74 replies to this topic

[MungFuSensei]

As much as I love the idea of the turrets, I don't think they belong in Assault mode. For the proposed idea of a one-sided assault mode, sure, but as it stands, it does nothing but take us further away from the role-warfare ideal the game was first built upon.

It's hard enough to cap. Capping is the domain of lights, and one of the balancing factors in their favor. I admit, that it is nice to see that capping now requires much more coordinated effort, but in the end, it just allows teams to ignore bases even more.

If the turrets are to stay, then there must be greater incentive to cap, so that teams will be fighting towards that goal, instead of simply playing assault like it were skirmish mode.

[1Sascha]

Strongly disagree. Assault is the one game-mode where those turrets make sense. Although I'd love to see some implementation of them in all modes and on all maps.

It's already clear that the turrets have a big impact on how matches play out. Light-lances running mindlessly towards the enemy base to cap (avoiding fights) are not a real option anymore (if they ever were). Although the new light-folly du jour now seems to be to run towards the enemy base and get busy shooting turrets (gotta get those 50 C-bills for the kill!!) instead of actually supporting your team by engaging the enemy.

Furthermore, choice of engagement-area is also more important now: I wouldn't advise now to try and pick a fight with the enemy within range of the turrets, since then you'd have to worry about both the enemy Mechs *and* the turrets shooting you.

I will admit however that I'm not sure about the number of turrets and their placement on River City. It seems fine on Crimson, but River City is too small IMO for the number of turrets currently deployed. Plus: They don't really compliment the new base- and spawn-locations. Would work better IMO with the caps in their old positions.

As it is now, the entire area between lower city and the ship/dock is a no fight-zone, reducing options further on a map that's already too small for 12-man matches.



S.

Edited by 1Sascha, 07 February 2014 - 03:36 AM.

[MungFuSensei]

1Sascha, on 07 February 2014 - 03:32 AM, said:

Strongly disagree. Assault is the one game-mode where those turrets make sense. Although I'd love to see some implementation of them in all modes and on all maps.

It's already clear that the turrets have a big impact on how matches play out. Light-lances running mindlessly towards the enemy base to cap (avoiding fights) are not a real option anymore (if they ever were). Although the new light-folly du jour now seems to be to run towards the enemy base and get busy shooting turrets (gotta get those 50 C-bills for the kill!!) instead of actually supporting your team by engaging the enemy.

You are coming at this from the perspective that the main goal is to destroy the enemy team and not to cap. That is the very thing that is wrong with the game. If a light lance runs up and ninja-caps, then the team they were competing against were idiots for leaving no one to defend. That's the point! It should be your teammates fighting to defend the base, not the turrets. Otherwise, we might as well just get rid of assault and completely replace it with skirmish. Capping must be the main goal of the team, and PGI must give incentive to do this. Putting turrets around the base just means that there is even less incentive to cap.

[nightsniper]

Base defense has always been a part of the online game going back to Mech Commander. The ability of a capping force to overcome the defense and cap was key. What maybe necessary is to create a structure that controls the base defense as the other versions of this Genre had such as MW4 this would require long range tactics to immobilize a base defense and your right would take more then a light mech in most cases. This now forces the units to rethink how to play a base cap strategy. Simple the easy way has changed the developers have forced you to think of a new way to open the box. I think it is one of the few things they got right but it may need to be tweeked.

[Ozric]

Like much of this weeks patch, turrets are an awesome idea that are simply not quite finished yet.

HP and damage numbers aside, all they need are unique icons so we can tell them apart from mechs and health bars so we can tell how much we need to hit them. They will be fun on Alpine I think.

[CarnageINC]

I have to agree with the original poster on this. Lights need a role and in assault that role is to cap for many various reasons. I'm not a light pilot but I do see their role on the battlefield being striped away in Assault mode with turrets in play. If your team can't respond to a ninja cap then you deserve to loose IMO. It adds some element of risk and fun without turrets IMO.

With turrets it is now becoming more like skirmish mode....we just had only 2 modes, then went to 3 and now its going back to 2 again! Just another thing PGI has not looked at closely enough. Give lights the ability to effectively participate in Assault mode PGI!

[1Sascha]

Quote

. Lights need a role and in assault that role is to cap for many various reasons.

I'd much rather have lights:

Scout ahead
Finding targets, getting locks, TAG-ing/NARCing for LRMS
Harassing big lumbering assaults
Covering friendly assaults from enemy lights


than them running off away from the fight to stand in a blinking square.


But that's just me.


S.

[MungFuSensei]

1Sascha, on 07 February 2014 - 05:04 AM, said:

I'd much rather have lights:

Scout ahead
Finding targets, getting locks, TAG-ing/NARCing for LRMS
Harassing big lumbering assaults
Covering friendly assaults from enemy lights


than them running off away from the fight to stand in a blinking square.


But that's just me.


S.

Then you would do away with capping altogether? If capping is not to be a strength of lights, and that lights should focus solely on the fight, then why have capping at all? The entire point of capping was to give an edge to faster mechs, less durable and less well armed mechs. I admit it is not the only thing lights are capable of, but it is where they have the greatest advantage.

[CarnageINC]

The most important role for lights in Assault, in my opinion, is to break up the enemy team coordination and to force them apart. Turrets prevent this and now their will just be more blobs of death rolling around.

No more light heroics when your team is going to loose a roll over. That one light can go back and win for you guys. GONE with turrets.

[Ransack]

So they finally put in a feature that has supposed to have been in game since beta and you want them to take it out?

Please no. Leave it be. Capping should be more than standing in a little red box. You want to cap? you gotta work for it.

[MungFuSensei]

Ransack, on 07 February 2014 - 05:28 AM, said:

So they finally put in a feature that has supposed to have been in game since beta and you want them to take it out?

Please no. Leave it be. Capping should be more than standing in a little red box. You want to cap? you gotta work for it.

I am not opposed to turrets, but their original plan was to have them in a one-sided attack/defend style mode. They do not work in normal Assault.

I agree that capping should be more than standing in a little red box. You should have to fight defenders. However, those defenders must be players. Turrets make the cap point even LESS of a focal point in the match than they are now. The only reason we are seeing increased activity at the moment is because people are curious about the turrets. Once that curiosity goes away, they will know to simply avoid capping altogether and focus everything on fighting, and then what point is there to having an assault mode at all?

[Ransack]

Think of it this way, going after the opponents cap is assaulting the Dropship. It has a risk now. The problem is that some people take a little fast lights with ECM and bee line to the cap totally avoiding combat. Done in packs this is cheesy and makes for a boring experience for a lot of people.

Heck just search for Capwarrior and you will see a ton of posts about it. Conquest has no turrets, so if you want to fulfill your "special role", you have an entire mode dedicated to capping.

[MungFuSensei]

Ransack, on 07 February 2014 - 07:04 AM, said:

Think of it this way, going after the opponents cap is assaulting the Dropship. It has a risk now. The problem is that some people take a little fast lights with ECM and bee line to the cap totally avoiding combat. Done in packs this is cheesy and makes for a boring experience for a lot of people.

Heck just search for Capwarrior and you will see a ton of posts about it. Conquest has no turrets, so if you want to fulfill your "special role", you have an entire mode dedicated to capping.

Again, we are talking about assault, with the expressed mission goal of capturing the enemy base. You are saying that capping is boring, and that ninja caps are boring. They are only boring because everyone focuses so much on killing that they forget about the cap. People focus so much on killing because capping has less reward. Now there is further punishment to a team trying to cap. This doesn't make it more interesting, it will only push players further away from capping as a valid tactic.

You are saying nothing that defends the use of turrets in assault mode. All you are saying is to abolish assault mode.

[Ransack]

MungFuSensei, on 07 February 2014 - 07:29 AM, said:

Again, we are talking about assault, with the expressed mission goal of capturing the enemy base. You are saying that capping is boring, and that ninja caps are boring. They are only boring because everyone focuses so much on killing that they forget about the cap. People focus so much on killing because capping has less reward. Now there is further punishment to a team trying to cap. This doesn't make it more interesting, it will only push players further away from capping as a valid tactic.

You are saying nothing that defends the use of turrets in assault mode. All you are saying is to abolish assault mode.

It was and is still valid. It just has a risk. It's not like the turrets cannot be destroyed.

I am not saying abolish Assault mode, I love assault mode. Assault mode is the in-between of Conquest and Skirmish. There is nothing wrong with the turrets being there. Had you said maybe that the turrets health needs to be reduced, I wouldn't have said a peep. Why should I have to defend something that was supposed to be in the game months ago? I'm happy they are finally in. YOU yourself said that you want to fight base defenders, kill the turrets then cap. Have at it.

Use those Ninja capping skills to get in a position where you can light the turret up for LRM boats. Turret dead. Cap away.
The turrets have a limitation of tracking speed, meaning if you move fast enough, it won't even shoot at you. One distract, the others kill it. cap away. It's not impossible, they are not invincible.

Now please defend why you want easy mode capping back. Do you also want them to reduce the amount of time to cap?

[LastPaladin]

1Sascha, on 07 February 2014 - 03:32 AM, said:

As it is now, the entire area between lower city and the ship/dock is a no fight-zone, reducing options further on a map that's already too small for 12-man matches.

Yeah, not quite a "no fight" zone though. The side who starts near there can fight from that area just fine, using the citadel for cover from snipers. The opposing team just has a harder time fighting back now.

[MungFuSensei]

Ransack, on 07 February 2014 - 07:39 AM, said:

It was and is still valid. It just has a risk. It's not like the turrets cannot be destroyed.

I am not saying abolish Assault mode, I love assault mode. Assault mode is the in-between of Conquest and Skirmish. There is nothing wrong with the turrets being there. Had you said maybe that the turrets health needs to be reduced, I wouldn't have said a peep. Why should I have to defend something that was supposed to be in the game months ago? I'm happy they are finally in. YOU yourself said that you want to fight base defenders, kill the turrets then cap. Have at it.

Use those Ninja capping skills to get in a position where you can light the turret up for LRM boats. Turret dead. Cap away.
The turrets have a limitation of tracking speed, meaning if you move fast enough, it won't even shoot at you. One distract, the others kill it. cap away. It's not impossible, they are not invincible.

Now please defend why you want easy mode capping back. Do you also want them to reduce the amount of time to cap?

The problem with the turrets is twofold. They unbalance a mech-on-mech fight. Sure, they can be destroyed fairly easily, but you can't focus on them when you have a mech attacking you. Suddenly they now have a 7 ton weapon advantage besides what they already carry. Second, they provide an early warning system before you can even reach the base by lighting up your position. This just makes it easier to leave the base undefended (besides having some guns already there) because now they will have a chance to react even quicker when they find themselves outmaneuvered.

All this leads up to people avoiding bases entirely. When fighting midfield, you at least know that you're on equal footing. When fighting at the base, you are purposefully putting yourself at a disadvantage. If you find yourself at a point where it would be advantageous to push towards the base, then you probably have enough advantage to just push for elimination of the enemy anyway, and would be better rewarded.

So again, I say that turrets only take away from the assault gametype. They do not add to it.

EDIT: Also, risk is already present, because you announce your position to the enemy (which you must hold), and you also split up your team between the main area of confrontation and the cap point. Further risk is unnecessary.

Edited by MungFuSensei, 07 February 2014 - 07:59 AM.

[Bill Lumbar]

Seeing some of the points brought up here.... Maybe it would be a good Idea to increase the rewards for pulling off a base cap very rewarding in XP and C-bills. Not only would it help with the "grind" that is so painfully obvious in this game, It would make players want to fufill the mission of taking the base as it should be in this game mode instead of just going for the kills to end the match.

[Ironwithin]

Looking forward to having turrets on the large maps, like alpine and terra therma. It is quite annoying to have a single light cap your base while you are stuck in a brawl and your own lights/mediums don't turn back.

It is not impossible to cap the base with turrets, it's just harder, so a single light or two can't do it on their own anymore. If they get help from a fast medium or 2 more lights it shouldn't be too much of a challenge. With those numbers your team has to actually commit to capping a base instead of just sending a single light to turn the whole battle around.

[MungFuSensei]

Ironwithin, on 07 February 2014 - 09:54 AM, said:

Looking forward to having turrets on the large maps, like alpine and terra therma. It is quite annoying to have a single light cap your base while you are stuck in a brawl and your own lights/mediums don't turn back.

It is not impossible to cap the base with turrets, it's just harder, so a single light or two can't do it on their own anymore. If they get help from a fast medium or 2 more lights it shouldn't be too much of a challenge. With those numbers your team has to actually commit to capping a base instead of just sending a single light to turn the whole battle around.

I agree that it is nice to see teamwork encouraged when capping, but to put turrets up because people are too dumb to defend their base is not the answer. That doesn't encourage capping, which sorely needs encouragement. As it stands, there is no incentive to cap, except purely to win. There is no real reward for doing so. All the turrets do is punish players for playing assault as assault instead of skirmish.

[Ransack]

MungFuSensei, on 07 February 2014 - 07:57 AM, said:

So again, I say that turrets only take away from the assault gametype. They do not add to it.

EDIT: Also, risk is already present, because you announce your position to the enemy (which you must hold), and you also split up your team between the main area of confrontation and the cap point. Further risk is unnecessary.

Here is a common tactic right now. ECM light runs around map avoiding combat and hides for a little bit. Once everyone is far enough from the base, it jumps on base. Some heavy or assault comes back because the lights on their team are heading to the other cap. ECM light see heavy/assualt coming. runs away breaking LoS. Heavy/Assault loses target. Thinking that light has fled it turns to return to battle. Once chicken little light see heavy/Assault far enough away, it jumps back on base

What is fun about that above scenario? Nothing. Its a waste of time.

Base capping was enough of a problem that the time to cap was raised and now turrets have been added. Should the turrets be addressed maybe even nerfed? absolutely. Should they be removed? absolutely not.