53 replies to this topic

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

So I've been dropping against EmP and SRoT in a few of my matches in group queue and I'd honestly just like to ask how they manage to work so well together.

I've been working in a two man with my brother, we are within talking range of each other and all that, but the coordination is horrible. I have a problem with keeping him near me, he either runs into me or is too far away to help out or is close by but has no firing line on the ememy due to his positioning. In all the drops I can probably count all the times hes been able to successfully focus fire with me on one hand.

Similar things happened when I tried getting a four man of my friends together, at one point it was as if I was with PuGs. Also groups that aren't me and my friends will be with us, 8 and 10 mans that just get rolled hard every time while EmP and SRoT are in 2 four mans with some other 4 man group helping out.

You guys are like a single machine, I had to explain for 2 minutes to my brother that it wasn't just a single small laser and AC20 that killed him when that ACH walked behind him, but a coordinated strike. I mean the whole team (me and him plus a 10 man team) was dead in under 2 minutes on frozen city night. Were you guys all very good at the game separately before getting into the group? At the moment all my friends are in T4 and I'm acting as commander trying to get us all working together. We have our moments of glory, but I'm herding cats here.

You got any tips on how to improve my unit?

[Alistair Winter]

To quote the great Brock Lesnar:

"You can't make chicken salad with chicken sh*t."


If you found this reply helpful, please leave a comment below.

[Idealsuspect]

Dakota1000, on 02 October 2015 - 08:06 PM, said:

So I've been dropping against EmP and SRoT in a few of my matches in group queue and I'd honestly just like to ask how they manage to work so well together.

I've been working in a two man with my brother, we are within talking range of each other and all that, but the coordination is horrible. I have a problem with keeping him near me, he either runs into me or is too far away to help out or is close by but has no firing line on the ememy due to his positioning. In all the drops I can probably count all the times hes been able to successfully focus fire with me on one hand.

Similar things happened when I tried getting a four man of my friends together, at one point it was as if I was with PuGs. Also groups that aren't me and my friends will be with us, 8 and 10 mans that just get rolled hard every time while EmP and SRoT are in 2 four mans with some other 4 man group helping out.

You guys are like a single machine, I had to explain for 2 minutes to my brother that it wasn't just a single small laser and AC20 that killed him when that ACH walked behind him, but a coordinated strike. I mean the whole team (me and him plus a 10 man team) was dead in under 2 minutes on frozen city night. Were you guys all very good at the game separately before getting into the group? At the moment all my friends are in T4 and I'm acting as commander trying to get us all working together. We have our moments of glory, but I'm herding cats here.

You got any tips on how to improve my unit?

Play smart ( don't send 10 guys chase a light for example )...
Be agressive, camping make you predictable as turrets >>> you don't move you are easy to shoot and your targets which are moving are still hard to shoot evn you move or not ...
When your teamates focus fire it's useless to focus 8 players on same target specially if already cored ... 3 guys focusing is enought for take out any target in 10 seconds.

Just be smart >>> easy to say to one guy hard to say to 11 selfish guys.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Alistair Winter, on 02 October 2015 - 08:10 PM, said:

To quote the great Brock Lesnar:

"You can't make chicken salad with chicken sh*t."


If you found this reply helpful, please leave a comment below.

I don't think I'd want to just drop all my friends and even my brother from the group for not being good enough, I'd just be a 1 man by that point. I'll hope that maybe once they get some more experience they might at least be helpful though.

Idealsuspect, on 02 October 2015 - 08:12 PM, said:

Play smart ( don't send 10 guys chase a light for example )...
Be agressive, camping make you predictable as turrets >>> you don't move you are easy to shoot and your targets which are moving are still hard to shoot evn you move or not ...
When your teamates focus fire it's useless to focus 8 players on same target specially if already cored ... 3 guys focusing is enought for take out any target in 10 seconds.

Just be smart >>> easy to say to one guy hard to say to 11 selfish guys.

At the moment we don't have the numbers to run into those issues, just 2 and 4 man drops. We have run into some groups who could learn from your post though.

[Mycrus]

Dakota1000, on 02 October 2015 - 08:06 PM, said:

So I've been dropping against EmP and SRoT in a few of my matches in group queue and I'd honestly just like to ask how they manage to work so well together.

I've been working in a two man with my brother, we are within talking range of each other and all that, but the coordination is horrible. I have a problem with keeping him near me, he either runs into me or is too far away to help out or is close by but has no firing line on the ememy due to his positioning. In all the drops I can probably count all the times hes been able to successfully focus fire with me on one hand.

Similar things happened when I tried getting a four man of my friends together, at one point it was as if I was with PuGs. Also groups that aren't me and my friends will be with us, 8 and 10 mans that just get rolled hard every time while EmP and SRoT are in 2 four mans with some other 4 man group helping out.

You guys are like a single machine, I had to explain for 2 minutes to my brother that it wasn't just a single small laser and AC20 that killed him when that ACH walked behind him, but a coordinated strike. I mean the whole team (me and him plus a 10 man team) was dead in under 2 minutes on frozen city night. Were you guys all very good at the game separately before getting into the group? At the moment all my friends are in T4 and I'm acting as commander trying to get us all working together. We have our moments of glory, but I'm herding cats here.

You got any tips on how to improve my unit?

Good players playing often..

Dakota1000, on 02 October 2015 - 08:06 PM, said:

So I've been dropping against EmP and SRoT in a few of my matches in group queue and I'd honestly just like to ask how they manage to work so well together.

I've been working in a two man with my brother, we are within talking range of each other and all that, but the coordination is horrible. I have a problem with keeping him near me, he either runs into me or is too far away to help out or is close by but has no firing line on the ememy due to his positioning. In all the drops I can probably count all the times hes been able to successfully focus fire with me on one hand.

Similar things happened when I tried getting a four man of my friends together, at one point it was as if I was with PuGs. Also groups that aren't me and my friends will be with us, 8 and 10 mans that just get rolled hard every time while EmP and SRoT are in 2 four mans with some other 4 man group helping out.

You guys are like a single machine, I had to explain for 2 minutes to my brother that it wasn't just a single small laser and AC20 that killed him when that ACH walked behind him, but a coordinated strike. I mean the whole team (me and him plus a 10 man team) was dead in under 2 minutes on frozen city night. Were you guys all very good at the game separately before getting into the group? At the moment all my friends are in T4 and I'm acting as commander trying to get us all working together. We have our moments of glory, but I'm herding cats here.

You got any tips on how to improve my unit?

Good players playing often..

[Alistair Winter]

Dakota1000, on 02 October 2015 - 08:21 PM, said:

I don't think I'd want to just drop all my friends and even my brother from the group for not being good enough, I'd just be a 1 man by that point. I'll hope that maybe once they get some more experience they might at least be helpful though.

No, of course not. I was just jokingly pointing out that a lot of the "pro units" either have players who are very experienced and don't need someone to hold their hands, or they have new players who are very dedicated and willing to participate in group practice, watch videos on YouTube to improve their understanding of the game, etc. It's a whole different deal, it's hard to compare to a bunch of buddies just playing MWO on occasion for a good time.

I have very limited experience running with good teams. My limited experience can mostly be summed up by this:

• Radio discipline. People need to STFU and stop jamming the com.
  
• The commander needs to have some idea what kind of builds his guys are running.
  
• It's usually better to have almost blind faith in the commander. As a rule of thumb, the matches where people aren't following orders or start discussing alternatives, those are the matches you lose real fast.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Our conversation during the match is generally all tactics and positioning and who to aim at, and we usually end up running matching or complimenting loadouts, and they do tend to try to follow my orders. Its just a case of telling them to go left and they walk right. You wouldn't happen to have any types of tutorial videos that you think would be helpful for them would you, I tell them all I know, but maybe a video demonstration would be a bit more useful. They did want to try doing Crab Warfare once they watched some of B33f's videos, though we've yet to get the gang together for it, and only have 4 people instead of 12.

[LordNothing]

you know some of the best drops ive had with 11 mans have all had one thing in common:

camaraderie.

its more like being on a sports team and less like a bunch of people who want some points. everybody respects each other and they guy commanding. people listen. there is a plan and people stick to it.

throw on top of that optimal builds, smart play, and tactics and you have a recipe for awesome.

[Ultimax]

Practice & Experience.

Keep playing, find a larger group. You'll get the hang of it.

[pwnface]

If you guys actually want to get better at the game I'd highly recommend finding a competent unit to play with. Playing with other players that have a really good understanding of the game will help you improve much faster than anything you can do on your own. Church of Skill used to be a great resource for teaching newer pilots how to play at a higher level, but I'm pretty sure that is not going on anymore.

I'd like to invite you and your friends to come do some drops with Night's Scorn [ ts.nstalkers.com for teamspeak] sometime so you can get a feel for how an organized group runs things. We would likely be able to help point out any critical errors occurring during matches.

[Lyoto Machida]

Practice, practice, practice...with the same people who are willing to listen. Meta build probably wouldn't hurt either.

Alistair Winter, on 02 October 2015 - 08:10 PM, said:

To quote the great Brock Lesnar:

"You can't make chicken salad with chicken sh*t."


If you found this reply helpful, please leave a comment below.

Ironically, Brock is also the guy who reportedly refused to do standup sparring in his training camps which led to amazing moments like this:







Dude was gunshy on the feet because he never went through it in sparring (practice). All props to him because he was a tremendous athlete but you have to put yourself through the fire in training when facing top level comp and he never did.

Bonus:

[Summon3r]

meta builds/mechs aggressive focus fire ts discipline kthxbye

[Elizander]

Dakota1000, on 02 October 2015 - 08:21 PM, said:

I don't think I'd want to just drop all my friends and even my brother from the group for not being good enough, I'd just be a 1 man by that point. I'll hope that maybe once they get some more experience they might at least be helpful though.

Group queue is a different beast and coordination gets harder the more complicated things are. My friends were not the greatest at the game (and neither was I) so we had some trouble in the group queue before and couldn't have any fun. There wasn't a tonnage limit back then I think and they all had MC so I decided we should all bring the simplest mech we could so we:

1) All bought Ilya Muromets (though any Jagermech is fine)
2) We put 3 UAC5s in them
3) We put 3 ML in them

And the only thing we coordinated was stick together and shoot the first mech that appears. Their aim was horrible so lasers and PPCs and other ACs miss over half the time. With rapid fire weapons that give no heat they could just keep shooting until they got the hang of it.

Also having 9 UAC5s in your face kinda melts you.

Edited by Elizander, 02 October 2015 - 10:20 PM.

[El Bandito]

Practice. Lots and lots of practice.

[Alistair Winter]

Lyoto Machida, on 02 October 2015 - 10:01 PM, said:

Ironically, Brock is also the guy who reportedly refused to do standup sparring in his training camps which led to amazing moments like this:

Dude was gunshy on the feet because he never went through it in sparring (practice). All props to him because he was a tremendous athlete but you have to put yourself through the fire in training when facing top level comp and he never did.

Didn't know he never did any striking sparring. That's weird. Makes you wonder how good he could have been if he'd done that, let alone started training MMA earlier.

I'm no fan of Lesnar, on any level, it's just a good quote.

[Lyoto Machida]

Elizander, on 02 October 2015 - 10:17 PM, said:

Group queue is a different beast and coordination gets harder the more complicated things are. My friends were not the greatest at the game (and neither was I) so we had some trouble in the group queue before and couldn't have any fun. There wasn't a tonnage limit back then I think and they all had MC so I decided we should all bring the simplest mech we could so we:

1) All bought Ilya Muromets (though any Jagermech is fine)
2) We put 3 UAC5s in them
3) We put 3 ML in them

And the only thing we coordinated was stick together and shoot the first mech that appears. Their aim was horrible so lasers and PPCs and other ACs miss over half the time. With rapid fire weapons that give no heat they could just keep shooting until they got the hang of it.

Also having 9 UAC5s in your face kinda melts you.

5555 posts...

[DivineEvil]

1.) Passive Cooperation. Always hit R. Learn to call targets and their weak spots. Move and fight together. Ask or notify your group mates before you go astray and justify it. Provide status reports if you're attacked or critted. Maintain shared awareness and work as a single unit.

2.) Tactical Literacy. Practice alone and with your group to set up shared understanding of each map key points and features. Complement your team as best as possible. Playing good as a group requires sacrfices, including tanking with little to no personal gain for group's benefit. Every group member at this point must understand where, when and what he should and should not do or be in most circumstances.

3.) Leadership. Find a person who can lead better or become that person. Direct the actions of your group. Discuss both success and failure situations with your teammates. Don't be personal and don't allow anyone else to be. All accomplishments and mistakes must be seen as result of group effort. If a person does not play as part of the group, ignore him as if he were a pug, until he'll come to the understanding himself. Don't take command if it's too stressful and takes way too much from your performance.

4.) Combat Deck. After previous elements, the advancement only goes almost as far as the efficiency of group's mechs. Each mech in a group must perform a certain role, that benefits group's performance in general. Playing with mech's your mates are comfortable with and the ones which work good together, are both more important than an efficiency of each mech separately.

5.) Strategy. Final stage of the group-drop development is a definition of certain methods, by which one or another objective is expected to be accomplished. Everything revolves around this method indiscriminately. There's no exceptions, no freedom of opinions, waste-talk, troll loadouts, suicides, burden-tossing and name-calling. Objective goes above anything else. The selection of mechs, their loadouts, group subdivision and combat behavior, all must represent the unified structure built to reach the objective.

[Greenjulius]

Unless you play this game religiously, play only metamechs, and play in tight groups, you're going to get eaten up and spit out by the top guys. EMP and SROT are definitely in the tippy top. I just kind of sigh and deal with it when I get matched against anything more than a 4-6 man group of them, because I know it's going to be a quick match.

As much time and energy as I've put into this game over the past year, (shamefully much 1/2 a year back I'm afraid) I'm still only considered by the game to be tier 2. Probably a side effect of me taking out one too many crapper mechs and trying my best to make them work. But I digress.

Just be careful... if you play it too much, you're likely to get burned out and start taking multi-week breaks like I'm down to.

It's much better to just enjoy the game and avoid playing against guys who have too much time for MWO.

Edited by Greenjulius, 02 October 2015 - 11:09 PM.

[Adiuvo]

I'm part of EmP.

All of our players were top tier before being accepted into the group. Due to that we don't need to work on basics. The easiest thing to fix in MWO is builds. You don't need to drop in full serious all the time, feel free to take bad fun mechs like Blackjacks or Black Knights or whatever, but don't ever expect success if your builds are ****. Don't put a single AC2 with 3MLs on and expect wins. Weapons should always compliment each other. If a build has a lone LRM launcher on it? Instantly worse than it would be without it. Never worth the tonnage. Don't run LRMs in general tbh, but that's another discussion.

The hardest part about MWO is positioning and awareness. These go hand in hand, and are fixed by looking at your radar as often as you can (though eventually you'll be able to make out enough info from the your peripheral that this isn't necessary) and knowing spawn locations. This is your brother's issue, and why he felt like he insta died from a weapon combo that isn't capable of doing that.

Communication is also obviously important, but for a general pug game we don't really talk that much about the game. We just shoot the **** or at most call out mech positions. For a typical pug game extreme coordination isn't needed. In comp it is.

Watch MWO streams from players like Twinky, Writhen, Heimdelight, etc.. Players from any top comp team would do. It's honestly the quickest way to improve no matter what the game is.

[AssaultPig]

aside from the basic advantages of being smart/experienced/etc, the big thing is just knowing your strategy in advance.

Like, when you get a numbers advantage at some spot or other you know you'll all push together, so you can be more aggressive. On different maps you stake out different places, and since you know that in advance you can move decisively and get there first. When you need to adjust you can do it with a minimal number of voicecom words, since 1) you probably have at least a de facto commander and 2) you're used to communicating with one another.

it doesn't take a lot to turn a game into an easy win, especially if these advantages mean you can kill one or two enemies early on at little cost