Woska, on 17 February 2013 - 10:03 PM, said:
I've noticed that weapon preferences run through cycles. People are sheep. And if someone is successful with a certain type of weapon, they all have to try it.
Case in point is the AC/2. For a while there half the mechs on the field were ballistic heavy and carrying as many AC/2s as they could. After a while the players started to see the down side of the weapon and gravitated to something else.
So yes, you have to adapt. You need to adapt your weapon loadout to suit your play style. You need to adapt your tactics to the enemy's action and weapons.
Case in point is the AC/2. For a while there half the mechs on the field were ballistic heavy and carrying as many AC/2s as they could. After a while the players started to see the down side of the weapon and gravitated to something else.
So yes, you have to adapt. You need to adapt your weapon loadout to suit your play style. You need to adapt your tactics to the enemy's action and weapons.
These cycles were the response of patching, not people just following each other blindy in fads. The AC/2 used to shake the camera so much that the target couldn't really fight back. That was the whole point of using it. Then patches reduced camera shake across the board and the AC/2 fell out of favour because it was back to being the long-range low damage weapon it is supposed to be. SRMs were not in-vogue pre-ECM because SSRMs dealt with the lagshield better, and LRMs were effective and reliable long range damage dealers. Then ECM was added in, turning off LRM use almost completely until the 750 metre TAG was introduced, and switching SSRM users to SRM users, which got better with netcode improvements.