425 replies to this topic

[Timelordwho]

Purlana, on 03 December 2012 - 12:04 PM, said:

The problem is you have very limited opportunities. If you miss or if they get close to you, your toast. You can't exactly trade shots, with your vulnerable side torso and terrible heat.

GR Cat is superior in almost every category.

If lights close on you, your streaks rip them up, and if you can get a clean shot you can still fire the erppcs, if you hit thier ctr they are toast. You can't trade shots, that's true, but you can fire 2 volleys before a gauss rifle reloads and you should get the heck behind cover. If you hit, they are either quite low on their Ctr or you blew up one of their two gauss rifles. I'd count that as a win in exchange for taking 30dmg.

You are will lose against 90% of med/hvys I close combat. A sniper should. But you have huge range, and move reasonably quick for such a chubby mech that you can outrun assaults, and be out of the main engagement.

[Erik Jast]

Timelordwho, on 03 December 2012 - 11:50 AM, said:

If you hit your shots, you blow up any mech in the game in 2-3 burst.

I'm not sure if you have used the Trial Awesome against an actual pilot. The ER PPCs do not work the way you say they work. At all. In fact, the ER PPCs, to my surprise when I just started playing, are incredibly weak.

[8RoundsRapid]

Meh, trials aren't as bad as some say they are. Sure, they could use a little sprucing up here and there, but really, I think they are fine for the most part. Mostly.

[Timelordwho]

Leetskeet, on 03 December 2012 - 12:16 PM, said:

No, take the PPC's off. If you absolutely HAVE to have a long range weapon that you waste the range on, put on two ER Large Lasers in the chest. Do not ever use PPC's, they are ***. They overheat you, you'll never hit anything but an Assault or slow Heavy with them, you're going to miss a majority of the time on anything long range that's moving, and if you're not willing to overheat yourself even more, they have a minimum range. They suck, take them off, do not use them.

The Stock 9M is probably THE WORST possible newbie mech that could have made the list.

Edit : No, I lied, that freaking Cicada was the worst mech that could have made the list. IT'S SO BAD

Then shoot at heavies and assaults with them. You can even slap missile boats outside missIle range (1080m) for 20dmg per volley. Heat efficiency doesn't matter much at that range, as you'll cool before anything is in optimal range.

And yeah, that cicada is sucky, not as suck as the one with 4 MGs though.

[Zervziel]

Heh, kinda funny that Russ is saying that. As people have mentioned, no stock is ever going to be able to stand against a custom build with heat working the way it is and with the trial mechs being the only ones available to new player, many of whom might be new and don't know the first thing about heat management not about why they should protect their side torsos.

[Sikosis]

i run trial mechs A LOT and they are fine, if you know what you are doing. So there again is a flaw in "Mr. Bolluck"s supposition, most new pilots aren't aware of what they're doing to even begin to understand how to use the mech. If they would build actual in game tutorials it would help, but apparently someone missed that necessity ><

Trial Mechs would be fine if they would just balance HEAT! ! ! ! no mech pilot would drive a mech off the platform with a 0.9 heat efficiency, thats ********! I really like the Awesome I think it is, the 3 ERPPC. . . if they'd take one or two things OFF it and put a couple more sinks in it, it would be FINE! Again, from a more experienced pilots point of view, but for a new pilot. . . GIVE ME A BREAK! he's startin to sniff his own bs and believe'n it has no stank to it ><

[Henchman 24]

EyeOne, on 03 December 2012 - 07:27 AM, said:

Russ is right though. I own several mechs but use Trials often. I don't really have a problem with it. People seem to think that a trial Awesome 9M is works worse than an Awesome 9M that you buy. Assuming you run it as it is.

You just have to adapt to the mech instead of adapting the mech to yourself.

The problem was, that you couldn't adapt a mech that relies on a broken heat system to the combat at hand.

Yeah, you can pace yourself and not pop in a trial mech, but that also means you are doing far less than the rest of the "team".

So, in closing, WRONG.

In TT, they are fine, with normal heat, they'd be acceptable, if not fine...but in MWO, they flat out suck if you are trying even the slightest to be competitive.

This clearly shows Russ' disdain for any community suggestions on the matter, and I have to say, I'm losing more and more respect for his decisions. This, plus the bull argument for 3rd person is staggering in it's ignorance of customer base wishes.

By ignorance, I refer to:

Idea A is put forth by community to mitigate a problem introduced by PGI

PGI immediately implements the opposite.

It's not like we don't have plenty of examples by now.

[Erik Jast]

Since this is Beta, the developers should try to get real data on Trial Mechs. For two weeks, force everyone to use trial mechs. Then two weeks after that, allow everyone to pick what mechs they want to use and fully customize it for free. I am pretty sure people will see the glaring difference between the two sets.

[MavRCK]

Trial mechs are excellent for getting new players into the game and for teaching new players the fundamentals of piloting, gunnery and heat management. You earn a lot of cbills because you don't have to pay for repairs. They're not optimized, but of course, they're not - they're free mechs!

Most players here complaining about the trials mechs are probably players who need to learn the fundamentals of being a mechwarrior. I owned in a trial mech when I started - can you?

Edited by MavRCK, 03 December 2012 - 12:46 PM.

[QuantumButler]

MavRCK, on 03 December 2012 - 12:45 PM, said:

Trial mechs are excellent for getting new players into the game and for teaching new players the fundamentals of piloting, gunnery and heat management. You earn a lot of cbills because you don't have to pay for repairs. They're not optimized, but of course, they're not - they're free mechs!

Most players here complaining about the trials mechs are probably players who need to learn the fundamentals of being a mechwarrior. I owned in a trial mech when I started - can you?

Yeah, that's why the army gives new recruits weapons and equipment from WW2 and drops them directly on the front lines to teach them the skills they need to survive.

That's pretty much what new players in trail mechs are experiencing.

[Jason1138]

Leetskeet, on 03 December 2012 - 12:16 PM, said:

No, take the PPC's off. If you absolutely HAVE to have a long range weapon that you waste the range on, put on two ER Large Lasers in the chest. Do not ever use PPC's, they are ***. They overheat you, you'll never hit anything but an Assault or slow Heavy with them, you're going to miss a majority of the time on anything long range that's moving, and if you're not willing to overheat yourself even more, they have a minimum range. They suck, take them off, do not use them.

The Stock 9M is probably THE WORST possible newbie mech that could have made the list.

Edit : No, I lied, that freaking Cicada was the worst mech that could have made the list. IT'S SO BAD

i kill lights all the time in a K2 with 2 PPC's.

[LaserAngel]

QuantumButler, on 03 December 2012 - 12:49 PM, said:

Yeah, that's why the army gives new recruits weapons and equipment from WW2 and drops them directly on the front lines to teach them the skills they need to survive.

That's pretty much what new players in trail mechs are experiencing.

Wow, it's like I'm living the Clan invasion without the Clans! And my Level 1 units are hitting 90% casualty rates from more heat efficient Inner Sphere builds. Have some C-bills fiery death trap pilot.

[Sephlock]

http://www.youtube.c...4t3ES8Y#t=3m04s

Edited by Sephlock, 03 December 2012 - 01:15 PM.

[Arcturious]

I quite like the trial mechs and rarely have any issues. As long as you understand that their heat is balanced to engagement ranges. You have enough HS to fire your LRM's / PPC's etc at range. When they get close, you usually have some ballistic or SRM or medium lasers to chain fire.

I think the problem is people expect to be able to alpha all the time in them. Read the books, very rarely would a pilot alpha strike, and when they did the heat almost always spiked near critical levels. Two or three alphas and the pilot would eject.

I still frequently jump into trial mechs and do pretty well. Of course not as well as my custom build, but honestly some of my builds are only one or two items from stock anyway so it's not a big deal.

Trial mechs aren't an issue, once a proper tutorial is in that teaches weapon grouping and heat management.

[Lootee]

There are good stock mechs but unfortunately there are far more 3025 variants than newtech. So for obvious reasons trial players tend to end up with the short end of the stick vs heavily upgraded level 2 custom mechs.

We've only seen 3 newtech trials so far and there are not enough of them to always have a token upgraded trial in each rotation.

It'd be nice to see Falconers, Lynxes, Salamanders and Penetrators, which all kick major booty in their stock configs. But it seems PGI is only going to add mechs that have 3025 configs with maybe 1 upgraded variant.

Edited by PanchoTortilla, 03 December 2012 - 01:27 PM.

[Taizan]

QuantumButler, on 03 December 2012 - 12:49 PM, said:

Yeah, that's why the army gives new recruits weapons and equipment from WW2 and drops them directly on the front lines to teach them the skills they need to survive.

Trial mechs are "one size fits all", just like the fresh recruit doesn't get the SOPMOD rifle but the standard assault rifle.

I've spent around some 8 hours piloting trials and had fun when I got the gist of how the game in general works. Once in a while I'll still drop in one to get a c-bill bump or try out a different chassis which I do not own yet. Sure they are not on par with upgraded owned mechs, but they work.

Anyway PGI should have enough metrics on all kinds of different mechs, weapons and builds to understand when a trial mech is underperforming in the role it was meant to perform.

[MustrumRidcully]

Timelordwho, on 03 December 2012 - 12:09 PM, said:

Right. It's a player skill issue, and it will take a few matches to learn to play that mech. If you were player a sniper in any other game, and tried to sit in assault rifle range, and out of cover, exactly the same thing would happen: you'd get wrecked.

But even the ER PPC isn't some awesome Sniper weapon. AC/5 and Gauss Rifle have a maximum range that is quite comparable to the ER PPC, and they do not suffer its heat problems.

A man on foot trying to charge a Sniper will probably die. A mech charging an Awesome trying to "snipe" won't, and then after he tried his luck he'S overheating, the mech is there and blasts him to hell.
On the other hand, if you were using AC/5s or Gauss Rifles, the charging mech might actually be in trouble.

[Purlana]

Taizan, on 03 December 2012 - 01:46 PM, said:

Trial mechs are "one size fits all", just like the fresh recruit doesn't get the SOPMOD rifle but the standard assault rifle.

A trial mech would be an old / unreliable, assault rifle that jams if you fire more then 3 bursts without resting.

Edited by Purlana, 03 December 2012 - 01:50 PM.

[QuantumButler]

Taizan, on 03 December 2012 - 01:46 PM, said:

Trial mechs are "one size fits all", just like the fresh recruit doesn't get the SOPMOD rifle but the standard assault rifle.

I've spent around some 8 hours piloting trials and had fun when I got the gist of how the game in general works. Once in a while I'll still drop in one to get a c-bill bump or try out a different chassis which I do not own yet. Sure they are not on par with upgraded owned mechs, but they work.

Anyway PGI should have enough metrics on all kinds of different mechs, weapons and builds to understand when a trial mech is underperforming in the role it was meant to perform.

Fresh recruits aren't given what amounts to defective gear, trail mechs are functionally defective. And they certainly aren't shipped off to the frontlines immediately, they're given training in safe conditions first so they can learn to do their job.

[Dukov Nook]

Why the concept of giving people new to the series some kind of training environment to get a hang for piloting before going through the frustration of the introductory days to online mechwarrior warfare is being debated beyond 'yup, needed' I don't know.