106 replies to this topic

[BARBAR0SSA]

I honestly wish there was a lobby system where you could make a random 12 man sort of PUG group, that way if you want to be a GG Close jerk when it's 12-0 you might end up lonely.
heck even a pug lobby where you can grab 24 players and have it randomize teams so you might not be playing WITH your buddy but against him etc.

Hopefully CW allows a bit more a faction system where you people within the faction can vote up leaders and so forth to make decisions on the next course of action. You may not be the best jump sniper but if you can plan tactics and lead to victory you're more valuable than the guy that gets 5 kills but his team loses.

Edited by shad0w4life, 11 June 2014 - 02:19 PM.

[R Razor]

Ihasa, on 11 June 2014 - 02:08 PM, said:

Wow what an incredibly jaded view you have. Please make more friends from the competitive or want to be competitive set so that you don't have such a bitter opinion of all from a select few.

That select few tends to be the most vocal and thus the most memorable...........police yourselves and maybe the opinion of the masses will change but until that happens we will continue to view that subset in that manner.

PGI almost seems to actively encourage the split with some of the decisions they make regarding balance and mechanics so the blame doesn't necessarily lie completely at the feet of the comp players, but enough does that's for sure.

And computer gaming is most certainly not a sport, not in any way, shape or form.

[Jun Watarase]

Ihasa, on 11 June 2014 - 02:08 PM, said:

Wow what an incredibly jaded view you have. Please make more friends from the competitive or want to be competitive set so that you don't have such a bitter opinion of all from a select few.

My point was that people's opinions of the comp scene are affected by the vocal minority that do stuff like this.

[Aresye]

Contrary to popular belief, it's extremely hard to sync drop.

Back before private lobbies, our best way of conducting trials for new players and/or unit practice was to gather 24 people and create 2 12man groups. Even under the best conditions possible, we'd still end up facing a random 12man team 50% of the time.

Most of the time I've seen another 4man group from my unit end up on my team was pure coincidence. Any intentional attempts to sync drop with another 4man unit will put the two of you on opposite teams 99% of the time.

I think a lot of people just look at faction tags and immediately scream, "SYNC DROP! SYNC DROP!"

For example, what do you make of this?


That was 3 completely separate units that somehow managed to get lumped onto 1 side, and despite the game giving us a horribly stacked side, we got our butts royally handed to us.

A lot of people blame everything else for their losses, but if there's one thing I've noticed amongst the competitive scene, it's that the high Elo players don't blame outside factors for their loss (not as often at least).

For that pic posted above? According to, "forum logic," we should have steamrolled the other team. We didn't. We got outplayed. Simple as that.

[Ihasa]

R Razor, on 11 June 2014 - 02:19 PM, said:

That select few tends to be the most vocal and thus the most memorable...........police yourselves and maybe the opinion of the masses will change but until that happens we will continue to view that subset in that manner.

PGI almost seems to actively encourage the split with some of the decisions they make regarding balance and mechanics so the blame doesn't necessarily lie completely at the feet of the comp players, but enough does that's for sure.

And computer gaming is most certainly not a sport, not in any way, shape or form.

You're saying that to me as if I'm somebody anyone in the comp scene would recognize, let alone listen to or follow the example of. I'm not, just some casual who happens to not share that bitter and jaded point of view, even though I've seen and despise the behavior Jun chastises the comps for as if everyone were doing it.

[Slepnir]

Juns been on the comp/meta/premade boogeyman freak train since closed beta.

Even though time and again juns been proven wrong because of trying to paint with such a broad brush.

People tend to play in groups or sync because its human social behavior to want to p l ay with friends. not for some mythical win button. most groups also dont often run the ppc/ac meta. also being in a team doesnt always mean you win. I think that sometimes people like jun forget both sides have a team in alpha lance that may not be as coordinated as the one on the other side.


Of course jun looses alot of the moral high ground when getting caught running meta or being on a team as well.......when not hiding in the back getting angry with the team becase they aren't doing all the work to give jun an easy win.

[Capriel]

Companies like Blizzard, for example, have entire teams of people (GMs or their equivalent) investigating and acting upon reports of behavioural impropriety, and dishing out bans/suspensions which act as a visible deterrent to other potential a-holes out there.

Where in this game is there any opportunity to report someone for things like TKing, personal insults in chat etc?

I understand we can email support or something, but this is not an integral function of the UI as it is in other games.

Trashtalking is NOT part of the game; it is playground bullying at its worst, and should not be tolerated.

If PGI will not police players for these issues then it falls to the community to do it ourselves.

Assuming everyone in the Comp Scene is part of a Unit, which Unit Commanders take an active role and responsibility for the behaviour of their players?

Please step forward and reassure us (people like Jun and myself, who clearly despise loutishness) that respectable Units are deserving of... you know.. respect.

Another way this game's UI fails is that is does not enable/encourage any kind of social interaction between strangers.

In other games, if I am impressed by a player I can easily add him to my friends list, find out which team he plays for, and introduce myself/offer to team up again - this game does not seem to accommodate this concept at all.

I wonder how organised Units ever manage to recruit, given a large % of players never visit forums...

[krash27]

Aresye, on 11 June 2014 - 02:36 PM, said:

snip

Wow if you can't look at the other team and see that you were "outpremaded" .....
I mean look at the LRM lance complete with ECM spotter and Tag and the DD lance complete with ECM cover. Forum logic found that...

Edited by krash27, 11 June 2014 - 04:55 PM.

[Davers]

Where did it all go wrong?

It started when PGI made a game all about customized mechs instead of stock mechs. This led to a mech lab where people could make suboptimal choices, without even knowing they were suboptimal.

Then PGI allowed premades to drop against pugs which led to premades being hated. It should have been teams of 12 or solo.

PGI should have supported groups more and given them something more to do than farm pugs for Cbills.
Even though I hate Esports, they should have had group tournaments going long before this. And CW as well.

[Creovex]

Truth be told the OP does have some points.

Just some tips for premade / comps to remember when pugging....
- Don't announce your clan / group at the start of the match (it makes everyone assume you are just that even if you are solo dropping) *recruitment is for the forums...not ingame chat
- Say "gg" regardless of winning or losing
- If you drop a big group of people (premade) in a pug, keep the arty to a minimal not to look like a bunch of spammers (come on you know you don't need that in a pug)
- Don't call puggers idiots ingame when they die (especially when you didn't communicate before)
- Take Lance or Team lead if you think you have a tactic and use the map markers (typing isn't always a clear communication form when in combat)
- Support non-premade teammates... Don't always go rogue and ignore others who are trying to lead
- Again.... say "gg" regardless of outcome and praise teammates if they do well

****Be a teammate, use good sportsmanship conduct and stop assuming you are better then others around you.

Personally I tend to be top 3 in most matches with regards to damage but I could care less because pugging is all about having fun. I played sponsored competitive computer games for years and can attest that you need not bring ego outside of a match. You just end up hurting your own reputation and that of your groups when you behave arrogantly in a pug match.

*****Pugs are all about fun so when a bad moves happens by teammates just roll with it and relax.

Edited by Creovex, 11 June 2014 - 07:19 PM.

[NextGame]

Jun Watarase, on 11 June 2014 - 12:55 PM, said:

Funny, this is the attitude i was talking about that leads many people to dislike competitive players as a whole.

What's even more funny is that you consider someone who couldn't even be bothered to roster up for the official tournament, hasn't played the game for multiple months and when they did dropped far more frequently solo than as a group to be a competitive player.

If that's your definition of competitive, then everyone must be, or else they *really* need to accept that they are going to lose. Often.

Play to win. That is the point of a competitive game. If you do not play to win, do not cry about defeat.

Edited by NextGame, 11 June 2014 - 09:32 PM.

[Jun Watarase]

Aresye, on 11 June 2014 - 02:36 PM, said:

Contrary to popular belief, it's extremely hard to sync drop.

Back before private lobbies, our best way of conducting trials for new players and/or unit practice was to gather 24 people and create 2 12man groups. Even under the best conditions possible, we'd still end up facing a random 12man team 50% of the time.

Most of the time I've seen another 4man group from my unit end up on my team was pure coincidence. Any intentional attempts to sync drop with another 4man unit will put the two of you on opposite teams 99% of the time.

I think a lot of people just look at faction tags and immediately scream, "SYNC DROP! SYNC DROP!"

For example, what do you make of this?


That was 3 completely separate units that somehow managed to get lumped onto 1 side, and despite the game giving us a horribly stacked side, we got our butts royally handed to us.

A lot of people blame everything else for their losses, but if there's one thing I've noticed amongst the competitive scene, it's that the high Elo players don't blame outside factors for their loss (not as often at least).

For that pic posted above? According to, "forum logic," we should have steamrolled the other team. We didn't. We got outplayed. Simple as that.

There was one night when i ran into the same 8 man sync drop multiple times per hour, for several hours. They didnt always end up with both premades on the same team, but often enough to give themselves free wins.

Every game they would open up with trash talking the moment they saw that i was in the same match. If i was on the same team as them, they would do everything within the COC to get me killed, such as refuse to shoot enemy mechs that were engaging me or deliberately run to a corner of the map and hide till i and the rest of the team was dead. They would also shoot me with PPCs within min range to try and shake without inflicting friendly fire damage, deliberately block my line of fire or block my movement with their mechs.

Since they ran nothing but metabuilds, they would brutally curb stomp the other team every single time both of their premades ended up on the same side. There is nothing a team of randoms can do when they are facing multiple LRM boats with multiple ECM spotters and you dont have any ECM to counter them yourself, and it just so happens to be alpine peaks with no cover.

Judging from the screenshot you posted, it looked like the winning team had a way higher ELO while blue alpha/beta lances were playing around in mechs like the HBK-4G which are frankly, not very good.

Things would have been much different if all of blue team was running nothing but metabuilds.

Ihasa, on 11 June 2014 - 02:41 PM, said:

You're saying that to me as if I'm somebody anyone in the comp scene would recognize, let alone listen to or follow the example of. I'm not, just some casual who happens to not share that bitter and jaded point of view, even though I've seen and despise the behavior Jun chastises the comps for as if everyone were doing it.

Ive never claimed that all comps behave this way, if you read what i posted, you will see i specifically say that not all comps do this.

Slepnir, on 11 June 2014 - 04:47 PM, said:

Juns been on the comp/meta/premade boogeyman freak train since closed beta.

Even though time and again juns been proven wrong because of trying to paint with such a broad brush.

People tend to play in groups or sync because its human social behavior to want to p l ay with friends. not for some mythical win button. most groups also dont often run the ppc/ac meta. also being in a team doesnt always mean you win. I think that sometimes people like jun forget both sides have a team in alpha lance that may not be as coordinated as the one on the other side.


Of course jun looses alot of the moral high ground when getting caught running meta or being on a team as well.......when not hiding in the back getting angry with the team becase they aren't doing all the work to give jun an easy win.

Has no relevance to anything which i posted, especially given that i specifically mentioned not all comps behave this way.

Then you proceed to violate the forum name and shame policy while engaging in insults. Thank you for proving my point for me.

[Bhael Fire]

Davers, on 11 June 2014 - 05:53 PM, said:

Then PGI allowed premades to drop against pugs which led to premades being hated. It should have been teams of 12 or solo.

This is basically the sole reason there's a divide in the community; the fact PGI forces solo players to play with and against groups.

I know they are trying tone it down a bit by "only" having one group per team...but ultimately PUGs are going to resent premade groups no matter what...it's the law of online gaming. And as long as PGI forces PUGs to play against and with premades it's not likely to change.

[Jun Watarase]

Capriel, on 11 June 2014 - 04:48 PM, said:

Companies like Blizzard, for example, have entire teams of people (GMs or their equivalent) investigating and acting upon reports of behavioural impropriety, and dishing out bans/suspensions which act as a visible deterrent to other potential a-holes out there.

Where in this game is there any opportunity to report someone for things like TKing, personal insults in chat etc?

I understand we can email support or something, but this is not an integral function of the UI as it is in other games.

Trashtalking is NOT part of the game; it is playground bullying at its worst, and should not be tolerated.

If PGI will not police players for these issues then it falls to the community to do it ourselves.

Assuming everyone in the Comp Scene is part of a Unit, which Unit Commanders take an active role and responsibility for the behaviour of their players?

Please step forward and reassure us (people like Jun and myself, who clearly despise loutishness) that respectable Units are deserving of... you know.. respect.

Another way this game's UI fails is that is does not enable/encourage any kind of social interaction between strangers.

In other games, if I am impressed by a player I can easily add him to my friends list, find out which team he plays for, and introduce myself/offer to team up again - this game does not seem to accommodate this concept at all.

I wonder how organised Units ever manage to recruit, given a large % of players never visit forums...

There is no way to report people ingame.

You can try and report people to support but most behaviour is simply considered "annoying, but not against the COC".

You can add people to your friend list after a game though, just take down their names and add them in the friend list.

Edited by Jun Watarase, 11 June 2014 - 10:00 PM.

[Jun Watarase]

NextGame, on 11 June 2014 - 09:28 PM, said:

What's even more funny is that you consider someone who couldn't even be bothered to roster up for the official tournament, hasn't played the game for multiple months and when they did dropped far more frequently solo than as a group to be a competitive player.

If that's your definition of competitive, then everyone must be, or else they *really* need to accept that they are going to lose. Often.

Play to win. That is the point of a competitive game. If you do not play to win, do not cry about defeat.

Playing to win has absolutely nothing to do with trash talking or insulting people. Which is what you are doing when you label everyone else with dissenting opinions as "whining" and how much you love their "tears".

Imagine how it would look if a sports player were to show up in the news saying remarks like that. But this is the internet, so nothing happens.

Its rather dissapointing that people frequently misquote the playing to win book to justify their actions. Playing to win involves constantly challenging and improving yourself. It does not mean that you stack teams to bash some random newbies, abuse bugs that let you match opponents you would not have been allowed to otherwise (12 man vs randoms), use bugs to permanently prevently someone from doing anything at all (infinite knockdow), sync drop to avoid the group queue, brag about your score, trashtalk or any number of socially unacceptable behaviour.

It also doesnt mean that you keep using nothing but akuma in street fighter simply because hes the most powerful character in the game and gives you the best chance of success. Theres a point where something is so broken that a competitive player needs to recognize that they should either stop playing the game, not play it competitively or workaround whatever is broken.

Edited by Jun Watarase, 11 June 2014 - 10:03 PM.

[NextGame]

Jun Watarase, on 11 June 2014 - 09:59 PM, said:

Playing to win has absolutely nothing to do with trash talking or insulting people. Which is what you are doing when you label everyone else with dissenting opinions as "whining" and how much you love their "tears".

If you have an issue with labelling and generalising then you are being a hypocrite.

Quote

Imagine how it would look if a sports player were to show up in the news saying remarks like that. But this is the internet, so nothing happens.

But I'm not a sports player, and have no aspirations to be one. Nor is there any requirement upon me to behave in a specific way that meets your subjective behaviour criteria in order to set some sort of behaviour example to future generations.

Quote

Its rather dissapointing that people frequently misquote the playing to win book to justify their actions. Playing to win involves constantly challenging and improving yourself. It does not mean that you stack teams to bash some random newbies, abuse bugs that let you match opponents you would not have been allowed to otherwise (12 man vs randoms), use bugs to permanently prevently someone from doing anything at all (infinite knockdow), sync drop to avoid the group queue, brag about your score, trashtalk or any number of socially unacceptable behaviour.

Play to win. Whatever you think the route to that might be, be it a course from the mystical world of self improvement, or simply picking the best mech with the best loadout, there are many different paths that all converge in the end. But the bottom line is: if you aren't playing to win then you only have yourself to blame.

However to clarify, as you are blatantly from the Republic of Assumptiononia. I have never did any of the following:

Dropped in a 12 man vs randoms or used other bugs to be placed against weaker opponents
Used a bug to prevent someone from doing anything at all
Used Infinite knockdown
Sync dropped with the aim of unbalancing teams
Stacked teams to bash random newbies

I have most likely participated in "trashtalk or any number of socially unacceptable behaviour" in whatever bizarre terms you may subjectively consider it to be; as while I might be known amongst my immediate friends for my integrity, unfortunately (?) patience and tolerance for dead weight are not amongst my many virtues.

But guess what? No one is beholden to your standards of personal conduct just as no one is beholden to mine.

Just to also be clear on the following point: I actually don't care if people have did any of the above thinly veiled accusations. If it is within the game mechanics, then it is fair game, as anyone can do it. The line only stops at modifying game files in order to gain an advantage.

Quote

It also doesnt mean that you keep using nothing but akuma in street fighter simply because hes the most powerful character in the game and gives you the best chance of success. Theres a point where something is so broken that a competitive player needs to recognize that they should either stop playing the game, not play it competitively or workaround whatever is broken.

If it's directly facilitated by the game, it's legit.

[AssaultPig]

Bhael Fire, on 11 June 2014 - 09:50 PM, said:

This is basically the sole reason there's a divide in the community; the fact PGI forces solo players to play with and against groups.

I know they are trying tone it down a bit by "only" having one group per team...but ultimately PUGs are going to resent premade groups no matter what...it's the law of online gaming. And as long as PGI forces PUGs to play against and with premades it's not likely to change.

Most public matches could include a preform group or two all the time and nobody would even notice. People notice preforms when they're doing something obnoxious, like running an all VTR-DS lance (or running all DDCs, or all spiders back when, whatever.) If you face a preform you're more likely to lose because they're communicating, but there's nothing intrinsically bad about it (especially if the matchmaker will try to match groups against one another in the future.)

The problem is that a handful of mechs are dominant in the current 'competitive'/high-elo scene (for obvious reasons we're all aware of) and that the matchmaker allows a bunch of high-end players to all drop in them at once. These players are exploiting the current state of the game to farm cbills, but they aren't ultimately the problem. Hate the game, not the player.

That's why the OP is kinda silly, even though I appreciate the spirit of it. Players respond to incentives, so as long as they're allowed to drop in groups exclusively composed of the most powerful 'meta' mechs, that's what they're going to do.

[Lykaon]

Tahribator, on 11 June 2014 - 01:01 PM, said:

I think most of the friction comes from the type of players in this game; those who only play to win and those who play to have fun with the customization and variety. Naturally, those who play to win ruin the game for the other group as they tend to play unpopular mechs with "unoptimized" builds.

"naturaly those who play to win ruin the game for the other group as they tend to play unpopular mechs with "unoptimized" builds"

Interesting choice of wording.That the players trying to win are ruining the game for that "other group".

Why is it not that other group is wasting the time of players trying to win by being nothing more than a designated casualty because they...

do not try to win and pilot junk while doing it.

It's fairly obvious that those "other group" players do have some sort of investment in the game because we always see them complaining.

And complaining about the wrong things.

It is assinine to blame a player for meeting the objectives of a clearly defined victory condition in a competetive game where one team can win while another team will lose.

MWo is competative there are victory conditions to meet and both teams compete to meet those conditions.

Yet the blame goes to the players who grasp how to best meet a victory condition.

they blame the winning team using any number of excuses premade/matchmaker/meta tryhards Instead of looking to the game developers to exspand the methods of meeting a victory condition beyond 2 AC5s 2 PPCs jumpjets.

Hate players using the meta ? blame the meta and a designers who failed to recognize it when we (the early beta testers) discovered it the very first day a Catapult K2 had a pair of gauss rifles plugged into it nearly 2 years ago.

Hate losing to players who use planning and co-operation.Don't blame those players Ask where the hell your grouping tools are where are the pre and post match lobbies where are the public comms?

Stop looking for divisions and look for solutions that intergrate players.

Would we see so many players asking for premade free solo only queues if there were intergrated tools for composing a pick up group before hand,a means of chatting and planning before hand and a means of communicating during a drop? What would be the difference between the pick up group and the premade then? not a heck of a lot.

[TheKatzMan]

Unfortunately every game has elitist jerks that like to trash talk and tell everyone how bad they are in an attempt to feel/look pro.

At the same time there are always going to be idiots that chase red dots and lose the game for their team over and over.

You both suck equally.

There now we are all on even ground. Can't we all just get along?

[Alex Warden]

people are people... as some famous person once said, there is as many attitudes as there is people in the world...

there will always be nice and gentle people, harsh but helpful ones, egoistic but silent ones, spoiled and entitled ones and of course always aggressive people who are just bashing others for the sake of it...

you can´t get them all under one roof, you can just try to limit escalations when multiple attitudes bang together... thats why police and military become more important the bigger a "collective" becomes...
(take the US... from 1 Sheriff who was enough to control a simple village, to L.A which has a Police force nowadays that would put some countries´ military to shame)

and thats why forums need moderators... this one more today than during early CBT

problem is, same applies to this community as well... there are not TWO groups in here, there are a thousand individual opinions and PoV´s here, and there will always some points that cause an argument to heat up... and there will always be those guys who just feel sooo elite that they have to bash others, because that makes them feel even more elite...

or those who are that convinced with their opinion that they´ll defend it with all weapons they´ve got... how ever, you cant change human nature

but i honour your effort, OP

Edited by Alex Warden, 12 June 2014 - 04:22 AM.