70 replies to this topic

[Goose]

lockwoodx, on 10 August 2014 - 07:22 AM, said:

ECM is the reason. Plain and simple.

If you can't figure out where the other guy is, or whom to shoot first, "mutual defense" gets invoked as a reason to play Meat Shield Lotto, and attempts to do recon becomes a point of derision.

[Lefty Lucy]

Bishop Steiner, on 10 August 2014 - 08:16 AM, said:

The ILLUSION of mechs lasting forever in Battletech is fostered by the fiction, and the fact that it took an HOUR to complete 4 turns on average, which actually represented FORTY SECONDS OF COMBAT. And in any of the situations I descriped at the outset most mechs didn't last 2 turns of fire, and even the >Atlas was down in 3-4 tops.

Yup. This combined with the fact that slow death does not equal "tactical depth" (counterstrike proves quite the opposite) and people who want slow TTK at the expense of *actual* tactical depth are simply clueless.

Zyllos, on 10 August 2014 - 08:18 AM, said:

I think the obvious reasons why mechs feel like paper is due to the amount of damage players can easily land on single locations. Also, this makes lighter mechs feel like nothing, if you get hit, you lose that section.

MWO is basically TT with every pilot a 0 gunner with a targeting computer.

[Bishop Steiner]

Lefty Lucy, on 10 August 2014 - 08:31 AM, said:

Yup. This combined with the fact that slow death does not equal "tactical depth" (counterstrike proves quite the opposite) and people who want slow TTK at the expense of *actual* tactical depth are simply clueless.



MWO is basically TT with every pilot a 0 gunner with a targeting computer.

or bad at the game and want to feel validated.

[Sandslice]

Bishop Steiner, on 10 August 2014 - 07:49 AM, said:

if mechs died much slower in MWO, I'd get bored real quick, just like i did in WoT. Once the shells start connecting, how long do tanks last IRL? If the shell is sufficient to penetrate? 1-2 hits, DONE.

It's basically the difference between armour = damage reduction / extra hit points, and armour = avoid damage but hell if you actually take damage. It can be hard to say which is better.

[Bishop Steiner]

Sandslice, on 10 August 2014 - 08:36 AM, said:

It's basically the difference between armour = damage reduction / extra hit points, and armour = avoid damage but hell if you actually take damage. It can be hard to say which is better.

true

[PappySmurf]

LUCY
[MWO is basically TT with every pilot a 0 gunner with a targeting computer.]

If I really think back on past MechWarrior2-4 games I believe all weapons were spread damage except for a few like the gauss riffles and a few Clan Ultra Ac weapons. This of course made the mechs last longer because you were not coring out whole sections at one time.

Really focus fire and pinpoint weapons damage did not occur much until MekTek made there mod and changed it all with focus fire weapons and NHUA garbage.

P.S NHUA= No Heat Unlimited Ammo

[ice trey]

Khobai, on 10 August 2014 - 07:14 AM, said:

Yep the problem with MWO is mechs die too fast. Which makes deathballing the best tactic by far. The result is that the game has very little tactical depth.

I think the problem is less that the mechs die too quickly, and more that the customization system in MWO has lead to game-changing escalation.

Had they kept the repair system, and made it expensive to take all those XL engines, DHS, and assault 'mechs, then you'd be seeing far more players trying to use low-tech light and medium mechs with single heat sinks, Atlases might go back to being the impenetrable wall of death, Missile boats will max out at 40 LRM volleys, and the average light might not be whipping around at 140+ kph.

But with no repair system, we get Dual AC20/Gauss Jagers and Cats, Artemis+LRM80 stalkers, the works... and these are now the standard. If you compare any of these builds to the Vanilla versions of each mech, you can see why it's no surprise how it is so hard to stay alive in MWO.

Prior to the inclusion of XL engines and DHS... or rather, prior to the elimination of repair costs, the game was far more survivable, because nobody could afford to make 70+ Damage Alpha mechs.

[Lefty Lucy]

ice trey, on 10 August 2014 - 08:53 AM, said:

I think the problem is less that the mechs die too quickly, and more that the customization system in MWO has lead to game-changing escalation.

Had they kept the repair system, and made it expensive to take all those XL engines, DHS, and assault 'mechs, then you'd be seeing far more players trying to use low-tech light and medium mechs with single heat sinks, Atlases might go back to being the impenetrable wall of death, Missile boats will max out at 40 LRM volleys, and the average light might not be whipping around at 140+ kph.

But with no repair system, we get Dual AC20/Gauss Jagers and Cats, Artemis+LRM80 stalkers, the works... and these are now the standard. If you compare any of these builds to the Vanilla versions of each mech, you can see why it's no surprise how it is so hard to stay alive in MWO.

Prior to the inclusion of XL engines and DHS... or rather, prior to the elimination of repair costs, the game was far more survivable, because nobody could afford to make 70+ Damage Alpha mechs.

The game's heat system is fundamentally broken for SHS. All this would do is make Clan mechs even more powerful against IS.

[MAXrobo]

While I admit I haven't played any world of tanks, I have watched a few tournaments and game play of it. I think a big factor in this is that in WoT third person view (and thus ridge peeking) is standard. It makes having situation awareness much easier.You don't have to worry as much about someone sneaking up on you, but you can also scout and make sure any corners you turn are safe before you bumble into 2 or 3 enemies. It lets you decides whether or not to engage a target or move into an area before the enemy even knows that you were there. This is especially true for scouts or any more mobile tanks.

From what I have seen, tanks in WoT don't actually live all that much longer than a battlemech. In both, 3-4 well placed shots will kill or cripple you, but you can turn and angle yourself to try and mitigate damage. also, I think WoT tanks actually have less maneuverability than a MWO battlemech. In WoT if you are flanked, the enemy can get multiple solid side shots in before you can turn your turret around to fight back, let alone spin your treads to try and deflect shots. A battlemech, in contrast, can spin its torso around and bring its full arsenal to bear on an opponent in a second or less. Also, a tank spinning its turret around allows you to shoot back, but you are still exposed to shots as most of your armor relies on the facing of the much slower turning treads. in mechwarrior however, both your armor and weapons are all focused in the much faster turning "turret" of a battlemech. This makes quick striking tactics much harder to pull off. You get less time to shoot unopposed because of the faster torso twist, and the shots you do fire are less meaningful because the location you target can move and shift much faster.

The end result of all this is that it is safer to group up with friends so that you can move without the fear of being outnumbered unexpectedly. And when you do find the enemy, you can put out as much firepower as possible as fast as possible, because it is very easy to spread out incoming fire and reduce any individual shot to a meaningless leg or arm hit.

[Scratx]

On the topic of "murderball is the most advanced tactic that PUGs can reliably use", very true. In WoT, between the wheel that lets you with just a key press and a mouse swipe send one of many standardized messages out (like "Help!" or "Attack!", etc), there's also a minimap that's constantly shown which you can also interact with to draw attention to map grid locations.

You don't need to chat at all to alert people to things, ask for assistance, etc.

MWO needs something similar.

[Bulvar Jorgensson]

Here is the Scenario

Mech humps a hill-o-lot gets ambushed by three poptart o trolls, three shots later sir humps a hill is dead, because the mean old trolls Gaused/PPC him into scrap.....Oh now why did this happen was there something sir humps did wrong, yip he stood on one spot bouncing back and forth, not noticing the Red smoke being Dropped on his large behind.....and why was this??

WE have NO COMMS in this game....unless you use a third party one.

How can a tactical warfare game succeed when 12 vs 12 has to work through an assumption that.

Players are competent enough to go with the Murder-ball Flow

Skilled enough to realise what the buttons do on their keyboard (Press the Bloody "R" button)

I fully endorse Bishops Steiners post on if you extend too far or make a stupid mistake which lands you in-front of 3 or more mechs you should get nuked and quite possibly die.

If the mechs/weapons do not need tweeked more, then some sort of In-game Voice needs to implemented for random drops to help co-ordinate this game better, going on visual alone is poor, and have you tried to use Text in the heat of a Mech battle????

Heck even after a mech is destroyed in this game the player usually quits the match before the end to go farm some more C-bills rather than become the ghost in the machine and act as an extra set of eyes and type locations of the enemy in the chat box.

No one is advocating that mechs need to last overly long in this game, but it should be who can produce a tactical advantage by holding an objective or neutralising said objective rather than the LETS RUN ROUND A HILL and the biggest Group with the most RED SMOKE wins.

[ice trey]

Lefty Lucy, on 10 August 2014 - 08:55 AM, said:

The game's heat system is fundamentally broken for SHS. All this would do is make Clan mechs even more powerful against IS.

As far as I'm concerned, had they never removed the repair mechanic, the clan stuff would have been implemented differently.

However, in my scenario, a player in a clan mech would be at an advantage in a match, sure, but they wouldn't be making any significant C-bills, because of the huge maintenance costs. They'd have to pull a LOT of weight in order to make the same C-bills had they taken a low-tech IS mech.

Also, in Clan VS IS matches, clans should have been a fully separate category of player, who then loses access to inner sphere mechs, and also have smaller force sizes compared to the IS players' team.

[PappySmurf]

I have to say this is one of the best threads I have read in a long time on the forums all the posts and topics represent a lot of what's wrong fundamentally with MWO and need to be fixed from weapons to social aspects to community involvement in the games progression.

But as long as PGI/IGP/DEVS keep us all on the island and will not listen to reason MWO will remain the same shallow FPS that it is and the hopes of the fans and players to see MWO evolve past its roots and become a true fun exciting want to play BattleTech/MechWarrior game will fade right along with its player base and funding.

[Henree]

how about large urban areas?

[Sarlic]

StaggerCheck, on 10 August 2014 - 06:50 AM, said:

Something struck me the other day while playing World of Tanks. I'd be playing MW: O right now, but it doesn't seem very stable atm. When it comes to the teams movements at the start of the match, it seems to me that teams gather up to create a murderball in MW: O, while teams in WoT split up to cover different avenues of advance. In both instances, to do otherwise is suicidal to your survivability and chances to win. If you split off from the pack in MW: O, it seems almost 100% certain that you'll run into the enemy murderball and get vaporized in under five seconds. In WoT, if the whole team funnels down one avenue of advance, the team ultimately gets flanked and obliterated.

So... why the difference? Is it map structure, layout and size? Spotting mechanics of the two games? The nature of the weapon systems, rate of fire or armour values? Perhaps it is the availability of arty and airstrikes for every Mech in MechWarrior: Online, although that would tend to dissuade the formation of murderballs, one should think.


A lot of similarities between the two games exist. Artillery in WoT can shoot over terrain features much like the LRMs in MW: O, but they seem to suffer from close contact much more than LRM boats do in MW: O... just easier to kill off, I'd say. Scouts are fast in both games and hard to hit as a general rule.

So, the two tactical styles remain in two different, yet similar games. I think it would be interesting to discuss why the different tactics exist in both games, and why doing otherwise generally leads to defeat.

It's because there are no clear roles.

[Felbombling]

Well, there does still seem to be multiple items missing from the game still that could ultimately affect the way the game is played. I'm thinking along the lines of bonus experience for scouting primarily, but I try to think of MechWarrior: Online as a jigsaw puzzle that is being put together [rather slowly], so the missing elements have a huge impact. PGI leaving things out of whack for extended periods of time certainly doesn't help much. As far as time to kill goes, I wouldn't mind seeing armour factor increases as weight class goes up to help counter the front loaded damage meta. That could go a long way in making the different classes have a more immersive durability 'feel' to them. I just get the feeling sometimes that the Assault Mechs aren't 'tanky' enough, while the Light Mechs either suffer catastrophic damage in a single alpha, or they feel more 'tanky' than an Assault Mech three times their own mass. Certainly this all plays into the tactics that have developed over time for MW: O.

I see good points being made by everybody in the thread so far, which is good. Things that hadn't crossed my mind and things I've long railed against.

[TB Freelancer]

PappySmurf, on 10 August 2014 - 07:32 AM, said:

In MEchWarrior2-4 the mechs were tougher and more agile so you could evade incoming fire and evade enemy mechs as a scout or solo fighter.I remember a league game where I was the last player against 6 enemy mechs it was a medium battle only and I was able to take out 5 mechs before the last enemy killed me just using tactics and skill and im just a average player.

MWO offers nothing like the older PC CD MechWarrior games had to offer as far as meta choices tactical choices or just plain fun as in social and league play dam I miss playing MechWarrior.MWO is such a shallow MechWarrior experience I can understand why new players just install then bail on the game.

Yeah a lot of stuff missing now days. Being able to look left, look right, the rear view camera, even being able to shoot certain weapons depending on location in those views.

Honestly I think the single biggest mistake PGI made was to speed things up too much and to reduce knock to nothing more than a visual effect, as well as pulling knock downs right out of the game.

Back in MW4 long range, high damage weapons had slow recycles. Heavy hitting close range weapons had faster recycles, and could twist a mechs torso right around. That just didn't slow down the TTK, it gave different roles distinct advantages over one another. A dedicated brawler would absolutely murder any dedicated sniper once in range.

Visually and movement wise the game feels better, but in comparison to the older games it just feels like everything fires too fast and does nothing but make noise and cause visual effects. Its all just window dressing.

I wish my AC20 would still twist a mediums torso 90 degrees, even knock it on its ass.
I wish my PPCs and Gauss still had amazingly fast projectiles, and SLOW recycle times.
I wish I could still look left and fire my left arm at an enemy, same for the right.
I wish I still had my rear view camera back.
I wish I still had flares to light up an enemy or blind him.
I wish PPCs still caused that cool electrical interference to an enemies cockpit.
I wish I could still aim my lasers independent of torso twist like MW3.

Its all just lostech....

[Marmon Rzohr]

I don't think MWO needs to be more like WoT. It has it's own unique style and mechs are not too fragile at all. The fact that a single pilot can carry the game proves this quite well.

However the point the OP made about map tactics and muderballing is an interesting one. Using multiple avenues and routes on a map is unusual in MWO because of the way the maps are designed. They are either small or there simply aren't viable flanking routes.

Maps in MWO favour standoffs or blitz attacks. All the maps are small compared to the speed of battle mechs. If you could realistcally get capped, it would force people to watch multiple approaches. Even the big maps like Alpine are no good because some positions are too dominant. No map should allow a team to get into a dominant position without a fight. Therma is actually quite good in this regard, but all the paths apart from the one through the center are just too labyrinthine and it takes far too long to threaten the enemy cap and even then they have too much time to respond.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Its multiple things but mostly map design in my opinion.

The thing about WoTs is that tanks are slow, all of them so if you neglect one side of the map or another and the enemy comes from that side, you cannot prevent them from capping. Therefore to prevent this from happening, you need to cover all angles of approach.

Another thing is that there is no reason to split up in MWO. Maps are generally tiny and there is no objectives far enough away you can't reach it in about 30 seconds or so unless you are in a super slow Assault.

The solution would be maps of very large scale, perhaps 5x larger than Alpine that have multiple, vital objectives scattered about the map that absolutely had to be taken, destroyed or otherwise addressed in some form or fashion. This would require the team to split off lances to insure they were meeting these objectives all across the map simultaneously.

Also I would get away entirely from the tournament style play we have now and go to a garage battle. Make the matches last say 30 mins long and the winner of the battle is the one with the most victory points gained from a combination of killing enemy mechs (relatively small contribution) and completing objectives (the major contribution to winning) but allow players to keep bringing mechs in and reinforcing as the battle progresses. Also the extremely large map now allow for roles. You can drop in an Assault but what about those objectives way on the other side of the map from your initial drop ship? You probably can't get there in an assault so maybe you should drop into a fast medium instead. Then again, what about the enemy supply dump on the other side of the map (where you can go to repair and rearm), maybe I should drop in a light and make a long flank rush to their supply dump to destroy it for a huge lump of victory points and to deprive the enemy of being able to rearm and reload for the rest of the match.

Honestly, this is how MWO should be, not this crap we have now. Really wish PGI would get out of greed mode and just build the game part of this game already. They could make tons more profit if they could just stop thinking so damn short term with this game.

Edited by Viktor Drake, 10 August 2014 - 10:25 AM.

[TB Freelancer]

Viktor Drake, on 10 August 2014 - 10:25 AM, said:

Its multiple things but mostly map design in my opinion.

The thing about WoTs is that tanks are slow, all of them so if you neglect one side of the map or another and the enemy comes from that side, you cannot prevent them from capping. Therefore to prevent this from happening, you need to cover all angles of approach.

Another thing is that there is no reason to split up in MWO. Maps are generally tiny and there is no objectives far enough away you can't reach it in about 30 seconds or so unless you are in a super slow Assault.

The solution would be maps of very large scale, perhaps 5x larger than Alpine that have multiple, vital objectives scattered about the map that absolutely had to be taken, destroyed or otherwise addressed in some form or fashion. This would require the team to split off lances to insure they were meeting these objectives all across the map simultaneously.

Also I would get away entirely from the tournament style play we have now and go to a garage battle. Make the matches last say 30 mins long and the winner of the battle is the one with the most victory points gained from a combination of killing enemy mechs (relatively small contribution) and completing objectives (the major contribution to winning) but allow players to keep bringing mechs in and reinforcing as the battle progresses. Also the extremely large map now allow for roles. You can drop in an Assault but what about those objectives way on the other side of the map from your initial drop ship? You probably can't get there in an assault so maybe you should drop into a fast medium instead. Then again, what about the enemy supply dump on the other side of the map (where you can go to repair and rearm), maybe I should drop in a light and make a long flank rush to their supply dump to destroy it for a huge lump of victory points and to deprive the enemy of being able to rearm and reload for the rest of the match.

Honestly, this is how MWO should be, not this crap we have now. Really wish PGI would get out of greed mode and just build the game part of this game already. They could make tons more profit if they could just stop thinking so damn short term with this game.

Sounds an awful lot like your suggesting some form of respawn. HERESY! HERESY I SAY!

DON'T YOU KNOW THE MINDLESS PURISTS ARE DEAD SET AGAINST IT?
No matter how much it would improve the game experience, not matter how much it would skyrocket this game's popularity?

EDIT: Never mind the fact that the most popular formats in EVERY previous Mechwarrior title involved respawn or wave respawn.

Edited by TB Freelancer, 10 August 2014 - 11:58 AM.