95 replies to this topic

[JigglyMoobs]

xTrident, on 03 January 2017 - 09:09 AM, said:

I personally try to be in the middle. Whenever I'm the first one in battle I feel like I have zero support and get my *** kicked. And I don't care to be last because I don't feel I supported the team as well as I should have.

That being the case whenever working right in the "middle" of providing support of damage dealt as well as damage received the KMDD's and kills just seem to come. Typically won't the winners accumulate more kills which will then give them a higher K/D?

The best thing to do is actually for people to position their mechs correctly according to load out and armor amount, and then for people to fill in for each other if some people are getting focused.

That doesn't happen except rarely in pugs so the alternative is to take a poking builds, find some good firing spot away from the very first line and take an overwatch role. Then you slowly herd team forward and beat enemies back by heavily punishing the most aggressive enemies. This strategy works for a variety of heavy and assault mechs.

If you are in a brawling assault, and you expect to carry, then your strategy is different. You need to be up front but cannot push in the opening game unless team is exceptional. So you take a position where you can hide from most enemy fire but ambush-punish any aggressive front line enemy and stop any aggressive enemy push. So you're really a bouncer for your team's position. Then, as soon as you sense enemy weakness you lead the push.

That's the static role. The NASCAR role is to try to get to the front, and then use your mass and firepower to keep NASCAR constantly advancing at assault mech pace.

As a light, you have a couple of choices. You can flank way out back to backstabbing, but unless team also utilized the Intel you are sending them you simply cannot kill fast enough to make a real difference.

Choice 2 is for you to act as a roving sentry, providing ecm where needed, protecting against light harassers, chasing away snipers and spotters.

The last option, if team is actually pushing you can actually lead the push by constantly executing micro-flanks on the very first line of enemy mechs. This breaks up their battle front and lowers resistance for your team's +W.

Of course, all of the above break down if team is sufficiently potato.

[Rift Hawk]

Appogee, on 01 January 2017 - 04:03 AM, said:

We really need to see KMD stats. Between those and Kill stats, you'd get a more accurate picture of a players' performance.

Kill/Death isn't enough by itself, because some pathetic souls deliberately inflate their stats by kill-stealing.

Win/Loss isn't enough, because it's too much at the mercy of PUGlotto, and group carrying.

I think Match Score is probably the best proxy we have at the moment, even though it too can be artificially inflated by LRM usage (much superfluous damage), consumables usage (such as UAV spotting for the LRMers, strikes) and other weird oddities which may not necessarily indicate strong personal performance (eg. Lance in Formation, Hit and Run bonuses etc).

Don't forget the "flanking" bonus that applies even when your not actually flanking anything.....

[LordNothing]

i think the people who play for stats are in the minority. i looked at my stats like twice since they put them into the game, and one of those was on accident while i was trying to figure out my progress on the merc tree, and the other was me playing around with a new feature. ultimately i play to win, and to level mechs, but im running out of those.

[Appogee]

Imperial X, on 03 January 2017 - 05:41 PM, said:

Don't forget the "flanking" bonus that applies even when your not actually flanking anything.....

Yeah, I'm not sure how it's calculating that sometimes.

Last night I noticed I earned a "first capture" during a Conquest Match, when I wasn't anywhere near a capture point, and that capture point had changed hands several times.

Oh well, I'll take the free CBills

[xTrident]

Appogee, on 03 January 2017 - 09:54 AM, said:

If we all did that, we'd all be standing around waiting for someone to "go first".

In fact, if you PUG a lot you will see exactly that ... Mechs standing around in a group behind cover, waiting for someone else to engage. And unfortunately, that often ends in the group getting pincered by a less fearful enemy.

I guess luckily not everyone does that then. I personally have always felt I'm a much better support player than anything else. Doesn't matter the game type I've always been much better in the support role than the front line role or the back line sniper role.

I do see that happen a lot in pug matches and yes, we usually not only lose, but get our butts kicked by doing such. I'm the type of player that if I was to ever lead - and I don't ever plan to, mind you - I'd be more of a sneaky strategist. Have a scout try and keep tabs on the enemy so the big guns could continue to try and get into good position whether it be defensive or offensive, doesn't really matter. While the scout is working on keeping targets I'd want the long range medium mechs to try sniping staying back and in cover as much as possible. Anything to soften the enemy up which usually works well in both softening the enemy up as well as getting some to scramble from taking shots. My hope would be to separate their team some, but if that didn't work at least whatever role our big guys were in they'd have a few mechs already damaged to hopefully take out a little more quickly.

Basically I'm not the type of player to run in guns blazing. I like to try and do things in which the team takes the least amount of damage possible. Unfortunately that never works because of all the different personalities of pilots out there.

But I just wanted to give you a little insight that although I may try to play the way I mentioned, if I were to actually take control, that's the way I would try to do it. Whether it would be successful or not... who knows?

Edited by xTrident, 04 January 2017 - 05:57 AM.

[JigglyMoobs]

I've been playing since open beta and I've personally never seen any obvious case of "kill stealing" as Appogee defines it.

Maybe it's happened all the time and I haven't noticed, or maybe Appogee is looking too hard and seeing intent in coincidence.

Edited by JigglyMoobs, 04 January 2017 - 09:42 AM.

[Kshahdoo]

Every ******* time I try to play as a teamplayer I found myself totally ******. Why am I so stupid to keep making this mistake?

[xTrident]

JigglyMoobs, on 04 January 2017 - 09:41 AM, said:

I've been playing since open beta and I've personally never seen any obvious case of "kill stealing" as Appogee defines it.

Maybe it's happened all the time and I haven't noticed, or maybe Appogee is looking too hard and seeing intent in coincidence.

The only times I think it's happening is when I'm working over a guy, clearly put in most damage and someone jumps right in front of, blocks my shots and gets the kill. Not saying it really bothers me because I get plenty of kills shooting just two or three times at a target. (no, I'm not trying to take the kill, just assist, but that's the way it happens)

As long as these "kill stealers" are in the middle of the action I could care less. To me it's just luck of the shot anyway.

[SWANN]

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.

The only stat that matters in this game is damage. KDR is irrelevant. W/L is irrelevant. Damage is the only metric by which you can measure any level of objective individual skill.

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

OBJ in war? Kill enough of the enemy and break enough of their toys that they give up.

Easiest way to do that is by killing them and not getting killed in the process.

JigglyMoobs, on 04 January 2017 - 09:41 AM, said:

I've been playing since open beta and I've personally never seen any obvious case of "kill stealing" as Appogee defines it.

Maybe it's happened all the time and I haven't noticed, or maybe Appogee is looking too hard and seeing intent in coincidence.

I've seen it a few times. ELP had a guy that intentionally would do it when playing lights. He'd hold his fire til the last moment to get the kill shot. He'd regularly have 4-5 kills and sub 250 damage. He'd even laugh it off and joke about it til we started booting him from group. He's with MS last I saw.

[Felicitatem Parco]

SWANN, on 05 January 2017 - 12:44 PM, said:

The only stat that matters in this game is damage. KDR is irrelevant. W/L is irrelevant. Damage is the only metric by which you can measure any level of objective individual skill.

Absolutely wrong. Narc and tag do not inflict damage upon the enemy. Neither do capturing resource collectors or destroying generators.

The only metric that can truly measure your performance over a long period of time is wins vs losses.

[Mystere]

Prosperity Park, on 05 January 2017 - 02:16 PM, said:

Absolutely wrong. Narc and tag do not inflict damage upon the enemy. Neither do capturing resource collectors or destroying generators.

The only metric that can truly measure your performance over a long period of time is wins vs losses.

Take it easy on the peasant farmer class. That's all they will ever know.

Edited by Mystere, 05 January 2017 - 02:24 PM.

[Zergling]

SWANN, on 05 January 2017 - 12:44 PM, said:

The only stat that matters in this game is damage. KDR is irrelevant. W/L is irrelevant. Damage is the only metric by which you can measure any level of objective individual skill.

W/L is entirely relevant; if you aren't helping your team win battles, then all the kills and damage you do are wasted.

There is a rather large difference between doing damage and scoring kills, and doing damage/scoring kills while also helping the team win.
And the later requires significantly more skill than the former.

[JigglyMoobs]

Plus w/l is affected by how much mm expects you to carry, at least it used to be.

[SWANN]

Prosperity Park, on 05 January 2017 - 02:16 PM, said:

Absolutely wrong. Narc and tag do not inflict damage upon the enemy. Neither do capturing resource collectors or destroying generators.

The only metric that can truly measure your performance over a long period of time is wins vs losses.

Yes... That is why I said the only metric we have. We don't have metrics to measure those things. Honestly, did you guys even read what I said?

Quote

The only metric that can truly measure your performance over a long period of time is wins vs losses.

It's too team dependent to really indicate anything about a singular player.

Zergling, on 05 January 2017 - 04:24 PM, said:

W/L is entirely relevant; if you aren't helping your team win battles, then all the kills and damage you do are wasted.

lol, what? I didn't say "W/L is irrelevant" I said it was less relevant in determining individual skill - You can be an individually good pilot and have a poor W/L. If you play with friends that aren't particularly good for example, could potentially lead to an individually good pilot having a poor W/L. You guys seem to have trouble separating team play from individual play.

They are different skill sets.

Edited by SWANN, 18 January 2017 - 08:49 AM.

[Zergling]

SWANN, on 18 January 2017 - 08:38 AM, said:

lol, what? I didn't say "W/L is irrelevant" I said it was less relevant in determining individual skill - You can be an individually good pilot and have a poor W/L. If you play with friends that aren't particularly good for example, could potentially lead to an individually good pilot having a poor W/L. You guys seem to have trouble separating team play from individual play.

They are different skill sets.

Part of what makes a player 'good' and 'skilled' is ability to carry teams. It doesn't matter how much damage or kills are scored if that damage and kills aren't making the team win.

And I was speaking about the solo queue, as are most people when they talk about W/L.