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A little explanation for those not familiar with the tabletop game. Clan Large Pulse Lasers are widely considered to be the most OP weapon in the tabletop. It's got more range than a IS PPC (unlike IS pulse lasers, which is what we have now) and has the same heat/damage as IS PPCs...except with a -2 modifier to hit, which makes it super accurate. It basically has no drawbacks whatsoever, and someone showing up to a game with tons of clan large pulse lasers generally has people packing up to leave and refusing to play with him in the future.
A common tactic for people looking to win at all costs on the tabletop is to take as many clan large pulse lasers as they can (or PPCs/ER PPCs if playing with IS tech), a fast, jumpy mech, and if possible, pick a map with lots of woods and small hills, enough to hinder movement, but not enough to block LOS.
Then they spend several hours jumping from woods to woods, which makes their mechs extremely hard to hit, at maximum range. This usually means that they don't have very good odds of hitting the enemy either, but that's ok, because you will (eventually) win if your opponent cant hit you at all and you can hit him with a 3% chance. It doesn't matter at all how long the game takes, because people who use this tactic only care about winning, they don't care about "fun" or the fact that it's taking up so much time they could be using for their life. Since their mechs are fast and can jump, they can basically kite most mechs forever. The only way to beat such a force (without extreme luck) is to build a very fast force that can catch up to him and hit him at same or better odds, but this generally requires you to know in advance what he is bringing. The main point of this tactic is not to win by destroying your mechs, or by completing any objectives, but by forcing you to forfeit out of boredom or lack of time.
Now, this is not commonly seen in game stores, because most people won't bother playing with you the moment they see what you are bringing, and everyone will quickly recognize you on sight (and not for good reasons). The system is really simple, you either play in an acceptable manner, or people choose not to play with you and you are left out in the cold.
However this, and a lot of other shenaningans, is extremely common on Mekwars servers, basically servers where you can play a computerized versions of the board game. They typically have some form of community warfare, where you fight for control over planets with points. More importantly, they have rules to govern gameplay, since the community warfare part becomes pointless if players are throwing games repeatedly to allow another faction to grab territory with ease, or if veterans keep challenging newbies that have no hope of winning while refusing to play against similarly skilled players that might cause them to lose.
Typically you are not allowed to choose the players you fight, it's ELO dependant, and anyone within your ELO range can attack you or vice-versa. Once an attack is confirmed, you HAVE to play the match, you can't refuse to play without your opponent's consent. If you refuse to play, you forfeit, and people get pissed that you lost points without a fight, plus repeatedly forfeiting is likely to earn you a ban.
So you can see how this appeals to the "win at all costs" type, because the rules ensure that they get to play and their opponent gets no say in it. There are usually combat rules as well, such as not being allowed to hide your whole force behind LOS and making your opponent search for you, but these are vauge and it's easy to stay within the rules by doing the bare minimum. Oh and the "jump around and bore your opponent to death" tactic? Perfectly valid because you are technically "engaging the enemy". Usually. And people like these are why a lot of people don't like to play on these servers.
Some of you may have noticed a parallel with MWO. You don't get to choose who your opponents are, and i'm not sure if you are allowed to quit a match if it's being ruined by certain types of behaviour. Even better you can take up to 3 people in a group with you...and play against randoms. You can make any perfect lance setup you want, while your opponents are most likely going up to end up with quite a few trial mechs, stock configs, or otherwise, mechs that are just there as canon fodder. And the people who you are bringing with you likely know how to play...(no such guarantee exists for your opponents), and they probably have elite efficiencies and enough cash for whatever optimized loadout they want. Even better you can sync drop to DOUBLE your advantage. Which is totally allowed by PGI btw. Kind of funny because you are usually not allowed to rig matches in your favor (go ask Blizzard if they will let you sync drop in ranked matches).
In an ideal game, this isnt a problem at all because you would be facing opponents who are equal to you...equal skill, equal mechs, equal efficiencies, etc. The reality is that the matchmaker is going to see 4-8 veterans on one team, ignore their mechs and loadout, ignore their efficiencies, stretch the ELO bracket to find suitable opponents....and you end up with the typical 12-0 stomp where one team is made up of mostly of newbies who have no idea what they are doing, who don't have their mechs setup before hand to work in sync with each other, who have no or next to no ECM, who are in trial mechs, who are in stock configs (i am seeing a lot of stock HBK-4Ps for some reason...)...and you get a slaughter.
The odds of another group of veterans, with equally good lance setups, launching at the same time as your group, and ending up on the opposing team, is pretty low. Unless you co-ordinate before hand. So the matchmaker just dumps as many randoms as it can grab, with a large ELO gap if necessary, into the opposing team. With predictable results.
In the past few days ive lost count of how many times i've been with most of our team, who then proceeds to get rushed by a few players with the most OP configs in the game, and we get totally wiped out in the blink of an eye. 4 mechs boating ballistics with elite efficiencies and focusing fire can easily take on 8 random mechs....or more. Hell i've taken out most of a team by myself....it's not hard to get 8 kills, 3 assists when you are boating ballistics and the enemy team just keeps standing in the middle of the river of river city, looking around in confusion as you gun them down (although i'm sure some players here think they are amazing because they can beat some newbies).
Oh and since most random teams end up with maybe 1 ECM at best, they get eaten alive by the LRM boat spam that is so popular these days. Assaults dying in 5 seconds while they try to kill a ECM spotter running around at long range is pretty sad to watch. And there's nothing much they can do because the game was decided before it even begun.
So, what does this all mean? Well i'm kind of reminded of a famous penny arcade comic. Normal guy + Internet = (you should be able to guess this). In MWO what do you have?
Player who wants to win at all costs + Ingame incentives for doing so (c-bills, xp) + Ego boosts (K:D ratio, scores) + System prevents people from refusing to play against you + Broken matchmaker + Broken game balance = Small groups of people who ruin the game for everyone else.
And that's why i can't get anyone to play MWO for long. They keep joining games, only to get stomped into the ground. On the occasions they win, their team stomps some other newbies into the ground. Only a tiny portion of games are actually somewhat even and they get to have a good fight. They keep running up against some ridiculous build that shreds their mech before they can do anything, because weapon balance has been terrible since closed beta started 2 years ago. Where one mech, can just take out multiple mechs with ease, not because he is so much better, but because he is abusing the easiest, most OP loadout in the current meta that he can find. Where a 2014 game still has no working lag compensation, so light mechs can tank more firepower than an Atlas and are incredibly frustrating to kill without streaks.
So people usually ask me "Okay this game is just really badly broken. When are they fixing it?" and then i tell them that everything, matchmaking, balance, etc, has been broken for 2 years...they just look at me in disbelief or start laughing. Or both. And they all moved on to other games. Which is great for them, not so great for PGI hoping to make money. I'm sure a lot of people had similar experiences....there's probaly lots of similar stories around the net "I tried MWO but every game was like a curb stomp, don't waste your time".
Well PGI is partly to blame here obviously, if the matchmaker was working, newbies wouldnt be getting stomped by teams of veterans. If weapon balance was decent, boating ballistics or LRMs wouldnt be able to decide a game. Anyone else here remember the complete fiasco that was the MWO release? When thousands of new players signed up then proceeded to quit and badmouth MWO because they kept curbed stomped into oblivion by vets teaming up? All because PGI refused to make a randoms only queue (and to this date, wont actually say why)?
Aside from that however, there's one group of people who's to blame for making the game terrible and for making so many people quit. It's the same people who keep abusing the most OP configs. It's the same people who sync drop against randoms instead of using the 12 man queue. It's the same people who do everything possible to make the gameplay experience terrible for everyone else. All so that they can brag about their high K:D and win ratios, while telling each other how amazing they are.
Quite literally one of the cancers killing this game. The worst part is that we are stuck with these people. We have to play with them. We can't avoid them if we want to play MWO. We can't make use of the lovely self regulating mechanicsm where you are free to do whatever you want, just don't complain if people stop wanting to play with you and you are left standing there alone.
Too bad they can't get banned either, usually companies don't appreciate it when you are responsible for making tons of people quit and are actively out to ruin the game for everyone else.
Well i guess the only thing we can do is hope everything gets fixed so we dont have to deal with the nonsense of 8 man sync drops vs team of newbies, half in fodder mechs, and we can actually get people to play MWO again. Maybe another year or two for it to happen?
Oh and if anyone has tried to get people into the game, i would love to hear if they had a similar experience to my friends. When playing solo of course (getting carried by 3 other players in OP configs doesn't prove anything).
Edited by Egomane, 23 April 2014 - 11:20 AM.
please remember to use "Use first tag as prefix" when creating a new thread
+1
