21 replies to this topic

[Kin3ticX]

FW is not meant to be perfectly balanced.

The longtom only activates at 90% intel and that is a 60 pt intel window. (540 of 600)

If you neglect the scouting queue then bad things will happen. You will probably lose to a unit you otherwise never would have due to the longtom support.

That is not much different from when a mix group gets defense on Vitric and pulls a miraculous win against a 12-man group

OR, how about when the full 12-man unit gets defense on Vitric against an inferior force. That usually ends up being a hopeless farm to 48 or a last ditch base rush attempt.

The point is, longtoms reverses the fortune in these usual expected outcomes

Actually the only problem I see with longtoms, besides the usual polishing up, is somehow just 4 clanners in queue had this one defense pact Steiner planet at 100% intel(we were helping out some steiners from FRR after getting our attack to 100%). Im not really sure how the planet actually got to 100% intel as this planet was an afterthought for my unit.

In that situation, there was presumably the 4 wonderful IS people already in that queue that essentially facilitated the mass intel fail + whatever turret drops occurred. It took like 45 min to stop the longtoms just because 4 solid players held the queue hostage. We would have really long count ups and turret queue count downs and half the missions were defense, not gather. Later 8+ opponents showed up and it started to flow better. To make matters worse, we cant even see how many people are participating via the non-unit queue.

Edited by Kin3ticX, 21 April 2016 - 09:27 AM.

[Joey Tankblaster]

Yeah - thats perfect. Perfectly bugged.

[Tom Sawyer]

I do not mind strong Longtoms no pun intended. What does bug the heck out of me is that anyone who would randomly from the rear call down arty on the largest blob even IF friendly mechs are in the strike cone needs to be shot.

I still think someone on the friendly team needs to be designated as shot caller.

[Super Trooper]

In the one match I've been in the long tom took out more enemy attackers using the long tom, than us defenders. It literally won us the match having the long tom used against us.

You just have to play smart when facing the tactical nukes.

[Kin3ticX]

Super Trooper, on 21 April 2016 - 08:51 AM, said:

In the one match I've been in the long tom took out more enemy attackers using the long tom, than us defenders. It literally won us the match having the long tom used against us.

You just have to play smart when facing the tactical nukes.

yeah, I know about the spread everyone out and then have 2 light mechs charge the enemy tactic. I expect PGI will make an adjustment. Just removing the progress bar and not repeating the exact same cooldown would make that tough to pull off.

Edited by Kin3ticX, 21 April 2016 - 09:02 AM.

[Gas Guzzler]

But, when otherwise fresh assault mechs are being head shotted every 2 minutes its kind excessive don't you think?

I mean, as a 12 man we figured out a good way to handle long toms, but for anyone lacking serious coordination they will be SoL.

I think the timer should be more like every 5 minutes.

Are people against somehow altering how they do their damage so they prevent the common headshots?

[Mystere]

Tom Sawyer, on 21 April 2016 - 08:37 AM, said:

I do not mind strong Longtoms no pun intended. What does bug the heck out of me is that anyone who would randomly from the rear call down arty on the largest blob even IF friendly mechs are in the strike cone needs to be shot.

I still think someone on the friendly team needs to be designated as shot caller.

This is where the creation of a 13th player (11th for the Clans ) -- the Mechcommander -- is a good addition to the game.

[hybrid black]

Joey Tankblaster, on 21 April 2016 - 08:36 AM, said:

Yeah - thats perfect. Perfectly bugged.

And here is the problem with gamers they don't know what a bug really is

[Kin3ticX]

Gas Guzzler, on 21 April 2016 - 09:04 AM, said:

But, when otherwise fresh assault mechs are being head shotted every 2 minutes its kind excessive don't you think?

I mean, as a 12 man we figured out a good way to handle long toms, but for anyone lacking serious coordination they will be SoL.

I think the timer should be more like every 5 minutes.

Are people against somehow altering how they do their damage so they prevent the common headshots?

Insta headshots was also a problem when they first created call-in strikes. You'd figure PGI would also have expected the same reaction if long toms did the same thing. It should do a bunch of damage but instagibbing everything and cockpitting fresh mechs on the edge of the explosion is no good.

Edited by Kin3ticX, 21 April 2016 - 09:10 AM.

[Aresye]

Kin3ticX, on 21 April 2016 - 08:33 AM, said:

If you neglect the scouting queue then bad things will happen. You will probably lose to a unit you otherwise never would have due to the longtom support.

Except the majority of scouting seems to be done by solo players with no unit affiliation, and they don't have a care in the world about the planet, nor the teams/units playing the actual invasion mode.

For the first night of playing FW, we had 3 SJR teams doing scouting, and we were winning nearly every single match, but losing the scouting game, despite us grabbing as much intel as possible.

The queue numbers for unit 4v4 mode only showed maybe 1 other team that was playing for Smoke Jaguar other than us, so what's that mean? That means the players who were repeatedly losing our progress on scouting were our non-unit affiliated solo players.

I'm fine with long toms being super strong, and scouting having a big impact on the invasion game mode, when random solo players basically stop functioning as RNG.

[Gas Guzzler]

Kin3ticX, on 21 April 2016 - 09:09 AM, said:

Insta headshots was also a problem when they first created call-in strikes. You'd figure PGI would also have expected the same reaction if long toms did the same thing. It should do a bunch of damage but instagibbing everything and cockpitting fresh mechs on the edge of the explosion is no good.

Completely agree. That's why they should have left the damage number alone, and done something about the headshots.

[Deathlike]

Aresye, on 21 April 2016 - 09:11 AM, said:

I'm fine with long toms being super strong, and scouting having a big impact on the invasion game mode, when random solo players basically stop functioning as RNG.

This was moreso the case in CW Phase 1, where the difference between winning and losing a planet was the solo PUGs in that final drop.

The reality is the lack of coordination makes success far less a goal, but a dream.

[Big Tin Man]

I'm fine with the strength, but every 2 minutes is A LOT. If it would randomly fire within windows of 0-4 minutes, 4-8, 8-12, etc. that would probably balance it better than decreasing the strength.

I also like that scouting MATTERS, and there's so many point needed it takes time to build it up.

[Kin3ticX]

Aresye, on 21 April 2016 - 09:11 AM, said:

Except the majority of scouting seems to be done by solo players with no unit affiliation, and they don't have a care in the world about the planet, nor the teams/units playing the actual invasion mode.

For the first night of playing FW, we had 3 SJR teams doing scouting, and we were winning nearly every single match, but losing the scouting game, despite us grabbing as much intel as possible.

The queue numbers for unit 4v4 mode only showed maybe 1 other team that was playing for Smoke Jaguar other than us, so what's that mean? That means the players who were repeatedly losing our progress on scouting were our non-unit affiliated solo players.

I'm fine with long toms being super strong, and scouting having a big impact on the invasion game mode, when random solo players basically stop functioning as RNG.

I sorta forgot about the solo queue factor. We cant even see their numbers unless we have an alt account (which I dont currently)

[dervishx5]

I have a feeling PGI missed a decimal place somewhere.

[sycocys]

How does that work out for the teams that would normally have an advantage anyhow?
^ Especially the larger units that can easily run both queues with enough teams to hold down both at the same time.

Don't see any problem with that?

[Kin3ticX]

sycocys, on 21 April 2016 - 09:38 AM, said:

How does that work out for the teams that would normally have an advantage anyhow?
^ Especially the larger units that can easily run both queues with enough teams to hold down both at the same time.

Don't see any problem with that?

if the queues are properly populated, 90% longtoms should be super rare, right?

thats why when the steiner planet from last night was at 100% I suspected a 20pt turret drop every 10 min in the unit queue plus the 4 unit people queue winning every game. That on top of almost nobody in the solo intel queue for that planet

As Arseye said, he had 3 4-mans pumping wins and couldnt get a lot of movement in intel because of losses from other players.

[sycocys]

I bet if they switched from going for maximum intel to smaller chunks and maximum drop rate that would change up quite quickly. They are plenty organized once they figure out how to game it so they get the best possible advantage, and at that point they will have to be vastly outnumbered by pugs to lose data.

[Big Tin Man]

^^^ yup. As always, drop efficiency is still key.

[Chemistrius]

Having two separate and untouchable groups of people affecting the missions on the same resource (planet/intel) is bad design.

This is similar, in a way, to the steam launch when there were so many people losing so quickly, that it didn't matter how many wins you posted up quickly, it wasn't enough to help. We've just exasperated that problem by creating a queue whereby even if players lined up for miles to take on missions, if the opposing team is in the other queue, too bad so sad, ghost drops for everyone.

If you're going to maintain split queues, perhaps they should have separate resources they are fighting over just so you don't have a group of people losing the planet out from underneath the other group.