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.
Sure, but it doesn't motivate the person inside to ever leave. The idea in my thought was to try to give players another way to eliminate a cap zone.
This gives players some things to think about. For example, you're losing 2 cap zones to 1 and there's only a few minutes left. The enemy has 6 mechs left and you have 3. You don't think you have time to get to the other cap zone which you're sure is empty, but you have a few options left. You can push a direct assault against their 6 mechs sitting right at the nearby cap zone and try to brawl through enough to break their cap (you'll never do it, though, because the time to drain the cap counter after killing enough of them is too long). Just outright killing them will be a rather stiff challenge as well. So you could just pack it in and surrender, or, you can attack their defense turrets. Doing that, you can try to draw them out. Start picking off their cap zone defenses, and thereby quickly draining their cap point bar. If they don't push out to try and engage you (giving you a chance to 2 on 1, flank, or at least maybe even up the odds) you may at least be able to eliminate their cap on that zone and get a tie out of the match. They have the incentive to push out at you to try to avoid letting you just pop their turrets and steal their hard earned win.
To make this work, maybe a cap zone is considered in control when you get 50% of the bar. If you can stay above that you are considered to have control and get points. So the goal may not be to take the cap zone away from the enemy so much as prevent them from taking full control of it.
Well the main advantage of 8v8 was that one person could make a huge difference on their own. But in 12v12 the ability for one person to carry their team is greatly diminished. Thats why ELO sortve worked in 8v8 but doesnt work at all in 12v12. ELO would work even better yet in 4v4 though.
12v12 basically snuffs out individual ability in favor of mob mentality and deathballing. So I would support the option of having 4v4, 8v8, and 12v12 matches. In addition to allowing for more skillful and tactical matches, it would have the added benefit of reducing the queue times because youd have less players tied up in 24 player matches.
But also we need some new game modes that dont just resort to both teams playing defensively and poptarting either. Conquest is the only gamemode we have that forces teams to move around, but Conquest has some gaping flaws, like the ridiculously long capture times. Gamemodes which encourage teams to remain stationary only contribute more to poptarts being as prevalent as they currently are. Pinpoint weapons being overpowered doesnt help either of course.
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.
Or maps that were actually designed for such a massive zergfest. Closest thing to strategy I've seen is a light (or a premade lance of them) running through enemy lines dropping narcs on everything. That's it. Everything else is "rush straight to <chokepoint> and take cheap shots at each other until half your team or the enemy team is dead, then go full zerg". But playing objectives is apparently trolling, as is using tactics and being smart like shutting down around a corner so the enemy walks right by you instead of seeing a giant red dot pop up on their screen.
I'd prefer 8v8 again for several reasons, least of all because it actively encourages people to work together. If you lose one in a 12 person match it has far less of an impact than losing 1 in an 8 person match. Assuming exactly equal contribution (that the game doesn't properly record), you lose 12.5% of your team when one person dies on an 8 player team. How about the 12s? Not even 10%.
tl;dr now that we have skirmish, the objectives should actually matter in assault/conquest. Assault should go back to being 8 players, or the MM can randomly do 8 and 12 player teams (heck add yet another option to choose a preferred team size because that won't break the queue or anything right?). Conquest can stay 12, and skirmish can do 8 or 12. Wouldn't hurt to only select maps that were designed for the appropriate number of players either, 24 players on any of the original maps is just silly.
Great post Koniving! I 100% agree with it. If PGI made assault and conquest more about the objective; I'll certainly be more happy with it. The way those games are played now resulted in me taking out the lone wolf portion of defending the base in my guide. I'll put it back in if they increase the significance of the objectives by increaseing reward and speed of capping in conquest. Might even write something new.
Turn assault base cap into the golden snitch of Quidditch.
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tl;dr now that we have skirmish, the objectives should actually matter in assault/conquest. Assault should go back to being 8 players, or the MM can randomly do 8 and 12 player teams (heck add yet another option to choose a preferred team size because that won't break the queue or anything right?). Conquest can stay 12, and skirmish can do 8 or 12. Wouldn't hurt to only select maps that were designed for the appropriate number of players either, 24 players on any of the original maps is just silly.
I disagree with 8 players on assault. Yes, combat could be a bit more tactical. It's true. But only because 50% of the group was ALWAYS a premade. In the days of old gameplay was more tactical because repair and rearm meant no one would play foolishly.
There was also the greater reward in taking the base; it gave players a united goal. "Defend our base and attack their base." That's two objectives.
PGI has planned for 3 objectives aside from defending your own base and killing everyone: Taking the enemy base, the turret power supply (disabling enemy turrets to make taking the base easier), and some other objective (as I remember something about the 'control station' being a balancing issue). There aren't enough players (with 8 players) to defend and attack. The main complaint in the past is that no one would defend.
In fact the complaint about Assault has always been "No one will defend. Ever." "My team's too stupid to defend." "It's capwarrior because no one is defending." "We need some defense here." "Why is no one defending?" "Help me defend!" Even with 12 players on each team, the complaint continued to be "End capwarrior! No one will defend!"
So when we look again at Khobai's complaint. The underlying impression that Khobai has is the possibility that somehow, 24 players will all unanimously and simultaneously decide to defend; something that has NEVER happened in the HISTORY of MWO or ANY game for that matter... And that is about the polar extreme of what would have been an assault player's happiest wet dream back in the day. The problem is Khobai's fear will never occur.
For the very reason that someone already stated, "No one will defend because defense is boring and causes the player to miss out."
What you will have instead are players staying near defensible positions with builds designed for long range sharp shooting and a quick tap on the "call for help" button. These are also ideal roles for commanders, too. Players who defend know with 100% certainty that they will miss out on the cash for fighting if nothing comes to attack the base. That is very true. But those defenders also know that they could get more for the capture that their team does than they would if they went straight out and fought. At the same time, defense is a mentality that is uncommon. This and the fact that the biggest cash payouts are from fighting and then capturing means that the quotient of "defending" players will be relatively low, perhaps even almost non-existent as it always has been.
Defending players don't choose to defend. Like capturing bases on Conquest currently, it is a boring task. They do it out of necessity, but only due to necessity. Instead, these players are likely to have two Gauss Rifles sharp shooting, or be on the front line in a fast mech and then turn around because their help is needed.
In the rare cases when an entire group chooses to defend, they will almost always lose with a 90% certainty. Exceptions of course exist, such as players with things such as ambushes; but an ambush doesn't work if the entire team is defending, it becomes obvious.
The simple fact is no one actively chooses to play defense. Most bases aren't even properly defensible as a specific counter to the notion that players would 'defend' their base instead. This is why there are so many high rises overlooking the bases; "if you camp, we'll get up high and bombard you and you won't be able to hit us."
Even in this battle, we had NO intention of playing defense. But half the team got wiped out and they went for the base, and so for literally 13 minutes we held out as a mixed lance with one other player against an entire swarm of light sharp-shooter mechs...and won.
The best part of it? Listen to us. Do we sound begrudging? Do we sound bored? Not at all, in fact we're having so much fun that we wind up shooting each other for even more laughs while we wait for the lights to make their next move! "Wait, wait, let's test something. Shoot my Hunch in the back. Shoot it."
Compare to my latest gameplay for the past month or two... how bored I sound even when I'm trying so hard to not sound bored. I'm so goddamn bored with the game that even my joke builds and "challenge" builds aren't making the game any fun. Players are too easy to kill, the weapons too predictable, the tactics so stale that they put me to sleep (you can hear the yawning).
(I was thinking about it... and actually on the day we did the 12 player artillery strike on our own base to get rid of enemies... was two days after artillery came out. That was with the "10 damage" per shot and no upgrades, so back when it was worthless. We wanted to see how many it would take to kill. We laid down 11 artillery strikes before anyone died and simultaneously 9 of them did during my strike. ...I need to organize a team to do that again; it'll be a great video.)
Well the main advantage of 8v8 was that one person could make a huge difference on their own. But in 12v12 the ability for one person to carry their team is greatly diminished. Thats why ELO sortve worked in 8v8 but doesnt work at all in 12v12. ELO would work even better yet in 4v4 though. 12v12 basically snuffs out individual ability in favor of mob mentality and deathballing. So I would support the option of having 4v4, 8v8, and 12v12 matches. In addition to allowing for more skillful and tactical matches, it would have the added benefit of reducing the queue times because youd have less players tied up in 24 player matches. But also we need some new game modes that dont just resort to both teams playing defensively and poptarting either. Conquest is the only gamemode we have that forces teams to move around, but Conquest has some gaping flaws, like the ridiculously long capture times. Gamemodes which encourage teams to remain stationary only contribute more to poptarts being as prevalent as they currently are. Pinpoint weapons being overpowered doesnt help either of course.
So when we look again at Khobai's complaint. The underlying impression that Khobai has is the possibility that somehow, 24 players will all unanimously and simultaneously decide to defend; something that has NEVER happened in the HISTORY of MWO or ANY game for that matter...
Obviously youve never played 12man vs 12man base assault. Because it does happen.
Both teams just sit on their side of the map near their base and poptart. Neither team wants to commit fully to attacking because theyre at a disadvantage thanks to the turrets. So usually what happens is they spend the first half of the game sniping back and forth until finally someone dies... and then when the clock gets down to like 2-3 minutes left the team thats down on kills has to attack or they lose anyway. So theyll attack into a defensive line, protected by turrets, while down at least 1 mech... and will generally always lose.
It truly is the most boring game you can experience in MWO. So I stand by what I said: a decent game mode needs to force at least one of the teams into taking action. And currently base assault fails miserably to do that.
Quote
The simple fact is no one actively chooses to play defense.
Except that they do. Because the defender has the advantage in base assault thanks to turrets. The smartest way to play base assault is to stay at your base and defend. The only reason people dont do it in PUG games is because its boring. But in competitive games you see it a lot.
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In the rare cases when an entire group chooses to defend, they will almost always lose with a 90% certainty.
Not really. Since the defending team has the advantage of turrets as well as being able to defend at chokepoints where the attacking team cant form a proper firing line to focus fire. If you think the defender is at a disadvantage in base assault you clearly need to reevaluate your thinking.
The point is having static defenses and nothing that forces either team to take action results in very stagnant matches and only further reinforces poptarting as the best way to play the game. Gamemodes that force teams out of turtling and hiding behind cover and funnels them into a massive brawl in the center would be vastly superior to the current gamemodes.
I should add there is a certain group of players that need acknowledgement in matters like this. I see them more often in chat, I do not think they come here much if at all. These are the ones who play what I call 'speed matches.' They play until they die, then they want allies to die quick so their Mech can jump right into the next fight. I see them more often since the Private Matches became available, it is annoying seeing one or few allies left trying to fight/survive/be stealthy when allies are on chat saying things like, "Hurry up and die, I need my Mech." Almost once saw dead allies give away a live and fighting team member who was playing smart against a larger enemy force.
Dracol, on 31 May 2014 - 09:57 AM, said:
Assault strategic options currently:
1. Kill enemy
2. By pass/destroy defenses to cap base (strategically speaking a High risk / low reward proposition)
The tactics now involve either a heavier force to attack base which leads to a fight
or
Utilizing the base defenses when your team is down mechs
Imho, compared to the prior version of assault, I prefer the tactical choices now available. Although I do miss having a non-combat based strategy being available.
I have to disagree on Assault, it depends on the map. In the current series of review threads for maps I am doing, here are examples done so far. Forest Colony - both, I think Assault here is now at a decent level based on Turret Health and number of them by type. Alpine Peaks, used to be I saw fighting on the H9/10 hill a lot just like Skirmish, now for the past month Sigma team camps forcing Gamma to come to them and usually Sigma wins, maybe a tie. River City - both, just a sniping war, possibly players go north for some action. Odd that such a small map has so many Turrets.
I am hoping these reviews at least bring possible changes, I am not saying I know what is best on everything but I am not seeing the options you list for Assault. I also started doing these hoping community members would comment and PGI would listen to us.
Dracol, on 31 May 2014 - 09:57 AM, said:
As for conquest, I would stand behind a decrease in cap time to make the objectives a little more tempting.
Conquest does need adjustment, since forever, you only get one reward for capping no matter if you cap 1 base or all 5 in the course of a match. At least one reward per base so you cannot get the same one twice for capping the same base. Role based reward here.
Obviously youve never played 12man vs 12man base assault. Because it does happen.
That's just two of 30+ examples on assault with 12 man teams.
Only twice has a team played pure defense. But not both teams. In both cases it was our team that chose defense.
What you've experienced is not what everyone has experienced, and the only reason you have experienced it is because of the lack of what this thread seeks: A REASON TO ATTACK! There is no reason to attack currently. This is because there is no gain to attacking the enemy base.
This thread seeks to have that reason through the old reward for capturing the base which was equal to or greater than what you'd get for single handedly taking out 8 players and netting 1,000+ damage, plus that gain for capturing the base is for the entire team. That's strong motivation to attack.
That's just two of 30+ examples on assault with 12 man teams.
Only twice has a team played pure defense. But not both teams. In both cases it was our team that chose defense.
What you've experienced is not what everyone has experienced, and the only reason you have experienced it is because of the lack of what this thread seeks: A REASON TO ATTACK! There is no reason to attack currently. This is because there is no gain to attacking the enemy base.
This thread seeks to have that reason through the old reward for capturing the base which was equal to or greater than what you'd get for single handedly taking out 8 players and netting 1,000+ damage, plus that gain for capturing the base is for the entire team. That's strong motivation to attack.
And then we'd see huge light swarms running to cap you out again. So much fun.
And then we'd see huge light swarms running to cap you out again. So much fun.
This. Theres not a whole lot you can do to make base assault fun. Its an inherently flawed gamemode. The whole gamemode needs to be scrapped and replaced with attack/defend.
Conquest does need adjustment, since forever, you only get one reward for capping no matter if you cap 1 base or all 5 in the course of a match. At least one reward per base so you cannot get the same one twice for capping the same base. Role based reward here.
I only disagree here. Capturing a base in conquest is essentially required and takes upwards of 45 seconds to do. It is boring and whoever does it is stuck without any action or viable income.
Instead, increasing the threshold or maximum resource points on conquest on larger maps can make up for the shorter capture time (20 seconds max for one person versus 45 seconds for one person).
To make it so that a train isn't terribly effective, have the impact that each additional player has be decreasingly as effective. So if 1 player can do it in 20 seconds, then 2 might do it in 16, 3 might do it in 14, 4 might do it in 13. Just an idea here, but obviously the idea is having 12 players on the same cap point won't do much. Have a capture accelerator reflect this change so that with it one player can do it in 16 seconds, but two players stacked with it would be equal to 4 players at the reduced rate.
Right now on Conquest, players simply camp at the largest cluster of conquest nodes on maps that allow it, bringing as many assault mechs as they can possibly carry. It has no inspiration for lights or mediums as it's just skirmish with drills. It was supposed to be a game mode to favor lights and mediums but in reality it does no such thing.
The old Conquest on Alpine was a good deal of fun, provided you had a medium or light. The issue was assaults and heavies didn't get a choice in their game mode at the time. Now they have that choice.
Diverse and spread out conquest points to capture meant lances splitting up to take them. Usually the "train" lost. With capture points more appropriately designed to counter trains by being 1) spread out and 2) having significantly reducing benefits with more and more players capturing the same point, this will improve the odds of players splitting up in smaller groups. The fact that the fight will keep moving because of how much quicker it is to take bases means that if you want to kill those mechs you have to intercept them with a 'guess' of where they are going next.
With just a couple of small changes alone, we've made the conquest game mode considerably more enjoyable.
From this.
(where the simple fact is: if you play the objective you will always lose)
To this.
(where playing to the objective better than the other side will always yield a win)
And then we'd see huge light swarms running to cap you out again. So much fun.
In all seriousness, this was loads of fun.
C'mon. Check out the fun we had!
Besides take a few meta rigs and instant-kill them. You're not THAT bad at playing, are you?
If the meta rigs don't work, then try a rig like this; you can create it with ANY Victor or Highlander with incredible ease.
And if you think that weakens you against heavies and assaults and missile boats and the like?
Welp here you go.
(Once you hit play and see the first score, skip to 6:40 (where while commanding, giving out orders to 8 players in trial mechs and 3 non-trials, leading the charge against the enemy and systematically killing every enemy one by one with NO SHUTDOWNS, NO STOPPING, and just racking in the damage and kills).
It pays to go non-meta once in a while and actually design something to kill meta.
Deathlike, on 31 May 2014 - 05:18 PM, said:
It would've been nice had turret placements didn't make maps feel like TurretWarrior Online.
This actually prevents the problem that he mentioned; lights are too easily killed by turrets.
Koniving... I didn't really like Alpine in its original incarnation of Conquest. Capping did mean something, but not having enough lights (as it's worse now) made it a pain in the arse.
I REALLY don't like the current version of Alpine with its boring version of Conquest. It's just a different version of the blob around theta. I even tell people on that map "control theta and everything around it" because it's literally the best action you can take more often than not.
This actually prevents the problem that he mentioned; lights are too easily killed by turrets.
Ironically, they are not. The thing is that you need a "set of (meta) lights" to do a bit of turret killing... although mostly applicable to Crimson Strait, but a bunch of aggressive lights can take down a network with some heavy/assault backing when played correctly.
An ECM light (for anti-missile turret rain) with something like a pair of Jenners/Firestarters would be more than enough to destroy the turret grind (the more, the merrier).
A variation can be done on that (replace ECM light with D-DC) and you can clean turret house like maps like Terra Therma as a "back door" attack to their base, splitting people from staying in the dome or "trying" to get into it.
It's just that people don't attempt capping that makes such ideas/options not viable in PUG play.
Koniving... I didn't really like Alpine in its original incarnation of Conquest. Capping did mean something, but not having enough lights (as it's worse now) made it a pain in the arse.
I REALLY don't like the current version of Alpine with its boring version of Conquest. It's just a different version of the blob around theta. I even tell people on that map "control theta and everything around it" because it's literally the best action you can take more often than not.
I agree. Old conquest is better than current, but old Alpine had some issues for some mechs. None of them followed the 'flat' paths that assaults could really use with ease. I'd imagine if they do redo the mode they'd re-arrange the points to something new again. Nothing wrong with that.
Deathlike, on 31 May 2014 - 05:44 PM, said:
Ironically, they are not. The thing is that you need a "set of (meta) lights" to do a bit of turret killing... although mostly applicable to Crimson Strait, but a bunch of aggressive lights can take down a network with some heavy/assault backing when played correctly.
The turrets won't do it all alone, the turrets need support. It's kinda common sense. Turrets will reduce it from happening if you're also protecting the base with some units. I didn't mean the turrets would do it alone. I meant the assistance of turrets will prevent the base (and yourself) from being stormed.
The turrets won't do it all alone, the turrets need support. It's kinda common sense. Turrets will reduce it from happening if you're also protecting the base with some units. I didn't mean the turrets would do it alone. I meant the assistance of turrets will prevent the base (and yourself) from being stormed.
It's not necessarily the turrets themselves, but it's the psyche of many pilots that fall into one of two categories.
1) They're too scared of the turrets to just eliminate them outright. They are "well armored", but if you have problems facing 1 LRM10 or 2 med lasers, there's something wrong with you. Lights can naturally fear them, but newbies tend to be rather timid while facing them.
2) They have no interest of facing them. If anything, they would rather avoid facing them until they have to. While this is OK, sometimes you MAY be better off getting rid of some of them to make a push... see River City.
I get frustrated with people that don't understand that focus fire is still the best way to get rid of them. The fact that they are immobile gives them little excuse (easy to hit an immobile target as it is). I mean... seriously. /sigh
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."
But what will happen is the defender gets mauled defending an objective and the attacker just hunts down the last light mech who cannot destroy any more objectives. Or the same happens to the attacker.
Attack/Defend will be a boring mode as well. Most likely the Defender will surrender the majority of the map to the Attacker and base camp. Then it will be an arty/air strike battle. The game will end when the Defenders are dead, but before the base is capped. Or the last Defender light runs off and the Attackers cap the base rather than give chase. If they put the bases in the most god awful spots to discourage base camping, then the base becomes an 'out of the battle' location, like the bases were in old Assault- away from the fighting and an inconvenience for Assault Mechs to return and defend.
4
Koniving, on 31 May 2014 - 12:43 PM, said:
