100 replies to this topic

[silentD11]

ElLocoMarko, on 30 April 2013 - 02:28 PM, said:

I can tell you that matches like this aren't fun at all for 12 of the 16 players. When 75% of your players had a bad experience as a direct result of an (arguably) abused game mechanic... that isn't a good thing. No one is buying MC to play matches like this.... It's bad for PGI.

Im pretty sure I remember this match

[Zerberus]

I agree 100% with the OP.

When the score is 7:2 and the last enemy guy is hiding, and teh entire team moves to cap except "you", who are flaming your tea, foer capping instead of playing "find the shutdown raven in the gorge", teh only n00b is you because you`re the one that doesnt understand the game and needs to go play Quake or something else where intelligence (or lack therof) has less bearing on gameplay.

Had exactly this not happened half an hour ago, I probably wouldn`t be posting, because usualy I don`t care. But wanting everyone else to sit on their thumb for 8 minutes just so you can attempt to pad your K/D ratio, hell even suggesting it, is just flat out a d!ck move.

Aloha, on 30 April 2013 - 02:40 PM, said:

Well, if there is actually a TDM mode, then the people who wants to play TDM has a place to go and wouldn't be complaining about the current assault capping mechanics.

Correct, they`d be complaining about spending 10 minutes every match searching for the shutdown raven. But since they don`t believe that, I say give it to them and tell them to **** 50x /day when the threads start popping up. Some people can`t listen, so they have to learn the hard way, by getting exactly what they ask for.

Edited by Zerberus, 30 April 2013 - 02:56 PM.

[MrVop]

Will you fine gentlemen (read that as '******* idiots') stop fighting and get back on topic.

Bloat boat, as you say, is not there because people necessarily enjoy them the most, it's the most rewarded. And who the hell would have guessed that people like being rewarded.

Anecdotal scenarios

Alpine, you drop a fast med to combat the enemy lights, you defend the base by staying there to guard. What is the most likely activity you will be doing during that match? ******* nothing, you stand there the whole time twiddling your lasers. chances are neither team wants to cap, it's less money, less Xp,and less of the most important resource... Fun.

By luck a light did come and try to cap. Thank god you stayed back! You do a few turns a few good pin point splats on the little guy and he decides (because he is not completely dumb) that his death is certain if he remains engaged. He bones weaves and gets the **** out of dodge. YOU JUST SAVEDTHEGAME! ... Well actually no, you still get **** poor money because you only scratched a light a couple of times. And chances are that light joined the main fight did more damage then you and even if loosing to TDM still gets more rewards then you.

The reason people don't run back is that if you take a fast med away from the fight and run to base to scare off one light (who will run netting you little profit) by the time you rejoin the fight there is a good chance it has already been decided and you might get to pick off a few stragglers or be the straggler getting picked off.

Where I the above thre paragraphs is fun? And why do you want players to play roles that aren't fun...
The game isn't here at the moment, it's just deathwatch with a chance a troll will waste both teams time by fast capping. Netting negligible rewards for the time invested.

How about this. Lock both so that they cannot be capped until the team that owns it is winning by 33% of BV (meaning you have to have killed x amount of the enemy team to where the combined battle value of your live team is 33% above theirs), now you know your base is open so you send defender(s) back. Holly **** the whole game will do a 360 build wise. Fast lights will scout because they have nothing else to do, meds will be watching base status to allow themselves time to get back if need be, loosing team has a chance because you are almost chain to send at least one defender back evening the odds a little.

See if you actually try to build a game mode resembling battle tech battles some what the whole two bases to stand on to cap thing becomes idiotic. That's not battle tech, and that's why people are using the so called bloat boat, I bet most of you guys own one too in order to grind chills.

You can build on that meta game so much. Make bases not defenseless. Build walls with ******* lasers that are automated on them. Now if you want to have a fast medium lance breakthrough the defenses to cap it's actually fun for them to shoot at stuff, and gives you time to react and decide on defense.

I can go on for a while with these ideas, but until Ann actual game mode is created the builds will always be broken.

[Ransack]

silentD11, on 30 April 2013 - 11:55 AM, said:

To all,

Since closed beta we’ve seen one thing after another as “broken” or “OP”. As soon as one thing is fixed another thing crops up. This is why regardless of how you feel about PPC boating and poptarting, fixing it will not balance the current game. All it will do is open the door for everyone to move to the next “broken” build. Everyone proposing weapon balance or item balance tweaks should be aware of it. You’re just trading the devil you know for the devil you don’t, or potentially the return of the devil you do.

The actual problem has less to do with the weapons, it has to do with how people are insisting on playing the game. Most players out there do not want any sort of tactical gameplay. All they want to do is play a sort of bastardized TDM. Where both teams lumber towards each other and slug it out. As long as people want to play this game there will always be a way to optimize your mechs to kill the other one more effectively since nothing else matters. When you don’t have to worry about using mechs to defend, scout the edges of the map for other mechs, move from group to group as support, any hope of weapon balance goes out the window.

If people were actually playing assault with the goal of capturing the base, the current meta of slow and heavy alpha strikers wouldn’t be so powerful. Massing up a firing line and waiting to poptart the crap out of people fails to base capping. People would be forced to take faster mediums and heavies that can’t poptart to counter caps, lights to push their own caps to break up the other force and scout the map to see where the other lights are going, and other choices as well. In short, massing PPC boats and poptarts that are slow and heavy would be a completely invalid tactic.

Do the weapons need some work, sure. However until people stop running off to play TDM and instead actually play assault no amount of weapon balancing is going to save this game from simply being a contest to make the most killy mech possible out of the choices you have with no regard for other factors. And we will always be hopping from whatever that build is at the moment to whatever the next one is after a new mech is introduced, waiting for a patch to fix it, and then repeating the process again.

PGI bears part of the blame for not encouraging capping. But PGI only bears part of the blame for the screwed up meta. The rest of the blame, and IMHO the majority of the blame, lies squarely on the heads of people who insist on playing TDM, because TDM has made all the min/maxing with a total focus on killing ability alone not only a viable strategy, but the only one worth a crap. Hilariously though, that falls flat on it’s face when confronted with a group of players who are willing to play assault and actually capture the base.

TL:DR- If you’re one of those insisting on playing TDM you’re far more of an issue to balancing this game than PPCs, LRMs, ECM, or whatever ever was. And as long as you continue to do this any attempts at balancing are ultimately futile and we are doomed to a permanent cycle of OP after OP.

eh, I agree with some of what you say, but to me, it all comes down to this. If you kill everyone else, you win. On a conquest map it could be 200 to 749, as long as their team is dead, you win.

The game play itself encourages it. It encourages High damage builds, because you make more money for damage. It's just the game itself. Until there is adequate reason to play another style, people are going to go with the path of least resistance.

What is the solution? I don't know, but it sure as hell isn't making capping more lucrative. Been there, done that, it wasn't fun either.

Edited by Ransack, 30 April 2013 - 03:05 PM.

[Evil Deaz]

I agree with the OP. This game and battletech in general is based off of role warfare. Every mech has a purpose other than slapping the biggest guns or the most guns in some cases and standing in a firining line like if we were in WWI fighting out of trenches. I mostly run a light mech or in some cases a dragon with a balanced build and still out damage the big bloat-boats in most cases and keep some versatility on the battlefield. Now if you excuse me, im going to get in my dragon, kill a couple of poptarts and then cap their base and watch the QQ.

[ElLocoMarko]

Cap racing was a problem last year that PGI acknowledged and addressed by changing the economy. That isn't working any more. Current game balance has pissed off lots of people (myself included) and the lights are voicing their outrage through cap runs.

Perhaps I should attempt to be heard by making the game unplayable for everyone else. That sounds really sarcastic, but I am seriously considering it. I can afford an ERPPC spider. Forum posts do nothing. But when cap racing was the norm... PGI reacted. I've played almost every broken weapon and chassis that has ever seen the nerf hammer. if I take up cap-running, it is bound to be addressed in 3-6 months.

I encourage all to take up the cap race!

Edited by ElLocoMarko, 30 April 2013 - 03:15 PM.

[Trauglodyte]

ElLocoMarko, on 30 April 2013 - 02:28 PM, said:

I can tell you that matches like this aren't fun at all for 12 of the 16 players. When 75% of your players had a bad experience as a direct result of an (arguably) abused game mechanic... that isn't a good thing. No one is buying MC to play matches like this.... It's bad for PGI.

You lost to a goon squad. These are the same jerks that abused the knockdown mechanics and pretty much kept a dev on his butt for the entirety of the game. Pointing that game out is more an issue with them (and the fact that your team did a cap race as well) then it is with actual capping.

[MrVop]

Neverfar, on 30 April 2013 - 03:20 PM, said:

Many problems here.

1. It may make you feel high and mighty by calling your audience "idiots", but it's roughly as effective as being the whiny guy calling your losing team "noobs": it may feel good as an emotional release but you won't win anyone over. If you're not on this forum to persuade anyone, may as well scream at a wall until you feel better.

2. The part where you say lights will play your way because "they will have nothing else to do". Is that how you see lights? Giving them a tertiary, token role? Even if you artificially made it essential with the rest of your ideas, who would want to play that? We're supposed to cower in fear of your mighty and grand choice of a bigger Mech with (in your version of the game) no real weaknesses to light Mechs? Please. So much for choice.

3. Lock capping until the winning team is already winning? So what would the point be of lights or capping again? Oh, right. You want your flotilla of bloat boats to win because they brought more of them, and maybe called primaries faster on their premade voice channel. That works (sort of) in EVE, but it would be very dry very quickly here. The very cap mechanic exists so you don't get too comfortable lining up like you're columns of ball-and-powder Revolutionary War redcoats. I bet those redcoats cried about the Colonials taking potshots at them from the woods and running around unchecked, too!

4. Saying "idiots" a lot and making weird assumptions about what the "idiots" are buying because I called your bloat boats (buying things to grind "chills"? Do you mean C-Bills? Comstar Bills? For all the babbling about what Battletech is supposed to be, you don't seem very informed on it), well, bloat boats is not very persuasive, endearing, or for that matter effective. It makes you seem a little desperate.

5. Like the "REMOVE DOUBLE HEAT SINKS PROBLEM SOLVED" fanatics, you seem to believe your "solution" would solve every problem, and as you put it, would "360" the game (which means we go COMPLETLY around and go back to where we started, which is right here!).

6. Like the "360" idea, calling people idiots and spelling stuff like a text kiddie hopped up on caffiene is reflecting off on you more than hurting any of us. You're trying to hurt us, right? You're certainly not persuasive. You're kind of entertaining, but not in the way you might intend.

wow... where to begin. oh i know #1

1.) Read your own point #1 then apply it to your post. There were people litelarly fighting over who was more truthful... that's why I called them names, hopefully to refocus them get productive.

2.) Don't put words in my mouth please. I have almost every light bough and they are my favorite class to play. Problem is there is no reason to play them right now, and that's not becuaes they are gimped, They are weak like they are supposed to be, but fast and nimble. They just don't have a game to play. There is no Role Warfare because there are no ROLES. There is DPS and there is the capper, I play lights for fun, and I do ok, but I do alot better in the heavier bigger mechs it earns more moneys, which is the only reason to play right now, to hoard moneys.
Lights should cover in fear of the bigger mechs. THEY ARE CALLED LIGHTS, lighter fire power with lighter armor, engaging a lone assault in a light should be ideal, everything else should be just about suicide lights are not meant for direct combat, I want them to have a role thats not DPS, or it will just break them again.
Again don't put words in my mouth.

3.)If you read my words and comprehend them. The winning teams base becomes cappable, not the losing. Its spelled out right there. I'm not sure what else to say about that. The "i" word comes to mind...

4.)Well I was using a touch device. Sorry about the misspelling C-Bills(really proves your point when you start attacking unimportant things like spelling though). Calling a viable build names because it currently wins battles and earns C-Bills is just kinda weak man. Second of all most mechs out there move at about 60 kph... which is plenty fast for me. People don't go back to caps not because they are too slow, Its just not fun as I pointed out.

5.) I didn't give THE SOLUTION. I gave a suggestion, you know like "Don't just state the problem, think of a solution" type deal? It was an idea of how the game mode could be used to affect the builds.

6.) Well not much I can say here, You certainly took the higher ground and showed me what not to do by doing it to me?

[TheMadPoet]

I would love to see more strategic things to do. Maybe a supply depot that can be captured that heals all friendlies for a percentage, or a bridge across a deep chasm that can be a choke point of defense and attack, or perhaps points that can be captured on maps that set off air strikes or lengthen capture time for the enemy. Just fun things that have value, but don't win/lose the game automatically.

I agree that base capping is a viable and built-in win condition, but make the maps have others that have value as well to keep and hold, rather than just winning automatically. Conquest does this somewhat, but in a very uninteresting way.

[MrVop]

TheMadPoet, on 30 April 2013 - 03:49 PM, said:

I would love to see more strategic things to do. Maybe a supply depot that can be captured that heals all friendlies for a percentage, or a bridge across a deep chasm that can be a choke point of defense and attack, or perhaps points that can be captured on maps that set off air strikes or lengthen capture time for the enemy. Just fun things that have value, but don't win/lose the game automatically.

I agree that base capping is a viable and built-in win condition, but make the maps have others that have value as well to keep and hold, rather than just winning automatically. Conquest does this somewhat, but in a very uninteresting way.

That's exactly what we need. More stuff to do.

[El Bandito]

silentD11, on 30 April 2013 - 11:55 AM, said:

TL:DR- If you’re one of those insisting on playing TDM you’re far more of an issue to balancing this game than PPCs, LRMs, ECM, or whatever ever was. And as long as you continue to do this any attempts at balancing are ultimately futile and we are doomed to a permanent cycle of OP after OP.

This is Mechwarrior: Online. I came here to shoot at mechs and get Godly amount of C-Bills. If every match is decided by who capped first, then it is worse experience than LRM fest or PPC fest or ECM fest, period.

[silentD11]

TheMadPoet, on 30 April 2013 - 03:49 PM, said:

I would love to see more strategic things to do. Maybe a supply depot that can be captured that heals all friendlies for a percentage, or a bridge across a deep chasm that can be a choke point of defense and attack, or perhaps points that can be captured on maps that set off air strikes or lengthen capture time for the enemy. Just fun things that have value, but don't win/lose the game automatically.

I agree that base capping is a viable and built-in win condition, but make the maps have others that have value as well to keep and hold, rather than just winning automatically. Conquest does this somewhat, but in a very uninteresting way.

That will work provided each "thing to do" can turn around a match by doing it. The cap is currently the only option you have to unscrew the current screwed up meta caused by the TDM mash actions figures together till one breaks crowd created.

[Keifomofutu]

Trauglodyte, on 30 April 2013 - 03:29 PM, said:

You lost to a goon squad. These are the same jerks that abused the knockdown mechanics and pretty much kept a dev on his butt for the entirety of the game. Pointing that game out is more an issue with them (and the fact that your team did a cap race as well) then it is with actual capping.

OP mentioned being part of that goon squad just so everyone is aware.

[El Bandito]

Neverfar, on 30 April 2013 - 04:33 PM, said:

Rhetorical dead end. "I want X, screw everyone else. Period." You came here to shoot at Mechs (that are supposed to line up politely for you) and get godly amounts of C-Bills (by killing them in a shooting-gallery fashion). Anything that inconveniences you, like lights having a purpose or forcing some of your firing line to break up (or heaven forbid, one of you being able to go back and guard the base!), is worse than anything hyperbolically. Period. Please.

Clearly you did not read my thread carefully. I specifically said "if every match was decided by who capped first"-- but in your haste to point out other people's perceived faults in their opinions, you probably skipped that part. Are you mistaking me for some simple PPC warrior who likes it easy from 1000 meters? Please.

Edited by El Bandito, 30 April 2013 - 04:42 PM.

[MrVop]

Neverfar, on 30 April 2013 - 04:35 PM, said:

Rhetorical dead end. "I want X, screw everyone else. Period."

You came here to shoot at Mechs (that are supposed to line up politely for you) and get godly amounts of C-Bills (by killing them in a shooting-gallery fashion). Anything that inconveniences you, like lights having a purpose or forcing some of your firing line to break up (or heaven forbid, one of you being able to go back and guard the base!), is worse than anything hyperbolically. Period.

Please.


Goons may raise hell and disrupt things, but they often do it for an underlying reason. In EVE Online, they helped expose and punish a vast corruption scandal where the developers there were giving handouts and the equivalent of thousands of real-life dollars of T2 blueprints and other goodies to their in-house favorite corps and alliances, for example.

Dogmatically hating or dismissing people because they're goons is about as silly as their antics, because they are people too.

I dont think Neverfar like anybody here. Dont put words in peoples mouth man. Atleast talk to us about solutions, or possible ways of fixing this through meta.

You're kinda being a ****... stop it and help the discussion please.

[MrVop]

Neverfar, on 30 April 2013 - 04:36 PM, said:

Your entire post is an overblown "NO U". Simply post that next time and spare me the burden of reading your rage. The "wow" to start was the first giveaway. Whiners in matches almost always start with "wow" as well. Go figure.

IIIIIIIRRRROOOOONNNNYYYY!
LoL.

[MrVop]

Neverfar, on 30 April 2013 - 04:39 PM, said:

I said it before, and I'll say it again. Dogpile fallacy. You're posting a so-called response that is equally answerable with an identical response, only yours sounds more childish, has more capslock, and invokes "irony" as if that means anything to anyone not a hipster or on Reddit.

I'm not going for it. Post something useful or move along.

I feel like we're gonna perpetually repeat stuff to each other. This is fun and constructive!
Its ok for you to do though because all your posts so far have been nothing but constructive.

Anyway I'm tired of this Flame War.
Good Day Sir.

Edited by MrVop, 30 April 2013 - 04:42 PM.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

silentD11, on 30 April 2013 - 11:55 AM, said:

To all,

Since closed beta we’ve seen one thing after another as “broken” or “OP”. As soon as one thing is fixed another thing crops up. This is why regardless of how you feel about PPC boating and poptarting, fixing it will not balance the current game. All it will do is open the door for everyone to move to the next “broken” build. Everyone proposing weapon balance or item balance tweaks should be aware of it. You’re just trading the devil you know for the devil you don’t, or potentially the return of the devil you do.

The actual problem has less to do with the weapons, it has to do with how people are insisting on playing the game. Most players out there do not want any sort of tactical gameplay. All they want to do is play a sort of bastardized TDM. Where both teams lumber towards each other and slug it out. As long as people want to play this game there will always be a way to optimize your mechs to kill the other one more effectively since nothing else matters. When you don’t have to worry about using mechs to defend, scout the edges of the map for other mechs, move from group to group as support, any hope of weapon balance goes out the window.

If people were actually playing assault with the goal of capturing the base, the current meta of slow and heavy alpha strikers wouldn’t be so powerful. Massing up a firing line and waiting to poptart the crap out of people fails to base capping. People would be forced to take faster mediums and heavies that can’t poptart to counter caps, lights to push their own caps to break up the other force and scout the map to see where the other lights are going, and other choices as well. In short, massing PPC boats and poptarts that are slow and heavy would be a completely invalid tactic.

Do the weapons need some work, sure. However until people stop running off to play TDM and instead actually play assault no amount of weapon balancing is going to save this game from simply being a contest to make the most killy mech possible out of the choices you have with no regard for other factors. And we will always be hopping from whatever that build is at the moment to whatever the next one is after a new mech is introduced, waiting for a patch to fix it, and then repeating the process again.

PGI bears part of the blame for not encouraging capping. But PGI only bears part of the blame for the screwed up meta. The rest of the blame, and IMHO the majority of the blame, lies squarely on the heads of people who insist on playing TDM, because TDM has made all the min/maxing with a total focus on killing ability alone not only a viable strategy, but the only one worth a crap. Hilariously though, that falls flat on it’s face when confronted with a group of players who are willing to play assault and actually capture the base.

TL:DR- If you’re one of those insisting on playing TDM you’re far more of an issue to balancing this game than PPCs, LRMs, ECM, or whatever ever was. And as long as you continue to do this any attempts at balancing are ultimately futile and we are doomed to a permanent cycle of OP after OP.

Give me an actual goal other than "make C-bills, gain mechs, repeat" And maybe, just maybe, I wouldn't be clamoring for TDM.

[silentD11]

Jade Kitsune, on 30 April 2013 - 04:54 PM, said:

Give me an actual goal other than "make C-bills, gain mechs, repeat" And maybe, just maybe, I wouldn't be clamoring for TDM.

I'm all for creating a TDM mode, don't get me wrong. I'm just point out that the problems with weapons and builds and classes in the current meta game, are virtually entirely caused by people insisting on playing TDM fights in the middle. And that as long as people insist on playing TDM, balance with classes and weapons will never be solved.

Edited by silentD11, 30 April 2013 - 05:03 PM.

[MrVop]

silentD11, on 30 April 2013 - 05:02 PM, said:

I'm all for creating a TDM mode, don't get me wrong. I'm just point out that the problems with weapons and builds and classes in the current meta game, are virtually entirely caused by people insisting on playing TDM fights in the middle.

What else is there to do? You want me to run to cap? or defend our cap?
We are using the tools we have... And we only have two... one is Damage, the other is Capping. One happes to be fun, the other requires me to stand still in a box.