75 replies to this topic

[Faith McCarron]

Racking up high scores in these challenges is not easy, but it's far from near-impossible as the OP makes it out to be. I'd rank myself as a decent player, but far from top-tier, and my final score was 1,948. I dropped about 75 matches, playing in an Ember, 3L Raven, 2K Shadow Hawk, Dragon Slayer, and 733C. I brought double strikes to every drop. I did not sync-drop with friends. On most drops, I found about 2-3 players from the top 10 leaderboards in the match with me.

My experience dropping in these tournaments is that your first 10-15 matches are probably going to be throwaways until you get a "feel" for how the specific tournament is generally being played by most. Once you do that, getting decent scores is not all that difficult. Some of it is luck, you have to have the proper balance of teams so that you're not getting rolled and not rolling the enemy too quickly. A lot of it is about putting out consistent damage throughout the entire match, and having the proper feel for when to make your push to rack up the kill shots. Push too early and you will get focused down hard. Push too late and you will be watching as your teammates eat up all the kills.

Finally, in response to some of the comments about tourney scores not making someone a good player, while that is technically true that high scores don't NECESSARILY make you a good player, take a look at the top scoring players in this tournament and you will see that the vast majority of them are, indeed, very good players.

[Satan n stuff]

Monsoon, on 27 May 2014 - 05:51 AM, said:

That's why Torso Twisting and 'Deadsiding' are popular, increased survivability.

Very few decent players are impatient enough to try to destroy your mech one section at a time, most will wait for a better shot and if you intend to return fire at some point you will give them one.

[Mawai]

Lots and lots of matches played ... so that the few great matches are the ones that count. Personally, I think the average score over a minimum of 10 matches would be much more representative of consistent performance and would make an interesting metric for a tournament.

However, this probably raises issues of connectivity. If every match counts for something what happens when a person disconnects? If ti is a network issue then it is a bit unfair to count the match ... on the other hand, if you don't count disconnected matches then people would just deliberately disconnect for less good matches.

So a better metric might be average score over a minimum of 10 matches scoring ... allowing the worst 3 matches to be ignored (whether the worst ones are disconnects or just bad luck) ... so you would need to play 13 matches to allow you to drop the 3 worst. You could continue playing trying to increase your score with the 3 worst matches out of all of them being dropped.

[MadSapper1234]

mostnotweak, on 26 May 2014 - 01:06 PM, said:

I honestly don't know how people get less than 400 damage a match in this game.

You play lights. I average less damage than 400, but my KD is up at 2.74.

Last tournament I played ~40 matches and got to 57th. It all has to do with the more matches you put in, and the more "good matches" you get. I believe Eglar put in over 80 matches last time (He posted a spreadsheet). The better than average players tend to get better than average matches, but it is those 1/10 6 kill 9 assist 1000 point matches that make the scores go up. 2 kill/6 assist are common but it is not what wins these tournaments.

[Screech]

Reptilizer, on 27 May 2014 - 12:03 AM, said:

Actually, to score well, you have to survive till the end to apply all that damage. You need cannon fodder. You need the guy stepping into the breach. You need to use your teammate as cover when the jagerbomb moves in.
Flee the fight, let others die whenever possible.

No, in order to survive you need the other team dead nothing else. You need to shoot the exposed components quickly and not spray your damage all over the enemy target. You need to know when to move out of an exposed position in order to re-group and strike back at your enemy. Killing the enemy saves the lives of your teammates more then any other act you can do on the battlefield.

[Solahma]

Very easy to rack up points in a ECM Raven-3L with 2 ERLLas...
Priorities:
1. Keep firing, the tournament runs heavily off of damage so this build needs to put out as often as possible to get that damage to the 700+ range.
2. Stay near team to make sure they survive against LRM boats
3. Tag every target you see, usually chain fire the ERLLas so that I can scan targets. This way you will at least get an assist if that mech gets taken out.
4. After all visible targets have been scraped for future assists, pick a priority target and make sure to focus on weakened components. You could potentially get extra damage for destroying components, ammo, equipment, etc.
5. Take your time to place an arty/air strike. Focus on the large and slow mechs and look for an opportunity where targets are grouped up. Avoid dropping a strike on a single target, even if that target is begging for it.

The biggest thing here is to make sure to help your team survive. Play things safe and stick nearby to provide your ECM blanket. I see a lot of people use this build to go off on their own. They do well for damage, but none of that matters if A. Your team isn't able to dish out enough damage for you to get kill/assists B. Your team dies before you do, you are probably not going to score well. You might have good damage, but your assists and kills are going to be lacking in a loss, not to mention the 10 point loss from losing alone.

After a match, I plug my numbers into a spreadsheet that shows what my average would be if that game represented all 10 of my games. That way i'll know if it is above/below my current tournament score. For example: A game with 2 Kills, 10 Assists, 1000 damage, and a win would average ~2266. So if my score was 2000 before that match, I know it will go up and bump out a lower scoring game.

Sadly this time I had too much else going on RL with the holiday weekend and what now, So I was only really able to play Saturday night. Got in 15-20 matches in the raven and banshee. Finished 29th w/ 2045. Had a few really good games, and just as many really bad games, it would have been easy to replace those bad games and place well, just no time...

Edited by Solahma, 27 May 2014 - 07:37 AM.

[Lynx7725]

I got into the habit of screencapping all my results where possible (barring d/c etc.), so I managed to record the results of all my tourney matches out of sheer habit.

Played 31 games, of which likely 9 wins and 1 loss was taken (based on some rough number-crunching that might be off). Of the lot, my likely best game had the second lowest damage of the 10... but it had the most kills, and assist on everything else bar one. My highest damage game actually tied for 5th spot -- 948 damage if anyone cares (which incidentally was that one loss...).

Damage does come in to play, but more as a tiebreaker in your own games. The crux is to kill things and molest everything else -- and of course, winning.

EDIT: Just found an interesting data point. I had one game where I had 4 kills and did 827 damage, but it was likely not counted into my best 10. That's because I lost that game, and had only 1 assist. Damage has an effect, but is secondary or even tertiary; winning, killing, assisting has more effect IMO.

Edited by Lynx7725, 27 May 2014 - 07:55 AM.

[Nryrony]

BaronBastardKiller, on 26 May 2014 - 12:47 PM, said:

Hey,

so i opted in to the challenge (regretting it, have not enjoyed it at all).

I'm curious, considering the rules and conditions, how the heck are people getting those high scores? I'm atleast 1000 lower than most...

How? unless they're getting 6-7 kills and 1000 damage a match I don't see how. and If its Pug'ing and not premades then how are they able to do that?

I have had literally only one decent game this weekend. and my best was a 4 kill 4 assist 500+ damage match. Just one. The rest have been LRMs going bezerk and my own team mates shooting me in desperation to get in a killsteal for their score...

Are there really players that good on MWO who can go around getting in that many kills/damage a match?

Tournament is about grinding luck to get the perfect 10 matches.

This for example was one of my best I think:



However, consider that DMG itself isn't _that_ important, you get "easy" points for Kills/Assits.

Also note that even the "good" players usually don't end up having this kind of score every 2end match.

Its a mixture of luck and skill and time.

(I ende up with only 2258 Points, nothing close to players like Eglar or Proton so these scores are "low")

Edited by Nryrony, 27 May 2014 - 07:58 AM.

[Reptilizer]

Screech, on 27 May 2014 - 06:43 AM, said:

No, in order to survive you need the other team dead nothing else. You need to shoot the exposed components quickly and not spray your damage all over the enemy target. You need to know when to move out of an exposed position in order to re-group and strike back at your enemy. Killing the enemy saves the lives of your teammates more then any other act you can do on the battlefield.

I do wonder if you quoted the right post?
Because your comment seems strangely disconnected.
Mine was about getting high scores.
And that this is not necessarily the best for your team.

[Screech]

Reptilizer, on 27 May 2014 - 09:43 AM, said:

I do wonder if you quoted the right post?
Because your comment seems strangely disconnected.
Mine was about getting high scores.
And that this is not necessarily the best for your team.

I think we just view things very differently. I have a really hard time understanding what you think players who are doing well are actually doing. Apparently you think they are a detriment somehow, so I can see the confusion.

[Vweegit]

Satan n stuff, on 27 May 2014 - 05:28 AM, said:

Given that team averages are usually below 300 ( enough to kill most mechs twice over ) he'd have to either consistently perform much better than his team to get such an average or exclusively use LRMs and strikes, neither of which is very likely.
Even in an all assault match if the team average is significantly higher than that it's because nobody can shoot straight. it's quite rare for most mechs to survive that much damage.
For reference: One sidetorso and the center torso of an Atlas have at most 312 hit points total.

I can't speak for the guy claiming 600 damage, but in my case, I use strikes nearly every match. I am consistently on top of the scoreboard - match scores and damage, and generally have touches (damage) on 10 or 11 enemy mechs. We're only speaking of the JR7-F in my case - I'm at my best in that mech and very little else - so LRMs aren't an option. (For comparison's sake, I have played exactly 650 games since returning 40 days ago. 316 of those are in the JR7-F.) That is the only mech I am consistently tops in. I am a mediocre assault driver, at best, though I do enjoy me some heavies, and perform only marginally worse in them. For the record, I never use LRMs. Not my cup of tea. Strikes are used liberally - I am premium and always make more than 80k cbills in a game.

A big part of my damage output comes from the fact that I generally stay alive throughout the whole match, or at least the majority of it. I survive 58.5% of the time, because I try very, very hard not to make stupid tactical errors or overextend myself. I'm also not above running away to strike from a different direction, and I endeavor to not involve myself in the circle of death fights with other lights. (I prefer drawing them in by running away, and letting the Big Guys gut 'em.) Having a teammate who is equal in most regards cannot be emphasized enough. I would guess that 85% or better of my matches are played with my best friend. We've been doing this so long, we don't even need to communicate intentions. That makes a tremendous difference. I can perform very well, solo. As well as my stats indicate? Probably not.

[topgun505]

I break 600-700 damage in my Cicada pretty much daily and it just has 2 ERLL. If you throw in arty I have gotten upwards of almost 1200 before ( though that's not frequent). If I can do that with two ERLL you can easily imagine what kind of damage the typical meta mech does (or should).

[Jun Watarase]

Prezimonto, on 27 May 2014 - 04:55 AM, said:

They should allow you to hover over the players name and see each match score, then hover over the score and see the player's build that earned them that score.

In a real twist if there's a standout combination of weapons, they should then consider tweaking those weapons. Even if they're reasonably balanced it's indicative of a stale meta when the bulk of players are using the same tactic and weapon sets. Take a look at League of Legends, they regularly make small changes that push players to try new builds.

Sounds like too much work. PGI needs to work on those $500 gold mechs man. They have bills to pay! Besides, everyone knows that weapon balance is near perfect anyway.

Faith McCarron, on 27 May 2014 - 05:53 AM, said:

Racking up high scores in these challenges is not easy, but it's far from near-impossible as the OP makes it out to be. I'd rank myself as a decent player, but far from top-tier, and my final score was 1,948. I dropped about 75 matches, playing in an Ember, 3L Raven, 2K Shadow Hawk, Dragon Slayer, and 733C. I brought double strikes to every drop. I did not sync-drop with friends. On most drops, I found about 2-3 players from the top 10 leaderboards in the match with me.

My experience dropping in these tournaments is that your first 10-15 matches are probably going to be throwaways until you get a "feel" for how the specific tournament is generally being played by most. Once you do that, getting decent scores is not all that difficult. Some of it is luck, you have to have the proper balance of teams so that you're not getting rolled and not rolling the enemy too quickly. A lot of it is about putting out consistent damage throughout the entire match, and having the proper feel for when to make your push to rack up the kill shots. Push too early and you will get focused down hard. Push too late and you will be watching as your teammates eat up all the kills.

Finally, in response to some of the comments about tourney scores not making someone a good player, while that is technically true that high scores don't NECESSARILY make you a good player, take a look at the top scoring players in this tournament and you will see that the vast majority of them are, indeed, very good players.

I think you are confusing skill with luck and/or the know how to run metabuilds.

I sit you down infront of a chess board and tell you that you can choose any combination of pieces to play with but queens are the most powerful chess piece. So what do you do? Choose all queens. What happens? You win 100% of matches. Does this make you a chess grandmaster? No. Would you get completely destroyed by any half decent chess player if you were forced to play with the standard assortment of pieces? Yes.

[Jun Watarase]

topgun505, on 27 May 2014 - 11:07 AM, said:

I break 600-700 damage in my Cicada pretty much daily and it just has 2 ERLL. If you throw in arty I have gotten upwards of almost 1200 before ( though that's not frequent). If I can do that with two ERLL you can easily imagine what kind of damage the typical meta mech does (or should).

You left out the part where you run a metabuild with ECM and snipe with the ERLL which makes it near impossible for most people to kill you, since at 600+ meters hitting a small, fast mech with anything but gauss or LRMs is pure luck.

I mean, come on this is not hard, under the right conditions anyone can do 1000+ damage with a LRM boat too. Why do people think getting high scores in a metabuild is some kind of achievement? You may as well brag about beating a single player AI on easy modo.

[Primez]

The feeling of getting Jun in most of your matches expecting him to rage. Start calling Jun Senpai to get new and unique responses to enjoy the game more forever ignored.

Anyways I guess if your running meta and know how to take kills statistically the more games the better chances you have. Plus it matters what kind of team your going against, I had a nice game with a locust did 800 dmg and got 5 kills and 4 assists. The enemy team was just unaware or having a really bad bad game.

Edited by Primez, 27 May 2014 - 02:10 PM.

[Solahma]

Primez, on 27 May 2014 - 02:07 PM, said:

The feeling of getting Jun in most of your matches expecting him to rage. Start calling Jun Senpai, forever ignored.

24 MPLas to the CT of his Highlander, opens him right up to get finished off by a PPC or other... blames LRM spam

Edited by Solahma, 27 May 2014 - 02:10 PM.