184 replies to this topic

[Jungle Rhino]

Stomps happen in Quickplay just the same. I think the problem with Faction play is that the 4 mechs kind of drag the whole process out and make it more frustrating.

I don't really see much strategy with the whole 4 mech dropship concept given how quick games start to snowball - I haven't played FP a whole lot (wouldn't want to offend the l33t dudes with my potatoness) - but how often does a first wave wipe turnaround and win the game? What are the 3 other drops doing other than prolonging the suffering?

Also I think new players need a bit of a break given how impenetrable this game is. If I was a total newb loading up MWO for the first time ever I think it is a pretty fair assumption that 'Trial' mechs should be competitive, or at least able to have fun in them. But they really, really aren't... The tutorials are alright I guess - but bear no relationship to effective playing of a QP game let alone FP. Throw in Ghost heat mechanics, min range on LRMs and more confusingly PPCs, exploding ammo/XLs and there are many traps for young players.

Which is great - but it is not well introduced. Which is probably why I saw a CPLT-K2 with 1xUAC5 + 3xML last night???!

[Xiphias]

Barkem Squirrel, on 09 January 2017 - 02:11 PM, said:

Think about this How many people in the game have a KDR greater than 1? That is what about 4 or 5 thousand active players and how many of them do not play CW?.

If you're curious it's 9,617 active players as of this post in the season 6 leaderboards ("Mors Draco" if you want to look it up).

[Willard Phule]

Barkem Squirrel, on 09 January 2017 - 02:11 PM, said:

Think about this How many people in the game have a KDR greater than 1? That is what about 4 or 5 thousand active players and how many of them do not play CW?.
How long does it take a new player to get the KDR up to above 1 after loosing again and a again?
What if a player gets a new computer and the low KDR jumps due to being able to play the game at a good frame rate?
What if they have 10,000 games and have a kdr that needs 500 to 1000 kills to even out the KDR?

Here is what I see. You want a game mode where during short periods each day there would be enough players online to have a match. Remember KDR is a poor way to evaluate mechs. Even to a point the W/L is hard at times.

I still see, a required number of regular drops before CW. Then as an exemption allowing people with not enough matches to drop in a groups of a certain size with experienced players. That is it.

Or.....an achievement based on GXP earned (not individual mech XP) that unlocks FW?

[Crockdaddy]

Bud Crue, on 09 January 2017 - 02:52 PM, said:

Boredom at work?
Venting?
Some sort of odd need for anonymous attention?
A desire to engage others with whom we have a common and shared interest, namely this game, it mechanics, its characteristics and those of its makers?
A desperate but futile hope that PGI will some day listen to our individual issues?
Mental masturbation?

Whud I miss?

We simply refuse to get on board the Russ Twitter Train. (Just had to fix your fantastic list for ya).

[Barkem Squirrel]

For data, I was looking at the numbers for season 7. Season 6 may have been a better choice to look at, but the number of active players in season 6 with a KDR's above 1 is well below 25% of the player base.

It is all on how the player base is split up. Working in groups is the key even with people with below W/L and KDR below 1. This is in Solo play or Faction Warfare. Some of us can remember in Solo play having a restricted group sizes and what happened. We have two areas and never shale they meet, groups drops and PUGing.

Faction warfare is a bit different. Having a group drop area with allowing Qualified PUGs to drops with them, may just be a decent idea. Now having a new PUG only area for players that have below 1 KDR or W/L may be a decent idea to try.

[Bud Crue]

Crockdaddy, on 10 January 2017 - 05:01 AM, said:

We simply refuse to get on board the Russ Twitter Train. (Just had to fix your fantastic list for ya).

Doh! I knew I'd miss something...and this one so obvious. Damn.

[TheLuc]

The Russ Twitter Train, is just a sale pitch. Buzz words all stacked up over an other.

Reminds me of the Roughneck Mech, a oversized Shadow Hawk that offers less then the original.

Edited by TheLuc, 10 January 2017 - 10:03 AM.

[Sjorpha]

Jungle Rhino, on 09 January 2017 - 04:27 PM, said:

Stomps happen in Quickplay just the same.

Not just the same.

In quickplay you have stomps mainly because this game has a very strong snowballing effect. A well balanced matchup can still easily turn into a 12-0 stomp, that's just how the game works and it's not a balance problem.

In Faction play you have a completely different kind of stomp, where looking 1 second at the drop preparation screen tells you if it will be a stomp or not. In Faction play you go very often go into the match knowing that you will win 48-20 or more. That is a very different thing from quickplay where at best you can guess at a favorable matchup if you see more recognizable names on one side, but you won't be sure.

Edited by Sjorpha, 12 January 2017 - 03:15 AM.

[Appogee]

Well I just had a 580 damage match. The Mode was Conquest and I spent the whole second half of the match desperately trying to cap and keep us in the cap race.

Only one other guy even tried to cap. The rest of the team just seemed to trade near Theta, neither pushing and capturing it, nor trying to flank and cap somewhere else.

We lost the match by about 75 resource points in the end, regardless Man that was frustrating. And pointless!

[Ninjah]

I said it before and I'll say it again. FP needs a set of minimum requirements before you can play, nothing special or hard to obtain like 4 owned mechs and maybe 100 hours played. Why? Because newbs tend to jump right in with trials and die horribly and then quit playing the game completely leaving "this s*** is f***** unbalanced!!!!" threads on Steam. Also PGI should make a FP tutorial ASAP and make it mandatory so you can't go to FP without completing it. It would help a lot but noone at PGI seems to give a damn.

[Appogee]

Ninjah, on 13 January 2017 - 04:16 AM, said:

...leaving "this s*** is f***** unbalanced!!!!" threads on Steam...

Those noobs are surprisingly astute.

Still, we need to hang onto them long enough that they too can learn and exploit the imbalances

[Willard Phule]

Ninjah, on 13 January 2017 - 04:16 AM, said:

I said it before and I'll say it again. FP needs a set of minimum requirements before you can play, nothing special or hard to obtain like 4 owned mechs and maybe 100 hours played. Why? Because newbs tend to jump right in with trials and die horribly and then quit playing the game completely leaving "this s*** is f***** unbalanced!!!!" threads on Steam. Also PGI should make a FP tutorial ASAP and make it mandatory so you can't go to FP without completing it. It would help a lot but noone at PGI seems to give a damn.

Either that or coding something like that is completely beyond their ability. Take the whole matchmaker thing for an example. The community has come up with any number of better matchmaker ideas than the garbage they force on us. It's not out of maliciousness, it's that they simply can't do better.

Think about it. PGI's only claim to fame before MW:O was a bass fishing game. The matchmaker for that is significantly easier.

[Aescwulf]

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.

[MischiefSC]

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.

We do. And a lot of people accept that help and they get better at the game. How do you think we all got good at it? Coincidence? We just ran LRM 10s and MGs until we magically started winning matches?

It's critical to understand that there's a huge difference between a newbie and a potato. A newbie is just new - they don't know better but they want to learn. They take direction, they try to follow the calls on the drop and they work to improve. We all <3 them and do our best to help them.

A potato is someone who takes bad mechs, makes bad choices, refuses to group up or push or follow the calls on the drop and has been for a long time. They don't want to improve; they want to keep being bad at the game and making bad choices but get everyone and everything else nerfed until their bad playing starts to win.

Being wacky and taking bad robbits in QP is fine. That's why QP is there - to derp and troll and goof around. It means nothing, the teams mean nothing. FW however is all about the teams. Someone being a derp hurts their team and faction and screws everyone else who's actually trying to win.

So potatoes are bad. Toxic even. Dead weight. Newbies? <3 every single one of them, happy to help them, wish I could give them money and old robbits. I can't count how many times I've been on drops on Davion TS where you had an 8man helping train up 4 newbies, helping them make money. On absolute rolls we would leg people and let them get the kill.

It's not about elitism. It's about people who actually want to try and win and people who literally are having fun helping their side lose and then blaming everyone else and demanding everyone who isn't terrible be nerfed so they can be terribad and still win but not have to change.

[Naelbis]

I just did sub 500..polar highlands skirmish. My team and the clanners spent the whole game sniping from 1200-1800 meters and I don't have a dropdeck built for those ranges. Went to time expiration before anyone got close enough for me to hit them.

[Monkey Lover]

Naelbis, on 14 January 2017 - 03:10 PM, said:

I just did sub 500..polar highlands skirmish. My team and the clanners spent the whole game sniping from 1200-1800 meters and I don't have a dropdeck built for those ranges. Went to time expiration before anyone got close enough for me to hit them.

Do you plan on making some longer range mechs for when his happens again? I personally have range,brawl,low heat and high heat mechs made for me to use. I change these out depending on the group goals and map.

[Striker2237]

I usually get at least 1500, that good enough to keep playing lol!

[Naelbis]

Monkey Lover, on 14 January 2017 - 04:13 PM, said:

Do you plan on making some longer range mechs for when his happens again? I personally have range,brawl,low heat and high heat mechs made for me to use. I change these out depending on the group goals and map.

To be honest it is the first time I havent been able to find a way to engage using my deck. I have never dropped with a team that committed to range trading with clanners. but yes, I am planning on purchasing another drop deck and outfitting it will ER range builds as funds permit.

[MischiefSC]

Naelbis, on 14 January 2017 - 05:49 PM, said:

To be honest it is the first time I havent been able to find a way to engage using my deck. I have never dropped with a team that committed to range trading with clanners. but yes, I am planning on purchasing another drop deck and outfitting it will ER range builds as funds permit.

I have my decks broken up by range, not heat. The reality is that even an energy build can rock on a hot map if you handle it well but there's no real working around range. Long range map you want a long range deck; a brawling/push map you need brawling builds.

I have a push deck and a poke deck and both of them have an alternate in them; one push mech in the poke deck and one poke mech in the push deck I've found that to be optimal and if I've absolutely got to switch to 4 of one type I can swap the one mech on the fly.

End of the day I've found range to be a far, far more critical factor in deck design and map/mode success than either dakka or energy.

[Brenden]

Isn't MetaMech horribly out of date?