154 replies to this topic

[Josef Nader]

In a persistent Battletech campaign, you wouldn't stick around and keep fighting till your mech exploded. Once you got close to CLG, you'd:

1) Retreat off the field, if viable.
2) Cycle out with your buddies, allowing them to take the front (considering one player is in charge of all the mechs on one side or another, this was a lot easier, as one person knew the status of each mech and could make these kinds of tactical decisions with ease)
3) Power down and pop white smoke. This is an in-house thing my gaming groups use to prevent total mech loss. The winning side takes the mech and the pilot.

All of these options preserved the mech and allowed one side or the other to avoid completely destroying a machine. If we were allowed to make those kinds of decisions, I would be much more supporting of a cost of death. However, considering the game will not end till all mechs are destroyed, it's not really fun to punish a player for dying, even if they pulled more than their fair share of the weight.

EDIT: I wouldn't mind a C-Bill reward for survival. I'm just frustrated that I failed to qualify despite having 20+ multi-kill, massive damage games just because I ate a death securing a win.

Edited by Josef Nader, 24 November 2014 - 11:58 AM.

[Wintersdark]

Josef Nader, on 24 November 2014 - 11:56 AM, said:

In a persistent Battletech campaign, you wouldn't stick around and keep fighting till your mech exploded. Once you got close to CLG, you'd:

1) Retreat off the field, if viable.
2) Cycle out with your buddies, allowing them to take the front (considering one player is in charge of all the mechs on one side or another, this was a lot easier, as one person knew the status of each mech and could make these kinds of tactical decisions with ease)
3) Power down and pop white smoke. This is an in-house thing my gaming groups use to prevent total mech loss. The winning side takes the mech and the pilot.

All of these options preserved the mech and allowed one side or the other to avoid completely destroying a machine. If we were allowed to make those kinds of decisions, I would be much more supporting of a cost of death. However, considering the game will not end till all mechs are destroyed, it's not really fun to punish a player for dying, even if they pulled more than their fair share of the weight.

EDIT: I wouldn't mind a C-Bill reward for survival. I'm just frustrated that I failed to qualify despite having 20+ multi-kill, massive damage games just because I ate a death securing a win.

Yup, but that's a whole setup that cannot exist in MWO as it stands.

This, because in Battletech you'd have 100% control over your mech and the other mechs on your team. Unless you're playing in a 12-man unit (who actually reasonably follow orders) that just can't happen here.

You've got 12 totally independant players who:

A: Are not necessarily playing the same game as you (read: their objectives can be quite different; maybe the care about winning the battle, maybe they don't, etc)
B: Are in the case of the tournament likely competing for arbitrary scoring points
C: Know that after the match, everything resets and there are no long term issues - not just in terms of R&R, but societally as well.

In particular, from a "fluff"/"Real Life" perspective, a member of your unit - a soldier, a mechwarrior - who due to his overwhelming cowardice endangers or costs the life of a fellow soldier/mechwarrior would face serious penalties. That doesn't happen here.

There's no pressure NOT to be a wanton coward in MWO, particularly when your scoring is on the line (and you're too stupid to realise that passivity and cowardice decreases the likelyhood of fulfilling the "win" condition).


That's where so many people keep falling down here: Because this is a game with the limited scope, and instanced battles with random players that neither know nor care about each other, and no consequences beyond the battle.

[MischiefSC]

Surviving a match preserves your firepower for later on when it might be telling. Dying does nothing for your team that surviving doesn't do better. The point of the challenge was that you had to do damage, kill someone, injure others and still live to see your team to victory.

That is exactly the skills that make for better players. That's why this was a hard challenge; you had to play like a good player to win. Being a kill-stealing twit or hiding in the back all the time doesn't actually help your team win, so you miss the 'win' requirement.

This challenge was about doing what good players do. Secure kills, damage the enemy, survive to fight again later in the match after you've carried as much as you can safely. I watched a game get won by an Orion who lost everything but one medium laser and he and a similarly crippled stormcrow with 1 ERLL duked it out, both little more than shambling skeletons. The Orion won because he'd better protected himself earlier in the match, played hard but safe. He did over 600 damage, got 4 kills and 8 assists and won the match for us because he played smart.

My only complaint is that this tournament needs to feed regular rewards and run for 30 days.

There are rare occasions when being the distraction/suicide run to break a well fortified position is required. That's like 1 match in 50. The problem is that dying is irrelevant anymore. What separates a good player from an average one is playing each match with an eye towards what's going to drive the win at the end of the match, not what's going to get you 1 more kill right now.

This contest was excellent. The rules are excellent; best we've ever had. The problem is that it needs to run for 1 month and just give you a steadily scaling reward as you accumulate qualifying matches. That is, indirectly, what R&R was all about. Rewarding you for surviving and not running off to die stupidly. The current mechanic rewards playing stupidly because the 1 in 30 payoff for when being stupid gets you cbills feels (incorrectly) like it's worth it. We've got a lot of bad habits as players that we need to lose. Challenges like this are an indicator that we need to change them.

[Bishop Steiner]

MischiefSC, on 24 November 2014 - 12:19 PM, said:

Surviving a match preserves your firepower for later on when it might be telling. Dying does nothing for your team that surviving doesn't do better. The point of the challenge was that you had to do damage, kill someone, injure others and still live to see your team to victory.

That is exactly the skills that make for better players. That's why this was a hard challenge; you had to play like a good player to win. Being a kill-stealing twit or hiding in the back all the time doesn't actually help your team win, so you miss the 'win' requirement.

This challenge was about doing what good players do. Secure kills, damage the enemy, survive to fight again later in the match after you've carried as much as you can safely. I watched a game get won by an Orion who lost everything but one medium laser and he and a similarly crippled stormcrow with 1 ERLL duked it out, both little more than shambling skeletons. The Orion won because he'd better protected himself earlier in the match, played hard but safe. He did over 600 damage, got 4 kills and 8 assists and won the match for us because he played smart.

My only complaint is that this tournament needs to feed regular rewards and run for 30 days.

There are rare occasions when being the distraction/suicide run to break a well fortified position is required. That's like 1 match in 50. The problem is that dying is irrelevant anymore. What separates a good player from an average one is playing each match with an eye towards what's going to drive the win at the end of the match, not what's going to get you 1 more kill right now.

This contest was excellent. The rules are excellent; best we've ever had. The problem is that it needs to run for 1 month and just give you a steadily scaling reward as you accumulate qualifying matches. That is, indirectly, what R&R was all about. Rewarding you for surviving and not running off to die stupidly. The current mechanic rewards playing stupidly because the 1 in 30 payoff for when being stupid gets you cbills feels (incorrectly) like it's worth it. We've got a lot of bad habits as players that we need to lose. Challenges like this are an indicator that we need to change them.

whelp, that would be a good way to get me to uninstall, or at least find another game to play for a month.

30 days of idiotic play...... no thank you bro.

IF surviving actually served some sort of purpose, like number of matches you survive in a row, adding to some sort of escalating bonus, etc, or if in an event a destroyed mech could not be used for the rest of the event, or we still had RnR or any number of things, it might almost serve a purpose.

As it is, it promotes even more timid play. Don't play to win, they play to not lose. And that leads to losing. And dying anyhow.

[Wintersdark]

Thing is, if I have a team of players who are going to push hard, and accept some casualties in the process, we will beat your team who cower passively 10 times out of 10.

You're not wrong in that players should want to survive. However, when you reward survival too highly, you take an already problematic situation (PUG players who are terribly afraid to fight) and make it exponentially worse.

For the same reason that R&R lead to terrible gameplay in practice (if awesome in theory) - if your comrades happen to be too cowardly, you're losing (and thus being punished more for dying, because you will die) because of that. It's sucky.

[AEgg]

MischiefSC, on 24 November 2014 - 12:19 PM, said:

Surviving a match preserves your firepower for later on when it might be telling. -Snip-

I'm going to stop you right there. If you get absolutely nothing for a win when you die, you won't BE using your firepower later on when it could win you the game. Because doing so risks (or often causes) your death, which makes winning the round meaningless (since you don't care if the rest of your team wins).

As I said elsewhere, a simple survival requirement makes for terrible games. However, if you got 2 points for surviving and winning and just 1 point for winning, that would work out great. True, you'd still see people run and hide sometimes, but it encourages you to actually try to win the game, rather than to survive at all costs.

[Bishop Steiner]

AEgg, on 24 November 2014 - 12:27 PM, said:

I'm going to stop you right there. If you get absolutely nothing for a win when you die, you won't BE using your firepower later on when it could win you the game. Because doing so risks (or often causes) your death, which makes winning the round meaningless (since you don't care if the rest of your team wins).

As I said elsewhere, a simple survival requirement makes for terrible games. However, if you got 2 points for surviving and winning and just 1 point for winning, that would work out great. True, you'd still see people run and hide sometimes, but it encourages you to actually try to win the game, rather than to survive at all costs.

THIS makes a heck of a lot more sense. A point formula, with Survival as a multiplier or such? GREAT.

Blanket Survival Requirement, when that survival is directly impacted and predicated by 11 other people? Idiotic outside of a good team setting.

[Wintersdark]

Bishop Steiner, on 24 November 2014 - 12:22 PM, said:

whelp, that would be a good way to get me to uninstall, or at least find another game to play for a month.

30 days of idiotic play...... no thank you bro.

IF surviving actually served some sort of purpose, like number of matches you survive in a row, adding to some sort of escalating bonus, etc, or if in an event a destroyed mech could not be used for the rest of the event, or we still had RnR or any number of things, it might almost serve a purpose.

As it is, it promotes even more timid play. Don't play to win, they play to not lose. And that leads to losing. And dying anyhow.

Yeah, this.

To be fair, Mischeif did ask for ongoing survival rewards, but... yeah. The reality is that it leads to people being more stupid than they are in normal non-challenge matches.

For me, my time in the group queue with competent reliably players was awesome because they weren't chickenshits. But once I was in the solo queue, or in a small group so unable to rely on the bulk of my team having balls? Gods, it was horrible.

Multiple times, we had a solid lead and then lost because our team wouldn't PUSH. They'd have been roflstomps... but nobody would push an advantage.

Ironically, this challenge led to far more "even" matches than I've ever seen in this game before - 12v11 style endgames. If it was legit, I'd have loved that. But when every time it was because players wouldn't fight... it was infuriating.

[Jetfire]

I already have mastered victors, but this tournament was really not enjoyable.

I played a brawling Banshee and did tons of damage, got high match scores and plenty of wins/kills/assists, but died typically on a win. In general I saw a lot of cowering the whole match, to stay alive and pick of stragglers, far more than normal. Leading a push that wins the match was always a death sentence.

[Josef Nader]

You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and you can't initiate a push if you don't risk destruction.

Any time you spur your mechanical warhorse into the ranks of the enemy, even if they're badly wounded, you run the risk of dying. If you refuse to take aggressive action just because you might be incapacitated or killed, you just end up dying anyway. Aggression wins fights. Hesitation gets people killed.

If we're talking about the real life, where you don't get a second chance, being cautious is definitely a wise thing to do. However, the point still stands in real life. At some point, there comes a time where you need to advance out of cover and apply pressure to an enemy position. No war is won by sitting in your defenses the entire time.

But this is a video game. We all get second chances, and death is meaningless. Get mean, get involved, and get in there. You can't win any other way.

Edited by Josef Nader, 24 November 2014 - 12:32 PM.

[Wintersdark]

Bishop Steiner, on 24 November 2014 - 12:29 PM, said:

THIS makes a heck of a lot more sense. A point formula, with Survival as a multiplier or such? GREAT.

Blanket Survival Requirement, when that survival is directly impacted and predicated by 11 other people? Idiotic outside of a good team setting.

It, like R&R, could be awesome, but would require a hell of a lot of supporting factors. In the game we have? No. Just no.

Random players, all out 100% for themselves, with entirely different outlooks on the game? *shudder*

[Brody319]

MischiefSC, on 24 November 2014 - 12:19 PM, said:

Surviving a match preserves your firepower for later on when it might be telling. Dying does nothing for your team that surviving doesn't do better. The point of the challenge was that you had to do damage, kill someone, injure others and still live to see your team to victory.

That is exactly the skills that make for better players. That's why this was a hard challenge; you had to play like a good player to win. Being a kill-stealing twit or hiding in the back all the time doesn't actually help your team win, so you miss the 'win' requirement.

This challenge was about doing what good players do. Secure kills, damage the enemy, survive to fight again later in the match after you've carried as much as you can safely. I watched a game get won by an Orion who lost everything but one medium laser and he and a similarly crippled stormcrow with 1 ERLL duked it out, both little more than shambling skeletons. The Orion won because he'd better protected himself earlier in the match, played hard but safe. He did over 600 damage, got 4 kills and 8 assists and won the match for us because he played smart.

My only complaint is that this tournament needs to feed regular rewards and run for 30 days.

There are rare occasions when being the distraction/suicide run to break a well fortified position is required. That's like 1 match in 50. The problem is that dying is irrelevant anymore. What separates a good player from an average one is playing each match with an eye towards what's going to drive the win at the end of the match, not what's going to get you 1 more kill right now.

This contest was excellent. The rules are excellent; best we've ever had. The problem is that it needs to run for 1 month and just give you a steadily scaling reward as you accumulate qualifying matches. That is, indirectly, what R&R was all about. Rewarding you for surviving and not running off to die stupidly. The current mechanic rewards playing stupidly because the 1 in 30 payoff for when being stupid gets you cbills feels (incorrectly) like it's worth it. We've got a lot of bad habits as players that we need to lose. Challenges like this are an indicator that we need to change them.

Death not being punished is in itself a way to encourage people to stay alive. In the old reward system I would agree that dying is not really a problem, you run in tap all the enemies and die, then you get a ton of c-bills from assists. Now staying alive rewards you much more. However the problem is if you encourage staying alive more people won't be aggressive because they are afraid of death since it nets a loss in money. Staying alive does mean you can use that firepower on the enemy, the problem however is sometimes your mech is so crippled its not worth using your weapons on the enemy in direct combat.

For example:
During one match during the challenged, I ended up getting legged, with my other leg being red and unarmored. I was in a raven, so I tottled off and powered down to hide. I was surrounded by an enemy Cataphract, Stalker, and Timberwolf. Should I power up and fire on them, I would die, and my firepower would have been useless to my teammates anyway. However If i stayed powered down, my enemy wouldn't notice me, I wouldn't die, and my teammates still had to shoot the same enemy.

Saying my firepower would have been useful is true, but in some cases its simply not effective for me to use it. If the stalker had a red CT and no back armor, I would have powered up and fired on them, however they were all in near perfect shape. We won, and I lived, If i had powered up we would have won, and I would have died. sometimes hiding IS effective and doesn't hurt.

[Bishop Steiner]

Wintersdark, on 24 November 2014 - 12:30 PM, said:

Yeah, this.

To be fair, Mischeif did ask for ongoing survival rewards, but... yeah. The reality is that it leads to people being more stupid than they are in normal non-challenge matches.

For me, my time in the group queue with competent reliably players was awesome because they weren't chickenshits. But once I was in the solo queue, or in a small group so unable to rely on the bulk of my team having balls? Gods, it was horrible.

Multiple times, we had a solid lead and then lost because our team wouldn't PUSH. They'd have been roflstomps... but nobody would push an advantage.

Ironically, this challenge led to far more "even" matches than I've ever seen in this game before - 12v11 style endgames. If it was legit, I'd have loved that. But when every time it was because players wouldn't fight... it was infuriating.

more infuriating because people never seem to learn either, that their very desperation to "survive" all but ensured them dying....it just took longer to happen, sometimes.

Whereas playing knowing you might die on some matches, but as you say carry MORE matches, actually improve your chance of survival.

[Wintersdark]

Josef Nader, on 24 November 2014 - 12:30 PM, said:

If we're talking about the real life, where you don't get a second chance, being cautious is definitely a wise thing to do. However, the point still stands in real life. At some point, there comes a time where you need to advance out of cover and apply pressure to an enemy position. No war is won by sitting in your defenses the entire time.

But this is a video game. We all get second chances, and death is meaningless. Get mean, get involved, and get in there. You can't win any other way.

Even in real life, caution may be wise, but aggression wins battles. Solid defense is good, but simply cowering for fear of danger gets everyone killed, every time.

[Bishop Steiner]

Jetfire, on 24 November 2014 - 12:30 PM, said:

I already have mastered victors, but this tournament was really not enjoyable.

I played a brawling Banshee and did tons of damage, got high match scores and plenty of wins/kills/assists, but died typically on a win. In general I saw a lot of cowering the whole match, to stay alive and pick of stragglers, far more than normal. Leading a push that wins the match was always a death sentence.

And being the only reason your team won, and some cowering schmucks survived to get the point......but dying while securing that win (800 plus damage, 5 or more kills, you carried the team), and getting screwed out of a point yourself (A point no one would have got if someone hadn't manned up and actually fought), is utter bullcrap.

[Wintersdark]

Bishop Steiner, on 24 November 2014 - 12:34 PM, said:

And being the only reason your team won, and some cowering schmucks survived to get the point......but dying while securing that win (800 plus damage, 5 or more kills, you carried the team), and getting screwed out of a point yourself (A point no one would have got if someone hadn't manned up and actually fought), is utter bullcrap.

Couldn't agree more. Knowing the people who did everything they could to ensure a loss gained points while I died to provide those points galled.

I didn't really appreciate how frustrating it was till my second day when practically every match was full of it... god. I had to stop playing, give up the Victor despite having a solid number of points, largely because otherwise I'd be trying to reach through my monitor to strangle the cowardly little ***kers.

Edited by Wintersdark, 24 November 2014 - 12:37 PM.

[Danghen Woolf]

I think that there are several ways that the challenge could have been better but as I did not participate I cannot supply any constructive feedback on this one in particular.

Some of the other challenges have been easy, some have been hard. This is to balance the need for the casuals (me) and the comps (not me) to be challenged at their level. The 130 match point challenge? I have never broken 100 match points so the liklyhood of me earning anything was approximately 0%. The Thunderbolt challenge I managed to snag a new mech. The important thing to remember is that most players want to be challenged and there is no way that a challenge will allow everyone an equal chance at successfully completing it. Design a challenge and set it up on the boards for people to vote on and no matter how you write it up, proof it, or simulate the results, there will be someone who abuses the rules, or games the scoring system to get the rewards.

[Revis Volek]

mogs01gt, on 24 November 2014 - 10:07 AM, said:

That was the point. You had to make a decision, do I go in for the kill and risk getting killed or do I sit back and hope to get a lucky red CT kill. I myself played support mechs because assists and kills are easy, getting a team win and surviving is hard.

Im starting to see that most forum members/players missed the entire point of the challenge!

Did the whole thing in my FS9-A with 8 Sm Pulse Lasers....

Was Aggressive but stealthy until I got my first kill then went into my normal play style....ended almost 70% of my matches with 2 kills 3-5 assists and a win. Took no time at all and i did all but about 6 matches in the SOLO QUEUE.

[Bishop Steiner]

Danghen Woolf, on 24 November 2014 - 12:39 PM, said:

I think that there are several ways that the challenge could have been better but as I did not participate I cannot supply any constructive feedback on this one in particular.

Some of the other challenges have been easy, some have been hard. This is to balance the need for the casuals (me) and the comps (not me) to be challenged at their level. The 130 match point challenge? I have never broken 100 match points so the liklyhood of me earning anything was approximately 0%. The Thunderbolt challenge I managed to snag a new mech. The important thing to remember is that most players want to be challenged and there is no way that a challenge will allow everyone an equal chance at successfully completing it. Design a challenge and set it up on the boards for people to vote on and no matter how you write it up, proof it, or simulate the results, there will be someone who abuses the rules, or games the scoring system to get the rewards.

one big misunderstanding is the 130 pt score....it's not your match score, it's a simple formula separate from that, and as such was relatively easy to achieve, on a win. A heck of a lot harder if your team was bad, and you lost, though.

DarthRevis, on 24 November 2014 - 12:39 PM, said:

Did the whole thing in my FS9-A with 8 Sm Pulse Lasers....

Was Aggressive but stealthy until I got my first kill then went into my normal play style....ended almost 70% of my matches with 2 kills 3-5 assists and a win. Took no time at all and i did all but about 6 matches in the SOLO QUEUE.

Yes, so you got lucky and had teams that fought to win. (No way you got 70% wins any other way, especially since by your own account, you weren't carrying the team, just contributing) Most people didn't.

[Wintersdark]

Danghen Woolf, on 24 November 2014 - 12:39 PM, said:

I think that there are several ways that the challenge could have been better but as I did not participate I cannot supply any constructive feedback on this one in particular.

Some of the other challenges have been easy, some have been hard. This is to balance the need for the casuals (me) and the comps (not me) to be challenged at their level. The 130 match point challenge? I have never broken 100 match points so the liklyhood of me earning anything was approximately 0%. The Thunderbolt challenge I managed to snag a new mech. The important thing to remember is that most players want to be challenged and there is no way that a challenge will allow everyone an equal chance at successfully completing it. Design a challenge and set it up on the boards for people to vote on and no matter how you write it up, proof it, or simulate the results, there will be someone who abuses the rules, or games the scoring system to get the rewards.

The 130 point challenge was really easy.

You likely assume that means 130 "match score" as in the End of Round Match Score. It didn't. Simply getting 0 kills and 6 assists and 400 damage pretty much ensures a 130pt tournament/challenge score.

Our issue here isn't difficulty. Difficulty is fine, and some challenges being too hard for a player is ok.

The survival requirement in this one was frustrating not because it was hard, but because it directly led to really poor player behavior that resulted in lost battles. That is, you'd end up losing (and thus likely dying) even more often for reasons totally outside of your control, reasons directly created by that requirement.