]

Der Geisterbaer, on 29 August 2023 - 10:19 AM, said:

"Not balanced" in what sense? If you are suggesting that they are too powerful: Why are Lights the least played weight class, with the lowest average damage / score per match (which leads pages like jarl's list to mathematically correct their stats to even become comparable)?

Reason #1 that light 'mechs are the least played 'mechs in the game: they are the least numerous 'mechs in the game. If every 'mech received exactly the same quantity of playtime, lights would be the least played 'mechs in the game, because there are the least number of them, and by a substantial margin.

Going to the profile page and sorting solely by weight class we get:
Lights: 182
Mediums: 276
Heavies: 275
Assaults: 289

So Lights can't help but be played the least, even with the ever elusive "perfect balance" achieved.

As for lowest average damage: I feel as though that's averaging Tier 5 with Tier 1. In Tier 4 where I am, and Tier 3, where I've been, and Tier 1, where I was before the PSR reset, Lights frequently outperform assaults for raw damage numbers. Overall, apart from your one or two meta outliers (8x LBX/2 DWF, for example), Assaults tend to be the least damage dealing 'mechs in most of the matches I play.

In the words of everyone's favorite 'mech combat trainer: "In battlemech combat, speed is life. You go slow, you die". Tier 5 is the home of everyone learning the game who may have never played any previous MechWarrior title, before. It's the home of everyone who's taking in the sights and seeing what's what, learning their way around, etc. And thus, Tier 5 is the home of the light 'mechs that stand still and stare while they line up a shot.

Conversely, most Tier 1 light 'mech pilots are capable of using their 'mech's size, speed, and hitreg issues to prevent themselves from taking any damage or losing any components, internal or external. I have personally seen a Flea get 1500+ dmg in QP, and have heard of one achieving 1900 dmg in QP.

For these reasons, I don't especially trust the statistics in either Tier 1 or Tier 5 to be wholly representative of the 'mech, so much as they're representative of the pilots in those tiers, and unless you can give statistics which only cover Tiers 2, 3, and 4, I'm going to be suspicious of the results, "average" or not. (The median statistic might be more representative than the mean, because if we've got 100 pilots in Tier 5 for every one pilot in Tier 1, it's going to skew the results down).

Edited by C337Skymaster, 29 August 2023 - 06:53 PM.

[Lionheart2012]

Hi folks. My proposal to make X-pulse more effective, increase heat scale limit. Mediums to 7 or 8. Larges to 4.

Nerf HAGs to slower cooldown and greater spread.

[KursedVixen]

Lionheart2012, on 29 August 2023 - 07:19 PM, said:

Hi folks. My proposal to make X-pulse more effective, increase heat scale limit. Mediums to 7 or 8. Larges to 4.

Nerf HAGs to slower cooldown and greater spread.

So you want to totally break the balance and make IS just straight out OP?

No Hags are fine

BInary cannon will get it's GH fixed and X-pulse will be modified somehow.

Edited by KursedVixen, 30 August 2023 - 08:24 AM.

[McGosy]

What a nice patch!
I`m not done testing all the mech quirk changes but those look very good. Ihave a lot fun rearranging some Phoenix Hawks and Gargoyles atm. It all seems fine and testing other loadouts id fun time. There is only 1 change i think it`s lill overpowered. The PHX-3S -20% Laser Heat quirk is too much imo. It halfes the heatcap on PHX using LL/BLC. Due to new Binary Laser Cannon it should do better maybe way better on this variant too, but double the dmg output on LL range is too much imo, maybe u can reduce it to -10% Laser Heat and give it something else if u feel so, there is other than energy hardpoints which could make this variant a fun mech.

Thank You for redesigning of the minimaps "Domination Zone", it`s good to use!
Scrapyard`s visibility is way better, and compareable to most other maps.

The new LGD mechs appears to be fun, just the combination of giga ammo quirk and 6 missile hardpoints on the LGD-Viper is too crazy imo, the different quirk-levels for SO4/6/8 are interessting.
All new weapons need some balance, but those all show great potential to be a good and fun add to mwo`s weaponary, thank You!
Please be more carefull with typing numbers in future. GH3 settings for Binaries is fun atm, but will produce a lot of crying if u take it away again soon. it`s obviously overpowered and ppl are wasting hours in mechlab to build obsolete mechs:(, i just can hope the reroll will work out smooth.

Thanks for all the upgrades°°7

[martian]

JumpingHunter, on 29 August 2023 - 01:10 PM, said:

Now you are wrong too. It would not make them not viable if PGI would make them better for performing jobs that don't require direct face-to-face combat that they simply should not logically be able to withstand. Info Warfare, better base captures, control point captures, capture the flag gamemode, any consumables that send in some infantry or lighter vehicles, anythng that will give lights some job to do and to get pain for while heavier mechs are beating the sh!t out of each other. And when control ponint is captured and lighter vehicles are blown up, lights can go and suddenly strike down beaten-up assault or heavy mech from behind. Suddenly, and after their main job is done. And not just go in, take no damage because of hitreg, zoom behind painfully slow assault and blow it to peaces in one or two super overquirked alphastrikes.

Those things that you described (consumables calling in infantry or light vehicles, etc.) have never been in MechWarrior Online and almost certainly they will never be. Thus, it would be a nonsense to balance light 'Mechs with the respect to such scenarios.

As I said, in the current MWO light 'Mechs must be able to kill enemy 'Mechs. Nobody would buy and pilot light 'Mechs geared towards situations that can not happen in MWO.

JumpingHunter, on 29 August 2023 - 01:10 PM, said:

Besides, i think that majority of complaints about light mechs are not about those that were in game from the start. Jenner if very much fine, in fact i don't see it on battlefields that much anhymore, because everyone are using horrifically overquirked or just overbuffed in general machines like piranha, mist lynx, courgar with its insane RoF, arctic cheetah, and other that bring a large number of antiperssonnel weapons that for some reason drill through armor better than anti armor PPFLD weapons. That's where all the complaints are coming from, not about proper fighter lights like jenner, panther, wolfhound, raven or others.

How often do you pilot light 'Mechs? I guess you do not spend too much time using them in MWO.

If you wish to complain that light 'Mechs are OP and should be nerfed, the right thread is here: Light Mechs Are Screwed Up

As a heavy or Assault 'Mech player, you can kill or cripple them with one shot.

And by the way, thanks for giving me a good laugh. This is the "horrifically overquirked and overarmored" PIR-1 Piranha:



This "overquirked" 20-tonner has one Operations quirk. The "overarmored" Piranha can carry massive ... 138 points of armor and those additional armor quirks make no big difference in the battle. Not in the game where 50-point alpha strikes are nothing unusual.

[Void Angel]

C337Skymaster, on 29 August 2023 - 04:57 PM, said:

Reason #1 that light 'mechs are the least played 'mechs in the game: they are the least numerous 'mechs in the game. If every 'mech received exactly the same quantity of playtime, lights would be the least played 'mechs in the game, because there are the least number of them, and by a substantial margin.

Going to the profile page and sorting solely by weight class we get:
Lights: 182
Mediums: 276
Heavies: 275
Assaults: 289

So Lights can't help but be played the least, even with the ever elusive "perfect balance" achieved.

As for lowest average damage: I feel as though that's averaging Tier 5 with Tier 1. In Tier 4 where I am, and Tier 3, where I've been, and Tier 1, where I was before the PSR reset, Lights frequently outperform assaults for raw damage numbers. Overall, apart from your one or two meta outliers (8x LBX/2 DWF, for example), Assaults tend to be the least damage dealing 'mechs in most of the matches I play.

Your logic is wrong on the first point: it really doesn't matter how many chassis are available in a weight class, since players are going to develop their favorites and play those more often than not. Wanting to play every 'mech equally is going to be a pretty niche, compulsive habit - possibly such a person should seek help.

Damage in your matches seems like a skill floor issue with Tier 4. With Tier 4 matches, you're going to see T2 pilots tackle T5 Assaults, and those Assaults will generally not know how to maneuver. Tier 1 matches do not normally feature Lights outdamaging assaults today.

[Ralph Edwards]

So is there something planned to allow HAG the bonus it is supposed to receive from targeting computers?

[C337Skymaster]

Void Angel, on 30 August 2023 - 01:32 PM, said:

Your logic is wrong on the first point: it really doesn't matter how many chassis are available in a weight class, since players are going to develop their favorites and play those more often than not. Wanting to play every 'mech equally is going to be a pretty niche, compulsive habit - possibly such a person should seek help.

Damage in your matches seems like a skill floor issue with Tier 4. With Tier 4 matches, you're going to see T2 pilots tackle T5 Assaults, and those Assaults will generally not know how to maneuver. Tier 1 matches do not normally feature Lights outdamaging assaults today.

It actually does matter how many 'mechs are available in a weight class when making a statistical comparison, because everyone's favorites will be different, and over a large enough sample size, will eventually even out. When's the last time you saw a QP match that was 24 Timber Wolves all duking it out? The closest I've seen is about 10 of the same 'mech for two weeks after a brand new one is added to the game. Thereafter, 'mech frequency evens out considerably.

The number of available chassis will influence the total amount of absolute time (in seconds, minutes, hours, whatever unit you want to use) that class of 'mech gets played in comparison to its peers.

There's 653 unique chassis when you filter for standards and heroes (filtering out duplicates). If there are 653 players in MWO, everyone will have a different favorite 'mech, and all the 'mechs will be played exactly evenly, call it 60 minutes per day.

When you sum up the total time in each weight class, Lights come up short, because they don't have as many 'mechs with which to accumulate time played.

Now 653 players is an incredibly small sample size for this to be true, but as the sample size increases, this becomes a more and more accurate generalization.

As for your second point, you and I are saying the same thing: Tier 5 performance is a reflection on the pilots, not on the 'mechs. The same goes for Tier 1. Tiers 2 through 4 are where you'll see a more accurate representation of how the 'mechs fare against each other.

[Void Angel]

You're making huge assumptions that are not factually true. The math is simple: players do not select things they like at random. They select them based on their own subjective criteria, but those criteria are weighted by how well the 'mech in question actually performs for them. You don't see an even distribution of available 'mechs in any weight class. You, personally don't; I don't; no one does. Because the 'mechs aren't all created equal. If you see someone piloting a Battlemaster 1D today, that person is a masochist - take it from a Phoenix Project owner. The handful of high weapon mounts are offset by the 'mech's unfortunate architecture. So while it's fun to have a RAC that never jams, the chassis just isn't the equal of a Stalker, which carries similar loadouts in the same weight class, but does literally everything better. This will push players against playing certain 'mechs, so the assumption that people are going to pick 'mechs by some kind of stochastic variation isn't valid, and your reasoning falls apart after that.

You're not saying the same thing that I am in the second point either. 'Mechs shouldn't be balanced to shore up weak player skills (like with Mages in WoW.) They should be balanced against the performance of players who have achieved general competence in MWO. A Tier 4 who hasn't developed the skills to maneuver his Assault (not to mention possible marksmanship deficiencies) fighting a Tier 2 Light pilot abusing a meta build to farm that poor semi-newbie just isn't a good measure of relative balance. You need to be looking at matches between T1-T3 players for a truer picture of how the 'mechs fare against each other.

Edited by Void Angel, 31 August 2023 - 01:29 PM.

[C337Skymaster]

Void Angel, on 31 August 2023 - 01:28 PM, said:

You're making huge assumptions that are not factually true. The math is simple: players do not select things they like at random. They select them based on their own subjective criteria, but those criteria are weighted by how well the 'mech in question actually performs for them. You don't see an even distribution of available 'mechs in any weight class. You, personally don't; I don't; no one does. Because the 'mechs aren't all created equal. If you see someone piloting a Battlemaster 1D today, that person is a masochist - take it from a Phoenix Project owner. The handful of high weapon mounts are offset by the 'mech's unfortunate architecture. So while it's fun to have a RAC that never jams, the chassis just isn't the equal of a Stalker, which carries similar loadouts in the same weight class, but does literally everything better. This will push players against playing certain 'mechs, so the assumption that people are going to pick 'mechs by some kind of stochastic variation isn't valid, and your reasoning falls apart after that.

You're not saying the same thing that I am in the second point either. 'Mechs shouldn't be balanced to shore up weak player skills (like with Mages in WoW.) They should be balanced against the performance of players who have achieved general competence in MWO. A Tier 4 who hasn't developed the skills to maneuver his Assault (not to mention possible marksmanship deficiencies) fighting a Tier 2 Light pilot abusing a meta build to farm that poor semi-newbie just isn't a good measure of relative balance. You need to be looking at matches between T1-T3 players for a truer picture of how the 'mechs fare against each other.

I play stock 'mechs, and I'm not the only one. Masochists exist, and they play the 'mechs they remember liking from TT, or from MW2 or from HBS Battletech, for the love of the game, and the love of the 'mech's history, or lore, or being good elsewhere, and its performance in MWO's "meta" be damned.

Not everybody wants to be a meta-tard, running only what's the latest and bestest and doesest the mostest damagest. A lot of us just want to have fun and have a personal connection with some 'mech or another for one reason or another which is different from person to person.

I love Adders, because in MW4 they were very good. They're not quite as good in any other game, but they were amazing in MW4, so I like them regardless. I like Bushwackers, because that's the starting 'mech in MW3. I like the Timberwolf-D, because when I played Ghost Bear's Legacy on Windows XP, it had a glitched 'mechlab, forcing me to only play what was pre-loaded in the game, and I used that build in a trial of position and did really well. I was able to recreate it in MW4, and it does well there, too, and it does really well in MWO, once I got here. I never tried it in MW3 because LRMs are the absolute king in that game, so why would you run anything else unless you didn't salvage enough ammo? I'm tempted to play that one again and use anything and everything besides LRMs, just to see how I do, though.

There's almost a third as much again of any weight class more than there are lights in MWO, meaning the selection pool is smaller, and the options for running lights in the first place are less. There are some light 'mechs that are absolutely broken OP, so if all anyone wanted to do was run the latest meta, those would be just as popular as any heavy or assault, and are frequently seen because of that. But people want to play what they like, not just what does well, and therefore we see Battlemaster 1D's, and Bushwacker S2's, and Timberwolf Primes, regardless of how poorly they might perform in a straight up fight compared to other variants of their same chassis, never mind completely different 'mechs, altogether.

I have two Battlemasters. One was an event reward (1G) the other was the heaviest 'mech I could buy in Solaris Tier 5 or 6, or something too stupid for there to be an assault 'mech in that tier, but I was getting my *** kicked by whatever the meta was, so I grabbed it to give it a try, and it did halfway decently (I think it's the 1S, or 3S, or something. I have to double-check, I just know it's the Steiner Battlemaster). Both of those 'mechs are stored in their stock configuration. They're both mastered, and skilled for their stock config, and if ever I were to run them, that's how I'd take them out. I'm nearing 500 'mechs in my 'mechbay, though, and I barely have time in the day to run the dozen or so that aren't mastered, let alone every single 'mech I've ever bought. I widen my horizon by role playing 'mechs that would have been in the Ghost Bear Touman and call it a day.

EDIT: alright, logical thought exercise:

There is ONE assault, ONE heavy, and ONE medium in the game, but there are 100 light 'mechs. The Heavy, Assault, and Medium are stupendously spectacular in their performance. What weight class do you see most often? Lights drastically outnumber every other weight class, so they naturally show up more often simply because people like variety. Nobody's going to run the same three meta 'mechs when there are so many options to choose from in the lightweight category, simply because they're going to get bored after awhile, and want to mix it up.

Same thing is already going on, but in reverse. There is a dearth of lights compared to the other weight classes (not necessarily PGI's fault, either: if you look through any online listing of 'mechs in existence, there are less lights than other weight classes), so they get played proportionally to their number, and come up short in the comparison.

Edited by C337Skymaster, 31 August 2023 - 08:00 PM.

[C337Skymaster]

One other key ability which is missing from MWO that technically balances the Light vs Assault circle-jerk fight that everyone hates so much, is the ability for the Assault 'mech to reach out and slap the light 'mech. Give it a good drop-kick and push it back out into effective weapons range. Stick out a leg, trip it, and then blast it in the back as it runs by.

Things that humanoid robots should be able to do, if they're really mimicking human movement, but which requires a LOT more input controls than we have on a computer, some of which are straight up fictional.

[martian]

C337Skymaster, on 31 August 2023 - 08:03 PM, said:

One other key ability which is missing from MWO that technically balances the Light vs Assault circle-jerk fight that everyone hates so much, is the ability for the Assault 'mech to reach out and slap the light 'mech. Give it a good drop-kick and push it back out into effective weapons range. Stick out a leg, trip it, and then blast it in the back as it runs by.

Things that humanoid robots should be able to do, if they're really mimicking human movement, but which requires a LOT more input controls than we have on a computer, some of which are straight up fictional.

Physical attacks were possible in MWO only for a short period (and I guess that the majority of the currently active playerbase has not experienced physical attacks in MWO) and very probably they will not be added. Also, when those physical attacks were possible, they created a lot of problems.

[Void Angel]

C337Skymaster, on 31 August 2023 - 07:51 PM, said:

Not everybody wants to be a meta-tard, running only what's the latest and bestest and doesest the mostest damagest. A lot of us just want to have fun and have a personal connection with some 'mech or another for one reason or another which is different from person to person.

EDIT: alright, logical thought exercise:

There is ONE assault, ONE heavy, and ONE medium in the game, but there are 100 light 'mechs. The Heavy, Assault, and Medium are stupendously spectacular in their performance. What weight class do you see most often? Lights drastically outnumber every other weight class, so they naturally show up more often simply because people like variety. Nobody's going to run the same three meta 'mechs when there are so many options to choose from in the lightweight category, simply because they're going to get bored after awhile, and want to mix it up.

Same thing is already going on, but in reverse. There is a dearth of lights compared to the other weight classes (not necessarily PGI's fault, either: if you look through any online listing of 'mechs in existence, there are less lights than other weight classes), so they get played proportionally to their number, and come up short in the comparison.

No, they do not. You're falling into a common fallacy, of interpreting data toward your conclusion. Do a real experiment: Take a screenshot of the 'mechs at the end of your matches for a while, and then make a simple bar graph illustrating by chassis how many times you're seeing those 'mechs. You will not see those 'mechs distributed evenly according to available chassis in class. You will not see 'mechs within a class evenly distributed. Even in Tier 5. What you're going to see is a lot of variation, but with more powerful 'mechs standing out. Sure, you'll see some iconic 'mechs more often; 'mechs like the Catapult and Hunchback are popular for emotional reasons - same reason I play my Locust and Shadow Hawk. But you should recall that there are very strong 'mechs which are also iconic in the core IP. You can control for that in various ways, but it's still a confounding variable.

You're actually arguing against your own opinion, here! If players play some 'mechs over others for any reason, your fantasy of random distribution of 'mech choices is false! It doesn't matter if I play my Locust 1V because I really enjoyed the Crescent Hawks' Inception, or because I have good memories from the Project Phoenix release and faction/comp play, or if I find it to be more powerful than my Spider. All of those are possible at once, if you didn't pick that up, and other players will have siimilar preferences - and there is no reason whatsoever to think that those preferences will be randomly distributed across all possible 'mechs. That is ack-basswards logic, and it is emphatically wrong.

[Void Angel]

martian, on 01 September 2023 - 06:03 AM, said:

Physical attacks were possible in MWO only for a short period (and I guess that the majority of the currently active playerbase has not experienced physical attacks in MWO) and very probably they will not be added. Also, when those physical attacks were possible, they created a lot of problems.

Heheh. So. Many. Problems:

That's not even the worst bit I've seen, but I can't find "Jenner Football" on Youtube any more.

[smokefield]

martian, on 29 August 2023 - 10:56 AM, said:

You can find combat-oriented light 'Mechs in all BattleTech eras. Not every light 'Mech must be like the stock tabletop Raven or Ostscout.


As for MWO, the game is advertised as "a tactical, 'Mech-based online shooter". See? "Shooter" ... And people play this game to shoot other 'Mechs.

Since the very beginning of MWO, light 'Mechs have been used in direct combat.

Depriving light 'Mechs of their combat ability would mean that there would be no reason to take them because they would not be viable in MWO.

there were other good answers on why lights need to be reviewed, but i just want to point out a couple of things.

while its true some light mechs were used for combat, they were never meant to "assault" the enemy team. for that we have a dedicated category.

adding to this the word you intentionally "forgot" from that advertisement - tactical - Now becomes much more clear why lights don't play their intended role at all - they miss(mostly not all) both the tactical scope as the game intended, as well the fighting role. there is nothing tactical in charging a slow assault or heavy in a light and kill him while speed, buffs and hitreg make you as strong as a medium if not more. not to mention when that happens to a group of slow mechs and the light manages to get away barely scratched.

i am not saying to deprive them of combat ability, i am asking that mwo creates a role for lights, where lights are actually needed and can be used, the best choice because of what those mechs are, not because of buffs and poor hitreg. but that would mean to change things in the game, and if that did not happen until now, weak chances to see it in the future...

[martian]

Void Angel, on 01 September 2023 - 03:46 PM, said:

Heheh. So. Many. Problems:

Void Angel, on 01 September 2023 - 03:46 PM, said:

That's not even the worst bit I've seen, but I can't find "Jenner Football" on Youtube any more.

Paul Inouye was not pleased with the "Dragon bowling"..

Edited by martian, 02 September 2023 - 12:16 AM.

[martian]

smokefield, on 01 September 2023 - 08:37 PM, said:

there were other good answers on why lights need to be reviewed, but i just want to point out a couple of things.

while its true some light mechs were used for combat, they were never meant to "assault" the enemy team. for that we have a dedicated category.

In BattleTech, all 'Mechs - including light 'Mechs - do what the situations demands. Just open some scenario books and you will find how one mixed force (light, medium and heavy 'Mechs) attacks the opposing force (also composed of light, medium and heavy 'Mechs).

And this is exactly what we have in MWO.

smokefield, on 01 September 2023 - 08:37 PM, said:

adding to this the word you intentionally "forgot" from that advertisement - tactical - Now becomes much more clear why lights don't play their intended role at all - they miss(mostly not all) both the tactical scope as the game intended, as well the fighting role. there is nothing tactical in charging a slow assault or heavy in a light and kill him while speed, buffs and hitreg make you as strong as a medium if not more. not to mention when that happens to a group of slow mechs and the light manages to get away barely scratched.

If it is not "tactical", what is it then? Strategic?

And that a light 'Mech uses its mobility to defeat some assault 'Mech? No problem. These things happen in BattleTech. I have just read a book in which a light 'Mech fights that way and kills Davion Templar III.

smokefield, on 01 September 2023 - 08:37 PM, said:

i am not saying to deprive them of combat ability, i am asking that mwo creates a role for lights, where lights are actually needed and can be used, the best choice because of what those mechs are, not because of buffs and poor hitreg. but that would mean to change things in the game, and if that did not happen until now, weak chances to see it in the future...

You just admitted that no big rework of MWO is in sight.

Thus, light 'Mechs must be viable in the game as it currently is, and that means that they must be capable of killing other 'Mechs.

[smokefield]

yeah, unfortunately... that it means, but that happens for the wrong reasons, this is what a lot of people try to say. and we should not agree with it just because devs cannot offer more.. some people still hope

[JumpingHunter]

martian, on 30 August 2023 - 12:03 PM, said:

Those things that you described (consumables calling in infantry or light vehicles, etc.) have never been in MechWarrior Online and almost certainly they will never be. Thus, it would be a nonsense to balance light 'Mechs with the respect to such scenarios.

As I said, in the current MWO light 'Mechs must be able to kill enemy 'Mechs. Nobody would buy and pilot light 'Mechs geared towards situations that can not happen in MWO.



How often do you pilot light 'Mechs? I guess you do not spend too much time using them in MWO.

If you wish to complain that light 'Mechs are OP and should be nerfed, the right thread is here: Light Mechs Are Screwed Up

As a heavy or Assault 'Mech player, you can kill or cripple them with one shot.

And by the way, thanks for giving me a good laugh. This is the "horrifically overquirked and overarmored" PIR-1 Piranha:



This "overquirked" 20-tonner has one Operations quirk. The "overarmored" Piranha can carry massive ... 138 points of armor and those additional armor quirks make no big difference in the battle. Not in the game where 50-point alpha strikes are nothing unusual.

Yep, i screwed up with piranha quirks, not gonna lie, but if there is so many people who tell that piranha is overarmored, and if from my personal experience i can't reliably damage it and other faster lights even when my shots connect, then there is definitely something wrong with either it's hitboxex or it's armor. Trust me, there were far less times where i actually DID get any results from direct Heavy Gauss, Heavy PPC or laser array precisely tracked burn on piranha than times when i didn't deal any significant damage to it. I don't know if it's the hitboxes or if it is an armor that makes it so durable and undamagable, but if i don't have perfect ping around 20-30 at worst (which is extremely rare with PGI servers location) i tend to see my shots deal either no damage or severely reduced damage if it's a laser burn, no matter how precisely i shoot. If you tell me that the hitboxes being broken or abused to this level is viable way to balance out the mech, then i dont even know what is not a viable way to balance mechs out.

As for piloting lights, i own 3 of them, and i pilot them sometimes - stealth and NARC raven, Wolfhound and Panther. Yes, i never did pilot mechs like piranha or mist lynx or arctic cheetah, but i've seen enough of them and fought enough of them in my experience to know how them feel from outside their cockpit.

And about these consumables i made up - i only made an examples of things that light mechs would be very good at doing, and the fact that PGI zealously refuse to add any more depth in game process of MWO, combined with ongoing streak of unnecessary light mechs buffs, shows why exacly MWO feels stale sometimes, especially when you get 5 or 10 loses in a row because there's FP light mech pilots everywhere running in packs of 4-6 and killing everything with no losses to their numbers.

Edited by JumpingHunter, 03 September 2023 - 02:20 AM.