123 replies to this topic

[Wingbreaker]

WBCReaper, on 09 March 2015 - 05:20 PM, said:

#War never changes
I like killing marik but i like killing clanners more .....sorry wing but you got to die now :3

WE'RE NOT THERE YET

[MischiefSC]

Khanesh Loral, on 09 March 2015 - 05:01 PM, said:

Thank you Mischief. This is kinda what I have been saying. It's still no excuse for our guys turning tail though. Only 1/4 the peeps that were clamoring for war showed up. Herein lies the problem. We chestbeated, and lost the chestbeat game. The guys that are still here are having a BLAST. But the Faction as a whole is suffering.

That's not an issue unique to Marik. People need to show up and practice to get good. You don't bring LRMs, you play aggressive and close and you coordinate fire with your team. A few things to work out and refine. The thing that kills me is that there's a painfully large subset of players who run into that reality and....

quit.

Rather than put a bit of effort into finding really good builds that work well for them and play to the realities of the gameplay and learn to play with/to the team and either drill down on staying bad or just quit to the pug queue.

If someone is jostling to stay in the back of the pack, they are dead weight. If the drop caller says 'push' and they're not balls out up front bringing the fire and taking their turn sharing the damage, both giving and receiving, they're a burden to the teams success. If a team doesn't understand focused fire and how to stay focused in fire they need to practice that until it's a skill they know. Otherwise they're going to get rolled, repeatedly, by those who do.

CW doesn't have Elo. For all peoples talk of the MM not working and Elo being useless, etc. etc. etc. it created a cradle of deception for a lot of people that they really, really liked to believe was true. 'Everyone else plays like you; you're average, a bit better than average! You don't need to get better and the only better you can get is a tiny bit. You already know everything you need to know. You're generally better than the people you play with'.

Getting good at CW is about getting actually literally good at the game overall, on a scale that runs from worst to best. That takes some effort and some humility and a willingness to learn said skills.

So sometimes events happen, like suddenly dropping against Kurita who can field multiple comp or near-comp tier 12mans back to back every single night and realizing that, actually, you need to get better and a lot of people just....

quit.

Not saying that's RB. He's a good guy and I know enough about what actually happened to appreciate why he might feel inclined to take a break. Not my business nor my place to discuss and I find the concept of this thread uncool and Molasses spot on in his assessment.

As to Marik players leaving overall? Not a unique Marik issue. If someone isn't fun to play against or your teammates are not fun to play with or any combo of those, people leave. It's not about winning or losing; it's about how fun the game with the other team is and the game with your own team is. That's it. The failure to provide a fun experience on both sides is just another kick down the chute to CWs population decline.

[N0MAD]

CW is a pigs ear and will always be, people wanted paid for and deserved silk..

[Stealth Raptor]

My question is how do you make a game fun for people that dont want to get better or arent good, who then go up against good groups and get destructed? CW wont work easily with elo that will keep it relatively player controlled, so how can it be fixed? Especially now, the population is nowhere near high enough to sustain any meaningful cw

[SteelWarrior]

Stealth Raptor, on 09 March 2015 - 05:40 PM, said:

My question is how do you make a game fun for people that dont want to get better or arent good, who then go up against good groups and get destructed? CW wont work easily with elo that will keep it relatively player controlled, so how can it be fixed? Especially now, the population is nowhere near high enough to sustain any meaningful cw

Answer: Steam meets world of warcraft


WoW has perfected the balance between their hard cores and casual. CW NEEDS to be the heroic raids of MWO, but then you need a healthy, thriving pug drop expirence for the casuals. I would limit pug dropping to a lance max of premade grouping. That way no casual pugging groups gets matched to a NS group lol. You cant make a single game mode appeal to hardcores and casual. You must seperate those player bases and cater an expirence to them.

Like back when the game launched, they had 40 man raids. hard core players loved it, casuals wanted to do it but didnt have the time. so they changed the format to 10/25. With the 10s catering to casuals, 25s to the hardcore, creating 2 different challenge peaks. Then in Cat, they made 10s and 25s equal in difficulty and rewards but put the higher prestige on the 25s, allowing casual and hardcores to take part in the same gameplay, while still seperating the skill barrier and rewarding each party appropriately to their investment of time. CW needs to be for 12 man, organized, comp teams who are willing to min/max their game play and really push their performances. Pug drops really need to be solo players or small groups, a single skilled lance can give a team a huge edge, but its not often enough to out right carry. The pug drop 12v12 needs to be for the casual weekend warriors.

Cant build CW around both groups, and its hard to balance pug dropping when you get 6-12's qeueing up togather.

And we need Steam to boost the population to fill both those categories.

Edited by SteelWarrior, 09 March 2015 - 05:56 PM.

[Ultra-Laser]

Rebas Kradd, on 09 March 2015 - 05:26 PM, said:

They've already said that's going to happen, sorry to spoil your surprise. No more development until May while they work on Mechlab and new game modes.

Pay attention to Townhalls once in a while.

To clarify, does "new game modes" exclude CW? I recall Russ mentioning that they were planning to add the public maps and game modes to CW, but I don't remember where on the "soon™" scale it fell.

Wingbreaker, on 09 March 2015 - 05:26 PM, said:

WE'RE NOT THERE YET

Think a shortcut though Clan Puppy might get you here any quicker? The algorithm seems to think you want a summer home on Tharkad.

[Vlad Ward]

MischiefSC, on 09 March 2015 - 04:33 PM, said:

I wish it was that simple. A lot more to it than that. Most people would rather quit than surrender in a game. So they quit. So we end up with empty queues. I'm waiting for another ghost drop on a Marik world right now.

Marik needed a war with Kurita because that was the only big war open to them. Players need fights to fight - that's what they need to stay playing. You show up and there's nobody to drop with or against and you get bored and you leave.

At what point did Kurita surrender to CSJ or FRR to, well, anyone? Who should Steiner surrender to?

Don't be silly. There is no surrender in this game. Ever. People don't show up to win; they show up to play. The problem becomes 'how fun to play against is someone'. NS can attest that there are plenty of Davions who will show up and lose matches and still have fun, we did it with marik for a while. It's a matter of making playing fun for them.

Honestly? Marik and Davion should be the ones fighting each other. Maybe Liao too. I don't know Liao. They're an enigma. But Marik and Davion actually have relatively equal levels of skill in their House units. That would probably make the game a lot more fun for them.

Kurita is on a different level. It has nothing to do with numbers, it's just the truth. Sure, Davion and/or Marik could try some hyperbolic time chamber style training to get on their level, but that's not the kind of player those factions attracted. Marik and Davion are the care bear factions. And that's fine. I don't think anyone has a problem with that. The problem arose when certain people tried to thump their chests in Kurita's face.

Kurita's house units are better at this game than Marik and Davion house units - by a lot. The sooner people acknowledge that and stop picking losing, unfun battles the sooner they can all get back to fighting more enjoyable, more equitable battles against people with similar interests. Davion can fight Marik. Kurita can fight Smoke Jag. Everyone's happy.

[MischiefSC]

Vlad Ward, on 09 March 2015 - 06:26 PM, said:

Honestly? Marik and Davion should be the ones fighting each other. Maybe Liao too. I don't know Liao. They're an enigma. But Marik and Davion actually have relatively equal levels of skill in their House units. That would probably make the game a lot more fun for them.

Kurita is on a different level. It has nothing to do with numbers, it's just the truth. Sure, Davion and/or Marik could try some hyperbolic time chamber style training to get on their level, but that's not the kind of player those factions attracted. Marik and Davion are the care bear factions. And that's fine. I don't think anyone has a problem with that. The problem arose when certain people tried to thump their chests in Kurita's face.

Kurita's house units are better at this game than Marik and Davion house units - by a lot. The sooner people acknowledge that and stop picking losing, unfun battles the sooner they can all get back to fighting more enjoyable, more equitable battles against people with similar interests. Davion can fight Marik. Kurita can fight Smoke Jag. Everyone's happy.

The fundamental issue is that there were some great units in Daivion. Some left to be mercs, some of the comp units with davion tags don't play CW anymore so calling them 'Davion units' is a bit of a misnomer. They don't actually belong to a faction; they're pug/group queue players with a faction forum icon. The problem plaguing both Davion and Marik right now is that their comp players left. The majority of 'loyalist' comp units are clan, after that mercs, after that Kurita.

Don't forget that for a good long while Kurita got thumped by CSJ and Davion both, brutally and badly. That wasn't because NS was terrible then - though I'm sure they got better. It wasn't that NKVA showed up - Kurita was turned around by the time they showed up.

Clans and the rest of the IS largely emptied. I don't mean a little. I mean that in the first month or two of CW in Davion I had nights where it was 60+ on all 3 borders of Davion players anywhere close to primetime and I could hop in at any hour and find a stupid number of people to drop with.

Kurita has better units right now because they actually have units. Same with the Clans, same with the 'big merc groups'. Kurita is wrecking face because they've got 36 really good players on pretty much every night. That's it. All due props to Kurita - especially the ones who show up regular and play. The problem though is.... why? Why is Kurita the only IS faction that has 36 comp-focused players who will actually show up every night and wreck face and play to win?

In the end, going to agree with SteelWarrior. I would go so far as to say have no pugging or drops with less than 4 players in CW and have it pay a bit more than it does now. Also.... logistics, more maps/modes, etc. etc. All the other stuff that was promised. There needs to be a better set of tools as well for collecting newer players, getting them into units and helping get them trained up. I need to be able to play private matches on CW maps with respawn. I get that the fear is that comp teams will train up too fast but that's already the case. There needs to be more tools in place for players who want to 'GIT GUD' to do so.

Edited by MischiefSC, 09 March 2015 - 06:59 PM.

[Khanesh Loral]

Vlad Ward, on 09 March 2015 - 06:26 PM, said:

Honestly? Marik and Davion should be the ones fighting each other. Maybe Liao too. I don't know Liao. They're an enigma. But Marik and Davion actually have relatively equal levels of skill in their House units. That would probably make the game a lot more fun for them.

Kurita is on a different level. It has nothing to do with numbers, it's just the truth. Sure, Davion and/or Marik could try some hyperbolic time chamber style training to get on their level, but that's not the kind of player those factions attracted. Marik and Davion are the care bear factions. And that's fine. I don't think anyone has a problem with that. The problem arose when certain people tried to thump their chests in Kurita's face.

Kurita's house units are better at this game than Marik and Davion house units - by a lot. The sooner people acknowledge that and stop picking losing, unfun battles the sooner they can all get back to fighting more enjoyable, more equitable battles against people with similar interests. Davion can fight Marik. Kurita can fight Smoke Jag. Everyone's happy.

Vlad, I gotta say...... I cannot disagree with ANYTHING you have said. Good on you man, good on you. But we as a house want to get better. We are working through some internal kinks, and we want to try to pick some harder fights a bit more until we throw in the towel. Because we want to fight with the IS on a united front after reset. We are learning a lot, both politically and tactically.

Edited by Khanesh Loral, 09 March 2015 - 07:25 PM.

[Wingbreaker]

Ultra-Laser, on 09 March 2015 - 06:19 PM, said:

To clarify, does "new game modes" exclude CW? I recall Russ mentioning that they were planning to add the public maps and game modes to CW, but I don't remember where on the "soon™" scale it fell.


Think a shortcut though Clan Puppy might get you here any quicker? The algorithm seems to think you want a summer home on Tharkad.

Thankfully the puppies were bad and got swatted ont he nose by steiner for a couple days, so we got their lane.

Praise be to the Paulgorithim.

[Stealth Raptor]

MischiefSC, on 09 March 2015 - 06:58 PM, said:

Don't forget that for a good long while Kurita got thumped by CSJ and Davion both, brutally and badly. That wasn't because NS was terrible then - though I'm sure they got better. It wasn't that NKVA showed up - Kurita was turned around by the time they showed up.

a big part of why we were thumped was that for over a month, NS was literally the only group that dropped full 12s on the TS. occasionally 6rnt would show up, but that was basically it. near the end of the drought was NKVAs rise. we took them under our wings and taught them what we did, and it was soon after that that the HK council formed and the HK loyalist units started to transfer hard into CW. i would like to say that part of the reason why we are so strong is that the majority of kuritan units were "late to the party". a few units showed up early, but they quickly left, and NS was the only consistent unit. either way, the combination of the HK council forming, the emergence of NKVA, and the rest of kurita either coming to CW or coming back to it is what has us going. we were basically outnumbered always which lead to us losing planets even though NS runs a ridiculously high w/l rate in 12s (and really any group that has at least half us). we seem to be hitting a lull in attendance which is to be expected, but for now we will always have 2-3 12s on a night with spikes up to 5-6 groups. as of now, i couldnt be happier with whats going on for us, even though we are going to lose a lot of planets tonight lol

[Taisa Sodai Lopez Kerensky]

Stealth Raptor, on 09 March 2015 - 07:25 PM, said:

a big part of why we were thumped was that for over a month, NS was literally the only group that dropped full 12s on the TS. occasionally 6rnt would show up, but that was basically it. near the end of the drought was NKVAs rise. we took them under our wings and taught them what we did, and it was soon after that that the HK council formed and the HK loyalist units started to transfer hard into CW. i would like to say that part of the reason why we are so strong is that the majority of kuritan units were "late to the party". a few units showed up early, but they quickly left, and NS was the only consistent unit. either way, the combination of the HK council forming, the emergence of NKVA, and the rest of kurita either coming to CW or coming back to it is what has us going. we were basically outnumbered always which lead to us losing planets even though NS runs a ridiculously high w/l rate in 12s (and really any group that has at least half us). we seem to be hitting a lull in attendance which is to be expected, but for now we will always have 2-3 12s on a night with spikes up to 5-6 groups. as of now, i couldnt be happier with whats going on for us, even though we are going to lose a lot of planets tonight lol

[SteelWarrior]

Nkva was the most random thing in the world. One day 12 new faces drop by TS, new profiles, no mechs to speak of, 2 weeks later they were a beast of their own

The High Council and the stuborn resolve of Kuritas core units is the key to our success. Throw in some particularly potent players and some great minds for mech builds and strategy and boom. Hk as it is

Alot of meta tactics came from our strategy masters. Even now they are reinventing the meta. Did you know NS has found immunity from streak boats during our light rushes? Give it 2-3 weeks and everyone will follow thd lead. And all this stems from a competative environment we thrive in. Our guys do the hard math for dps numbers vs heat and such. Its a no brainer that we shouldnt be fighting pugs with lrms.

[Slambot]

Basically, it came down to the fact that we were winning most of the fights but still losing planets. This was because we could field maybe 4 companies on a good night. Kurita could field 8 or 10 just for us and still have over 100 members fighting (and losing to) the clans. So, we would attack..win and 5 minutes later the area is lost to a Kurita shadow drop... not really fun. It came down to numbers. Yes, we wanted the war, but it ended up like we stepped on a hill of fire ants. We could kill as many as we wanted and still get swarmed under. And Kurita can stop kidding yourselves.

I'm not saying that House Marik is the best, most skilled group of mechwarriors ever. We do very well however and we have a great community. Its just a smaller one, mainly due to lore I think. All of the lore centered around Davion as the good guys and House Marik is rarely mentioned until the Jihad (which I just wanna pretend never happened as the story is crap) Kurita is always portrayed in lore as honorable, sometimes bad sometimes good guys, but good mechwarriors.

[Stealth Raptor]

the fun thing is if there are more then 3-4 groups on each side, ghost drops statistically are very rare as only one ghost drop happens every 10 minutes, so before the timer ends one of the groups fights is over and they queue up for the team in the ghost timer drop. then the next kurita group starts a 10 minute timer, etc etc.

also while we have good numbers, we definitely dont 8 or 10 for you guys with 100+ people to throw at the clans. we generally throw 3-4 groups at marik and have 1-2 on the clans, plus the merc groups which tend to focus clans for the most part.

[Karl Marlow]

Khanesh Loral, on 09 March 2015 - 05:01 PM, said:

Thank you Mischief. This is kinda what I have been saying. It's still no excuse for our guys turning tail though. Only 1/4 the peeps that were clamoring for war showed up. Herein lies the problem. We chestbeated, and lost the chestbeat game. The guys that are still here are having a BLAST. But the Faction as a whole is suffering.

Khanesh Loral, on 09 March 2015 - 05:01 PM, said:

Thank you Mischief. This is kinda what I have been saying. It's still no excuse for our guys turning tail though. Only 1/4 the peeps that were clamoring for war showed up. Herein lies the problem. We chestbeated, and lost the chestbeat game. The guys that are still here are having a BLAST. But the Faction as a whole is suffering.

I hate to break it to you but we've had severely diminished numbers ever since the nSL thing happened. Some were mercs. Some just got board. As for me I got fed up when we finally got a kurita border and everyone suddenly didn't want t fight. So I ended up playing other games with friends and ha b e had no desire to even patch mwo since. The only time I even think s bout mwo is when. M board at work and read these forums.

Kinda in a wait and see mode. I'm not even excited for the new mechs coming out next week. Marik problem is mostly apathy. I was hoping war with kurita would help with that. Unfortunately it took too long to reopen the front. We could barely field 2 companies by the time we broke through.

[Tasker]

Slambot, on 09 March 2015 - 07:50 PM, said:

Basically, it came down to the fact that we were winning most of the fights but still losing planets.

Yeah, no. Sorry. Winning attacks on Hellebore/Sulfurous nice, and congratulations on forward progress of being able to win on those two maps, but anyone who play CW long enough know that attackers always heavily favored on those map. Even RRB win games on Sulfurous time to time.

When lose every counter attack and overwhelm majority of time on Boreal both sides, is not because Kurita have more numbers. Kurita fighting on FIVE FRONTS almost every night. Tonight have Wolf attacking hard, Jags attacking hard (Jags get TWO attack lane), Ghost Bear attack, Davion attack Ronel, and Marik attack. We still gain +1 net against Marik. You think is because we have great zerg of pilot to spare? Ha ha. No.

Dispense with nonsense and maybe talk more realistic about situation.

Edited by Tasker, 09 March 2015 - 09:35 PM.

[The Droid]

Molossian Dog, on 08 March 2015 - 06:57 PM, said:

I see Kuritas grand strategy of "mobbing enemy until he stops playing" is still in full swing.

Kudos, gents. You are an asset to this community.

How did Kurita mob them to stop playing? It is to our understanding that Marik talked lot of smack, and got smacked when they tried attack us. Then when they opened up the borders again they attacked us, but the moment we attacked back the louder voices in Marik suddenly fell silent.

You make little sense, dog.

[White Bear 84]

[Shell Game]

MischiefSC, on 08 March 2015 - 06:32 PM, said:

Wow. That's pretty rekt.

Rektum? Damn near killed 'em.

You forgot... Rektum and left him!