55 replies to this topic

[Axeface]

So, OP, you want them to do a challenge that many people wouldnt be able to complete?

[A banana in the tailpipe]

Mcgral18, on 09 August 2014 - 06:46 PM, said:

Yes, but while pugging you'll also find groups which allow you to get 1400 damage with IS Pulse Lasers.


The PUG life is a pretty bad place to call things OP. Look at Lurms.

I'm 50/50 on that. I my eyes a PUG match is like the Royal Rumble. The most technical or skilled wrestlers rarely ever win based on merit, and it's usually the guy who catches a lucky break by scoring some easy eliminations or not getting picked on. Like I said, placing your shots where you want to definitely = skill but some times you brought a BB gun and your targets are 1000m away. Others you bring a shot gun and the targets are fish in a barrel. That's just the dumb luck situations of inconsistency this game is annoying consistent about.

[Alistair Winter]

Axeface, on 09 August 2014 - 07:04 PM, said:

So, OP, you want them to do a challenge that many people wouldnt be able to complete?

Yes. Hence the word 'challenge'.

If the challenge was "Let's see who enter a match", the word 'challenge' seems somewhat inappropriate, don't you think?

[Ph30nix]

lockwoodx, on 09 August 2014 - 05:57 PM, said:

He just completely slaughtered IS mechs left and right because he was in a mech that is absurdly OP under the right conditions, and the stars aligned for him.

so you mean he ran into a bunch of IS pilots who didnt know not to stand in front of the direwolf?

[Cion]

Alistair Winter, on 09 August 2014 - 04:35 PM, said:

...
Anyone who disagrees with me is wrong, but feel free to comment anyway.

hahahah lol! hahahaa. and I'm not laughing for just 1 reason .

Anyway, thanks for the laugh.

Besides that, interesting rest of the post.

[Henree]

how this adhered to lore or was different from any other day I do not see.
two teams of mechs, clan and IS all mixed shoot each other, like every other day

what event?!!?!

[MAXrobo]

I ran the entire challenge in an firestarter H loaded with only an AC20 because I wanted a challenge and it was fun and hilarious. I got 20 kills in 23 matches. My best match was 4 kills, but I also had multiple 0 kill matches. I don't think its necessary to make the challenge ridiculously hard (I think I'v gotten more than 6 kills once. ever.) For the people that just want the reward, they can hop online and run their matches as fast as possible. PGI still gets the attention and surge in players and no one is hurt for it. And if you really want a challenge you can do something like I did and make it more challenging on your own.

edit* Hurray! my 100th post after being a member for almost 3 years!

Edited by MAXrobo, 09 August 2014 - 07:59 PM.

[Axeface]

Alistair Winter, on 09 August 2014 - 07:09 PM, said:

Yes. Hence the word 'challenge'.

If the challenge was "Let's see who enter a match", the word 'challenge' seems somewhat inappropriate, don't you think?

So, now we have that straightened out.
What more would YOU gain from an weekend challenge that you can complete while others struggle to, than the current type of challenge?

[Lucian Nostra]

I much prefer when they do wins because it makes people focus on winning..

Kills? geh.. been such a hassle.

[A banana in the tailpipe]

Ph30nix, on 09 August 2014 - 07:13 PM, said:

so you mean he ran into a bunch of IS pilots who didnt know not to stand in front of the direwolf?

LOL nope. It was a huge brawl out in the middle of forest colony around theta in the center of the map. IS mechs just couldn't compete as usual and it took LRM boats to bring him down of all things.

[Ph30nix]

lockwoodx, on 09 August 2014 - 08:18 PM, said:

LOL nope. It was a huge brawl out in the middle of forest colony around theta in the center of the map. IS mechs just couldn't compete as usual and it took LRM boats to bring him down of all things.

ya know what though LRM's are alot more deadly then people realize. I have a 2 LRM 10 stalker tear open the CT of my LBX60 direwolf on alpine earlier.

int he time it took me to get from 100 meters to close enough for LBX to be concentrated enough to do damage i was dead.
(LBX60 is my gag build suprises the F outta people on brawl maps)

ive come to realize that for killing chain fired lrm5-lrm10 are the best, if you just want ot do as much damage as possible (or punch thru heavy AMS) thats when you group fire larger LRM's

[Mycrus]

lockwoodx, on 09 August 2014 - 05:51 PM, said:

This is a MMO after all. You expected PGI to think further outside the box than "go kill 10 rats"?

The best adventures starts by killing a few rats

[Deathlike]

I got 6 kills in an Awesome. I KILL STOLE EM ALL!!!

But seriously, you know how much work it is to get kills in an Awesome?

You are treated like an Atlas, but have bigger side torsos than a Victor. Nothing good comes from that.

[Training Instructor]

This challenge, like almost all of the others, has encouraged so much bad behavior and horrible team play. It's more or less ruined the solo queue for the weekend, sort of like every other past challenge.

[Alistair Winter]

MAXrobo, on 09 August 2014 - 07:54 PM, said:

I ran the entire challenge in an firestarter H loaded with only an AC20 because I wanted a challenge and it was fun and hilarious. I got 20 kills in 23 matches. My best match was 4 kills, but I also had multiple 0 kill matches. I don't think its necessary to make the challenge ridiculously hard (I think I'v gotten more than 6 kills once. ever.) For the people that just want the reward, they can hop online and run their matches as fast as possible. PGI still gets the attention and surge in players and no one is hurt for it. And if you really want a challenge you can do something like I did and make it more challenging on your own.

I can make the game more challenging on my own without any help from PGI. All I need to do is dust off my Locusts. Actually, I've been playing with some exotic Firestarter builds myself, because I wanted to get to know the mech without the default medlas + MG boating. So I've been doing stuff like [AC2+4small lasers+3MGs] or [ER PPC + 7 small lasers] and [6 flamers + 2 medium lasers], etc.

But if they're going to do a challenge, I think it should be challenging. It would be more fun for me, at least.

Axeface, on 09 August 2014 - 07:54 PM, said:

So, now we have that straightened out.
What more would YOU gain from an weekend challenge that you can complete while others struggle to, than the current type of challenge?

Well, I could very well have to struggle myself. My gain is the sense of accomplishment after completing a challenge I know is difficult. Like finishing all Super Mario games on my Super Nintendo. That's hard. You end up throwing the controllers into the walls a few times. But it's great when you complete it.

Modern video games have a bad habit of trying to make everything possible for everyone. That's why a lot of people have been such great fans of the Dark Souls series, because it's a modern game with the difficulty of certain old games that gave you a sense of accomplishment when you beat them.

Deathlike, on 09 August 2014 - 09:52 PM, said:

I got 6 kills in an Awesome. I KILL STOLE EM ALL!!!
But seriously, you know how much work it is to get kills in an Awesome?
You are treated like an Atlas, but have bigger side torsos than a Victor. Nothing good comes from that.

Yeah, I started out trying to get through this challenge in my AWS-9M with 3 LPLs. I got good damage, but people ended up stealing my kills all the time, so I switched to my bread & butter mech. A Griffin 1N with 3xSRM6+Artemis and 3xMedlas. Got the job done a LOT faster.

[Onmyoudo]

So Alistair, if the numbers in your OP were just picked out of the air, can you give us 3 examples of challenges that you think are fair and skill based?

[Alistair Winter]

Onmyoudo, on 10 August 2014 - 01:35 AM, said:

So Alistair, if the numbers in your OP were just picked out of the air, can you give us 3 examples of challenges that you think are fair and skill based?

I don't know, I don't have access to real statistics like PGI, so I don't know much about the norm, except what I've seen personally or read on the forums. But I'll just give a bunch of examples

• Matchscore 100 or above. As far as I know, match score isn't just based on damage.
  
• 5 kills or more. Should be doable for many players, but I remember it took a few months since I started playing untill I got 5 kills in a single match. I don't even know if I regularly get 5 kills in a match every night I play, so that would be a fun challenge for me. Maybe solo queue only for this one.
  
• Destroy 15 components in 1 match. I don't know if this would lead to a lot of bad gameplay, because people started picking apart isolated mechs instead of helping their team. But it would also be fun to see some matches where people didn't go straight for the kill all the time.
  
• Do 1000 damage. Well, maybe 800 or 900 would be a better number, I don't know if more than 25% players would be able to do 1k damage, even running LRM Stalkers in the underhive. But 1000 has a nice ring to it. Then again, how about 888, or 777 as the minimum damage? Maybe that would be better.
  
• Cap all five bases in a single match of Conquest. I don't know if the game has a way of measuring this without adding new code. Basically, you would have to be on the square when the base goes from neutral to blue, and this would need to happen to Sigma, Epsilon, Kappa, Gamma and Theta in the same match.
  
• 10 savior kill bonuses in a single match. The way I understand it, if 2 friendly mechs attacking your target are below 50% health, you get the savior kill bonus for both friendly mechs. So 10 should be doable. I may have this wrong though.
  
• 2 kills by cockpit destruction in a single match. I almost never get these, so it would be a fun challenge to get 2 in one match. And when you need a cockpit kill, it should result in less FF, I think.

Again though, the actual numbers isn't the important thing to me. It's the overall philosophy behind making a challenge that requires a somewhat difficult feat in a single match, rather than just putting the time in. So I'm not going to argue back and forth if it should be 700, 800 or 900 damage. I'm just saying that any of these would be more fun for me, personally, than... 20 kills in 48 hours... 25 victories in 48 hours... collect 1 million C-bills in 48 hours.

It's kind of like the previous competitions where you needed to get the highest score in the course of a weekend, so people would be eating, drinking and going to the toilet in front of their computer, just to play as many matches as possible. Of course, you have to be skilled to win, but it's also a matter of being willing to just put in the time. I prefer a shorter window of opportunity.

[Onmyoudo]

I understand and agree with your point, Alistair, although I think your guesses at numbers are a bit high for the majority of the playerbase. Perhaps they would work, but ideally PGI might need different metrics or mechanics than what we have right now to make trulyskill based challenges.

[3rdworld]

Alistair Winter, on 10 August 2014 - 02:38 AM, said:

I don't know, I don't have access to real statistics like PGI, so I don't know much about the norm, except what I've seen personally or read on the forums. But I'll just give a bunch of examples

• Matchscore 100 or above. As far as I know, match score isn't just based on damage.
  
• 5 kills or more. Should be doable for many players, but I remember it took a few months since I started playing untill I got 5 kills in a single match. I don't even know if I regularly get 5 kills in a match every night I play, so that would be a fun challenge for me. Maybe solo queue only for this one.
  
• Destroy 15 components in 1 match. I don't know if this would lead to a lot of bad gameplay, because people started picking apart isolated mechs instead of helping their team. But it would also be fun to see some matches where people didn't go straight for the kill all the time.
  
• Do 1000 damage. Well, maybe 800 or 900 would be a better number, I don't know if more than 25% players would be able to do 1k damage, even running LRM Stalkers in the underhive. But 1000 has a nice ring to it. Then again, how about 888, or 777 as the minimum damage? Maybe that would be better.
  
• Cap all five bases in a single match of Conquest. I don't know if the game has a way of measuring this without adding new code. Basically, you would have to be on the square when the base goes from neutral to blue, and this would need to happen to Sigma, Epsilon, Kappa, Gamma and Theta in the same match.
  
• 10 savior kill bonuses in a single match. The way I understand it, if 2 friendly mechs attacking your target are below 50% health, you get the savior kill bonus for both friendly mechs. So 10 should be doable. I may have this wrong though.
  
• 2 kills by cockpit destruction in a single match. I almost never get these, so it would be a fun challenge to get 2 in one match. And when you need a cockpit kill, it should result in less FF, I think.

Again though, the actual numbers isn't the important thing to me. It's the overall philosophy behind making a challenge that requires a somewhat difficult feat in a single match, rather than just putting the time in. So I'm not going to argue back and forth if it should be 700, 800 or 900 damage. I'm just saying that any of these would be more fun for me, personally, than... 20 kills in 48 hours... 25 victories in 48 hours... collect 1 million C-bills in 48 hours.


It's kind of like the previous competitions where you needed to get the highest score in the course of a weekend, so people would be eating, drinking and going to the toilet in front of their computer, just to play as many matches as possible. Of course, you have to be skilled to win, but it's also a matter of being willing to just put in the time. I prefer a shorter window of opportunity.

Challenges are not really meant to be challenging, it is just to get people to play the game.

A really hard one that gave you a faction specific hero would be nice.

[A banana in the tailpipe]

Mycrus, on 09 August 2014 - 08:26 PM, said:

The best adventures starts by killing a few rats

I thought it was standing in front of a white house and opening the mailbox?

Ph30nix, on 09 August 2014 - 08:23 PM, said:

ive come to realize that for killing chain fired lrm5-lrm10 are the best, if you just want ot do as much damage as possible (or punch thru heavy AMS) thats when you group fire larger LRM's

Yep ^ (and ironically since you mention chain fired lrm5s... a goldenboy had the highest damage/kills on their team. >.>

Edited by lockwoodx, 10 August 2014 - 05:54 AM.