154 replies to this topic

[mogs01gt]

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.

You are running the most OP mech in the game right now and this challenge actually favored lights since lights survive easily, get assists, FS9's are killing machines and can easily get wins since lights arent focused much.

[AlphaToaster]

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.

I think it was easier for me to get the qualifying criteria (1 kill, 1 assist, survive) part in a light mech, but due to the overall lack of aggression I was seeing, I ran into trouble helping the team win. A light mech can only do so much to help start a push, but all of those things require action on the part of the team. You can only string out a team so far being the rabbit before you realize no matter how spread out red team is, blue is not going to push. I would try to draw people on red team into my teams line, but once we started heading to my teams line, red would disengage.

Sometimes you just can't carry hard enough in a light.

Edited by AlphaToaster, 24 November 2014 - 12:50 PM.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

mogs01gt, on 24 November 2014 - 09:59 AM, said:

To teach players how to play to win, to play for their teammates

Shutting down to avoid being killed or TKing helps the team how again?

[Wintersdark]

mogs01gt, on 24 November 2014 - 12:48 PM, said:

You are running the most OP mech in the game right now and this challenge actually favored lights since lights survive easily, get assists, FS9's are killing machines and can easily get wins since lights arent focused much.

Ironically, that was one benefit of this tourney: For Lights and Mediums, it was really great. It didn't lead to more of them being used, but what can you do?

I had the most success in 100+kph mechs. Driving an Assault in this challenge was terrible, because your team could always be relied on to fall back when opposition was reached.... Leaving forward assaults SOL.

It was *awful* to pilot an assault in this. Awful.

Thankfully, I had my Stormcrows.

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 24 November 2014 - 12:50 PM, said:

Shutting down to avoid being killed or TKing helps the team how again?

So much TKing, too. Bizzare, that.

[Danghen Woolf]

Bishop Steiner, on 24 November 2014 - 12:41 PM, said:

Spoiler

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.


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.

Either way I had 0 qualifying games, haha. I think that one way to get some good challenges would be to set up a point scale maybe like this:

Skirmish
Personal Kill - 1 P
Assist - 0.25 P
Most Damage Kill - 1.25 P
Solo Kill - 1.5 P
Friendly Mechs Health - 0.25 P/>50%, 0.5 P/<50%
Damage - 0.1 P/10
Friendly Fire Damage - -0.5 P/10

It promotes teamwork by protecting each other and rewards the team for not dying. For each kill you can only get one of the kill rewards. I am sure there is a way to game it but just throwing it out there.

Edited by Danghen Woolf, 24 November 2014 - 12:52 PM.

[AlphaToaster]

mogs01gt, on 24 November 2014 - 12:48 PM, said:

You are running the most OP mech in the game right now and this challenge actually favored lights since lights survive easily, get assists, FS9's are killing machines and can easily get wins since lights arent focused much.

Oh I see what I was doing wrong. I was in my Mist Lynx.

[mogs01gt]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 24 November 2014 - 12:50 PM, said:

Shutting down to avoid being killed or TKing helps the team how again?

Never happened in my game. If they were doing that when the team was loosing, well they are simply stupid. If they did it when the team was winning,,who cares.

I had one TK'er, I think his name was borgtwerker. Ohh well, I moved onto the next match.

Edited by mogs01gt, 24 November 2014 - 12:58 PM.

[Josef Nader]

Wintersdark, on 24 November 2014 - 12:51 PM, said:

So much TKing, too. Bizzare, that.

I know I scored a few accidental teamkills because my teammates sprung into my line of fire to try and score the killing blow on a mech, eating my hits to their exposed sections and exploding. More than once I had a teammate sprint in from out of my field of view to catch a Gauss slug to the butt like a dog catching a Frisbee.

[Alistair Winter]

Russ Bullock, if you're reading: There's plenty of us that understand and appreciate the survival criteria. For me, it was the most entertaining aspect of this challenge!

With that out of the way, let me explain for you, OP.

• There are different sort of First Person Shooters with different levels of realism. On one side of the scale, there's stuff like Quake Arena, which is more like a sport than warfare simulation, and doesn't even try to be very realistic. On the other side of the scale, there's military simulation like early Rainbow Six, ARMA, etc, where realism is a goal. You can't take loads of damage and you don't respawn when you die. A single hit is crippling and you lose when you die.
  
• Games with little or no punishment for death, where you can respawn instantly or near instantly, the way people play changes significantly. In short, it's a lot less realistic, because the most important two dimensions of gameplay is profit vs victory. In other words, you worry about whether you'll get paid enough C-bills, and you worry about whether you'll get enough wins / kills / damage to make you feel like a pr0.
  
• In games where dying sucks (due to mechanics like R&R, losing XP, losing your public ranking, etc) it adds another dimension to the gameplay, and it actually becomes more like real warfare, because people are afraid to die in real life too.
  
• One of the things that makes PVP (Player vs Player) gaming enjoyable, is the extra thrill and adrenaline you get when you know you're actually playing another human. It's not necessarily the difficulty of playing humans vs bots, because it's easy to make bots that are better than humans. But there's an extra level of pressure when you risk losing against another player. That's part of the reason many players will rather let the time run out and hide, instead of getting killed.
  
• When dying is associated with a negative consequence (e.g. starting the level over in Super Mario, losing money in EVE Online or not qualifying for a free Victor in MWO), it adds another level of suspense to the game. You'll be slightly nervous untill the very end of the match, even when victory is a foregone conclusion, because you're worried that you'll die at the very last moment. Suspense = good.

For all these reasons, and more, survival is a very cool criteria to add. But it's not for everyone.

[Quintus Verus]

There are definitely 2 camps here. One side, loved it and thought the challenge of accomplishing all 3 things was great. The other side, was upset their heavy/assault mech got lots of kills and damage but their other teammates didn't exploit openings and lost or they were killed trying to continue to put pressure on the OpFor.

Personally I loved the challenge, but knew better than to pilot my assaults in it. Speed, JJ, and Mobility were key for completing this task. I had to resort to my FS9's in the end.
My kill mechs:
CN9-AH -2
CN9-A - 1
CN9-D -1
CLPT-C1- 2
CTF-IM -4
FS9-H - 8
FS9-A - 2

I did a lot of damage in the Firestarters and finished most rounds with 9-11 Assist. If I got my kill early, I backed off and harassed/moved to keep folks pinned down. I let others finish off mechs I was chewing up.

The keys for this event were getting lucky with MM, staying mobile, and supporting your team without hogging all the kills. Repeatedly I had big brawlers finishing off mechs that people had been wearing down when they were all but dead. Bragging about their 6 kills, that prevented folks from getting at least 1.

Edited by Quintus Verus, 24 November 2014 - 01:02 PM.

[Bishop Steiner]

Quintus Verus, on 24 November 2014 - 01:00 PM, said:

There are definitely 2 camps here. One side, loved it and thought the challenge of accomplishing all 3 things was great. The other side, was upset their heavy/assault mech got lots of kills and damage but their other teammates didn't exploit opening and lost or they were killed trying to continue to put pressure on the OpFor.

Personally I love the challenge, but knew better than to pilot my assaults in it. Speed, JJ, and Mobility were key for completing this task. I had to resort to my FS9's in the end.
My kill mechs:
CN9-AH -2
CN9-A - 1
CN9-D -1
CLPT-C1- 2
CTF-IM -4
FS9-H - 8
FS9-A - 2

I did a lot of damage in the Firestarters and finished most rounds with 9-11 Assist. If I got my kill early, I backed off and harassed/moved to keep folks pinned down. I let other finish off mechs I was chewing up.

The keys for this event were getting lucky with MM, staying mobile, and supporting your team without hogging all the kills. Repeatedly I had big brawlers finishing off mechs that people had been wearing down whey they were all but dead. Bragging about their 6 kills, that prevented folks from getting at least 1.

One problem with your generalization? I pilot Mediums, and usually pretty mobile ones.

I could have chosen ANY Mech, and as long as the MM kept grouping me with people more interested in hiding than fighting? Same results, just different speeds.

[Jeb]

Wintersdark, on 24 November 2014 - 12:48 PM, said:

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.

Exactly...


The problem with the 130 point challenge was that the kills were worth less then assists, which I am pretty sure I read somewhere that they said that was a mistake they had not meant to do... While getting the 130 points was not that hard, the game play went down hill due to people refusing to kill mechs due to wanting the assist and not the kill... Getting the points was easy, but game play sucked..


The problem with this event was sort of the same thing... people changed the way they played, and after getting the kill, a lot of players would hide and hope the rest of the team got the win... and on top of that, it was a huge grind, and grinding is usually not fun... I probably spent 2x as much time on this one as any other event I have done.


As I say, this one did have a much larger time sink as well due to the fact that not many points were able to be gained per match.

With a win, kill and stay alive condition, there is a max of 12 points being given out a match... a few people get more then 1 kill, that drops a lot... anyone gets a kill and dies, that is less points given out...
I would bet the average points per match given out were in the 4-6 range and that might even be a bit high...

example:
max 12 points...
3 people get 2 kills, that is 6 points used, but only 3 that might be awarded.
if one of those 3 people die, that is still 6 points used, but only 2 points awarded.

In that case, if we take the other 9 people and say 6 of those get a kill, and 3 of them die, that is 5 points given out... and I think that is high... I saw lots of matches where there were 3 or 4 players left, and not all of them even had kills...

[Quintus Verus]

Alistair Winter, on 24 November 2014 - 01:00 PM, said:

Russ Bullock, if you're reading: There's plenty of us that understand and appreciate the survival criteria. For me, it was the most entertaining aspect of this challenge!

With that out of the way, let me explain for you, OP.

• There are different sort of First Person Shooters with different levels of realism. On one side of the scale, there's stuff like Quake Arena, which is more like a sport than warfare simulation, and doesn't even try to be very realistic. On the other side of the scale, there's military simulation like early Rainbow Six, ARMA, etc, where realism is a goal. You can't take loads of damage and you don't respawn when you die. A single hit is crippling and you lose when you die.
  
• Games with little or no punishment for death, where you can respawn instantly or near instantly, the way people play changes significantly. In short, it's a lot less realistic, because the most important two dimensions of gameplay is profit vs victory. In other words, you worry about whether you'll get paid enough C-bills, and you worry about whether you'll get enough wins / kills / damage to make you feel like a pr0.
  
• In games where dying sucks (due to mechanics like R&amp;R, losing XP, losing your public ranking, etc) it adds another dimension to the gameplay, and it actually becomes more like real warfare, because people are afraid to die in real life too.
  
• One of the things that makes PVP (Player vs Player) gaming enjoyable, is the extra thrill and adrenaline you get when you know you're actually playing another human. It's not necessarily the difficulty of playing humans vs bots, because it's easy to make bots that are better than humans. But there's an extra level of pressure when you risk losing against another player. That's part of the reason many players will rather let the time run out and hide, instead of getting killed.
  
• When dying is associated with a negative consequence (e.g. starting the level over in Super Mario, losing money in EVE Online or not qualifying for a free Victor in MWO), it adds another level of suspense to the game. You'll be slightly nervous untill the very end of the match, even when victory is a foregone conclusion, because you're worried that you'll die at the very last moment. Suspense = good.

For all these reasons, and more, survival is a very cool criteria to add. But it's not for everyone.

I second your thoughts Alistair!

[AdamBaines]

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 they a FREE TIER 1 mechs. I like how this has worked out. It should not be a simple task. I did not earn mine. Oh well....I should have played better. It sucks but it should not be easy to earn this prize.

[Quintus Verus]

Bishop Steiner, on 24 November 2014 - 01:02 PM, said:

One problem with your generalization? I pilot Mediums, and usually pretty mobile ones.

I could have chosen ANY Mech, and as long as the MM kept grouping me with people more interested in hiding than fighting? Same results, just different speeds.

Point taken Bishop. Many times its 1-2 people doing the yeoman's amount of work. Moving, changing angles of fire, preventing advances, but if the rest of your team spends the 1st 5 mins staring at the ridge top waiting on targets to lurm or someone to peak over the it, it was probably a long weekend.

[Mystere]

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

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

Idiots will remain idiots. But those capable of changing and learning will improve.

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

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.

A team that goes timid works to the advantage of an enemy team capable of exploiting that opportunity. I like that ... a lot.

Edited by Mystere, 24 November 2014 - 01:16 PM.

[Jeb]

AdamBaines, on 24 November 2014 - 01:08 PM, said:

Because they a FREE TIER 1 mechs. I like how this has worked out. It should not be a simple task. I did not earn mine. Oh well....I should have played better. It sucks but it should not be easy to earn this prize.

this was not a hard challenge... but it was frustrating and a long grind for most... there wasn't really a lot of skill involved in getting the points... it was luck of the draw... if you dropped with a good team, you probably got a point... if you didn't, you probably didn't. It was just a matter of how many matches it took to get those good teams...

(yes there is a basic amount of skill involved in getting kills and staying alive, but the better the team is the easier that gets, and vice versa, the worse a team is, the harder that gets)

Edited by Jeb, 24 November 2014 - 01:15 PM.

[Bishop Steiner]

Mystere, on 24 November 2014 - 01:13 PM, said:

Idiots will remain idiots. But those capable of changing and learning will improve.

yeah, let them learn on someone elses team, and without thinking "the rules" are an acceptable excuse for their idiocy.

[pwnface]

You know what made this challenge a lot easier? Having competent friends to play with. Our comms were constantly filled with "who still needs a kill?" Stomping through group queue with your teammates trying to evenly distribute kills was an interesting experience, we had several matches where 8 or more players received points for the challenge from the same match.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Mystere, on 24 November 2014 - 01:13 PM, said:

Idiots will remain idiots. But those capable of changing and learning will improve.

I have yet to see proof of that in these tourneys. Ive seen it sliding backwards actually