69 replies to this topic

[hammerreborn]

Roland, on 07 May 2013 - 06:40 PM, said:

Also, folks realize the point of mechwarrior is killing mechs, right?

I mean, if that's not your cup of tea, maybe mechwarrior isn't for you?

Entire planets have been won by capturing the mobile field bases and even Phaelen Kell or however you spell it took a planet on his lonesome with words.

This isn't solaris. It's always been about planetary control, and the dudes with the bases controls the planets. When I capture your base why does the game end? Because I've forced a surrender. I own the planet or at the very least the staging ground. I own the resources, the repair base, everything.

The clans were the best example of this. They would bid down to the lowest resources spent, and tried to not completely destroy the mechs they were fighting, because that was lost resources!

Mindlessly blowing each other to as tiny little bits as possible I'd argue is counter to the battletech lore than capturing the bases.

[Syllogy]

So if I whoop your tail up and down the map, I shouldn't win?

This Mechwarrior, not some pathetic little league baseball team where everyone gets a trophy no matter how rubbish they are.

[hammerreborn]

Syllogy, on 08 May 2013 - 08:44 AM, said:

So if I whoop your tail up and down the map, I shouldn't win?

This Mechwarrior, not some pathetic little league baseball team where everyone gets a trophy no matter how rubbish they are.

You would win, just get little to no reward. The salvage should be the big payoff, as it always was in the lore, not random bonuses that only reward damage which only benefits the people with the biggest guns.

[Butane9000]

I've gotta ask.... why?

If you kill all of the enemy guarding a base the base is yours for the taking. Why force players to capture when they've already won?

[Corvus Antaka]

We NEED CTF. desperately. CTF with mechs has always been epically fun. Call it "steal the beacon" or something. the bacon? perhaps... CTF would give every weight class a role and assaults more heavily restricted to base defense or helping assault for the beacon.

The problem is the no-respawn environment. CTF needs respawn, and is ideal because only the flag objective matters, not kills or assists or anything else. just like a true objective based military mission. The trick is adding in respawn and making it work with the system PGI has developed. Something like dropship mode and picking 4 mechs, having 3-5 flag caps as the victory condition could work very well, plus points for assaulting, capping and defending.

More modes are coming folks. Conquest is great for messing with jumpsnipers, their mostly fat and slow anyhow. Until we get LRM fixes etc it will have to do.

imho we need turrets, call in infantry and tanks and aero space that can be shot by mechs.

[hammerreborn]

Butane9000, on 08 May 2013 - 08:59 AM, said:

I've gotta ask.... why?

If you kill all of the enemy guarding a base the base is yours for the taking. Why force players to capture when they've already won?

hammerreborn, on 08 May 2013 - 08:57 AM, said:

You would win, just get little to no reward. The salvage should be the big payoff, as it always was in the lore, not random bonuses that only reward damage which only benefits the people with the biggest guns.

[Atheus]

Butane9000, on 08 May 2013 - 08:59 AM, said:

I've gotta ask.... why?

If you kill all of the enemy guarding a base the base is yours for the taking. Why force players to capture when they've already won?

Don't bother. The proposition makes as much sense as a Dance, Dance Mechwarrior Revolution mode where you win by synchronized torso twisting and arm boogies.

Furthermore, all of the "capture" modes make no sense to begin with aside from being a meaningless game device. Imagine if the match didn't "end" freezing all the mechs in place and teleporting them back to the mech lab. The true determination of a battle's end is when one team either perished or retreated, not when some arbitrary base slider reached zero. If there are two identical bases and one got captured by a single light mech survivor, why wouldn't the dominant team just go kill the twerp and take it back? Why not take both bases? In the real world, if your military forces can't maintain control of the region, you lose it. That's all. The idea that CW is going to have all these pansy side-exits for players who don't want to eliminate the enemy, but would rather bypass them to base nab then say silly role-play things like "Entire planets have been won by capturing the mobile field bases and even Phaelen Kell or however you spell it took a planet on his lonesome with words."

I have no idea what you're talking about, but I can assure you the "mobile field bases" were not captured by a single ECM Raven standing there for 2 minutes before the star of assault mechs got back fresh from blowing the hell out of the rest of the Raven's team saying "Whelp, there's a raven here done got our base! We better escape while we can!"

Edited by Atheus, 08 May 2013 - 10:24 AM.

[Jack Lowe]

Apologies for the text wall seems to be something wrong with this posting format. I rather like both the modes we have now. With that said they do either need additional fleshing out or additional win conditions. Destroying all enemy mechs has been a win condition since the first MechWarrior game came out. I doubt it will be going away and I really wouldn't want it to. That would lead to the enemy deciding to base camp and FORCE the opposing team to completely destroy them knowing that the worst that could happen is a draw. It wouldn't happen in the initial phases of a match but when the odds starting going against them....yeah.
So not allowing destroying the enemy team to be a win condition won't work out so well. However I do understand, sympathize and want more mission types or at least more options in victory conditions. I believe, hope, crossing fingers that the larger maps will be where such things begin to be implemented. Rather large portions of them go to waste simply because of the current game modes causing one area to be more tactically important or perhaps just thru habit. It does get a tad tedious to run to the same map location and simply slug it out sometimes. That's no less frustrating than completely decimating the enemy only to have their one lone light win it for them because your remaining forces have a top speed of no greater than 80kph.
I think part of what the OP and others are saying is that the BattleTech Universe even at this time was more of a scavenger environment. The Ares Conventions were in full effect since their reintroduction during the Third Succession War. Tactical withdrawals became accepted as did surrender of the opponent, although it didn't often happen that they surrendered their mechs as well. Being dispossessed was considered a fate worse than death for many mechwarriors. As such the idea of greater rewards is a little off target. The idea was really kill the meat save the metal, taking down a mech or forcing an eject without leaving nothing but the legs behind was the idea. I just don't think it is the fix for this problem.
I do believe that as most missions were always about something else other than a head hunting vendetta to irradicate the other side that is a big part of the game and is still missing. I think the devs. realize this as well. I believe they will address it. I also think they are moving very cautiously because TDM is very popular with many players and they don't want to alienate a significant part of their player base tinkering just tinkering around. I believe this and figure by no later than the first of the year we'll know if that belief is misplaced. Most of the features the OP myself and many others want require we have factions to gain or lose something for and planets to take them from all of that is CW, we don't have it yet. Why am I willing to wait so long? I doubt that CW will be a complete version on launch it, just like the game in it's current iteration CW will be very basic, the foundation. That is how I choose to view the game right now just the bare bones, it's most basic and simple form. When looked at from that point of view I think it's doing pretty well.

Edited by Jack Lowe, 08 May 2013 - 10:37 AM.

[hammerreborn]

Jack Lowe, on 08 May 2013 - 09:50 AM, said:

Apologies for the text wall seems to be something wrong with this posting format. I rather like both the modes we have now. With that said they do either need additional fleshing out or additional win conditions. Destroying all enemy mechs has been a win condition since the first MechWarrior game came out. I doubt it will be going away and I really wouldn't want it to. That would lead to the enemy deciding to base camp and FORCE the opposing team to completely destroy them knowing that the worst that could happen is a draw. It wouldn't happen in the initial phases of a match but when the odds starting going against them....yeah.

Well the point would be that if team A has more players on the base than team B the cap begins. So even if a team really wants to go full turtle, it would not only make them the easiest targets in the world in their tiny square completely making them unable to return fire without FF, once one or two drop the other team can zerg and conquer.

I want the game to turn to a tactical shooter. I want there to be a reason you only blow off that LT of an atlas to disable the AC20, but keep the rest, maybe blow off one of it's legs. Right now, if its not a CT hit its a wasted shot (cept for XLs). The crit weapons all of a sudden get an enormous benefit as being able to absolutely demolish the weapons and cripple a mech, but leaving the overall structure intact.

The engines are the big money maker. Keep that alive and you walk away a happy and rich man. And by making capping or the resource collection the only "winning" scenario, you can really tie rewards to an objective rather than who can snipe the other team better, or who brings the bigger tonnage.

In fact, the tonnage now works against your favor, because it makes the other team richer if they win, and makes it easier to capture the base or maneuver when doing either of those things IS MORE REWARDING than mindlessly walking to the center and starting the poptarting.

[Attack Boss]

They could institute a Mission Mode type of play, kind of like Team Fortress where one guy was the President. Now im not saying we have a President Mech but make it so that a certain mech has to survive for the victory or once the team successfully enters from one end and exists the other with a percentage of their lance intact wins.

Kinda like the table top where you entered from one end and had to exit from the other. Just spit ******* here

holy smoke why did it censor b a l l i n g?

Edited by Attack Boss, 08 May 2013 - 10:29 AM.

[Keifomofutu]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 08 May 2013 - 09:22 AM, said:

We NEED CTF. desperately. CTF with mechs has always been epically fun. Call it "steal the beacon" or something. the bacon? perhaps... CTF would give every weight class a role and assaults more heavily restricted to base defense or helping assault for the beacon.

The problem is the no-respawn environment. CTF needs respawn, and is ideal because only the flag objective matters, not kills or assists or anything else. just like a true objective based military mission. The trick is adding in respawn and making it work with the system PGI has developed. Something like dropship mode and picking 4 mechs, having 3-5 flag caps as the victory condition could work very well, plus points for assaulting, capping and defending.

More modes are coming folks. Conquest is great for messing with jumpsnipers, their mostly fat and slow anyhow. Until we get LRM fixes etc it will have to do.

imho we need turrets, call in infantry and tanks and aero space that can be shot by mechs.

I'd swap CTF with assault in a heartbeat. Even without respawns just make the game end on a single beacon capture. Some might ask what the big difference would be. Basically to win CTF you need to have some control at both your base and the enemy's base. No cap races where you abandon your own base. Also unlike assault if the enemy did grab your "beacon" then you would have the ability to intercept them before they got back to their own base.

Naturally any mech carrying the beacon would need to be slowed down a lot somehow. Seems to be a common mechanic in CTF modes to prevent it being too easy to get away safely with the flag.

Half the fun of such a mode is when you each take the other's flag and are unable to bring it back to base till you secure your own again.

Edited by Keifomofutu, 08 May 2013 - 10:06 PM.

[Fooooo]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 08 May 2013 - 09:22 AM, said:

We NEED CTF. desperately. CTF with mechs has always been epically fun. Call it "steal the beacon" or something. the bacon? perhaps... CTF would give every weight class a role and assaults more heavily restricted to base defense or helping assault for the beacon.

The problem is the no-respawn environment. CTF needs respawn, and is ideal because only the flag objective matters, not kills or assists or anything else. just like a true objective based military mission. The trick is adding in respawn and making it work with the system PGI has developed. Something like dropship mode and picking 4 mechs, having 3-5 flag caps as the victory condition could work very well, plus points for assaulting, capping and defending.

More modes are coming folks. Conquest is great for messing with jumpsnipers, their mostly fat and slow anyhow. Until we get LRM fixes etc it will have to do.

imho we need turrets, call in infantry and tanks and aero space that can be shot by mechs.

The bolded part is the key here.

You cannot have tug of war based objective matches without them. Otherwise every match turns into kill all the enemy to win.

EVERY single game mode you try to make will devulge into kill all the mechs.

With spawns it moves it more to control. Think ET , where you have to blow up bridges or repair them to progress to the next section of the map, or BF2 / 3, where you control points / areas of the map to drop their tickets.

Killing the enemy team wont win you the match as they have "reinforcements" in a sense, however killing the enemy is still key to holding the objectives of course...

You can then have maps where the team who holds the most points after the timer runs out wins. Or ones where the defenders must hold a point for 15mins. If it hits 15mins, the defenders win. etc etc.

Without spawns, that is not possible to do. (dropship mode looked like it would facilitate this, however its now changed to lobby mode, so I have no idea what that means for the dropship idea......)

Edited by Fooooo, 09 May 2013 - 12:56 AM.

[OneEyed Jack]

If you want a game where killing the enemy doesn't win, I hear Hello Kitty: Island Adventure has a new update.

[Fooooo]

OneEyed Jack, on 09 May 2013 - 01:00 AM, said:

If you want a game where killing the enemy doesn't win, I hear Hello Kitty: Island Adventure has a new update.

I don't think thats what the OP really meant........

Killing the enemy is a key to winning, even if the emphasis is not on the kills for the absolute win.


If all you want is deathmatch, deathmatch with 2 bases that people sometimes abuse for fun, deathmatch with a flag nobody bothers to get. Deathmatch with objectives nobody bothers to take............(In essence, why bother making any other gamemodes other than straight TDM?)

Then yes, we should stay exactly like we are now............however don't you think that is a little stale?

[James DeGriz]

I've seen some pretty insane posts on these boards, but one suggesting that a game which is centred around the combat between "massive robotic war machines", should not be set up to reward the defeat of those robotic war machines is quite honestly barking.

Oh, and a big fat "No Thank You" to re-spawns or Capture the Flag. I'd prefer a proper "Attack / Defend" scenario, or perhaps a transport escort one with each team adopting the role of attack or defense from the outset, rather than that role decided by the players once the match gets underway. I feel these kinds of modes would be far easier to fit into the scope of CW and the game world than arbitrary modes like CTF that don't really have any point on the grander scale.

[mekabuser]

Im all for a mode buffet, but no killing = the most inane thing Ive ever read.
"son Im going to war!"
"Oh no, Im scared for you daddy"
"DOnt worry, we dont kill each other"

[Lee Ving]

7/10.

Oh **** what are you doing ni..pugger?

No kill victories? o rly

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 08 May 2013 - 09:22 AM, said:

We NEED CTF. desperately. CTF with mechs has always been epically fun. Call it "steal the beacon" or something. the bacon? perhaps... CTF would give every weight class a role and assaults more heavily restricted to base defense or helping assault for the beacon.

The problem is the no-respawn environment. CTF needs respawn, and is ideal because only the flag objective matters, not kills or assists or anything else. just like a true objective based military mission. The trick is adding in respawn and making it work with the system PGI has developed. Something like dropship mode and picking 4 mechs, having 3-5 flag caps as the victory condition could work very well, plus points for assaulting, capping and defending.

More modes are coming folks. Conquest is great for messing with jumpsnipers, their mostly fat and slow anyhow. Until we get LRM fixes etc it will have to do.

imho we need turrets, call in infantry and tanks and aero space that can be shot by mechs.

I was really into liking this post, until I saw you advocate for respawns. I'm with you on everything except not penalizing players for terrible tactical decisions - which a lack of respawn does. Maybe incorporate respawns with one team assault/one base defense or CW stuff; don't ruin the mechanics here for it.

Edited by Lee Ving, 09 May 2013 - 05:50 AM.

[OneEyed Jack]

Fooooo, on 09 May 2013 - 01:18 AM, said:

I don't think thats what the OP really meant........

Killing the enemy is a key to winning, even if the emphasis is not on the kills for the absolute win.


If all you want is deathmatch, deathmatch with 2 bases that people sometimes abuse for fun, deathmatch with a flag nobody bothers to get. Deathmatch with objectives nobody bothers to take............(In essence, why bother making any other gamemodes other than straight TDM?)

Then yes, we should stay exactly like we are now............however don't you think that is a little stale?

There's not an emphasis on kills. It's just simple and logical that if you remove the enemy that was attempting to stop you from achieving the actual objectives, then it can be assumed that you can achieve said objectives at will. Ergo, if they're all dead, you win.

And it's a frikkin' fighting game.

If you want to play a different game, go play a different game. Don't expect that you can just pick a game and force it to change into something completely different to suit you.

[Spawnsalot]

So let me get this straight, you believe that planets can't be captured by destroying the oppositions mechs and killing the pilots?
Even though with every destruction/death you reduce the enemies numbers and ability to mount a feasible defence against you?

Yup, that makes sense.

Quote

Think of all the salvage we should be getting when we capture the base? After all, when we win, those are 6-7 fully equipped mechs I SHOULD BE EARNING as rewards, much better than just getting a centurion leg.

Because those 6-7 mechs that just stomped the rest of your team are going to quit and eject because an ECM Raven ran into their back yard, right?

No. They're going to turn around, slag you and break for lunch.
And later they'll have a good laugh about 'that pilot that complained we didn't surrender our mechs because he was in our base all by himself".

If you remove rewards for kills the matches will degenerate into nothing but fast lights trading bases. It's the same reason PGI reduced the rewards for capping.

I get it, you think the only way a light can be useful is by capping, that's fine. (I brawl in my lights, it's far more fun.)

How about 2 changes - the C3 computers we have in the mechs now as standard are removed so communications and information gathering play a much larger role...

And...

A mode where the two teams are dropped into random positions on a much larger map, 1 team has a player VIP that they much get to a designated area before the time runs out or they are destroyed.
Light mechs can scout the map, track the opposition, report findings and harass while their lance arrives.

Would that be "tactical" enough for you?

[hammerreborn]

James DeGriz, on 09 May 2013 - 03:45 AM, said:

I've seen some pretty insane posts on these boards, but one suggesting that a game which is centred around the combat between "massive robotic war machines", should not be set up to reward the defeat of those robotic war machines is quite honestly barking.

Oh, and a big fat "No Thank You" to re-spawns or Capture the Flag. I'd prefer a proper "Attack / Defend" scenario, or perhaps a transport escort one with each team adopting the role of attack or defense from the outset, rather than that role decided by the players once the match gets underway. I feel these kinds of modes would be far easier to fit into the scope of CW and the game world than arbitrary modes like CTF that don't really have any point on the grander scale.

mekabuser, on 09 May 2013 - 04:24 AM, said:

Im all for a mode buffet, but no killing = the most inane thing Ive ever read.
"son Im going to war!"
"Oh no, Im scared for you daddy"
"DOnt worry, we dont kill each other"

I refer to this

Fooooo, on 09 May 2013 - 01:18 AM, said:

I don't think thats what the OP really meant........

Killing the enemy is a key to winning, even if the emphasis is not on the kills for the absolute win.


If all you want is deathmatch, deathmatch with 2 bases that people sometimes abuse for fun, deathmatch with a flag nobody bothers to get. Deathmatch with objectives nobody bothers to take............(In essence, why bother making any other gamemodes other than straight TDM?)

Then yes, we should stay exactly like we are now............however don't you think that is a little stale?

Killing will give you a win, but it shouldn't give you a win, rewards wise.

Let's look at it this way. What is the biggest downside to capping the base right now, the absolute garbage rewards (25k for the capper). It should be flipped entirely on it's head.

Damage should be tied to XP only. All the other rewards can stay roughly where they are at.

Salvage rewards should be ramped up extremely. You kill all 8 players with CT hits and a lot of other component destruction (arms and STs for example), you should be walking away with nothing but some XP, you capture their base, you get full mech rewards.

This also encourages crippling mechs, but not destroying, but if need be aiming for legs for kills becomes more profitable in the long run than just smashing all many ppcs as you can into the mech as possible.

Losers get rewarded salvage gains based on what they managed to kill only, and if they didn't get any kills and got immediately capped they get NOTHING.

The game needs to disincentivize just walking to the center and hopping up and down, but every modification to the gains just keeps rewarding it more and more.