70 replies to this topic

[zagibu]

PPFLD will always rule, no matter what kind of artificial frameworks are built to make other weapon systems more appealing. What is needed is gameplay diversity, some other way to win than killing enemy mechs as fast as possible.

Unfortunately, PGI doesn't seem interested in changing the gameplay much.

[Some Douche]

Gauvan, on 06 November 2014 - 02:30 PM, said:

But MWO suffers from a low player base. I think this is due in a large part to the lack of a new player experience and I expect that is going to be a top priority next year.

This game has the same problem Eve has.

It caters to selfish ****** that only care about winning, even at the expense of other peoples experience.

Spoiler alert: The vast majority of mature adults aren't putting up with that ****.

[Xmith]

Some Douche, on 06 November 2014 - 03:46 PM, said:

This game has the same problem Eve has.

It caters to selfish ****** that only care about winning, even at the expense of other peoples experience.

Spoiler alert: The vast majority of mature adults aren't putting up with that ****.

Selfish? You consider wanting to win selfish?

[Some Douche]

Xmith, on 06 November 2014 - 03:53 PM, said:

Selfish? You consider wanting to win selfish?

How about address what I ACTUALLY said, and not just the snippet you picked out.

Some Douche, on 06 November 2014 - 03:46 PM, said:

It caters to selfish ****** that only care about winning, <b> even at the expense of other peoples experience </b>.

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

I guess without competitve people we'd have no Olympics, no professional baseball, football, futbol, basketball, hockey, no shooting competitions, etc

I guess seeing who's best is something to be scorned, at least in this thread.

It's a shame this game lacks the quality new player experience/lower entry costs to acquire a higher population so that way Elo could work (or better yet, replace Elo with tiers so a player in Tier F won't even see a player in Tier A). That way TT purists could stay in their own tier away from others and the ones who find winning fun can be in their own tier.

Trying to define "fun" is loltastic. Shows how closeminded people are. Fishing to me is "fun", yet I guarantee someone will read this who wants to ban fishing.

Edited by Lord Scarlett Johan, 06 November 2014 - 04:06 PM.

[ShadowWolf Kell]

RG Notch, on 06 November 2014 - 01:49 PM, said:

You could have the best match maker in the world (not that this game does) but it can only work with the number of players you've got. PGI chose to focus efforts on catering to a small group of whales at the expense of expanding the player base and you get what we have now.

Exactly. It works fine for War Thunder *if* you play Arcade. Not so well if you go into Historical and it's absolutely abyssmal in Realistic due to the small # of players which usually ends up being MiGs and F-86s vs props, making for some extremely one sided games. That's provided you don't mind waiting 30 minutes just for a game.

I wouldn't say the MWO playerbase is all that big, especially compared to other multiplayer games. There's also no ultra-realistic mode that would funnel the high ELO players into a more advanced version of the game, and even if there was, I'm not sure they'd put up with the insanely long queue times.

It is what it is and once CW goes live, the likelihood of running into high ELO players will actually increase depending on what faction you decide to play for.

As for PP FLD, that won't change much because for people who can aim consistantly, it's the quickest way to destroy a mech without wasting time or damage.

[cSand]

Lord Scarlett Johan, on 06 November 2014 - 04:05 PM, said:

I guess without competitve people we'd have no Olympics, no professional baseball, football, futbol, basketball, hockey, no shooting competitions, etc

Sorry man, but you can't put any comp video games in the same class as any those activities

[RG Notch]

cSand, on 06 November 2014 - 04:14 PM, said:

Sorry man, but you can't put any comp video games in the same class as any those activities

The funny part is some of these folks really honestly feel like they are in that class. Really.

[Nemesis Duck]

Agreed cSand, 100%.

[Lykaon]

Techorse, on 06 November 2014 - 01:32 PM, said:

Recently after playing a few games against what we call the "meta" PPFLD Dire Wolves with 2 PPC and 2 Gauss, I drew a very strange conclusion.

Oh sure, we can whine and complain that these sorts of things are "overpowered" and what not, but honestly, changing it only removes that build out of the hands of players that were using it.

It's those particular players that are the problem.

Let's be honest here, no matter what we change in the game, there's always going to be this chunk of the playerbase that will always run the cheesiest, most metanerd builds possible in the game, because winning is all they truly care about. It's not that somehow this is a grievous crime against humanity or anything, it's just... we don't have an option to not play against the riff raff who do this.

There's plenty of people I see on these forums who run non-meta builds all the time. They're not stupidly inefficient builds (12 flamer nova anyone?), they're builds that make sense, but aren't the absolute best of the best.

So here we are, having tried quirks, and nerfs, and all sorts of changes, and we haven't fixed the real problem. The servers all belong to PGI at the moment, and so we, the players, can't join servers that might ban builds that are considered to be part of any kind of meta that ruins the game. In fact, as far as I can see from these forums, we have a tiny playerbase and really can't afford to split ourselves up that way.

Ok so, if we have a tiny playerbase, the implication is that we have a whopping percentage of players who are willing to run the insta-gib builds at the expense of the rest of the playerbase.
Which is why I won't whine about "X is OP" anymore. It's not the machine. It's the people who run it because they don't see value in anything but winning with relative ease.

That being said, I look forward to anything that might bring in more players, such as the talk of the possibility of moving to Steam, as that would dilute the playerbase a bit and make avoiding these unsavory players a bit easier.

Thoughts? Comments? QQ? Post Below.

TLDR:

When the meta changes, the people playing the old meta will simply switch to whatever works best again and therefore perpetuate the whining and terribad matches. We need a bigger playerbase to make avoiding these people easier, and I look forward to that.

You are seriously placing the blame on players using what was provided?You really think the blame should fall on players who made the most of the variables given?

Your objective is to cut down a big tree.The tools provided are a spork,a hatchet and a gas powered chainsaw with plenty of gas.

You would blame the people who opted to use the chainsaw and applaud those who chose the hatchet (and apparently pity those who took the spork )


The issue is NOT players it's game development that presents the players with a clearly superior tool for meeting the objective of destroying the opposing team.

I wouldn't blame anyone for realizing that there is an easy mode because the developers of this game presented that as an option.


The issue with the ER-PPC + Gauss combo is the pin point front loaded damage that can be aimed with precision.

The very situation the armor mechanics used in MWo were not intended to face.

It's very simple.The armor mechanics used in MWo are so closely derived from the table top game's armor mechanics that MWO has also inherited all the weaknesses of those armor mechanics yet failed to account for it.

I quick break down of the key characteristics of the armor mechanics used for MWo and table top

Each mech body location is protected by an armor value.

When an armor value on a specific location is depleted the components and structure in that location are vulnerable to damage.

When all armor and structure of a specific location is depleted that location is destroyed.

Some locations are "Kill conditions" such as center torso and Head depletion and some mounted items result in Kill conditions if destroyed XL engines for example.

The table top game armor mechanics are insulated from being exposed to high volumes of accurate pin point damage by a number of supporting mechanics (sadly few that translate well for a video game) mainly random hit locations prevent precision aiming at mech locations that cause a Kill condition to occur.

MWo however does not insulate the armor mechanics from conditions that cause mechanics failure.In fact,MWo has several mechanics that enhance and vastly increase exposure to mechanics failure events.
Group fire,Instant weapon convergence and of course the ability of the players to aim with intent and accuracy at critical kill condition locations.

It is this development oversight or decision that is the real issue not players making the best of the options presented.

Edited by Lykaon, 06 November 2014 - 04:22 PM.

[Mycrus]

Krivvan, on 06 November 2014 - 03:13 PM, said:

And like I said, they derive the fun from finding and using the best ways to win. Except when that way is boring, it becomes less fun. It's not fun to them to purposefully gimp yourselves arbitrarily. It's like running a marathon while wearing a cast for fun because it's too easy to win without one on.

On a side note, there is a call from a lot of us for jump sniping to return to an extent to offer a counter to clan tech. Following the PGI motif of Clans having superior equipment and mechs, but being less able to poke, maneuver, snipe, and deliver pinpoint damage.

Playing a meta Dire (which isn't really 2 Gauss 2 PPC btw, that's not the best thing you could put on a Dire) is also more fun than jump sniping because the Dire carries with it weaknesses as well.

Nothing wrong with the players it's just bad game design to have 1 top tier loadout that works in all situations... I'm not talking today... I'm talking about the pee pee cee meta of yesteryear

[Alexander MacTaggart]

Techorse, on 06 November 2014 - 01:32 PM, said:

Let's be honest here, no matter what we change in the game, there's always going to be this chunk of the playerbase that will always run the cheesiest, most metanerd builds possible in the game, because winning is all they truly care about. It's not that somehow this is a grievous crime against humanity or anything, it's just... we don't have an option to not play against the riff raff who do this.

This is why you occasionally see people ask for/mention a 'stock mech queue' and then immediately get shouted down because EWWW STOCK MECHS.

Regardless of your stance on stock mechs, you have to admit that very, very few are anything like as cheesy as 90% of custom rides you see day to day.

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

cSand, on 06 November 2014 - 04:14 PM, said:

Sorry man, but you can't put any comp video games in the same class as any those activities

Sure you can. I've played sports all my life (was I good enough to be anything but walk-on quality at a JuCo? No.)

I've also shot competitively for nearly a decade now, and I've been quite successful at it. Competitive shooting in many instances has the same levels of physical activity as online gaming. Trap shooting specifically, where you stand in a box and reflexively shoot clay pigeons.

Sounds kinda like MWO don't it? Sit in a computer chair and reflexively shoot robots? Hell, one girl that used to sweep the s-keet tourneys was wheelchair bound and she held #1 female in the state three years in a row. Are you saying she wasn't competitive?

Or like I did in baseball, I pitched. That was all I could do. I wasn't even on the batting line-up. So I stayed on the pitcher's mound or the dugout. So I wasn't all that active.

Or what about fishing competitions? That's not much physical activity either.

Or gambling competitions?

Are you seeing the pattern yet?

You don't get to decide what is or isn't a competitive activity.


EDIT:

s-keet is apparently a wirty dord.

Edited by Lord Scarlett Johan, 06 November 2014 - 04:36 PM.

[Dark Horse X]

There is only so much that a Match Maker can do. They should instead have 3 phases to the game. Let new players only play against other new players until they reach their first 25 games; after that, let them be matched against other players who have only played 26-100 games until they themselves reach 100 games played; and after that, unleash them into the public domain.

That would give them a chance to learn the game without having to face a roflstomp by the more experienced players.

As far as replying to the OP: Give it a break. We've heard all the whines & snivels from your type of players. You don't like a build and instead of learning how to take it down, you'd rather have it "removed" from the game. I'll bet you lose at Monopoly also and blame the dice.

[Alexander MacTaggart]

zagibu, on 06 November 2014 - 03:34 PM, said:

PPFLD will always rule, no matter what kind of artificial frameworks are built to make other weapon systems more appealing. What is needed is gameplay diversity, some other way to win than killing enemy mechs as fast as possible.

Unfortunately, PGI doesn't seem interested in changing the gameplay much.

Seems like the answer you're looking for is to make PPFLD hard/impossible to do. Spread the damage, out TTK goes up and it begins to actually feel like a BattleTech game as your mech is blown out from under you one piece at a time.

Especially evident after this quirk pass - I love the idea of quirks but they have REALLY shortened TTK and since doing stuff like adjusting cooldowns across the board or an across the board damage re-scaling ('nerf') would never go over, we really need to 'fix' PPFLD and then probably double armor values again.

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

Alexander MacTaggart, on 06 November 2014 - 04:27 PM, said:

This is why you occasionally see people ask for/mention a 'stock mech queue' and then immediately get shouted down because EWWW STOCK MECHS.

Regardless of your stance on stock mechs, you have to admit that very, very few are anything like as cheesy as 90% of custom rides you see day to day.

And in Stock Mech matchers, people will gravitate towards the better stock mechs.

[Sjorpha]

zagibu, on 06 November 2014 - 03:34 PM, said:

PPFLD will always rule, no matter what kind of artificial frameworks are built to make other weapon systems more appealing. What is needed is gameplay diversity, some other way to win than killing enemy mechs as fast as possible.

Unfortunately, PGI doesn't seem interested in changing the gameplay much.

PPFLD is not the current meta, your dystopic prediction is already out of date.

Edited by Sjorpha, 06 November 2014 - 04:39 PM.

[Alexander MacTaggart]

Lord Scarlett Johan, on 06 November 2014 - 04:37 PM, said:

And in Stock Mech matchers, people will gravitate towards the better stock mechs.

Almost every stock build has some sort of 'weakness', whether it be lack of ammo, not-max armor, inability to handle heat generation... Or just a kind of nonsensical weapons loadout (looking at you, Kit Fox Prime).

There are always going to be 'better' mechs but the difference is much lower with stock ones.

[Squally160]

Some Douche, on 06 November 2014 - 03:46 PM, said:

This game has the same problem Eve has.

It caters to selfish ****** that only care about winning, even at the expense of other peoples experience.

Spoiler alert: The vast majority of mature adults aren't putting up with that ****.

Protip: Your fun is not better than my fun, no matter how much you think it is.

If you do not want other people to impose on your "experience" of the game, go play singleplayer.

Also, for your EVE example, that game REVOLVES around ruining peoples days. The devs have stated it, multiple times. Going so far as to PROMOTE scamming, subterfuge, and backstabbing.

This game is not even remotely close to EVE levels of douchebaggery.

[cSand]

Lord Scarlett Johan, on 06 November 2014 - 04:35 PM, said:

Sure you can. I've played sports all my life (was I good enough to be anything but walk-on quality at a JuCo? No.)

*snip*

Yea, sorry man. Gambling and video games... you may "compete" in a "competition" that involves them but no sir.

They simply are not in the same class as someone who trains (shooting, b-ball, kung-fu, etc) for years of their life to master it. You literally play enough of 1 game for enough months to be really good at it, and can be "competitive". I can compete the world series of Rock Paper Scissors too. You can toss on a visor and some shades, read up on poker and enter a top level tourney, if you have the time/money to spend playing poker. If the cards are good, you'll be the champ! (And rich )

But let's not derail the thread. I think comp gaming (gambling included) is more like a hobby than a sport, and you think w/e you want. Agree to disagree sir. Kudos on the shooting BTW. I always thought that was a cool thing to know how to do.

Yea, it'll block the "s word", lol

Edited by cSand, 06 November 2014 - 05:08 PM.