53 replies to this topic

[DaZur]

I'm usually pretty stoic when it comes to most of the absurdity witnessed in the course of a PUG drop... That said, tonight I might very well have witnessed an apex example.

I drop on Mordor into a skirmish and watch the three lances form up into a blob. They're a determined bunch and I'm not going to debate the pros and cons of blobbing on Mordor and dutifully accompany them on their quest...

I then watch 9 of the drop composite hurd themselves up at one of the PUG zapper entrances and watch in horror as they bunch up, shoulder to shoulder and butt to belly and witness the systematic slaughter of those teammates... with little I could do to stop the carnage.

I and two others break off and vainly try to flank but are simply focused down by direct fire and a LRM deluge.

No offense to the players in that match but seriously... Word of advice: Never-ever blob up in an entrance to the PUG zapper and God forbid if you do... have the nuts to push through so the rest of the team has a chance to take a few shots before getting mowed down by focus fire.

That match was such an odd mixture of humor, horror and sadness... I'm not sure even a pound of bacon might remedy it...

Edited by Egomane, 24 April 2014 - 11:56 PM.

[Roadbeer]

Yeah, I watched something very similar tonight,

My lance just walked past them as I said, "Oh, good, you're going to the PUGZAPPER, make sure to feed in one at a time, the enemy LOVES that"

3:20 later, my lance is all that remains and I'm able to get off "CALLED IT" before being overwhelmed.

It's an almost nightly occurrence.

[Roadbeer]

Oh, and the first person that says, "But it's good to go into the PUGZAPPER when..."

Just uninstall the game now, spare the rest of us.

There is no good reason to go to the PUGZAPPER... ever... even on Conquest.

[Deathlike]

Once in a while, this happens though...





Too bad that is far and few in between...

Also, I got killed by Arty

Edited by Deathlike, 24 April 2014 - 09:27 PM.

[Roadbeer]

Deathlike, on 24 April 2014 - 09:24 PM, said:

Once in a while, this happens though...





Too bad that is far and few in between...

Also, I got killed by Arty

Shopped

[Deathlike]

Roadbeer, on 24 April 2014 - 09:36 PM, said:

Shopped

??



It's real though... /sigh

[Daekar]

DaZur, on 24 April 2014 - 09:12 PM, said:

I'm usually pretty stoic when it comes to most of the absurdity witnessed in the course of a PUG drop... That said, tonight I might very well have witnessed an apex example.

I drop on Mordor into a skirmish and watch the three lances form up into a blob. They're a determined bunch and I'm not going to debate the pros and cons of blobbing on Mordor and dutifully accompany them on their quest...

I then watch 9 of the drop composite hurd themselves up at one of the PUG zapper entrances and watch in horror as they bunch up, shoulder to shoulder and butt to belly and witness the systematic slaughter of those teammates... with little I could do to stop the carnage.

I and two others break off and vainly try to flank but are simply focused down by direct fire and a LRM deluge.

No offense to the players in that match but seriously... Word of advice: Never-ever blob up in an entrance to the PUG zapper and God forbid if you do... have the nuts to push through so the rest of the team has a chance to take a few shots before getting mowed down by focus fire.

That match was such an odd mixture of humor, horror and sadness... I'm not sure even a pound of bacon might remedy it...

If a pound of bacon can't fix it, then I doubt it's within the power of PGI to fix either.

[LoneMaverick]

Had two Atlai on Crimson Strait conquest, DDC and RS, pregame screaming "follow the atlas, lalalalala, brofist!" and most of us rational people can understand where this is going. I call it and try to reason with them, but apparently I don't know how invincible these two bros are in their Atali.

They rush Epsi from bottom, whole enemy team is there, RS stops, DDC just decides to stomp around Epsi until dying 8 seconds later and then ******* the entire game about how we would have won if we decided to commit suicide as well.

Game ends with the enemy team winning on resources, last friendly left alive is the other Atlas who ran off to the edge of the map near Gamma, since his 2 PPCs were great at shooting people in the back at 900+ M.

This is one of the main things I'm scared of with the new 3x4 queue, wish there was a way to kick someone off of a weight class(Edit: for a # of games/hours) if they do enough dumb shit, I just hope these two don't end up being in my bracket, or lose their ELO quick enough with that type of shitty play to get away from me.

Edited by LoneMaverick, 24 April 2014 - 09:43 PM.

[Deathlike]

LoneMaverick, on 24 April 2014 - 09:41 PM, said:

Had two Atlai on Crimson Strait conquest, DDC and RS, pregame screaming "follow the atlas, lalalalala, brofist!" and most of us rational people can understand where this is going. I call it and try to reason with them, but apparently I don't know how invincible these two bros are in their Atali.

They rush Epsi from bottom, whole enemy team is there, RS stops, DDC just decides to stomp around Epsi until dying 8 seconds later and then ******* the entire game about how we would have won if we decided to commit suicide as well.

Game ends with the enemy team winning on resources, last friendly left alive is the other Atlas who ran off to the edge of the map near Gamma, since his 2 PPCs were great at shooting people in the back at 900+ M.

This is one of the main things I'm scared of with the new 3x4 queue, wish there was a way to kick someone off of a weight class(Edit: for a # of games/hours) if they do enough dumb shit, I just hope these two don't end up being in my bracket, or lose their ELO quick enough with that type of shitty play to get away from me.

I would like to say from my experience IN that PTS, the skill levels seemed to be OK (the Elo buckets seem to work) because I don't recall much derping... just bad mistakes that cost the team a win/loss.

[Roadbeer]

Deathlike, on 24 April 2014 - 09:50 PM, said:

I would like to say from my experience IN that PTS, the skill levels seemed to be OK (the Elo buckets seem to work) because I don't recall much derping... just bad mistakes that cost the team a win/loss.

You know, I've been thinking about that since I was in PTS.

I don't know if it was just because of the people who were in the queues or if the buckets really worked. Every match was Forumite heavy, from which, I can only assume, I'm in the low Elo bucket

[meteorol]

Bad players, premades and pugs alike, will get killed one by one at the entrance of the zapper.
There is pretty much nothing you can do about it. If the enemy team is in the arena, guys will start peeking one by one and will die.

So what could you do to prevent the defeat? Tell them not to die one by one at the entrance(That tiny F6 entrance is the worst of all, because only 1 mech can pass through it at a time)? Doesn't help, they will do it anyway.
Trying to flank to save their butt? Doesn't help, they will be dead by the time you arrive. Once the whole enemy team is in the arena, the match is pretty much lost, because guys will get impatient and they will try to peek and they will die.

So is there a way to prevent it? What helps in many cases (atleast for my team) is denying the enemy the zapper. Whenever i play with my buddies and we drop on Terra Therma, we rush to the zapper entrance (all mechs going 70+ kph) with AC heavy mechs. Some prediction shots to the opposing entrance; if an enemy mech turns up, he most often stops and starts walking backwards (blocking his whole team) if hit by AC (and some PPC ) fire of 4 mechs. Make sure the zapper hasn't charged by the time your team arrives to its slaughter. Just some heavy AC suppression fire to keep their heads down, which helps against anything but a coordinated 4man premade. Guys are afraid of all the smoke and cockpit shake and paddle back.

You can't prevent mechs from walking into the zapper. Deep in its core, there is an irresistible magnetic force that pulls mechs towards it. What you can do, is make sure that the zapper is not loaded with 800 tons of enemy mechs when your teammates start walking into it one by one.

Just like PGI, you won't be able to fix the problem, but you can atleast try to cure the symptom.

Edited by meteorol, 24 April 2014 - 10:14 PM.

[Deathlike]

Ideally, entering from the EAST-WEST entrances are better than the solo NORTH-SOUTH entrances.... because you can stuff more players quickly.

Although, that might be tougher to do in Skrimish - this is more "natural" in Assault.

[darkkterror]

This pug zapper sounds like a fun and interesting place.

[Deathlike]

darkkterror, on 24 April 2014 - 10:20 PM, said:

This pug zapper sounds like a fun and interesting place.

A magnetic force has drawn you into Mordor!

[Lynx7725]

meteorol, on 24 April 2014 - 10:11 PM, said:

You can't prevent mechs from walking into the zapper. Deep in its core, there is an irresistible magnetic force that pulls mechs towards it. What you can do, is make sure that the zapper is not loaded with 800 tons of enemy mechs when your teammates start walking into it one by one.

The reason is very simple. You're assured in PUGs that everyone will head towards it, expecting everyone else to go there to fight. I PUG most of the time and when the map shows up, I sigh because there's really only one important thing to do on it.

Rush to grab the caldera.

That's it. The PUG team that managed to grab the interior has a huge advantage. PUGs generally are chicken and once it takes a few AC or LRMs they shy back. And PUGZAPPER entrances have terrible arcs for direct fire, and yet PUGs are determine to hold at the entrance. That makes the interior team very powerful, so the only real thing to do is to grab the center first.

You know what peeve me more? The lead bruiser/ AC boat takes an AC shot from far away and then backs down. And promptly block the road, preventing anyone else from getting in. I had games where my LRM boat had to stump around a chicken PUG heavy AC brawler to take the entrance and force the issue -- and the number of times said chicken PUG heavy AC brawlers are so situational clueless that even when your team already forced an entrance, they are STILL hogging the road plinking away with their weapons.

[Bruan]

One team it zaps,
One team is the Zapper,
They are both in the center.
But only one enters,
Tis they who block the way in,
That are sure to not win,
but rather come here instead to whine,
how asine twas, for their side to go center,
but brilliant for the other side it was.

[Procyon Alpha]

DaZer, I think I was the Cat A1 on the other side in that match. Did you guys have a Raven 4x behind us that did nothing for 4 mins? It was painful to watch all I could do was throw LRMs at them to stop the pain. Sorry for your loss, but I hope they learned something, because you should learn from something that painful.

o7

[meteorol]

Lynx7725, on 24 April 2014 - 10:27 PM, said:

The PUG team that managed to grab the interior has a huge advantage.

This is only the case because the team outside of the zapper gives them that advantage.
If you see the enemy team has the zapper, you could pull back, set up a line of fire and murder them when they push out. Pushing out of the zapper is just as hard as pushing in, because the first guy will get obliterated, and players don't like dying in general. They will face the same issue of the first mech stopping and blocking all the others. You could also pull away from the zapper in general, and keep to the corner of the maps.

Sadly, the team outside the zapper gives the zapperteam this advantage almost every single time.
Even if you are trying to command the team, tell them to retreat, build a fireline at a certain point or flank through a certain path you can be sure a minimum 3 guys will ignore you, peek, and die.
If the zapper is charged, you will lose atleast 3 mechs 80% of the time, which can often decide the match. Once we realized we couldn't prevent this, we started trying to pull the zappers plug, which (atleast for us) works better than trying to prevent guys from walking into their death at the entrance.

Edited by meteorol, 24 April 2014 - 11:14 PM.

[Lynx7725]

meteorol, on 24 April 2014 - 11:11 PM, said:

This is only the case because the team outside of the zapper gives them that advantage.

If you see the enemy team has the zapper, you could pull back, set up a line of fire and murder them when they push out. Pushing out of the zapper is just as hard as pushing in, because the first guy will get obliterated, and players don't like dying in general. They will face the same issue of the first mech stopping and blocking all the others. You could also pull away from the zapper in general, and keep to the corner of the maps.

I disagree with the pushing out part, but it depends largely on which entrance we are talking about, and whether the outside team is too close to the entrance. This is as Mechs from the interior of the zapper generally have a wider arc of space to stand and still have line of fire to the exterior -- it's a bit easier, by no means easy though.

And, let's put a pet peeve to rest. LRMs in the doorways of the zapper is great as the arc of the rise is just the perfect angle to drop LRMs both uphill and downhill. You need LRM support fire if you want to break in, and when breaking out, LRM support fire as the brawlers break out can mean a big deal as the deathball roll downwards.

If the outside PUG sets up beyond the "death zone" doorway, then yeah, it becomes another ballgame. But advantage lies generally with the inside team, as it's likely they would have scored a few kills simply by focusing on the doorways.

meteorol, on 24 April 2014 - 11:11 PM, said:

Sadly, the team outside the zapper gives the zapperteam this advantage almost every single time.

Even if you are trying to command the team, tell them to retreat, build a fireline at a certain point or flank through a certain path you can be sure a minimum 3 guys will ignore you, peek, and die.

If the zapper is charged, you will lose atleast 3 mechs 80% of the time, which can often decide the match. Once we realized we couldn't prevent this, we started trying to pull the zappers plug, which (atleast for us) works better than trying to prevent guys from walking into their death at the entrance.

And that's why I hate the map. The layout makes tactics largely irrelevant in PUGs, because of the very limited options a commander may have. It's hard to pull teammates back once the fighting start.. on other maps, because of the lack of obvious chokepoints, teams tend to flow and flank. Zapper? Teams fixate and we end up with nothing more than frontal assaults back and forth. It's... limited in entertainment, to me.

[YueFei]

I've also been on the other side of that, where we had a smart team, realized that the spawn location lottery meant that our big guns did not arrive on time. I was in a match with a Jagermech pilot named Scottimus. He hill-humped over the bridge and laid down some fire, I took the opportunity to peer around inside and saw the enemy forming a firing line. I told the team and we halted outside of the entrance and setup a concave firing line.

After a bit of poking with neither side willing to commit we had half our guys going to another entrance to flank. Dangerous though because if the guys who stayed got pushed by the entire enemy team we were done. The half of our team that stayed took turns dropping strikes and firing glorious dakka at the entrance, kept the enemy pinned down long enough for our flankers to arrive. And then we clamped them from two sides and obliterated the other team.

And then a teammate accidentally misplaced an artillery strike and head-shot me but I was in too good of a mood to care.

Edited by YueFei, 24 April 2014 - 11:44 PM.