16 replies to this topic

[B1zmark]

Heavy teams are preferable in the current Meta. It's no secret that 2xPPC 2xAC5/UAC is the most optimal loadout for heavy+ Mechs (as seen in the -3D and -733C). Jump-jets help push these mechs above others in effectiveness due to their ability to peek and shoot, minimising their damage taken.

As such, Lights and Mediums are being marginalised in most flat out fights, this is off-set by increased mobility - which leads to interesting fights when substantial weight differences are apparent between equally skilled players.

However taking a strong force of highly mobile mediums and lights can yield results by pulling heavier teams into poor positions through capping from behind. The static objective/s in 2/3 game modes makes this possible.

Turrets just broke that.

Skirmish leads to death-balls of assaults and heavies pulling off what i call the 'slug' maneuver, taking their entire team to strong positions and sitting immobile - with no motivation to 'give up the high ground' on skirmish. It becomes tedious to an insane level. I believe without tonnage limits, skirmish should be removed from 12 man queues... but that's another point.

Now similar strategies are more viable due to having 2/3 Mech's worth of fire-power and spotting all around your base in the form of automated turrets. It only takes 1/2 lights to fall back, backed up by fire-power from turrets to make anything fast enough to negate the tonnage gulf extremely easy to deal with.

If turrets become default on every 12-man assault game it will be devastating for any hope of a competitive MWO community once lobbies/CW go live. This kind of addition solidifies the opinion of MWO as a 'joke' in the FPS market.

Tower Defense MWO game-mode? yes please. Automated turrets for defence in normal games? No.

[Ironwithin]

B1zmark, on 05 February 2014 - 01:36 PM, said:

...If turrets become default on every 12-man assault game it will be devastating for any hope of a competitive MWO community once lobbies/CW go live. ...

Not questioning the rest of your post, that all makes sense even if it's nothing new. The quoted part however had me thinking "why?".
Strategies will adapt and yes, lights/mediums are less than desirable now(well...more so than before) in 12v12 on turret-maps. How does that ruin the competitive community, though ?
That crowd is all about min/max-ing anyway, if you show up in a light that is not an ECM spider you get laughed at and if your team has more than one even more so.

[Josef Koba]

I've only had the pleasure of dropping twice on maps with turrets despite all of yesterday evening playing Assault (roughly 20 matches). I was hoping for more because I'm curious about them and how they'll change the game. What I do know is this (from limited experience): It slowed the matches down dramatically. Which I personally liked*. (*Ask me in a month and I might say differently - the change of pace was nice.) The first match was on River City and it went the full 15. I can probably count on one hands how many times I've seen that happen in 3,000 drops. It was sort of interesting. Teams were extremely cautious about engaging. Now, I've little doubt that this will change with more exposure to turrets. Once the community figures out how to dispatch of them, I don't believe they're going to be an issue - we will adapt and overcome, adjusting tactics, techniques, and procedures as necessary. It seems that as of right now they may be marginally effective area denial weapons that somewhat deter touch and go caps by a couple of lights.

In any case, I say all this with the caveat that I've only seen them twice and, sadly, didn't get to really see them because in both cases the OPFOR hung around them pretty close. However, I desperately want to kill one.

EDIT: To the OP - I understand your point. I would almost like to see them deploy at random just to keep everyone off guard. Some drops have them whereas others do not. Scout the base, determine there is no defenses, adjust accordingly. Of course, I like the Fog of War.

Edited by Josef Koba, 05 February 2014 - 02:35 PM.

[Roland]

B1zmark, on 05 February 2014 - 01:36 PM, said:

Skirmish leads to death-balls of assaults and heavies pulling off what i call the 'slug' maneuver, taking their entire team to strong positions and sitting immobile - with no motivation to 'give up the high ground' on skirmish.

And then they get obliterated by airstrikes and artillery.

The reality is, in skirmish, you don't HAVE to fight as a giant ball. If you choose to do that, and the enemy does the same, then you get what you are describing... And it is dumb.

But you don't HAVE to fight like that.

In skirmish, you are actually free to flank off of the center line. When a team blobs up, and the other team surrounds them, the team that isn't blobbing tends to win.. But very few people actually do this, because Assault taught them to fight with such simplistic tactics.

Skirmish enables you to do more things, if you can get it through your head that there is no need to just run mindlessly towards the center of the map.

[shellashock]

I have only been in a match with turrets once on River City so my feedback probably doesn't mean diddly squat, but I was just kind of thrown by how many turrets there were. Maybe it was just the UAV graphics indicating their positions that made it seem like there were more turrets then there really were, but it made it see like there was 6-8 turrets by the base. If this is wrong, please correct me, but it would seem like a better bet to just have two pairs of turrets on either side of the base. Make one a med laser turret and the other an lrm turret in the pair and then see if more turrets need to added. The spacing between the two pairs should also be significant to prevent team camping around the turrets.

Edited by shellashock, 05 February 2014 - 05:02 PM.

[Abivard]

Ironwithin, on 05 February 2014 - 02:10 PM, said:

Not questioning the rest of your post, that all makes sense even if it's nothing new. The quoted part however had me thinking "why?".
Strategies will adapt and yes, lights/mediums are less than desirable now(well...more so than before) in 12v12 on turret-maps. How does that ruin the competitive community, though ?
That crowd is all about min/max-ing anyway, if you show up in a light that is not an ECM spider you get laughed at and if your team has more than one even more so.

You will get laughed and yelled at for bringing a spider.

you see maybe 6 different mechs:

jenner's and maybe a raven are the light choices.

Shadowhawks or BlackJacks's for mediums

Highlander 733c maybe an atlas DDC for all the rest.

Maybe the jenners and ravens will disappear when turrets are everywhere... would not be surprised if they did drop out of play.

[B1zmark]

Ironwithin, on 05 February 2014 - 02:10 PM, said:

Not questioning the rest of your post, that all makes sense even if it's nothing new. The quoted part however had me thinking "why?".
Strategies will adapt and yes, lights/mediums are less than desirable now(well...more so than before) in 12v12 on turret-maps. How does that ruin the competitive community, though ?
That crowd is all about min/max-ing anyway, if you show up in a light that is not an ECM spider you get laughed at and if your team has more than one even more so.

You put up some good points - the Min-Maxing argument is exactly why this is a problem. Lights will be less of an issue for heavy mechs to deal with because of turrets. The maps are getting larger and this leads to speed becoming a real advantage rather than just a novelty. With static defences the ability to out-maneuver slower mechs is pushed further into obscurity.

Turrets encourage min-maxing. We have to remeber THIS ISN'T TABLETOP. As another forum members eloquently put it, the cost of each mech is 1-pilot. Not X-CBills, not X-Tons. 1-Pilot.

The argument could be: Tonnage limits will solve this.

My counter-argument is: Tonnage limits shouldn't be needed. If you want to run 12 assaults go ahead - but you need to have an exploitable weakness. Tonnage should be balanced naturally due to the NEED for different roles. I agree that some mechs will always be better than other, but a hard-cap on tonnage is a cop-out in terms of game balance.

Counter-Strike- 5x AWP's is allowed but isn't optimal. 4xRifles and 1xAWP or 3x rifles and 1xAWP works on some maps. The weaknesses of the weapons when measured against the diversity in a game mode create a natural balance.

Back to my main point: Turrets in standard game-modes are unnecessary and, IMO, don't do anything except discourage intelligent aggressive play and weight diversity.

[Foo2rama]

I do not see this as that big of an issue, lets see how they work and they will get balanced. I think we need to normalize the JJ's 1 JJ should not do 75% of 5 jj's. this would force pop tarts to run less weapons effectively normalizing the cost of JJ to their affect on the game.

[Bill Lumbar]

I have been in two matches with them..... and just like any game or real life tactics used to deal with a fixed gun postion is similar in taking them out. Simple, have a faster mech distract and just dance within and without of its range, keeping its fire on that mech or mechs. I was in a jagger and was able to take out two of them in one match by using this method. Of course I stayed moving and made sure not to sit and fire at them.

Tactics to take out bunkers or fixed guns like this are very basic and have been around in warfare and games for many years. From what I experienced in game they were not hard to take out at all if you use these know tatics that have worked since the inception of such weapons.

In one of the games I and 3 other mechs on my team was able to knock them out and deal with two mechs in the base and kill them also.

Edited by Bill Lumbar, 06 February 2014 - 11:29 AM.

[C E Dwyer]

Turrets are having a negative effect on the game.

All ready we have disconnects, teams starting one/two short, very bad tonnage mismatches latest, 3 assaults 5 heavies against 1 assault, and 3 heavies.

Now we have certain types of player pealing off teams to destroy PvE turrets rather than to take on other players, essentially its a leach where the person picks up turret destruction xp/cb because they're easier to hit than an awesome going backwards, if the team manages to pull off a win they get the first win xp bonus on top which the person made less likely, by his actions.


So I'll echo the OP, turrets for attack/defend mode only, when it arrives

[Ironwithin]

Cathy, on 06 February 2014 - 11:38 AM, said:

Turrets are having a negative effect on the game.

All ready we have disconnects, teams starting one/two short, very bad tonnage mismatches latest, 3 assaults 5 heavies against 1 assault, and 3 heavies.

Now we have certain types of player pealing off teams to destroy PvE turrets rather than to take on other players, essentially its a leach where the person picks up turret destruction xp/cb because they're easier to hit than an awesome going backwards, if the team manages to pull off a win they get the first win xp bonus on top which the person made less likely, by his actions.


So I'll echo the OP, turrets for attack/defend mode only, when it arrives

You can't really blame the system for idiot players. If you take away the turrets those guys go chasing after the first light to pop up on their atlas' radar anyway, or do something equally stupid.

I had a game two days ago, not long after the patch, where my team started 2 players short on Crimson Strait. Sucks, yes, but it happens.
So I suggest to my outnumbered team to just stick to the base and use the turrets to equal out the numbers again. Of course nobobdy even bothered to answer in chat and they stomped off in a nice long lemming-train toward the platform to get slaughtered...
BUT the point being: in a situation like that the turrets can actually be a "workaround" for the MM-madness and/or discos.

Also you should take into account that the turrets are new and only present on two maps in one gamemode. So whenever they show up you're gonna have "tourists" going for a sight-seeing tour of the new feature just for giggles. That will probably not be the norm in a couple of weeks.

Edited by Ironwithin, 06 February 2014 - 01:00 PM.

[zhajin]

I have only been in 1 drop with turrets, and it was on river city. all it did was turn the match into even more of a long range snipe fest. both teams spent most of the match on their side of the river sniping at anything that moved. now a I suspect a big part of this is that river city is way to small a map for the turrets. I can see how they may make matches on alpine or terra more interesting. but river city is one of the few good brawling maps...

also I am not sure they have a place in 12 man drops either. tactics are a much bigger part of 12 man drops and I can see how teams would easily exploit the turrets, rather than relying on well thought out tactics.

please remove turrets from river city, and keep them off the smaller maps.

[Zefram]

From what I saw of them last night, which I admit was a limited sample, it doesn't look like the turrets stop the tactic you mention. It may slow it down, but it really didn't seem like much of a deterrent to an organized base attack. Their position also hampered their ability to dish out much damage as long as you didn't stand still. Not sure I see this as game breaking, we have other items that rank much higher in that area. (Don't worry, I'm not going any further down that road)

As to camping on them in general, if you park the majority of your force in any area of the map for too long, the OPFOR will spot you, surround you and eliminate you. Don't do it.

[Felio]

B1zmark, on 06 February 2014 - 04:30 AM, said:

Turrets encourage min-maxing. We have to remeber THIS ISN'T TABLETOP. As another forum members eloquently put it, the cost of each mech is 1-pilot. Not X-CBills, not X-Tons. 1-Pilot.

...

Tonnage limits shouldn't be needed. If you want to run 12 assaults go ahead - but you need to have an exploitable weakness. Tonnage should be balanced naturally due to the NEED for different roles. I agree that some mechs will always be better than other, but a hard-cap on tonnage is a cop-out in terms of game balance.

What I've said along this same vein is that they took this tabletop tactics game in which one player controls many mechs, some more expendable than others. It's a little like chess -- a pawn can make a big difference in the right place at the right time, but you don't fuss too much over losing one the way you do over, say, a bishop or a knight.

So they took all these mechs one player normally controls, from the foot soldiers to the battlefield superstars, and put one player in each of them.

If this were any other game, if they had developed their own combat system and classes and so forth, people would be screaming from the rooftops about balance. But they went into it not expecting any semblance of balance. If they tried to balance, people would scream from the rooftops about betraying the setting.

[Wurzelkobold]

There is a real easy solution to this "turrent problem". Let them only activate if there is no friendly mech in range, lets say for example 500 meters.

[B1zmark]

Wurzelkobold, on 06 February 2014 - 02:48 PM, said:

There is a real easy solution to this "turrent problem". Let them only activate if there is no friendly mech in range, lets say for example 500 meters.

"2/3 Mech's worth of fire-power and spotting all around your base in the form of automated turrets. It only takes 1/2 lights to fall back, backed up by fire-power from turrets to make anything fast enough to negate the tonnage gulf extremely easy to deal with"

I think removing turrets is the only reasonable way to balance mech weights. The speed/firepower balance is only a balance when being fast achieves something that raw firepower cannot.

Edited by B1zmark, 15 February 2014 - 04:53 AM.

[B1zmark]

Felio, on 06 February 2014 - 01:47 PM, said:

What I've said along this same vein is that they took this tabletop tactics game in which one player controls many mechs, some more expendable than others. It's a little like chess -- a pawn can make a big difference in the right place at the right time, but you don't fuss too much over losing one the way you do over, say, a bishop or a knight.

So they took all these mechs one player normally controls, from the foot soldiers to the battlefield superstars, and put one player in each of them.

If this were any other game, if they had developed their own combat system and classes and so forth, people would be screaming from the rooftops about balance. But they went into it not expecting any semblance of balance. If they tried to balance, people would scream from the rooftops about betraying the setting.

+1

Any true balance comparison that uses chess is always strong. I believe classic strategy games that have survived hundreds of years in one for or another (e.g. iterated to it's current form) are the perfect example of how digital games can reach a balanced place.