76 replies to this topic

[Nathan Foxbane]

It is a bit of pity of the Kill 'em All mentality that Skirmish has spawned. I remember when it was common courtesy if the last couple 'Mechs powered down in surrender to cap instead of kill.

[El Bandito]

1453 R, on 22 September 2014 - 03:08 AM, said:

First of all, it strikes me as being the obvious case that a player who withdraws from the match is conceding it, and as such a Withdraw counts as a loss for that player, regardless of the actual outcome of that match. The player still gains any rewards they earned through the rest of the game, assists and spots and such, but no victory credit even if by a miracle of awesomeness their team pulls it out without them.

NO. By withdrawing and chickening out of the match, one should forfeit ALL rewards. That's the price of saving face.

Just like how one intentionally runs out of bounds.

Edited by El Bandito, 22 September 2014 - 08:19 PM.

[1453 R]

El Bandito, on 22 September 2014 - 08:17 PM, said:

NO. By withdrawing and chickening out of the match, one should forfeit ALL rewards. That's the price of saving face.

Just like how one intentionally runs out of bounds.

*Sigh*

People are just determined to make the red team's life as utterly miserable as they possibly can, eh? Not a single shred of decency or respect for the fellow players who're making your fun night of Mechwarrior Online possible by providing opponents? Gotta grind that heel, make 'em BLEED for having the temerity to lose to you? Or really, given the general opinions in here, just make 'em bleed at all times, for any reason?

Sometimes I wonder why I bother.

[Mystere]

1453 R, on 22 September 2014 - 08:09 PM, said:

Community Warfare offers me absolutely nothing. I'll never partake in it because I can never partake in it, because only players who're part of a massive, rigidly organized player-run group are able to participate in Community Warfare. It has no role or place for solo players. The only thing Community Warfare may let me do is hurl myself alone in the teeth of a prepared, highly-coordinated league group twelve-man, and if I want to do that I'll go dial up my buddy Pierce and scratch off the 'alone' part.

So no; pardon me if I'm going to remain at least a little bit invested in the public drop game modes I'm still allowed to play.

If CW is designed well enough, solo players like you and I will be an integral part of it. It was never intended to be an organized group-only thing.

[El Bandito]

1453 R, on 22 September 2014 - 08:26 PM, said:

*Sigh*

People are just determined to make the red team's life as utterly miserable as they possibly can, eh? Not a single shred of decency or respect for the fellow players who're making your fun night of Mechwarrior Online possible by providing opponents? Gotta grind that heel, make 'em BLEED for having the temerity to lose to you? Or really, given the general opinions in here, just make 'em bleed at all times, for any reason?

Sometimes I wonder why I bother.

My opponents only make my night fun when they DIE. You dare talk about disrespect when you do not have the balls to die like a warrior and give me the damage/kill/assist reward? That's not an opponent I wish to fight in the first place.
If you want to cut losses and run, that's fine, but you are going to forfeit all rewards just like how you are denying the opposing team their rewards by damaging/killing you.

Edited by El Bandito, 22 September 2014 - 09:07 PM.

[1453 R]

El Bandito, on 22 September 2014 - 09:04 PM, said:

My opponents only make my night fun when they DIE. You dare talk about disrespect when you do not have the balls to die like a warrior and give me the damage/kill/assist reward? That's not an opponent I wish to fight in the first place.
If you want to cut losses and run, that's fine, but you are going to forfeit all rewards just like how you are denying the opposing team their rewards by damaging/killing you.

I'll remember that when you're the one under my guns.

All I'm asking for is courtesy. Clearly I'm not going to get it, but I thought I'd try. Thanks for being a fantastic example of why I shouldn't have bothered, I guess.

Mystere, on 22 September 2014 - 08:28 PM, said:

If CW is designed well enough, solo players like you and I will be an integral part of it. It was never intended to be an organized group-only thing.

The Community™ doesn't want CW to be designed such that solos can participate. The majority of folks I've seen are in favor, some wildly in favor, of making CW prohibitively difficult for anyone not in an organized unit to engage in, as a sort of Living World replacement for player-organized leagues. The notion seems to be that if you're not Serious About MechWarrior(C), to the point where you're willing to join a comp unit and get in those mandatory 10h/week practice slots, then you have no business participating in Community Warfare and can stay in Puglandia with the rest of the filthy casuals.

[Mystere]

1453 R, on 22 September 2014 - 09:19 PM, said:

The Community™ doesn't want CW to be designed such that solos can participate.

Where did you get that idea? It's not happening that way.

If by "Community™" you mean the self-proclaimed "ultra-elite" "high Elo" "competitive" types, well, they're not getting what they want. They can pound sand until their hands bleed for all I care.

[NeoCodex]

Mystere, on 22 September 2014 - 07:57 PM, said:

Note how Russ said in another thread that Elo and 3/3/3/3 will not be used in CW. If that is indeed the case (and I will be extremely ecstatic if that becomes so), then all the time spent on Elo and 3/3/3/3 was time wasted.

I'm shocked to read that. At least I expected they would use the 3's rule, this kind of defeats the purpose of the different weight chassis too, and shouldn't there be a dropship tonnage limit, so 3/3/3/3..? I'll be surprised if they lift all restrictions for CW.

As for the OP, it sounds like you had many consistent negative experiences with trying to commanding the pugs (well, at least that's probably how they've seen it, you just wanted to work together with everyone) by yourself trough use of ingame chat without ever participating in a group with voice comms. Still don't know if those were solo drops or team drops. Ingame chat is not the best idea to take a command role in pug games, but it's a bit of a gamble, sometimes you will get nice people that will work with you, other times you will get complete asswhipes that will refuse to listen and rather do smack talk.


But I still don't get it why is this such a problem with skirmish mode specifically. Are you sure you're not just over generalising it? I'd encounter same problems from time to time with revolting pugs regarding of the game mode and solo/team queue, I never felt any kind of different "atmosphere" in a certain game mode before.

[Slepnir]

Joseph Mallan, on 22 September 2014 - 03:21 AM, said:

I feel your pain. I do really. But Withdrawal in CBT is a Mech Death Sentence except when it is part of the scenario rules.

Exiting the map Intentionally or not Destroys the exiting Mech.

The Exceptions:
Units having a Flanking Special Perk, or the Scenario calls for allowing any Mech on Team A (and sometimes B ) to retreat under "X" conditions, usually 75% casualties, or 50% personal damage. NOTE: You are NOT guaranteed safe passage in either case.

So Retreat should be an option, but it should not be a "Exit the game Free" option.

Your a little off on the exceptions-
1. off board movement, some cannon units have the perk to move off board but you have to keep track of their movement so you can figure out where they can come back onto the board.
2.forced withdrawl rules: mechs are expensive and they rarely fight to the death. under forced withdrawl any mech suffering internal damage on 3 limbs or 2 torso's. the pilot may choose flee the combat zone to preserve the mech. the mechs in question immediately move to the closes table edge to leave the combat and are no longer considered active targets.

forced withdraw rules are important to speed TT games up and salvage mechs in progressive story campaigns.

Used it last weekend in fact, my galahad/glass spider II got both his left and right torso's stripped, taking minor internal hits while fighting ghost bears. so he turned around and left the battle.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

1453 R, on 22 September 2014 - 08:26 PM, said:

*Sigh*

People are just determined to make the red team's life as utterly miserable as they possibly can, eh? Not a single shred of decency or respect for the fellow players who're making your fun night of Mechwarrior Online possible by providing opponents? Gotta grind that heel, make 'em BLEED for having the temerity to lose to you? Or really, given the general opinions in here, just make 'em bleed at all times, for any reason?

Sometimes I wonder why I bother.

But in this case he is right, your not making his night fun by refusing to play and withdrawing.

Without an RnR system in play there is zero point in a withdraw feature.

It's just a defeatist mechanic.

You open a game to play, so play.

Win Lose or Draw, just play the damn game.

Edited by DV McKenna, 23 September 2014 - 12:32 AM.

[Maxx Blue]

I have to agree that a withdraw option doesn't make a whole lot of sense at this point. The game doesn't apply any penalties to you as a player when you die, so functionally there isn't really an additional reward other than from a role-playing aspect. However, since it would deny the other team the rewards from damage, a kill, tag/narc, etc. it does still actually take something away from them. Right now, you can run OOB (which I honestly thought was against the TOS for a long time, but isn't), intentionally overheat, quit the match, try to jump off some hills and leg yourself to death, etc. Several of those options are functionally similar to what you propose: They let you keep whatever rewards you have to that point, and take your mech out of the match as a target for the enemy. I don't see the need to add extra code to accomplish the same thing with a special game mechanic. I get that you don't like overheating and blowing yourself up or legging yourself to death, but the only big difference between doing either one of those things and withdrawing is the name we give it.

The biggest problem with using Withdraw, or any of the suicide options that we already have, is that it punishes the enemy team. They loose the opportunity to pick up assists, a kill, damage and all the other potential XP/CBill generators from the mech that took its self out of the fight. While a mech that retreats/suicides looses those same opportunities, typically they are typically giving up much less than the enemy team is loosing if their team is already in a bad position. So, unless you are proposing to give everyone on the enemy team an XP/CBill reward for every mech that retreats, I would still consider it a 'rude' thing to do.

I just don't see the need for retreat, as you proposed it, right now.

Edited by Maxx Blue, 23 September 2014 - 06:41 AM.

[Monsoon]

In answering the OP's suggestion (and not reading any of the other posts).

My suggestion (if not already mentioned) is a voting system. A 'surrender' option would first off not be available, until certain requirements were met, such as (for example): 5 minutes into the match, a loss of 75% of your forces, etc. When these triggers are met, then the remaining living players on a loosing team could initiate a 'surrender' request.
The first option for a voting system would be to have all fellow teammates then vote, with a majority vote winning. This is of active players, so that if there are two disconnects, then the majority vote would be out of 10 instead of out of 12.

Another option for the vote could be an unanimous vote of all surviving players.

With either option, you could either limit the surrender vote to only once a match, or as an alternative, put it on a timer, so that if a vote fails, a player can't spam the voting process all over again.

The requirements would hopefully avoid situations where people would try to initiate the vote unnecessarily, like at the beginning of a match, or when you still have the bulk of your forces. But which would allow for a match that is clearly lost, not to drag on for another 5+ minutes.

Vote or no vote, it still wouldn't have any control over players disconnecting, but that's really another problem all together.

The problem of a vote, as I see it, would be its on-screen presence. We certainly wouldn't want the screen to pop-up while we're in the middle of a heated exchange with an opponent. But without some sort of vote, a surrender option would really not be much different from a disconnect. As you wouldn't be able to control individuals from dropping out of a match, whether they did it 'officially' or not.

Edited by Monsoon, 25 September 2014 - 06:56 AM.

[OznerpaG]

a few good points brought up in the CW thread

if we are going to respawn after we die in CW planet drops using the 4 different mechs we will drop with, sometimes you'r going to end up with the atlas on 1 leg and no torso, and no enemy is going to be stupid enough to kill you since it's tying up an enemy player in a non-functional mech

in that case you'l need the option to 'withdraw' from your current mech to climb into a functional one. and if the enemy wins they should get a salvage reward for leaving a repairable mech on the battlefield

maybe you should also get a 1min spawn penalty for voluntarily withdrawing or something

Edited by JagdFlanker, 26 September 2014 - 02:50 PM.

[Nathan Foxbane]

JagdFlanker, on 26 September 2014 - 02:48 PM, said:

a few good points brought up in the CW thread

if we are going to respawn after we die in CW planet drops using the 4 different mechs we will drop with, sometimes you'r going to end up with the atlas on 1 leg and no torso, and no enemy is going to be stupid enough to kill you since it's tying up an enemy player in a non-functional mech

in that case you'l need the option to 'withdraw' from your current mech to climb into a functional one. and if the enemy wins they should get a salvage reward for leaving a repairable mech on the battlefield

maybe you should also get a 1min spawn penalty for voluntarily withdrawing or something

Maybe have the servers run a check to see if all weapons other than TAG and AMS are destroyed or expended all their ammo. If you have functional weapons your withdrawal request is denied.

Assuming such an option is reasonably technically feasible.

Edited by Nathan Foxbane, 26 September 2014 - 02:56 PM.

[OznerpaG]

go by dmg% - if you have no weapons left then chances are you'r at less than 50%

withdraw from a mech that's still near 100%, you should be finishing that match with zero CB and loyalty points since you'r considered a coward for running

[Corduroy Rab]

No.

The upside of having a surrender/flee option is not outweighed by the potential downside, not by a long shot. I have only played ~350 games and of those only one has really be so annoying (also in my case with a bottom camping team on HPG) that this feature would have been necessary - even then my solution was just suicide rushing in so i could quit the match and play another mech.

For the rare cases where this mechanic might have an upside I fear that if something like this existed in game what you would see is that after first blood you would have teams surrender snowball that that would be terrible for the game. Perhaps one could design a system convoluted enough to prevent abuse, then we are spending dev time on a very edge situation. Personally, if PGI was to spend dev time on something convoluted I would rather they try to implement the Axeman .

Games that I have played that have a surrender mechanic are all MOBAs where the match length can get in excess of an hour, for these games where a team can get very far behind and end up wasting 30-mins of their lives because their opponents want to farm kills and not end the game make sense. However, given the average game length for MWO is 6 minutes and for these games were you want a surrender mechanic you might end up wasting 10 minutes if you don't want to suicide I just cannot see having this being worth it especially given the potential negative consequences.

Edit. For CW where matches last longer that might change circumstances, but I still would have a hard time supporting this mechanic.

Edited by Corduroy Rab, 26 September 2014 - 06:09 PM.

[Scratx]

Is there actually a problem, Skirmish aside? Only skirmish forces you to win by killing everything. Everything else, just win by cap/points and you're good.

Seriously, CW is where some sort of pilot ejection makes sense. Standard matches, nope.