52 replies to this topic

[Crockdaddy]

ice trey, on 17 April 2016 - 06:40 AM, said:

I can't fully tell if this is sarcasm or not, because this is the complete opposite of my experiences with CW. CW seemed to have always been filled with players who believe first and foremost in using other people's builds and more often than not bringing out that snarky "You're seriously using one of THOSE?" attitudes. I mean, If someone tells me to bring a jump capable light, then yeah, I can do that, but if someone expects me to have the same ERLL Thud that every e-sporter brings to the table, it's just not how I do. As such, I leave all my levelling and experimenting to the public cue. I'm not likely to have the power builds that everyone cuts-and-pastes from smurfy, but I try to at least bring fully elited 'mechs to the table.

...probably why I'm precariously teetering at the lower edge of Tier 3, just waiting for a few bad matches to send me back to 4.

For right now ... the bulk of upper echelon players pretty much avoid CW (NKVA / KCOM are the exceptions). Most of the competitive types group up in the public queue for quick CBILLs. I used to disagree with Kin Luu assessment but when I want to level fresh mechs, I do it in CW or solo queue. Quick play group queue is generally quite a bit more challenging. YMMV of course. Each match is unique.

Hopefully CW - 3 will be the return of more interesting Faction Warfare for both solo and units.

I can see both points of view, the OP and the "pug". Although for my money, I'd have moved in to share the armor even if I was long range. Sharing armor is what this game is really all about and focusing your target.

Edited by Crockdaddy, 17 April 2016 - 10:04 AM.

[IQcreditscore]

It's an interesting debate but honestly the damage you will see to the cw population in the next 12-18 months will be telling.

I come from another game where I was a top 5-10%er over the span of 4 years through many meta changes and patches, while becoming a very good caller and clanwar player in that "tank game". Dropping pugs into clanwars is novel to me, but allowing the "teachable potatoes" to see what is possible is the first step in the journey to becoming a replacement to one of the elites who gets burnt out etc. Quickplay is a quagmire of awful. Think of all the things you will have to teach them as pug drops will be as big a mess as quickplay games within a matter of a week or so. They will learn nothing.

That other game we have to spoonfeed guys who have never pushed a corner or any of the other myriad of things they need to learn. After 4 years of doing that off and on I am burnt and came here to mess around. Currently a potato but still figuring out the controls and dealing with a massive difference in sensory input (prefer a third person view to a degree). I figure being middle of the pack in damage and kills while dropping with a couple free mechs and a couple built them just because mechs is not too bad (well one is a ppc thunderthingy build I saw in a youtube clanwars video even if it is a little outdated it still works ok, while the other is a raven lrmer I pug with).

It will be interesting to watch the new challenges this brings. Some will be healthy for the game while others almost guarantee the upper reaches a slow death in actual skill level.

...

[crustydog]

I am of mixed opinion, for there are merits to both sides of this argument - then again, we call it the pug lottery for a reason.

I was in this match, and given the players we were up against, I don't really think the solo participant would have made much difference in the final result, one way or the other.

That said, just two hours before this, I and one other "MS" player managed to pug wrangle 10 mostly untagged players with the in game VOIP to an intense and thrilling victory snagged in the last two seconds over a Clan 10 man unit on another planet. The kind of game play we all cherish.

Sometimes the pugs will play along and sometimes they will not. Unfortunately, this is the main reason we try to put a full 12 man together before we drop - and this pattern serves to work against the long term interests of the solo players... as they have to work harder to get access to the teams and the many benefits gained thereby.

That said, I support the right of players to play their game any way they like. Yes, CW is the team mode of the game, however, players also have to learn at their own rate - and for those who choose to solo - so be it. It is fair to ask them to join in, but should they flat out refuse to do so, why spend our own moral getting upset about it?

Personally, I prefer to focus on the players we do have participating, and not let the non participation of others interfere with our happiness. I am always open to helping those who desire it, regardless of their skill level. I have no desire to impose myself where I am unwelcome. We can lead the pugs to the well, but they must always have the freedom to choose whether or not to drink from it.

The root of this question comes down to that ability to make a choice. It is the only real power any of us have in this world.

When I joined MS, I knowingly and deliberately gave up some of that power in exchange for the many (many) benefits I gained as a result. The pugs we encounter have made no such choice in regards to this trade - and we have no right to impose any such conditions upon them.

We can reasonably and fairly make the offer, but going beyond that steps on player freedom.

Edited by crustydog, 17 April 2016 - 07:01 PM.

[Agent 0range]

people seem to think I was hanging back with my sniper on wave 2 which is the only time I wasn't fighting with the group. the situation was we were attacking Aboreal vault going in left from the DZ trying to get to E7 the team was full of MS-R and they were obviously trying to train people. as the advanced towards the gate(making exactly the same push as wave 1) i was on the ridge attacking the snipers and taking fire so as they crossed the gap the snipers were shooting me not them so spreading damage and helping. I kept the top of that flank as clear as i could and when the enemy tried to press in behind them I destroyed 2 mechs. i couldn't have done any of that just running in with them.

The idea this guy has is that i didn't help the team is wrong I shared damage and did as much as I could to help. the second wave push was far more successful than the first and my positioning my mech based on what i understand about the game help that.

he just didn,t like that i said no he argued with me, when i said it. Which is why i said i will play it my way. my way is to use my mech to help the team to the best of it abilities.

I have been DC a lot for pug groups while on my mech bay tour and when you do it you need to figure out what you have and use it to its best advantage not assume it will fit in with your plan.

[MischiefSC]

Agent 0range, on 17 April 2016 - 12:30 PM, said:

people seem to think I was hanging back with my sniper on wave 2 which is the only time I wasn't fighting with the group. the situation was we were attacking Aboreal vault going in left from the DZ trying to get to E7 the team was full of MS-R and they were obviously trying to train people. as the advanced towards the gate(making exactly the same push as wave 1) i was on the ridge attacking the snipers and taking fire so as they crossed the gap the snipers were shooting me not them so spreading damage and helping. I kept the top of that flank as clear as i could and when the enemy tried to press in behind them I destroyed 2 mechs. i couldn't have done any of that just running in with them.

The idea this guy has is that i didn't help the team is wrong I shared damage and did as much as I could to help. the second wave push was far more successful than the first and my positioning my mech based on what i understand about the game help that.

he just didn,t like that i said no he argued with me, when i said it. Which is why i said i will play it my way. my way is to use my mech to help the team to the best of it abilities.

I have been DC a lot for pug groups while on my mech bay tour and when you do it you need to figure out what you have and use it to its best advantage not assume it will fit in with your plan.

Wasn't there, only you and the people in the drop were. Please consider everyone elses responses (mine included in that obviously) as being about 'that pug who says I'm doing my own thing' rather than you.

If the drop caller isn't setting the drop order/expectations before the match starts, that's his failure. If you're not getting told at the start of a wave 'next wave bring something to brawl/long range/light/whatever that's their failure. MS is a good example of a large unit that does an amazing job setting standardized expectations for its players - you can drop at any time with any group of MS players, people you've never met or played with, and know pretty much exactly what's going to be expected of you. I can easily see where an MS drop caller may have missed that he needs to set expectations with his whole team, not just the guys on TS, about the way the drop is going to go so that everyone else can fit into that as well as possible.

As a pug though it's important to understand that the unit is going to function better if someone is helping them fill specific roles - be that sharing armor in a push, securing or covering a fire lane or position, whatever that specific role is. It's not about 'where your mech will do best'. It's about what the team needs done in that moment in the drop. If you're not in the right mech, well, that sucks but you need to fill the role. Sometimes you're going to push in a glass cannon sniper, sometimes you're just drawing fire from 600m away in a pure brawler. Sometimes the best role you can fulfill for your team is a glorious death, drawing enemy attention and pushing them to heat cap so the rest of the team can overwhelm them.

When you 'play your way' you degrade the effectiveness of the whole team. It doesn't matter if your build is good at X if your team is moving to accomplish Y. If you're not moving to accomplish Y, you're working at a cross-purpose to your team. A good pug needs to prod the unit at times (or all the time) to give him the info he needs to contribute. Units, at their best, do most of their work by habit.

The reality is that KCom is about the only unit that does an amazing job integrating pugs into their calls on a match, sharing their exceptional situational awareness and building an engagement (which is what a good DC does) that leverages their pugs in a way the pugs are viably contributing. That is exactly why you can see a KCom 4man and still go 'oh ****' in your 8man team. They're pretty much the gold standard for how to call a mixed drop. That's not everyone.

Units need to put the effort into wrapping their pugs in. Pugs need to play to the call, no matter what they're in, because that drives the win.

[BSK]

latinisator, on 17 April 2016 - 04:52 AM, said:

It is all this elitist whining I hate about BSK, besides the fine person he may be personally, that is shining through here.

Even though this sentence has no context, you mentioned us twice without me having said anything here. Are you still butthurt for calling you out for not sharing damage with us?

My unit has more than 200 founders with no other requirement than having that status. We don't care about the pilot tier, the amount of mechs or the battle records. Right now we encourage every lonewolf founder to join us before CW phase 3 starts to avoid the planned fee for recruiting pilots. We take any founder, anyone who invested in this game before it existed and that makes you think we are elitist and look down on other people?

We have regularly several pugs or pilots from other units in our teamspeak channel because almost every drop we invite everyone to our teamspeak. We still give commands via VOIP and ingame chat.

If THEN people do not comply and we have to argue about killing Omega first in a counter attack, then pardon me if I am fed up with it and do not care. PGI should rename it to ZETA in counter attacks so pugs could see a difference.

[fbj]

Why are MS players making posts like this?

That is what I want to know.

[Clanner Scum]

CW is so unappealing to me I don't even bother with it. It'd need a complete overhaul for me to consider it.

[Kieva]

The Basilisk, on 17 April 2016 - 12:41 AM, said:

Queue will be split to non Unit ppl and Unit ppl.

Honestly, I don't think it'll matter. People will find a way around it, people will complain about it, and it'll get scrapped, because 12-man drops will likely decline, due to absurd drop times - See: Tukayyid as Inner Sphere both times.

[Agent 0range]

MischiefSC, on 17 April 2016 - 01:07 PM, said:

Wasn't there, only you and the people in the drop were. Please consider everyone elses responses (mine included in that obviously) as being about 'that pug who says I'm doing my own thing' rather than you.

If the drop caller isn't setting the drop order/expectations before the match starts, that's his failure. If you're not getting told at the start of a wave 'next wave bring something to brawl/long range/light/whatever that's their failure. MS is a good example of a large unit that does an amazing job setting standardized expectations for its players - you can drop at any time with any group of MS players, people you've never met or played with, and know pretty much exactly what's going to be expected of you. I can easily see where an MS drop caller may have missed that he needs to set expectations with his whole team, not just the guys on TS, about the way the drop is going to go so that everyone else can fit into that as well as possible.

As a pug though it's important to understand that the unit is going to function better if someone is helping them fill specific roles - be that sharing armor in a push, securing or covering a fire lane or position, whatever that specific role is. It's not about 'where your mech will do best'. It's about what the team needs done in that moment in the drop. If you're not in the right mech, well, that sucks but you need to fill the role. Sometimes you're going to push in a glass cannon sniper, sometimes you're just drawing fire from 600m away in a pure brawler. Sometimes the best role you can fulfill for your team is a glorious death, drawing enemy attention and pushing them to heat cap so the rest of the team can overwhelm them.

When you 'play your way' you degrade the effectiveness of the whole team. It doesn't matter if your build is good at X if your team is moving to accomplish Y. If you're not moving to accomplish Y, you're working at a cross-purpose to your team. A good pug needs to prod the unit at times (or all the time) to give him the info he needs to contribute. Units, at their best, do most of their work by habit.

The reality is that KCom is about the only unit that does an amazing job integrating pugs into their calls on a match, sharing their exceptional situational awareness and building an engagement (which is what a good DC does) that leverages their pugs in a way the pugs are viably contributing. That is exactly why you can see a KCom 4man and still go 'oh ****' in your 8man team. They're pretty much the gold standard for how to call a mixed drop. That's not everyone.

Units need to put the effort into wrapping their pugs in. Pugs need to play to the call, no matter what they're in, because that drives the win.

yes i would have followed the call if there was any information coming out. I cant help focus fire, react, push when that information isnt coming to me. so the only option for any pug at that point is to just pay it as best they can to help the team. without the teams including pugs then the pugs should do what they do best. first push they werent sharing target call or direction absolutely nothing and exactly the same as every match i have had with MS

[Shard Phoenix]

If you're a unit and you've got the majority of players (especially if the only PuGs you pick up are "one or two"), and the actions of those one or two PuGs throws off your game plan enough to incite a forum gripe..

Well, your game plan needs work. Period.

If the PuG's actions didn't throw off your plan and you won anyway, but you still felt the need to make a forum gripe post about it....

Shave the neck-beard and go outside for a bit.

[Deathlike]

Agent 0range, on 17 April 2016 - 04:08 PM, said:

yes i would have followed the call if there was any information coming out. I cant help focus fire, react, push when that information isnt coming to me. so the only option for any pug at that point is to just pay it as best they can to help the team. without the teams including pugs then the pugs should do what they do best. first push they werent sharing target call or direction absolutely nothing and exactly the same as every match i have had with MS

That's not entirely accurate.

If you bother reading what you see on your radar and the Doritos, you can make a reasonable educated guess on what's going to happen.

Mind you, you might not be shooting at the called target, but chances are based on the direction and position on your teammates. However, you should be able to figure out what a good target happens to be based on that.

Those reads are the same used in actual group play... the thing is some people don't see that information as useful and don't do anything productive.

Sometimes you're not in the ideal mech for what is happening (running a Direwolf in CW is usually a bad idea, unless you're on defense) and many times the call made is more common than you'd think.

It's not impossible, but I don't think people practice this as they should.

[justcallme A S H]

The Basilisk, on 17 April 2016 - 12:41 AM, said:

With April 19th patch there will be no more incompetent non affiliated PuGs disturbing your uber pro less then 12 puppets of the drop commander team drops.

Queue will be split to non Unit ppl and Unit ppl.

If you still are unlucky enough to get some fubar performance from the few........oh so very very few unit affiliated ppl droping solo

It will not change much at all.

There are PLENTY of people with Unit tags who either

1. Refuse to listen to a DC - after asking for one, and the disagreeing and going to do something else anyway to pad their DMG out rather than the called objective because they are just arrogant turds.

2. Just plain bad.

Having a unit tag doesn't magically make you a good/decent/paying attention player. I've seen lots of tag-less players who are far better than their tagged counterparts in a skittle based FW drop.

To say the patch will fix it is utterly short-sighted as it's actually going to make more problems and not actually fix the problems with the queue, overall FW play/activity and wait times.

[Kin3ticX]

i usually write off pugs I don't recognize as nearly dead weight but appreciate the solid ones that show up too

Edited by Kin3ticX, 17 April 2016 - 08:13 PM.

[latinisator]

BSK, on 17 April 2016 - 01:51 PM, said:

]1.] Even though this sentence has no context, you mentioned us twice without me having said anything here. Are you still butthurt for calling you out for not sharing damage with us?

[2.] that makes you think we are elitist and look down on other people?

[3,] If THEN people do not comply and we have to argue about killing Omega first in a counter attack, then pardon me if I am fed up with it and do not care. PGI should rename it to ZETA in counter attacks so pugs could see a difference.

1. No context, well. Ok, the world is your oyster. By the way, our match was different: a nine-man of you with three pugs (I think), defending in counter attack. You ORDERED ME TO BE THE DROP LEADER (cause I was no.1 in the queue), which I refused two times. Firstly because no and secondly because you were the team (as I told you ingame). I did share some armour with you but when realising this would not help much and I got blocked and received "some" ff blowing out my right torso, I ran off and flanked (as some of your unit did). We won (pwned the oppfor), I did reasonably ok (upper third on the scoreboard), you did better (best maybe?).

2. But that is not why I called you here twice - it is your opinion that Commander A9 perfectly mirrored in here: "I know what to do and where to do, everybody listen to me / do as I want". As in the old thread, THAT is what I do not like about you ("hate" is too strong, sorry for that) and labelled elitist.

3. We were defending in counter attack back then, so your Omega arguement is not applicable to me. Although you are right with that that Omega does not matter in counter attack as long as the kill count does not match the win condition. This can be frustrating, I know and feel your pain there. However, one person cannot break a match as much as presented by Commander which strongly reminded me of the old thread and your opinion.


Personal note: I do not know you. Yet I think you are fine, reasonable, sane and all good things and I thank you for uniting players, making them better and having more fun. Still, your attitudes that sometimes shine through are not mine. So I make my point, trying to defend some of the soloist behavior. That is all.

[Kin3ticX]

also, the title of the thread is loaded, wouldnt have worded it that way myself

[smokefield]

i play a decent amount of cw games and imo there are 2 situations :

1. you drop with your unit/team and you make the majority in the drop. obvious play. you are fortunate if the pugs follow commands or at least do well in their mechs.

2. you drop with a couple of your friends or solo. You are not the majority in the drop. I will follow orders if anyone with the majority gives them and see where it leads. If the orders are bad I will not follow them again. If no one wants to take lead I will try to do it...if no one follows them then its a free for all game. Happens..and it can even be very entertaining (if you dont encounter a fully organised team that is... )

[Black Ivan]

The Basilisk, on 17 April 2016 - 12:41 AM, said:

Guys and Gurls....just drop it.

With April 19th patch there will be no more incompetent non affiliated PuGs disturbing your uber pro less then 12 puppets of the drop commander team drops.

Queue will be split to non Unit ppl and Unit ppl.

If you still are unlucky enough to get some fubar performance from the few........oh so very very few unit affiliated ppl droping solo in get rect queue just report them for incompetence at their units command office. (oh that is if you are lucky enough to get a game at all after the first two weeks when the other units are tired to get stomped over and over again by the 3 or 4 allmighty uber pro [noooo they arent ceating regularely] teams in game)

Have fun

Exactly my thoughts. Wasteland is coming to CW and that soon, can't wait for all the imconing crying.

[smokefield]

if they add story and immersion and real progress in CW, as they should have done from the start, I think more people will join or create units. CW is all and only about this.

[MischiefSC]

Agent 0range, on 17 April 2016 - 04:08 PM, said:

yes i would have followed the call if there was any information coming out. I cant help focus fire, react, push when that information isnt coming to me. so the only option for any pug at that point is to just pay it as best they can to help the team. without the teams including pugs then the pugs should do what they do best. first push they werent sharing target call or direction absolutely nothing and exactly the same as every match i have had with MS

Here's the thing. That you recognized the post, remembered the match and have repeatedly stated that you stuck with them and died in the other waves indicates to me that you're cognizant of the points I was trying to make. That's why I started out saying it wasn't really directed at you; in many ways I don't think the OP really intended this as being at you either.

The problem is that there's a lot of pugs in CW who are 100% 'I do wut I WANT' in CW and lose matches for their teams consistently before coming to complain on the forums that teams only play CW to club baby seals, not realizing that the problem isn't teams but bads like them that create rolls in CW like that.

Those guys, and there's a lot of them, are the real thrust of this thread and the OP. The match you were in was probably just the straw that broke the camels back for the OP and he was probably looking at you through the lens of being pissed at 2 or 3 people on his team every match he played for the last week. You just got painted with the same brush.

You are exactly right though - the team needs to put the effort into at least trying to wrap the pugs they drop with in. That's going to become even more critical after the queue split. If a team wants their pugs to play along they need to put a bit of effort into meeting them half way or only drop in 12mans if they just absolutely can't be arsed to use in game voip.