86 replies to this topic

[Catra Lanis]

When I began playing last summer there was almost no nascar matches in caustic, it was still perfectly possible to win by setting up a firing line and wait for the enemy or by advancing on the enemys or have a sniping match.

[Soultraxx]

Elizander, on 15 September 2015 - 11:26 PM, said:

Usually it's the overeager light and medium pilots that do this and the rest are 'forced' to follow because of blobdeathball mentality.

I always tell my team to go left in Caustic. Saves us a ton of time running around. If your team is better you win, if your team is worse you lose and you save a lot of time from running around in circles either way.

"Let's go left and just fight them right away instead of running around and wasting time." usually works at the start of the match.

Excellent yet simple idea - I might try it.

I think the most ive gone around in Caustic is 1.5 laps

[skorpionet]

NASCAR = no strategy at all

[sycocys]

Well I haven't seen a solo pug team that could set up a firing line since before 12v12, so there's that.

[Vlad Ward]

I prefer to shoot at people who are not shooting at me.

Washington beat the Redcoats. Zellbrigen is for suckers.

[Satan n stuff]

Chuck YeaGurr, on 15 September 2015 - 11:35 PM, said:

Nascar is so polite a term for I do not want to fight unless it is an easy target.

Are you not trying to win your matches? Because if you are you should be looking for easy targets. Just make sure you don't make yourself or the rest of your team an easy target in the process.

Alistair Winter, on 16 September 2015 - 01:39 AM, said:

In MWO, flanking always means circling the enemy. This misconception leads to NASCAR. "omg we're being flanked! Flank their flank!"

The proper response is to pull back far enough to clear your flank and then have the bulk of your forces flank the enemy while those most suited to surviving a frontal assault ( fast heavies and mediums usually ) keep the enemy distracted, ideally tricking them into advancing into a crossfire.
Good luck getting a PUG team to do that.

Edited by Satan n stuff, 16 September 2015 - 02:47 AM.

[MeiSooHaityu]

Players want to get in an advantageous position over the other team. They want to catch enemy stragglers out of position and alone.

At the same time, some players are trying to get away from a quickly advancing force.

It creates a weird circle track racing condition (NASCAR). Maps like Caustic make it really easy to go in circles (the edge of the Caldera). As a person who normally plays lighter mechs, it doesn't bother me as much, but I could see where slow assaults despise the tactic.

Could be worse. Last night on River City neither team wanted to push. It was a long range pissing match the entire time (we were upper city, them at the airfield). Both teams firing at range under ECM (hardly any dorritos all match) not hitting crap. The match went the full 15 minutes and ended in a tie. It was the most boring match I have ever played. Both sides afraid to do anything. I'd take NASCAR over that any day.

[Sadist Cain]

lotsa good points raised so far, strong side, and hard to fail.

Where I'm sitting it's the lack of effort towards tactics and a command & control structure for the game. Its all about drop shoot rinse repeat. rather than an extra minute of game time for strategising, no game modes support anything above basic tactics and the nascar deathball is the only one everyone knows and can stick too.

it does suck though, incredibly boring.

[Sarlic]

Sadist Cain, on 16 September 2015 - 03:27 AM, said:

lotsa good points raised so far, strong side, and hard to fail.

Where I'm sitting it's the lack of effort towards tactics and a command & control structure for the game. Its all about drop shoot rinse repeat. rather than an extra minute of game time for strategising, no game modes support anything above basic tactics and the nascar deathball is the only one everyone knows and can stick too.

it does suck though, incredibly boring.

Cant remember which game but i think it was Red Orchestra 2 when people began to draw penises as a strategy. Not funny when you try to have a serious attempt at teamwork.

It's too basic, i agree. Yet the tools are all here but if nobody uses basic tools then i dont see much benefit. The quality of these tools needs to go up.

Edited by Sarlic, 16 September 2015 - 03:41 AM.

[Rhaythe]

Players will follow anyone in this game that looks like they know what they're doing. Even if it's a locust running clockwise on the Bog trying to spot. Until I stop moving and start typing in chat, "If you move less than 140 kph, you REALLY don't want to be following me to scout".

Then, sure enough, a Dire Whale follows after me anyway, and a roll commences.

[Mazzyplz]

i have been a pug commander for over 2 years and i believe, i may be wrong... that i was one of the initial proponents and people to come up with this tactic. it really wasn't much of a tactic before but it took off. allow me to explain where it came from.


in the old forest colony, there was a few preset strategies; (there wasn't even many maps back during this time period)

if you spawn on the left side, you either camp and wait for the other team to inevitably push tunnel, or you push water.
it is a duality of push or defend. this is what the base strategy for this map was. for the other side, it was either go to arches, and push tunnel, or camp arches and possibly get wreck'd from every direction.

NASCAR was a strategy that i proposed to override these predefined/static tactics;
(of course it wasn't called nascar, back then we never even though to give it a name)

our team would go arches only until the enemy pushes water, then push around and merely switch places with them.
in turn this gave us the camping spot in trailer park and outside tunnel. - which is actually the stronger and preferred position. their maneuver ends up costing their positioning advantage, or if we are lucky it costs them a mech or two.

if we spawn on the other side, we merely would camp until the enemy pushed tunnel, and they took so long to go through the damn tunnel we'd push through shore and catch their rear super quick. usually. at any rate if we didn't it only meant that we had traded places, and we could do it again. anything not to lose precious mechs because these were fights that were long in the wait and short once the fisticuffs started flying


this became a "dynamic" or fluid strategy, as opposed to just pushing or camping at beginning of map;
to this extent it was a success.


this strategy worked so well that i saw it being adapted to other maps and places that i did not anticipate.
it has caught on.

it's not always used right and always in it's most basic form.

there is really nothing to be surprised or mad about, this strategy is a mere product of the simple attack/defend strategies that came before it; it is how the game evolved - but not in it's current form... of course. back then when it was conceived it wasn't used as a pushing maneuver, it was reactionary.

it wasn't merely oh the enemy is camping lets go around them; it was new - it was "the enemy is pushing lets push around!" and believe it or not this was innovative and effective for the most part - the idea of executing a tactic while the enemy was busy hadn't come up before; you had to sort of "wait" to see what the enemy had done, sort of like tabletop.. this "nascar" tactic was sort of taking the real time aspect of the game and using it

now it's just push counterclockwise right...

the reason i think it started devolving into this was because people would just push water at the beginning of map, and the reaction was always immediate; making a huge circlejerk because action was taken at an earlier stage.

at least this is the 'legacy' reason this started happening. but it always had to do with light mechs pushing behind you. the part about running away is what suddenly became viable - sometimes. instead of just getting surrounded in arches which meant defeat 9 out of 10 times

i think this tactic is even more popular now because like people pointed out already - pgi made the spawns kind of so that light mechs have a chance to catch the fatties off guard, and that encourages both sides to do this. but originally like i said it was not about this. spawns weren't even that close when the "counterpush" was invented in mwo. having it devolve into nascar has been kind of a regression in some ways, oh well..

Edited by Mazzyplz, 16 September 2015 - 04:08 AM.

[Sadist Cain]

Sarlic, on 16 September 2015 - 03:37 AM, said:

Cant remember which game but i think it was Red Orchestra 2 when people began to draw penises as a strategy. Not funny when you try to have a serious attempt at teamwork.

It's too basic, i agree. Yet the tools are all here but if nobody uses basic tools then i dont see much benefit. The quality of these tools needs to go up.

Alien swarm was another one where the map was plagued with penis lol

I do remember in days of yore there were some folk who would try to use the command structure in game, I was one of them.

Some of the problems I found was inability to read all the names or view a selected mech in the battlegrid, unable to issue commands outside of battlegrid (command wheel please) and back in the day you couldn't change direction whilst viewing the map (fixed now however).

I also find it troublesome that players are already in lances, meaning one chap has to essentially say "I'm your boss" rather than allowing players who wish to be lead to join lances with a leader. The random nature of the lance layout leaves little to encourage players to work in lances instead of just one big blob.

As you say there's improvement to be made and I do sincerely believe that the solution lies in a well built command wheel aiming towards more of a lance based command structure that could bring lances together more.

For example if targetted mechs were relayed to lancemates first then the rest of the team a couple seconds later along with more in depth command wheel options for lancemates over team mates you should hopefully start to see your lance responding to situations involving it's members quicker.

No doubt player motivation is a factor of consideration but if the tools are good enough and encourage camaraderie that result in better quality of gameplay, even in a roll, then players will use them more and more.

My go to example is always project reality. that's one mod which took a *********** of lone wolf idiocy (BF2) and turn it into the finest example of squad based tactics which reigned supreme as a result of the mechanics in place to encourage it as such.

[Lily from animove]

Sarlic, on 15 September 2015 - 11:57 PM, said:

Old and bad habits i say. If its get repeated enough any monkey would do the same.

Edited by Lily from animove, 16 September 2015 - 04:15 AM.

[TWIAFU]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 15 September 2015 - 11:03 PM, said:

Guy asked me this on Crimson straight and I had no real answer for it. Why DOES one team run through the saddle and one team run through the city?

Why DO we NASCAR?

LCD and lemming mentality - such is the solo gueue.

To do anything other what you have done literally every single solo drop and expect a different result is insanity. To expect anything different from the underhive is also insane.

Now if you really want to piss off the other team and make them cry and call hoxxorz, do the opposite and enjoy the 12-0 or 12-1 stomp.

Everyone that drops into solo KNOWS what the other team is going to do so why do exactly what they know your going to do like you know what they will do?

Lily from animove, on 15 September 2015 - 11:34 PM, said:

this only works with good coordination teamwork, and this is not what pugland can do. on regular basis. And therefore it never happens rarely

Fixed.

[Lugh]

Vellron2005, on 16 September 2015 - 12:51 AM, said:

I mostly go where most of the team goes...

On most maps, there are only two modes of play, go to the center or nascar..

its trying to outmanouver enemy lights and "suprise" the enemy... and the suprise comes if one team simply doesn't move at all..

Ironic, no?

Not if the team that isn't moving sets a proper firing line and can aim though

[ShinobiHunter]

Because it's a team game, and my team nascars. Who knows why they do it...

[Melon Lord]

William Mountbank, on 15 September 2015 - 11:05 PM, said:

To keep away from enemy lights, and to catch enemy assaults from behind.

Armored Yokai, on 15 September 2015 - 11:10 PM, said:

Why nascar's even a sport is my question

The first two posts answered this so perfectly. Faith in humanity restored.

[Poisoner]

Random Carnage, on 15 September 2015 - 11:14 PM, said:

In my Dire, if I see a NASCAR forming, I stop, find some cover and wait for the enevitable roll. I can usually take out one red in the process before I get fu*ked, and it beats being cored in the back while trying to keep up with the fools on my own side as they dissapear off into the distance.

Sounds like you need to get better about calling your position out instead of rolling over and taking it.

[kesmai]

Why not?

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

MeiSooHaityu, on 16 September 2015 - 03:17 AM, said:

Could be worse. Last night on River City neither team wanted to push. It was a long range pissing match the entire time (we were upper city, them at the airfield). Both teams firing at range under ECM (hardly any dorritos all match) not hitting crap. The match went the full 15 minutes and ended in a tie. It was the most boring match I have ever played. Both sides afraid to do anything. I'd take NASCAR over that any day.

Yea ties suck. had the same thing happen on hpg

Except with less action

Edited by Mechwarrior Buddah, 16 September 2015 - 06:54 AM.