20 replies to this topic

[Shae Starfyre]

During a period of discontent, I went Armorless, and mounted a Gauss on an ECM Cicada, and watch the flow of the battle.

As I attempted to get into proper positions for rear snipe attacks at ranges that I could not easily be detected, and so I could disengage, reposition, shoot, and move again (you know, proper sniper stuff), it occured to me that tactically, that is impossible to do with the flow of the game as it stands.

Everyone moves in such a way as to encounter the enemy as quickly as possible, and push to a state that there is often 7-9 minutes left on the counter with one side demoralized beyond hope (Skirmish).

Maybe I should try the other game types (but from what I have read, it plays like skirmish, so I am sure it will be no different).

What should be a thinking gamer's, tactical shooter has become a Halo, Tribes, COD fast paced game that doesn't have any semblence with the original premise of the game from a game play perspective.

I bought into this game hoping that this would not come to pass, and although I saw all the trends, over the past couple of years, I slowly watched that timer go from 2-3 minutes left, to 4-6, 5-7, and now, where we are with 7-9 minutes left in game.

This should not be; you could literially now make all games 5 minutes with nearly the same effect.

Save server time, and could bring back 3/3/3/3 and probably actualy work now because the games are over so quickly.

Edited by Aphoticus, 04 June 2014 - 05:52 AM.

[NextGame]

Tribes 1 & 2 were both very tactical, well paced and skill driven. The less said about vengeance and hi-rez's joke of an effort (some of the best evidence to date that sometimes an IP should just be left to die) the better.

MWO has 1 tactic per map, is pretty slow paced, has a low skill ceiling, and isnt really comparable. Also just to counter the points you are making, the larger, and therefore slower, maps in MWO are pretty much amongst the least popular, particularly amongst people running slow assaults.

The problem is not the pacing, its the fact that you know exactly what the other team are going to do as soon as the map loads as the game is so stale and 2 dimensional tactically.

MWO's gameplay structure in its current format (and it wont change) does not lend itself to becoming anything different.

Edited by NextGame, 04 June 2014 - 06:20 AM.

[DONTOR]

Assult mode is alot slower than skirmish mode, I often have games go down to the timer, with a 1 or 2 mechs on a team. Conquest is also usually fast paced, which is why i slow down, and play assult sometimes.

[Sprouticus]

You are not doing it right.

You should not move to be in position to hit people where they are. You should be working to be in position to be where they WILL BE.

You know where your team is going. You know the maps/terrain. You know the 'standard' responses to most movement situations.

With all that knowledge you should be able to place yourself into position to hit people. It may not be a long engagement, but you should be able to do it.

One additional note:

Traditional sniping in FPS assumes you will get kill shots. In MWO the TTK is higher so all that work will have less impact on the actual game. Using a fast ECm mech helps (see 2 ERPPC spiders), but it is still not a huge ROI.

However, If the game is close (which is about 20% of games in my experience) you can probably have a lot of impact at the end of the game if you setup correctly.

[Felbombling]

A thinking man's shooter and a fast paced shooter have collided. B!tchin' Betty cannot keep up with the damage updates before a Mech gets vaporized sometimes. "You have lost a heat si..." I remember is Closed Beta all the warnings the testers gave PGI. Front-loaded weapon damage will be abused with pin-point accuracy. Jump sniping will become a problem. We need heat scale penalties. etc. etc.

At some point we have to assume that this is the game PGI or IGP wanted. It has seen two years of development.

[Bobzilla]

In all fairness, the maps are just crappy. On every map you are capable of sitting in a defended position with sightlines past 1000m in all directions. Canyon and Terra would have been good maps for countering the current meta, but they restricted mech movements for the sake of 'choke points' which just rewards the current meta. HPG isn't all that bad because people start to fight short-med range for the long range vantage point (weird right?).

When the most effective tactic with the most effective build is most effective on all maps, the meta is born. With no change to environment, the meta will flourish. This would be the same if all maps had no sight lines past, 200m, but the loadouts would be different. They need to have more random map types, so taking a build that is stronger at a certain range in a certain roll will be affective on some maps and inaffective on others. This will have people either taking more varied loadouts (and probably a new 'rounded' meta). Hopefully to the point where skill with other builds will be more of a factor to the outcome. Meta will always be around and evolve, just mitigate its affectiveness by giving less known variables.

[Corwin Vickers]

I don't know if you remeber this but every time a new, unpopular map comes out people cry on the forums saying they should be able to choose the maps they play/be able to choose their mech based on the map. Then there is a wave of voluntary disconnects.

MWO players are weenies.

[xeromynd]

NextGame, on 04 June 2014 - 06:17 AM, said:

Tribes 1 & 2 were both very tactical, well paced and skill driven. The less said about vengeance and hi-rez's joke of an effort (some of the best evidence to date that sometimes an IP should just be left to die) the better.

MWO has 1 tactic per map, is pretty slow paced, has a low skill ceiling, and isnt really comparable. Also just to counter the points you are making, the larger, and therefore slower, maps in MWO are pretty much amongst the least popular, particularly amongst people running slow assaults.

The problem is not the pacing, its the fact that you know exactly what the other team are going to do as soon as the map loads as the game is so stale and 2 dimensional tactically.

MWO's gameplay structure in its current format (and it wont change) does not lend itself to becoming anything different.

THIS
I remember I had one of the coolest games I've ever played. A team of premades camped ALL of the mountains near their base on Terra Therma. Once we got to the pit-o-death and realize no one was there our scouts went out and saw some camping. We decided to all group up and move single file up one side of the map while our snipers got up high and harassed theirs. We ended up winning, and even if we had lost, it still would've been the most fun I've ever had on Terra Therma. I felt like I was playing a whole new game.

[meteorol]

Aphoticus, on 04 June 2014 - 05:50 AM, said:

What should be a thinking gamer's, tactical shooter has become a Halo, Tribes, COD fast paced game.

Honestly, when "bashing" MWO you should really stay away from tribes. It had a higher skill ceiling than all mechwarrior games combined ever reached.

[Almond Brown]

Quote

It has seen two years of development.

Not to be too repetitive here but, 10 years ago, when the last MW game was produced, that 2 years would still be 6 months short of ANY Player getting access to the code for testing. It seems times has indeed changed almost everything. Well, everything except for the patience level of the modern Game Communities.

[crossflip]

This is glaringly obvious when you come across those outstanding matches where one or both teams does something different than usual. There is little to no thought involved in this game beyond the basic FPS tactics, except that numbers and positioning are more important. There's no macro perspective, no variety in overarching strategy.

That's the difference. Strategy is the gameplan, tactics are the decisions you make in the field on a small scale. Ironic that the turn based game ended up being called MW Tactics.

[JP Josh]

thats when you do something really stupid like take a commando with a er ppc double heat sink and ecm and go routs no body takes and pray to whatever god that there isnt light mechs on the enimy team looking for people like you.

[Willard Phule]

I dunno....the pace of the COMBAT seems about right....but, the pace of what should be a tactical "thinking man's" shooter is way too fast to allow for that kind of thought and/or teamwork.

Problem is, I don't think there's a "magic fix" to it...and that seems to be what PGI is all about. Introduce something, slap a band-aid on it, move on to the next project....tell everyone you're aware of the problem and it's "on the list." That's how we ended up with a matchmaker that has to be rewritten from scratch (the MM we had was a "hotfix," remember?), ghost heat and a slew of other things.

Some things that I can point out with regard to issues preventing it from being more than just another FPS are:

- The missions are too simplistic for a long-range mission based game. What we have are 3 modes; one that requires you to capture locations and acquire points (or eliminate the enemy), one that requires you to destroy static defenses and capture a base (or eliminate the enemy) and one that requires you to...you guessed it...eliminate the enemy.

Previous incarnations of the MW franchise have seen missions that, at least in 1 player, required you to move from one location to another, destroying certain objectives along the way or even escorting a vehicle to an extraction point. Sure, I know, those were just 1 player games but....tell me it doesn't SCREAM offense/defense based scenarios to you.

-The maps just really aren't big enough to support the above. And the downside is, as cool as any of that may be, it's simply not practical. Maps large enough for a multi-objective mission would be so large that they simply could not be used with existing game modes....and we all know they simply don't have the resources to worry about maps right now. It is what it is.

-Lack of any means of communications with teammates that don't speak your language. The other MW titles had a...oh, whatever you want to call it...communication "tree" of pre-programmed commands/responses/alerts you could bind. Worked in the multi-player, too, if I recall correctly. It'd kinda be nice to be able to hit F5 and have "Enemy Spotted" transmitted to my team and have my little blue triangle on their radar flash so they know who sent the transmission. Handy bit of intel to have right there. Probably never happen, though. It's probably "on the list" and will be addressed "soon."

-Lack of any incentive whatsoever for the concept of "role warfare." I don't know if it's because it's a CW thing that'll happen "soon" or if it's because Russ personally has no concept at all of anything with regard to Battletech, Mechwarrior or it's lore/mechanics. I'm leaning toward the latter simply because everything I've heard and read in his interviews leads me to believe that he's really more of a "crack the whip, make the power points, give the meetings, interact with the investors" sort of guy than a Battletech fan. Which, I suppose, is cool if your company is producing something of good quality and has not only an excellent production history but good communication with it's customer base as well. PGI...well. They're trying. And they're Canadian, so, you know...cut 'em a little slack, eh?

Still, one of the main reasons we see so many meta builds, LRM boats, ECM snipers, Etc is because there simply is no incentive for the Light 'mech to stick his neck out there and spot for the team....well, other than the same bonuses available too the Atlas D-DC that leads the charge and locks targets. Same thing with brawlers. Slap a BAP on your brawler and start racking up those counter-ecm bonuses without lifting a finger. Support roles (sniper, LRM boat, etc) tend to be the guys that hang in the back, waiting to do their thing at their optimum range. Unfortunately, pretty much everyone at this point prefers playing a "support" role as opposed to taking charge, scouting for the team or even brawling. You can chalk that up to any number of issues that truly need to be addressed before this game can go forward....FLD metas, a broken matchmaker, ghost heat, Community Warfare...hell, just read the forums, it's not like any of the problems are "secret."

Edited by Willard Phule, 04 June 2014 - 10:09 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

To paraphrase Nick Fury,

Quote

In a firefight? Did you have an over-abundance of time for thinking?

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 04 June 2014 - 10:18 AM.

[Rebas Kradd]

The devs have stated that time-to-kill is on its way up, not down. So that's their general direction.

[Joseph Mallan]

Almond Brown, on 04 June 2014 - 09:22 AM, said:

Not to be too repetitive here but, 10 years ago, when the last MW game was produced, that 2 years would still be 6 months short of ANY Player getting access to the code for testing. It seems times has indeed changed almost everything. Well, everything except for the patience level of the modern Game Communities.

That has changed as well. It has gotten considerably shorter.

[Exilyth]

We really need a proper urban map. Not just a bit of buildings and lots of open space but a really cramped, urbanmech dancing through sidealleys, ******* moloch of a city with no long straight streets ('cept for the motorway passing though or the Melissa Steiner memorial park, maybe). That would shift loadouts towards mid range and would add variety.

[Lightfoot]

Your armor should last longer. Either more armor or cut the weapon damage in half on all weapons to make up for the 2xRecharge. I don't think new players have time to learn much before they are destroyed at the game's present pace.

[EvilCow]

meteorol, on 04 June 2014 - 09:07 AM, said:

Honestly, when "bashing" MWO you should really stay away from tribes. It had a higher skill ceiling than all mechwarrior games combined ever reached.

So true....

It was a crazy good game:

[Shae Starfyre]

I admit I was wrong the Tribes thing; It has been so long since I played it, I was just generalizing. Sorry about that.

My frustration is not that I was piloting a certain mech doing a certain thing right or wrong, but that through doing so, I observed the macro view of the playing field and felt it lacked a tactical perspective.

I know it has been said before, but we really need those roles, in my view point, scouts, etc.

It just plays so fast, and appears to be going quicker every day.

Yes, you still get some longer games, but I do not attribute them to being tactical so much as luck (or lack of focus fire).

I almost wish there were those objectives or someting that required multiple things being done at the same time to force planning.

Like having to hold two positions for a given time to account for something forcing a split of your forces, and maybe at the right distance to have to account for indirect support, also splitting more your forces to help maintain both places.

I don't know... charge! That's what it feels like. Get to them quick, hope your path is a little less obvious, and get the first shot in so attrition does the rest.

I hope, in 5 years, things change slightly.

Edited by Aphoticus, 04 June 2014 - 11:59 AM.