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2-10 Groups: Pug Strategies Don't Cut It Anymore. Or Do They?


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#1 Lucky Strongarm

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Posted 21 July 2014 - 06:56 AM

It has been my experience so far that the new group mechanics are making for more challenging drops. What I mean by that is that I lose more often. ;)

Realizing my question is a bit open-ended, I'll ask it nonetheless: Assuming that a group is made up of players who know each other, have the ability to coordinate the mechs they drop in, and actively use comms, what is the foundation for effective tactics in the current mechwarrior setting?

What are you having success with? Staying together as a group? Calling targets and focusing fire? Using the battlegrid command controls to direct your group? Practice practice practice?

I'm interested to hear the thoughts of pilots better than me (queue most of the community).

#2 InspectorG

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Posted 21 July 2014 - 07:38 AM

Maybe your elo is getting better?

#3 PeeWrinkle

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Posted 21 July 2014 - 09:09 AM

I mostly pug and have noticed pretty much what you have noticed. My teams loose significantly more now than they did in the past, sort of. The sort of is because it does vary. For example I may play one night and win 15 out of 20 matches, then the next night I may loose 18 out of 20 matches. Loosing more than 75% of the matches I am in during an evening gaming session is much more common than it was in the past.

It could be due to ELO, but I don't think so because I believe you have a different score for each wt class. Please correct me if I am wrong there. Since I drop with all 4 wt classes and am significantly better with a couple of them, I would expect my ELO to be higher with those wt classes. However I notice no real difference between evenings when I drop with mediums (I play these pretty well) and evenings when I drop with assaults (probably about average or just below with these). The one thing I can say for certain is my ability to play well is directly related to the quality of the team I have dropped with. Better teams make it much easier to play successfully.

Which leads me to the one thing I have noticed; teams with better coordination seem to win more often. I am not sure how this happens exactly because I have been on both sides. Most matches there is very little in game chat communication, but when I am with better teams we all seem to form up and focus fire almost automatically. When I am not with very good teams it seems like we get spread out, everyone is playing solo, and with in a couple minutes you are down three mechs.

As you'd expect with the good teams my match scores are much higher and I perform much better, with the not so good teams, my score is usually low. At this point I can actually tell which way it is going to go within the first minute or so (the exception being the rare close match).

Ironically I don't think it has anything to do with the so called newb's either. I have been on winning teams that seem to have a couple newb's and they do just fine after they run off and die quickly. Oddly enough there is no complaining either about anything stupid anyone may have done in those matches. On loosing teams after the first couple mechs go down, it seems as if chat lights up with finger pointing. Which may actually be the cause for the loss? Its hard to chat and fire at the same time I'm thinking. Heck one match there was a pilot lighting up chat telling everyone that they did not no how to play and that he tried to tell them what to do (probably was mad cause he died early when no one followed him). That was a very close match that turned out to be a victory, actually one of the most amazing matches I have been a part of, very fierce brawl at the end!

So I am thinking more team play = victories, as well as less negativity with in game chat. I mean if we want the game to survive, some guys need to take it easy on the newbs for sure!

Anyway those are just my thoughts

#4 Lucky Strongarm

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Posted 21 July 2014 - 09:51 AM

View PostInspectorG, on 21 July 2014 - 07:38 AM, said:

Maybe your elo is getting better?


I don't even know what an "elo" is.

View PostLucky Strongarm, on 21 July 2014 - 09:49 AM, said:


I don't even know what an "elo" is.


Where can I get one?

#5 Ursh

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Posted 21 July 2014 - 10:00 AM

Well, if you were used to dropping with a small group of friends in the normal queue, you probably used the PUGs as shields quite often, or simply followed the death blob. That doesn't work so well against people who are actually coordinating.

If no one calls a direction and goal at the beginning, you might need to do it. Milling around is wasting precious time that the enemy might be using to move to an advantageous position.

#6 PeeWrinkle

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Posted 22 July 2014 - 04:20 AM

I ran across this in the forums and thought it applies to this question. Why you get Roflstopmed. So I thought I would share it here as well.

Reading it actually made a lot of sense and goes with one of my thoughts that it is really based on how well your team works together. Especially the part about being out gunned, either from the start because of builds, or because of rapid loss.

I should also point out that Ursh is 100% right. In several matches last evening I took it upon myself (which I don't really like to do) and lead when I noticed my team was just milling around aimlessly. Made a huge difference in the quality of matches as well.

#7 Rasc4l

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Posted 22 July 2014 - 04:35 AM

View PostLucky Strongarm, on 21 July 2014 - 06:56 AM, said:

What are you having success with? Staying together as a group? Calling targets and focusing fire? Using the battlegrid command controls to direct your group? Practice practice practice?


Yes. Yes. No. Yes yes yes.

Focus fire is the key to victory in competitive games. Focusfire can only take place when players are working together as a group and calling targets. Nobody uses battlegrid commands except wanna-be commanders in PUGs.

#8 InspectorG

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Posted 22 July 2014 - 04:49 AM

View PostLucky Strongarm, on 21 July 2014 - 09:51 AM, said:


I don't even know what an "elo" is.



Where can I get one?


ELO is the formula the match maker uses to place you with similarly ranked players. It is hidden.
Suffice to say that as you get better, generally your competition gets better as well. Supposedly.

#9 Jacon Ceronia

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Posted 22 July 2014 - 06:16 AM

View PostInspectorG, on 22 July 2014 - 04:49 AM, said:


ELO is the formula the match maker uses to place you with similarly ranked players. It is hidden.
Suffice to say that as you get better, generally your competition gets better as well. Supposedly.


ELO =

Elo = http://en.wikipedia....o_rating_system

#10 JigglyMoobs

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Posted 23 July 2014 - 01:46 AM

The basic difference is that the optimal pug play style is defense oriented, with each player using the other players and the terrain as defensive screens to get in damage and kills over time.

On the other hand, large groups need to use their superior communication to be much much much much more aggressive. They are using shock, mass, speed, maneuver and focused firepower to win.

Good 6-12 man groups are constantly on the attack. They get everywhere much faster than opponents expect and attack much more aggressively, often committing their entire force into an attack.

Target calling and foccus firing is actually secondary. The primary thing is to get everyone in position to commit to an attack under favorable circumstances, and recognizing or creating those circumstances really fast. That accounts for 90 percent of the roflstomps.

The other 10 percent of games where 2 teams that have the basics down are facing each other is where More advanced skills are coming in play.

Its indeed completely different.

Edited by JigglyMoobs, 23 July 2014 - 01:55 AM.


#11 IraqiWalker

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Posted 23 July 2014 - 02:06 AM

View PostLucky Strongarm, on 21 July 2014 - 06:56 AM, said:

It has been my experience so far that the new group mechanics are making for more challenging drops. What I mean by that is that I lose more often. :P

Realizing my question is a bit open-ended, I'll ask it nonetheless: Assuming that a group is made up of players who know each other, have the ability to coordinate the mechs they drop in, and actively use comms, what is the foundation for effective tactics in the current mechwarrior setting?

What are you having success with? Staying together as a group? Calling targets and focusing fire? Using the battlegrid command controls to direct your group? Practice practice practice?

I'm interested to hear the thoughts of pilots better than me (queue most of the community).


I'm not sure I understand what you're asking, so correct me if I am wrong.

I am assuming you're asking what brings me better success when dropping with friends on comms. In that case, we use a combination of what you mentioned. The most important and best advantage we get is that we can have one person be the drop caller. That person will direct the movement of our units, and where they should go, and how they set up.

When I used to lead 12 mans I spent a good deal of the early game hidden and looking over the battle grid setting up where everyone should be.

After the drop caller the next advantage is the knowledge of what loadouts exist, meaning I won't bring a support mech and run into the problem of not having an LRM boat on the team, or vice versa. Thus I always know what my team has, and who to run to when chased by certain mechs (I prefer piloting lights).

Third advantage and the one that has the most impact when we clash with the enemy team is the ability to focus fire. In HHoD I drop with people I regularly know, and we have drilled good response and reflex, so when I hear Alpha, it takes me at most 3 seconds to spot it, and open fire on it.

At the same time, since we have a drop caller who's in a somewhat relaxed position, they can also declare which targets are secondary and tertiary.

Basically here's one scenario that happened during my last group drop.

We had 6 mechs in our premade. Our drop leader used my scouting information to see which enemies were barreling down on us, and called the enemy T-Wolf with Gauss ERPPC as primary, the CTF-3D as secondary, and the JM6-DD with 6MGs as tertiary. When we got to open fire on those three (they were ahead of the enemy formation), we killed the T-Wolf first, and those that didn't get there in time didn't need to waste time trying to see where Alpha is, as soon as we called Alpha down, they didn't need more communication, they switched to hit Delta (the CTF with the LBXs), and as soon as they heard Delta down, they were hitting Golf (the JM6-DD).

By the time we churned through those three, our drop caller already had 3 more targets prioritized for us, and we just went through the enemy team like a combine harvester on roid-rage.

Also, when we say at the beginning of chat that we are a premade, the PuGs usually follow us around, and I always make sure to keep them in the loop using chat. A luxury afforded to me since I am in a light going at 140Kph, with ECM, and I can hide wherever I want. Sometimes our drop caller (if they are the type to sit back and coordinate, like me, instead of lead from the front) will be the ones using chat.

Here's another scenario where we achieved a great victory simply because we kept the PuGs in the loop:

Terra Therma, we dropped with 3 DWFs (this was back when the clan packs had just been released), and we were made up of 4 mechs only. We told the PuGs to follow our lead, and they did. We got to the caldera and waited outside one of the exits for the enemy team to come out.

I kept having to type in chat "stay close" and "no, come back, don't leave the group or we lose" things like that to keep the natural "I wanna charge and punch things" mentality in check. We had our DWFs and JM6s and other mechs lined up in a concave firing line, and watched as the enemy team came out 2, 3 mechs at a time, and got chewed up. Once we had a 5 mech advantage, we let the PuGs go wild, and it was like the scene from 300 when they let the Arkadians in on the slaughter.

The brawl was glorious, and we had a clear win. Comms can be a game changer because you can use them while piloting and attacking. Meaning you don't need to worry about players not reading chat, or not having the time to type in chat. A second or 2 can be important if you are in a brawl. If you are sitting behind a rock and waiting for things to happen, use chat.

View PostJigglyMoobs, on 23 July 2014 - 01:46 AM, said:

The basic difference is that the optimal pug play style is defense oriented, with each player using the other players and the terrain as defensive screens to get in damage and kills over time.

On the other hand, large groups need to use their superior communication to be much much much much more aggressive. They are using shock, mass, speed, maneuver and focused firepower to win.

Good 6-12 man groups are constantly on the attack. They get everywhere much faster than opponents expect and attack much more aggressively, often committing their entire force into an attack.

Target calling and foccus firing is actually secondary. The primary thing is to get everyone in position to commit to an attack under favorable circumstances, and recognizing or creating those circumstances really fast. That accounts for 90 percent of the roflstomps.

The other 10 percent of games where 2 teams that have the basics down are facing each other is where More advanced skills are coming in play.

Its indeed completely different.

I use my JJ mechs to charge behind my teammates and fire over them as they are bum-rushing the enemy lines.

#12 Pekiti

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Posted 24 July 2014 - 05:35 AM

View PostLucky Strongarm, on 21 July 2014 - 09:51 AM, said:

I don't even know what an "elo" is. Where can I get one?



Elo is actually the name of the guy who invented a system for ranking players in competitive games. His system is/was used extensively in chess competitions, but has spread to many online games.

Arpad Elo

The way it works in MWO is that based on your win/loss record (and the W/L record of the rest of the players on your team and the enemy team) the matchmaker predicts whether or not you will win the match. If you are predicted to lose the match, but you win it instead, the matchmaker increases your personal 'Elo rating'. If you are predicted to lose the match, and you do in fact lose, your Elo rating stays the same. The same thing occurs if you are predicted to win, and you do in fact win - your Elo rating remains unchanged. If you were predicted to win, but you lose instead, your Elo rating goes down. As you play more matches, your Elo rating helps the matchmaker predict your wins/losses more accurately (which you see as a lot more challenging matches where 'it could have gone either way'). It tries to match groups of players against other groups with approximately equal Elo rating, so everyone has the best chance for a good match.

Note that your Kill/Death ratio, damage inflicted per match, number of kills per match - none of those things affect your Elo rating at all.

Only your Win/Loss ratio affects Elo, and the best way to affect that is to play better as a team member. I always chuckle when I see some guy raging in the forums about how he plays so well (usually inserting his K/D ratio and high damage numbers to 'prove' how good he is) but somehow the matchmaker keeps putting him in 'sucky PUG groups full of low skill players'. The irony is that if he was more of a team player, his teams would win more often and his Elo would go up - leaving those 'sucky' players behind. Since he isn't, he hasn't and they drop together. (I also laugh when someone rage quits in a match and says 'what a lousy team', apparently forgetting they were part of that team when matchmaker was assembling the 'Cast of Losers' :P )

Edited by Pekiti, 24 July 2014 - 05:44 AM.






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