46 replies to this topic

[Jman5]

Your faction just assaulted the enemy base in the region. It's fierce fighting busting down gates, turrets, and finally that big anti-orbital gun. You have a smoked out shamble of a base and a sketchy supply-line with all the fighting going on around the planet.

So wouldn't it make sense that when the defenders of the planet send in their counter-attack the base is still in disrepair? Gates still down, turrets still blown to smithereens, Orbital Cannon generator lying in a million pieces on the ground.

The counter-attackers aren't looking to blow up their own base. They are looking to take back their territory by rooting out the enemy forces.

Counter-attack objective should be Skirmish: Kill the enemy forces. The team with the most kills is the victor.

From a purely player-driven experience, I think this injects the much needed "fun" for Mechwarrior Online. Teams will suicide-rush a generator because it helps them win planets, not because shooting a defenseless building is inherently exciting. By creating a space in community warfare where it's simply "kill the enemy team", you enhance the overall experience for everyone.

So just to illustrate how it would work. Spawns are the same as before. Turrets and generators are removed, the gates are both open, while dropships still act as anti spawn-camping.

[riverslq]

I keep getting counter attack, and losing.
for that reason alone I like this idea.
change things up a bit.

[Smotty]

That is a good idea and it could be extended to include conquest (maybe with 3 objectives, like landing pad near orbital gun and 2 other areas, maybe generators or something along those lines) and even assault. (Same concept as above, but maybe only landing pad)

It would add some dynamics and help mix things up.

[MischiefSC]

.....

Please no. Please. Skirmish with 4 respawns just puts us back in the murderball but for half an hour. Can get this in pug/group queue.

Put Invasion mode in group/pug queue with respawns and drop decks and I'd be all for it. Not CW though. Eliminates all the pretext of tactics. I'm all for improvements; increasing gen health and delaying defender drop times, giving attackers strong motivation for a steady, aggressive attack instead of a zerg. At the same time tone the turrets down, remove cover from Sulfur and add some to Boreal.

That would make attack focused more on clearing defenders in a controlled advance to the objectives.

Making killing the defenders the objective though just puts us back into Skirmish, which really doesn't have any need or use for tactics. Murderball up, rinse and repeat.

[riverslq]

0/4 on counter attacks IS vs clan
0/4 total cw matches played
this is fun.
not.

[MischiefSC]

Try to drop with a large group of organized players. Stick to the plan they lay out. Don't run off alone. Don't do your own thing. Play to the team, follow the drop commanders direction and you'll do fine.

[Jman5]

MischiefSC, on 20 December 2014 - 01:38 PM, said:

.....

Please no. Please. Skirmish with 4 respawns just puts us back in the murderball but for half an hour. Can get this in pug/group queue.

Put Invasion mode in group/pug queue with respawns and drop decks and I'd be all for it. Not CW though. Eliminates all the pretext of tactics. I'm all for improvements; increasing gen health and delaying defender drop times, giving attackers strong motivation for a steady, aggressive attack instead of a zerg. At the same time tone the turrets down, remove cover from Sulfur and add some to Boreal.

That would make attack focused more on clearing defenders in a controlled advance to the objectives.

Making killing the defenders the objective though just puts us back into Skirmish, which really doesn't have any need or use for tactics. Murderball up, rinse and repeat.

Community warfare will die on the vine unless you add more mech on mech violence. There is a reason why no one base-rushes in assault mode and it's not just the money. It's because people play mechwarrior online to fight mechs not to bum-rush a spawn point. What we have now is a system that rewards the team that base-rushes the fastest. It doesn't matter how well you balance the generator hitpoints or defender respawns. It's always going to be about blowing through matches as quickly as possible to puts your unit tag on a planet and advance your faction territory.

Either way, our ideas are not mutually exclusive. The things you mentioned are great ideas to balance attack/defend and the normal matches will stay the way they are. Generators, turrets, gates, etc. This is about changing Counter-Attack into its own thing instead of just making defenders kill their own base.

Tactics don't go away just because there aren't generators to kill. I probably don't have to tell you, but there are A LOT of tactics, planning and practice that goes into the competitive leagues even though it's mostly Skirmish. I mean at the end of the day, if you don't find Skirmish fun and rewarding, I find it hard to imagine how you can enjoy this game. Judging by how often I get Skirmish over the other gamemodes, it's clear that it's the favored gamemode.

[Shaka808]

My solution is make defenders spawn outside the gates for their first 3 mechs and dont let the gates open until the defenders are all forced back behind their gates.


Or something along those lines.

[Roadbeer]

Jman5, on 20 December 2014 - 02:48 PM, said:

Community warfare will die on the vine unless you add more mech on mech violence.

Amazing you're able to make that prediction after a whole 10 days of Community Warfare.

Can I have next weeks lotto numbers while you're prognosticating?

[MischiefSC]

Jman5, on 20 December 2014 - 02:48 PM, said:

Community warfare will die on the vine unless you add more mech on mech violence. There is a reason why no one base-rushes in assault mode and it's not just the money. It's because people play mechwarrior online to fight mechs not to bum-rush a spawn point. What we have now is a system that rewards the team that base-rushes the fastest. It doesn't matter how well you balance the generator hitpoints or defender respawns. It's always going to be about blowing through matches as quickly as possible to puts your unit tag on a planet and advance your faction territory.

Either way, our ideas are not mutually exclusive. The things you mentioned are great ideas to balance attack/defend and the normal matches will stay the way they are. Generators, turrets, gates, etc. This is about changing Counter-Attack into its own thing instead of just making defenders kill their own base.

Tactics don't go away just because there aren't generators to kill. I probably don't have to tell you, but there are A LOT of tactics, planning and practice that goes into the competitive leagues even though it's mostly Skirmish. I mean at the end of the day, if you don't find Skirmish fun and rewarding, I find it hard to imagine how you can enjoy this game. Judging by how often I get Skirmish over the other gamemodes, it's clear that it's the favored gamemode.

Die on the vine? All the tactics in Skirmish revolve around calling targets and focusing fire. The tactics are about finding just the right min/max setup with the right mechs and right support. The fighting tactic is the murderball or firing line though. That's it. The right fire focused on one target at a time.

We have Skirmish in pug/premade. Let it stay there. The tactics for it are simple and direct and that's great. I play it tons.

CW though is something bigger. The fundamental concept is fighting for something bigger than yourself or your KDR. The gameplay should reflect that. Skirmish absolutely doesn't and it will just be the exact same play we've had for 2 years, people camping to the end in hopes of getting kills, sandbagging, etc. that we've had already.

Let CW be bigger and better. That's not going to appeal to everyone all the time. That's okay. It needs to be more involved than best organized murderball though.

[BigBucket]

...It's always going to be about blowing through matches as quickly as possible to puts your unit tag on a planet and advance your faction territory...
Change quickly to successfully and you nailed it. CW is about mech warfare, not just mech on mech combat. There are other game modes for that.

[Sandpit]

no
want skirmish drop pub queue

[Deathlike]

I like variety... but this isn't actually one of them.

I know I'm getting bored of Invasion mode already, but adding Skirmish doesn't add to much really.

At least if you were to say Assault or Conquest, you could force the objective part more readily. Skirmish is true deathmatch, and in this case with respawns.

It's not adding much value.

[MischiefSC]

Deathlike, on 20 December 2014 - 04:45 PM, said:

I like variety... but this isn't actually one of them.

I know I'm getting bored of Invasion mode already, but adding Skirmish doesn't add to much really.

At least if you were to say Assault or Conquest, you could force the objective part more readily. Skirmish is true deathmatch, and in this case with respawns.

It's not adding much value.

Buff generator health.

Slow defender drop rate.

This rewards a slower, more grind-oriented approach for attackers and a more tactical defense for defenders. The 3 gens is a good idea - they just need to have a better purpose. Lights do great skirmishing, mucking up defensive lines and attacking damaged targets or as a QB sneak. Right nwo though 2 lights can eat a generator in a few seconds. There's no point in killing attackers because they'll be on their gens/Omega by the time you get there, with dropship support. Give 1 minute for drop delivery on defense and suddenly killing defenders is about opening windows for attack and for defenders minding your defensive waves matters.

[Jman5]

MischiefSC, on 20 December 2014 - 04:07 PM, said:

Die on the vine? All the tactics in Skirmish revolve around calling targets and focusing fire. The tactics are about finding just the right min/max setup with the right mechs and right support. The fighting tactic is the murderball or firing line though. That's it. The right fire focused on one target at a time.

We have Skirmish in pug/premade. Let it stay there. The tactics for it are simple and direct and that's great. I play it tons.

CW though is something bigger. The fundamental concept is fighting for something bigger than yourself or your KDR. The gameplay should reflect that. Skirmish absolutely doesn't and it will just be the exact same play we've had for 2 years, people camping to the end in hopes of getting kills, sandbagging, etc. that we've had already.

Let CW be bigger and better. That's not going to appeal to everyone all the time. That's okay. It needs to be more involved than best organized murderball though.

You can have tactics coming out the wazoo. However if the gameplay rewards playing in a way that's generally not fun, people will abandon it. We need as large a population as possible to keep the matches flowing, otherwise it will be just 10-minute default wins that move the board.

Nobody is suggesting we take away attack/defend that we currently have. All we are suggesting is that we let Counter-attack mode carve out its own niche. It's also important to note that defend/counter-attack tends to be where the Pug teams are largest. If you want to insist that skirmish is simplistic, fine. That's perfect for a pug group to operate then.

[MischiefSC]

Jman5, on 20 December 2014 - 04:50 PM, said:

You can have tactics coming out the wazoo. However if the gameplay rewards playing in a way that's generally not fun, people will abandon it. We need as large a population as possible to keep the matches flowing, otherwise it will be just 10-minute default wins that move the board.

Nobody is suggesting we take away attack/defend that we currently have. All we are suggesting is that we let Counter-attack mode carve out its own niche. It's also important to note that defend/counter-attack tends to be where the Pug teams are largest. If you want to insist that skirmish is simplistic, fine. That's perfect for a pug group to operate then.

So you want half of CW to play out exactly like Skirmish already has, but have it 12mans vs pugs with no way for the pugs to pull it off through tactics instead of coordinated fire?

What you're talking about would be exactly like mixing group queue and pug queue on Skirmish. So what's going to follow is people wanting to split CW up between pug/premades... which functionally destroys CW.

What having tactical objectives does is allow a group to succeed on coordination and focus of getting an objective instead of straight combat. This is critical because in straight up mech killing the difference between pugs and premades is HUGE. Insurmountable most of the time. You can beat the competitive premade teams with pugs if you're rock solid and focused using shell games on Sulfur. I know I've done it a few times. In a pure Skirmish match though it doesn't matter. There is nothing, absolutely nothing you're going to do that's going to bridge that skill and coordination gap in straight up killing.

NOT being Skirmish is exactly why CW isn't the domain of 12mans.

CW is never going to appeal to people who just want to go shoot stuff, don't care about team coordination or the like. It shouldn't. That's exactly what the pug/group queue exist for. That's why they have evolved into what they are is catering to the interests of people who want that sort of play.

CW is about winning based on better planning ahead of time and overall tactical deployment over straight shooter skills. It is exactly what makes CW in MW:O a 'thinking mans shooter' as opposed to what we've got in pug/group queue already.

I'm all for making the objectives more complex - higher health for generators, slower respawn for defenders, to promote more combat less zerg rushing. However Skirmish just turns it into a murderball fest. 12mans will dominate that so absolutely as to make it pointless to drop with less than 10 people.

[MechaBattler]

Russ said they wanted to use Skirmish as like the staging ground fight. The attacker has to win in skirmish mode to successfully land his forces I guess. And then it goes to gate fighting.

Honestly it needs more game modes. And while some people may hate skirmish, it can have it's place, but we also need other things. A city siege mode would be interesting. Not sure what it would entail. But it'd be interesting nonetheless.

[MischiefSC]

MechaBattler, on 20 December 2014 - 05:10 PM, said:

Russ said they wanted to use Skirmish as like the staging ground fight. The attacker has to win in skirmish mode to successfully land his forces I guess. And then it goes to gate fighting.

Honestly it needs more game modes. And while some people may hate skirmish, it can have it's place, but we also need other things. A city siege mode would be interesting. Not sure what it would entail. But it'd be interesting nonetheless.

You want to add skirmish to the mix with no respawns that's fine but you need to be absolutely clear on the fact that they'll be ruthless, one sided stomps of premades vs pugs. Absolute and complete and total. There's no bridging that gap. We already know that. Being in a group and knowing that we'll absolutely and completely face-roll every pug or mostly-pug team we play isn't something I look forward to and it means I'd only drop CW when my group is on or I can sync-drop with allied groups because in those Skirmish matches it will be 100% decided by who's got the most folks on comms, with a handful of exceptions.

Hence... not a fan of the idea. Pugs won't come play because they'll get brutally stomped in ways that make the current lopsided matches seem tame. Nothing like regular 48-0 matches to make people leave CW completely. Teams won't play as often because it'll effectively be a 12man queue; come with 12 or stay home.

[JimboFBX]

A modified version of conquest where the defending team starts with all the points might work.

[InspectorG]

Keep Skirmish out of CW.

It simply WONT work.

12man on comms vs 12pugs = stomp > 80% of time. I would put money on it.

Add Skirmish and you will have 2 teams fighting just like on the ramps on Terra. Door humping. No 'strategy' , just peek-a-boo till your armor is gone then you hide in the back. Vs an average 12man, you wont even get the chance to peek-a-boo.

Counter attack should be different, say remove Omega and buff the 3 generators. Something like that.

But its only been a week, so give it some time.