89 replies to this topic

[Roland]

Joseph Mallan, on 21 July 2014 - 11:46 AM, said:

It is a game of patience Roland, if you are patient and your enemy isn't they will likely make that mistake of attacking in small numbers and be defeated in detail. Sometimes, the path to victory is not an exciting one. We won 7 outta 9 matches this very way one night. And I am not a patient player most matches.

Wow.
It's kind of sad that you guys would waste that much of your time playing the game in such a boring way. What exactly did you get in exchange for your boredom? Anything of value?

Edited by Roland, 21 July 2014 - 02:45 PM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Roland, on 21 July 2014 - 02:45 PM, said:

Wow.
It's kind of sad that you guys would waste that much of your time playing the game in such a boring way. What exactly did you get in exchange for your boredom? Anything of value?

Lots of time spent with buddies on Comms, telling bad jokes, killing opponents as they poked around the corner, insulting each other in fun. Drinking every time Player X said, "Like a Boss!"

Value... Priceless

[Roland]

Joseph Mallan, on 21 July 2014 - 02:49 PM, said:

Lots of time spent with buddies on Comms, telling bad jokes, killing opponents as they poked around the corner, insulting each other in fun. Drinking every time Player X said, "Like a Boss!"

Value... Priceless

My unit always does that stuff while actually fighting, since if we aren't interested in playing this game, we can talk and drink together while doing other things.

[Joseph Mallan]

Roland, on 21 July 2014 - 02:52 PM, said:

My unit always does that stuff while actually fighting, since if we aren't interested in playing this game, we can talk and drink together while doing other things.

Hey if you take the right position you could stand still and actually fight as well. The game is much funner when you are doing something that agitates your enemy and gets the undisciplined ones to fight foolish.

You wanna run around and duke it out, I get it, but as salty dogs, sometimes its better to walk down the hill and have sex with all the women. If you remember/know that old adage/joke.

[Willard Phule]

Sandpit, on 21 July 2014 - 12:50 PM, said:

I run into it all the time. Just the other night me and a buddy were dropping 2man. We got into a match on Caustic (skirmish) and the commander called for everyone to group up where he wanted them. The problem was, that it was a really bad position to dig in. He called me out 2-3 times for "not following my plan", I just politely told him "no thanks" and snagged a couple of stragglers to set up in a better position.

If we hadn't done that, we'd have gotten steamrolled. Plans are just suggestions. Like you said, no plan<bad plan<good plan

If they want to be dbags like that, dont' sweat it, work your own strategy, and if they get belligerent just report them

Not to belittle your efforts, but, man....the group queue HAS to be different than the Solo queue. I drop solo exclusively and man...the artificially inflated Elo scores of the newbs just SUCKS. Trust me.

Add to that any possible language barriers and you've got a recipe for stupidity.

Other than that....I challenge you to come to the Derp Queue for a night. See how the artificially inflated Elo scores of the noobs effect your W/L and K/D ratio.

I realize why they're inflated that way. The Derps of PGI don't ever drop solo. They only drop in groups....and they're barely "mid-range" themselves. They're inflating the noobs because they don't realize that the VAST majority of players out there are better than both the PGI employees and the new players. Using themselves as the "mid-range" of the bell curve has screwed the rest of us.

[Mazzyplz]

there are instances where you won't know you're in the wrong for not following the plan;

going low ground on the outside of the map without ecm in canyon network is a 90% loss. you have nowhere to run there, you can only climb through tiny ramps that may or may not be close to where you're getting rained on.

everytime i give an order to stay out of there and the team goes that way, i know we've lost.
kudos to the 60% of teams that actually follow the plan, the rest will be shredded into twisted metal and they have only themselves to blame

[Roland]

Joseph Mallan, on 21 July 2014 - 02:56 PM, said:

Hey if you take the right position you could stand still and actually fight as well. The game is much funner when you are doing something that agitates your enemy and gets the undisciplined ones to fight foolish.

You wanna run around and duke it out, I get it, but as salty dogs, sometimes its better to walk down the hill and have sex with all the women. If you remember/know that old adage/joke.

The problem with your plan here is that of your opponent doesn't "fight foolish", then you sit and do nothing for fifteen minutes and then get a draw.

And if your opponent is indeed foolish, then you shouldn't have to resort to hiding to defeat them.

[Jiang Wei]

Roland, on 21 July 2014 - 09:53 AM, said:

Hiding under the center is the derpiest of the derp plans. It leads to a very boring match with little actual movement.

But it does work when the other team is all missles... I have watched 5 surviving enemies make a comeback and win because my team was mostly missles and went under after them one at a time....

So it does work, if the other team is dumb enough...

Edited by Jiang Wei, 21 July 2014 - 04:10 PM.

[Asmudius Heng]

I would command more in pugs but its too damned hard to set waypoints and give orders in text while in combat.

The issue Is that creating a plan at the beginning is a good idea but you ALWAYS have to modify it to account for the enemy activity.

So you can do a good roll out and initial position but usually after that I find it hard to pilot, shoot and type what I mean. Some people are better at typing than me and sometime my friends on TS are nice enough to type out what I say in TS to the game but after all of that - when you do get a lance of bads completely ignore you it is all for nothing anyway as you need to change your own movements to support them or you just split your team and die in halves.

Better commanding tools (commo rose please!!!!!!) and VOIP will be the only way to address this (and add some new problems but nothing that cannot be solved or ignored)

[Willard Phule]

Asmudius Heng, on 21 July 2014 - 04:10 PM, said:

I would command more in pugs but its too damned hard to set waypoints and give orders in text while in combat.

Not to mention, it takes time to use Google to figure out how to say "stick together" in Russian, Chinese, German and Derp at all the same time....

[Tesunie]

Deathlike, on 21 July 2014 - 11:25 AM, said:

I personally think that to be effective most of the time, you can't have weapons that are unreliable... and LRMs tend to fall into that category (well, that and small lasers for non-Lights). This has a lot to do with mech building and versatility, so as much as some people argue LRM viability to death, even the existence of the anti-LRM areas (underside of HPG, Crimson Strait's garage-saddle) demands versatility in builds.

Trust me, my builds are normally very versatile, but I can't say otherwise, I like me some LRMs... I'm good with them. They have their blind spots and downsides, but that is where the backup (or primary) weapons come in. Trust me when I say, you want me with LRMs and not in a Meta-mech. I will die a lot faster in a meta-mech and do less than if I am in a mech with even a few LRMs. (I have decent aim... but I'm not so good at hitting the same location several times.)

Joseph Mallan, on 21 July 2014 - 11:42 AM, said:

Though I don't like the sacrifice either, those who decide to ignore the plan, and die, cannot blame the Commander. Specially when the plan works.

I had a "Commander" yesterday who thought he was a company Gunnery Sgt. He tried being demeaning to the Slow Fatty Assaults (Which made me laugh cause I was in an Atlas that was FASTER than his Dire Wolf), But though his delivery was poor, his tactics were sound, and we not only won but us Fatties scored best for our team.

Anyway, if someone makes the effort to organize the team, and gets even a minimum of support, chances of winning are improved, those who decide to ignore the orders/suggestion get what they deserve. That includes Myself when I do it.

Sometimes you need to sacrifice, but you can still turn that to your advantage. Not even being willing to help them out at all and telling them so... was the highly uncalled for part. As I said, he laid out what looked to be (for the most part) a decent plan to follow. However, the way he went about delivering his plans was the part that I disagreed with. "Listen to me, or die" isn't exactly what I would consider a "proper/polite" thing to say to make people follow your plan. About the only part I had an issue with (along we everyone shooting each other in the backs because of the narrow fighting space we were pressed into, but that's a completely different subject...)

Sound tactics is not all a commander makes. But it does greatly help. I also agree though that any plan is basically better than no plan.



I just have this thing against throwing away any asset that might be helpful. Be it ammo or teammates. A waste of either can be detrimental. Consigning people who don't follow what you say to death is a waste, it's arrogant, and it's really not a good thing to hear a commander say. It just... I have problems when people tell someone else (anyone, not just me) to do something or die. A commander should be flexible with his team, and should be able to use anyone, even a Leroy Jenkins, to his use in some part.

As I said, he made a good plan, but wasn't a very good commander.


(I think I also need to clarify, he didn't "take command". When I call him "commander", what I mean is he simply was the one pushing a plan of action on people, coming up with the strategy and issuing the orders. I also want to note, I don't have a problem working with someone else's plans nor with taking orders. I just don't like being told to "do this or die", or "I'm happy you died early". These remarks seriously drop any opinion I might have had on a commander, no matter how good his plan may be.)

[Mystere]

Mystere, on 21 July 2014 - 11:47 AM, said:

I had a game where my team had localized 3x1 and 5x2 advantages, with the enemies surrounded. But, they were unwilling to press! They just played peekaboo while taking potshots. It was extremely frustrating.

Plus, the most cowardly of them all was running a Dire Wolf (in the 5x2 I mentioned). 4 team mates died while he tried to preserve his pristine paint. So that 5x2 advantage became a 1x2 and he died in the end ... of course.

Oh, yes. It's during Euro prime time, like within the last hour!!!

<I died in a distraction move previously and pulled away 6 of the enemy. As such I was spectating the disaster.>

Meh! Just came out of a match of the same nature in the same map (Mordor), but with 3 DDCs playing peekaboo this time. Triple Meh!

Create a 13th player with a mech commander interface and I will gladly play that.

Edited by Mystere, 21 July 2014 - 08:07 PM.

[Tesunie]

Mystere, on 21 July 2014 - 08:10 PM, said:

Create a 13th player with a mech commander interface and I will gladly play that.

One of my suggestions for the CC was to actually have someone you are teamed up with spectate that mech (and only that mech) and would have full functions of the minimap at their disposal, with possibly additional information that only that "co-pilot" could see. (Only down side is, it would require two people, and one would not be "playing".)
Instead, it increases sensor range, data gathering speed, and zoom levels.

[Joseph Mallan]

Tesunie, on 21 July 2014 - 04:56 PM, said:

Sometimes you need to sacrifice, but you can still turn that to your advantage. Not even being willing to help them out at all and telling them so... was the highly uncalled for part. As I said, he laid out what looked to be (for the most part) a decent plan to follow. However, the way he went about delivering his plans was the part that I disagreed with. "Listen to me, or die" isn't exactly what I would consider a "proper/polite" thing to say to make people follow your plan. About the only part I had an issue with (along we everyone shooting each other in the backs because of the narrow fighting space we were pressed into, but that's a completely different subject...)

Sound tactics is not all a commander makes. But it does greatly help. I also agree though that any plan is basically better than no plan.

"Listen to me or die!" may not be the best motivator but it can be perfectly acceptable. If I tell you don't do "X" and you do it, you cannot complain when the consequences came calling.

"Form Up G7. Defend"

Now if someone wants to go off and do their own thing, well They know where the bulk should be positioned if they wanna have back up. If not... We told them where WE would be.

Back in the day, We were doing night Assaults on our entrenched brothers in training. We(a 4 man fireteam) were to "attack" 1st Platoon By yelling bang at them really really loud.

One of our team decided going around the hill alone was a good idea. Now we changed our mission when we found ALL of 1st Platoon asleep.

"Hey. Hey, wake up. Your dead." Man to man we did this to all of 1st. We silently killed every man!

So we went to pick up our wayward squad mate... who was being captured by 3rd Platoon's sentries... He didn't follow the plan, he paid the price.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 21 July 2014 - 08:20 PM.

[Asmudius Heng]

See battlefield 4 and it's commander play option.

A really neat addition where you could drop into a game and give orders, drop supplies, launch missile attacks etc.

Was very well done IMO would be amazing in MWO too but might be a major item to develop

[Joseph Mallan]

Roland, on 21 July 2014 - 04:02 PM, said:

The problem with your plan here is that of your opponent doesn't "fight foolish", then you sit and do nothing for fifteen minutes and then get a draw.

And if your opponent is indeed foolish, then you shouldn't have to resort to hiding to defeat them.

Yeah well that didn't happen in the 7-9 matches we played. And a Draw ain't losing.

[Tesunie]

Joseph Mallan, on 21 July 2014 - 08:18 PM, said:

"Listen to me or die!" may not be the best motivator but it can be perfectly acceptable. If I tell you don't do "X" and you do it, you cannot complain when the consequences came calling.

"Form Up G7. Defend"

Now if someone wants to go off and do their own thing, well They know where the bulk should be positioned if they wanna have back up. If not... We told them where WE would be.

I have no problem with consequences to one's action, but the problem I had was with the concept of openly abandoning teammates. I do get what you are saying, honest. Like, "Form up on G7" example, if you see someone nearby in H7, are you going to stand still and let them die? Or are you going to try and shift a little to try and at least lend a little support to them while still remaining close to your plan? This guy literally wanted everyone under that HPG station, and anyone who didn't listen, "let them die". Personally, if someone had remained outside, but nearby, I'd poke my head out of the basement and try to help them. (But remain close enough to duck back inside as well.) He didn't even want that...

I normally tell my team where I am heading, if I can. It can be helpful in solo play. However, it's not always good when you say "I'm scouting tunnel quickly"... and the rest of the team seem to take that as "charge into the tunnel"... But, oh well.


PS: I'd rather a loss in MWO than a Draw, as a Draw provides 0 bonuses, and a loss gives you some bonuses at least. It also counts as a loss on your stat chart...

[SolasTau]

On the subject of commanding, I have a lot of experience in online games (re: raid commander in WoW). Most of the time, I consider it herding cats. When people actually listen to you, it can be amazing and stuff will go very well. The rest of the time, it is a complete disaster the likes of which the only difference between life and death is literally being dependent on the ability of each individual player to do the best they can... and sometimes that works out.

But you always need to remember you're playing a game with other people *who are playing a game.* It's not worth being upset over. Sure, we all experience rage inducing losses some of the time-being upset at losing is normal. But like, being upset at the trash talking and trolling... just no.

People in WoW always say "Don't feed the trolls." I respectfully disagree. I feed the trolls... to each other.

Edited by SolasTau, 21 July 2014 - 08:57 PM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Tesunie, on 21 July 2014 - 08:37 PM, said:

I have no problem with consequences to one's action, but the problem I had was with the concept of openly abandoning teammates. I do get what you are saying, honest. Like, "Form up on G7" example, if you see someone nearby in H7, are you going to stand still and let them die? Or are you going to try and shift a little to try and at least lend a little support to them while still remaining close to your plan? This guy literally wanted everyone under that HPG station, and anyone who didn't listen, "let them die". Personally, if someone had remained outside, but nearby, I'd poke my head out of the basement and try to help them. (But remain close enough to duck back inside as well.) He didn't even want that...

I normally tell my team where I am heading, if I can. It can be helpful in solo play. However, it's not always good when you say "I'm scouting tunnel quickly"... and the rest of the team seem to take that as "charge into the tunnel"... But, oh well.


PS: I'd rather a loss in MWO than a Draw, as a Draw provides 0 bonuses, and a loss gives you some bonuses at least. It also counts as a loss on your stat chart...

Depends on the situation at hand. If there are 4-5 enemy firing on him... Probably Yes. if he is one on one or two on one Probably lend him some fire If he is trying to make his way back to us. But our CO will decide if we break cover or not.

A draw is also not losing. Holding a point on the map "can" be a important mission, so If we decide as a group, that is our mission this drop, we try to perform that mission. Doing the same trudge to D4 engage the enemy just like last time and the time before, and the time before... Don't get it for me. Roland can play the way he wants if its fun for him, and we Lawmen will do the same for us. if it chaps his ash... we are not worried unless he is on the other side of our guns. Then all we are worried about is how long till we take him out.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 21 July 2014 - 09:04 PM.

[Wintersdark]

Willard Phule, on 21 July 2014 - 02:57 PM, said:

I realize why they're inflated that way. The Derps of PGI don't ever drop solo. They only drop in groups....and they're barely "mid-range" themselves. They're inflating the noobs because they don't realize that the VAST majority of players out there are better than both the PGI employees and the new players. Using themselves as the "mid-range" of the bell curve has screwed the rest of us.

I get you're ranty here, but I'll point out: The reason new players have lower mid-range scores (1300 after Cadet) isn't because that's where PGI feels they should be but instead is a value chosen to make the Elo system work. Elo is (ideally) zero sum, so when team A gains points, team B loses the same amount. However, players join(new player) and leave(simply stop playing) the game all the time.

When a new player joins, he adds 1300 to the sum of Elo scores. When he stops playing, he takes a different number of points out of the pool. Generally speaking, a player leaving will leave with more points than he started, and this creates a deflation that pulls "average" elo ever downwards.

So, the lower a starting player's Elo score is, the more he contributes to score deflation when he leaves. The closer to what's actually average, the more likely he's not going to significantly impact the scoring. This, as he's as likely to be worse than average as to be better than average, so multiple players will balance it out.