6 replies to this topic

[Colin Thrase]

Dear Inner Sphere Tukayyid participant, who participated in a lost Counter Attack battle in Sulfurous Rift on Tuesday at 9:48pm US Pacific time,

During the lobby, you didn't make any suggestions on a plan (in fact, nobody did). When the match started, someone suggested "lets go north", then someone else said "no lets go center". Lacking any leadership, most people went center, while a couple went to the sides. I was among those who went north to Alpha gate. the others re-joined our main group at center when you said 'no we have to stick together'. The clan players came out in force through the center gate and attacked the majority of our group just outside that gate.

Since I was already at Alpha gate anyway, I suggested in chat that I'd hit Omega from the back, with the hope of distracting one or more of the clan forces to deal with me when they saw its damage bar blinking, so that the rest of our group might have a numbers advantage; I wouldn't do much in a brawl anyway, with a Raven 3L. You said in VOIP that was a dumb idea - however...

• On the way to Omega I encountered a slow Warhawk - I had several shots on him before he even noticed me, since he was preoccupied. I managed to kill him (1st kill our team made).
  
• I started shooting Omega at that point - did about 5% damage to it, then hid in the southwest corner to see if anyone would show up.
  
• Two Stormcrows showed up to check on Omega - I took several shots at them before making a quick exit to through the south gate, and they followed - since I was faster, they were out of the fight for a while

So my dumb idea resulted in 3 mechs not bothering the rest of our group (making that 9 of them to 11 of our group in the brawl). However, that's not really why I'm writing this - things like this happen frequently in PUGs, and we were matched against a 12 man, so I wasn't expecting us to win - just to give us the best showing I could. The reason I'm writing this is because I had to listen to you comment in VOIP about what a dumb idea it was for me to go to Omega, and that you didn't believe I took out a Warhawk on my own, nor that I distracted any of their players. In fact you spent much of the rest of the match making comments why my decision was a poor one. Even after you ran out of mechs, you were continuing to vent in chat.


Example (yours is the last comment - I left out earlier comments that were more colorful, and obviously I couldn't include the VOIP since I wasn't recording it, but I found it entertaining):


* side note - I'm including the comments of another player above, who said "ah.. they do not give a crap", because his match score was 51, and I think he gave even less crap than he thought everyone else did. I thought that was funny too, so he's the other player boxed in pink.

While I was too busy playing to VOIP/Type back, I did want to take the time to provide some commentary here in the forums.

My strategy may not have been sound, but nobody offered any alternatives. At least I let everyone know what I was doing in VOIP so that they'd try to press the numbers advantage
The scoreboard (below) shows your score of 78, immediately below mine (Colin Thrase). I see you managed to get a kill (good job! many of our group didn't have any kills) and 11 assists, which means that you did take some time between VOIP/Chat to shoot your weapons, and I applaud your efforts.

When I said I made 2 kills in the Raven, you said you didn't believe me, but the proof is in the scores below. I'm assuming you spectated my mechs after you died (I believe you lost your last mech while I was still in my 1st), so you would have noticed I made one of my 3 kills while I was in the King Crab, my last drop. Unfortunately, my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th drops all resulted in quick deaths since the clan players had surrounded our drop point, so I don't feel too badly about only getting 1 kill from those three - each of them died to concentrated fire within seconds of dropping. After my last mech died, we just had a Cataphract remaining - looked like he might have been lost in the south trench, probably with those 2 Stormcrows I had lured there earlier.

Scoreboard...

Edited by Colin Thrase, 28 April 2015 - 11:12 PM.

[Colin Thrase]

Just a side note, as further proof that I can make kills in a Raven 3L without assistance - I spent the following match with pretty much the same strategy as the previous one - sniping at enemy mechs to attempt picking them off one by one, or at the very least distracting them enough that they leave their companions to try and deal with my mech. Please note that I did not lose any mechs (no red boxes), so it should be apparent that both kills and the other 20 assists were all done by one light mech. And yes, I managed to score 80+ points in this match as well.

* Names are left available on this image since I'm not shaming anyone - this is a separate battle to illustrate a point, since the player mentioned above thought I couldn't play...



And here's the corresponding player stats page, showing my drop deck, with the RVN-3L(C) as the only mech showing XP, since it was the only one used:

[Catra Lanis]

To tie up enemy resources is a pefectly good strategy and can depending on circumstances help a lot even if you don't kill the enemy mechs. I've done it myself.

LoL they didn't think you could kill a Warhawk solo? I've done Ace of Spades in a 3L. in solo queue but still.

[masCh]

You did well. Don't let them control your mood.

[Scout Derek]

Some people are just plain *******s. Next time, tell'em to look at the forums if they wanna face the music like a real man( or woman)

[I 0____o I]

OP: your PUG team got rolled by an MS 12-man, don't feel bad because these are 50-times-a-day occurrences in CW.

[Colin Thrase]

GIANT TARGET, on 29 April 2015 - 02:52 PM, said:

OP: your PUG team got rolled by an MS 12-man, don't feel bad because these are 50-times-a-day occurrences in CW.

I think you may have misunderstood the commentary; I don't have a problem with getting rolled - seems like it's a 50/50 chance whether I'm on the winning or losing side of a roll, and that maybe 1 in 5 games are "close". While a close game is more enjoyable than a roll, even a roll can be educational for the losing side (paying attention to the winning team's strategy gives you an idea of what to try in future games).

This was aimed at calling out someone for negative commentary during the game, which seems to happen more often lately than it used to. I decided recently to start documenting these, with the intention of discouraging other players from doing it in the future. The majority of players I've heard trash-talk others tend to score lower than the players they're complaining about, and if they thought the incident might get attention from the community as a whole, maybe they'd think twice before doing it again.

Maybe stress levels were higher because of the time crunch on Inner Sphere side, or maybe he was just having a bad day, but he shouldn't be taking it out on other players. that's just poor sportsmanship.