39 replies to this topic

[ArmandTulsen]

Right now, turrets make capping all but futile. What augments this problem is the fact that capping the base in assault mode has absolutely no worthwhile incentive (50 XP? Seriously?).

Either give base capping in assault mode a solid incentive like 50k in C-Bills, or change the name to Base Defense, because - fact is - that is how the majority of the assault mode games are played. Everybody picks a spot (high ground, choke point etc.) and just camps it, hoping to have more kills than the other team and have the advantage to wait out the timer.

Lower the number and armor of turrets, or make base capping worthwhile. Otherwise, don't call it assault, please.

Thanks.

[Bhael Fire]

I agree; I like the idea of turrets and the protection they provide, but I feel like they belong in Attack/Defend instead.

[Khobai]

call it turret skirmish

[Kaeb Odellas]

I made a thread in Maps and Modes (later moved to Feature Suggestions by a mod) about this topic here.

I'll just repost it here.

Kaeb Odellas, on 12 March 2014 - 01:15 AM, said:

So Assault Mode has a problem.

With the addition of turrets and the length of the cap timer, cap victories basically only happen after the victorious force has destroyed most of their enemies and doesn't want to waste their time looking for the last Spider who has buggered off and shut down somewhere on the other side of Terra Therma.

Even when an early cap victory was possible, it was still a poor way to win a match, as you've ended up spending most of the match standing in a square as opposed to doing fun things, like shooting giant robots in the face with lasers. You got very poor rewards at the end of the match, since the game rewards combat performance, and not standing in a box for 2 minutes, and everyone else generally got mad at you for preventing them from shooting mechs in the face with lasers.


So I propose a change:
Instead of ending the game then and there with a victory, a successful capture should provide game-altering effects that affect how the actual mech-shooting game plays out.

Friendly Buffs:
Since they replaced the drilling platform with a mobile HQ thing, capturing the base can provide benefits to the capturing team, including but not limited to:

-Provide capturing team with the locations of every enemy mech still currently alive in the game
-Prevent the enemy team from capturing your own base.
-Turn the enemy's base turrets against them.
-Locks out your own base to prevent the enemy from capturing it until they recapture their base


Enemy Debuffs:
Allowing your base to be captured could also impact you negatively with some debuffs. These can include:

-Disabling the sharing of targeting info between friendly mechs. (Perhaps the HQ contained the C3 master system?)
-After, say 5 minutes of your base being captured, an artillery strike lands on a random mech on your team every 30 seconds. If you're the last one on your team, then buckle up!
-If time runs out and your base is still captured, you automatically lose.


To make enemy bases more inviting targets for capture, you can decrease the capture time to one minute, but make it reset if the capturing mech leaves the square. Multiple mechs cannot increase the rate of capture, and the capturing mech must continually face the HQ.This means that capturing requires a team effort, as the capture mech would not be able to defend himself. Recapturing your base would work the same way as capturing the enemy's.


Turtling:
To prevent teams from just turtling, you can add a third objective in the center of the map that acts as a tie-breaker at the end of the round. Whichever team holds the center while still holding their base, wins at time-out, regardless of who has the most kills.



I think this system, or something like it, would make Assault mode a far more dynamic, instead of just Skirmish with an option to cap the base instead of play "hunt the spider".

[Lukoi Banacek]

Khobai, on 12 March 2014 - 05:47 PM, said:

call it turret skirmish

turrmish

[kuangmk11]

remove one base, voilà... Assault

[Bhael Fire]

kuangmk11, on 12 March 2014 - 06:39 PM, said:

remove one base, voilà... Assault

That's actually going to be the Attack/Defend mode coming soon. They need to remove turrets from Assault or at least make capping the enemy base worth more c-bills and xp.

[Shermburger]

A proper 'assault' style game mode would require newly designed maps (something that this game needs, anyway) with the mode in mind. To keep it from being a turtlefest, ideally one team (with greater numbers) should be identified as the attackers while the other team (with lesser numbers) should be identified as the defenders. The defenders start in a more defensible position - high ground, some sort of fortification, etc. And the attackers have to maneuver around, or bludgeon through, the defense to destroy or capture an object. As it is, the game is just skirmish plus some nonsense.

[MustrumRidcully]

Shermburger, on 12 March 2014 - 10:31 PM, said:

A proper 'assault' style game mode would require newly designed maps (something that this game needs, anyway) with the mode in mind. To keep it from being a turtlefest, ideally one team (with greater numbers) should be identified as the attackers while the other team (with lesser numbers) should be identified as the defenders. The defenders start in a more defensible position - high ground, some sort of fortification, etc. And the attackers have to maneuver around, or bludgeon through, the defense to destroy or capture an object. As it is, the game is just skirmish plus some nonsense.

I am not convinced that it's a wise idea to give the defenders some kind of "home advantage" without compensation. That just means the attackers have a default handicap.

I think something like a turret defense or the like could work fine to augment a defender that needs to defend two locations. You have to split your forces. The attacker tries to scout out the base with the weakest defenses, while the defener attempts to scout out where the enemy is attacking to relocate his forces.



I don't know what to do in our current Assault mode. It seems that the defense turrets will always benefit those that stick near their base. So you either play it like Skirmish (meet somewhere else and duke it out "fairly"), or someone stupidly rushes to the enemy base and loses.
Maybe another set of targets would help here, too. Someone else suggested that the turrets might be powered by a generator somewhere else on the base, and if you can get to that, you can turn off the turrets and launch your real attack. That would force both sides to consider whether they want to defend the generator, too, or take their chances and wait for the enemy to destroy it and attack the base.

(Of course, why would you build a generator somewhere on the map to power turrets someplace else? Why is that generator not also defended by turrets? but if it was, that means the group that killed the generator will likely have taken damage in that attempt and are now weakened for the assault on the actual base, and again, at disadvantage. Maybe the generator should be attackable from range or via artillery, or the "implied backstory" is that the generator defenses where already destroyed in an earlier raid?)

[King Arthur IV]

turtle mode, ok fine maybe not but at least rename river city to turtle city.

[Eldan Sontim]

Just have one base.
First team to cap it has possession of the base (and turrets).
Win conditions are holding the base at end of timer or eliminating opposition.
Would also bring different mechs for different rolls into play.

[drinniol]

Or... You could always destroy the turrets. It's to deter solo light capping, a dedicated lance would make short work of them.

[Magna Canus]

I remember scores of games in assult, before the addition of turrets that went pretty much like this; Team 1 goes "left", Team 2 goes "left", nobody ends up fighting (especially if one team was under ECM cover) and the team to cap the fastest won. Such games were over quickly, were exceedingly boring, and had little to no rewards involved. All in all a total waste of time.

Still other games began as a "normal fight" until one side decided to send a light to cap the enemy base. If the fight drug out for a while a single light was able to win the battle by cap. Often that light would "cap out" despite the fact that the fight was going well for his own team and his team would be upset about it. Again, a load of unhappy people.

Threads were created to complain about all of this and the whining actually had an effect, turrets were introduces and the game plan changed. Now we have threads that whine that the "good old days" where you could cap out a game in under 3 minutes are close to gone.

I have to say "good riddance". Why? Minimal rewards for one. Also, if I want to drop and stand in boxes then I can choose Conquest which is better suited. The word "assualt" implies violence and battle, e.g. a fight. Base capping with no battle contact has nothing to do with that word, on the contrary. Now, with turrets, there will be a fight no matter what, either vs. the enemy or vs. the turrets at their base. You get xp and C-bills for destroying turrets as well, which is a nice bonus IMHO.

Another positive effect of turrets is that, when you get stuck with a load of noobs on your team unable to hit a target or even understand the basics of movement, you still have a coupple of AI turrets to "rely on". If you use that to your advantage you have the chance of turning that 12-0 roll into something a bit less embarrasing.

At the end of the day I would have to say that turrets on all maps for Assault is a win-win situation.

[Evil Ed]

Magnakanus, on 12 March 2014 - 11:52 PM, said:

At the end of the day I would have to say that turrets on all maps for Assault is a win-win situation.

At the end of the day people that complained over and had trouble with capping already got what they asked for: skirmish mode.

[Whatzituyah]

This why I think the turrets should only apply to dice rolls so that it dos not hit the same location and that includes LRMS they could lose lock or something I dont know...

[Magna Canus]

Evil Ed, on 12 March 2014 - 11:59 PM, said:

At the end of the day people that complained over and had trouble with capping already got what they asked for: skirmish mode.

While that does appear to be the case I believe all of us know that skirmish mode has become the "meta-playground", full of HGN-733C, CTF-3D, all sorts of ECM mechs, etc.

While I don't mind being stuck in skirmish (I always set my drops to random) among the swarms of PPC/AC POP-tart legions, many "normal" players dont. Yet you have "normal" players that were unhappy with the base-rush-without-a-fight "trend". MWO, and any battle simulator for that matter, are in spirit all about the fight. If you want to win without a fight there are a lot of board games out there like connect 4 that can satisfy that need.

I fail to see the depth of satisfaction one can get from base capping without any enemy contact in a game designed for battle, especially when the rewards for such are minimal at best. No, I do not agree with those that would like to increase the rewards for a base cap either, because if it is all about the win and not the fight for those that do like it, then the easy win should be its own reward.

Funny is of course that the more you win this way the harder this game is going to get for you. As we know, each win increasees our ELO, even more so when we win vs. an enemy above our own ELO. The best way to do that is cap out without a fight, but eventually you will elevate yourself into an ELO bracket beyond your abilities, one that consists of players that can head shot you with PPC/AC at 800m during a running jump while drinking tee and surfing the net on the side. Then, at the latest, the game is no longer enjoyable and the only one you need to thank is yourself for artifically elevating your ELO beyond your abilities.

On a side note, though I am quoting you, Evil Ed, the "you" in my post is not directed at you personally, just so we can avoid nastiness that always arises in these forums when people talk about different view.

[Asmudius Heng]

Should have taken my idea to make the game about controlling the mid field before pushing to a cap rather than adding base defence making it hard to actually cap.

That being said I have not seen that much turtling in the base except on river city which almost forces you to.

What i do see is gung ho charges into the centre and once people get smashed they retreat to safety. This is not a terrible thing in some ways, its quite tactical in fact as people cycle thier armour and form up crippled defence forces for a final push .... but the problem is that it is symetrical of course.

There needs to be some sort of penalty to camping ... say like mid field objectives that could help power down turrents, or give you artillery strikes ... you know things people have been talking about since forever to give the midfiield battle more importance in terms of objectives!

If you have a symetrical defense then you need a way to encourage people to fight in the mid field. if one team hunkers down then the other should be rewarded slightly for coming out and taking territory if this is going to be an objective driven mode.

[Corbon Zackery]

Were trying to get rid of the turrets until they make changes to the auto targeting bot.

Right now Spam LRM 10 with unlimited ammo that's going to go first.

Then were going to push to having only 4 m laser covering the base.

Right now its getting to be a clock war asking people to take out 12 mechs was pushing it. Right now mech are to damaged to push into a base cap with

4 3 m.laser turrets and 2 LRM 10 spam battery's

It was just sloppy programing that has did them in.

The other thing were looking at getting is a generator that you can destroy to pop all the turrets at once.

Edited by Corbon Zackery, 13 March 2014 - 03:06 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

It ain't a victory if you don't have to fight for it.

[MustrumRidcully]

drinniol, on 12 March 2014 - 11:30 PM, said:

Or... You could always destroy the turrets. It's to deter solo light capping, a dedicated lance would make short work of them.

Let's express it in simple math:
12 mechs + turrets > 12 mechs

Even if you only need one alpha from 4 "dedicated" mechs in your team, that's 4 alphas from the enemy team that the enemy has an advantage compared to you. "But 4 alphas is nothing" ... well, 4 alphas can be something like 120 points of damage, which can be enough to core a cataphract or anythnig ligher than that.

And even if your first alpha kills the turret, there is even a chance that it can still return fire once. (So even if you catch the turret out of range of any of the enemy mechs, you will take some damage.)