578 replies to this topic

[Stoicblitzer]

Feetwet, on 24 July 2013 - 08:43 PM, said:

This is just speculation here but I think he was commenting less on what he said and more on how he said it. People should try to avoid writing there post with their epeen. Same thing could have been said by humbly talking about the groups he drops against and the builds he is facing.

S

i didn't sense any epeen waving in his post. he did speculate that his elo is high which is not unreasonable if he is dropping against those teams consistently. it's elo hell because one side has 4 competitive players in uber minmaxed builds + 4 guys in mg cicadas. the other team has 4 competitive players in uber minmaxed builds + solid players not in mg cicadas. whoever wins the pug lottery usually wins those matches. i guess i'm being crude but that's been my experience. not my intention to insult anybody but pgi.

Edited by Stoicblitzer, 24 July 2013 - 08:50 PM.

[Feetwet]

GaussDragon, on 24 July 2013 - 08:47 PM, said:

The important one


He was merely commenting on his relationship with other competitive players, didn't seem controversial or demeaning to me.

Unless you are one of those lowly scrubs he's carrying to victory all by himself. I'm just trying to make a friendly suggestion so everyone can get along.

S

[Feetwet]

Stoicblitzer, on 24 July 2013 - 08:48 PM, said:

i didn't sense any epeen waving in his post. he did speculate that his elo is high which is not unreasonable if he is dropping against those teams consistently. it's elo hell because one side has 4 competitive players in uber minmaxed builds + 4 guys in mg cicadas. the other team has 4 competitive players in uber minmaxed builds + solid players not in mg cicadas. whoever wins the pug lottery usually wins those matches. i guess i'm being crude but that's been my experience. not my intention to insult anybody but pgi.

Trust me, even in whatever elo level I'm in I experience the same thing. Sitting in one of the top spots on the lower team with a second lance whose total damage equals your own sux. I have dropped against some of the boys in this topic including yourself...I have no idea where my elo lives. I was just suggesting that you win more friends with sugar.

S

[GaussDragon]

Stoicblitzer, on 24 July 2013 - 08:48 PM, said:

whoever wins the pug lottery usually wins those matches. i guess i'm being crude but that's been my experience. not my intention to insult anybody but pgi.

Feetwet, on 24 July 2013 - 08:56 PM, said:

Sitting in one of the top spots on the lower team with a second lance whose total damage equals your own sux.

This is also very frustrating to me too, but like stoic said, it isn't the fault of the newbie, it's the fault of the ELO (which means it's PGI's fault). Frequently seeing what were unambiguously fresh players salt and peppered into games full of people who I knew to be highly competent on both teams suggests to me (on the face of it) that population levels are low, forcing those people into games where they're terribly out of place. it's not fair to the newbies or the experienced players who get saddled with them.

Edited by GaussDragon, 24 July 2013 - 09:07 PM.

[Xie Belvoule]

GaussDragon, on 24 July 2013 - 08:47 PM, said:

He was merely commenting on his relationship with other competitive players, didn't seem controversial or demeaning to me.

Stoicblitzer, on 24 July 2013 - 08:48 PM, said:

i didn't sense any epeen waving in his post. he did speculate that his elo is high which is not unreasonable if he is dropping against those teams consistently. it's elo hell because one side has 4 competitive players in uber minmaxed builds + 4 guys in mg cicadas. the other team has 4 competitive players in uber minmaxed builds + solid players not in mg cicadas. whoever wins the pug lottery usually wins those matches. i guess i'm being crude but that's been my experience. not my intention to insult anybody but pgi.

Exactly, I wasn't trying to wave my epeen around or anything just stating what drops are like for me right now. People in my unit often joke that if you want to play the game on hardcore mode to just go and drop with Xie.

They know that dropping with me usually means they are going to be dropping against a Kaos lance comprised of deforce, Multitalented, Steel Claws and Mav, who are very tough to beat. They know dropping with me means fighting Magician and his Jaguars or PEEFsmash and his merry band of tryhards over in DV8.

I play with and against the best players in the game on a regular basis. Im also left to pull teams of regular pugs across the finish line a lot, which can be tiring let me tell you. I just can't afford to drop against a Jade Wolf lance in my suboptimal Catapult build. The ELO MM is counting on me to help pull my team through and playing bad builds is letting them down.

So I hope that answered your question and I hope you understand im not trying to be a jerk or elitist it's just that being in a high ELO is it's own hell sometimes.

Edited by Xie Belvoule, 24 July 2013 - 11:53 PM.

[PEEFsmash]

Xie Belvoule, on 24 July 2013 - 11:13 PM, said:

Exactly, I wasn't trying to wave my epeen around or anything just stating what drops are like for me right now. People in my unit often joke that if you want to play the game on hardcore mode to just go and drop with Xie.

They know that dropping with me usually means they are going to be dropping against a Kaos lance comprised of deforce, Multitalented, Steel Claws and Mav, who are very tough to beat. They know dropping with me means fighting Magician and his Jaguars or PEEFsmash and his marry band of tryhards over in DV8.

I play with and against the best players in the game on a regular basis. Im also left to pull teams of regular pugs across the finish line a lot, which can be tiring let me tell you. I just can't afford to drop against a Jade Wolf lance in my suboptimal Catapult build. The ELO MM is counting on me to help pull my team through and playing bad builds is letting them down.

So I hope that answered your question and I hope you understand im not trying to be a jerk or elitist it's just that being in a high ELO is it's own hell sometimes.

BTW add Deforce to our merry group. He plays mostly with us now, at least until KaoS returns to competitive play =]

Personally I don't see anything wrong with admitting you are good at the game. It isn't something to be ashamed of or embarassed about. You are better than most of these people that are trying to guilt you into feeling bad about yourself. Fuckem. This game is about winning. Don't tolerate being demonized by bads.

Edited by PEEFsmash, 24 July 2013 - 11:33 PM.

[jakucha]

PEEFsmash, on 24 July 2013 - 11:30 PM, said:

BTW add Deforce to our merry group. He plays mostly with us now, at least until KaoS returns to competitive play =]

Personally I don't see anything wrong with admitting you are good at the game. It isn't something to be ashamed of or embarassed about. You are better than most of these people that are trying to guilt you into feeling bad about yourself. Fuckem. This game is about winning. Don't tolerate being demonized by bads.

Exactly. Winning is part of the game. I was just pointing out how Xie is a bad person and should feel bad, unrelated to the game.

[William Mountbank]

Do you guys think CW will shake things up? I got the impression that there would be more varied 'mission objectives' that might favour some of the less optimized builds and gamestyles - LRM boats and TAG spotters for example.

[Leafia Barrett]

MustrumRidcully, on 24 July 2013 - 12:56 PM, said:

I think the distinction "competitive" and "casual" is too simplistic. There aren't just two camps. There are people that might just want to play their favourite mech regardless of whether they lose or not. But I actually doubt this is a tiny minority. If given the choice, people would want to win, not lose, most of the time.

I am this. Do I know if lights are truly viable? Not really, I don't have the experience to say one way or the other.
Do I care? No, not particularly. I'm going to run lights whether they're good or not, because it's fun for me.
Will I do everything in my power to mix/max those lights I'm playing to make them as competitive as I can? Yes, I will, because I like to be competitive and contribute to the teams I play on.
For me, it's not a case of starting with what's competitive and molding it to my liking; it's starting with what I like and molding it to be competitive.

[Rippthrough]

Psikez, on 24 July 2013 - 06:46 PM, said:

Once again the solution is the commando with 1 small laser. Then all our mechs can be even!

And then all the dumbasses who have put it in the torso will be whining about the tryhards who have it in the arm.

[Rippthrough]

Feetwet, on 24 July 2013 - 08:03 PM, said:

It seems like overkill to me, especially considering how funky the MM is working right now. You guys are better, I get that, but do you have to feed it to me with the META.

That's exactly why half the time I do run a 732 in a pug.
Because the MM is bollocks.

Okay, 1 game, I might get a decent set of guys with good skills, all randomly dropped, and we'll have a damned good game no matter what anyone has brought to the party because they're good enough to make even weird builds work.

The next 3 games, the matchmaker will give me a lance of new guys in trail mechs and stick a 4 man premade with decent builds on the other as some weird form of balance, now I need to kill 4 guys just for my team to have a 50:50 shot of winning the game.
I'm not Rambo, that ain't gonna happen if I take a Hunchback with flamers.
But the casuals on the other side will scream blue murder at me for taking a 'cheesebuild'

The game after that, it might stick me back with guys I know, with premades on both sides all sporting jump-snipers. It'll be a good match (even if the sniping is getting damned tiring), but again, it'd be no fun in a medium because it'll die in seconds and PGi ***** it hard with Seismic, a light is similar unless I work my arse off in a Spider with MG's and just end up with half the team chasing me around in a benny hill reproduction.
In which case I have to hope like hell my team is actually taking advantage and pushing up and not just sat laughing at the Spider getting squashed.

Either way, if I took an optimal mech, the chances of the team surviving/winning/blasting people in the face whilst collecting socks, goes up dramatically, solo queue or not.

[Riogar Daylighter]

If your looking for a catalyst for balance it's both competitive and casual players that contribute to it. One can't survive without the other especially when it comes to a business. Balancing towards the individual group is ludicrous and poor business practice. You want to appeal to all. If the game isn't making money then there is no competitive or casual players because the game is gone.

So in my opinion of course because I have no hard facts for this line of thinking just observations the real problem is skewed test results. Hard data. The numbers. The one thing that has no motive and no agenda. If the numbers say PPCs are the only weapon being used then it needs to change. Not because the Micheal Jordan of MWO says it does or John Doe family man says it does. Math won't lie to you. It's the one thing missing with all these "underlining causes of balance." the number are not there. Granted some of those posts are great reads and I might agree with some of them but they lack real numbers. I kind of take those posts with a grain of salt for the most part.

Then there is the attitude about a competitive gamer knowing more about balance and should be god when it comes to discussing it. Being the best doesn't translate to being right. Case in point Micheal Jordan. Arguably the best basketball player ever, in some circles the best athlete as well. Knows crap about building a team or executive management. Even team ownership. Same thing can be said about competitive gamers. Great at playing the game. Total screwups when running one and that is the argument as well not input on gameplay balance but running it. In a perfect world you would be right. In a human world dead wrong.

In conclusion gameplay balance is not wheighed by the player base alone. It is built on math then the feedback from the player base regardless if they are ultra competitive or John Doe from Idaho. Everyone contributes to the solution or the problem depending on your perspective. In the end the statistics and the numbers are what will balance the game. Not one individual or group. I rambled enough hope you enjoyed my little editorial. If not troll away.

[Kmieciu]

DaZur, on 24 July 2013 - 07:59 AM, said:

Discussing the present balance issues thus-far forwarded in this community with my son last night we came to the conclusion that potentially the needs / wants of the competitive player and their sub-group are the driving force behind a few of the current perceived imbalance in MW:O.

Are you implying that in a competitive PvP game, there are players who are not interested in doing their best to win?

[MisterFiveSeven]

Xie Belvoule, on 24 July 2013 - 08:20 PM, said:

Elo is why. After the institution of Elo I stopped being able to run my fun builds because my Elo is so high that when I drop, I will be facing off against members of SJR, DV8, Kaos, Snow Raven, Jade Falcon and other top tier units. If I don't run my PPC/Gauss 732 or fastlas brawler, these guys well feed me my teeth. Its that simple, Elo makes the MM act like every ******* drop is the freaking super bowl for us folks in higher Elo brackets. I can't run fun builds or I will get curbstomped by more optimized builds. Also, I represent a good chunk of my team's Elo, so when I drop a lot of times it's up to me to carry the team to victory, and I can't do it in a weak suboptimal build. If I don't bring my best build and give 100% Im a liability to my team.

This is why my 385std x6medlas awesome will never see action again.

Sybreed, on 24 July 2013 - 07:50 PM, said:

I, like a lot of people, think competitive players abusing the meta isn't the cause of the problem but a symptom. They want the best chances to win, they'll abuse every exploit possible to gain those wins.

But, I'm also thinking that competitive players might NOT make the game more fun. They might make obvious what is broken, but when they say they want to fix the game... I have my own doubts. They'll forget what Mechwarrior is supposed to be and turn this game into another generic FPS, killing its spirit effectively.

That's my main gripe with competitive players... they don't understand the spirit of the game... yet they want to fix it. IMO, what we need is a TT specialist who is also a competitive player... then we have better chances of having a fun game.

There are more of us than you think. The only reason I think convergence is the best option is because TT mechs always carried varied loadouts for any situation, while with perfect convergence two weapopn systems (or three at most) are the absolute maximum. All of my weapons need to be firing all of the time and hitting the same spot, otherwise I'm not doing as much damage as I could. It is (IMHO) the only way to encourage people to carry varied weapon groups.

But until then my x2erppc+gauss will continue plowing ct's (but don't worry about that little ppc, he doesn't alpha with the others, I use him to make you think I alpha-ed ).

[Rippthrough]

Riogar Daylighter, on 25 July 2013 - 03:49 AM, said:

Then there is the attitude about a competitive gamer knowing more about balance and should be god when it comes to discussing it. Being the best doesn't translate to being right. Case in point Micheal Jordan. Arguably the best basketball player ever, in some circles the best athlete as well. Knows crap about building a team or executive management. Even team ownership. Same thing can be said about competitive gamers. Great at playing the game. Total screwups when running one and that is the argument as well not input on gameplay balance but running it. In a perfect world you would be right. In a human world dead wrong.

And yet any racing team you ask will tell you a fast driver ain't worth **** unless he can give you good feedback on the car for development.
Every driver at the top of their game is good at giving feedback and helping develop the car. If he doesn't know what's right or wrong about a setup, he'll never be fast, no matter how fast his reactions are.

If Micheal Jordon tells me the basketball has gone flat, I'll believe him over the random guy sat in the stands with a rulebook.

Edited by Rippthrough, 25 July 2013 - 04:33 AM.

[Takony]

OP: if you read among the lines of your own post, you will see, that the stem/root of the problem is not a min/max mindset, rather than having chassi and weapons that are inherently and utterly imbalanced to begin with.

Guess who will (ab)use the imbalances first: the cadet or the veteran?

Weapons:
Damage in big chunks with greater intervals or damage in a continuous stream?
The idea is that both should be valid options, but the reality is that the latter means exposure to burst damage and is suboptimal. Burst is king.

Now you know what kind of weapons you "should" equip, and consequently know that epxosure to them is bad.

Onto chassi:.

You know that exposure is certain death, so you cherry-pick the chassi with the highest mounted weapon slots/JJ-s in order to jump-snipe/hill-hump: Stalker, Highlander, Caraphract 3D, Catapult K2, Blackjack.
[Victors are kinda an exception, thanks to SRM buff and very high mobility (essentially the brawler Victor is the perfect medium mech ]

There you have it: optimum builds on optimum chassi. Even if you can't aim or pilot at all, you still can theoretically spreadsheetwarrior the builds yourself, or just read some forum pages/watch youtube/twitch and gain an idea.

Add completely fcuked up hit registration, hitbox issues and other bugs, and you have FOTM (or in cases flavour of several bloody months).

PGI wants to balance with heat, but instead of heat dissipation+overheat penalties, they went the heat treshold (without heat penalties other than simply shutdown) route as a design decision, and everyone and their cats figured out that alpha-striking is the best way to kill, instead of carefully managing heat by alternating weapon groups, weapons, etc. Now they bandaided the second approach with an overcomplicated extract of the first, and nothing changed, except that there are less AC40 boats, and the remaining macroed/stagger their fire to have .5 sec between the two shots.

I don't think that comp. players are to blame for this. All of the above are stemmed from bad design decisions and crap weapons from the get-go.

[Takony]

Xie Belvoule, on 24 July 2013 - 08:20 PM, said:

If I don't run my PPC/Gauss 732 or fastlas brawler, these guys well feed me my teeth. Its that simple, Elo makes the MM act like every ******* drop is the freaking super bowl for us folks in higher Elo brackets. I can't run fun builds or I will get curbstomped by more optimized builds. Also, I represent a good chunk of my team's Elo, so when I drop a lot of times it's up to me to carry the team to victory, and I can't do it in a weak suboptimal build. If I don't bring my best build and give 100% Im a liability to my team.

That's why we need ranked and unranked matches and clear brackets in matchmaker (and leaderboards, etc. to go with it, CW anyone?), so every player could decide what to do with their spare time for that night: play on muthafriggin 150% or just open a beer and chase each other with flamers.

Currently matchmaker can put average players either in kindergarten or face them off against Diablo, without any warning, to make two average numbers pulled out of thin air, match.

With say 1-5 brackets, call them whatever, PGI could separate the the lamb from the wolves: don't mix 1st match people with veterans, etc.

edit: animals

Edited by Takony, 26 July 2013 - 01:31 AM.

[DaZur]

Kmieciu, on 25 July 2013 - 04:23 AM, said:

Are you implying that in a competitive PvP game, there are players who are not interested in doing their best to win?

Nope.

True... It's a PvP game and the task at hand is to obtain kills and assist your team to victory... This is truistic regardless of being a casual player or a competitive player. The difference between the two examples is typically the casual player's "end-game" is to play and have "fun"... win or lose. A competitive minded players end-game typically is to "win"

Think pro football player and a group of guys playing flag football in the park. The pro football player has desired intent to win and approaches the game of football seriously. The guys in the park, while just as desirous to "win" are there to play and have fun doing it... for them typically the "fun" trumps the "win".

That said... Like real life there are always people / players who buck the norm... You know, the pro who lacks commitment and the casual player who takes themselves and the sport too seriously.

Edited by DaZur, 25 July 2013 - 05:15 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Kmieciu, on 25 July 2013 - 04:23 AM, said:

Are you implying that in a competitive PvP game, there are players who are not interested in doing their best to win?

Are you implying that in pro sports players all use the very same shoes, Use the exact same bat, Gloves?

[xDeityx]

Joseph Mallan, on 24 July 2013 - 01:49 PM, said:

And what if Player 1 has a 6.0 K/D Using his build but a 1.7 in Player 2s Build? I have not had success in a single "Competative Build" I have been told my buils are no good enough to be on a "competitive team". Good! I am not trying to win a trophy or be #1. I win around 64% of my games and have over a 1.3 K/D. I am happy. Heck in the First Tourney I landed at 98th place out of more than 2500 participants in a Sub par Mech an completely missing the first 24 hours. Or C landed in 6th Place in a near stock Centurion-A (Had double sinks and SRMs instead of LRMs) Neither are "Competitive builds".

KD ratio and W/L ratio aren't a good indicator of skill since the introduction of Elo. The guy who pilots the first 'mech and gets better stats is probably just in a lower Elo bracket. But all that aside it is definitely possible to be bad at valuation but good at aiming, reaction time, awareness, etc. The thing about valuation though is that you don't need to have it to be successful in MechWarrior, especially if you are part of a team since competitive teams will tell you what loadouts to run as well as what targets to focus first (the other task to which valuation is applied).

But the truth (that we are trying to get PGI to change!) is that if you aren't running one of a very small number of builds right now then you are hurting your team. Nobody wants it to be like this, but this is the situation that PGI has created. I know you say you haven't had success in them but the 'competitive builds' are objectively better right now so if you aren't performing better in them then you are doing something wrong piloting them and just need to spend some time in them.

I understand you don't want to spend time in the competitive builds though; I'm in the same boat right now. I was running PPCs for quite a while but then I switched to running some UAC/5 builds and some more mixed loadouts. But even though I'm changing my loadout all my enemies and allies are still in majority PPC boats so I still get bored and go play a different game, and in the meantime hope that PGI fires Paul and hires someone with a clue.