62 replies to this topic

[MechaBattler]

So you are the opposite end of the spectrum, you like the way things are?

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Yes, if people want the objectives to be the focus of gameplay, then they have to be the easiest/only way to win (and rewards should focus on that, so lopsided games won't end with farming remaining respawns for c-bills like you see in FW). To do that, you must have respawns on some level so that a good amount of combat still takes place because ultimately that is where the fun of this game comes from, not playing this game like PvE.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 27 March 2017 - 09:16 AM.

[Paigan]

Coolant, on 26 March 2017 - 01:21 PM, said:

I'd have to disagree about Conquest...

Conquest is best played as "first kill, then cap". Aka skirmish.

You have a MUCH higher success chance if you completely ignore capping, kill the enemies fast and then outcap everything than if you split up, cap quickly and get wiped out 1 by 1 or in small groups.

One or MAYBE two lights capping instead of fighting can be worthwhile.
Everything else just reduces the overall win chance.

So conquest, too, is more or less skirmish with some negligible side effects.

A properly done conquest would add tactical values when holding resource points.
For example a artillery replenishing tower.
An airstrike replenishing tower.
A sensor sweep tower.
A radar(-net) tower.
An ecm(-net) tower.
Maybe even ammo- coolant- and repair towers.

Not just some almost irrlevant counter that can be caught up once all enemies are gone.

Edited by Paigan, 27 March 2017 - 09:16 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Paigan, on 27 March 2017 - 09:15 AM, said:

You have a MUCH higher success chance if you completely ignore capping

In PUGs, this is true, in more coordinated/competitive environments this is not true outside of smaller maps which is where the mode shines (because it prevents camping for the most part).

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 27 March 2017 - 09:17 AM.

[Paigan]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 27 March 2017 - 09:17 AM, said:

In PUGs, this is true, in more coordinated/competitive environments this is not true outside of smaller maps which is where the mode shines (because it prevents camping for the most part).

I only play PUG, so I can't thoroughly object, but I strongly doubt it. I bet a well-organized kill-first-team beats a well-organized cap-first-team most of the time.

Conquest aside: A MechLab in Java? Nice

[Mystere]

Kiran Yagami, on 27 March 2017 - 06:38 AM, said:

Matches where people rush the objectives always feel cheap and pointless because they are.

Now imagine for the moment if destroying the generator gave a 1,000,000 c-bill reward.

[Felicitatem Parco]

Kiran Yagami, on 26 March 2017 - 01:00 PM, said:

Because all game modes are skirmish in disguise. Even the new one that you're once again "testing" during an event so no one will play it.

How do I change my Mech into a Tank? I would love to reduce my frontal profile.

Is there a keybind that I am missing?

[Deathlike]

"Woebots" in disguise.

PGI has never really gotten good game design out... and the irony is that respawns are generally why gamemodes work.

Still though, having no insight into your own game makes creating gamemodes difficult.

[1453 R]

Paigan, on 27 March 2017 - 09:15 AM, said:

...
A properly done conquest would add tactical values when holding resource points.
For example a artillery replenishing tower.
An airstrike replenishing tower.
A sensor sweep tower.
A radar(-net) tower.
An ecm(-net) tower.
Maybe even ammo- coolant- and repair towers.

Not just some almost irrlevant counter that can be caught up once all enemies are gone.

How does this discourage killing the enemy?

The fundamental disconnect is exactly that - in order to encourage or prioritize completing an objective, killing enemies has to be discouraged or deprioritized.

As Quicksilver states, the fun in MWO is engaging in combat. Games which deprioritize combat in favor of forcefully pushing objective-based play leads to a state where combat - the best part of MWO outside of Alex - is actively detrimental to your win chances.

Why is this a desirable state?

Conquest is the best game mode in MWO because it forces movement and allows options for outmaneuvering the deathball (outcap and force the enemy team to scatter or risk loss) without being so in-your-face about the objective that combat is disadvantageous in all cases. Killing enemies is super helpful in Conquest and is a primary win condition, but you cannot ignore the cap and thus have to move and play and make decisions on where you need to be both in the now and in the next ninety seconds.

It doesn't need contrived Tactical Benefits™. It just needs people to stop playing Dire Whales in the Mosh Pit and expecting every single game on every single map to cater to them. If you Whale up, be prepared to sit on a Conquest point and be fat.

Skirmish is a disaster and I hate it tremendously because it's "Try And Find That Goddamn Spider For Eight Solid Minutes: The Gamemode." Assault is, conventionally, played as Skirmish sans the ol' TaFTGSF8SM:tGM minigame, which by default makes it better than Skirmish but it doesn't really encourage movement. Domination is MMA Cage Match: The Game Mode, and can be alternately awesome or completely awful depending on where you're Dom-ing, what you're driving, and how the match plays out. Escort is...not good, because the enemy can simply peg the VIP and prevent combat for the most part, denying both teams a chance to have any engaging combat. Nobody knows how Incursion will fall out yet.

Nevertheless, the question remains. Why do people not want to do the thing that is the best part of MWO?

[Athom83]

Paigan, on 27 March 2017 - 09:15 AM, said:

Conquest is best played as "first kill, then cap". Aka skirmish.

You have a MUCH higher success chance if you completely ignore capping, kill the enemies fast and then outcap everything than if you split up, cap quickly and get wiped out 1 by 1 or in small groups.

Not really, lost a conquest yesterday on HPG where we killed most of the enemies but lose on cap points because we were all to damaged/slow to make it to the points. My whole team squirreled on 2 light/medium mechs, leaving me holding off 3 assaults + their backup split between the top and basement alone in my MAD-3R (yes, this actually happened. How? Idk, but I kept using the cover never letting them fully spot me so they probably thought I wasn't alone.). After they finished off the "squirrels", they ended swarming over the top and rushing the 1 assault + heavies, killing them all. They dropped down to the basement entrance where I was set up, but didn't push. I lead the charge without saying anything (and surprisingly the team followed), killing a Griffon and a Stalker with KMDD and 1 assist on a Banshee with KMDD. There were 5 of us left against 2 enemies, but the enemy had 700 points and we only held one point. If it was a skirmish, we probably would've won in the end.

Paigan, on 27 March 2017 - 09:15 AM, said:

One or MAYBE two lights capping instead of fighting can be worthwhile.
Everything else just reduces the overall win chance.

If you actually move as a team to take and hold the points while supporting each other, with the enemy team doing the same,you would find that conquest usually plays out quite different than Skirmish.

Paigan, on 27 March 2017 - 09:15 AM, said:

A properly done conquest would add tactical values when holding resource points.
Not just some almost irrlevant counter that can be caught up once all enemies are gone.

Please list a game that does a "properly done conquest" mode where you are encouraged to fight your enemy for a point instead of running away when its clear they have the advantage.

[Anjian]

Paigan, on 27 March 2017 - 09:15 AM, said:

Conquest is best played as "first kill, then cap". Aka skirmish.

You have a MUCH higher success chance if you completely ignore capping, kill the enemies fast and then outcap everything than if you split up, cap quickly and get wiped out 1 by 1 or in small groups.

One or MAYBE two lights capping instead of fighting can be worthwhile.
Everything else just reduces the overall win chance.

So conquest, too, is more or less skirmish with some negligible side effects.

A properly done conquest would add tactical values when holding resource points.
For example a artillery replenishing tower.
An airstrike replenishing tower.
A sensor sweep tower.
A radar(-net) tower.
An ecm(-net) tower.
Maybe even ammo- coolant- and repair towers.

Not just some almost irrlevant counter that can be caught up once all enemies are gone.

Those towers remind me of what we needed to do and capture in Chromehounds.

Edited by Anjian, 27 March 2017 - 10:26 AM.

[Athom83]

Anjian, on 27 March 2017 - 10:22 AM, said:

Those towers remind me of what we needed to do and capture in Chromehounds.

Love that game. The feelz whenever its mentioned. It really needs a PC/new console reboot/sequel.

[R Valentine]

Paigan, on 27 March 2017 - 09:15 AM, said:

Conquest is best played as "first kill, then cap". Aka skirmish.

You have a MUCH higher success chance if you completely ignore capping, kill the enemies fast and then outcap everything than if you split up, cap quickly and get wiped out 1 by 1 or in small groups.

One or MAYBE two lights capping instead of fighting can be worthwhile.
Everything else just reduces the overall win chance.

So conquest, too, is more or less skirmish with some negligible side effects.

A properly done conquest would add tactical values when holding resource points.
For example a artillery replenishing tower.
An airstrike replenishing tower.
A sensor sweep tower.
A radar(-net) tower.
An ecm(-net) tower.
Maybe even ammo- coolant- and repair towers.

Not just some almost irrlevant counter that can be caught up once all enemies are gone.

Adding value to the resource points still doesn't discourage killing the enemy first. It might change the focal point of the fight, but the fight will still be what ultimately decides the game. Conquest losses due to points happen in those rare games when the battle is competitive, but since most games are stomps your best odds of success are still "kill them first, cap later", and even if you do lose the game after a good battle, your damage ensures your c-bill count and PSR change is still in the positive, so again, better off with "kill them first".

Prosperity Park, on 27 March 2017 - 09:34 AM, said:

How do I change my Mech into a Tank? I would love to reduce my frontal profile.

Is there a keybind that I am missing?

Your mech already is a tank. It drives like a tank, twists like a tank, fires like a tank, and the tips even tell you to consider your mech more like a tank than a person.

[Mole]

Kiran Yagami, on 27 March 2017 - 10:53 AM, said:

Your mech already is a tank. It drives like a tank, twists like a tank, fires like a tank, and the tips even tell you to consider your mech more like a tank than a person.

[R Valentine]

Mole, on 27 March 2017 - 11:08 AM, said:

No, it was a just a really, really bad joke.

[HGAK47]

Every game mode is exactly the same. Kill the enemy mechs first to win.

Try to play conquest properly, you run around getting great caps but meanwhile your team has melted like butter to the blob of enemy mechs all pushing as one.

The other game modes including Escort are the same, focus enemy mechs to win.

Now could you imagine Conquest with a respawn or two thrown in? We might actually be able to play the objective...... or just send more mechs to their death lol.

[Mole]

Kiran Yagami, on 27 March 2017 - 11:21 AM, said:

No, it was a just a really, really bad joke.

Maybe a joke went over my head then because I still have not been able to figure out why the fact that all of MWO's game modes boiling down to a team deathmatch in any way relates to transformers.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Paigan, on 27 March 2017 - 09:27 AM, said:

I bet a well-organized kill-first-team beats a well-organized cap-first-team most of the time.

Depends on the map, the side you start on, and your strat. Now that doesn't mean you will win with caps, but unless you are a brawl team people tend to at least get the first two caps and then maybe contest theta.

Paigan, on 27 March 2017 - 09:27 AM, said:

Conquest aside: A MechLab in Java? Nice

Sadly I haven't touched it in a while because I've been busy with other things. There is still a lot of work to do.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 27 March 2017 - 01:55 PM.

[Lykaon]

Here are what I see as the leading causes to stale game play and a tendency towards a "skirmish" like focus.

Fixed spawn points: Every match we play on any given map we know where we are and we know where the enemy will be. We can even see the enemy dropships leaving their drops zones.

The fixed spawn points issue leads to predictive movement and a tendency to cover the same ground over and over again.Fixed and known spawn points reduces the importance and need for recon and this deminishes role warfare.

Fixed objective locations: Knowing where every cap point is on a conquest match also reduces the need to apply resources for recon and also deminishes the importance of mobility information warfare and role warfare.How hard is it to assault an enemy position if you know exactly where to go? Conversely how hard is it to mount a defense if you know both where the enemy begins and where they need to be? This is how assault mode plays.

Small maps or maps with largely unused or "worthless" space: As the area of a map becomes smaller the amount of guess work applied to figuring out where the enemy is going and where they are is reduced. This is another factor that leads to a stale gameplay enviorment where we feel like we do the same things over and over. If the potential variables are so narrow and we know where the enemy starts and we know where they want to go how many suprises are left? Why do we need recon? why do we want to carefully plan where we position our slower mechs (the map is so small or the course of action so predictable there is no worry about being out of position for long) Because of this speed and deployment become less relevent. And role warfare takes another hit as with these circumstances we don't have much need for recon (lights) we don't have much need to delay the enemy to position our assaults (medium roles) and assaults mechs lose their defensive capabilities to some degree because the map is so small or so predictable that the enemy has little fear of not having their own assault mechs in position to counter enemy assests.

Small overall number of maps: Relatively speaking MWo for the length of time it has been in operation doesn't have a lot of maps. So those maps with flaws in design are either seen with more frequency or not popular for voting. Two examples.

Forest Colony has a flaw in design. I see it as being an excellent example of a map with a load of under utilize "worthless" space. Nearly a third of this map is either behind deployment zones and objectives (walked through but never returned to) or open water with no reason to enter baring a lethal lapse in judgment. Forest Colony is rarely voted for.

HPG Manifold also has a flaw in design.This map is probably the one map most guilty of predictability. The players are literally gated into the center "arena" and fight either "NASCAR" or "king of the hill" but usually a little of both. HPG holds few suprises to anyone and has limited tactical options.The amount of under utilized dead map space is close to two thirds of the total map area. Yet HPG is a popular map.This map has a lot going for it but utilized space,unpredictability and promotion of role warfare are not well supported.

[Moonlight Grimoire]

Game rewards killing each other, barely rewards touching the objectives or counter playing objectives. Everything devolves into skirmish due to yeah the most effective way to play is to just murder the enemy team then flex minimal effort to finish the objective. PGI's reward system is crap, the economy is crap, PGI needs to stop and learn that if it want's objectives it needs to make asymmetrical modes (because symmetry makes objectives meaningless without meaningful rewards and buffs, no pressure means no point). Hell FP needs to change from QP with respawns to dedicated servers with tickets for respawns and much more interesting maps to make meaningful conflict. But, hey, pipe dreams.