95 replies to this topic

[The Unstoppable Puggernaut]

If PGI hid all related stats showing a person's personal k/d and tier. Would it make people play differently I wonder?

[Johnny Z]

Karl Streiger, on 02 January 2017 - 06:04 AM, said:

The choice of weapons has a direct impact on the kills.

Weapons that deal damage over time but constantly - like lasers or AC2 or LRM5s have a higher profitability to "steal" a kill.
pin point weapons like PPCs or Gauss on the other hand usually "overkill" a target to get the final blow.

(there is a reason that I ask to change the kill/assist system once in a blue moon - make it relative and count them the same.
When you deal 1% dmg to a target you got a 1% assist and sum everything in the end.... 100% assists = 1 kill

This is right.

Zergling, on 02 January 2017 - 06:11 AM, said:

Lol no, 1000 damage is 3 times the normal an average player does per battle. Even if they spread their damage around a lot, they still did a huge amount of damage to the enemy team.

Only very rarely will a player pull off 1000+ damage while playing like a selfish jerk (except for those odd players that make a habit of it, due to playstyle).





Many people have fun by challenging themselves; winning battles is one of those challenges (and it is also harder to pull off reliably than high kills or high damage in the solo queue).





One look at leaderboard says everything that needs to be said: negative W/L, positive K/D.

OP doesn't know how to win battles because he is focusing on K/D padding, so wants the standard of skill to be shifted to make himself look better.





W/L is heavily influenced by player skill in the solo queue, however.





An 'ECM light taking potshots' implies long range weapons, and lights simply lack the DPS with long range builds to pull off 1000 damage reliably, so it is actually quite difficult to pull off 1000 damage like that.





Its possible; I was playing the Locust 1E in Season 6/December, and managed a 3.53 K/D in it (way above my normal for lights), largely due to how I was able to use that mech to pick off damaged enemies.

Another method is to just hang back behind the team, wait for the battle to be almost over before pushing in. At that point, a fresh heavy/assault can easily score a bunch of kills against crippled enemies, even if it is alone.

This is also right.

[Lily from animove]

Hit the Deck, on 02 January 2017 - 05:54 AM, said:

Can you reliably kill steal to boost you K/D? I don't think you can.

The best way to get a good K/D is to be a good pilot, which directly contributes to your W/L (and your team).

of course you can, save up your shots and when multiple people shoot at a mech time yours to be the final blow.

[Hit the Deck]

Karl Streiger, on 02 January 2017 - 06:04 AM, said:

The choice of weapons has a direct impact on the kills.
...

But does using weapons like AC/2 and LRMs make you have a good K/D?

Zergling, on 02 January 2017 - 06:11 AM, said:

...
Its possible; I was playing the Locust 1E in Season 6/December, and managed a 3.53 K/D in it (way above my normal for lights), largely due to how I was able to use that mech to pick off damaged enemies.

Another method is to just hang back behind the team, wait for the battle to be almost over before pushing in. At that point, a fresh heavy/assault can easily score a bunch of kills against crippled enemies, even if it is alone.

But that's how you play LCT-1E. I think your teammates apreciated that they had a good Locust pilot in their team.

As for the Heavy/Assaults which hang back, I guess that could work, but does it work reliably to boost your K/D? Being a good pilot guarantees that you (and your team) perform well the majority of the time.

Lily from animove, on 02 January 2017 - 07:26 AM, said:

of course you can, save up your shots and when multiple people shoot at a mech time yours to be the final blow.

Have you tried it? Is it really worth the trouble so you can boost your K/D (if it works)?

Edited by Hit the Deck, 02 January 2017 - 07:59 AM.

[Lily from animove]

Hit the Deck, on 02 January 2017 - 07:58 AM, said:

But does using weapons like AC/2 and LRMs make you have a good K/D?


But that's how you play LCT-1E. I think your teammates apreciated that they had a good Locust pilot in their team.

As for the Heavy/Assaults which hang back, I guess that could work, but does it work reliably to boost your K/D? Being a good pilot guarantees that you (and your team) perform well the majority of the time.


Have you tried it? Is it really worth the trouble so you can boost your K/D (if it works)?

yes that works, theres a laod of people that do that, and obviously it's worth it to them. And I did so in a few events where counters said gathering kills. If you would know what people do to boost their K/D, they hide at the end of matche sto not get killed and other funny stuff. Stat padding is as old as stats exist and work well in MWO. No matter if KMDD or kill famring is currently the new "meta" stat that decides your epeen. if theres epeen to stroke someone will do.

Edited by Lily from animove, 02 January 2017 - 08:18 AM.

[Cabusha3]

Wil McCullough, on 01 January 2017 - 04:59 AM, said:

i still remember in 2013, winning contributed a lot more to the paycheck and what functioned as the PSR back then. there were a lot of 0-0 games where capping points was actually a good strategy. back then, lights were also a lot more relevant, but i digress.

people got REALLY mad then for the reason that "they're playing a stompy robit game where their stompy robit smashes other stompy robbits or die trying". they didn't want to play stand-in-a-square simulator or "catch-up warrior online" where the match would be over before they even fired a shot.

so pgi gave us this version of stompy robit to assuage the rage.

funny how things come full circle.

Yup, there was not-insubsantial group that vocally decried anything resembling objective based play. As you mentioned, the rewards were shifted towards combat. Also adjusted were the spawn points and capture positions for all modes. Capture used to be a very tense, spread out game on Alpine. Sure, you'd have the occasional match where no one shot anything, but the majority of the time you'd see multiple smaller engagements because dearh-balling would normally be a loss.

But the kill all community won and capture became what it is today, another claustrophobic skirmish reskin.

I really do miss the old light fights, since being good in the lighter mechs actually mattered then.

[Appogee]

Hit the Deck, on 02 January 2017 - 05:54 AM, said:

Can you reliably kill steal to boost you K/D? I don't think you can.

Yes they can.

Keep an eye on your minimap. Look for the ******* standing slightly behind you. You're the one peeking the corner, and you get your target down to an exposed torso component. Then the guy behind you suddenly jumps out from behind and does a high alpha at your target, claiming the kill.

I've seen this done tons of times. I most notice it when they are blocking me by standing too close, or clipping me with their intended killshot.

Then there are the dual-PPC snipers, a Scat being their preferred ride due to ECM. They find a perch up high, watch what's getting shot, wait for a target to get an exposed component, before they shoot.

I hate those selfish asswipes.

There's a video on YouTube at the moment where a guy shows off how he got his Ace of Spades in his Spirit Bear on Viridian Bog. He proudly explains how he's deliberately hanging back, not engaging, waiting for the rest of the team to soften the enemies up. Then steps up only for the killshots.

Total *******.

Edited by Appogee, 02 January 2017 - 09:01 AM.

[Mister Blastman]

Uh, no.

This game is about WIN/LOSS in pugs.

If you have a fancy awesome high KDR but a crappy K/D, guess what?

You are toxic for your team and should be purged.

[Van Hoven]

Wil McCullough, on 01 January 2017 - 10:54 AM, said:

you don't break 1k damage in a qp match by sitting at the back and taking potshots. to get 1k damage, you need to be dealing a lot of damage, a lot of the time, which means you're in the thick of the action and got lucky enough to not get focused. if a player breaks 1k damage, trust me he/she's more than doing his share of heavy lifting haha.

Sitting back not as in being 500m away, but as in not leading the charge, position yourself that you are unlikely getting focused and that kind of stuff. Ofc dealing 1000dmg is contributing to the win, but to acchieve that regularly you have to abuse your teammates as meatshields most of the time.

[reflectorjones]

This game should be about damage and KMDD, not about kills, not about wins.

- Kills, you can swoop in at the last second, do 5 damage, and get a kill
- Wins, you can sit in the back and be useless and still win

I can put out 800dmg round, and a loss, and still get less than 1000XP for my mech with premium time. Something is wrong there.

[Van Hoven]

Zergling, on 02 January 2017 - 06:11 AM, said:

Lol no, 1000 damage is 3 times the normal an average player does per battle. Even if they spread their damage around a lot, they still did a huge amount of damage to the enemy team.

Only very rarely will a player pull off 1000+ damage while playing like a selfish jerk (except for those odd players that make a habit of it, due to playstyle).

Again, I said explicitly that it says something about the players qualities, but pure dmg doesn't say everything about skill/contributing to a win.

If you want to score high dmg numbers regularly (as in earn cbills a match) you better learn to stick with your group and be somewhere in the middle, not taking to many risks, not trading to much. Stay as healthy as you can and shoot on targets that your team focus', dont let you get caught in 1on2 situations and so on.

While I maybe worded it too harsh, that IS a selflish playstyle. More often then not the player initiating a push who gets punished for that by getting focused down is the one that really made the team win the game.

Ofc you sometimes get 1000dmg+ games without looking out for it, just down to luck (as in not getting focused), and you always did your part in winning when dealing that amount of damage. But again, dealing damage isnt the main indicator of contributing to a win.

Edited by Van Hoven, 02 January 2017 - 09:29 AM.

[Lily from animove]

reflectorjones, on 02 January 2017 - 09:22 AM, said:

This game should be about damage and KMDD, not about kills, not about wins.

- Kills, you can swoop in at the last second, do 5 damage, and get a kill
- Wins, you can sit in the back and be useless and still win

I can put out 800dmg round, and a loss, and still get less than 1000XP for my mech with premium time. Something is wrong there.

good, I soon pack 6 srrms 6 or lrms and get the KMDD and damage values up in the sky, may not efficiently kill stuff, but hey doens't matters when it's about KMDD and daamge.

[Van Hoven]

This discussion reminds me of a match not long ago, where a player after getting killed made a comment about the paintjob of a living player in the match. Someone responded "dead players stfu, enjoy getting carried"

While I agree that it can be distracting when other ppl chat while you are in the heat of the action, especially if they comment on what you should do, I dont get why people think that it's a question of skill to live to the end of the battle.

A player can do exactly 0 dmg, if that means he distracted 4 to 5 enemy mechs so the rest of the team is getting stomped by his team he did a very important job.

[reflectorjones]

Lily from animove, on 02 January 2017 - 09:26 AM, said:

good, I soon pack 6 srrms 6 or lrms and get the KMDD and damage values up in the sky, may not efficiently kill stuff, but hey doens't matters when it's about KMDD and daamge.

You should be rewarded higher than the guy that comes in next with 1 shot and puts the mech down. You contributed more.

[Cat-in-Exile]

Appogee, on 02 January 2017 - 08:56 AM, said:

There's a video on YouTube at the moment where a guy shows off how he got his Ace of Spades in his Spirit Bear on Viridian Bog. He proudly explains how he's deliberately hanging back, not engaging, waiting for the rest of the team to soften the enemies up. Then steps up only for the killshots.

Total *******.

Seriously? It's a total brawler mech. Of course he was hanging back until the fight got into short range. I don't even

Total *******, indeed...

[Appogee]

Cat-in-Exile, on 02 January 2017 - 10:09 AM, said:

Seriously? It's a total brawler mech. Of course he was hanging back until the fight got into short range. I don't even

Total *******, indeed...

I must not have been clear. He was hanging back while the enemy was in brawling range. He hung back and only stepped in when his targeting info showed him a damaged enemy was ready to be killed.

His team did most of the work. And he saw nothing wrong with sitting back and kill-stealing. He shamelessly posted a video, and commented on what he was doing.

Total *******.

[Mystere]

Van Hoven, on 02 January 2017 - 09:36 AM, said:

A player can do exactly 0 dmg, if that means he distracted 4 to 5 enemy mechs so the rest of the team is getting stomped by his team he did a very important job.

That's all well and good, in theory, except for the extremely glaring fact that his teammates, the game, and by extension PGI itself all think he deserves diddly squat for his efforts.

[Zergling]

Hit the Deck, on 02 January 2017 - 07:58 AM, said:

As for the Heavy/Assaults which hang back, I guess that could work, but does it work reliably to boost your K/D? Being a good pilot guarantees that you (and your team) perform well the majority of the time.

The players that do it end up with relatively low W/L for their high K/D and Kills/Battle.

I could name a few players that do it so you could look at their leaderboard stats, but it'd be name and shame.

reflectorjones, on 02 January 2017 - 09:22 AM, said:

- Wins, you can sit in the back and be useless and still win

In the solo queue at least, a better player will have a higher W/L than a worse player.

Sure everyone gets carried for many battles, but the better player will influence those battles where they aren't getting carried to produce wins, resulting in a higher W/L.

Van Hoven, on 02 January 2017 - 09:24 AM, said:

Again, I said explicitly that it says something about the players qualities, but pure dmg doesn't say everything about skill/contributing to a win.

If you want to score high dmg numbers regularly (as in earn cbills a match) you better learn to stick with your group and be somewhere in the middle, not taking to many risks, not trading to much. Stay as healthy as you can and shoot on targets that your team focus', dont let you get caught in 1on2 situations and so on.

While I maybe worded it too harsh, that IS a selflish playstyle. More often then not the player initiating a push who gets punished for that by getting focused down is the one that really made the team win the game.

Ofc you sometimes get 1000dmg+ games without looking out for it, just down to luck (as in not getting focused), and you always did your part in winning when dealing that amount of damage. But again, dealing damage isnt the main indicator of contributing to a win.

I pull off high damage scores while playing as an aggressive flanker, which has a lot of risks. Eg, I played 42 battles in my Summoner M/Fs in December, averaging 739 damage/battle; I broke 1000 damage in 8 of those battles.
With a W/L of 2.50 for those 42 battles (30 wins, 12 losses), my play style (and damage output) was certainly helping my team a lot.

And there is a strong correlation between damage and winning; sure there are players that don't do their damage efficiently, or play like selfish jerks, resulting in low W/L for their damage, but in the majority of cases, more damage is better.

Edited by Zergling, 02 January 2017 - 01:31 PM.

[Tristan Winter]

Kshahdoo, on 01 January 2017 - 03:48 AM, said:

Of course I mean PUGs, because PUGs play for a personal statistics and units play for wins, but 80% of games (probably more) are played in PUGs, so they do about about 4 times better presentation of the game, than organized matches.

If you play with PUGs and think people are here for the same reason as you, i.e. win the game, it's a big mistake. Wining means nothing, if you have all the mechs you need and don't need XP and CBs anymore. And thinking that w/l is that meaningful, when you play mostly with PUGs, is about as right as thinking people become politicians because they love their countries. But of course the better player the better chance he will help his teams to win more matches, so his w/l can be pretty good as well.

I like this post.

I normally fight to win the match. The only exception is if I try to communicate with my team, nobody responds and they play poorly on top of that. If I see my teammates start to die at that point, I'm just in it to grab some kills before I go down. I won't be desperately trying to cap bases or anything like that.

However, I think a lot of people are missing the valuable points of the OP, which is not to say that we should all be protecting our KDR or kill farming. The valuable lesson is:

• People play this game for different reasons and it's dumb to assume everyone is after the same thing.
  
• As you increase the size of the team (e.g. from 4 to 8 or 8 to 12), people identify less and less with team accomplishments in a game. In a 12v12 match, people are more concerned with their own accomplishments than the team accomplishment. Especially in a game where new teams are made every 5 minutes.
  
• People who are drawn to games like MWO are naturally drawn to the accomplishment of getting kills. Not the heroic sacrifice, not standing on squares to cap resources, not standing inside the circle to eat PPCs in Domination. The natural inclination for most people is to get kills. On top of that...
  
• In MWO, the biggest rewards are for kills. KMDD, solo kills, killing blows, brawling, components destroyed... kills, kills, kills. If you get 4 kills and 800 damage, you get paid a lot, win or lose. If you just win the match without getting kills, you get paid 40,000 C-bills and 200 XP or something like that. PGI is actually rewarding kills more, because they want you to hunt kills instead of only focusing on winning the match.
  
• The only way to preserve your sanity in the solo queue is to not assume that your teammates want the same thing as you.

[Jman5]

You gotta take care of business. You can have all the teamplay in the world and it wont matter if your team can't complete the objective. 90% of the time that objective is going to be getting 12 kills before the other team can.

It's frustrating to see how many people wrap themselves in the flag of being a teamplayer in order to excuse their poor performance and bad decision making.

Here's a tip: Charging into an entrenched firing line with equal or less numbers should be your last resort not your first.

There are times where sacrifice is warranted, but it's generally very situational and Objective-related. Invasion mode where you put your body in front of a generator to slow a gen-rush is a good one. Escort mode when your VIP is about to go down is worth doing. Conquest if you desperately need to hang onto one cap to win. Domination, if you have no choice but to fling yourself into the circle to prevent a loss. Assault mode, if you need to keep your opponent engaged to prevent a cap loss.