82 replies to this topic

[Atheus]

Arcaist, on 15 April 2013 - 11:21 PM, said:

well, you gotta guard the base then....

and besides, wait till 12 vs 12 arrives. things will change then...

Vincinzerey, on 15 April 2013 - 11:27 PM, said:

There is more involved in this game than blast the crap out of the other mach.. there are times where you just have to think what you could do to win. If the entire group leave the base unguarded and 2 light mechs can cap without interruption.. they deserve to win.

about the 12 vs 12.. will be interesting how this will "end" on the smaller maps like frozen city ;)

Footupyazz, on 16 April 2013 - 04:20 AM, said:

you said it yourself....USE TACTIC'S....so don't run off with ya group. Your own fault that you get capped.

so my vote: NO

There is no apostrophe in tactics. Something tells me your tactics are pretty boring to me.

HammerSwarm, on 16 April 2013 - 05:50 AM, said:

please learn to play defense, co-ordinate with other players, and to play game modes instead of just pretending you are in solaris.

Prezimonto, on 16 April 2013 - 06:09 AM, said:

I said no. I think the cap time should scale with the distance between the two spawn points/distance involved with side routes that are commonly traveled.

What's not fun is that on some large maps it's game losing to split your team and half your team can't get back to the cap in time to do anything.

I also like the idea that the cap time should scale with number of your team's mechs that are left.

I also like the idea that the cap time should scale relative to the tonnage you have on the point.

I'd like to have those two ideas offset each other.

To all of you - the question here is not "how do we cope with this existing game mode". It is "how do we make a game mode that is the most fun and interesting to play?" Guarding the base, whether you do it alone, or do it with a partner, or whatever, is almost guaranteed to be devoid of fun. Here are the possible scenarios and outcomes of leaving players behind to guard the base:

1. The other team does not attempt to cap the base early
a) Your team must fight the opposing team without your help, probably loses, then you get steamrolled by the remainder of the opposing team.
b) Your team manages to win despite their disadvantage in numbers, and you have spent the whole match doing nothing
c) You abandon your post and enjoy fighting robots.

2. The other team attempts to cap the base early
a) The opposing team sends a capture force greater than you can handle, you die in an uneven fight, game over.
b) The opposing team sends a scout to step on the base, he sees that it is defended, and leaves without engaging. You still don't get to do anything useful for the majority of the match.
c) The opposing team sends an ***** who overestimates his ability, and you kill him. Yay, base defended.

3. The opposing team base rushes with their entire team.
a) You see them coming, alert your team, but you just get the honor of being the first to die as they steamroll you on the way to the base, likely the only person who will die on your team before the base is captured.
b) You don't see them coming, same outcome.
c) Your team never went far from the base in the first place, so you actually had a fight involving the entirety of both teams. Good times.
d) (edit) You see them coming, alert your team, and your team just attempts to race to the enemy base and cap them first. The fight ends with maybe 1 or 2 defending mechs as casualties before the base sliders expire. This happens so often on river city and forest colony it's disgusting. To me, these matches are a complete waste of time.

Look at all these scenarios, and consider how many of them involving a potential base cap effort within the first 5 minutes were actually any fun to play. In most cases, it's not even all that fun for the winning team to rush a base cap (did they even get to do any fighting?). In nearly all cases, the poor ******* who got stuck on base guarding duty didn't have any fun, or suffered the opposite of having fun.

Now think from another reverse perspective - how would it harm the game experience right now to prevent base capping for the first 5 minutes of a match? Would scouts be unable to show off their amazing speed and stealth without engaging the enemy? Sure, if they like, but if they want to use that skill to singlehandedly win the match they'll have to wait until people have had some fun first. The "tactics" would just involve being aware that after 5 minutes their base is vulnerable to being captured. Perhaps more grace time would be appropriate on larger maps as well. From my perspective, it's all pluses.

To be honest, the base capping doesn't bother me much on smaller maps, but in the large maps, it can be 2 minutes of travel before you even get to a point where you are engaging the enemy. Traveling 2 minutes back to the base really isn't an option, nor is it anything most players want to deal with. Another consideration is often I wind up in matches where our team doesn't even have light or medium mechs. What then?

Whatever your tactics are, if you don't have any scouts, or your scouts fail to identify all enemy movement (an impossible task on many maps) you're vulnerable to being base capped before a match even really gets interesting. At least with 5 minutes of grace period, people who enjoy fighting will get a chance to do what they enjoy doing in this game with enough time to actually get some things smashed up pretty well.

Edited by Atheus, 10 May 2013 - 01:09 AM.

[Alois Hammer]

Spirit of the Wolf, on 16 April 2013 - 09:56 AM, said:

Then again, I'd also like a mode without any caps at all. After 15 minutes, the match just ends. The only win condition is destroying all your opponents. (Would need to make something like what I saw in another thread -- a shrinking area of combat, which forces pilots to fight each other.) I'd definitely play that mode.

Screw timers, if the only win condition is eliminating the entire other team, man up and play until the match ends. Maybe a couple of 4-hour matches will show the TDM zealots the problem with their "Itz all about mah mad skillz" mentality.

[Bobzilla]

Alois Hammer, on 18 April 2013 - 06:40 AM, said:

Screw timers, if the only win condition is eliminating the entire other team, man up and play until the match ends. Maybe a couple of 4-hour matches will show the TDM zealots the problem with their "Itz all about mah mad skillz" mentality.

I'm pretty sure they they still want to leave the 15 min time limit in...
But suggesting something that noone wants, to prove some unclear point is cool too.

[Firewuff]

can we just lock these stupid topics.... "I jsut want to kill things..." There was a group that used to lay an ambush, 2-3of them would stay on base, the others a small distance away, the light would turn up, they would kill it and move on to the rest of the team... very effective.

[Nathan Foxbane]

Already been fixed people. You no longer get C-bills for capping or assisting in capping.

[Klaa]

Oh lord, someone complaining about capping in Assault mode again... what did you think was going to happen when you left your base in the dust?

In case you missed it, its written in the win conditions that display during map load.

Edited by Klaa, 18 April 2013 - 03:23 PM.

[Atheus]

Firewuff, on 18 April 2013 - 02:10 PM, said:

can we just lock these stupid topics.... "I jsut want to kill things..." There was a group that used to lay an ambush, 2-3of them would stay on base, the others a small distance away, the light would turn up, they would kill it and move on to the rest of the team... very effective.

Do you think this group would stop having any fun if the bases were automatically safe for 5 minutes? How do you suppose a utilitarian calculation of player fun would size up if you eliminated bases being captured in the first few minutes of a game?

Nathan Foxbane, on 18 April 2013 - 02:14 PM, said:

Already been fixed people. You no longer get C-bills for capping or assisting in capping.

Actually... that would fix it, to a degree, but last I looked (about a week ago) people were still getting XP and C-Bills for a win even if they did 0 damage during the match.

Klaa, on 18 April 2013 - 03:23 PM, said:

Oh lord, someone complaining about capping in Assault mode again... what did you think was going to happen when you left your base in the dust?

In case you missed it, its written in the win conditions that display during map load.

Thanks, captain obvious. What would us morons do without you? Keep up the good fight.

Edited by Atheus, 18 April 2013 - 09:52 PM.

[Bloody Moon]

Do we really have to turn Assault mode into TDM? Can't you wait for Solaris?

Your suggestion just limits strategy, what little there is anyway.

[Atheus]

Bloody Moon, on 18 April 2013 - 11:54 PM, said:

Do we really have to turn Assault mode into TDM? Can't you wait for Solaris?

Your suggestion just limits strategy, what little there is anyway.

Yes, it does indeed limit strategy. There is no denying that, however it is not inherently a bad thing to limit strategy. Forcing teams to deal purely with attacking the opposing force is what I wish assault mode were about. Take away the combat element of this game and what is left is totally uninteresting - standing on a base to move a capture slider. I do not want to eliminate capture completely, because I know how tedious it can be trying to chase the enemy's one or two remaining light mechs around the map.when your own team only has slow movers available, so it does serve a purpose to end a match which has practically been fought to its conclusion even if all forces are not destroyed. Ending a match where nobody has even started fighting in a game that's primarily about combat, though, seems a serious misuse of the mechanic.

[Ursus_Spiritus]

Learn to watch/defend the base.

Basic tactic.

Not everyone can run out and gun and not expect to lose their base. Quite whining about base cap and not running assault/heavies all the time because they are two slow because myself or another in a faster mech skirted the opposing team or used ECM to mask my movement resulting in stealing your beer and ****!

If not any thing else and this lesson will be lost on some, but every fight is not about putting EVERY unit on the field at once so slug it out.

Though the FPS generation and those too immature to understand this apparently are the majority.

Patience is a virtue.

Edited by 8100d 5p4tt3r, 19 April 2013 - 09:18 AM.

[Atheus]

8100d 5p4tt3r, on 19 April 2013 - 08:41 AM, said:

Learn to watch/defend the base.

Basic tactic.:

Not everyone can run out and gun and not expect to lose their base. Quite whining about base cap and not running assault/heavies all the time because they are two too slow because myself or another in a faster mech skirted the opposing team or used ECM to mask my movement resulting in stealing your beer and ****! to catch my mech which is much faster.

If not any thing nothing else (and this lesson will be lost on some), but every fight is not about putting EVERY unit on the field at once so to slug it out.

Though the FPS generation and those too immature to understand this apparently are apparently the majority. (sentence fragment)

Patience is a virtue.

There, I translated your post into english. Thanks for being practically a caricature of how I envision people who disagree with me.

Responding to what I think you were trying to say... I'm just going to go with "no".

Edited by Atheus, 19 April 2013 - 07:52 PM.

[Makenzie71]

If you would like to keep this from happening, take command of the field. Normally, no one wants to be the one giving orders and no one's eager to start...be that person. Tell people what you want done. I try to get the lights to harry the enemy heavies and assaults. On the big maps like tourmaline and alpine I immediately pick two mechs and assign them the role of IMMEDIATELY breaking off and heading for base in the event of a cap attempt. Usually I'm looking for Catapults (including myself), Jagers, and Phracts since they can traverse the extent of even the largest maps before a cap could happen, and have the firepower to drive off the little offenders. Having a pair means most lightweights are going to run away.

Put thought into it. If you don't want to lose easy, work harder.

[Atheus]

Makenzie71, on 19 April 2013 - 09:41 PM, said:

If you would like to keep this from happening, take command of the field. Normally, no one wants to be the one giving orders and no one's eager to start...be that person. Tell people what you want done. I try to get the lights to harry the enemy heavies and assaults. On the big maps like tourmaline and alpine I immediately pick two mechs and assign them the role of IMMEDIATELY breaking off and heading for base in the event of a cap attempt. Usually I'm looking for Catapults (including myself), Jagers, and Phracts since they can traverse the extent of even the largest maps before a cap could happen, and have the firepower to drive off the little offenders. Having a pair means most lightweights are going to run away.

Put thought into it. If you don't want to lose easy, work harder.

I appreciate the thoughtful post, but you're mistaking the point of the thread. It isn't because I can't figure out how to protect the base that I dislike capwarrior. It's because I do not wish to be bothered with defending the base. It's just a matter of preference. I prefer to attack without need to worry about arbitrary objectives. This game does not offer a game mode for that preference. "Assault" seems to be the closest thing to, but with a critical flaw.

As an aside, I just spent a few hours tonight running a "capwarrior" troll squad with my spider and a few random strangers from the TeamSpeak LFG channel. We basically stepped on cap as soon as the enemy was engaging our group, and were able to win most matches this way. The only time we had any trouble is when the opposing team for whatever reason did not stray far enough from their base for us to cap out, though that didn't happen all that often, since we could cap most bases in 10-20 seconds. Sometimes we were spotted while approaching the base, but even when we were, in most cases that didn't stop us from capping out. Very little profit came of these matches, about 25k C-Bills, and a few hundred XP each, but the profit or lack thereof is not the problem. The people who dropped into the match on both teams barely got to play, simply because their strategy involved moving their whole team more than 1/3 of the way toward the enemy base, resulting in a total waste of time. As long as this "capwarrior" approach is available as a tactic, people will occasionally suffer matches that are just annoying and pointless as the ones I spent all night running. (Each time we capped out a team, I encouraged people to come to the forums to share their feelings on the capwarrior option of Assault mode).

Edited by Atheus, 19 April 2013 - 11:05 PM.

[Roland Verliden]

I have to agree with Atheus' suggestion. There's a multiplayer game I've put far more time into than MW:O, and that's Team Fortress 2. TF2 has an "Arena" mode that is very similar to MW:O's Assault mode, but Arena has the forced no-cap delay at the start of the match, meaning that players have to go out and fight.

I don't play Arena that much, but there's a custom gamemode based off of Arena that MW:O could benefit from emulating: Vs. Saxton Hale mode. In VSH mode, you basically have to go out and fight Saxton/the Mercs, the capture point only unlocks when there's three mercs left to fight Hale, and capping is very much discouraged except in special cases:

If you're Hale, and the last guy alive is a Scout (or someone who's hiding pretty well), you can stand on the cap and force them to either come to you or let their team lose. If you're a merc, then you can bait Hale into any trap you set.

It's this dynamic of no-capping-unless-necessary that could make Assault better to play. I honestly don't think that making bases unable to be captured for a few minutes will ruin the mode at all.

Edited by Roland Verliden, 19 April 2013 - 11:06 PM.

[Alamarian]

If you were to view the assault mode from the outside looking in, who would you think it was designed to satisfy? It can't be the tactical gamer; conquest presents more options for tactical gameplay. The brawler? But it can't be him if a team full of brawling heavies and assaults can be defeated by a light or two with capture accelerators when the brawlers attempt to move out and actually, you know, brawl.

What's funny and odd is that conquest often ends up providing a good brawl, because one cap can't end the match. So even if you lose to a capping team, you don't have to fear having the fun cut short before a volley is fired. You can go unleash some dakka, lose by resources and still have more fun than in a capping loss in assault.

That's not to say that capping, or something like it, should go away. First, something has to be done to prevent a light mech from running from a bunch of heavies until time runs out. It also gives lights more uses and provides a lot of drama. I've had some good, down to the wire matches that ended with successful caps or successful defenses. A five minute delay is the quick way to fix that. It might not be the best way though.

Another option would be to make capture speed based on the number of mechs in the match. As mechs are destroyed, a single mech represents a greater and greater percentage of the remaining total. This could be weighted so that a single mech would take several minutes to capture while everyone is alive but would capture quicker as attrition rose. I think this would encourage more team play, because you need enemy mechs to be occupied or destroyed to have a real chance to cap. It also makes it possible for your gambit to fail - your mates might get steamrolled by the undivided firepower of the enemy team and then have time to deal with you. (That's why I suggest it be based on ALL living mechs and not just friendlies - the latter would allow a light mech on an otherwise dead team to quickly cap and "rob" victory from the team that otherwise performed better)

[Troutmonkey]

I like the idea of scaling cap rates depending on how many players (total) are left. Someone should create another suggestion thread with a more articulated version of this idea so that I can upvote it

[GabrielSun]

Ultimately the cap on assault problem is more of a map and mission design failure than tactical failure. Assault maps should have choke points and other means of at least preventing it. Not like the mountain map where you can literally walk around without seeing anyone else for 10 mins if you try and flank.

[Cyke]

Alamarian has a splendid idea right there.
Scale cap rates based on total number (both teams added up) of surviving 'Mechs in the game!

Certainly needs more thought to see if there's any pitfalls to the idea, start a thread up, good man!

[Lars Widstrom]

I feel like the bigger issue here is that a lot of pilots want to load up an assault/heavy with guns and minimize engine/speed/support equipment. The capture mechanic (in both maps) is to give those pilots that utilize scouting, calling out targets, and speed an advantage over the "gun-whales". I know it is annoying when a light goes and captures before anyone even has a chance to build up a salvage bonus, but really so what? Match over, collect 25k and hit the launch button.

[ArmageddonKnight]

OP ur gunna get more people voting no for a couple reasons.

Those who pug and vote 'no' are those using pug's to farm and want fast matches, cap win repeat. Otherwise why vote no, u want to play the game then u want to fight mechs, not race to the finish line, it aint a racing game.

Those who do 8v8 drops use caping as a proper tactic, there is alot more teamwork involved and so def and offensework side by side. This is a good thing.

That there will make up more than 50% of the players making them the majority.

However as with any poll, even if one vote looses, if the % is high enough, it will likely still hit PGI's radar.

Personaly i only ever pug atm, i may well end up in a team in future. .who know ..depends how this game turns out. But as it stand, in pugging, caping in 90% of cases tends to ruin the fun of battle. Pug's rarely have good comunative teamwork, they end up being a simple team vs team detahmatch, and so 1 or 2 people running of to cap for their own selfish farming ways do indeed end up ruining some matches.
Ether adding a new deathmatch mode, or removing cpaing from assualt would be good, however as has been sugested a few times, a timer like sugested here would be a very good mid way point which people from both sides of the argument should realistcly be happy with. If they aint happy with it, then their just being selfish.