20 replies to this topic

[athlonduke]

i'll just toss the "LRN2PLAY", "NOOB", "USUKC" etc out in front just because...well it's an internet forum.

my normal night consists of the trying to relax after work/kids and i'm increasingly not able to do that anymore. my night is usually spent losing 8+ rounds in a row in the most horrible fashion and then a brilliant glorious win at which point I log out.

round 1: loss due to disco on my team (I get a disco on my team about 80% of the time)
round 2: LRM Online
round 3: everyone split up and play call of duty online
round 4: disco
round 5: enemy team has 4 dire whales and 3 timber wolves. yeah.
round 6: disco
round 7: LRM Online
round 8: disco
round 9: 12-2 win

is this some kind of karma for winning most of my matches a year+ ago when grouping with people worked well? why does it always seem that the disconnect person is on my team so often? most game are never "even" or "close", they almost always end up 2-12 or 3-12 roflstomps.

I try to play as a team player as best I can. if i'm using an lrm boat I assist as targets allow. heavy and assult mechs i'm usualy near the front tossing out damage. my overall weapon stats are all pretty high. I'll try to communicate as much as one can type. I try to carry UAV's on faster mechs, almost always have arty.

I just needed to vent. this is getting old and i'd like to have fun once in a while. i'm squeeking by with a 1.4 KDR right now, used to be 2.5 or so before the last stats wipe. 113/146 win/losses according to the stats page, so 43% chance i'll win. it's been going down the past few months.

Can I just put in a service ticket to "reset" my elo and see where that takes me?

Edited by athlonduke, 02 October 2014 - 08:26 PM.

[Mcgral18]

I'll ignore those LRM comments.

What are your builds?

[athlonduke]

little bit of everything. 63 mechs in the mechbay, anything I have 3 of is mastered or working towards it (except clan, just bought those)

working on dire whales now. A has 2xlrm20, 2xerppc, 1xlbx10. B has uac20, 2xuac10, 4xerml. forget what the prime has...
that's the general gist of how I build a mech. try to make use of the hardpoints as best I can.

[Corbon Zackery]

Complaints after 8 losses the record is still 32 losses in a row. Not even close to breaking it.

[Mcgral18]

Well, sometimes the MM just screws you over.

Two matches in a row where over half the team fails to get 200 damage, then it happens to the red team instead.


Best advice is work on positioning. It helps avoid the LRM rain, as well as peeking with high or side mounted hardpoints. Whales don't really have either, but other mechs do.

[9thDeathscream]

Your not the only one having a ****** time of it lately. If u aint sporting a Direwolf, Timberwolf or a Stormcrow your not even in the running. My KDR is at 1.86 Atm I am trying to Xp out the Vindicators and its fkn almost imposible to get kills. If the Clan Mechs don't get em the IS lights steal em or you get screwed by the Match Maker. Had 10 deaths in a row running Vnd 1r. Been trying to get it to an evn KDR. Can't do it. Not gunna bother until the IS quirk pass.

Edit. I do own all the Clan Mechs. But running them all the time is the "easy mode" I like a challenge but continually coming up against 3 Direwolfs is getting really old real quick!

Edited by Akulla1980, 02 October 2014 - 09:01 PM.

[Kiiyor]

Ah, PUGS. They alternate between glorious chaos, thrilling wins, and infuriating, keyboard twisting losses.

You need to find your own meta. Team matches are about co-ordinated battle, and supporting each other. PUGS are about scrabbling all over each other for kills and damage.

To this end, I like to have a few 'old faithful' mechs in my garage, that are solely designed to bring rage to my enemies, no matter the occasion. Even when mastered, and even if i'm trying to unlock new mechs, I still make sure to see at least half my matches from any play session from the cockpit of my favourite machines.

My personal favourite is the soothing balm of a dual gauss Yager.

You're faster than DireWolves (marginally), and if you play properly (read; lurk, kick in the crotch, relocate if necessary, repeat) you are always utterly devastating to the enemy team. You are very susceptible to focused fire, but if you hang out near any of the 5 DW's on your team, they will always be priority targets. I used to feel dirty running this, but then the Clans landed.

I also jump into an LRM1Bajillion Stalker every now and again, but that often still makes me feel dirty.

Overall though, you need to accept that the fickle and capricious gods of the PUG often find whimsy in your torment, and will sometimes grant you a stunning run of terrible, terrible matches.

[Manei Domini Krigg]

When your team are noobs its hard to win, but you must do all that you can for win. And after you can write "ahhhh this noooobs in my team!" if you played with best score =)))

Edited by Krigg, 02 October 2014 - 09:30 PM.

[Lynx7725]

athlonduke, on 02 October 2014 - 08:33 PM, said:

working on dire whales now. A has 2xlrm20, 2xerppc, 1xlbx10. B has uac20, 2xuac10, 4xerml. forget what the prime has...

that's the general gist of how I build a mech. try to make use of the hardpoints as best I can.

That's part of the problem. Dire Wolves are somewhat vulnerable in Solo Queues because they rely heavily on the team to cover them until they can get into an effective position.

You might also need to rethink your approach to mech builds. Part of the flexibility of Omnimechs is to build them exactly to the specs your fighting style prefers. Variety is good, but having a fighting style focus helps.

athlonduke, on 02 October 2014 - 08:24 PM, said:

is this some kind of karma for winning most of my matches a year+ ago when grouping with people worked well?

In a sense yes, IMO. This is particularly true if you were running assaults a year+ ago.

My explanation for this is that during that period, your ELO was driven up higher than your actual skill level (not disparaging your skill here, just as an explaining point), due to the multiplier effect of groups and comms in groups. Now when you solo, your higher-than-actual ELO gets you into situations where the the opposite site has a few players whose ELO is more representative. If those people are usual Solo Queue players, they have more familiarity with working with teams that lack cohesion, and that can be extremely telling.

Also, you have to be aware of the time zone differences. There are certain times where the better players swarm out of the woodwork, and there are certain times when the casual players come out. If you are looking at continual losses in a session, take a look at the names you are dropping with and against. If you are continually seeing the same names, or dropping into the same maps, you might want to take a pause in your gaming, a few minutes, so that these players move on to new matches and you can slot yourself into a new pool of players.

Other than that, L2P.. often the greatest culprit is loss of situation awareness. If you don't already have the habit of checking your minimap for the disposition of the rest of the unit, you need to pick that up and learn to interpret where best to insert your mech in what role. Dire Wolves need to be somewhere their firepower can be telling, but they need time to set up properly to either directly support or crossfire the current team positions. LRM boats need to stay with the pack, so you need to know where the rest of the team are.

After a certain point, your individual skill in your mech is a basic, expected requirement; the key differentiating point between a good pilot and a bad pilot becomes his ability to read the tactical situation and then to correctly insert himself in a place where he can be most telling.

[Xtrekker]

@OP, I feel your pain. I'm pretty much in the exact same boat as you. My stats used to be great, then it seemed like overnight I barely started to squeak by. I get a lot of nights that are 5 or 6 losses in a row scoring low to average damage followed by a stomp with mega damage. It seems like our goals are the same...just try to end the night on a high. But there have been plenty of nights with a rage quit. These days it's when I work the whole match keeping consistent damage, then some jackhole in a DWF one-shots me with little to no effort.

Since Clans, my miserable KDR (1.31) barely maintains, but my WLR is tanking. It used to be a pretty steady 1:1, but now I'm about 20% less in wins than losses. That's all IS tech, all solo queue. I think part of it is I act the part of the sheepdog, often herding my lance along, trying to rescue the guys on the flanks, sticking with the assaults that get left in skirmish to help make a stand. It usually results in something stupid, like me engaging to help a couple of guys getting ganked, only to see them run off and leave me with the thugs. If I play selfishly and ignore the lone wolfs, use the pugs as meat shields, etc., I do much better. But I hate throwing teamwork out the window and I hate watching other players play like that. So...no good deed goes unpunished.

Good luck.

[KingDavid]

Welcome to PUG's Life dude. I experience the same situation everyday. It's the matchmaker still sucks. We play to have fun but what we get is frustration and rage. I often vent out with my team for stress release, i don't like it but i have to let it out. Some of them are suicidal, some are cowards and some don't know what to do ( not to mention the disco ). I told them in chat what to do, what not to do etc they still doing it or not doing it. Hell i think some of them don't even read chats.

[totgeboren]

I mostly PUG, only group with a friend sometimes and those games we tend to lose more often than we win (Group queue is not kind to 2-mans).
Anyway, I'm definitly an average player, but I think Elo works pretty good for me, got a KDR of 1.01 and a W/L of 1.12. My W/L should maybe be closer to 1, but I think I have gamed the system a bit.

What has work well for me is to play using mediums and lights, that way I don't take the spot of any good clan mechs (except maybe Stromcrows who are just fierce) and so I increase the chances of my team winning. Same if I want to use an LRM boat, I never ever use a heavy or assault for that, because that LRM Cat could have been a Cataphract, Jager, Timberwolf or Mad Dog instead, and that LRM Stalker could have been an ECM Atlas, a DW or a Wubshee.

If you only focus on what you bring, but forget what you are taking the place of, PUGs will be quite a bit harder than if you game the meta a bit.

Edited by totgeboren, 03 October 2014 - 01:19 AM.

[athlonduke]

I think I found my problem: these god damn solo queue tournaments. during the week I don't really have any problems. solo queue weekends i'm getting annihiliated. lrm's all over the god damn place, invincible light's tearing me up and spotting for the immeasurable lrms on the other team.

i'm logging off until Monday night, screw this. it isn't worth the frrustration

[Mazikar]

Not having much fun the past few nights either, feels like I have a glowing target on my mech, no matter what I do I am the main target, seems people will damn near suicide to kill me, that was when I played a Hunchy. Mind you I almost always end a normal pug match with top damage and 3-4 kills. Now no matter where I am I am prime target #1. I dumped the hunchy I so dearly love and picked my Summoner, now no one cares about me at all and I have 5 wins in a row with decent damage. Meh, this game isn't nearly as fun as it used to be and without some play changes its going to be "that game I used to play" real fast =(.

[Budor]

Get one of the better mechs for the given time (atm. crow, timber, dire), take a solid build (laser, laser gauss, laser dakka), watch some streams/videos, profit.

Ditch the LRMs.

Edited by Budor, 25 October 2014 - 09:48 PM.

[Alek Ituin]

Lol, all you people with 1+ KD's saying they're "terrible".

I'm just sitting here with my 0.74 KD and laughing at you. T5 Mechs are just too fun to pass up... >_>

[NNQM]

There should be a single player mode for those who doesn't want to play another counter-strike ****. I mean, why should I always compete with other guys online to play battletech thing? That is just not fair. Fantasy fans have Skyrim, why big robots fans have just a cyber-sport rat bucket? IMHO.

[nitra]

athlonduke, on 02 October 2014 - 08:24 PM, said:

<snip>

Playing the wrong game to relax ,

i have just about givin up on mmo games as relaxing to much fierce competition anymore.

this game is a perfect example. your either being hammered or bring the hammer.

very rarely do you ever get in to any good clean duels . your forced to kill quick or GTFO and try again which gets very repetitive and stressful.

only thing you can do is try to build fun builds lol builds troll buil;ds and enjoy their absurdities.. other wise you going to have to find a more relaxing game.

like modding skyrim and doing screen archery

or a good driving game ..

either way mwo is not a relaxing game .

Edited by nitra, 25 October 2014 - 10:49 PM.

[Kilo 40]

when I have a bad run like that, I just shut the game off for an hour or two, then come back and see how it goes then.

[Gav Cox]

You have to many mechs.It messes with your mind trying to work it all out. Simplify your game, work on dominating the few mechs you have and play defensively. Play in a team mindset and you'll be right.Don't complicate something that is very complicated from the start.