41 replies to this topic

[kapusta11]

Play conquest?

[Cementi]

If anything my vote would be to spawn everyone together again like they used to an then the scouts and flankers can be the ones to move off as they need to. Ya some groups are just going to ball up, but they do that right now that will not change. All forcing groups to spawn apart accomplished is many matches the first 2 mins are wasted as groups gather up.

The only way I would support spreading groups out more, or even keeping the current spawns which I intensely dislike (its awesome to have a direwolf spawn with a couple lights and mediums way out on the flank and have no way to get to cover or allied protection before you are swarmed by lights and missles sure they could stay with you or the team could move to you to support but the entire team would be fighting on inferior terrain and thats even worse) would be to allow us to actually choose where we dropped on the map. Give that 60 second countdown at the begining of the match an actual use and let us pick our placement.

[Screech]

If you did this you would have to match lance weights and I just don't think the pond can hand the extra constraint. Don't hate the idea just see it leading to a bunch of other problems.

[CDLord HHGD]

I really like this. I don't want to hijack this thread so I will just say that this has merit and I'd support it.

[Alistair Winter]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Some of you seem to be either pretty happy with deathball tactics or suggesting something that would inevitably lead to deathball tactics anyway (such as letting people choose where they drop on the map). I would suggest that, having three game modes, we don't need all game modes for deathballing. Deatballing is currently a very effective tactic in both Assault and Conquest, which is why I'm suggesting Skirmish should be different.

cSand, on 10 January 2015 - 09:30 PM, said:

You know what would be cool, is if the lance commander in pug matches (to prevent much trolling), could deploy the lances within a certain area of grids. IE, you choose to place your lance in B4 or w/e... maybe you need a command console for this or something. That would be legit and would mix things up a bunch cause you'd never know where the enemy was starting their lance.

This would be great for Assault. It would lead to deathballing, but it would make scouts more useful, at least.

Duke Nedo, on 11 January 2015 - 12:24 AM, said:

I like the notion, but I don't think it would play out that way in practice... the team that forms the deathball nearly always wins and I think that wouldn't change. It would just take slightly more determination to get that deathball formed.

Depending on the distances involved, it would potentially be impossible to form a deathball without losing assault mechs in the process. I mean, losing assault mechs to light mechs is already happening, even though lances are deployed closer to each other than to the enemy.

It would happen ten times more if people were deployed close to an enemy lance, so deathballing would not be a viable tactic unless all mechs in a lance were faster than all mechs in the nearest enemy lance.

Duke Nedo, on 11 January 2015 - 12:24 AM, said:

For it to work, I think that each lance would need to be following a 1-1-1-1 rule, that would make it harder for the "light" and "medium" lance to just run off and create a 8v4 or 12v4 on another part of the map.

This is already the case in Skirmish, I think. At least it seems to happen fairly often. But I agree, this would only work if mechs were distributed evenly according to weight. An assault mech lance would have no way to prevent a light mech lance from disengaging, so it wouldn't work if you got lances where everyone moved at 100+ kph.

Duke Nedo, on 11 January 2015 - 12:24 AM, said:

Another incentive to actually fight out the lance v lance skirmish before regrouping could be to also place an objective near the lance-pair that gives the winner an advantage. This would add to the snowball-effect of winning the skrimish, but something like that might be needed to make the skirmish happen in the first place... ?

That is exactly my idea for Conquest too, which I may start another thread about. But it's not happening right now, because bases are usually so close to the center of the map (or, in the case of Alpine, four of the bases are quite close to each other) that it's better to just deathball in the middle and then cap when there's only 2-3 enemy mechs left.

Duke Nedo, on 11 January 2015 - 12:49 AM, said:

Actually, a better idea than using an objective to promote lance-vs-lance engagement could be to add a reward for winning a lance-vs-lance skrimish. A bit tricky to define, but if possible it could work out like a "sprint price" you have in long distance cross-country skiing competitions to spice things up (like bonus seconds in tour-de-ski and money rewards in other races for being the first to reach certain checkpoints) and probably other sports as well.

I don't think this ever works in MWO, because winning always pays more. If deathballing is more effective, people will always try to deathball to maximize their chances of high profits. It's kind of like giving people a 100% win bonus for playing House Liao in CW. It doesn't really matter, because you earn 800,000 - 1,000,000 C-bills for a good win and you're lucky to make half as much for a loss in CW.

People like winning, so the rewards would have to be subtantial for a people to accept a high risk of losing in order to get the bonus.

Quaamik, on 11 January 2015 - 06:20 AM, said:

People who are AFK aside, Ive seen issues where lag puts a delay on some startups. Not long, maybe 30 seconds from when the first mech can move till the last. Also, one of the things you gain in mastering a mech is faster ignition time. That said this would be the death of people with poor connection and of new mechs.

PGI removed the 60 second ready time before launching matches. While I never liked it, it would be necessary to bring it back for a gamemode like this. Certainly, disconnects and people crashing to desktop would be a problem, but... stuff like that is going to happen anyway. I think the positives outweigh the negatives.

Quaamik, on 11 January 2015 - 06:20 AM, said:

A second issue is balance. Are you going to place ones sides assault lance close to the other sides light lance? Will PGI be able to consistently do that without giving away on the pre-screen when enemy lance is which? I doubt it. Wich means you are going get lance vs lance fights of mediums vs assaults, lights vs heavies, and lights vs assaults.

Best way would be to sort all mechs by weight (e.g. 20, 25, 35, 45, 50, 55, 65, etc) and then place first mech in Alpha, second mech in Bravo, third in Charlie, fourth in Alpha, etc. In other words, ensure an even distribution of weight (and most likely speed) in every lance.

Bartholomew bartholomew, on 11 January 2015 - 06:34 AM, said:

Meh, truly random starting points would be better. Otherwise you can bait hunt when the MM throws you a good lance.

Truly random starting points would result in some horrible matches on these tiny maps. Which is why practically no games use random starting points on small maps.

Shatterpoint, on 11 January 2015 - 08:18 AM, said:

You're giving way too much credit to the average player, wish you weren't but you are.
Average player: "oh a shiny light mech better chase it, it's OBVIOUSLY the priority in this entire match"...6 of your team chase the light mech screwing over the rest of your team in a 12vs6 focused fire fuckfest.

That's going to happen anyway, in the pug queue. But it's not a factor in the group queue. I mostly play the pug queue though, and there's no way to get around people making dumb choices.

kapusta11, on 11 January 2015 - 08:36 AM, said:

Play conquest?

Read before you post?

[Alistair Winter]

Screech, on 11 January 2015 - 09:22 AM, said:

If you did this you would have to match lance weights and I just don't think the pond can hand the extra constraint. Don't hate the idea just see it leading to a bunch of other problems.

See above. I don't think lance weights would need to be matches 100%. Even if you could do that, there's a big difference between a 70 ton mech with an STD250 and an XL350 engine. There's basically no way to ensure all lances would have exactly the same speed and weight as their enemies. But... that's probably not going to be an issue. In practically every game, each lance would have at least one mech capable of moving faster than 100 kph, and probably faster than 140 kph too. There's basically no way for any lance to retreat safely and regroup with the rest of the team, without losing their slowest mech to an enemy light.

The idea would be to position the mechs so close together that disengaging would never work. And that's really not hard to do. Assault mechs need a very big lead to outrun light mechs without getting cored, and they wouldn't have a very big lead anyway.

[Trashhead]

+1

The only reason i have not deselected Skirmish from my menu is to reduce waiting time.

I would like to see changes made to Skirmish to make it somewhat less deathballish... .
(I am not against Deathmatches per se, but would like to see smaller deathballs, instead of a hug 12vs12 one.)

[Burktross]

No..... please....

[Alwrathandabout42ninjas]

This is exactly what this game needs. Deathball has taken alot of the fun out of the game, and making lance on lance combat a reality would be awsome.

[Sembrin]

I would *love* alternate maps like this. Heck just add 'em to the queue and boom, you got another 2 dozen "new" maps.

Get on this PGI.

[Lily from animove]

when the system would support fixed lance locations maybe, but imagien the assault lance has start next to the opponent light lance. because randomness makes it so.


he matchup would in first place have to return to a true lance drop and not grouping by lights, mediums assaults and the ehavies being distributed.

Edited by Lily from animove, 26 January 2015 - 02:23 AM.

[Almond Brown]

Cementi, on 11 January 2015 - 08:49 AM, said:

stuff

Give that 60 second countdown at the begining of the match an actual use and let us pick our placement.

Issue. First Team to pick allows the second Team to pick the same spot, get denied, already taken, but now they know where your Team is starting...

[Flaming oblivion]

This would appear to hurt long range builds and benefit brawlers.

[Coolant]

Can PGI just monthly change the drop zones? Make us fight on new areas of the match and with that comes new tactics and strategies.

[Ratpoison]

The only thing that will stop the deathballing in favor of more lance based tactics is going back to 8v8. I would support that all the way. Your spawn points look horribly unfair, honestly, and will just result in one lance getting wiped in the first few minutes followed by regrouping and deathballing for the win.

[Alistair Winter]

Flaming oblivion, on 02 February 2015 - 02:21 PM, said:

This would appear to hurt long range builds and benefit brawlers.

Depends on the map, what lance you drop in and where you spawn. On Alpine, the distances between lances would still be great enough that long range would be effective. Particularly against assault mechs, who can't just run across open terrain to close the distance.

But I wouldn't mind if Assault was slightly more suited for long range weapons and Skirmish was slightly more suited for short range weapons. I don't view that as a negative.

[Alistair Winter]

tortuousGoddess, on 02 February 2015 - 02:38 PM, said:

The only thing that will stop the deathballing in favor of more lance based tactics is going back to 8v8. I would support that all the way. Your spawn points look horribly unfair, honestly, and will just result in one lance getting wiped in the first few minutes followed by regrouping and deathballing for the win.

I don't see why it's a given that 1 lance will be wiped in the first few minutes, while the other lance(s) are unable to do anything. Given the random nature of the matchmaker, you may as well expect both teams to lose a lance. Or one team to lose all lances.

I'm not holding my breath for 8 vs 8. Then again, PGI isn't reading this thread anyway, so I'm not holding my breath for anything. It's all academic.

[AssaultPig]

I kinda doubt this would really change anything

The incentive would still be to ball up as quickly as possible, and I doubt the possibility of being under fire seconds into a match (as in your river city pics) would really make people less risk averse. The response in most pub games would be for players at the closer spawn points to launch and immediately back up to the old spawn points.

[Malckovich]

I love the idea of shaking up the starting points. On the smaller maps this would be tough as others have pointed out, but something might be workable. Some sort of lance balance would also need to be enforced, as all too often I see a whole light lance rush the assault lance, etc. I think art strikes should have a lock out period of the first 2 minutes of a match.

[Alistair Winter]

AssaultPig, on 02 February 2015 - 03:04 PM, said:

I kinda doubt this would really change anything
The incentive would still be to ball up as quickly as possible, and I doubt the possibility of being under fire seconds into a match (as in your river city pics) would really make people less risk averse. The response in most pub games would be for players at the closer spawn points to launch and immediately back up to the old spawn points.

It's not 4 seconds if you're moving at 51 kph and being chased by mechs moving twice that speed though. Running towards your teammates to ball up would be a big challenge if you're being chased by someone with TAG on a map where LRMs can fly over buildings and hills.

Even as a heavy mech moving at 89 kph, the idea would be to place lances close enough together that they wouldn't be able to avoid a fight with enemy lights / mediums running at 120-170 kph.

By River City, do you mean Crimson Strait?

Edited by Alistair Winter, 02 February 2015 - 03:13 PM.