38 replies to this topic

[martian]

Akuumer, on 23 July 2025 - 06:31 AM, said:

I'm not going to sugarcoat it. The vast majority of players online and playing are shoving themselves into assaults and heavy mechs and blatantly CANNOT handle it. I run a king crab 000B but I've all but given up on playing it even though I really enjoy using it because waiting 10 minutes because the last event dropped a Kodiak bear and a bull shark for free is abysmal. I run with a lance of 1-3 friends myself not included and I watch my teammates sit in the back or sit in corners as the battle evolved and the enemy mechs form pincer maneuvers and flank the entire team because the assault/heavy mech pilots refuse to take responsibility for tanking and attracting fire towards themselves. As a fresh player it's clear the balance of this game relies on the overall team effort and watching people who need to be locked into mediums bumble around like 8 year olds and get smoked or worse, take an assault for the tonnage and LRM spam which completely antithetical to winning is frustrating.

This leads me to the idea that the devs need to take charge on making sure new players understand what each mech's tonnage role is far more clearly and even more so, if a pilot is performing routinely poorly at their base stats, they need to be temporarily locked out of that heavier tonnage (heavy/assault) for at least a NUMBER of matches. That way you don't lose access to what you buy, you're forced to diversify your mech Bay, and players that actually understand the roles can get in leading to a better quality control. Boo hoo'ers of free choice will undoubtedly tout this as unnecessary restrictions but I see the state the game is in and it's not fun.

Check the MWO Store, especially the part with 'Mechs added after the introduction of the Legendary 'Mechs.

You will see that the MWO devs understand perfectly well that assault-class 'Mechs are what sells. They are certainly not going to limit the players in their purchase and their use.

[VeeOt Dragon]

no player should ever be locked out of any content just because they aren't doing up to someone else's idea of "good", the idea of locking someone out of a a mech because of a few bad matches is disgusting. lets say you just got a free hero mech, a 100 assault. we will assume this is a t4 or t3 player who doesn't play a lot of assaults let aloe 100 tonners. first they have to find a build that works for them (either testing grounds trial and error or copy paste some build off someone else.) now you can only do so much in the testing grounds. where the rubber hits the road is that first match. then you play another and another tweeking the mech till it works for you. it might not and what looked good on paper turns out to be rather trash. so you start again, all the while doing rather poorly compared to your usual performance. now think about how you would feel if because of these bad stats you are locked out of using that mech until some arbitrary benchmark is met. for most people that you be the moment they drop the game and go play something else.

Edited by VeeOt Dragon, 23 July 2025 - 11:21 PM.

[martian]

VeeOt Dragon, on 23 July 2025 - 11:20 PM, said:

no player should ever be locked out of any content just because they aren't doing up to someone else's idea of "good"
...

It really does not matter these days, since the the last thing that MWO needs (and PGI surely knows it) is to discourage players from buying new Mechpacks and playing their new 'Mechs.

[Akuumer]

martian, on 23 July 2025 - 10:02 PM, said:

Check the MWO Store, especially the part with 'Mechs added after the introduction of the Legendary 'Mechs.

You will see that the MWO devs understand perfectly well that assault-class 'Mechs are what sells. They are certainly not going to limit the players in their purchase and their use.

Yes thank you for the obvious statement that the game is in-fact a business. However you're cherrypicking by ignoring the overall selling point IS gameplay. As someone stuck in repeatedly losing matches based on these pilots' lack of ability in using the larger mechs, where is the dopamine/positive feedback loop that would incentivize me to come back to even want to buy MC or new mechs? You have to remember the fact that for people buy your product, they must be in the store correct?

It's silly to handwave this issue like it couldn't be fixed. I've yet to hear you offer a better scenario though.

[martian]

Akuumer, on 25 July 2025 - 05:06 PM, said:

Yes thank you for the obvious statement that the game is in-fact a business. However you're cherrypicking by ignoring the overall selling point IS gameplay. As someone stuck in repeatedly losing matches based on these pilots' lack of ability in using the larger mechs, where is the dopamine/positive feedback loop that would incentivize me to come back to even want to buy MC or new mechs? You have to remember the fact that for people buy your product, they must be in the store correct?

It's silly to handwave this issue like it couldn't be fixed.

Nobody is going to "fix" anything, since nobody is going to limit either the purchase or the use of assault-class 'Mechs.

And of course, the PGI's MWO staff has been reduced to absolute minimum, so any changes of the match maker are very unlikely to happen anyway.

Akuumer, on 25 July 2025 - 05:06 PM, said:

I've yet to hear you offer a better scenario though.

Of course, I can present you "a better scenario": Work on you skills and move to higher Tiers, like Tier 1 or so. Players there usually have some knowledge of how to handle 'Mechs. Then you will leave "these pilots who lack ability in using the larger mechs" behind. If you feel that you have better skills than they, it should be no problem.

Edited by martian, 25 July 2025 - 10:44 PM.

[Akuumer]

martian, on 25 July 2025 - 09:53 PM, said:

Nobody is going to "fix" anything, since nobody is going to limit either the purchase or the use of assault-class 'Mechs.

And of course, the PGI's MWO staff has been reduced to absolute minimum, so any changes of the match maker are very unlikely to happen anyway.

Of course, I can present you "a better scenario": Work on you skills and move to higher Tiers, like Tier 1 or so. Players there usually have some knowledge of how to handle 'Mechs. Then you will leave "these pilots who lack ability in using the larger mechs" behind. If you feel that you have better skills than they, it should be no problem.

I'm not quite sure why you're here if you're not interested in discourse but your pseudo intellectualism is falling extremely flat.

[martian]

Akuumer, on 28 July 2025 - 05:59 AM, said:

I'm not quite sure why you're here if you're not interested in discourse but your pseudo intellectualism is falling extremely flat.

What in my post is not true?

[MacKerris]

I have to say that I agree with martin and the others for the most part. Also, if someone doesn't know how to use an assault mech properly, why would one assume that they know how to pilot any weight class?

Someone like myself comes back after 13 years and you would be correct saying that I'm more than just a bit rusty. So, I guess that I'm in the group you don't want playing assault mechs. However, that's not going to stop me.

[KursedVixen]

Another huge problem with this is that PGI has said and proven that light mechs don't sell people want heavier mechs and aside from superheavy designs which may not work at all in MWO assault is the heaviest class you can get...

[Void Angel]

Lights have a much higher skill floor as well.

Akuumer, on 25 July 2025 - 05:06 PM, said:

Yes thank you for the obvious statement that the game is in-fact a business. However you're cherrypicking by ignoring the overall selling point IS gameplay. As someone stuck in repeatedly losing matches based on these pilots' lack of ability in using the larger mechs, where is the dopamine/positive feedback loop that would incentivize me to come back to even want to buy MC or new mechs? You have to remember the fact that for people buy your product, they must be in the store correct?

It's silly to handwave this issue like it couldn't be fixed. I've yet to hear you offer a better scenario though.

My guy. You've been playing the game for two months. The people telling you that artificially locking Assault 'mechs is a bad idea have been playing for years - we have food in our freezers that is older than your MWO career. We're telling you this is a bad idea for a reason.

Every weight class has its own challenges and capabilities. Lights are actually far more difficult to pilot compared to Assaults; their fragility and low weapon tonnage make it a challenge to deal enough damage to carry their own weight on the team. Mediums, by comparison, typically have more firepower, but their lower mobility means it takes them longer to recover from positioning errors, and they're still plenty fragile compared to Heavy and Assault chassis - which in turn are slow enough that a well-piloted Light's mobility can give them fits. The easiest chassis to learn are actually Heavies and Assaults - because while they are slow, they still have enough firepower to dish out damage quickly, and generally enough armor to survive for a while doing it.

And I'm not the guy to stat-shame people in order to obscure weak ideas - but there is such a thing as ethos and credibility. You've been playing a game that's notoriously complex compared to other shooter-style offerings, for about two months. And you're at the eighth percentile on The Jarl's List. That's not a failure on your part, and it will improve - but it signifies that you have not mastered the game in a mere two months' time. You've not spent any significant time in Heavies or Assaults, but you think you're qualified to critique other beginning players' performance - and your stats do not show that to be the case. Load out a meta Medium build if you haven't already, and branch out into Heavy and Assault chassis. The experience will help your piloting other weight classes, and may give you a broader appreciation for why players do the things they do.

Edited by Void Angel, 28 July 2025 - 04:30 PM.

[KursedVixen]

while I agree with some of the points the Jarl's list is a sorry excuse from Competitive players to use as any means to anything.... it does nothing but devalue players and give tier1's an excuse to demoralize, bully and denegrate anyone not in tier1......



"Mayhap oh queen, or maybe I need not flaunt my power in such an infantile test of will." ~Tassadar executor of the Protoss expiditionary fleet, Starcraft.

Edited by KursedVixen, 28 July 2025 - 05:00 PM.

[Void Angel]

The Jarl's list is a data-driven metric created by people who know how to play the game. It's not perfect, but it's not a "sorry excuse" for anything. Your feelings of inferiority - or the occasional misuse of the List - do not constitute a problem with the List itself.

[KursedVixen]

Void Angel, on 28 July 2025 - 06:19 PM, said:

The Jarl's list is a data-driven metric created by people who know how to play the game. It's not perfect, but it's not a "sorry excuse" for anything. Your feelings of inferiority - or the occasional misuse of the List - do not constitute a problem with the List itself.

and there it is...

Edited by KursedVixen, 28 July 2025 - 07:43 PM.

[Tesunie]

Stats often get misused here for a lot of things, often for "shut up, you are a worse pilot than I am!" reasons. With that said, stats can be used for a rough data gathering of sorts on player behavior and expected performance.

For example, if someone was posting about players who are bad at assaults, then you look up their Jarls (and/or the players they are complaining about) and find out all of them have a low percent game rate in assaults (or none), you can respond easily with "These people are just trying assaults and seem to be new at it. They are trying it out, and like everyone else they need to play it to learn how to use it" or with "you have never been in an assault mech yourself. Why don't you try it out and then come back here after you get some practical experience".

I know people have tried to use it improperly, namely against me in the LRM based threads. They point to whatever whatever on my Jarls and try to tell me I'm a bad player... when I actually have good stats overall and they were presuming I was using only LRMs... Meanwhile I was crunching my weapon stat numbers (mostly for fun) or individual mech/build numbers to get more accurate data upon weapon/build performance and how I use it.

Sometimes, stats can be fun to look at. They aren't always relevant, but that doesn't mean I can't check on them. Just like PSR is rarely relevant and is more of a MM system than anything else. I know I'm still T3 from lack of playing the game enough to move it since the last reset. So many good games out there, so little time. Plus PvP games always intimidate me going into, or back into, them.

[Void Angel]

KursedVixen, on 28 July 2025 - 07:42 PM, said:

and there it is...

Actually, it was here:

KursedVixen, on 28 July 2025 - 04:59 PM, said:

the Jarl's list is a sorry excuse from Competitive players to use as any means to anything.... it does nothing but devalue players and give tier1's an excuse to demoralize, bully and denegrate anyone not in tier1......

- if you dislike being held responsible for the things you say, perhaps you could try not saying them? Or just be honest about how you feel, instead of trying to gaslight people who can literally quote you back your own words.

[Akuumer]

MacKerris, on 28 July 2025 - 01:03 PM, said:

I have to say that I agree with martin and the others for the most part. Also, if someone doesn't know how to use an assault mech properly, why would one assume that they know how to pilot any weight class?

Someone like myself comes back after 13 years and you would be correct saying that I'm more than just a bit rusty. So, I guess that I'm in the group you don't want playing assault mechs. However, that's not going to stop me.

The impact that assaults have on the game as a whole not regarding who's piloting them means they are critical in any fight and the pilot is a force multiplier. If the wrong person is piloting an assault and they go down minute 3 with 150 damage and 350dmg taken, the fight becomes marginally more difficult. The only point Martin has made regarding this has been his ardent support of giving the developers money and claiming nothing can be done hand waving this entire thread while simultaneously refusing to exit the conversation. What I've proposed isn't a permanent ban from the class, but a numbered ban from assaults/heavies that gives the player routinely performing poorly from affecting gameplay longterm as we can clearly see in game. This forces them to play lighter Mechs like medium or light that have less of an impact on the fight and gives them a two-fold chance of #1 learning to pilot a mech in general far better and #2 a chance to reflect on what they did poorly in the prior matches.
Plus, this would help prevent the balance of pilots in matchmaking from being 40% or higher in assault/heavy as it often is resulting in larger wait times so slots can be filled more adequately. We all acknowledge that the majority of the player base is choosing assaults because of the larger armor/structure pool and larger array of heavy weapons.

[Void Angel]

If the "wrong person" is in an Assault, they still tend to do more damage while going down than the "wrong person" in a Light - and it's not like they're taking up extra tonnage or anything. A Light is far more difficult to play, and a player who takes a Light and dies on minute two is going to make an even greater difference in incremental difficulty for the match, because he'll do less damage and still put you down a pilot on the roster.

Martian has claimed that the point is moot because of sales pressure, but that's not the only point he's made. He also told you to get better at the game so that you don't play with beginners any more - in other words, players like yourself. Other people have told you that it's a bad idea to artificially gate Assaults for other reasons, which you have ignored in favor of accusing martian of "hand-waving." That's... a bit on the nose, don't you think?

Again, this game is hard to learn - a fact of which you are an exemplar. Try listening to people with more experience than you have, and at least try Assaults and Heavies before you develop dogmatic opinions on who should be "allowed" to pilot them.

PS: People use Assaults preferentially not only because they have more raw damage potential - but also because their skill floor is significantly lower than Lights.

[Tesunie]

Akuumer, on 29 July 2025 - 02:12 PM, said:

The impact that assaults have on the game as a whole not regarding who's piloting them means they are critical in any fight and the pilot is a force multiplier. If the wrong person is piloting an assault and they go down minute 3 with 150 damage and 350dmg taken, the fight becomes marginally more difficult. The only point Martin has made regarding this has been his ardent support of giving the developers money and claiming nothing can be done hand waving this entire thread while simultaneously refusing to exit the conversation. What I've proposed isn't a permanent ban from the class, but a numbered ban from assaults/heavies that gives the player routinely performing poorly from affecting gameplay longterm as we can clearly see in game. This forces them to play lighter Mechs like medium or light that have less of an impact on the fight and gives them a two-fold chance of #1 learning to pilot a mech in general far better and #2 a chance to reflect on what they did poorly in the prior matches.
Plus, this would help prevent the balance of pilots in matchmaking from being 40% or higher in assault/heavy as it often is resulting in larger wait times so slots can be filled more adequately. We all acknowledge that the majority of the player base is choosing assaults because of the larger armor/structure pool and larger array of heavy weapons.

I'm going to start with saying, you've got some misconceptions here. Tonnage isn't everything in a match, it's how you use it. I've seen mediums and light mechs that were more pivotal in a match than assaults, in the right hands. You also fail to account for learning how to play, on top of different play styles for different people.

Your statement here is as much like the ones of old of "we should remove LRMs, they are a detriment to the game", ignoring that some people (like myself) enjoy using LRMs. I do not feel any class of mech should be restricted, because this game has never been about restricting anything from anyone.

As for myself, I'm a medium mech jock personally. Give me a medium mech and I will often perform better than in other mechs. If your restrictions where place, I'd likely never get out of a light mech, or be denied working in an assault if I wanted to. Or, if we took most new player advice, and had new players in Heavy mechs, I'd never earn the rights to play other classes, as I do not normally perform well in that class, chassis and build dependent.

I would also say, from what evidence I can see, you've never even tried a heavy or assault mech yourself yet. So I don't think you have any experience on using them to even really give much feedback about them.

My final point would be, many of us players are here because of the IP. Many of us are here for our love of Battletech and Mechwarrior. We have specific mechs we all love and enjoy from the lore. Many people love the Atlas and Timberwolf for that reason. I always liked the odd mechs, like the Crab, Hussar, Mercury, Huntsmen, Flea and King Crab (among others). If I wasn't able to play in my favorite mechs because I failed to perform good enough with it, I'd likely be leaving the game.

Overall, I don't think you understand the concept of the game yet to really grasp what is going on here. You haven't spent enough time either on the game or in the lore to have as much input on the realities here. I'm not saying what you feel is invalid, but I am saying I don't think you are experienced enough yet to be able to come to any real conclusions... yet.


My suggestion for new players would likely be the opposite of what this whole thread is asking. Typically, I suggest a heavy mech or some specific medium mechs for new players, such as the Crab or Marauder. Marauder IIC can also be a good choice as a starting assault. But if someone new really wants to pilot that locust, I'm not going to stop them, but I will tell them they are starting on hard mode. Most assaults also are on my "not new player recommended" list, but that isn't to say I'm not telling them not to.

The problem with light mechs and new players is that they don't know positioning, and are too fast for their own good. They can get into trouble too quickly, and a little bit of damage can leave you unable to recover (you died). Assault mechs are not recommended because they require even more positioning knowledge, but they can take hits and survive long enough for a player to maybe recover, but if they moved too far into a bad position, they likely are not going to survive.

Medium mechs are squishy, but have a good combo of offense, speed and survivability to learn in. They can reposition from a bad spot reasonably well, can survive it long enough to maybe recover, and can have a bit of a punch. Heavy mechs follow this, with a little more survivability and a little less mobility and are my go to recommendation to new players.

However, as you may have noticed, none of these factors are indicators that new players shouldn't use any of those mechs. Just, some are more recommended than others.


My final stance on this; if you are having fun, does the rest matter? If you enjoy piloting an assault mech, keep doing it. If you enjoy a light mech, go for it. It's a game, and games are (usually) there to have fun.

[KursedVixen]

Akuumer, on 29 July 2025 - 02:12 PM, said:

The impact that assaults have on the game as a whole not regarding who's piloting them means they are critical in any fight and the pilot is a force multiplier. If the wrong person is piloting an assault and they go down minute 3 with 150 damage and 350dmg taken, the fight becomes marginally more difficult. The only point Martin has made regarding this has been his ardent support of giving the developers money and claiming nothing can be done hand waving this entire thread while simultaneously refusing to exit the conversation. What I've proposed isn't a permanent ban from the class, but a numbered ban from assaults/heavies that gives the player routinely performing poorly from affecting gameplay longterm as we can clearly see in game. This forces them to play lighter Mechs like medium or light that have less of an impact on the fight and gives them a two-fold chance of #1 learning to pilot a mech in general far better and #2 a chance to reflect on what they did poorly in the prior matches.
Plus, this would help prevent the balance of pilots in matchmaking from being 40% or higher in assault/heavy as it often is resulting in larger wait times so slots can be filled more adequately. We all acknowledge that the majority of the player base is choosing assaults because of the larger armor/structure pool and larger array of heavy weapons.

if assault mechs are so important that just pushes the fact that other mechs should be protecting the assaults... i don't see that happening a lot... I think what your pushing for would actually end up; punishing everyone but the assault mechs because if they don't protect the assaults especially the slower heavier ones they are the ones punished because there will be less assault mechs played.... This could even lead to assaults becoming extinct if it goes too far.....

Edited by KursedVixen, Yesterday, 05:42 PM.