38 replies to this topic

[Sprouticus]

Percimes, on 24 November 2014 - 10:34 AM, said:

I don't mind the challenge being tough, I don't mind not getting the Victor but I do mind how the challenge altered the gameplay. Unless challenges have a queue of their own (which won't happen) the rules should encourage "normal" gameplay, if not they disrupt it too much to simply ignore the challenge.

See I am completely in the other camp.. I LOVED how it altered gameplay (or at least most of it. There were so few people playing stupid this weekend it was like a completely different game. Sure, there was some selfish play, but the overall impact on the game was amazing.

It sounds to me that you LIKE how the game plays currently, with people being stupid aggressive, running off to die, having an entire lance run and cap while the rest of the team dies, etc etc. And if you do, you are welcome to that opinion. I won't fault you for it.

We just have different ideas of what the game should be. Ill take some kill stealing and some passive play over the negative aspects of the current gameplay every single time.

Catalinasgrace, on 24 November 2014 - 10:23 AM, said:

This one just forced the fact of patience and watching what your team was doing way way way more than normal matches. THE most important key word in that was patience during the fight, and lets be realistic in the fact that 98% of the people playing this do not have it...

I saw nothing wrong with this challenge other than it was a lot more challenging than the rest have been. If people actually read the challenge PGI even stated this was their toughest challenge yet... They weren't lying... lol...

My hypothesis:

the less patience you had, the less you liked this weekend's event.


side note: I found this one to be far less annoying and challenging than previous challenges. that might have to do with the fact that I enjoyed the game more due to better teamwork overall.

[DaynarFaol]

Catalinasgrace, on 24 November 2014 - 10:23 AM, said:

This one just forced the fact of patience and watching what your team was doing way way way more than normal matches. THE most important key word in that was patience during the fight, and lets be realistic in the fact that 98% of the people playing this do not have it...

I saw nothing wrong with this challenge other than it was a lot more challenging than the rest have been. If people actually read the challenge PGI even stated this was their toughest challenge yet... They weren't lying... lol...

How does patience help when the match maker was throwing 4 to 5 assaults on one side and maybe 2 on the other? I rarely saw more then 1 to 2 lights in a match, ditto mediums. LOTS of heavies and assaults with about zero balance.

Ran a 12 man on Sat night. Even with excellent team work we got stomped due to the nature of match maker not matching against mechs but ELO. If the only people with the right ELO that are not in a 12 man are all running assaults then well the 12 man is hosed.

[Sprouticus]

Novakaine, on 24 November 2014 - 10:32 AM, said:

Well I'll be blunt also.
Dummy only one kill mattered per match regardless.
So I could have been a feckless kill stealin hog such as probably yourself.
Or do the team thing and share the wealth.
Which is not rewarded in a supposed team based game.
Congrats to those who had the luck and endurance to win the Victor.
I simply ran out of steam is all.
Shred head congrats if you won one, but I'm sure you did it the feckless kill stealing hog way.

I get that you were trying to be respectful That is admirable. But none of that matters if you lose the match. My rule of thumb this weekend was:

1) Dont worry about getting more than 1 kill until after you were up for 4 mechs. if it happened, so be it. Winning was still the 1st goal.
2) dont worry about getting a kill until you were up by 4 mechs. I had several matches with 0/9 and 0/11 due to this, but I also made a done of $$ in the process.
3) If I had my kill, only kill a mech trying to kill me.
4) Help out others whenever possible, but dont be stupid/foolish and get killed in the process. (if I was super crit and we were down to 3 enemy mechs I was the last man into the scrum...that kind of thing. I never hid, but I was never stupid agressive)
5) play rear guard and spotter if we were searching for the last few mechs. (this ended up saving people from possibly dying a few times)


If you were unable to come to these same (or similar) conclusions after a few matches, that is on you, not PGI.

[Percimes]

I don't see people playing stupid aggressive most of the time, quite the opposite: too much timidity. What I saw this week-end was people waiting for others to do the job and reap the benefits often at their expense.

When you have challenges where teammates must compete against themselves as much as the enemy team... teamwork takes the back seat. Kill stealing should not be an issue: every dead opponent is a plus for your team.

Might be my Elo, might be bad luck, might be me or maybe it's Maybelinne, but there was no improvement in the gameplay from what I saw.

[Sprouticus]

Daynar, on 24 November 2014 - 11:06 AM, said:

How does patience help when the match maker was throwing 4 to 5 assaults on one side and maybe 2 on the other? I rarely saw more then 1 to 2 lights in a match, ditto mediums. LOTS of heavies and assaults with about zero balance.

Ran a 12 man on Sat night. Even with excellent team work we got stomped due to the nature of match maker not matching against mechs but ELO. If the only people with the right ELO that are not in a 12 man are all running assaults then well the 12 man is hosed.

so you were running a 12 man and the Elo penalty and tendency to get out tonned surprised you? How is that different than any other day? That is how the MM system works. It has its faults (the tonnage thing in particular is annoying at times), but it has nothing to do with this event.

Smaller groups take larger mechs on average. That is how the group queue has worked for months.

[Sprouticus]

Percimes, on 24 November 2014 - 11:07 AM, said:

I don't see people playing stupid aggressive most of the time, quite the opposite: too much timidity. What I saw this week-end was people waiting for others to do the job and reap the benefits often at their expense.

When you have challenges where teammates must compete against themselves as much as the enemy team... teamwork takes the back seat. Kill stealing should not be an issue: every dead opponent is a plus for your team.

Might be my Elo, might be bad luck, might be me or maybe it's Maybelinne, but there was no improvement in the gameplay from what I saw.

Again, I had a very different experience. Maybe Elo, maybe I just got lucky. I see what you are saying about the competition. And gong into it I fully expected super passive play all the time. But I saw more teamwork, more communication, etc because people REALLY wanted to win. People would hide if they were crit, but they would ALWAYs stay near the group to try to live and still get a kill. They just tried harder.

As for the passive play, you are correct, let me be more specific. I saw much less of the stupidity I associate with overly agressive players. Running off on their own. 'flanking' in a slow mech. entire lances capping at the start of the match instead of letting maybe 1-2 mechs do it. Things that I associate with people who are impatient and lack a basic understanding of tactics. I always refer to it as 12 year old syndrome. (and admittedly I suffer from it on occasion...we all do).

The passive play you are describing is being passive as a group, not moving around, being static and unwilling to take ANY chance. Oddly, I saw less of that this weekend (possible confirmation bias on my part) as well, although it did happen. And it almost inevitably ended up in losses, as usual. And yes, it freakin drives me batty.

[Johnny Slam]

Novakaine, on 23 November 2014 - 09:43 PM, said:

CURRENT CHALLENGES

Notice: prizes are awarded 15 minutes after you complete the challenge.

To the Victors Tier 1

CHALLENGE COMPLETE!

Time Left: 12:24:48


3Day Premium Time 1 Point

To the Victors Tier 2

16 out of 20

Time Left: 12:24:48


Victor 9S Champion 20 Points

Generally I enjoy the challenges.
But this been literally a fail.
Maybe not for all, but I'm willing to bet most of us.
If multiple kills in a match counted I would enjoyed this.
I would love post post a wall of my games lost, but it would not let me.
The games with 2 or more kills were just a waste of effort.
And when I did back off to leave kill shots for the other players, I still lost the match
The terri-bads were out in full force.
Thanks for the premie time it was the only thing worth all the effort.
I'm gonna go play tetris now.
And no you can't have my stuff.

Best challenge ever, please do it again PGI, it was brilliant.

[Ten Ton]

I would love to see this format used on the long weekend coming up, add a different reward mech?

[Shredhead]

Novakaine, on 24 November 2014 - 10:32 AM, said:

Well I'll be blunt also.
Dummy only one kill mattered per match regardless.
So I could have been a feckless kill stealin hog such as probably yourself.

There is no such thing as "kill stealing" in this game, kid. You shoot to destroy because you can't afford to let still armed mechs shoot your team mates.

Quote

Or do the team thing and share the wealth.
Which is not rewarded in a supposed team based game.
Congrats to those who had the luck and endurance to win the Victor.
I simply ran out of steam is all.
Shred head congrats if you won one, but I'm sure you did it the feckless kill stealing hog way.

I did not steal kills at all, we shared the kills in our mostly 4 man group if possible. I did however leave legged and disarmed mechs for others to kill if we had a comfortable advantage. A loss because you left dangerous mechs alive didn't net you anything.

Draal Kaan, on 24 November 2014 - 10:38 AM, said:

What the hell is a "Germany Facepalm"??

Don't know, just found it hilarious.

[Voivode]

I really enjoyed this challenge, a lot more than previous ones. I thought for sure it would bring out the LURMboats (like challenges usually do) but I saw less of that with this challenge than with previous ones. It was frantic and chaotic and by the end of the matches where I scored a point my pulse was pounding. Some matches were frustrating but overall this was a blast!

[Sorbic]

If they do it again I would hope they set the goal to 15 instead of 20. Or something like make it so that high damage/assists cancels the need for surviving the entire game.

[blood4blood]

Two suggestions for any future challenges like this one:

1) If you get a team kill the game doesn't count toward your total (i.e. watch the friendly fire, folks).
2) Count "most damage" kills as one point, "killing blow" kills as one point, and "solo" kills as two points. Maybe raise the point total needed for the prize to reflect it.

I think those changes would help a lot with all the friendly fire and alleviate the whining about kill stealing.

[Jetfire]

There is a difference between a good challenge which is difficult and one which is simply punishing.

I would rather have required a higher match score than usual or finish the match within 5 minutes and win. Anything but encourage high alpha spam then go hide.

Edited by Jetfire, 24 November 2014 - 12:45 PM.

[Ten Ton]

I thought it was the best tournament challenge yet, and it improved teamplay and the overall atmosphere as a side effect.

I hope we see another challenge with this format again before the end of they year.

There is a whole section of the player base that liked the event, it would be a mistake to ignore them.

[Mott]

Man... i never thought to see a gameplay topic that'd knock the LRM QQing off the top of the charts... but folks we have a new champion! lol

I get why folks were upset by this tourney... but i'd say they gotta loosen up and try to identify the good that came with the bad. Yes, there was TKing, KSing and some hot heads spouting off.

But for every person that got their assist, their kill and then ran off to hide and power-down there were at least 2 (probably way more than this) who were doing their best to carry their teams, share the kills, etc.

Not having 3, 4 even 5 teammates just leroying in the first 2 mins for no discernible reason was a HUGE boost to the quality and balance of matches. Sure, some of those folks may have gotten themselves cent-critted really quickly and played like ghosts for the rest of the match, but they're still dangerous and a "may-die-soon" teammate is way more effective and helpful (even just as another target for your enemies to hit while you race for cover or unload some damage) than a definitely dead teammate.

[Burktross]

I won this, and I hated it still.

[Mystere]

Sorbic, on 24 November 2014 - 12:18 PM, said:

If they do it again I would hope they set the goal to 15 instead of 20. Or something like make it so that high damage/assists cancels the need for surviving the entire game.

The survival requirement was the game changer. As such I prefer it is kept.

[Mystere]

Jetfire, on 24 November 2014 - 12:44 PM, said:

There is a difference between a good challenge which is difficult and one which is simply punishing.

I would rather have required a higher match score than usual or finish the match within 5 minutes and win. Anything but encourage high alpha spam then go hide.

Your team mates hiding actually works to the advantage of the other team if the latter are capable of exploiting that opportunity. That sounds good to me.

[VictusRhul]

I don't post offend but when I do it's because I have something that rocks me to my core. First off I did win the challenge but at a great expense to my health. I will never do something like this again. I went 36 hours straight to complete it. Never again.
This challenge brought the good and bad out of people. You would get the noble ones that would asked who needed a kill to add to the challenge. They were few and far between. Then you would have the Kill Stealing ******** (KSB ) that would leave all of us left with nothing and a waste of time. One such gent, was a black champion that took 3 of my hard faught kills. The next match he took one and I took his arm with the AC20. Third match he was in my lance and I just decided it would be best for the group if I amputated his AC20 right off from the start. I don’t condone team kills but in this guy’s case I would hole hardly do it.
Then you would get the guy’s that would get their kills and shutdown. Leaving the rest of the team to fin for ourselves. This would back fire by us losing the match.
By Monday morning I sunk to the point where I was killing more than 2 or 3 adversaries from the begging of the match. This would force the remaining players on my team to fight, instead of getting their kills and shutting down.
Like I said this brought the worst and the best out of people and I will never do this kind of challenge again.