154 replies to this topic

[AlphaToaster]

Mystere, on 24 November 2014 - 10:37 AM, said:

So tell me then, whose real life death directly and immediately ended a war (for their side)?

Somewhat of a loaded question really (because wars don't end directly and immediately), but in spirit I would say using WWII as an example, all of them. Every death of every soldier in WWII contributed to the end of the war. Every death got the allies closer to Berlin. Without any of them the allies would have lost, so they all contributed.

Edited by AlphaToaster, 24 November 2014 - 10:44 AM.

[Almond Brown]

Farix, on 24 November 2014 - 10:04 AM, said:

The only way I could get a kill was to be hyper aggressive, and we know that generally leads you to being dead most of the time.

Incorrect assumption. Playing as a team, focusing fire and covering each other resulted in way more games where points were gained by many, versus when such rash aggressive actions were used to try and attain a Kill and more losses were the end result.

Some dawgs just can't be taught new tricks is all. No harm done.

[Brody319]

AlphaToaster, on 24 November 2014 - 10:43 AM, said:

Somewhat of a loaded question really (because wars don't end directly and immediately), but in spirit I would say using WWII as an example, all of them. Every death of every soldier in WWII contributed to the end of the war. Every death got the allies closer to Berlin. Without any of them the allies would have lost, so they all contributed.

I would say sadly, WW2 ended because of the deaths the nuclear bomb caused. Every one of those deaths and the bomb itself directly lead to Japan's surrender. Without it over a million more people would have died when America tried to invade Japan.

[Nightmare1]

Some of the previous Challenges have been as easy as clubbing baby seals.

Some have been substantially more difficult. Personally speaking, I did not find the Victor Challenge to be all that hard.

Regardless, PGI will never win with their Challenge designs because there will always be someone who decides to dislike what they have done. Frankly, I appreciate their efforts to provide some variation and keep the Challenges from becoming stale. The creativity is refreshing! Since they are giving away free stuff that would normally cost actual dollars, I don't feel that it is justified to complain about the Challenge. In the past, if they designed one I didn't like or didn't have to to do, then I just abstained from it.

Overall, I thought that the Victor Challenge and the Halloween Challenges have been the best thus far. The amount of LRM spam was noticeably less for the Victor Challenge, and the Pugs actually stayed closer together and fought more like a team. Those are the kind of Challenges I want to see, rather than the pandering type like the ones that encourage LRM abuse or suicidal, Rambo-ish behavior.

All that being said, I'm getting tired of seeing these, "I didn't get any cake because someone wouldn't cut it for me and walk it over here to where I'm sitting!" threads. Man up, own up, and do the Challenge, or just abstain from it. Quit griefing over your inability or aversion to winning free stuff with little to no effort. Nobody is asking you to go dig fence holes or fork hay so that you can have these things; all you have to do is sit on your butt and mash buttons!

...It's called a "Challenge" because it's supposed to "challenge" your skills. If it didn't, then it would just be a simple giveaway. Up your game.

[Mystere]

AlphaToaster, on 24 November 2014 - 10:43 AM, said:

Somewhat of a loaded question really (because wars don't end directly and immediately), but in spirit I would say using WWII as an example, all of them. Every death of every soldier in WWII contributed to the end of the war. Every death got the allies closer to Berlin. Without any of them the allies would have lost, so they all contributed.

With all due respect, that is not an answer to my question.

Brody319, on 24 November 2014 - 10:49 AM, said:

I would say sadly, WW2 ended because of the deaths the nuclear bomb caused. Every one of those deaths and the bomb itself directly lead to Japan's surrender. Without it over a million more people would have died when America tried to invade Japan.

Good answer. It's a great tragedy though that mankind seems to not have learned from.

Edited by Mystere, 24 November 2014 - 11:05 AM.

[Fubbit]

I feel like changing up the meta-game a little once in awhile is a good thing.
Rewarding survival did that.

Perhaps they are interested in having incentives to stay alive in CW?

Make no mistake though, you could play a perfectly good match and not get a point. ( And that's OK )

[Wintersdark]

Yeah, it was a tough challenge. IMHO, it was their best to date, though - somewhat flawed, but much less than various scoring formulas have been.

I appreciated the 1 kill/1 assist requirement: it promotes aggression (yay fun games!), but doesn't encourage one person to dominate or do really stupid things (aim for 12 assists, avoid getting kills, etc).

The only complaint I had was the survival requirement, as it led to excessively passive play that's inherently counterproductive. That is, it led to more losses - more mechs on both sides destroyed. I appreciate as well the reasoning WHY PGI put the survival requirement in:

Challenges and Tournaments in the past have notoriously led to very poor play via gaming the scoring system. Whether people doing that were right or wrong, it's an unavoidable consequence.

PGI has been working on designing a challenge/tournament system where good play is encouraged and rewarded. This is harder than it looks, and (as with most game design questions) if you think you've got an obvious answer you've almost certainly overlooked something. This challenge was definitely a step in the right direction.


God knows, I know your pain. I did really well in the first day, scoring on roughly every other game - 10 points in 21 matches, then went 17 games without scoring for every reason under the sun. Sadly, I was unable to win a Victor as I just didn't have enough play time, but that's alright.

[Killstorm999999]

Captain Stiffy, on 24 November 2014 - 09:56 AM, said:

Russ please positively explain why you would make survival a requirement for the tournament. I am trying to find some positive justification for it and I can't.

The adrenaline fueled thrill of coming out victorious in a crippled mech 12-11 is not justification enough?

What you should be asking is why getting 1 kill was in there. That certainly did not promote team play. I should have perhaps been
1 kill OR 1 kill-most-damage (though this still makes things kind of difficult for lights)

[AlphaToaster]

Mystere, on 24 November 2014 - 10:56 AM, said:

With all due respect, that is not an answer to my question.

War's don't end directly and immediately. I pointed that out and attempted to answer in a way that was constructive, but I see now you didn't intend for it to be answered.

It's as if you disagree that the soldiers' deaths contributed to victory. I believe they did contribute to victory. Since war's don't end directly and immediately, I cannot name a soldier who thus caused a war to end directly and immediately with his death.

[Saobh]

Its honestly the 1st time that a challenge/tournament has included a variable which promotes what this game should be about. In order to survive and win the match you can't be a coward hiding away nor be a Leroy Jenkins. This simple rule made it that the best strategy for an individual was to actually support his team mates by fighting hard enough to hurt the red team while being careful enough to not die. Which tbh is pretty much the function of a warrior.

Sure it brought out the ugly face of people cowering away in many cases, but the end result was quickly that they learnt that that tactic was simply invalid as that tended to incur your teams loss thus the shift of gameplay during the 2 days with better matches and less cowardly behavior (yes i know there still was a lot of it but a lot less then on Saturday, heck even Saturday night things where better then in the morning)

If this type of thing had lasted all week I'm pretty sure that by the end of the week teamwork would be a lot better overall with less people outright hiding all a match.

And I know this because I saw this very same shift when people went from Battlefield 2 gameplay (COD type) to the Project reality mod for BF2 one which is exactly that of teamwork and surviving (if you don't want to spend 5 minutes walking to the front as it still had spawning).

[Almond Brown]

Farix, on 24 November 2014 - 10:12 AM, said:

Oh, so repeatedly having kills stolen out from under me makes ME the bad player. STFU.

I think you just single handily proved the mans point.

[Mystere]

AlphaToaster, on 24 November 2014 - 11:08 AM, said:

War's don't end directly and immediately. I pointed that out and attempted to answer in a way that was constructive, but I see now you didn't intend for it to be answered.

It's as if you disagree that the soldiers' deaths contributed to victory. I believe they did contribute to victory. Since war's don't end directly and immediately, I cannot name a soldier who thus caused a war to end directly and immediately with his death.

Someone did give a better answer.

[Josef Nader]

Honestly, the biggest problem I had with this challenge was the fact that the teams I was playing on never showed any aggression. I apologize if you were in game with me and I started making pterodactyl screeches at you, but I would be engaging the enemy, trading blows, scoring several kills, down to bright red armor on almost all sections, and all we'd need to do to score a win would be to apply a bit of pressure and advance out of cover.

Then, I'd turn around to see my entire team standing 300m back trying to avoid damage, despite the fact that the enemy team was largely a pile of scrap, and nobody was taking any initiative.

I lost a few very frustrating 3-5 kill, 800+ damage games like that, just because my team was so concerned for staying alive that they refused to apply any pressure to the enemy team and actually secure a win. I'd end up pushing into a weak enemy flank, smashing the hell out of it, and exploding hilariously because my team didn't advance out of cover despite the fact that I just dropped a third of the enemy team.

This happened far more than I care to elaborate on. It's just frustrating to perform extremely well and have a qualifying round snatched away because my team wasn't showing any initiative.

[Almond Brown]

Bishop Steiner, on 24 November 2014 - 10:42 AM, said:

with no rnr, rewards, or consequences, survival is secondary

So why do we have so many players QQ'ing about those "DERPS" who game after game "run off and die Rambo" style, if what you state is actually true?

Edited by Almond Brown, 24 November 2014 - 11:31 AM.

[Johnny Slam]

Captain Stiffy, on 24 November 2014 - 09:56 AM, said:

Russ please positively explain why you would make survival a requirement for the tournament. I am trying to find some positive justification for it and I can't.

Because it was fantastic, it encouraged teamwork and smart play. It spawned the best matches I have ever had in a non TT battletech matches.

What I want to know is was it planned? or was it a lucky unforeseen outcome Russ?

[Sjorpha]

The incentive to survive was brilliant, I really liked how much it improved my own play. I actually made more damage, kills and assists plus other bonuses than usual. It simply made me step up my game a notch having that stress of surviving added.

A reward for survival should be worked into the cbill rewards ASAP. Make it a percentage of your overall match earnings so that it only pays off if you already did a solid contribution.

[Wintersdark]

Almond Brown, on 24 November 2014 - 11:27 AM, said:

So why do we have so many players QQ'ing about those "DERPS" who game after game "run off and die Rambo" style, if what you state is actually true?

Because useless deaths are counterproductive. Survival doesn't matter, but accomplishing something does.

If you run off rambo style and die, you accomplish nothing with your life.


As with the other discussion in this thread: Soldier's deaths rarely contribute to victory, but what they did leading up to their deaths absolutely does. The willingness to act, even though you know it'll cost your life, is what wins wars.

Another consideration:

In terms of Battletech (and by extention MWO): Consider, mech destruction != death. You could well have your mech destroyed (or even just disabled), eject and live. Hell, if your cockpit isn't destroyed and your engine doesn't explode, you can well survive even without ejection. Repairs are a thing, after all.

[Monkey Lover]

I bet you the only reason they did it was to stop farming. If not you could just kill 1 person hit another go hide and start another game. You could win a victor in under a hour.

[Johnny Slam]

Wintersdark, on 24 November 2014 - 11:41 AM, said:

Because useless deaths are counterproductive. Survival doesn't matter, but accomplishing something does.

If you run off rambo style and die, you accomplish nothing with your life.


As with the other discussion in this thread: Soldier's deaths rarely contribute to victory, but what they did leading up to their deaths absolutely does. The willingness to act, even though you know it'll cost your life, is what wins wars.

Another consideration:

In terms of Battletech (and by extention MWO): Consider, mech destruction != death. You could well have your mech destroyed (or even just disabled), eject and live. Hell, if your cockpit isn't destroyed and your engine doesn't explode, you can well survive even without ejection. Repairs are a thing, after all.

And in ongoing battletech campaigns (CW anyone?) you paid a real price for foolish loss of a mech or equipment when you could'nt field your best mech at a later match because it wasn't serviceable, or god forbid you lost it and the enemy took it as loot.

[Commodore Perspicuous]

Sjorpha, on 24 November 2014 - 11:32 AM, said:

The incentive to survive was brilliant, I really liked how much it improved my own play. I actually made more damage, kills and assists plus other bonuses than usual. It simply made me step up my game a notch having that stress of surviving added.

A reward for survival should be worked into the cbill rewards ASAP. Make it a percentage of your overall match earnings so that it only pays off if you already did a solid contribution.

I would totally be behind this. A light incentive means it shouldn't be enough to make people hide, but may give a little extra to people to learn to contribute AND stay alive to keep contributing, as I learned this weekend. Also, more CBills is always good.

Plus it kind of adds to the "immersion" feeling, for those that want it. I know we through immersion out the window way back when, but that little rush of trying to survive the rest of a match at below 20% because you accidentally went toe-to-toe with a Dakka Whale, for me, feels just a tad more realistic than Action Combat Monday Murderball then QQ when people don't die as fast as you and free up the only mech you feel like running for the evening. God, that's a long sentence.