19 replies to this topic

[A HeadlessChicken]

Hi all!

I've been playing this since the steam launch and I am absolutely loving it. After playing around with the different mech I've settled on using the Locust Chassis as my main for now. I bought the Pirate's Bay version and it is speedy as hell and I'm loving it!

Now, on to my Question. I was playing Assault on Canyon Network. One of the things I've noticed is that everybody immediately leaves their base so I decided to see if I could reach theirs without arousing anyone else's suspicions. I was able to get a few scouting points in so yay for that. I made it to their base and stepped inside. Watching the minimap I could see that some one was coming for me. I ran away and his behind an outcropping watching the opponent until they left. When they did I ran back into their base. Another friendly mech took out the guy that was looking for me. I stood there the whole entire time until the base was won. What did I get out of it? 200XP. That's it. Just 200!

The next match I went out and started shooting people left and right on a Conquest round ands was the 2nd to last pilot out. We lost that match. BUT! I got 800XP for it.

Can anyone explain to me how that can happen?

If the only way to get good XP is to shoot the other players, what's the point in even trying to get the win on objective maps?

[Cactus In The Rear]

You don't get much for getting on the base if you don't fight as well.
In general PGI wants to discourge going straight for the base since that makes for a boring game.
That being said capping in conquest is much more highly rewarded.

[Nerdboard]

Shooting and/or killing mechs will usually give you more experience than anything else. Playing objectives purely will not give you as much. However, a mix of both might lead you to much better rewards.

In your example of the first match you could have assisted in killing the mech that was looking for you. This might have given you experience and C-Bill bonus for: kill assist, killing blow, component destruction, possibly saviour kill, damage etc. You can look up the individual bonuses (C-Bill and exp) on http://mwo.gamepedia...ategory:Rewards . I think those are out of date however and I couldnt find a full list of everything (sorry).

So back to your question: If you are mainly playing in order to farm C-Bills or exp and to learn about the game and how to play your mech I would suggest not focusing too much on objectives. Always try to fight. This doesnt mean you shouldnt ever cap points. If you see no way of participating without instantly dying or if you have lost your weapons go for the base/capture point.

[A HeadlessChicken]

I guess what I'm trying to say is, isn't the objective to win? Yes, I understand that I could have chased that guy down, but if there were another mech that came in to support the one that got shot down, it would have defeated the purpose of my trying to get the base ASAP. That was my reasoning there. I guess I want my team to win instead of looking out for my own self interest. I mean, yeah, if by disreagrding my team winning and going out just to raise my own score, I could certainly do that. I'd just really prefer not to and maybe be rewarded for putting my team over myself.

[Nerdboard]

There's nothing wrong with wanting to win. And yes that is the objective, it just doesnt get rewarded as well as other things. The only thing I would mention is that running for cap first is not always the way to win. But seeing how you described the situation it seems you are well aware of that. So just keep playing it the way you want, you did nothing wrong there. As Xanilos said however the reward system does not favor you in order to prevent people from capping only and not fighting at all.

[Tarogato]

HedlessChickn, on 15 December 2015 - 11:12 PM, said:

If the only way to get good XP is to shoot the other players, what's the point in even trying to get the win on objective maps?

The objective is not to win the match, it's to deal as much damage to enemy mechs as possible, regardless of win or loss. Like it or not, that is how the rewards system is designed and it's one of the reasons people cite when they say the Locust is one of the worst mechs in the game (it's very delicate and has relatively low damage potential). A number of people have complained about this reward system numerous times in the past and tried to get PGI's attention, but not enough people think it's a problem, so it will just continue to be like this because most people simply don't care. They hate base rushes, they're simple minded and refuse to defend against them.

So my advice: find like-minded people (such as myself) and get together to bother PGI to buff the objective rewards so that playing to *WIN* the game mode is actually worth your time.

[Rogue Jedi]

as someone who spends a lot of time in light Mechs the main reason to cap early is to distract the enemy team and force them to split up, giving your guys an advantage in the main fight, but this feels much more interesting in group queue when yo know that your guys will take advantage of your sacrificing earnings for the win.
edit:
I have been doing that a lot this weekend ^{(while trying to get a conquest win for the tournament, it took 35 games to get the conquest win)}, go for the cap point, tell the team what I am doing (with VOIP) then when the enemy respond tell the team what came after me, they then push with usualy a 2-5 Mech advantage, 4 times out of 5 that wins us the match, and several times I have been able to kill 3+ Mechs sent after me, ^{(in my hands the Jenner IIC is massively overpowered so I am just playing them until mastered at which point I will only use them for CW)}
end edit

the cap point in Assualt is mostly used to end the match when your team has wiped out 9+ players and the last few enemy do not seem to want to fight, all your slow Mechs get onto the enemy base and it is over inside a minute rather than spending potentially 10 minutes hunting down the last few.

it is much the same in conquest except you need to keep an eye on the score, and if the enemy gets to 500 first make sure you get more caps otherwise you can kill 11 enemy for 0 losses and still loose

Edited by Rogue Jedi, 20 December 2015 - 02:36 AM.

[Not A Real RAbbi]

HedlessChickn, on 15 December 2015 - 11:55 PM, said:

I guess what I'm trying to say is, isn't the objective to win? Yes, I understand that I could have chased that guy down, but if there were another mech that came in to support the one that got shot down, it would have defeated the purpose of my trying to get the base ASAP. That was my reasoning there. I guess I want my team to win instead of looking out for my own self interest. I mean, yeah, if by disreagrding my team winning and going out just to raise my own score, I could certainly do that. I'd just really prefer not to and maybe be rewarded for putting my team over myself.

You've summarized about 2/3 of what's wrong with match scoring. And really, you managed that in your first forum post. Congratulations!

Seriously.

If you want a focus on objectives, you are kinda outta luck here. You CAN do that, but the reward will be slow coming. In fact, you may regularly find your own teammates booing you (or worse) for winning the match for them. Sorry to say it, but assault is just skirmish with a cowardly back door. At least, according to an old issue of "The Adventures of Captain Tryhard and Meta Girl"...

[Leone]

Honestly, I mastered my locusts after learning useful light skills like assassinations and sneaking about without ecm. And then having tons of mechs and cbills went about trying less lucrative things like tanking as a light.

A locust who can take an opponent one on one can base rush to get the enemy to trickle towards you in small numbers, though sometimes they flood in. It can still be lucrative, but it takes much skill and no doubt some practice. Early on your probably best serve picking at the edges of fights, dashing in to get damage for kill assists and trying to act as a wolf, picking off the weak and slow.

~Leone.

Edited by Leone, 16 December 2015 - 12:13 AM.

[The Basilisk]

HedlessChickn, on 15 December 2015 - 11:55 PM, said:

I guess what I'm trying to say is, isn't the objective to win? Yes, I understand that I could have chased that guy down, but if there were another mech that came in to support the one that got shot down, it would have defeated the purpose of my trying to get the base ASAP. That was my reasoning there. I guess I want my team to win instead of looking out for my own self interest. I mean, yeah, if by disreagrding my team winning and going out just to raise my own score, I could certainly do that. I'd just really prefer not to and maybe be rewarded for putting my team over myself.

While you are quite right when you say the things you get rewarded for are somewhat odd you have to keep in mind that there are two kinds of direct rewards and one...lets say twosided sword reward.

1. Cbills: High C-bill reward does not mean you also get high XP

2. XP & GXP: Remember those are for *learning* your mech --> you don't learn anything about mechpiloting by standing in a cap circle, also just standing around doing lots of damage with missiles f.e. may yield lots of cbills but not much xp if you don't do all the other things like kill assists, savior kills ( killing mechs firing at a friend/ beeing near a friend ) or work with bap, tag and uav, one of my matches yesterday evening in a wolfhound I went with two lurm stalkers and had a bap and a tag.
I got ~1100 XP but only ~120000 Cbills
On the other hand I used my BlackKnight with lasers, did over 700 dmg, the remaining 11 mechs of my team around three times as much if you counted it all together, we lost the match, I got 280k Cbills, but only 300ish xp

3. Match score player rating. Dependent on your actions you get a matchscore.
You either can do a lot of support work like scouting, tag, support, narc, uav, and spotting or just cruel, brutal damage.
While rising in your Tier always having a high matchscore is somewhat twosided since your matches will get harder and your rewards more slim it also can make more fun

So...you see its quite a bit complex.
In endeffect the strategy is always to stay with your team but still stay active since activity yields rewards. Don't do only one thing.
Fighting may get you the most aparent reward it also may kick you quickly out of the match hindering you to get more reward. Staying safe just peaking and sneaking and spotting and capteasing may not be inactivity but since you are not a target for your enemy your buddys are even more so.

Edited by The Basilisk, 16 December 2015 - 12:38 AM.

[Melon Lord]

Sadly many of the things that lights are excellent at (i.e. sneaking around, capping, scouting, getting ninja locks, getting half the team to chase you so your team can crush the rest, rescuing lone assaults who are caught in the open with your ECM so the downpour of LRMs stop) don't get rewarded basically at all in terms of XP or cbills. This game rewards damage, and throws crumbs at everything else.

But if you're having fun that's all that should matter. I spent the first few months of my career in a ECM Spider because I loved it, despite the hit in cbills I took. If you really need the cbills (often true as a newbie), just remember to put damage as your #1 priority some games and let everything else take #2.

[Scyther]

Technically the objective may be 'to win', but in reality it is a combat game designed to provide entertainment for its' players. Very few players find a stealth base cap to be entertaining.

Almost all games of this type are set up to reward combat participation vs. winning-by-not-fighting. MWO rewards damage, component destruction, 'lance in formation', and supporting/assisting other people in their fights. The actual win 'conditions' reward very little, although the bonus for being on the winning team is decent.

[Koniving]

HedlessChickn, on 15 December 2015 - 11:12 PM, said:

Hi all!

I've been playing this since the steam launch and I am absolutely loving it. After playing around with the different mech I've settled on using the Locust Chassis as my main for now. I bought the Pirate's Bay version and it is speedy as hell and I'm loving it!

Now, on to my Question. I was playing Assault on Canyon Network. One of the things I've noticed is that everybody immediately leaves their base so I decided to see if I could reach theirs without arousing anyone else's suspicions. I was able to get a few scouting points in so yay for that. I made it to their base and stepped inside. Watching the minimap I could see that some one was coming for me. I ran away and his behind an outcropping watching the opponent until they left. When they did I ran back into their base. Another friendly mech took out the guy that was looking for me. I stood there the whole entire time until the base was won. What did I get out of it? 200XP. That's it. Just 200!

The next match I went out and started shooting people left and right on a Conquest round ands was the 2nd to last pilot out. We lost that match. BUT! I got 800XP for it.

Can anyone explain to me how that can happen?

If the only way to get good XP is to shoot the other players, what's the point in even trying to get the win on objective maps?

The game has always awarded little in the way of XP for a base capture. It used to, however, pay more cbills for capturing the base than killing the enemy. Even then you earned more by killing most enemies and then capturing the base (more than flat out killing all the enemies). Problem is this became a common tactic, and because if you lost you originally got nothing except what you could do combat wise (which didn't pay enough for repair and rearm), the outcries began.

Even with 25,000 guaranteed minimum for losing and R&R removed, this tactic was ruining the game for many players when big groups were separated and only 1 to 4 player groups could exist. No one wanted to defend a base as MWO went into open beta, often leading to lots of butt-hurt gamers.

If the game had better mechanics around base captures, and say the ability to retake the dropzone (say if dropzone is taken, no reinforcements or lower pay for the team that lost it, but retaking it could get those back) rather than an 'end game'... there'd be so much more value to it.

For now, there is virtually no reward for stealing a base. It serves, at best, as a way to turn a 12-1 stomp around.

This is a defense match back then. Notice despite enemy contacts, their main objective is take the base? To the point of ignoring enemy presence to rush the base. That's because it paid DAYAMN good.

This is a base defense after.

We are rushing to protect our base after the enemy force used it to distract us. After we split, they wiped out most of our forces, and we upheld a 13 minute defense.
BUT! Back then there was no "Weight" balancing, which made fights like this LOTS of fun! Their entire team is lights and mediums to our mediums, lights, heavies and an assault (that gets wiped out quick)

Edited by Koniving, 17 December 2015 - 09:21 AM.

[WANTED]

Capping is to distract the other team so your team can focus down the mechs and get numbers advantage. While capping the base is ok just don't cap it or early on or it ruins the fun for all l. Not only do you get hardly any rewards, your team does not either and so this makes them unhappy medhwarriors Yes it sounds ridiculous that you don't want to win a match to quickly without causing damage and kills beforehand, but it's what PGI setup.

Good example I had to this was me in my commando 2d last night. Had Assault and our team focused their front lines while I and other lights in my lance harassed their rear elements. At the end they managed to get a cored atlas and QuickDraw to our base. I didn't react to this helping kill off the rest of the team before rushing to our base to stop the cap and had to take down the atlas first and then had to stay in the cap area for the base cause it was down to a sliver. The QuickDraw tried to take me out but being faster and smaller in circled the base inside the boundary until the rest of my team could kill him. I was down to 1 mdl and left arm and damaged pretty good so couldn't fight as much as I would have liked. Just delayed his cap till they killed him off. Was very very close game but we won and got the kills and rewards

Edited by WANTED, 17 December 2015 - 09:51 AM.

[Digital_Angel]

One thing that could have gotten you a lot more XP and C-Bills would have been to remember to target ("R" key) all the mechs that your were watching. This would have given you some rewards (although still not a huge amount) and given your allies more information on the capabilities and locations of the enemy mechs as well as locks for any LRM carriers on your team.

Light mechs like the locust can also be good at general scouting and carrying TAG or NARC to get a decent amount of rewards from assisting your teammates. This still won't get you as much as dealing damage, but will help a lot without having to get you directly in the fight, since a Locust's only real advantage in a fight is being a fast small target to hit.

[Rogue Jedi]

LadyDanams, on 17 December 2015 - 08:38 AM, said:

Light mechs like the locust can also be good at general scouting and carrying TAG or NARC to get a decent amount of rewards from assisting your teammates. This still won't get you as much as dealing damage, but will help a lot without having to get you directly in the fight, since a Locust's only real advantage in a fight is being a fast small target to hit.

you are not wrong but there are some problems with that idea on such a small Mech they are:
a NARC is 3 tons plus ammo, that is half the Locusts tonnage for weapons gone,
the TAG is a laser pointer telling the enemy exactly where you are, to make use of it you have to stay out of cover and stand still, again not good in a Locust or Commando where 1 AC20 hit or 2 PPC hits can cripple the Mech.

those are much better ideas in the 35 ton Lights which can afford a NARC without sacrificing as significant a porton of their tonnage

a better option for the Locust is to target the enemy with R or use a UAV, unfortunately UAVs are expensive but they can pay for themselves if used well and can bring in a lot of XP, again, if placed well.

[Digital_Angel]

Agreed that those suggestion still have issues.

Out of the 2, my suggestion would be TAG and TAG people from behind so that they don't see the laser pointing back at you, since the TAG mechanic doesn't really care which component of a mech you point it at. A Locust should be more than fast enough with a decent pilot to stay behind pretty much any opponent it wants to, especially since it sounds like he is already fairly decent at using terrain as cover.

[DarthHias]

A Locust lover straight from the academy Welcome Sir!

[Not A Real RAbbi]

LadyDanams, on 17 December 2015 - 10:02 AM, said:

Agreed that those suggestion still have issues.

Out of the 2, my suggestion would be TAG and TAG people from behind so that they don't see the laser pointing back at you, since the TAG mechanic doesn't really care which component of a mech you point it at. A Locust should be more than fast enough with a decent pilot to stay behind pretty much any opponent it wants to, especially since it sounds like he is already fairly decent at using terrain as cover.

Not a bad idea. One of my great frustrations is, that there is no warning indicator for the pilot when his/her mech is designated by an enemy TAG. NARC, sure. ECM countered by ECM or AP? Yup. TAG? No one cares, I guess. SO, if you CAN get behind an enemy formation and light up the TAG on one or more of their mechs, GO FOR IT.

It's not a HUGE hit to take on a RVN-3L(C), for instance, and I can even tolerate it on a ACH (I have a couple of specialized spotter builds for those), but it IS still a sacrifice of a ton, a slot, and an E hard point.

NARC will be trollolololol-only as long as the launchers are so freakin' heavy.

[Anachronda]

Nerdboard, on 15 December 2015 - 11:41 PM, said:

Shooting and/or killing mechs will usually give you more experience than anything else. Playing objectives purely will not give you as much. However, a mix of both might lead you to much better rewards. In your example of the first match you could have assisted in killing the mech that was looking for you. This might have given you experience and C-Bill bonus for: kill assist, killing blow, component destruction, possibly saviour kill, damage etc. You can look up the individual bonuses (C-Bill and exp) on http://mwo.gamepedia...ategory:Rewards . I think those are out of date however and I couldnt find a full list of everything (sorry). So back to your question: If you are mainly playing in order to farm C-Bills or exp and to learn about the game and how to play your mech I would suggest not focusing too much on objectives. Always try to fight. This doesnt mean you shouldnt ever cap points. If you see no way of participating without instantly dying or if you have lost your weapons go for the base/capture point.

More up to date rewards information can be found here (cbills and xp)

http://mwomercs.com/...-get-xp-and-cb/

A little on match score which also includes rewards

http://mwomercs.com/...ed-for-science/

One thing that is kind of wrong (I think) in the rewards is the bit on flanking

Quote

Flanking:

• Move behind an enemy Mech without being targeted by it and without being engaged.
  
• Deal damage to the enemy Mech from behind (out of sight).
  
• Reward has a cool-down of 20 seconds.

In my experience flanking doesn't have to be from behind. I usually get the bonus when firing from the side. I think the key is you are not targetted or engaged and aren't attacking from the front.