179 replies to this topic

[Jman5]

People who play with me, know I have very little patience for players who get "left behind" as the team pushes aggressively. Despite what many people say over and over, 9 times out of 10 players are not left behind. They stay behind either by stopping in their tracks while the rest of the team moves, or by taking round-about paths that make keeping up impossible.

You see this sort of blame-game coming from a lot of assaults particularly direwolves who would like you to believe that they are physically incapable of keeping up with a standard slow-push. I get told I simply don't get it since I play a hunchback, so let's load up the trial dire-wolf and look at a common situation of assault-angst: The River City Skirmish spawn by the Boat.



Spawning there let's see how long it takes to get to the citadel bend at d4 in a direwolf without speedtweak.



About 1 minute +/- 10 seconds in the slowest mech without speed tweak.

Let's look at where you typically see players that spawn by the boat at the 1 minute mark. This is a real world game where our banshee buddy is taking his first shot at the direwolf.



Wow, he's only gone about half the distance we did in our test and he probably has speed tweak too.

As you can see there can be a huge difference in distance covered by just moving a little more efficiently. Also never forget that you are an assault pilot weilding a ridiculous amount of firepower. Sure, I may be able to get a few shots on you, but you've got a 60 damage alpha to answer back as you move. Too often people seem to either stop and shoot, or just straight up die without firing a shot.

So next time you load up your big-bad-direwolf and you find yourself in a tricky spawn, don't just give up and say it's impossible. Think about how you can get to where you need to be faster.

And stop blaming your team for leaving you behind.

[luxebo]

Being a Dire Wolf TRIAL is an excuse though.

However, I hate the Dire Whales that stay so much farther from the team and then the other Dire Whale that made it with the rest was from the SAME lance. That is really annoying, but what can we say. Puglife is the only answer.

*I remember that one time this Raven 3L with 2 ERLL was complaining about how he got left behind.

[Wintersdark]

While I support this post entirely, I'll make a couple comments:

Comment The First: You used the smallest, easiest to navigate map as an example. A direwolf should NOT be "left behind" on this map unless the whole team is doing that horribly awful circle-racing game, in which case there's little you can do but take cover and engage about half way around. On Alpine, Being Left Behind on charlie spawn is a very real and potentially unavoidable issue.

HOWEVER! A caveat to the above is that since the Solo queue has been changed to spawn all the assaults+heaviest heavy together, you should be close to the slowest members of your team - move efficiently, and it's highly unlikely you'll be far from the other assaults unless you had the misfortune to spawn alongside a bunch of 80+kph assaults who tear off immediately.

Comment The Second: Absolutely in support of your overall point - The key is to understand your mech, it's limitations, and the situation.

Spawned at Charlie on Caustic? Yeah, you book ass immediately towards the bulk of your team. The most important point to keep in mind is this:

If you return fire against a lance peeking over the ridge near you, you will die. Fast mechs that spawn opposite you can and often will peek over that ridge. Due to the Direwolf's limited torso twist, in order to return fire against them you need to stop progress towards your teammates. Doing so ensures you'll be left behind.

You're in an assault mech, and they're lighter, faster mechs. You can take the pokes, just run to your team, THEN repay them for their impudence.

Ultimately, in 90% of circumstances:

If you got left behind, isolated and killed? It's your own damn fault; and not because you picked a slow mech.

[Glythe]

You won't get the very most backspawn unless you are in a real game. When you are the back DW in the bad spawn with some traffic then you will die if the enemy team rushes down on you (or you'll be so messed up you wish you could respawn in a new game).

Also I'd like to point out that Nascar isn't a valid tactic (aside from the point that camping in good terrain is always easier than assaulting). You are essentially gambling that your side will circle faster than the other side. In a pub game you have no idea if people are in trials or fully decked out monsters. If you're the fast crew it can be "exciting" to chase down heavier guys..... but what you are really doing is leaving your team's slowest guys to be eaten as well. That's just not nice. If there were no team kill penalty I'd shoot you in the back for trying to leave me as bait. I am not your pawn and I will not be used. If you refuse to play in a way where we can help each other then you can go to hell.


If you have ever seen the Kingdom of Heaven (and actually paid attention) you should realize that sometimes you should not attack the enemy no matter how tempting the opportunity might seem. The maps in this game generally feature terrain that vastly favors specific areas against an approach from any angle (other than out of bounds). If you are familiar with the phrase "crossing the T" then you will understand that it is better to defend than to attack.

Edited by Glythe, 05 November 2014 - 05:26 PM.

[WarZ]

Except you are taking a one off instance where the pilot is doing what you are complaining about. More often than not its the lights, mediums, and quite a number of heavies, who run off to the engagement point that THEY choose, leaving the assaults to plod up to the group. What you "faster" mech pilots should be doing is looking at the map, seeing where the assault lance STARTS at, then choosing a point to engage the enemy that is CLOSEST to the assault lance. But that almost NEVER happens. Usually 2 lances run off to where THEY want to fight, and FORCE the assaults to close to the group in order to deathball, or be left on thier own to be overwhelmed.

I am a faster mech pilot. I prefer mediums and fast heavies and I am perfectly aware of this, I'll even chat the team to inform them to stay near the assaults, or to choose a rally point which I know they can comfortably reach. But guess what ... rarely do people acknowledge this fact, much less try to accomodate it. The fact is the team who tries to stay in area of their assaults is almost always the successful team.

So instead of just doing what YOU want to do, perhaps you could do whats best for your TEAM. Consider its makeup and starting positions.

Edited by WarZ, 05 November 2014 - 05:16 PM.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

no; **** teammates leave your assaults behind and I seriously doubt QQ does that.

[Dauntless Blint]

If you are too pig headed to accommodate or consider a slow assault then there's not much anyone can tell you about being a team player because of selfish play style, either, is there,instead of being angry try some common sense instead,A slow assault caught in the open is dead if anyone brought LRM's or kited by a good light pilot,If you want to throw away that much fire power and damage soak because you don't like mutual support,(which by the way is the whole premise of this game)

You like to play chase the enemy tail fight which just kill's the slowest of each team systematically.That's the strategy you have chosen.

Otherwise if lucky assault's can hold a line with cover supported by a handful of other's while you try and execute a pincer/flanking movement.If we use the Dire Wolf for example why would you throw away an asset that can take down an Atlas in 5-10 second's just because you don't like it's speed or increased need for cover.That specific mech need's a close to medium range Ambush to be most effective in a situation where the enemy has to back away due to the whale being supported.

This is 2 example's of a supported Assault...
(the image to portray an unsupported slow assault is nil because why would I capture no kill's and under 400 damage and if lucky at that)

Edited by CorditeJunkie, 05 November 2014 - 05:45 PM.

[Wintersdark]

This is, if you're in a slow assault in a PUG, you need to understand the reality of your situation and behave accordingly.

Jman's point is sound.

It's nearly impossible to be actually left behind if you play correctly for a pug, not like you would in the group queue unless:

A) It's one of those terrible circleracing Skirmish matches, or
You're on Alpine at Charlie spawn.

In any other circumstance, you're fine if you play correctly.

[FrupertApricot]

That is what balances them. That said our maps suck in this regard.

[Carrioncrows]

Also

Edited by Carrioncrows, 05 November 2014 - 05:36 PM.

[MadPanda]

I commonly think to myself at the beginning of games "Am I in the selected few who are not AFK at the start of a match"? It amazes me time after time how long people take to get a move on, especially on Conquest mode. I can't tell how often I've been first to the cap point in my *gasp* assault mech and a lot faster heavies and mediums trailing me simply because they don't start up right away as the game starts. So the problem isnt the time it takes to get somewhere, the problem is that many people don't start moving when the match starts. Why? I have no idea.

[Monkey Lover]

I wonder what the other team was doing. In the first 30 seconds they should have cored you back out and been raining lrms on you....

[riverslq]

well, you're ******* wrong
i spawned with 2 other dwolves on river city
we started moving, and by the time we got to the dropship on top which is a few hundred feet from where we spawned, here comes 2 fast mediums. call for help, noone turns around, start walking backwards to not take hits to the back. first dwolf down, 3-4 more mechs join up, we're ******. noone helped.

so that's a nice idea and all, but when you have to maneuver through all that **** at the top of river city from spawn to even make it to the rest of the drop? you're ******.

48kph.
death by pug.

[Cion]

When direwhales complain about that on River City in the likes of "stupid team always leaves assaults behind (dead)" I kindly tell him that no one forces him to ride a Direwhale every game.

Yes, a 100 tonner is SLOW. that's your choice to trade speed and maneuverability for extreme firepower. Either work to handle the weakness of the mech you take or choose another mech.

An assault complaining (in certain occasions) that he was abandoned is about the same as a Light complaining that he doesn't have enough firepower and exclaiming "Why did the team not fire at the target I was firing at??!"

[Wintersdark]

MadPanda, on 05 November 2014 - 05:27 PM, said:

I commonly think to myself at the beginning of games "Am I in the selected few who are not AFK at the start of a match"? It amazes me time after time how long people take to get a move on, especially on Conquest mode. I can't tell how often I've been first to the cap point in my *gasp* assault mech and a lot faster heavies and mediums trailing me simply because they don't start up right away as the game starts. So the problem isnt the time it takes to get somewhere, the problem is that many people don't start moving when the match starts. Why? I have no idea.

I often wonder this, too. It's not uncommon for me to outrun most teammates in my Direwolf, simply because I'm at max forward speed to where I need to be the instant Betty is saying "All systems nominal".

Yet it seems half the team is full of people who are too busy licking windows to start moving.

Then they cry because they got left behind.

[Green Mamba]

One thing that would help is to remove the Spread of lances and go back to all lances dropping together

[Koniving]

Anyone remember back when the game was reasonably more true to Battletech, where slow mechs at 64.8 kph were viable, Dragons were kings, and 97 kph was hella-fast?


"Want a mech that can level a city....but take a day to reach it?"
Back then Atlases went 48.6 kph stock.
And were typically customized to go 32 kph...
....and were still unstoppable gods of the battlefield to be feared unless 3 to 4 players converged on him simultaneously.
Even then, it could knock you down and keep on trucking as if you were a bowling pin.

I miss those days.

Edited by Koniving, 05 November 2014 - 05:35 PM.

[El Bandito]

Jman5, on 05 November 2014 - 04:57 PM, said:

People who play with me, know I have very little patience for players who get "left behind" as the team pushes aggressively. Despite what many people say over and over, 9 times out of 10 players are not left behind. They stay behind either by stopping in their tracks while the rest of the team moves, or by taking round-about paths that make keeping up impossible.

You see this sort of blame-game coming from a lot of assaults particularly direwolves who would like you to believe that they are physically incapable of keeping up with a standard slow-push. I get told I simply don't get it since I play a hunchback, so let's load up the trial dire-wolf and look at a common situation of assault-angst: The River City Skirmish spawn by the Boat.



Spawning there let's see how long it takes to get to the citadel bend at d4 in a direwolf without speedtweak.



About 1 minute +/- 10 seconds in the slowest mech without speed tweak.

Let's look at where you typically see players that spawn by the boat at the 1 minute mark. This is a real world game where our banshee buddy is taking his first shot at the direwolf.



Wow, he's only gone about half the distance we did in our test and he probably has speed tweak too.

As you can see there can be a huge difference in distance covered by just moving a little more efficiently. Also never forget that you are an assault pilot weilding a ridiculous amount of firepower. Sure, I may be able to get a few shots on you, but you've got a 60 damage alpha to answer back as you move. Too often people seem to either stop and shoot, or just straight up die without firing a shot.

So next time you load up your big-bad-direwolf and you find yourself in a tricky spawn, don't just give up and say it's impossible. Think about how you can get to where you need to be faster.

And stop blaming your team for leaving you behind.

Meh. The computer that your playing on matters a lot. 90% of the times, I am the first guy to move from my lance. Does that mean 90% of the puggers don't know how to rotate right? No. They are simply still loading. You wont believe how ancient the machines these guys run MWO on. And then they QQ about LRM explosions killing their FPS.

Edited by El Bandito, 05 November 2014 - 05:40 PM.

[Agent 0 Fortune]

MadPanda, on 05 November 2014 - 05:27 PM, said:

I commonly think to myself at the beginning of games "Am I in the selected few who are not AFK at the start of a match"? It amazes me time after time how long people take to get a move on, especially on Conquest mode. I can't tell how often I've been first to the cap point in my *gasp* assault mech and a lot faster heavies and mediums trailing me simply because they don't start up right away as the game starts. So the problem isnt the time it takes to get somewhere, the problem is that many people don't start moving when the match starts. Why? I have no idea.

I've watched them, they usually sit idle for a few seconds. Then alpha all of their weapon towards the nearest ally "to check heat". Then they write their name in the snow with lasers, before finally hitting the throttle, of course they usually head in the wrong direction for 30 seconds, before correcting, or just walking into a wall, while they lick the Cheetos dust off their fingers.

[Wintersdark]

riverslq, on 05 November 2014 - 05:30 PM, said:

well, you're ******* wrong
i spawned with 2 other dwolves on river city
we started moving, and by the time we got to the dropship on top which is a few hundred feet from where we spawned, here comes 2 fast mediums. call for help, noone turns around, start walking backwards to not take hits to the back. first dwolf down, 3-4 more mechs join up, we're ******. noone helped.

so that's a nice idea and all, but when you have to maneuver through all that **** at the top of river city from spawn to even make it to the rest of the drop? you're ******.

48kph.
death by pug.

I play Direwolves regularly, and have since day one with the Clan release.

In that time, I have never once had that issue on River City. I've suffered from circle-race deaths, yes, but I've NEVER had an issue with being overrun by mediums. You don't need to turn and fight them, just twist enough to take hits on your arms, not your back while still moving at full speed to your team.

With that said, if you're in a group of 3 Direwolves, you can also elect to simply crush your opposition too; the choice of whether or not to do that depends on where the rest of their team is.