58 replies to this topic

[Crockdaddy]

So here is a delicious irony. Last night we (NS) faced a team which on Boreal decided to NOT come out of the spawn area. So for the first 10 minutes we moved up ... moved up more until we were at the left and right entrances to their spawn (base). They wanted us to come to them (we were on counter attack). At first we were like ... lets just get one kill and pull back as we wanted to win but did not want to contend with the UBER ERLL Quirked out dropships.

Well boredom set in and we all wanted our 80 points. So we simply proceeded to poke in ... get a fairly quick kill and pull back waiting for the dropship. Rinse and repeat ... we did this several times. Eventually the enemy team realized they needed to poke back so they in fact did from the top of the hill (and they did a decent job at it).

On our next wave .. we repeated our first steps only instead of poking we did a full push. Killed most of the team and attempted to pull back before the dropships ate us. Well we did in fact kill the team and farm on the way out but typically we were finished off by the dropship.

Finally at the end the enemy team pushed out and we finished them. It wasn't a group of pugs ... I believe it was a 7/8 man group with a few pugs.


So as I expected would happen the reverse spawn camp will now take place. Fun times. At least we started to develop tactics to manage this when a team decides to do this.

Edited by Crockdaddy, 17 June 2015 - 06:50 AM.

[Kin3ticX]

Yeah, I was a little worried about this too. Perhaps they will have to make popping the MPB worth 5 kills(edit: only for when the clock runs out) to coax people looking for lulz out of their spawn.

Edited by Kin3ticX, 17 June 2015 - 07:43 AM.

[Khereg]

I am shocked, I say shocked, at this shocking development.

[Crockdaddy]

I do understand why the enemy team did this. Our team was quite a bit better than their team and they wanted to tie us up and gives themselves the best chance they had against us. I do worry that this could become the tactic du jour for many teams not just weaker teams which seems to defeat the entire point of the protected dropship areas ... which are meant to be a safe haven to drop from ... not to hide or use as a fortification. One way to fix this would make counter attack objective based and kill based not just kill based for the counter attacking team.

[CyclonerM]

Working as intended

I feared this was what was coming with the recent changes, too..

[Ghogiel]

This is a mostly PUG team spawn camping the attacking side 2 game in a row.


Just duck for the drop ships then farm.

[Khereg]

I had a longer discussion queued up, but scrapped it in favor of this succinct, but well-intentioned comment:

If you are getting spawn camped after these changes, there is really no other place to look for relief other than your own abilities and the level of teamwork you are employing with your group. No more hiding behind the map design, meta-mech usage, or other ancillary issues. Getting camped now means you got outplayed...badly. It's time to take that hard look in the mirror and figure out how to improve.

Kin3ticX put up an excellent guide for just how to do that in another thread. Find it, read it, and live it.

Edited by Khereg, 17 June 2015 - 07:54 AM.

[Vapor NINE]

Running into the same. All counter attacks i have been in the pugs and even some coordinated units never once tried to enter the base.

[Ripper X]

Here is a thing. Stay at the spawning area for more than 2 minutes and boom! yer dead. That should help fix the reverse spawn camping.

[Tom Sawyer]

We sorta saw something like this on Sulfur Rift last night. The old meta of rush up the right side, take D3 and C2 to spawn camp kill is gone.

However the mostly pug team on the other side deicded to try to hide in the new drop zones only poking out to take sniper shots. This allowed our team to quickly take and hold C2 and D3 from which we began sniping back. We quickly then too the center and as they tried to poke out to fire we just focused fire them down.

I think the newest thing is there are more turrets now, those pill boxes around the gens, and the gens themselves being nearer to Omega.

[Crockdaddy]

At first I was annoyed with this but it is a game design problem more than anything. I would guess future tweaks will be forthcoming. Either way it didn't affect the outcome of the match overly much aside from the fact we could not light rush an attack.

[Lord Dundar]

Spawn camping is easy still and I don't see how this new map change fixed anything. Now you can camp from the ramps and the dropships can't hit you. the enemy team only has two ways out and you can create great fields of fire on both of the exits. They poke, Laser vomit, they die. rinse and repeat.

Also with the gens all grouped together and the turrets clumped up it slows the attack for about 2 minutes then the turrets are dead and you can kill the gens when you want, even with lights.

I assume that this is "working as intended". I know that most of my unit is getting bored with CW and the number of people playing show that CW is dead. I think a rework of the idea of only 2 modes of combat, assault, and counter attack, need to be looked at. The maps are always big funnels to choke points even beyond the gates. All the maps have giant mountains and deep canyons, change the colors and the heat but the maps are all the same.

We need some big changes and I would suggest looking at really battlefields in history to help with map design. Big rolling hills, small wadis, open areas with small villages to fight over, Beach heads with cliffs then open forest beyond, anything to change the feel of the maps from "another canyon with mountains on the sides".

[AlphaToaster]

If this change was to prevent players getting shot as they were dropped off, for the most part it worked. Moving the drop zones back behind the base is enough, and the erLL on the drop ships are enough of a deterrent to keep players from camping in the actual drop area.

The new spawn locations do alter where teams meet, but little impact on the game mode itself. It did seem like the games last night were actually slower pace than before, so if the goal was to slow down the action, that part is working.

If the game timer is 30minutes, I say killing Omega on Counter-attack takes 20minutes off and counts for some kills as someone else suggested. Right now on Counter-attack, Omega is generally ignored in most games.

Edited by AlphaToaster, 17 June 2015 - 09:50 AM.

[Husker Dude]

The new dropships worked fine on a Grim Portico map in one of the drops I did last night, it just gave heavier cover fire against the mechs picking off our last disconnect at the end of the match.

However, the new spawn location on Boreal actually gave the other team their own cover to hide while the drop ships arrived, pretty much negating the increase in firepower; as soon as the mechs were down, they'd retreat outside and avoid any damage. I suppose it does save mechs from being shot as they drop out of the ship for a second, but once you're dropped you're in an open plain, possibly facing the wrong direction, and there's nothing else to really stop a mass of enemy pilots from savaging the new mechs.

[Crockdaddy]

Now that easy light rushing has been for the moment removed ... can we just simply put objectives back into the counter attack mode? This would make the whole spawn camping idea (of the defending team) less likely to happen as the attacking team can then just end the match quickly if needed rather than getting timer camped. I don't have any real issue otherwise. This does dissuade drop ship camping.

[Alex Reed]

Didn't Russ say that he envisioned defenders moving into the game on gantries or elevated platforms (like elevators on an aircraft carrier)? I believe he said this in a TownHall.

If this happens, the defenders' dropships will totally disappear (though there may be more turrets to contend with).

There will probably be a tweak to this but it will be slow change (or no change if no one gets bold enough to Tweet about it. )

Edited by Alex Reed, 17 June 2015 - 12:34 PM.

[Scoops Kerensky]

It sounds like a lot of our worst fears were confirmed then. The changes don't functionally change anything about the outcome of matches, they just add a lot of tedious padding to drag an already decided match out longer.

[Gone_Till_November]

Yeah, they really need like a 3 or 4 minute timer. After that if you are still in the DZ your mech explodes.

Or maybe counter attack uses the old drop zones.

Edited by Aldo1Raine, 17 June 2015 - 12:48 PM.

[Mr Hunter]

Is it safe to say give up on cw? I think so.

[Crockdaddy]

B8hunter, on 17 June 2015 - 12:56 PM, said:

Is it safe to say give up on cw? I think so.

What would you put into place of CW? It is in fact a beta product and the product the vast majority of us whales paid for.