72 replies to this topic

[Wildstreak]

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.

Some Turrets are placed wrong in my view. River City maps having the most of any is overdone including 2 LRM ones is my personal worst case.

Koniving, on 31 May 2014 - 05:36 PM, said:

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.

Alpine now, I think Gamma needs moving as I said in the Alpine thread I linked to. Hardly anyone touches it after start and someone caps it, it is still too far away from the others.

I will note Crimson bases in Assault have weaknesses that make capping possible. I nearly took the F1 base in nothing but a Locust with no one else and took out both LRM Turrets doing so. Have yet to try the theory about capping the B5 base.

[Deathlike]

Merchant, on 31 May 2014 - 06:46 PM, said:

Some Turrets are placed wrong in my view. River City maps having the most of any is overdone including 2 LRM ones is my personal worst case.

Pretty much.

Quote

Alpine now, I think Gamma needs moving as I said in the Alpine thread I linked to. Hardly anyone touches it after start and someone caps it, it is still too far away from the others.

Do we really have to complete the new limited area usage "open brawl" map?

So much of that map goes unused...

Quote

I will note Crimson bases in Assault have weaknesses that make capping possible. I nearly took the F1 base in nothing but a Locust with no one else and took out both LRM Turrets doing so. Have yet to try the theory about capping the B5 base.

F1 base is harder to get through (I guess if you move in between some of the turrets, you can avoid them)... the B5 base is waaaaaaaaaaaaay easier to get through.through the water. You can pretty much cap w/o question if you just take the upper water route to the base. At worst, one LRM turret "might" spot you.

[LordKnightFandragon]

How about mission based battles lol?

Like one side has to defend the HPG on HPG Manifold and the other side has to destroy it. Ofc I would then add turrets to slog through and a gate and maybe a mine field lol.

Make the map much bigger, so the attackers start further from it.

Its normal 12-12 match up but the attackers get On board artillery cannons that can be destroyed, should a heroic little light swing around their back lines and blow it up. Attackers can use these to help wreck the base. Each arty gun would get like 8 shots each, give em maybe 4 mobile guns, something like the USA Paladin...only the company commander can command the things. He would be given a spotter gun on his mech, firing it where he wants the guns to shoot.



Or one side is escorting a river boat convoy through that forest colony map.

Or that base on the big open winter map has sought after resources and both sides are going after it to try and capture it.

Or one side gets a 13th AI controlled mech, its a war hero, or criminal and one side wants him dead. Its the other side's job to protect him. As soon as he dies, the mission pretty much ends. Ofc this one would be very easy to win...so maybe a lance of medium mechs to defend..idk.

Instead of.....point A, B, C, D, E.....Fetch, go get it boy!

Posts out in the middle of nowhere...no rhyme, no reason....

The current TDM and modes are just boring...its just WoT with mechs...pointless shewsting of each other until one side says 12 and the other doesnt...

Edited by LordKnightFandragon, 01 June 2014 - 03:05 AM.

[Scurry]

I think an Assault mode such as this would be better once they get 4x3 or whatever they're calling it working properly.

Improved chance of having fast Mechs, no 12-Lightballs,

Camping might be avoided using the turret-capture point/turret power supply mechanic mentioned earlier.

Heck, you could even work this into the module system/Command Console.

E.g. Turret-disabler mod (fire an EW missile that disables a turret for 30 seconds), turret-confuser mod (turret fires at all targets, friendly and hostile), command console allowing one to hack turrets faster at the capture point, module that allows you to temporarily overclock the turrets, or even allowing the one equipping the command console to take direct control of turret targeting, etc.

Make assault into something like Conquest, but only one point grants victory - all other points grant various forms of advantages instead?

[Turist0AT]

Kon is MVP of this community.

Listed to him PGI and maybe you get all those players back. Instead of sqeezing the few you have left with constant sales.

Edited by Turist0AT, 01 June 2014 - 07:17 AM.

[Rasc4l]

Koniving, on 31 May 2014 - 09:01 AM, said:

We apparently have Skirmish, Skirmish with turrets, and Skirmish with drills.

I say again: By removing the reward for playing to the unique objective you have effectively alienated and removed all motivation to do what made the game good!

You make a very good argument for this. And thank you, I hadn't actually realized this is what it has become but it's very true that assault and conquest modes are too skirmishlike. Well, I guess had realized this on a subconscious level, because recently I've been mostly playing skirmish, because the others just don't seem so... fun and at least skirmish is straightforward and gives what it promises. And the lack of fun is pretty much for the reasons you explained.

Koniving, on 31 May 2014 - 09:01 AM, said:

This is because assault's objective does not pay and in fact is detrimental to the team entirely. This is also because Conquest's objective is so time consuming that it's boring and it yields an "experience" reward so meager that you could get the same reward by suiciding at the edge of the map. What is the point of playing?

True. I find it a lose-lose situation that conquest objectives take too much time to capture but still in organized 12-men drops the first objective is to kill the enemy skirmish style and then take care of caps. So PUGging is boring and 12-men assault is skirmish with an end twist.

You are right, that the whole rewarding system should be adjusted to make capping worthwhile in both assault and conquest. In addition, I was wondering if the latter 12-men effect in conquest could be partially fixed by this:

Each Conquest cap point (the giant coffee machines or whatever they are nowadays) has also one laser turret and one LRM turret. Turrets are inactive when the cap point is neutral. After the initial capping of the point has been completed, another capping time of 2x initial capping time ensues, which first enables the laser turret and after that the LRM turret. This way, cap points could be fortified (by using 2x or 3x more time at the point) and their retaking later would be more difficult. It would boost the role of lights in the beginning of the game, which should quickly try to claim as many points and active turrets as possible. Capping module would finally be useful.

Koniving, on 31 May 2014 - 09:01 AM, said:

deathmatch. Well Skirmish is deathmatch. We have 3 versions of deathmatch and no substance. We have huge maps, we use less than 10% of them because the choke point is always the best place for camping.

Here's the only thing I disagree with. I think we have quite small maps but it's true that there's too few choke points and ppl concentrate there.

[Gyrok]

Dracol, on 31 May 2014 - 09:57 AM, said:

Will be honest, stopped reading at the bolded text about removing the reward for objectives.

Assault strategic options initially:
1. Kill enemy
2. Rush base
The tactics used to achieve those goals included the often denounced fast mech/fast cap

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.

As for conquest, I would stand behind a decrease in cap time to make the objectives a little more tempting.

Edit: In regards to rewards, I am of the opinion assault nor conquest require any adjustment.

This.

[Koniving]

Rasc4l, on 01 June 2014 - 07:34 AM, said:

Here's the only thing I disagree with. I think we have quite small maps but it's true that there's too few choke points and ppl concentrate there.

(Yes we have Forest Colony and River City; those are the small maps. Frozen City and Caustic Valley are the medium to medium-large-ish maps. [To circle around the entire Caustic Valley map takes 4 minutes in a Locust at 169 kph; it's bigger than people think.]

Then we have Terra Therma, HPG, Crimson Strait, Tourmaline Desert and Alpine. Alpine alone at 169 kph takes over 17 minutes to do a circle around; though part of this is due to terrain complications. HPG takes 23 minutes, but this is due to the ends of the map not actually being connected. Terra Therma takes 16 minutes, but I took a shortcut here. Btw Terra Therma is the only map with a dead commando corpse in it. Tourmaline takes 15 minutes; lots of smooth terrain helped. Crimson Strait has almost perfect terrain in most cases and takes roughly 16 minutes to circle and it's kinda pacman shaped.)

Here's the reason I say we have huge maps. They are huge. Considering the "1:1" scale that the engine is pushing, the maps are bigger than what the CryEngine 3 normally pushes [which is why the detail is quite reduced]. Even in comparison to MW:LL, it's pretty huge (yes I know the MW:LL maps are incredibly large and supporting insurmountable amounts of players; but have you noticed the size difference in trees?) Here's why, an Atlas in MWO could fit the MW:LL's Atlas's head in its hand.

Their Atlas is barely taller than our Centurion.

Spoiler

That's one of a few reasons their landscapes are much more vivid, too. PGI made things way too big to have an imposing Atlas at 17 meters. (Our Centurion is just under 14 meters). As such most of MWLL's mechs are much smaller.

Spoiler

If only if PGI was somewhat more competent with design decisions; did you know that Forest Colony's textures at one point in closed beta put these textures to shame? Then they dumbed it all down.


Dem graphics!

Anyway, the maps are a lot larger than people think; but we don't use them. We simply can't; the game forces these uber tiny spaces because there's nothing to do; there's no where to go. The only thing there is to do is kill each other and because of the pinpoint problem we have (which didn't exist in closed beta), no one has any courage to go anywhere else due to the lack of cover or hills to hump. It's quite saddening really.

[Jonathan Paine]

We've had some fun running attack/defend scenarios in private matches recently. One team starts up by 1-2 players and roughly +50 tons attacking, while the other team has to hold their base. Having to continue an assault when you've lost that advantage, and they still have some functional turrets - great stuff!

[p4r4g0n]

What if the only objectives within the 15 minute time frame were :-

Assault: Capture the base (note: game does not end when all opposing team mechs are eliminated, base capture much be achieved before the 15 minutes are up)
Conquest: Collect a minimum of 500 resources (or whatever other appropriate amount)

For a win, the usual normal rewards for both sides

For a tie, the rewards for kills, assists, etc are pooled, reduced by 50% and shared evenly between both teams to eliminate the incentive for actions other than achieving the objective.

It has always bothered me that preventing a base capture until the clock ran down in Assault could still be a defeat for the defenders.

Viable?

Edited by p4r4g0n, 01 June 2014 - 07:37 PM.

[Koniving]

There'd be minor issues.
If one team got stuck defending, would all their efforts be lost when the time ran out?

There wouldn't be a major issue with Conquest other than if both teams got 500+, they'd have to slaughter each other. And that isn't really an issue in the long run if there's no "cap" to when it ends.

[p4r4g0n]

Koniving, on 01 June 2014 - 06:47 PM, said:

There'd be minor issues.
If one team got stuck defending, would all their efforts be lost when the time ran out?

There wouldn't be a major issue with Conquest other than if both teams got 500+, they'd have to slaughter each other. And that isn't really an issue in the long run if there's no "cap" to when it ends.

Leave the defensive rewards (and extend applicability of such rewards slightly beyond the actual base area) out of the pooled rewards and award them to the relevant teams in the event of a tie. May encourage overly defensive play but probably unlikely unless the amounts are large. Note that this may not be an issue if the rewards for a tie was sufficiently large (See last paragraph).

Establishing the appropriate minimum level of resources for Conquest could be a little tricky IMO. Another alternative that could focus attention on resource gathering is to use a minimum spread in the resources collected between the two teams to incentivise defending or counter capping. However, the spread would not apply if maximum resources (750) are collected before the 15 minutes are up or all the opposing team is dead (death by suicide of last opposing mech grants immediate win). This allows the team that's down in resource collecting several options to deny the opposition victory.

Incidentally, AFAIK, a tie currently nets the teams less rewards than a defeat. If correct, this incentivises behaviour that is directly contradictory to the Assault / Conquest primary objective. This needs to be corrected and is basically the premise for the suggested reward pooling and division mentioned earlier.

Edited by p4r4g0n, 01 June 2014 - 07:39 PM.

[Koniving]

Bump for great justice!