49 replies to this topic

[Vxheous]

Players that end up getting spawn camped do not recognize the fact that the opposing team had to fight through to get to the dropzone to begin with. If your team is so weak that you get rolled 12-0, 12-1 on the opening wave, you have already lost the match 99% of the time. The rest of the game is just formality because at best you have lost wave advantage, at worst, you have lost both wave and tonnage advantage.

[Willard Phule]

Hydrocarbon, on 23 April 2015 - 07:15 AM, said:

Umm, this is already in the game. In real life it requires a commander to send a message & communicate. In-game it requires the commander to swap dead people to a different lance. What else do you want PGI to automate? Your weapon aiming?

Once again, a clanner asking for an "easy button"...

Well, let's look at this a different way......

PGI has decided that the Clans don't need an "Ilkhan".....that Tukayyid will be fought by the Houses instead of IS pilots being a proxy for Comstar.....

Yeah, I think I can safely say that it should be relatively simple for them to add a line of code that says something to the effect of "If there are enemy mechs within XXX meters of the drop zone, the dropship will automatically re-route to one of the other DZs."

Doesn't mean there needs to be 20 drop zones....there tend to be three...it just means your dropship will go to one of the already existing DZs that doesn't have an enemy mech within XXX meters of it.

[Telmasa]

Vxheous Kerensky, on 23 April 2015 - 07:53 AM, said:

Players that end up getting spawn camped do not recognize the fact that the opposing team had to fight through to get to the dropzone to begin with. If your team is so weak that you get rolled 12-0, 12-1 on the opening wave, you have already lost the match 99% of the time. The rest of the game is just formality because at best you have lost wave advantage, at worst, you have lost both wave and tonnage advantage.

That's a **** game. "It's already over, now you have to sit and get whaled on because it's a formality at this point." Who the hell wants to play that? If with every win you're scaring off the losers, you suddenly have a depopulated and dead game.

Ghost Badger, on 23 April 2015 - 05:25 AM, said:

Pretty sure that "deathball" is a synonym for "the mech buddy system." And if you're taking your friends with you, that constitutes teamwork.
This hasn't changed since closed beta.

Deathball lemming zergs are the thinnest, laziest kind of 'teamwork' there possibly is. Anybody, including & especially the average pug, can figure it out. Using comms to do it doesn't make it special.

It was the same on WoT - skilled units would actually bother with scouting, maneuvers, flanking, role warfare, while those who failed to do so would inevitably fall back on the 'zerg rush'; how many units do you see actually bothering with any of that here on MW:O? (Thanks alot to the lane-based map design, with mech balance coming in second, but nontheless.)

Plus, 'buddy system' usually means working in a lance or two-man basis, not the whole 12-man group...

Mystere, on 23 April 2015 - 07:32 AM, said:

It does take time to kill 12 and run to their LZ.

Not if you're already standing less than 500m away from said LZ. Not to mention mechs move pretty damn fast if you simply don't stop.

Ghost Badger, on 23 April 2015 - 07:50 AM, said:

Was in a game where I got spawn-camped last week...2 of my mechs dropped, solo, into a shitstorm of fire from the opposing clanner team.
Both made it to cover, DAMAGED, but alive...and I ended up netting 2200 dmg despite dropping a pair of mechs into the worst situation possible.
When people talk about "not being able to do anything when you drop" I call that as BS. You can. Try harder.
Spawncamping means you were losing to begin with. Buck up, grit your teeth, and keep trying. You still have the opportunity to make the most of it.

If you were getting 2200 damage against a spawncamping team, I'm pretty skeptical that it was ever really a 'spawncamp'.

One anecdotal exception of luck-meets-tryhard circumstances does not become the prove-all description of the majority of CW games.

That part about "keep trying"? That's the whole point of making spawncamping impossible, so that players can keep trying. If you still have the opportunity to keep playing, then it ain't a spawncamp, though with way things are I will at least admit it's a blurry, hazy line.

Edited by Telmasa, 23 April 2015 - 08:37 AM.

[Surn]

When cw first launch the dropships did more damage and we considered them "dropship hammers". They were a battle asset.

[Molossian Dog]

Which was a problem as well.

And why?

Because the frigging spawns -back then as well as now- were directly in the attacker´s path to the objectives.

[Mystere]

Telmasa, on 23 April 2015 - 08:34 AM, said:

Not if you're already standing less than 500m away from said LZ. Not to mention mechs move pretty damn fast if you simply don't stop.

Why in Hades' name did the attackers allow the defenders to get within 500m of their LZ in the first place?

[AlmightyAeng]

Telmasa, on 23 April 2015 - 08:34 AM, said:

If you were getting 2200 damage against a spawncamping team, I'm pretty skeptical that it was ever really a 'spawncamp'.

When you tryhard your hardest with a pair of Thunderwubs and Dragons, 2200 is a pretty crap game It was a well setup spawncamp, I promise.

Edited by Ghost Badger, 23 April 2015 - 08:55 AM.

[Telmasa]

Mystere, on 23 April 2015 - 08:55 AM, said:

Why in Hades' name did the attackers allow the defenders to get within 500m of their LZ in the first place?

Because zerging superman-quirked or metabarf builds - especially when this applies to mechs weighing over 75 tons apiece, so plenty survivability - in a group allows you to exponentially maximize the exploitably unbalanced min-max builds to such a degree that the enemy can't possibly stop you from approaching the LZ (unless they happen to do the exact same thing, which really is the exception rather than the regularity).

Ghost Badger, on 23 April 2015 - 08:55 AM, said:

When you tryhard your hardest with a pair of Thunderwubs and Dragons, 2200 is a pretty crap game It was a well setup spawncamp, I promise.

Dude, you're just proving my point about how superman quirks break the game.

If you're saying it's OK because those superman-quirked mechs allowed you to escape and fight back against the spawncamp, that's flawed. One broken part of the game counteracting another broken part of the game does not make a fixed game, it makes a game that's just broken on multiple levels.

Both things need fixing.

Edited by Telmasa, 23 April 2015 - 09:54 PM.

[zeves]

they had hilariusly shortsighted map designs, until they bother changeing the maps all we can do is hope your teamates can help enough that your spawnpoint wont get camped.
the time it takes for them to admit failure itl take around 2 3 years .

Edited by zeves, 24 April 2015 - 01:56 AM.

[Elizander]

Willard Phule, on 23 April 2015 - 03:16 AM, said:

The spawncamping thing has an EASY fix...so easy, I'm surprised PGI hasn't noticed it.....

In the military we call it the "alternate drop zone" effect.....basically, if the DZ is too hot, you reroute to one that isn't.

So, if there are any enemy mechs with X meters of the DZ, the dropship re-routes to an alternate DZ.

Simple as that.

Yes. Some games in the past let you select where you spawn from several points.

[Willard Phule]

Elizander, on 24 April 2015 - 02:40 AM, said:

Yes. Some games in the past let you select where you spawn from several points.

I'm surprised people here don't just "call a spade a spade."

Why is CW messed up? Because it's a free-flowing, multiple respawn type of scenario with clear cut objectives....not exactly PGI's strong point, you know? Take a look at what they've done so far. We have deathmatch, deathmatch with a base, and capture the flag in the "tutorial queue" and group queue. In CW, we've got basically the same thing, but with 4 mechs.

It is what it is, man. If you expect them to fix this crap any time soon, take a look at both Ghost Heat and our Elo/Matchmaker system. Neither one of those were intended to be permanent...they were both temporary fixes that got patched, tweaked, patched, beaten with Paul's nerf bat until it can't stand up....and beaten again. No hope of those ever getting fixed at this point...the current programmers can't even understand the original code (kind of like the whole LBX cluster/solid ammo that the can't figure out how to do).

( It's off topic, but one GOOD thing about CW...at least as a PUG...is that you stand a far better chance at getting a halfway decent team because there is no matchmaker. Think about it...this, more than anything else, proves the whole "the better you are, the more you carry" conspiracy. When a high Elo player comes to the "Solo/Tutorial queue," he's balanced out by several lower Elo players. In CW...it fills groups on a first come/ First fit basis. I get better teams in CW way more often in solo. )

Edited by Willard Phule, 24 April 2015 - 06:15 AM.

[Mystere]

Telmasa, on 23 April 2015 - 09:52 PM, said:

Because zerging superman-quirked or metabarf builds - especially when this applies to mechs weighing over 75 tons apiece, so plenty survivability - in a group allows you to exponentially maximize the exploitably unbalanced min-max builds to such a degree that the enemy can't possibly stop you from approaching the LZ (unless they happen to do the exact same thing, which really is the exception rather than the regularity).

Did I read you correctly? Min-maxing is considered an exploit?

In any case, is a Gargoyle a suitable mech for an "exploitably unbalanced min-max" build? Because that is what I use to charge the enemy, or a use Mist Lynx. Crazy, I know.

[Mystere]

zeves, on 24 April 2015 - 01:55 AM, said:

they had hilariusly shortsighted map designs, until they bother changeing the maps all we can do is hope your teamates can help enough that your spawnpoint wont get camped.
the time it takes for them to admit failure itl take around 2 3 years .

Regardless of the map, a team should be securing their LZ. Or are you telling everyone that the game should be doing that for you instead?

[AlmightyAeng]

Telmasa, on 23 April 2015 - 09:52 PM, said:

If you're saying it's OK because those superman-quirked mechs allowed you to escape and fight back against the spawncamp, that's flawed. One broken part of the game counteracting another broken part of the game does not make a fixed game, it makes a game that's just broken on multiple levels.

Both things need fixing.

Sigh. No, that's not what I'm saying at all. If you'd ever gotten into a dragon's CT with legs you'd know that quirks don't do **** for their survivability. It's not a standalone example. I consistently walk away alive in ANYTHING that's not a light mech when we get spawncamped and I drop into it.

Is the mechanic annoying? Sure. But stop sucking. There's a lot more grey area to this than everyone who whines "It's IMPOSSIBLE!" seems willing to admit.

[Maxwell Albritten]

Telmasa, on 23 April 2015 - 08:34 AM, said:

That's a **** game.

I'm assuming you mean a "regular" game. Really. Tell me a game where you can put a practiced and talented player against someone who is down right awful and the awful player has a chance to not get curbed stomped. Is chess an ****** game just because you'd get smashed when playing a Grand Master? No, because that's how games work.

Besides, all the suggestions to move drop zones or whatever would just prolong the beating. It sounds like from your post that you would want shorter stomping times, so logically you'd be opposed to changing drop zones or whatever.

Now, I can already forsee the next whine in this which is "Well, CW needs a match maker so bads like me aren't forced to play against decent players!" and that is just a fundamental misunderstanding of how match makers work. Match makers take a pool of players that are waiting at once and mixes and matches. It is not possible to do this in CW because there is a level of strategy involved in picking which planets to attack/defend. When to queue up and when not to. Ect. Do you want to just have a game where there is a pool of players and no strategy beyond that? Well, good news there is! It's called public queue. Go play that.

[Willard Phule]

Maxwell Albritten, on 24 April 2015 - 09:10 AM, said:

I'm assuming you mean a "regular" game. Really. Tell me a game where you can put a practiced and talented player against someone who is down right awful and the awful player has a chance to not get curbed stomped. Is chess an ****** game just because you'd get smashed when playing a Grand Master? No, because that's how games work.

Interesting that you'd mention chess. PGI has somehow equated MW:O with chess in their design of the whole Elo system they mangled. I'm not a fan of the system in general, but even when they use it on professional sports, they've got one thing MW:O doesn't have......a stable playerbase.

Maxwell Albritten, on 24 April 2015 - 09:10 AM, said:

Besides, all the suggestions to move drop zones or whatever would just prolong the beating. It sounds like from your post that you would want shorter stomping times, so logically you'd be opposed to changing drop zones or whatever.

Not necessarily true. Granted, a PUG team against a 12 man (especially when they're on defense) doesn't really stand much of a chance, but they can certainly make them work for it. If the other team isn't a 12 man...then, believe it or not, sometimes it's not a forgone conclusion.

I can't speak for the IS side, but on the Clan side, we have a LOT of trial mechs in our PUG drops. That comes from a combination of new or inexperienced pilots that don't own enough mechs to make a dropdeck. It is what it is. The biggest problem we've got, overall, are the "trial" mechs that some bonehead at PGI thought would make the best mechs for people to learn on.

Virtually everything worth putting into a dropdeck has no way of countering ECM, which with the release of both the Hellbringer for cBills and the new Griffin, is pretty much everywhere, all the time. To top that off, they tend to be either LRM heavy or unable to sustain it's firepower because of poor design, crap game mechanics that no TR:O mech was ever designed to deal with (like Ghost Heat) or they have negative tweaks.....which to someone with no open skill trees or modules pretty much makes it a suicide mech.

BUT...I'll tell you one thing....you give those drooling incompetents something to shoot at, and they do STUPID DAMAGE. They're predictable as hell....one red triangle = stampeding herd of derps headed that way. Make sure everyone with any type of experience knows to target enemy ECM as a priority, and you've got an out of control, constant flow of rampaging new players. You thought they were bad in the solo queue? Wait till you see them with multiple respawns. As long as you can herd the derps, you've got a powerful tool.

Maxwell Albritten, on 24 April 2015 - 09:10 AM, said:

Now, I can already forsee the next whine in this which is "Well, CW needs a match maker so bads like me aren't forced to play against decent players!" and that is just a fundamental misunderstanding of how match makers work. Match makers take a pool of players that are waiting at once and mixes and matches. It is not possible to do this in CW because there is a level of strategy involved in picking which planets to attack/defend. When to queue up and when not to. Ect. Do you want to just have a game where there is a pool of players and no strategy beyond that? Well, good news there is! It's called public queue. Go play that.

Hell no, CW doesn't need a matchmaker. In fact, CW pretty much proves that whole "the better you are, the more you carry" thing. Ask any PUGger that's been around for a couple of years. You stand a much better chance of getting a halfway decent CW team than you do in the solo queue. And let's just call the solo queue what it really is....PGI's Tutorial Queue.

They have no intention of ever coming out with anything interactive that teaches you anything more than getting out of 3PV and moving forward. They set the solo queue up so that whenever someone with a higher Elo than normal joins, it will put several inexperienced players in to "balance him out." By carrying those new players, they get to learn by example. PGI is hoping the community will continue to provide them a special needs class for free.....

[Telmasa]

Mystere, on 24 April 2015 - 07:21 AM, said:

Did I read you correctly? Min-maxing is considered an exploit? In any case, is a Gargoyle a suitable mech for an "exploitably unbalanced min-max" build? Because that is what I use to charge the enemy, or a use Mist Lynx. Crazy, I know.

If it's nothing but heatsinks and CERML? I'd say so. It certainly has plenty energy hardpoints and crit space. And you can fit a LPL in the CT for some zombie fun....

For the most part, the offenders lie in the IS side, imho. CERMLs are a tad strong for clanners, but really, I think the "OP"-ness of it all is way overhyped. A few laserbarf farmers in pug games gives it a skewed appearance.

Ghost Badger, on 24 April 2015 - 07:41 AM, said:

Sigh. No, that's not what I'm saying at all. If you'd ever gotten into a dragon's CT with legs you'd know that quirks don't do **** for their survivability. It's not a standalone example. I consistently walk away alive in ANYTHING that's not a light mech when we get spawncamped and I drop into it. Is the mechanic annoying? Sure. But stop sucking. There's a lot more grey area to this than everyone who whines "It's IMPOSSIBLE!" seems willing to admit.

Ugh. I HAVE driven the Dragon-1N. And it was OP as hell. I got rid of it because it was boring, easy, cheesy, and felt like I was exploiting the game. Why take a King Crab when the Dragon-1N has the same DPS? The Dragon moves faster, turns faster, gets a *huge* amount of CT structure buffing, and the KC has low-slung ballistic points, so where's the trade-off? Even the increased armor threshhold on the KC is totally offset by it being slow as molasses. Dragon-1N has no such problem.

It's probably that increased CT structure that allowed you to survive, honestly, combined with the insane DPS allowing you to cream any mech you manage to focus down.

Again, you aren't actually being spawncamped if you're able to walk away, find cover, prepare yourself, and then engage the enemy as you please. On the other hand, if you're merely talking about being able to run around for a few moments while the enemy unloads on you, that's still a spawncamp - just poor aim and/or they're farming damage for points.

Yeah, sure, there's plenty gray areas, but nobody should be getting shot before their feet touch the ground or before they have a chance to so much as look around and see what is going on. That is just bad game design.

Maxwell Albritten, on 24 April 2015 - 09:10 AM, said:

I'm assuming you mean a "regular" game. Really. Tell me a game where you can put a practiced and talented player

Okay, first, I'm gonna stop you right here. This game, by and large, does not have practiced and talented players.
Most of the "endgame meta" is simply filled with mediocre pilots who know the basics of teamspeak communication who ride the min/max superman-quirk/lightrush/CERML barf bandwagon as fast and hard as they possibly can - and who then pat themselves on the back, stroke each other's egos, and lie about having used any teamwork or tactics under any true definition of those words.

Second, no matter what real-life equivalent of competition you find, the two players/teams always are given a fair and balanced chance to compete. Show me a widespread competitive game in real life that involves one-sided gimmickry to the extent that MW:O has. The fact that "anybody can use it" merely turns it into a B.S. contest, that doesn't make it a fun, fair, or balanced game, and without those factors it can't ever truely be competitive.

Skill will never have a true place in a game that is defined more by how many gimmicks you abuse than what tactics or piloting skill you employ.

Edited by Telmasa, 24 April 2015 - 04:25 PM.

[Pereset]

I decided to take some time out to make a short post to this thread.

All of you make very compelling arguments about camping spawn points, especially when you have some excellent teams coordinating their strategy around just reaching the spawn points in CW.

I think it would be very cool, if the dropships were more aggressive in protecting the mechs they have dropped, and stayed until the threat in the spawn areas were neutralized within 500 to 1000m.

In fact, what would be even better is if the level of activity from the dropships increases with the combined scores of each team. This way, those players and teams who lack the coordination or training of the opposing team have a fighting chance to survive (even a bit longer in the match).

It would force the spawn campers to come up with another strategy.

I can tell who they are, by looking at the posts evident in this thread. I believe we would see more balance to what is often a very unbalanced CW match, especially when you have perfect strangers, fighting against what is often a crack team of very, very good players who have often been playing together just for this very thing.

If PGI were to take that strategic balance away from these teams, perhaps those unbalanced matches would be better.

It would offer the team that lacks the coordination or strategic advantage a match that would offer more rewards in terms of damage or kills at the very least. This way, those crack players and teams are given more of a challenge in eliminating the opposing team farther from the drop points, rather than steamrolling the other team.

I realize this would not be an end-all to the balance issues when pitted against the more practised teams, but...I feel that it could offer more of a strategic challenge to all those in the game. In other words, "Raise the bar", PGI. If these teams are steamrolling other teams, it is evident that you are making the game too easy for them. Stop making it so easy for the opposing teams to win defensively or offensively. Make changes to CW, map-by-map.

[Pereset]

Okay, need to reply to this post:

"Okay, first, I'm gonna stop you right here. This game, by and large, does not have practiced and talented players.Most of the "endgame meta" is simply filled with mediocre pilots who know the basics of teamspeak communication who ride the min/max superman-quirk/lightrush/CERML barf bandwagon as fast and hard as they possibly can - and who then pat themselves on the back, stroke each other's egos, and lie about having used any teamwork or tactics under any true definition of those words."

There really are practised teams (IS and CLAN) who have formed up, and practise (some daily).

I personally feel that you would be doing a disservice to those teams, not to make the game challenging for them. You could base the difficulty of what they face on ELO or whatever other form of measurement that is used to determine the strength of a player, mech or whatever. But, I saw those practised teams play in CW, and they did devastating damage. Nine times out of ten, those teams steamrolled the team I was on. Many times, this was a team that had previously won 5 or 6 matches previous to the one that they faced with that opposing team. And...there were certain, specific teams that were steamrolling the opposing side. Constantly.

Therefore, my argument is that PGI use ELO or whatever measurement they use prior to the match, to determine dropship and base defense aggressiveness. I don't know, perhaps include long toms for the more superior teams to waylay them when they camp the gates. Pound the heck out of them, so that the team with the lower ELO or whatever measurement is being used, be given the opportunity to really give that more superior team a real challenge, rather than a cakewalk.

Edited by Pereset, 12 May 2015 - 12:51 PM.

[Havyek]

I'd like to see the dropships get heavier, short range weapons.

Take away their LLAS and MPLAS and give them AC20s (or LBX10s).