72 replies to this topic

[Koniving]

I wouldn't totally take the rewards from players losing. That'll cause some really upset people. We're trying to enrich the experience for those of us who want a better tactical experience, as well as give motivational reasons for indulging in those tactics other players to join us; if it pays well, the players will do it.

We don't want to alienate other players entirely and create a bitter experience for losing; we're trying the do the complete opposite by encouraging them to join us. A player should never be robbed of the rewards they earned just for losing. The player earned those rewards and the player should be entitled to them.

Good gameplay, sportsmanship. We had this in closed beta and in early open beta. It was only after the rewards were removed that people truly got upset about capturing (to the point of racial slurs and other insults) where the fun of playing to the objective was completely robbed from us, and thusly the fun of playing at all was also taken away.

Having your base captured from under your nose didn't happen often, nor should it. Especially with the turrets we have now; players will have a warning that says "someone is trying to take our base!" The turrets can keep even the most skilled player busy for about 1 to 2 minutes. A little less if 2 or more players are involved in disabling the turrets. This is where turrets could even stand a little health buff back to the 150.

I think PGI could benefit from something like watching this.

Back in closed beta the meta game actually changed every single day. I'm not kidding it really did. There's even videos where members of my group would say "The greatest thing about Mechwarrior is you never know what's gonna happen; one day everyone has missiles, the next it's AC/20s, the next it's sniping, before you know it there's hill humpers, laser boats, water bugs. Remember yesterday? 8 Jenners hiding under the water popping out to blast our legs off and then going for the base. Good thing you were there buy us time to limp our way back!"

Edited by Koniving, 31 May 2014 - 12:34 PM.

[Khobai]

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That's what the turrets are supposed to reduce. You only truly have that if one team 'trains'. It is incredibly easy to counter that. We call it artillery strikes..

Artillery strikes are also extremely overpowered and are rightfully being nerfed. Relying on overpowered mechanics like artillery strikes to balance a gamemode is simply not how you properly design a game.

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Ever tried an ambush? Ambushes are also great fun and yield great results because the enemy is so desperately trying to run down the cap meter, they can't move and it's incredibly easy to slaughter them.

Yeah its called base camping. And its one of the reasons base assault fails in competitive play. Because both teams just stay near their bases and poptart. There are no central/scattered objectives that force both teams to take action.

A good gamemode FORCES teams to take action. It doesnt allow both teams to indefinately camp their base or win by getting the first kill and simply letting time run down. Conquest is really the only gamemode we have now that forces teams to take action or lose. Unfortunately it takes WAY too long to capture points in Conquest and thats the major failing of that gamemode.

Skirmish doesnt really force action either, which is why you get a lot of poptarts that just play defensively. Skirmish would be a lot more fun I think if it had a king-of-the-hill style objective in the center that both teams had to fight other. That would force both teams to be way more aggressive.

Edited by Khobai, 31 May 2014 - 12:34 PM.

[Imperius]

Koniving, on 31 May 2014 - 12:13 PM, said:

That's what the turrets are supposed to reduce. You only truly have that if one team 'trains'. It is incredibly easy to counter that. We call it artillery strikes.

Last time a team tried to 'train' a capture, I had 9 kills with an artillery strike after our entire team systematically dropped them one after another. You can teach people lessons to prevent bad behavior.

Ever tried an ambush? Ambushes are also great fun and yield great results because the enemy is so desperately trying to run down the cap meter, they can't move and it's incredibly easy to slaughter them.

So much depth right there, and all that's being done in those few sentences is teaching players with bad habits a valuable lesson about their bad tactics. Just that alone would make the game so much richer in gameplay experience.

The game shouldn't end until the base is capped...Which means wipe out the team and their turrets and take the base.

Edited by Imperius, 31 May 2014 - 12:27 PM.

[monk]

Quick and dirty solution for handing players standing in cap zones to prevent the enemy from capping (this being a problem is bizarre to me, but here is something that might help alleviate concerns.)

- Capping occurs when one team has a majority in the cap zone and goes down if they lose the majority. The larger the majority, the faster the cap growth or decline. At 25% capped one base defense pops up. At 50% another, 75%, a third, and at 100% the fourth. These base defenses will help support the team currently winning the cap zone and will force the enemy to consider retreating and regrouping or face the extra firepower of the AI base defenses. However, if the enemy kills a base defense, the base cap instantly loses 25% of the cap bar (imagine it has 100 points, so losing a defense turret drops it 25 points). Thus, if they destroy all the base defenses, the cap will have to begin again. So enemies can destroy the defenses to break a cap. This would allow harassing forces that may not have the firepower for a direct confrontation to try to draw out enemies that want to just sit on a cap zone. With inferior numbers you could effectively break a cap and give your team the chance to then storm the position and secure it for yourselves or just keep breaking the cap over and over. Only award points towards victory and awards for full caps and or adjust the rewards to that the full cap is the most valuable goal. A single tick on a cap zone no longer is the goal, but rather establishing a fully defended cap point.

[Vassago Rain]

Imperius, on 31 May 2014 - 12:26 PM, said:

The game shouldn't end until the base is capped...Which means wipe out the team and their turrets and take the base.

I can't wait for 45 minute rounds where both teams sit in their tiny bases on our tiny maps, with a tiny 24 robot totals.

[WarHippy]

Vassago Rain, on 31 May 2014 - 12:23 PM, said:

Ninjacap was a bad mechanic, and assault is largely a placeholder game mode.

Ninjacap was only a bad mechanic for those to lazy to prepare for it.

Koniving, on 31 May 2014 - 12:25 PM, said:

I wouldn't totally take the rewards from players losing. That'll cause some really upset people. We're trying to make those of us who want a better tactical experience with reasons for indulging in those tactics motivating other players to join us. We don't want to alienate other players entirely and create a bitter experience for losing; we're trying the do the complete opposite by encouraging them to join us.

No more alienated than those that don't want 3 versions of skirmish are being alienated. As for punishing the losing team I can't think of a way to give incentive to both defense and offense without it. If you only increase the incentive for capping you are going to end up with two teams passing in the night trying to get to the others base first. Not exactly an improvement.

Koniving, on 31 May 2014 - 12:25 PM, said:

Good gameplay, sportsmanship. We had this in closed beta and in early open beta. It was only after the rewards were removed that people truly got upset (to the point of racial slurs and other insults) where the fun of playing to the objective was completely robbed from us, and thusly the fun of playing at all was also taken away.

Good gameplay and sportsmanship is not something I would entrust to the players at large. Just having the increased rewards was fine with a smaller more tight nit group of players, but I wouldn't hold my breath with the masses.

Koniving, on 31 May 2014 - 12:25 PM, said:

Having your base captured from under your nose didn't happen often, nor should it. Especially with the turrets we have now; players will have a warning that says "someone is trying to take our base!" The turrets can keep even the most skilled player busy for about 1 to 2 minutes. A little less if 2 or more players are involved in disabling the turrets. This is where turrets could even stand a little health buff back to the 150.

I think PGI could benefit from something like watching this.

I just want capping to be a viable option again without it being a race to see who gets to which base first.

[VanillaG]

If you want to bring in more tactical gameplay, you need to implement a stock-only mode. With the amount of customization that we have, everyone customizes their mechs to run as fast as possible while putting out as much damage as possible. Until you limit the amount of customization available in a game mode, all you ever are going to get is kill the other team.

I am not against customization, just allow limiting the existing game modes to stock loadouts only. You can still have the exact same game modes with full customization for those that want a Solaris type of experience.

Edited by VanillaG, 31 May 2014 - 12:40 PM.

[Khobai]

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Ninjacap was only a bad mechanic for those to lazy to prepare for it.

Which was pretty much every team in PUG matches.

And in competitive matches both teams just stayed near their base and neither team commited to take action.

So yeah base assault has a long history of being a fail gamemode.

An Attacker/Defender would be much better because it FORCES the attacker to take action. Because if time runs out the defenders win by default. So the attackers are on the clock to complete the objective of either destroying the enemy HQ or destroying all the defenders.

Edited by Khobai, 31 May 2014 - 12:43 PM.

[Koniving]

Khobai, on 31 May 2014 - 12:26 PM, said:

Yeah its called base camping. And its one of the reasons base assault fails in competitive play. Because both teams just stay near their bases and poptart. There are no central/scattered objectives that force both teams to take action.

Turrets as originally advertised are supposed to have "power stations" located outside of the base, as well as "control stations" which would then allow players to take control of enemy turrets. These were described in a command chair post.

That's 3 objectives, in 3 locations, with no possibility to defend them all. This keeps the players moving. Even if they camp all 3 objectives, it's only 4 enemies per location which makes them incredibly easy to defeat. An intelligent player group might amass the assaults in a middle ground and then have scouts watch the approaches to each location as an early warning system so that the assaults and heavies can proceed to where they are needed most.

Some maps like HPG are obviously predesigned with the ability to close and open gates (there are gates and their models are meant to move; the function however has yet to be implemented).

Yes, some base camp. It's really detrimental to their ability to win however. See the last video in the first post to see what happens when you camp it out; those poor Steiners! (What do you think a one sided assault mode will give you? Base campers on every mission!) It's a viable strategy, but one of low reward if capturing the enemy base yields a greater reward than total annihilation. Its occurrence is rare and non-profitable. Using the base's turrets lowers their potential damage rewards so they would get less than duking it out in the middle of the map.

Some go all out to attack and have no defense at their base, too. This is also another tactical fallacy with negative consequences if caught early enough and countered.

We call these things tactics, and every tactic has positive and negative effects. Tactics add depth to the game, even bad tactics.

monk, on 31 May 2014 - 12:31 PM, said:

Quick and dirty solution for handing players standing in cap zones to prevent the enemy from capping (this being a problem is bizarre to me, but here is something that might help alleviate concerns.)

The game already has this, actually. If there's 1 enemy in the enemy base zone, but 2 allies in the zone, the base is being captured by the allies.

Vassago Rain, on 31 May 2014 - 12:32 PM, said:

I can't wait for 45 minute rounds where both teams sit in their tiny bases on our tiny maps, with a tiny 24 robot totals.

This is pretty unlikely to happen even with the base capture requirement; you can't win if you're camping in your base. The worst result of it would be that you'd have capture races again. But you won't have 15 to 45 minute camping sessions.

We already have 15 minute camping sessions, we call them "Choke Points" on maps.

Edited by Koniving, 31 May 2014 - 12:49 PM.

[WarHippy]

VanillaG, on 31 May 2014 - 12:39 PM, said:

If you want to bring in more tactical gameplay, you need to implement a stock-only mode. With the amount of customization that we have, everyone customizes their mechs to run as fast as possible while putting out as much damage as possible. Until you limit the amount of customization available in a game mode, all you ever are going to get is kill the other team.

I am not against customization, just allow limiting the existing game modes to stock loadouts only. You can still have the exact same game modes with full customization for those that want a Solaris type of experience.

As fun as stock mech matches are it isn't the answer to everything. A lot of people enjoy customizing their mechs and it is a big part of what makes Mechwarrior enjoyable to them. Limiting them to just arena style combat would be reason enough to quit for many, and frankly is a rather stupid idea.(no insult intended)

[Khobai]

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Turrets are originally advertised are supposed to have "power stations" located outside of the base, as well as "control stations" which would then allow players to take control of enemy turrets. These were described in a command chair post.

Again this still doesnt force either team to take action. Both teams will just camp because theres no incentive to attack the other team. The smart thing to do would just be to play a bunch of poptarts, play defensively, and then crush the enemy when they come to attack you. You claim you cant defend all three locations at once, but I dont believe thats true at all, given the speed of fast heavies and the range of weapons like PPCs/ERLLs/AC5s. The maps quite frankly arnt that big, and even Alpine gives you a crazy amount of forewarning about anything the enemy is doing, if you just climb up a mountain and use your eyes.

Youre missing the point. A good gamemode forces teams to take action. Because if they dont take action they lose outright. This is why attacker/defender, king-of-the-hill, take-and-hold, etc... are always used in other games. Because teams cant ignore the objective or they lose.

Edited by Khobai, 31 May 2014 - 12:52 PM.

[Imperius]

Vassago Rain, on 31 May 2014 - 12:32 PM, said:

I can't wait for 45 minute rounds where both teams sit in their tiny bases on our tiny maps, with a tiny 24 robot totals.

Yes because 2 min pug stomps is sooo much better right? All blob to the other blob and pray your potatoes are better than thier potatoes...

[VanillaG]

WarHippy, on 31 May 2014 - 12:44 PM, said:

As fun as stock mech matches are it isn't the answer to everything. A lot of people enjoy customizing their mechs and it is a big part of what makes Mechwarrior enjoyable to them. Limiting them to just arena style combat would be reason enough to quit for many, and frankly is a rather stupid idea.(no insult intended)

I was not implying that you could not have customization, just that stock mode lends itself to more tactical style game play. If you added a flag for Custom vs Stock only mode for all game types, my belief is that the stock mode would be more tactical because of having to work around the limitations of the chassis you pilot. With the Custom mode, you can minimize the limitations of the chassis which leads to less tactical game play.

[Imperius]

Khobai, on 31 May 2014 - 12:49 PM, said:

Again this still doesnt force either team to take action. Both teams will just camp because theres no incentive to attack the other team. The smart thing to do would just be to play a bunch of poptarts, play defensively, and then crush the enemy when they come to attack you.

Youre missing the point. A good gamemode forces teams to take action. Because if they dont take action they lose outright.

They should have a dropship mode like how battlefield bad company did Rush.

"Rush
The Rush game mode consists of an assault force attempting to destroy pairs of objectives. By destroying the two initial objective crates, a secondary set of objectives will open and the assault continues. Repeating this process will open up the third and then final pair of objectives. The assaulting team wins by destroying all objectives, while the defensive gains a victory by stopping the assault."

Edited by Imperius, 31 May 2014 - 12:59 PM.

[Koniving]

Khobai, on 31 May 2014 - 12:49 PM, said:

Youre missing the point. A good gamemode forces teams to take action. Because if they dont take action they lose outright.

That is my point.
The players are taking action no matter what they are doing. If they turtle up, they are taking action. It's action that will cost them a lot of earning potential but IT IS ACTION none the less.
If they all go out to attack, that is action.
If they go to the middle to scope things out, it is action.
If they spread out and take multiple routes, that is action.
No matter what they do, they are taking viable actions to progress the game.

If two teams play defense, one will eventually go on to attack.

In every case, the attacking team will always have a greater likelihood of income. Meta game, meta rigs, etc., are all built around the concept of making the most money in the least amount of time. There's too much time in camping and defending. The meta would be to attack. Especially since the reward for killing some and capturing is greater than killing all without capturing.

A one sided attack/defense mode will always have one team camping, which makes it stagnant in comparison (and for some reason you're against the stagnant side of a team defending).

Edited by Koniving, 31 May 2014 - 12:57 PM.

[Khobai]

Exactly, a gamemode similar to rush would work since the attackers have a limited number of lives, it effectively puts them on the clock to complete the objective.

Likewise attacker/defender does the same thing, since the defender would win by default if time runs out.

Quote

The players are taking action no matter what they are doing. If they turtle up, they are taking action. It's action that will cost them a lot of earning potential but IT IS ACTION none the less.

turtling up is not action. its inaction. and it may cost them earning potential, but if its more conducive to winning, than its what players will do. a good gamemode doesnt just cost turtlers earning potential, it also prevents them from winning. A bunch of poptarts turtling is NOT fun for anybody and really has no place in the game. No gamemode should allow both teams to turtle.

Edited by Khobai, 31 May 2014 - 01:04 PM.

[Finster]

Great post! However, one thing I think everyone is missing is that a lot of the "tactical" feel is lost when they went to 8v8 and then 12v12. You want a tactical game? You go back to 4v4. It took forever to die because at worst you could only get focus fired by 4 other mechs. Everything was less of a zerg, and you could actually coordinate usefully over chat with only 3 other people.

Honestly, they should've dialed 12v12 back until they had more of "role warfare" they were touting back in the day. Just another series of terrible design decisions.

[Koniving]

Khobai, on 31 May 2014 - 12:56 PM, said:

turtling up is not action. its inaction. and it may cost them earning potential, but if its more conducive to winning, than its what players will do. a good gamemode doesnt just cost turtlers earning potential, it also prevents them from winning.

What do you think a one sided attack mode is?

The team with the most players still alive is the team that wins. Though ideally, the team who has done the most damage or 'capture' to the base would automatically win.

Btw. With the old assault mode, the problem that most people complained about is that NO ONE would stay at bases to defend them. Even if it meant an easier win, NO ONE would stay at the base. You're complaining as if someone defending the base would be a bad thing. We'll be lucky to have anyone stay at the base at all.

I'm sorry but your reasoning for opposing it in favor of a mode that would cause the very thing you're opposing is...counter-intuitive? It genuinely is. Besides, we are getting both modes, just don't play the mode you don't like.

Edited by Koniving, 31 May 2014 - 01:07 PM.

[Khobai]

Quote

What do you think a one sided attack mode is?

A one sided attack mode forces one team to take action though. it doesnt let both teams turtle up.

[Imperius]

Finster, on 31 May 2014 - 12:56 PM, said:

Great post! However, one thing I think everyone is missing is that a lot of the "tactical" feel is lost when they went to 8v8 and then 12v12. You want a tactical game? You go back to 4v4. It took forever to die because at worst you could only get focus fired by 4 other mechs. Everything was less of a zerg, and you could actually coordinate usefully over chat with only 3 other people.

Honestly, they should've dialed 12v12 back until they had more of "role warfare" they were touting back in the day. Just another series of terrible design decisions.

I want 8v8 back but that wont happen