46 replies to this topic

[Jman5]

I played some counter-attack games today where we insisted on going for kills instead of just zerging generators like 90% of teams do. You know what happened? Both teams had a good time. At the heart of the matter is the fact that fighting other mechs is fun and why most of us play this game. I guarantee you that if we made Counter-attack skirmish, it would be the most enjoyable part of community warfare for most people. You can belittle skirmish all you want, but it would bring numbers to community warfare that we desperately need to cut down on queue times.

[MischiefSC]

Jman5, on 21 December 2014 - 04:40 PM, said:

I played some counter-attack games today where we insisted on going for kills instead of just zerging generators like 90% of teams do. You know what happened? Both teams had a good time. At the heart of the matter is the fact that fighting other mechs is fun and why most of us play this game. I guarantee you that if we made Counter-attack skirmish, it would be the most enjoyable part of community warfare for most people. You can belittle skirmish all you want, but it would bring numbers to community warfare that we desperately need to cut down on queue times.

So absolutely gut the purpose of CW and make it like pug queue Skirmish with 4 respawns and then we can have more people... like if we were in pug queue with 4 respawns?

Put Invasion game mode in pug/group queues. I'm 100% for that. Totally and completely.

CW though is not and should not be that. It's great that you had a good game. I'm all for that. Go drop in a pug team against Lords or another comp team who will literally just farm you for kills and score. Then have that be every time you play a 12man. That'll get old pretty quick.

You can play to kills if you want. That's great. Have fun, go nuts. To say that CW needs to throw away the fundamental tactical nature that makes it different from (and for many of us better than) just playing pugs is beyond disingenuous. It would bring more players into CW to just make pug/group queue award loyalty points for whatever faction you're in for each match and just generally calculate up LP earned by factions and award planets that way. Then we'd have the whole games population in! Just have Invasion with respawns another game mode.

Or not. Just lost a counter-attack match on Sulfur (easiest possible map to win) on FRR border with the Clans because a 4man dropped on our side that was very matter-of-fact that they were there to farm kills and not win. The other side was a 12man and we got absolutely face-rolled. That 4man by the way? Butchered. Repeatedly and easily. Why? Because a 4man+pugs is no match at all in any way in a straight up skirmish-style fight against a 12man. We could have won if we'd stuck to the plan as a group.

One of many example. Again Jman5 - this isn't new. It's not a new concept. We had group vs pug with no Elo before. We know exactly and precisely how it will play out. It was so terrible that PGI put Elo in to help and ended up splitting group/pug queue, because nobody (except the big groups and not even all those) were enjoying playing the situation you're talking about.

One-off games where you find yourselves well matched and play for kills are great. That's not a reality of how it would play out overall though. Do you want Elo and team-size matching in CW too? Because with Skirmish you'd need it.

[Dirty Starfish]

You're right in that there would be an issue with pugs vs. premades, but If we added in skirmish counter attack, assault on cities, and conquest on refineries then premade vs. pug or no, I think it would be a lot more interesting and worth the occasional stomp.

[MischiefSC]

Serial Peacemaker, on 21 December 2014 - 05:13 PM, said:

You're right in that there would be an issue with pugs vs. premades, but If we added in skirmish counter attack, assault on cities, and conquest on refineries then premade vs. pug or no, I think it would be a lot more interesting and worth the occasional stomp.

Occasional?

4mans in an 8man queue (like 6mans in the current queue) would run 90% win rates. There were some 4man players who literally ran 100 straight wins.

What's the win rate in group queue of 12mans vs pug 2mans? That's with Elo balancing btw.

You can work around it with tactics and non-combat objectives. I just did it the last few matches in a row - solid pugs, we ran some good plans and it went well. That doesn't work in straight up killing. Premade on comms calls focus fire, calls damaged or weak points, fall up and back the line to maximize survival vs killing.

Skirmish matches with no Elo and premade mixed with pugs is like feeding pugs into a machine. They'll win 1 in a 100 against organized groups.

So, back to prior statement. It'll turn into 'who's the biggest group', then pugs will leave.

[Davers]

It's funny that I seem to recall Mischief was a proponent of Skirmish, before it came out. Opened the door to new tactics he said. No need to go to the same spots on the map he said.

[Mystere]

MischiefSC, on 21 December 2014 - 05:45 PM, said:

Occasional?

4mans in an 8man queue (like 6mans in the current queue) would run 90% win rates. There were some 4man players who literally ran 100 straight wins.

What's the win rate in group queue of 12mans vs pug 2mans? That's with Elo balancing btw.

You can work around it with tactics and non-combat objectives. I just did it the last few matches in a row - solid pugs, we ran some good plans and it went well. That doesn't work in straight up killing. Premade on comms calls focus fire, calls damaged or weak points, fall up and back the line to maximize survival vs killing.

Skirmish matches with no Elo and premade mixed with pugs is like feeding pugs into a machine. They'll win 1 in a 100 against organized groups.

So, back to prior statement. It'll turn into 'who's the biggest group', then pugs will leave.

Most(?) people here are not asking to make CW 100% Skirmish. What people are asking for is to have a Skirmish-type mode for variety's sake -- even if that means the "comps" will absolutely dominate such a mode.

I am really not understanding the extreme resistance to this idea -- and that's coming from someone who has yet to join any group. And the irony of it all is that I don't even like Skirmish.

Edited by Mystere, 21 December 2014 - 06:53 PM.

[MischiefSC]

Davers, on 21 December 2014 - 06:11 PM, said:

It's funny that I seem to recall Mischief was a proponent of Skirmish, before it came out. Opened the door to new tactics he said. No need to go to the same spots on the map he said.

I love Skirmish. I play it all the time - in pugs.

I enjoy pug play and group queue. Not a big fan of Conquest.

However, that's because of splitting group/premade and use of Elo. Those matches are a good challenge of PvP Combat. I love that, it's a lot of fun, I still play it a lot.

That's not CW though. The habits and skills you learn in pug matches are not good ones; you learn not to trust your team, everyone else is expendable and focus fire trumps all other tactics.

That doesn't belong in CW.

Mystere, on 21 December 2014 - 06:41 PM, said:

Most(?) people here are not asking to make CW 100% Skirmish. What people are asking for is to have a Skirmish-type mode for variety's sake -- even if that means the "comps" will absolutely dominate such a mode.

I am really not understanding the extreme resistance to this idea -- and that's coming from someone who has yet to join any group.

Because it absolutely skews averages. You're creating a mix of gamemodes that are 99% guaranteed win for whoever the biggest group is. That makes bigger groups > smaller groups and smaller groups > pugs by default a regular, predictable amount of the time. We know that while you think you enjoy that that when we had it everyone hated it and we voided players so much they coded up an Elo system to deal with it.

It's repeating a mistake we've already made before. It's not a new idea. It's not a new experience. It's like saying we need to speed up PPCs and reduce their heat because everyone would love that and it would be fun and balanced to play sometimes. We actually know that's terrible, cuz we did it already.