51 replies to this topic

[Magicbullet141]

This game cannot handle 12 players. Lots of people have low end PCs that cannot handle this game now. 12v12 is putting an emphasis on "PUGs make you lose". Either stick with the death ball or die. Sniper war standoffs, if you try to move you'll be focused down by 6-10 players with ppcs. In a 8v8 one pilot could severely damage 3 other mechs and change the tide of the game. In 12v12 one pilot could do 1100 damage and his team still get rolled (happened to me). Capping takes forever now, a single mech or two cannot cap points in a timely manner. A four man group of the best MWO players in the world could drop together and will still get rolled often. If a lance splits off, you're screwed.

If you take out the value of the individual, multiplayer games are not fun anymore.

[GODzillaGSPB]

The individual is nothing worth anymore, you say?

*the president of china likes this*



You're right though. Unfortunately this argument can swing both ways. Some may argue that this is a team game and that success should come with working together. Others might argue that weight-matching is missing, matchmaking is sucking and ELO is doing whatever and that, no matter your own effort, you get handed defeat after defeat despite your best effort. Everyone should be able to see that this is frustrating.

Of course: Expecting a near 100% win chance is illogical. But how about something around 50% when you're reasonable good? "Nope", says the matchmaking.

[Yankee77]

By individual effort, I imagine you mean lonewolfing, running off on your own and doing your own thing. If so, good, because it already was a bad idea in 8v8, and anyone doing so was hurting the team back then.

But if you mean that an individual's actions have no bearing on the game, that's just silly. Every mech's effort counts, and the end result of a match is the outcome of everyone's actions.

Sure, it's harder to carry a match on your own now, but that's reality for you. Deal with it.

Also, you are totally incorrect about "sticking to the death ball". If anything, 12v12 has cut down on the "blob of doom", and most of the time the group splits in two forces of its own volition, creating more frequent AND more diverse brawls. And it'll get even better as people adapt to 12v12 and the faster mechs learn to hang out and move around together. Heck, with these added number it's now possible to do some truly stunning flanking maneuvers, and that's not to mention the increase need for capping (and cap defense).

Furthermore, "teamwork" is not the reverse "individual effort". It's possible to show great individual skill while still being a good team player. The big difference with 12v12 is you need to be a better team player, and it just so happen that that's a skill that everyone needs to develop anyway.

[80sGlamRockSensation David Bowie]

WHAT?!


Individual efforts in a team based tactical game are NOT as important?!

Edited by mwhighlander, 08 August 2013 - 05:20 AM.

[Budor]

I don't carry anymore

Edited by Budor, 08 August 2013 - 05:27 AM.

[Lupin]

As Lone Wolf mainly light and medium pilot I have found a new role to play. That of protecting flank and stopping Snipers, adding to scouting and capturing I normally do.

Conquest game does need looking at, as main objective now much harder to slow capture and give time to effect outcome.

[jozkhan]

Come on guys dont be obtuse the fact was in 8 v 8 if you got say 4 kills you could turn the game into your favour even if your team werent playing at their best.

Now you can get 5 or 6 kills and still lose. That feeling of being able to 'make the difference' has all but gone.

It is an unfortunate side effect of 12 v 12 but it's very real (and yes I play PUG and I play with friends - different mechs, different tactics etc)

[Twisted Power]

It is just Like in WoW when blizzard couldn't balance 2vs2 arena so they focused on the larger 5vs5 groups. PGI has decided they don't want to try and balance so they just throw lots of people on the field.

[GODzillaGSPB]

Itkovian, on 08 August 2013 - 05:15 AM, said:

By individual effort, I imagine you mean lonewolfing, running off on your own and doing your own thing. If so, good, because it already was a bad idea in 8v8, and anyone doing so was hurting the team back then.

This is not universally true. What about a fast medium or light flanking to distract the enemy? What about a surprise-cap to punish the enemy super-heavy-team for just storming and trying to stomp the lighter opposing team?

Not doable anymore, because of the number of mechs and their behavior as a "blob of doom" and due to PGIs brilliant idea to lengthen cap times.

The single, most efficient and most encouraged tactic is now the blob. And even on bigger maps like Canyon Network I see my own team trippig over each others toes, shooting in the back of teammates and blocking of firing lines. It's chaos. And it was not as chaotic before.

[TexAce]

When I read the OPs title I remembered a moment on one of the last matches yesterday.
I was pugging alone and It was on frozen city, we dropped south and split (not coordinated split, just people following other people) with one lance going tunnel, the other at the most left side of the ridge and the third lance (where I was in) going through the city part on the right side of the ridge.

I was piloting a hunch with one PPC, 2ML and 2SRM6 and we saw a cat in the city and a dragon I think. By then we allready lost 2 guys so it was 0:2. One of us said we should all push together but noone was really doing anything.
I then went deeper into the city and moved towards the center part where the cat was standing (the LRM spot). He didnt see me coming and I thought If I'm the first to open fire I'll have 10 enemies on my toes in matter of seconds but I said who cares and sneaked to the cat and placed an alpha into his back. He immediately started to run away (LRM boat) and one of his mates (vic or highlander, cant remember) helped him and I thought this is it, now they are after me, but at the same moment all our other lances pushed them from all sides and hell broke loose. It was a massive brawl, we circled them from all sides, beautifully enveloped.

I don't know how I did it but I made it out alive right until the last enemy who shot me dead, but by then I already had 4 kills and around 600 damage so it was worth it, we won.
Effing great match it was.

Edited by TexAss, 08 August 2013 - 05:46 AM.

[Davoke]

I took out a JagerMech, Quickdraw, and Catapult yesterday in my Cataphract in an epic flanking attack and won the game for my team. I had a rare "beast mode engaged!" moment, so yes, it can happen.

[Sprouticus]

GODzillaGSPB, on 08 August 2013 - 05:40 AM, said:

This is not universally true. What about a fast medium or light flanking to distract the enemy? What about a surprise-cap to punish the enemy super-heavy-team for just storming and trying to stomp the lighter opposing team?

Not doable anymore, because of the number of mechs and their behavior as a "blob of doom" and due to PGIs brilliant idea to lengthen cap times.

The single, most efficient and most encouraged tactic is now the blob. And even on bigger maps like Canyon Network I see my own team trippig over each others toes, shooting in the back of teammates and blocking of firing lines. It's chaos. And it was not as chaotic before.

Factually incorrect. We did it yesterday. We lost 2 at start (victor and atlas). We waited fairly close to spawn until the enemy fat team moved up. We engaged and 2 lights went and capped. We all died except those two lights and myself, but we held them off long enough to win the game, heck, I was still alive at the end.


This is a team game, and communication matter more than aim or even loadout. If that is not the game for you, maybe this is not the game for you.

Edited by Sprouticus, 08 August 2013 - 05:54 AM.

[AvatarofWhat]

I understand this is a team game(small teams is what i really like about it), and your not going to win the game by yourself but if I wanted to have my herculean efforts be in vain I would play planetside. I want to feel that my 1200 damage 4 kills did something to help my team. Thats all. I love 12 man for competitive unit vs unit play. I feel that it does add a lot for the bigger maps. As far as pugging or 4-man goes though... just give me the option to play 8v8 again, thats all I ask. I want less randomness, not more and I feel the players should have the option to choose. You like big chaotic brawls where what you do might not mean jack but youll still have fun because everyone is shooting everyone play 12s. You like small tactical games play 8s. simple. The other reason is that I took a 20fps hit from the 12v12 patch.

[Kunae]

In this vein, individual effort can be just as effective now, but requires a different method.

Rather than silently "pwning" half the enemy, take initiative and provide some basic leadership, especially on the larger maps. It makes a huge difference on the behavior of your teammates, most of the time.

It's more effective than being a leet sniper, too, as you gain reputation with the community.

[Novakaine]

Soldier up and Enlist.

[FrDrake]

I went 3/7 with most damage yesterday in a match and felt like I made a pretty significant difference. The one thing I really liked was that even after I saw like 5 mechs falls around me, the rest of my ally mechs showed up and we still had a fighting force left instead of just getting mopped up. I guess my brain has some kind of auto counter or something, because with the amount of friendlies I had seen die I felt like we were losing, when actually we won 6:12.

Edited by FrDrake, 08 August 2013 - 06:23 AM.

[zhajin]

Its tough to call it a team tactical game. with the worst in game communication since the mid 90s...

12 man pug suck because communication in game sucks, and will until PGI pulls their head out of their....

[Sprouticus]

Kunae, on 08 August 2013 - 06:10 AM, said:

In this vein, individual effort can be just as effective now, but requires a different method.

Rather than silently "pwning" half the enemy, take initiative and provide some basic leadership, especially on the larger maps. It makes a huge difference on the behavior of your teammates, most of the time.

It's more effective than being a leet sniper, too, as you gain reputation with the community.

I get that. And it is understandable. But the fact is with the current matchmaking, if you are doing 1200 dmg and getting 4-6 kills, you are probably a much higher ELO than your teammates, and the MM system probably balanced you with 2-3 really bad player. And until they tighten up the matchmaking system as Matthew Craig indicated in his post this week, that is going to happen. Ezspecially with people on the high high end of ELO.

Try dropping with a friend who is not very good

[Kunae]

Sprouticus, on 08 August 2013 - 06:30 AM, said:

I get that. And it is understandable. But the fact is with the current matchmaking, if you are doing 1200 dmg and getting 4-6 kills, you are probably a much higher ELO than your teammates, and the MM system probably balanced you with 2-3 really bad player. And until they tighten up the matchmaking system as Matthew Craig indicated in his post this week, that is going to happen. Ezspecially with people on the high high end of ELO.

Try dropping with a friend who is not very good

Yep. And this has been confirmed, yesterday, by PGI:

Matthew Craig, on 07 August 2013 - 11:10 AM, said:

Technically the match maker will consider it a 'good' game if both teams were matched by having 1 high elo and 1 low elo player on both teams just as much as putting 2 average players on both teams.

The match maker can only work within the ranges given to it though and currently the ranges can be too large i.e. the matchmaker can drag in a high elo player to balance out a few low elo players, when we start to reduce the range what we should see is that the match maker will wait longer to create a 'good' game i.e it will have to wait for a player with a more average elo to show up (as the high elo player will be out of range). In the extreme case the match maker will simply give up and say it couldn't find a good game, this can potentially be seen as a good thing as you didn't want to play that game anyhow.

As mentioned we'll be monitoring carefully and we suspect we can tighten the ranges without having a dramatic impact on average wait times and failed matches, we can also adjust the timeout up from 2 minutes to compensate. Hopefully that answers your question.

Even still... providing some limited direction can make those really low ELO players worth a great deal more than having them wander aimlessly, by default.

[Deathlike]

Your actual value to the team is far less if you do nothing teamworthy. In some cases though, the good things you do for the team can go unrewarded.

With that said, I did have some fun killing a Jenner in the Trebuchet to save a teammate, then effectively running a duel vs an Atlas later on (with the teammate running the heck away for some reason) and winning it.

1v1 battles don't happen often, but they still do. It is still possible to shine, but the team effect is far greater than solo play.

Edited by Deathlike, 08 August 2013 - 06:44 AM.