396 replies to this topic

[Livewyr]

Keifomofutu, on 12 May 2013 - 03:30 PM, said:

Why did they remove all rewards from capping? Maybe the devs were concerned with the 2min cap trade matches hmm?

A perfect example of a game-made "correction" to a player problem just creating another player problem.

(A better solution to the 2min cap trades was what, unfortunately not enough people did, defended their base while the assault force went to theirs...I had a lot of fun taking an AC20 Cat, shutting down behind my base, and setting up an ambush for the little light mechs.. I caught a lot of flak for not joining on my team in the blob.. but they didn't say much after the first jenner or two I creamed in an ambush..)

[Keifomofutu]

Livewyr, on 12 May 2013 - 03:35 PM, said:

A perfect example of a game-made "correction" to a player problem just creating another player problem.

(A better solution to the 2min cap trades was what, unfortunately not enough people did, defended their base while the assault force went to theirs...I had a lot of fun taking an AC20 Cat, shutting down behind my base, and setting up an ambush for the little light mechs.. I caught a lot of flak for not joining on my team in the blob.. but they didn't say much after the first jenner or two I creamed in an ambush..)

Cool so you sat afk in what percentage of matches when nobody tried to cap? Tell me more about learning to play.

Players don't create problems by themselves. They are enabled to do so by the game mechanics.

Mechs having their inherent manuverability depend on strictly top speed for one. You posted above that meds are more manuverable than heavies. That should be the case but it actually isn't. If you take an atlas and a commando of the same top speed both turn at an identical rate. It would be easier to be a medium if the fast heavies weren't very nearly the same size, almost the same speed, and basically the same manuverability. Your "flank with meds" idea fails because the fast heavies will easily counter and kill them piecemeal while still sticking with and supporting the assault blob.

Players act the way they do and form firing lines because that is currently the best strategy to win. Your fix to the meta problem would probably fail much more than it would succeed. And for every time you pull off a quick cap the assault blob will just gradually pull their forces closer and closer to their own base.

In three months on the big maps the assault blob may not even leave their base. Good job fixing it hero!

Edited by Keifomofutu, 12 May 2013 - 04:12 PM.

[Corvus Antaka]

just wait for 12 mans. 1 4 man lance can easily go cap while 8 people fend off the other 12. Dynamics and strategies will change, and in the end defending your base will be as important as finding the enemy and engaging them.

Edited by Colonel Pada Vinson, 12 May 2013 - 04:09 PM.

[Vassago Rain]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 12 May 2013 - 04:09 PM, said:

just wait for 12 mans. 1 4 man lance can easily go cap while 8 people fend off the other 12. Dynamics and strategies will change, and in the end defending your base will be as important as finding the enemy and engaging them.

It won't.

Edited by Vassago Rain, 12 May 2013 - 04:18 PM.

[Livewyr]

Keifomofutu, on 12 May 2013 - 04:06 PM, said:

Cool so you sat afk in what percentage of matches when nobody tried to cap? Tell me more about learning to play.

Players don't create problems by themselves. They are enabled to do so by the game mechanics.

Mechs having their inherent manuverability depend on strictly top speed for one. You posted above that meds are more manuverable than heavies. That should be the case but it actually isn't. If you take an atlas and a commando of the same top speed both turn at an identical rate. It would be easier to be a medium if the fast heavies weren't very nearly the same size, almost the same speed, and basically the same manuverability. Your "flank with meds" idea fails because the fast heavies will easily counter and kill them piecemeal while still sticking with and supporting the assault blob.

Players act the way they do and form firing lines because that is currently the best strategy to win. Your fix to the meta problem would probably fail much more than it would succeed. And for every time you pull off a quick cap the assault blob will just gradually pull their forces closer and closer to their own base.

In three months on the big maps the assault blob may not even leave their base. Good job fixing it hero!

Well that was hostile.

1st, no I didn't sit in the base for the whole game, I sat there long enough for my team to kill the enemy lights or determine what they were going to do.

2nd, That is a very dumb statement. Player's don't create problems by themselves, they're enabled by mechanics. I suppose in a way, that's true; if we didn't have Jumpjets, we wouldn't have jumpsnipers.

Player refusal to do anything other than charge 1700's style is not a mechanic problem, that is a player lack of foresight and lack of abstract thinking, problem. This thread was to point out the link between people complaining about how mediums are pointless along with their recommendations to make them more like lights AND the people who think that (because in their mind it is the best idea) charging and fighting head on is the only way to fight [realm of heavies and assaults], and taking advantage of maneuverability is cowardice and socially unacceptable.

When I see the last Atlas on one team complaining that the last Raven or Centurion on the other team isn't coming to fight him- calling him a coward (which is common). I don't think "yeah, that stupid Raven should go be a man and fight the atlas" I think "Well, sucks for the atlas being that slow, hope he can predict the raven's movement."

--------------
And frankly, I think you are right, sadly... if caps started getting more popular, rather than thinking of an actual tactical solution to the whole defense and offense challenge, people would just start camping in their bases.. because people are lazy and shortsighted.

Given the choice, I would rather fight to the death than cap (I said that earlier) but I'm tired of (and I actually do get lethargic in play after about 5 rounds of) people mass charging to one area or another, shooting the other guy hopefully more times than he shoots them and calling it a game.

If we wanted that.. why doesn't PGI just set the game time limit to 5 minutes and remove the bases? Hell.. they could just get real lazy, set up a couple of walls on either side (like the old coliseum (or Pit) map in MW4) and FORCE players to fight or lose rewards... that's about how tactical this is.

Edited by Livewyr, 12 May 2013 - 05:07 PM.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 12 May 2013 - 04:09 PM, said:

just wait for 12 mans. 1 4 man lance can easily go cap while 8 people fend off the other 12. Dynamics and strategies will change, and in the end defending your base will be as important as finding the enemy and engaging them.

That seems like a poor use of giant maps.

I once again have to state, a lot of this is due to the static nature of this game.

Big maps, with dynamic drop points and dynamic base spawns would go a long way to creating varied matches. And would introduce REAL scouting, which we don't currently have.

[Asmudius Heng]

Players are driven by incentives and restrictions. This is the core of game development form a player behaviour perspective.

Carrot and stick.

MWO had terrible player incentives and hardly any kinds of restrictions to divert player behaviour.

The game modes and the rewards in them are shockingly bad. While it works, it leaves people cold most of the time because people want to feel VALUED after each game much more than they want to win. A win gives value and rewards, and so does combat in a non rewarding way if yo get kills even if you lose.

Lets take a look at the carrot and the stick in more detail.

Carrots:

Cbills. This is the big one in an F2P game especially. People play and are rewarded with money to buy new stuff.
XP. This is the other motivator. You play to upgrade your mech and buy modules.

These are the two hard coded rewards in the game and everything balances around them. How players play will be based very much on how they are rewarded by these things. As others have said, capping gets you a win, but it is not very rewarding for the grind. People will try to maximise thier grinding efficiency even if they do not think of it like that.

If rewards were better for teamwork we would see more teamwork. However teamwork is extremely hard to determine by a computer and so hard to reward. That guy who flanked drawing 4 mechs away and tied them up for a good 30 seconds and died doing only 100 damage. He could have won the game for you because of that action ... the game cannot reward that though so he has to rely on his own sense of judgement to feel he did a good job - though his in game rewards suck apart form the win bonus.

The other carrot is a persons sense of achievement as just stated. It is possible to create your own sense of achievement in the game and people who d this are happier and better players - however it is a rare trait and even the best can get frustrated when that is all that is driving them.

The game modes are also terrible at promoting teamwork because of this. Assault is such a binary win/loss game that locks you into a certain way of playing it is terrible. There is no reward for defending apart from personal achievement, and capping is inly a little better.

What the game needs is more variety on the battlefield. More things to DO so that people can get smaller rewards as they go. This is not for the sake of simply getting the rewards though, as long as those objectives are things that help the team win. See my suggestion for assault overhaul for an idea to improve this. Conquest i feel is a little better but it feels kind of manic - i prefer conquest to be honest because it does reward objective based play somewhat but not enough.

The Stick:

Games relay on boundaries and restrictions to create fun, and to funnel behaviour. People who whinge about being restricted in a game do not understand that those restrictions are thee for very good reasons. Right now you can take whatever mech you want into the game and as such we get that mentality that taking an assault is better. You aslo get some efficient heavies in the mix and some lights who go for the cap - but those who run mediums and lights and low end heavies for the sake of it often are relying on personal achievement and that can wear thin. In the end, tonnage matters for killing ability and now HSR is in we can see that much more.

This should be a game of manoeuvring but the rewards for doing such and the teamwork tools for doing such are very bare. The more this is fleshed out, the less restrictions are needed. However, all those things a computer cannot calculate as good work - this is where some restrictions are needed.

The chief concern here to me is tonnage matching. However not just tonnage matching - it is variety enforcing. A really good system of rewarding gametypes and good communication can help to address some variety problems when mechs actually have more than 2 roles. However, this is not the case. The game becomes much more interesting with a variety of mechs, chassis and weight classes on the field. This needs to be enforced better through matchmaking. In a Community warfare aspects, being able to take any mech you like seems rediculous as well when there are logistics to think of etc.

Restrictions are usually in the game when balance fails, when incentives fail, when you cannot direct player behaviour with the carrot. Sometimes it is needed, but you can have less and less restrictions the more you balance and incentivise well for the game you want.

I am assuming PGI wants a game of tactical manoeuvring, great mech combat, and objective based victories as well. Right now it fails on all those fronts.

Incentivise players better, create more compelling game modes, and reward people for good teamwork beyond shooting and you will have a game that has more variety.

OK that was a long rant - but damnit i am tired of all the imbalances and lack of diversity in this game due to core problems in the game modes and how they reward players in a game driven by rewards!

[Caustic Canid]

Keifomofutu, on 12 May 2013 - 03:30 PM, said:

Why did they remove all rewards from capping? Maybe the devs were concerned with the 2min cap trade matches hmm?

Were the rewards ever good? or were they always crap to begin with? Was this back when lights were nigh invincible because of lag shield?

Why didn't they just remove capping? Seems like if they didn't want it to happen they would have just taken it out of the game and made it a TDM with a time limit.

[The Cheese]

Y'know what would make this problem go away?

Respawns.

[Keifomofutu]

In any case I'm not sure what the OP is trying to accomplish. No matter how terrible there is no point blaming players for an ingame imbalance. Players plural are a leaderless mob. They don't choose to act a certain way the game and how people play it just kind of evolve on their own driven by the game mechanics and rewards.

It is 100% the responsibility of the devs to drive player behavior. People set up firing lines and rarely bother capping? It might have had something to do with removal of all rewards for capping. If players begin to exploit a certain mechanic then it is up to the devs to curb the behavior with ingame mechanics or rewards for the opposite behavior. Well everything short of outright hacking. In which case it would be up to the devs to ban said players.

Edited by Keifomofutu, 12 May 2013 - 07:24 PM.

[Lefty Lucy]

Keifomofutu, on 12 May 2013 - 07:23 PM, said:

In any case I'm not sure what the OP is trying to accomplish. No matter how terrible there is no point blaming players for an ingame imbalance. Players plural are a leaderless mob. They don't choose to act a certain way the game and how people play it just kind of evolve on their own driven by the game mechanics and rewards.

It is 100% the responsibility of the devs to drive player behavior. People set up firing lines and rarely bother capping? It might have had something to do with removal of all rewards for capping. If players begin to exploit a certain mechanic then it is up to the devs to curb the behavior with ingame mechanics or rewards for the opposite behavior. Well everything short of outright hacking. In which case it would be up to the devs to ban said players.

Yeah, I'm not sure what the deal is with "mediums would be viable if only people played the way I wanted them to."

[Praehotec8]

I would love to see more maneuvering in game, but the problem is that 1v2 (or more) usually ends poorly for the lone mech. It feels like (and this is in PUGs) every time I leave my team or go with 1 or 2 other mechs to try flanking, I often manage to do it...right into the rear of the enemy team. At which point 5 (or more) mechs turn around and proceed to fry the smaller flanking group.

Granted, I run mostly heavies, but even mediums would have that problem. In an 8-man with voice coms and team communication/leadership this could be coordinated with other groups, but not in PUGs. The safest option is to stay with the group, and then in that case, there is little reason NOT to bring as much firepower as you can...hence AssaultWarrior Online.

Not sure how to change this, but until there is a reason for people to NOT gather so much, I think it will continue to be a problem.

[Asmudius Heng]

People will always blob up when communications are hard. Only premade groups on coms can do effective manoeuvring (well most of the time). It requires great co-ordination basically.

Harassing on the flanks however should be viable at range, but the only ones who can do this have ECM so they dont glow like a beacon each time they strike - because we do not have passive sensors ...

To not gather together for general play need objectives to fight for all over the map. Conquest is better than assault for this, but has some serious flaws as well ... optional goals in game that help you to victory would help as long as they are option - this way you can attack or disengage if you cannot win the objective allowing for mini fights on the fringes - but those fights have to be over something that is worth it.

[JokerVictor]

Mediums are still plenty viable, they just aren't ideal right now.

They need a couple things to help them, mainly: just shrink them. So many of the problems associated with the class are because they are huge targets. Of course they can't dodge, the cent is bigger than a cataphract, and the treb is literally the same size as a Highlander. If the Treb was the size of the Hunchback it would be a fantastic heavy scout. The Hunchback has it's huge weakness in the hunch itself, but that's part of the thrill of driving one.

Mediums could also use a boost to their maneuverability, in all areas. They need a feather in their cap for fighting heavier stuff, and that would help tremendously.

And Livewyr is absolutely right about how to effectively use a medium in a tactical sense. A good medium pilot is constantly harassing the flanks looking for opportunities to turn the enemy team around. Part of the reason they are effective at this is because they're just mediums. People, for some stupid reason, see them as a non-threat, so they tend to be extremely effective at penetrating enemy lines with enough firepower to actually do some damage. Of course they explode under direct fire, but if you're under direct fire in a medium by anything other than mediums and lights, you've screwed up.

Here are some effective medium builds:
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...d307865d9bff4ac
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...fe6bc8850c86e32
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...31fe31574d3af61

[Panzerman03]

Funny that the OP keeps bringing me up even though he said he was done with me.

Anyway, I could seriously give zero ***** about what someone else does in a pug match, aside from grief capping. The metagame isn't really up to pug players to solve. They get one choice: what mech they drive. They don't get to choose their teammates, they don't get to choose where they fight, they don't get to choose what weapon PGI decides to make hilariously OP this month. There are major issues that impact balance that the player has no power over, despite the OP's reluctance to acknowledge them.

The OP is making a mountain out of a molehill as far as his social pressures argument goes (scapegoating me was a cute rhetoric tactic btw, I play almost nothing but 8-man premades as a brawler and none of your argument applies to me at all).

[JokerVictor]

Panzerman03, on 12 May 2013 - 10:27 PM, said:

Funny that the OP keeps bringing me up even though he said he was done with me.

Anyway, I could seriously give zero ***** about what someone else does in a pug match, aside from grief capping. The metagame isn't really up to pug players to solve. They get one choice: what mech they drive. They don't get to choose their teammates, they don't get to choose where they fight, they don't get to choose what weapon PGI decides to make hilariously OP this month. There are major issues that impact balance that the player has no power over, despite the OP's reluctance to acknowledge them.

The OP is making a mountain out of a molehill as far as his social pressures argument goes (scapegoating me was a cute rhetoric tactic btw, I play almost nothing but 8-man premades as a brawler and none of your argument applies to me at all).

I'll be sure to cap win on you just to **** you off. You seem like such a good sport.

[Panzerman03]

JokerVictor, on 12 May 2013 - 10:31 PM, said:

I'll be sure to cap win on you just to **** you off. You seem like such a good sport.

I should clarify my position on that I guess, because my initial response was to the OP who was declaring himself a grief-capper explicitly.

I have no problems with capping. I have no problems with a group of players who executes a plan with the intent of winning by capping.

What I have a problem with is one or two griefers in lights with cap accelerators who run all the way around the edge of Alpine or Tourmaline or something to speed cap where there is no way for the opposing team to return in time, and even their own team is asking them to stop the cap and play it out, but the game gets ended explicitly for the purpose of griefing/trolling.

Which is what I imagine the OP is doing when he's declaring it fair to troll because using assaults is trolling or something.

[LordDante]

capping is a good way to break up the enemy force. that tactic works in almost every PUG game i Play.

sitting in a Spider the first Thing i do is to locate the enemy Forces and tell my Team where they are / going. THEN ill rush there base. what happens next is that with 80% certainty two or three guys leave the front to stop me from capping. So 1 ( one ) Spider keeps 3 ( three ) guys busy = WIN WIN WIN .
when they Show up at their base ill retreat and while they are chasing me, my Team eats up their mainforce, and when they are finished doing that ill serve them the rest.
do i get kills ? sometimes
does that Sound like spoiling the fun for others ? to some People it might, i think I ROCK!
do i get much cb/xp ? no
do i have fun ? HELL YEAH
do i win by cap ? to **** People off ? NO ! when my Team gets eaten alive or im the last guy Standing, YES!

Edited by LordDante, 12 May 2013 - 11:53 PM.

[Void Angel]

Livewyr, on 12 May 2013 - 12:46 PM, said:

There was a state of mind bred by the first 4 maps and their alternates: The Blob mentality.
The whole team sticks together and moves as a single blob, focuses targets and attempts to take out the other team faster.
If anyone caps, they're automatically a noob/loser/*******/jerk/*****/moron/etc...
This is blob mentality- or what I personally call; The "Assault Racket."

Assault mechs are undeniably the best at slaughtering mechs face to face, and now even in long range combat with the release of the Highlander.

So, what is the weakness of the Assault mech? Being the slowest on the battlefield.. that makes them vulnerable to being outmaneuvered. Now, as an assault mech, players know they can't go fast AND have ridiculous firepower so in order to negate their maneuverability disadvantage, they've made it socially unacceptable to outmaneuver them: "I've come here to blow up robots, not cap!" or "CapWarrior: Online" are common (un)clever epithets regarding capping.

This mentality has led to the crippling of the medium and light classes, it wasn't felt harshly until recently when the HSR removal of lag-shield made medium/light brawling non-viable.
The advantage of the medium and light chassis has been their maneuverability, which has been effectively outlawed by the Assault racket.

--------------------------------

So what needs to happen?

Start maneuvering.

I see a consistent battlefield routine in Alpine where the northeastern team moves a little ways away from their base to the closest ridge, sets up a firing line, and sits waiting for the other team, who dutifully runs right to them, intent on meeting in straightforward combat. Except the combat isn't straight forward, they get picked apart while maneuvering the open terrain to get to the enemy. You can see on the heat-map that there is where the majority of the deaths are.

Solution: Have some patience and don't engage them on their protective ridge. Stay back, flank to another side, send a jumpjet light mech to their base just to tap it and retreat up the hill just to create concern in two directions. Do not engage them when they have protective hill and you have open terrain. You will get picked apart, PPCs, Guass, LLasers, etc.. you will get picked apart.

Don't play into the Assault Racket. Cap them, force them to move. If they wish to bring the biggest load of weapons they can, make them pay for it, you're already paying a handicap in fighting by being completely outmatched in firepower, make them pay a handicap of being completely outmaneuvered.

In the Desert, same thing: Out maneuver them.


If anyone calls you something because you aren't fighting straight up, tell them to F-off and figure out how fights are really won.

I can tell you now, I will be capping bases until people figure it out. It could be considered trolling, but to that; I say the Assault Racket is trolling and therefore it's fair.

-Livewyr

(minor grammar edits)

I am so sorry for your situation, and would like to encourage you that all is not lost. Remedial education, particularly in mathematics and logical thought, is available at an institution of higher learning near you!

In fact, allow me to start you on your journey into a wider world by explaining to you the actual reason that teams stick together: It's effective! See, if you split up your team into "maneuver groups," you split your firepower in most cases. Then, when your team runs into a team that's actually moving as a team (less their scouts, of course,) they blast you down and take significantly less damage than you did. This is because of a phenomenon called "focus fire." It gets a little complicated to explain, but basically if four identical 'mechs fought two other identical 'mechs, the smaller team would lose both their 'mechs, and the bigger team might not lose any! The faster you can kill an enemy, the less damage they can do to you before they die. That means it's really tough to win a fight if half your team is off "maneuvering" somewhere. This is also why detailing a force to guard your base is not a viable tactic.

Of course, tactics is a fun and complicated discipline, as you're sure to find out as you continue your education! You actually had some good ideas about going around the enemy when people are camping somewhere in cover with a kill zone in front of them. It may be surprising, but did you know that most every map has a way to get around places like that without being shot at? Most times, you can even get close enough to use brawling weapons on those pesky sniper 'Mechs! Simply running to their base and trying to cap it is usually bad, though. Not only do you deny your team the benefit of your recon and combat support, but you also can get hammered pretty hard when their fast 'mechs come back to base in order to stomp on you. It's much better to start capping in order to pull some of their team out of position, and then leave their base before you can be destroyed!

There's lots more to be learned before you become a qualified MechWarrior, but I'm sure you'll make it, with long study hours and lots of hard work! Let's review what we've learned so far!

• You are not qualified to hold forth on the metagame - the practice of grouping up is common because it is necessitated by the dynamics of force-on-force actions. You seem ignorant of the mechanical reasons for the current PuG tactical methodology, and have made up your own fairy tale explanation out of whole cloth.
  
• There is no conspiracy on the part of mean Assault and Heavy pilots to browbeat you into playing to their strengths. The reason that nearly every pilot in the game screams at you when you play CapWarrior is that it's not any fun to play like that, not because they're mean nerd-jocks trying to make your brave, smart tactics "socially unacceptable."
  
• On that note, using CapWarrior tactics on the large maps is just short of bug abuse, and you should feel bad for doing it. There is no effective way for a PuG team to ensure that they have all of the approaches covered without dispersing their combat power to an untenable degree. Particularly on Tourmaline, but to some degree on both maps, playing CapWarrior to passive-aggressively punish people because you don't know how to pilot your light simply makes use of a cap timer that is currently too short for the map size.

I hope that this educational brochure has been helpful to you, and that we'll see you again once you've attained a basic level of competence! See you on the battlefield!

[Sam Slade]

Void Angel, on 13 May 2013 - 12:02 AM, said:

• On that note, using CapWarrior tactics on the large maps is just short of bug abuse, and you should feel bad for doing it.

...and we get down to the core of your post; 'I wanna pew pew and not think about defending so your capping is bad for me'. That educatiuon centre... I hope you kept the phone number...

EDIT: Spelt education wrong... leaving it because it's indicative of these forums

Edited by Sam Slade, 13 May 2013 - 12:37 AM.