Posted 06 June 2014 - 01:10 AM
Okay.
As it typical for this forum I'm seeing a great deal of arguement going on from completely different perspectives that are wholly incapable of seeing things from the other guy's point of view. I'm going to make a few sweeping statements not directed at specific people but rather at archetypes. Take that as you will.
To the guy who says "learn to play or get out of my game": You're being... let's be polite and use the word "rude". Please stop. The very concept of "meta builds" means that some things are better than other things and that players who recognize what those things are and use them will do better than players who either do not recognize them or choose not to use them. Player skill is a part of this, yes. It requires skill with gunnery to accurately and correctly target a specific part of an enemy mech, and it requires precise timing and teamwork to do so as part of a squad all doing the same thing to the same guy.
That said, it is a tactic that seems to be disproportionately successful and judging from the tabletop as the source material it is not the intended use of jump jets and not the intended way to dominate a battlefield. The fact that it does so is a quirk of mechanics in this game that deviates significantly from the source material. It also renders a large amount of the available materials for play something close to meaningless in highly competetive high level play. When a roster of almost thirty mechs sees over half of them declared "useless", that strikes me as an issue that needs to be corrected; not just a meta, but a by definition FLAWED meta that should be brought back into line to make more builds passably useful.
To the guy who says "OMG POP TARTS WIN EVERY MATCH": Bullcrap, please stop saying that. There IS an extent to which it is valid to say you really should learn how to play the game better. If a tactic frustrates you, seek counters to it. Jump sniping, pop tarting, whatever, it is a powerful tactic, disproportionately so I personally feel, but it is not an unbeatable one. And if you're regularly dropping into matches full of this particular meta, the game seems to feel you're a pretty decent player, since you're dropping into a more competitive ELO bracket. Whether ELO is working properly or not, you are being considered a better player and dropping into a bracket where you have to learn a new set of skills. These skills do not come overnight.
To carry the Magic: the Gathering analogy, anyone can win a few matches with a basic green beatdown or red burn deck. Anyone can blast down their opponent with big critters or massive damage spells, or with basic combos that your opponents don't see coming. This sort of thing can boggle the mind of a new player, but an experienced player will see it coming and attempt to beat you to the punch or delay your victory so they can force their own victory, depending on their playstyle. An experienced player recognizes board positions, sees how much mana you have, sees how many cards you have, sees what you're playing, makes some guesses as to what options you might be holding onto, and then acts to counter those options with his own, and you act to counter his. Magic the Gathering is a dance. So is Mechwarrior Online. Jump sniping is not Black Lotus -- Channel -- Fireball GG. It is a high tier strategy that is difficult to counter if you allow yourself to be frustrated by it.
I am as guilty as anyone of getting frustrated when I get kicked into a higher bracket and suddenly start getting stomped by better players than I'm used to dealing with. I roll with a group of two to three friends and we play regularly together, to the point where we have begun to develop a teamwork that synergizes well with each other. And yet, every so often, we have a night where we just get utterly stomped, over and over again, by people who have mastered higher tier strategies than the ones we're used to. We *****, we growl, we complain... and then we go back to playing, or quit for the night. Either way. We don't LIKE the current meta, we choose not to play by its rules, we get punished for it sometimes, but we choose to play the way we want, and we're getting better at forcing engagements on our terms rather than theirs.
I repeat: I do not like the current meta. I do not like the idea that a small subset of builds dominate the game above a certain level of play. I do not like that the particular style of play that dominates the game at those levels is a style that can very easily render me dead within the first few seconds of any engagement with the enemy. Playing the game is fun, being dead and watching other people play is less fun. Losing matches is less fun than winning, but win or lose I want a match that was hard fought and had tactical variety, not a match of standing across a valley popping over a hill sniping at each other like glorified Howitzers. I play Mechwarrior to see giant robots fight, after all, and I want to see LOTS of ways for giant robots to fight.
That said I do not believe the current meta is broken. I would like to see it changed, yes. But it is not so broken that the game cannot be enjoyed. Everyone has their own ideas for how to "fix" it. I have mine too. But at the end of the day, I am still enjoying Mechwarrior. And I don't have to pay a dime to play it.
(Oh, I've put money into it, but I never HAD TO is my point)
My personal preference for the game is to see a greater variety of brawling, sniping, artillery, and harassment in every match. To see a larger number of strategies compete, and to see COMBINED ARMS WARFARE dominate the field, not a single style of "snipers and spotters" that is vastly more difficult to counter for the average player than it is to pull off for other players at the same skill level.
But I keep playing the game. Maybe, just maybe, it's time we all considered that we're getting really, really worked up over a game we're... still playing and enjoying regardless.
I don't like the meta either. But I don't expect you to play by my rules... and more than you should expect me to play by yours. Pop tarts, keep pop tarting. I'll keep trying to beat you anyway. And if I keep losing, it'll just knock me down into a lower bracket again where I will probably have more fun anyway, right?
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Deitz, on 05 June 2014 - 11:15 AM, said:
