14 replies to this topic

[Khereg]

I feel like I'm going to get flamed for this, but what the heck...

Spent a little more time than normal on the forums lately and continue to see the raging discussions on balance in CW and it got me thinking: what are the critical success factors building to successful play in CW (or in general, for that matter)? I came up with 4, each of which could be debated to death, but taken together, if you can honestly say you and your team is above average in all 4 of these, you should be doing well in CW. If you're substantially deficient in any, it will definitely hamper your performance. Curious if others have differing opinions.

In no particular order:

1. Mech selection and loadout - some are obviously better than others. Pick good ones for better success. By all means continue the eternal debate over which mechs, weapons, and equipment are OP/UP.

2. Player hardware - specifically as it translates to fps and aiming/maneuverability. While MWO isn't a pure twitch game, good responsiveness, quick and accurate aiming, and high fps will definitely help, or at least keep you from being at a disadvantage.

3. Teamwork, active communication, and familiarity with teammates - I'm hoping this one is self evident. The #1 advantage teams have over pugs.

4. Individual player skill - it's the hardest one to admit to ourselves, but we do not all possess equivalent talent. However, we can all learn. For CW, a good yardstick I use for myself is a goal of 1,200 damage per game where all 48 opponents are killed. I can accept 1,000, but anything below that and I'm kicking myself.

My own personal journey in MWO has touched on each of these. I realized early I sucked. And I mean I sucked Hard. Among other issues, my fps was garbage. I upgraded my graphics card and my play picked up immediately. Amazing what being able to see could do. I tweaked my mouse settings and got better response in game. Now I could aim and hit things too. Miracle!

I ground out some c-bils, played in some bad mechs for a while and finally started to learn which builds were better thanks to in game chat and reading these forums. I bought better mechs. My play continued to improve. Also, was watching and learning from others the whole time.

Then, CW launched and I again had fps issues which by now I could immediately tell were affecting my performance. Upgraded my core processor and watched my damage scores jump by over 300/game almost overnight. Finally realized I had gone as far as I reasonably could in pug life and joined an active CW unit. I continue to learn from them and am getting better at teamwork now. It's a journey, for sure, and one I'm still enjoying.

I'm curious if others see the same critical success factors for CW or if I'm missing something. What's been your experience on your path to self-improvement in game?

[Adamski]

From what I can tell, if you aren't in an organized group, you need a high level of situational awareness to know where the enemy is, otherwise you end up like the average PUG who turns corners into 3 enemy mechs who proceed to alpha off all the PUGs armor.

More skilled players will hang back, stay in cover, take shots and land them without exposing themselves to return fire.

Also, people need to understand that CW is where people go AFTER they have mastered multiple mechs, if you still need XP for your skills or C-Bills for modules and Consumable Spam, you need to hit up the general queue,as you will earn more per time spent there.

[sdsnowbum]

Is damage dealt really a good yardstick? I would say you need to factor in kills as well.

You can kill 4 mechs doing 600 damage if you aim well. If everyone on your side kills 4 mechs your team wins no matter how much damage they did.

While you can do 1000 damage with no kills if you use a ton of LRMs.

[Rhaythe]

5) Luck of the PUG lottery if you're not dropping with a 12-man.

[Khereg]

sdsnowbum, on 24 March 2015 - 02:17 PM, said:

Is damage dealt really a good yardstick? I would say you need to factor in kills as well.

You can kill 4 mechs doing 600 damage if you aim well. If everyone on your side kills 4 mechs your team wins no matter how much damage they did.

While you can do 1000 damage with no kills if you use a ton of LRMs.

It's not perfect, but I think it's a better measure than kills and when the only stats you have readily available after a fight are dmg, kills, and assists, you work with what you have. I certainly pay attention to kills, but I find dmg is a more consistent measure of performance and it's most of what my team discusses during the debrief period. We even joke that someone with a high kill number and low dmg is a bona fide "Kill Securer". To each their own, though.

[Ssamout]

That 1k damage is a good yardstick if the battle has been attrition. Its perfectly possible to manage it even in a match where your puggie friends were slaughtered like blind pigs. If you don't clock that over 1k consistently on a winning match, you are doing something wrong. Lrms don't belong in a pug's cw dropdeck, they are for unit tactics imho.

[Lily from animove]

Factionwide communication.

I remember how the CWI's were talking in TS with the russian CW's and coordinate faction wide who is attacking which planet (at the rare time we had actually some proper and multiple attack lanes.)
Zerging one planet and losing two somewhere else isn't really successful.

Rhaythe, on 24 March 2015 - 02:21 PM, said:

5) Luck of the PUG lottery if you're not dropping with a 12-man.

Wrong, this is not, luck, actively seeking a 12 man is actually part of communication within your faction. Don't drop without 12's and Luck is not in this equation. and if your whole faction cna not establish a 12 man, well Luck won't even save you

[Kyynele]

sdsnowbum, on 24 March 2015 - 02:17 PM, said:

Is damage dealt really a good yardstick? I would say you need to factor in kills as well.

You can kill 4 mechs doing 600 damage if you aim well. If everyone on your side kills 4 mechs your team wins no matter how much damage they did.

While you can do 1000 damage with no kills if you use a ton of LRMs.

If everyone in the team does 1000+ damage, it's pretty much a won match, so it's not a bad thing to aim for.

However, bringing LRMs means that the other people in your team have to tank more damage, so you're passively making it harder for them to deal that amount. Either don't do that, or atleast acknowledge that the only one you're doing a service is yourself.

[Tom Sawyer]

Adamski, on 24 March 2015 - 02:04 PM, said:

From what I can tell, if you aren't in an organized group, you need a high level of situational awareness to know where the enemy is, otherwise you end up like the average PUG who turns corners into 3 enemy mechs who proceed to alpha off all the PUGs armor.

More skilled players will hang back, stay in cover, take shots and land them without exposing themselves to return fire.

Also, people need to understand that CW is where people go AFTER they have mastered multiple mechs, if you still need XP for your skills or C-Bills for modules and Consumable Spam, you need to hit up the general queue,as you will earn more per time spent there.

One caveat to this. When you do the gate rush EVERYONE should be murderballing. The more in the ball the less likely the enemy will just destroy the attackers. Yes you might draw the short straw and just get wrecked. But while the enemy is doing that to you your buddies should be wrecking them or reaching cover. All too often you will get a pug or 2 that just hang back thinking they are sniper or LRM gods. Once the enemy finishes off the ones who DID push they are coming out to finish you off.

[Molossian Dog]

5. Man parts


Most attacks and a good share of defend OPs crumble because people don´t have them and rather hillhump or lurm the countryside instead of pushing in the attack to get where the attacker has to go to win or stop the same push if you are defending.

This part you cannot even call coordination.

If you see your team pushing or trying to stop the enemy push you either join them or you don´t.

Edited by Molossian Dog, 25 March 2015 - 03:33 AM.

[Leeroy Mechkins]

You also need to understand the maps well.

[Khereg]

Leeroy Mechkins, on 25 March 2015 - 05:40 AM, said:

You also need to understand the maps well.

Agreed about the maps. That should probably be #5.

Knowing the maps intimately helps both individual skill and team play. It's harder in CW b/c you can't get to the maps in the training grounds and exploring isn't usually feasible in the middle of a match. We had a team get pretty angry at us for tying up their mechs for an extra 5 min when the new map rolled out. It was attack and we had killed them all but hadn't taken down Omega. We told them in chat we wanted to explore a bit before finishing and they did not react well to the news. We had no other opportunity to look around unopposed, however...

I thought I heard PGI was going to add the CW maps to training grounds, but not sure. I think that would help a lot.

[_Comrade_]

And none of what OP wrote matters if your faction doesn't have the numbers to win or defend a planet, till PGI fixes the balance issues

[Apnu]

Rhaythe, on 24 March 2015 - 02:21 PM, said:

5) Luck of the PUG lottery if you're not dropping with a 12-man.

This is true whenever you aren't in a group of 4 or more. Pub. Queue, Group Queue, or CW.

Grimwill, on 25 March 2015 - 08:40 AM, said:

And none of what OP wrote matters if your faction doesn't have the numbers to win or defend a planet, till PGI fixes the balance issues

I think planets flip too easily. Russ has said many times in the Townhalls they can change the shards needed to flip a planet whenever, but they seem to have forgotten this or are holding back on it for some reason.

[Khereg]

Grimwill, on 25 March 2015 - 08:40 AM, said:

And none of what OP wrote matters if your faction doesn't have the numbers to win or defend a planet, till PGI fixes the balance issues

This is true, but what I'm driving at is that if more people do the things that lead to success in CW, then more people will enjoy playing CW and the population will grow. I put all this out there in an effort to help people understand how to make their CW game better and more competitive so their experiences in CW aren't so negative. Instead of hoarding that info for a competitive advantage, I'd prefer to spread the wealth and in return get more parity and competitive matches in CW.

If the CW population increases, it becomes much harder for a few units to have such a substantial impact on planet wins and losses, which I think is also part of the frustration a lot of people have with CW.

As for balance, this is an area that will be debated eternally (see #1, above). PGI has the job of watching and managing balance. Only they have the information and the means to make changes at the global level. Looking from the inside as players, our job (IMHO) is to "exploit" as many balance issues as we can so the imbalances become clear to PGI. That may sound counter intuitive, but it's the try hards who will first find the OP weapons, mechs, and tactics and use them to affect game outcomes. Once game outcomes are affected to the point that PGI takes notice, they'll make adjustments to mitigate.

All this assumes trust in PGI to actively watch and address balance issues, of course. I have faith in that, but the adjustments aren't instantaneous. As a result, there will always be some aspect of the game that is unbalanced at any given time. Expecting perfect balance, or even thinking that we, as individual players really know what's out of whack at any given time is a little unrealistic.