184 replies to this topic

[PFC Carsten]

Brenden, on 14 January 2017 - 08:45 PM, said:

Isn't MetaMech horribly out of date?

Why would it need to be updated when there are no changes to the gameplay?

---
While thinking about a nice (admittedly troll) build, one thing occured to me earlier today.
When the OP's sentiment is right and people with (regularly) less than 500 DMG will be expelled from FaPing, what is the logical consequences for players who just aren't „dat gud“? They would devise way to get to their 500 DMG and one of the easiest ways to achieve that without sufficient skill would be to load their assault mechs up with LRMs. Which is another thing, most people would view as disqualifying for FaP.

[Willard Phule]

Aescwulf, on 14 January 2017 - 07:20 AM, said:

When you first click on FW it does give a warning that there is no ranking and that everyone is running around in customised mechs. Maybe when a newbie does start playing FW instead of the elitists moaning about potatoes they should help.

If only we had thought about that 3+ years ago.....

Potatoes don't learn. They don't listen. They never have.

[Brenden]

PFC Carsten, on 14 January 2017 - 11:59 PM, said:

Why would it need to be updated when there are no changes to the gameplay?

---
While thinking about a nice (admittedly troll) build, one thing occured to me earlier today.
When the OP's sentiment is right and people with (regularly) less than 500 DMG will be expelled from FaPing, what is the logical consequences for players who just aren't „dat gud“? They would devise way to get to their 500 DMG and one of the easiest ways to achieve that without sufficient skill would be to load their assault mechs up with LRMs. Which is another thing, most people would view as disqualifying for FaP.

You know that's a good point.

Amount of damage is not indicative of someone's actual skill in 'Mech Combat. A variety of factors should be considered like;
A) Level of Coordination with the team
B ) Effective use of environment to you advantage
C) Knowing when to shut down for a surprise sneak attack
D) Appropriately using the Override function

And so on.
You shouldn't judge a player based solely on their ability to inflict damage when there are more things to be taken into account, no?

Edited by Brenden, 15 January 2017 - 10:39 AM.

[Scythe Kagato]

I play what I want.

[_Comrade_]

How difficult is it to understand get on coms and communicate with a team. You can lead a horse to water but you can't force it to drink

[MischiefSC]

Scythe Kagato, on 15 January 2017 - 11:07 AM, said:

I play what I want.

So does every single other player in the game.

The difference is 'do you want to win'?

If so then you play what wins.

If you don't then people who do enjoy winning more than losing are not going to want to play with you.

That's the crux of it. We all play what we want. Some of us enjoy winning more than losing and, as such, would rather play alongside people who enjoy winning more than losing. We get the situation we have now when we have people who enjoy winning and, as such, want to play what wins (both in terms of playing with their teammates and bringing good mechs) constantly and totally destroying the 'I play what I want' (as a justification to play poorly with no coordination in bad mechs).

Everyone plays what they want. Some just want to win, some just, I guess, want to lose? I admit I'm not able to wrap an explanation around the other side of that which makes sense.

[Kazenoma]

Scythe Kagato, on 15 January 2017 - 11:07 AM, said:

I play what I want.

And that's fine. I often bring an ERPPC Nova into scouting matches on maps with reasonable distance. I've had teammates call me out on this several times, saying things like "Lol wut, sniping in scouting?" and "You lost in the mechlab!" Some have even gone as far as calling out my position out to the enemy to get me swarmed.

And yet, at the end of the match, my damage is almost always higher than the sum of the rest of my team combined. I guess it's not a good idea to facetank all those SRM Griffins and AC20 Cents, huh?

The difference here isn't playing what you want. It's being able to do it well. I think I echo the point that many people here are trying to make. We honestly don't care what mech you bring, or what your weapon load-out is, or whether you like to min-max or use some edge-case specialty build. If you can put out 800+ damage consistently in a dedicated LRM boat, bring it. But don't cry about teammates hating you if you're firing all of your missiles into the side of a building.

If you don't have the ability to score reasonably well with your mech, you're a liability to the team. Plain and simple. It has very little to do with build choice and much more to do with experience and tactics. The people putting up these scores would do around the same damage with a meta Kodiak and a quad machine gun Spider, because they make HUGE tactical errors that get them killed almost instantly.

M A N T I S, on 05 January 2017 - 03:15 PM, said:

Nice attitude.

We need more players to be encouraged to play this mode and be excited about it. You're placing barriers for many of these new players by this type of subversive shaming. Everyone is allowed to play. If it bothers you, tough. Pugs join, do poorly, you both move on. Don't forget, it's only by that player's choice to join that you were able to fill out your (or opponent's) group in the first place to get a game. Be thankful you have others to play with and against.

I'm far from the best player here, but I can do 500 damage in a Faction Play match doing literally nothing but suicide bombing the entire enemy team solo with 4 close range builds. It only takes, what ... 10 or 11 Alphas overall?

Think about it. 125 damage per mech.

If your score is lower than that, you shouldn't be in Faction Play. You should be learning the ropes in Quick Play: getting better at positioning, aiming, and tactics. Maybe trying out new builds for a better fit. That's the point OP is trying to make. There's no sense in newbies throwing themselves into a meat grinder without knowing how to fight their way out first. All they'll want to do after getting stomped is abandon the mode -- or even the game -- entirely.

Edited by Kazenoma, 15 January 2017 - 04:01 PM.

[James Argent]

A true free-to-play player will need to be able to enter FP with trial mechs, unless you want them to fill their four starter mech bays exactly right to fill out a drop deck. Hell, I'm not even FTP and I have a trial mech in one of my decks right now because I don't own any Clan mechs light enough for the new tonnage limit. I rarely use that particular deck in favor of one with a more equal tonnage profile, but there it is.

But oh no, now they still can't join FP because even though they miraculously got their total tonnage correct (this week, anyway), they don't have enough mechbays to get their mechs mastered first and their only free source of additional mechbays, outside of infrequent events where gaining one is rare at best, is FP itself! So now they have to not only get the total tonnage right, but it has to be 4 variants of the same mech at (currently) 60 tons for Clans and 65 tons for IS (leaving 5 tons on the table) to meet the 'mastered mechs' standard. I could easily make the 4 Mad Dog deck work for me, but I'm sure new players would want a little more variety in their only available mechs. The number of true free-to-play players who would make these decisions on their own before even thinking about FP is virtually nonexistent.

Effectively putting FP behind a paywall is an unreasonable proposed restriction.

[MischiefSC]

James Argent, on 16 January 2017 - 10:18 PM, said:

A true free-to-play player will need to be able to enter FP with trial mechs, unless you want them to fill their four starter mech bays exactly right to fill out a drop deck. Hell, I'm not even FTP and I have a trial mech in one of my decks right now because I don't own any Clan mechs light enough for the new tonnage limit. I rarely use that particular deck in favor of one with a more equal tonnage profile, but there it is.

But oh no, now they still can't join FP because even though they miraculously got their total tonnage correct (this week, anyway), they don't have enough mechbays to get their mechs mastered first and their only free source of additional mechbays, outside of infrequent events where gaining one is rare at best, is FP itself! So now they have to not only get the total tonnage right, but it has to be 4 variants of the same mech at (currently) 60 tons for Clans and 65 tons for IS (leaving 5 tons on the table) to meet the 'mastered mechs' standard. I could easily make the 4 Mad Dog deck work for me, but I'm sure new players would want a little more variety in their only available mechs. The number of true free-to-play players who would make these decisions on their own before even thinking about FP is virtually nonexistent.

Effectively putting FP behind a paywall is an unreasonable proposed restriction.

Firstly, trials on both sides need to be a solid FP dropdeck. Honestly I think we need 8 trials for both IS and Clans. This gives some flexibility and hurts nothing - seriously, do they think people are not going to want to buy their own mechs? Buying mechs and gearing them up is the bulk of this game.

I'd rather new players learn in FP where experienced players can (and will) help them. QP is the worst place for new players to learn.

[LordNothing]

i consider anything under 1000 bad. but even i dip down to the 500s on games where we got a lot of starch on are team and a lot of skill on the other. your ability to lone wolf it when your team sucks isnt really a measure of a good team player. even as a pug i will accept the need for some basic level of teamwork, even if its just sticking together, listening to calls, helping other players, and using the target spotted function. its people who deny this that i dont want to see on my team.

[RaidSoft]

Problem is that you get much more c-bills when doing well in faction play. That's by far the fastest way I've found to get enough funds within any kind of reasonable timeframe to get outfitted well. It's going to take me months to get enough c-bills to get the mechs I want for FP when grinding quick play and that's just painful because for me faction play is where I want to be playing.

Honestly the matches I have played in FP seems to be decided once the players have been picked. Doesn't matter if you have someone that tries to take charge of a pug and people try their best to follow reasonable orders. If there's a unit stack on the other team then you're just not going to win, I do try my best every time though.

edit: also I don't think skirmish or assault should be in faction play, it just makes for very dull matches, if you lose the first engagement then the other team can just sit in a corner and let you walk into them or win by default on timeout... That is just awful gameplay, it's fun when the match of course but I have only seen that like twice so far.

Edited by RaidSoft, 26 January 2017 - 04:36 PM.

[FreeFragUK]

There are various points raised in this thread I agree and disagree with. First off, I regularly play Faction Play (FP) and I'll admit my performance as far as damage goes is inconsistent for various personal reasons. Does this generate an increased workload on the rest of my team? Arguably yes, but at the end of the day it's a game and I play it to have fun.

Quick Play (QP) is frankly unfulfilling, devoid of any sense of meaning and becomes exceptionally tedious. QP can be fun... it fills that gap when I don't have enough time to dedicate to a focused FP match, however, I also find that QP fulfils the role of acting as a warm up before sinking my teeth into an evening of FP.

As stated by many posters here, QP is full of positives and negatives but due to its very nature it often reinforces bad gameplay habits.

While I comprehend the point which you are raising Apogee, it is far from welcoming or encouraging. If anything it sets a very elitist and unwelcoming tone which establishes a line in the sand; a message which clearly states "if you want to play in my sandpit then you must be of this standard or better". The issue with this message is that to any prospective player who may be browsing the forums to gauge the community and to assess if this game is for them it, potentially, sends a very off putting message. For players already in the community looking to embrace new forms of gameplay it also sends out a very foreboding and unwelcoming message. The end result is that you end up with fewer and fewer people to play with in your sandpit and in turn leads to the sandpit being abandoned.

Out of all the posts in this thread, the people I have to agree with most would be "B3R3ND", "Insufficient Skill" and "MischiefSC". PGI need to implement better tools for introducing players into FP but this responsibility does not lie solely upon PGI. The community has to accept a certain level of responsibility. I fully appreciate that there are often communication barriers; be it language or simple ignorance but I see sarcastic, abusive and derogatory comments far more often than any form of positive reinforcement or even simple attempts to coordinate/cooperate. The irony being that positive reinforcements and basic guidance are often all it takes for an experience akin to herding cats to turn into an effective group.

What I will say is that I completely agree with barring people from entering FP with Trial Mechs. I would also suggest that mechs shouldn't be allowed into a drop deck unless they have all basic proficiency's completed. Furthermore I agree with the sentiment of barring people who haven't completed the initial 20 starting match bonus/incentive.

As far PGI's message upon selecting FP goes... it's as effective as an age gate when it comes to obstructing your average teenager accessing something which they shouldn't be but what is a reasonable measure to put in place? The message does its job. It states clearly that FP is a "highly-competitive game mode" with the recommendation of developing 4 customised mechs and by honing your skills but let's face it... this is hardly an objective criteria and to be frank, just because you can obtain 500+ points of damage on average doesn't mean that you're going to be contributing to an FP team in a meaningful way.

Where the statement truly hits the nail on the head is that MWO is a game where team cohesion is key. The ability to function and operate within a team far outweighs an arbitrary damage score in terms of value.

edit: point of concession - I agree that 500 points of damage is a relatively low bar across 4 mechs which is easily obtainable but in the same breath FP is very different to QP.

Edited by FreeFragUK, 26 January 2017 - 07:55 PM.

[Reza Malin]

Bud Crue, on 05 January 2017 - 03:16 PM, said:

It isn't just a question of not doing enough damage...if you are just not good or specifically if you lose more than you win (W/L ratio less than1) you really shouldn't play CW.

The goal of the game is to win planets. CW is now two teams (Clans vs IS) trying to take those planets. If good groups on your team are winning and you and your group are consistently losing, then you -by losing consistently- are counter acting any progress that the rest of your team is making. In other words you losing is hurting the teams chances of getting to the goal of taking the planet. Every time you and your fellow losers play you are hurting the team. So if you want your team to win you need to stop playing for the sake of the team.

This is the nature of CW. For good or ill, this is how it works. This is why terribads like me are not welcome (for the most part) in CW (except by those who just want someone to farm).

W/L is a good representation of whole units and their skill success level. Not solo players. Solo players could be dropping with bad groups a lot of the time, which they have no control over.

A better display of a solo FP pilot's success in FP, would be KMDD compared to matches played. Its the best simulation of attrition from the stats board, and attrition is what its all about, especially with pug/premade combo groups.

Edited by Reza Malin, 27 January 2017 - 03:53 AM.

[Laser Kiwi]

its the mech bays and ranks i can't progress unless if i play QP therefore no FP no progression, essentially CW is where the interest is and loyalty points are the whole point of CW for a player like me. I've been killed over 450 times and i'm still useless but tough luck, if people like me don't play CW at some point then perhaps sooner rather than later noone will except for maybe some prearranged circle jerk amongst 100 or so good players that bother to log on any given day.

As for win loss, some units in war are better than others, some are green and some are elite, in the REAL mechwarrior universe all those units fight, good and bad, in many ways this makes it a more realistic representation of war if poor player lose battles and ground whilst you sleep, thats realism right there, not everyone is kell hounds or gray death legion, some dudes are the new avalon academy regiment if you get my drift.

[Sjorpha]

People keep responding as if this is some kind of elitist thing, but no one suffers harder from the pugstomping than the pugs themselves.

What creates the most unbalanced matches?
The answer is zero barrier FP where people who haven't even learned the controls properly can jump in to get stomped.

Who suffers the most from this?
The answer is low to medium skill players who try to have fun solo pugging FP, and then gets grouped with complete nubs and also get stomped.

Now is damage a good barrier, arguably not.

But SOME kind of barrier is needed. For example having played 100 matches, or owning your own drop deck, or whatever. Just SOMETHING to make FP closed to complete newbies for just a little short while until they know how to play the game.

Another variant is to cap solo pugging FP to tier 1-3 and allow all tiers to play in groups of 4+. No skill gate, but you have to show that you are willing to put in a minimum of effort to join and create teams if you try to join as a low tier player.

It should be in the interest of everyone, including the newbies, to set up some kind of friendly resistance for complete newbs to enter FP as one of the first things they do after downloading the game.

Consider this: If you want absolutely zero barriers to playing FP, then you cannot also complain about being pugstomped by units.

Edited by Sjorpha, 01 February 2017 - 12:32 PM.

[Deathlike]

Sjorpha, on 01 February 2017 - 12:31 PM, said:

People keep responding as if this is some kind of elitist thing, but no one suffers harder from the pugstomping than the pugs themselves.

What creates the most unbalanced matches?
The answer is zero barrier FP where people who haven't even learned the controls properly can jump in to get stomped.

Who suffers the most from this?
The answer is low to medium skill players who try to have fun solo pugging FP, and then gets grouped with complete nubs and also get stomped.

Now is damage a good barrier, arguably not.

But SOME kind of barrier is needed. For example having played 100 matches, or owning your own drop deck, or whatever. Just SOMETHING to make FP closed to complete newbies for just a little short while until they know how to play the game.

Another variant is to cap solo pugging FP to tier 1-3 and allow all tiers to play in groups of 4+. No skill gate, but you have to show that you are willing to put in a minimum of effort to join and create teams if you try to join as a low tier player.

It should be in the interest of everyone, including the newbies, to set up some kind of friendly resistance for complete newbs to enter FP as one of the first things they do after downloading the game.

Consider this: If you want absolutely zero barriers to playing FP, then you cannot also complain about being pugstomped by units.

A quicker-smarter way is that you need to have like a ~200 match score (or 200 damage) min like 7 out of the last 10 QP matches or something like that. That should account for some variance (like cap wins), but also filter out people that aren't really cut out for FP.

It's not a high bar, but then again, most people aren't even doing the bare minimum.

Edited by Deathlike, 01 February 2017 - 07:26 PM.

[Ninjah]

I'm starting to think that it would be for the best to just kill Quickplay and make everyone drop in FP but with a matchmaker. QP is just meaningless anyway and it takes a huge portion of the population away.

Just look at it:

1. Quickplay
2. Quickplay Group Queue
3. Scouting
4. Faction Play


My suggestion:

1. Scouting
2. Faction Play Pug Queue (MM)
3. Faction Play Group Queue

Edited by Ninjah, 03 February 2017 - 02:48 AM.

[Appogee]

Hmmm. After how many days of no response will this officially become a zombie thread

[Colonel ONeill]

James Argent, on 16 January 2017 - 10:18 PM, said:

A true free-to-play player will need to be able to enter FP with trial mechs, unless you want them to fill their four starter mech bays exactly right to fill out a drop deck.

I know you wont read this as it is quite old, but whatever:

Why does a free-to-play player need to have access to CW before he grinded out a dropdeck and gained something like a basic understanding of the game mechanics (aka Tier 3)?

The part I quoted describes precisely what is happening in CW. PGI does not wanna exclude somebody, so the new players farm MCs, CBills, Mechbays in CW. They do not care about their performance at all.

Ninjah, on 03 February 2017 - 02:42 AM, said:

I'm starting to think that it would be for the best to just kill Quickplay and make everyone drop in FP but with a matchmaker. QP is just meaningless anyway and it takes a huge portion of the population away.

My suggestion:
1. Scouting
2. Faction Play Pug Queue (MM)
3. Faction Play Group Queue

Well, most players have no real intrest in CW (anymore). They play it to farm stuff.
And as CW is almost like Quickplay now, you can just click on Quickplay and get farmed there. Where is the point in playing more than one Mech?

[meteorol]

I'm having issues to understand how it's even possible to get less than 500 damage with 4 mechs during 30 min matches.

You see non afk guys getting like 129 damage between all of their mechs. I can't conceive how someone isn't able to put like 2-3 alphas into an enemy mech before dying. Even for brand new players. MWO is such an easy game.

It seems almost impossible, yet it happens on a daily basis. Must be people who never played any kind of FPS in their whole life.