404 replies to this topic

[I_AM_ZUUL]

MischiefSC, on 23 April 2017 - 11:27 AM, said:

Okay. Take LRMs to comp play and domimate. I'm eager to see it.

Along the way please kick the **** out of those top tier players with PPFLD too. It's easy, right?

Except you're wrong on both counts. LRMs will lose against comparable skill with PPFLD and because PPFLD has a higher skill ceiling the top tier players with PPFLD will dominate you as well. Why?

Because PPFLD has a higher skill ceiling, meaning you can get better with it than other weapon types.

PPFLD poptarting does NOT have a higher skill ceiling, what it has is a higher physiological requirement. "Competitive Players" in gaming is no different than any other competitive scene where certain people are just going to be better because of how their bodies are built, hand eye coordination & nerve speed in this case. I will never dispute that FUSION will be better at it then I could ever dream even if I practiced for hours and hours and hours a day... there are a very few of them, but your claim like it is applicable to all is not only invalid but totally absurd. I already showed screenshots of IS LRM domination over Clans in CW from the sparse scattering that I have... which included full 12 man groups with two partial units. So to say it can not happen when I have personally experienced it in CW & GP back when I did that kind of stuff what makes it a ridiculous claim.... you can go outside and say the sky is not blue, but it is no more of a valid statement.

[Ruar]

LRMs can be good in limited situations on a few select mechs. The ability to boat LRMs does not mean the mech is a good LRM thrower. The Archer and Catapult are the top end for good LRM boats. All of the rest are lighter than these two mechs, yet we consistently see people in assault mechs boating LRMs.

Ideally a 12 man group will have three scouts, three brawlers (two of them being assault class), two skirmishers, two LRM support boats, and two multi-role capable of shoring up whatever is weak.

If you know the map is going to be an open map then the one of the multi-role can be LRM and the other a sniper/skirmisher. There is never a need for more than three LRM boats on a team though, and never a need for an assault class to be an LRM boat.

However, PGI hasn't designed the game around what is tactically efficient so people play what they want, even if it is bad.

[Acehilator]

MischiefSC, on 23 April 2017 - 11:00 AM, said:

Okay. So you get a team of 12, I get a team of 12. You set up with LRMs, boated or mixed or whatever, and we'll set up direct fire. We will see who wins.

Oh, wait! That's already been done thousands of time in comp play and FW! That's why the top competitive teams and top FW teams don't bring LRMs! Because when skill level gets much over mediocre on average on both teams then direct fire wins!

Get a team, dominate in FW against good teams or get into comp play and rock that div A. Show us all how it's done! Saying LRMs work in solo pug queue is like saying you can still keep a 0.7 w/l and afk every match. What works and what doesn't is tested in practice between teams of comparable skill. That's already been done.

WTF? A third time with the group play BS? Just because a weapon is usable in one game mode and not usable in another doesn't matter one bit. It just means that one game mode has one more usable weapon system than the other.

And you should realize that neither group queue (due to how the MM works) nor some elitist league game mode (that is not even 12 vs 12) are the pinnacle of skill in this game. The most difficult thing to do in this game is playing solo queue and getting good results. Also, if your "arguments" you presented in this thread would be correct, than it would be impossible to achieve good results while using LRM boats. But it is not... strange.

[I_AM_ZUUL]

MischiefSC, on 23 April 2017 - 01:00 PM, said:

I can't blame anyone for being bad in a PHX. If Jesus Christ returned to earth, fired up MWO and dropped in a PHX he's be happy with 200 damage, a w/l of 1.0 and a 1.1 KDR.

Then, having dropped in pug queue, he'd say "**** all you cowardly snipers, campers and LRM boats. Not going to Rapture anyone now. Have fun with the Tribulation, ********."

Then ragequit.

PHOENIX HAWK PXH-1 14 9 5 1.80 9 9 1.00 1,986 23,082 01:22:57
PHOENIX HAWK PXH-1B 38 21 17 1.24 22 23 0.96 8,885 58,394 04:15:21
PHOENIX HAWK PXH-2 33 18 15 1.20 33 23 1.43 8,901 61,232 03:32:43

I actually spent GXP to bail out of having to finish playing one of them it was so bad... man, even Vindis were not that bad.

VINDICATOR VND-1AA 47 26 20 1.30 41 31 1.32 12,759 59,697 05:19:17
VINDICATOR VND-1R 43 22 20 1.10 32 25 1.28 14,112 58,876 05:02:45
VINDICATOR VND-1X 56 27 27 1.00 51 36 1.42 14,735 65,885 06:01:15

Edited by I_AM_ZUUL, 23 April 2017 - 01:20 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

Acehilator, on 23 April 2017 - 01:11 PM, said:

The most difficult thing to do in this game is playing solo queue and getting good results.

Er, no. No it's not. As long as your 'Mech is competent and at least acknowledging the meta, that's easy.

[Ten Roos]

Its not the LRM Boats that I hate, I play them myself when I want to switch off and relax. Its the LRM Boat players that constantly yell out "Please Keeps Locks" ... "Why cant you guys keep locks" etc that I hate. Yeah its like LRM Boat players think we are purposely not trying to target the opposition, or expect us to stand in the open and maintain a lock while getting blasted by the opposition.

Ohh and the LRM Boat players that feel they have to be stationary to fire and stay miles at the rear and don't keep up with the blob.

[MischiefSC]

Acehilator, on 23 April 2017 - 01:11 PM, said:

WTF? A third time with the group play BS? Just because a weapon is usable in one game mode and not usable in another doesn't matter one bit. It just means that one game mode has one more usable weapon system than the other.

And you should realize that neither group queue (due to how the MM works) nor some elitist league game mode (that is not even 12 vs 12) are the pinnacle of skill in this game. The most difficult thing to do in this game is playing solo queue and getting good results. Also, if your "arguments" you presented in this thread would be correct, than it would be impossible to achieve good results while using LRM boats. But it is not... strange.

Are you really serious?

By that same logic winning a pick up touch football game in the park regularly is more difficult than winning the Super Bowl 4 years in a row.

As has been said, repeatedly, farming potatoes in QP can be done in a Vindicator with flamers and Mgs. I had a 80p damage match in a king crab with 6 MGs, 2 Lpls and 2 SRM6A. It's a troll build and it's a waste of 100 tons but in QP you can wreck face with it. Because QP is not about what works best but clubbing the seals.

A club works great on baby seals. If you're in a pit full of tigers you probably want a gun.

Comp matters because it has the smallest variance in player skill - it highlights the value of the value of good weapons/builds because the variance in player skill is smaller. There are no potatoes to farm. Same thing with top of the leaderboard in FW, especially as represented in unit W/L. If you're consistently winning then you're consistently beating good teams, not just puggles.

I've played thousands of matches in LRMs. Because the meta can change and you want to stay practiced with everything from pinball to bumper cars to throwing potatoes. I know how they work, I've got an LRM hunchie and Catapult and Awesome lurking my my bays. Before the LRM 5 need I would play a 3xlrm5a, 1x uac10, 2xcerml TBR for giggles still. However I'd never take them to a serious fight because they're inferior to direct fire loadouts.

LRMs work against bads. Go beat good players with them consistently, then talk.

[Kin3ticX]

LRMs are nothing more than a foo strategy

Its something anyone can spam and win sometimes but eventually you either learn something new or hit a wall.

[Acehilator]

MischiefSC, on 23 April 2017 - 04:36 PM, said:

Are you really serious?

By that same logic winning a pick up touch football game in the park regularly is more difficult than winning the Super Bowl 4 years in a row.

As has been said, repeatedly, farming potatoes in QP can be done in a Vindicator with flamers and Mgs. I had a 80p damage match in a king crab with 6 MGs, 2 Lpls and 2 SRM6A. It's a troll build and it's a waste of 100 tons but in QP you can wreck face with it. Because QP is not about what works best but clubbing the seals.

A club works great on baby seals. If you're in a pit full of tigers you probably want a gun.

Comp matters because it has the smallest variance in player skill - it highlights the value of the value of good weapons/builds because the variance in player skill is smaller. There are no potatoes to farm. Same thing with top of the leaderboard in FW, especially as represented in unit W/L. If you're consistently winning then you're consistently beating good teams, not just puggles.

I've played thousands of matches in LRMs. Because the meta can change and you want to stay practiced with everything from pinball to bumper cars to throwing potatoes. I know how they work, I've got an LRM hunchie and Catapult and Awesome lurking my my bays. Before the LRM 5 need I would play a 3xlrm5a, 1x uac10, 2xcerml TBR for giggles still. However I'd never take them to a serious fight because they're inferior to direct fire loadouts.

LRMs work against bads. Go beat good players with them consistently, then talk.

Aaaand again with the useless RL analogy.

Sure there are no potatoes to farm in comp play... but your teammates are no potatoes either. And it is not some random mayhem, you have your tactics and at least one or two counters to the enemies' tactics and their counters.

FW leaderboards are laughable, most of the meta chasing hardcore guilds are always playing on the same side anyways, and even if they weren't, way too many PUG and casual guild groups to get some kind of accurate measurement. Still the same problem as groups queue, possibly even worse.

If you played "thousands of matches" with LRMs, you should be beating people while being blindfolded by now. I only played around 200 LRM mech games in recent times (most of them in T2), and the stats are only going up. It was no real difference going from T3 to T2, I don't expect the change from T2 to T1 to be any different.

Yeonne Greene, on 23 April 2017 - 01:22 PM, said:

Er, no. No it's not. As long as your 'Mech is competent and at least acknowledging the meta, that's easy.

Agree to disagree then. Not being able to "hard carry" in MWO because of the game mechanics makes it more difficult here than in WoT, in my experience. For me personally, LRM boats are as close to a "soft carry" as I have found so far.

[Ruar]

Acehilator, on 24 April 2017 - 09:20 AM, said:

Aaaand again with the useless RL analogy.

Sure there are no potatoes to farm in comp play... but your teammates are no potatoes either. And it is not some random mayhem, you have your tactics and at least one or two counters to the enemies' tactics and their counters.

FW leaderboards are laughable, most of the meta chasing hardcore guilds are always playing on the same side anyways, and even if they weren't, way too many PUG and casual guild groups to get some kind of accurate measurement. Still the same problem as groups queue, possibly even worse.

If you played "thousands of matches" with LRMs, you should be beating people while being blindfolded by now. I only played around 200 LRM mech games in recent times (most of them in T2), and the stats are only going up. It was no real difference going from T3 to T2, I don't expect the change from T2 to T1 to be any different.




Agree to disagree then. Not being able to "hard carry" in MWO because of the game mechanics makes it more difficult here than in WoT, in my experience. For me personally, LRM boats are as close to a "soft carry" as I have found so far.

The biggest issue with LRMs is their group contribution is difficult to judge even if the individual returns are high. Did the LRM mech share it's armor? Did the LRM mech attract attention and divert the enemy team which created mismatches in other areas of the map? Did the LRM mech apply damage to key components or was the damage spread?

The answer to these questions most of the time is no. The LRM mechs don't share armor, they don't help create mismatches, and they don't apply damage critically. There will be a few matches that go great for the LRM boats. Like the last match I played where I missed seeing a UAV on polar and got annihilated in about 20 secs in my Roughneck. GG LRM boats.

However, it takes a perfect storm of events to happen to make LRM mechs rewarding to the team. I can take a brawling or sniping mech and make my own luck for the most part.

Which is why people don't like LRM boats in general and really don't like them on mechs with enough weight to defend against a push or help make a push happen. People don't like to see key mechs sitting in the back cranking up their individual score while ignoring the team overall. A 12-10 win feels unsatisfying if you are one of the 10 who died and you know... absolutely know... that if the LRM mech had only been up front then more people on your team would still be alive at the end of the match.

So that's why people don't like LRM boats and it's going to continue to be this way until PGI changes LRM mechanics to make them require the pilots to be group friendly and less sitting the back providing "support".

[Dimento Graven]

Mole, on 06 April 2017 - 10:05 AM, said:

I've had people call my Timberwolf an LRM boat about three times that I can remember, my Mauler an LRM boat four times, and my Kodiak an LRM boat two times. This usually happens when the rest of the team is mostly dead and I'm still standing and someone sees LRMs in my loadout through spectating and just decides to start blaming the stupid LRM boat that isn't actually a boat for the loss. Nevermind that I have a 50+ direct fire alpha strike that I'm stomping around in, I DARED to bring an LRM launcher and that cost us the game!

Actually what brings the hate is when we observe that assault LRM'er still way back, tossing LRMs with completely, or damn near so, armor making no move to get with the rest of the remaining team and provide actual front line support and share some armor.

If you're at least with the team, sharing armor, and LRM'ing most reasonable people aren't going to have a problem with you (unless your constantly bitching about locks...).

[DANKnuggz]

Ok so education time....

Racism is when you discriminate against someone for WHO THEY ARE racially, something they have NO control over and CANNOT change even if they wanted to...

LRMs are a CHOICE a player makes and they have FULL CONTROL over weather or not they bring them into a match....

Absolutely NOTHING like racism...

This being said... NOBODY has the right to harass other players based purely on their choice of weapons in a game they are playing. It is THEIR choice how they wish to play THEIR game and if you don't like it that's just too bad for you isn't it... You have ABSOLUTELY NO control over what other players bring to the game but you can attempt to counsel them if you wish to do so CONSTRUCTIVELY. Insulting players who bring LRMs is just plain STUPID since it won't stop them from doing what they WANT with THEIR game and all it does is make YOU look like a winey angry A$$...

I don't run that many LRM boats simply because teams who have their S*** together can counter the vast majority of your weapon loadout with EASE... Most LRM lovers don't seem to realize that when they're doing well its usually because the opposite team is unorganized pugs. I do not hate LRMers ( I have a few boats myself ) but I do tend to view them as lower skill players who don't understand what it takes to be better... Blind adherence to a favored tactic doesn't make you right... Just because you can stomp pugs with them doesn't make them "good"....

[Ruar]

DANKnuggz, on 24 April 2017 - 10:21 AM, said:

Ok so education time....

Racism is when you discriminate against someone for WHO THEY ARE racially, something they have NO control over and CANNOT change even if they wanted to...

LRMs are a CHOICE a player makes and they have FULL CONTROL over weather or not they bring them into a match....

Absolutely NOTHING like racism...

This being said... NOBODY has the right to harass other players based purely on their choice of weapons in a game they are playing. It is THEIR choice how they wish to play THEIR game and if you don't like it that's just too bad for you isn't it... You have ABSOLUTELY NO control over what other players bring to the game but you can attempt to counsel them if you wish to do so CONSTRUCTIVELY. Insulting players who bring LRMs is just plain STUPID since it won't stop them from doing what they WANT with THEIR game and all it does is make YOU look like a winey angry A$$...

I don't run that many LRM boats simply because teams who have their S*** together can counter the vast majority of your weapon loadout with EASE... Most LRM lovers don't seem to realize that when they're doing well its usually because the opposite team is unorganized pugs. I do not hate LRMers ( I have a few boats myself ) but I do tend to view them as lower skill players who don't understand what it takes to be better... Blind adherence to a favored tactic doesn't make you right... Just because you can stomp pugs with them doesn't make them "good"....

Did you just say no one has the right to harass other players based on choice and then harass people who choose to point out the badness of the majority of pure LRM builds?

[MischiefSC]

Acehilator, on 24 April 2017 - 09:20 AM, said:

Aaaand again with the useless RL analogy.

Sure there are no potatoes to farm in comp play... but your teammates are no potatoes either. And it is not some random mayhem, you have your tactics and at least one or two counters to the enemies' tactics and their counters.

FW leaderboards are laughable, most of the meta chasing hardcore guilds are always playing on the same side anyways, and even if they weren't, way too many PUG and casual guild groups to get some kind of accurate measurement. Still the same problem as groups queue, possibly even worse.

If you played "thousands of matches" with LRMs, you should be beating people while being blindfolded by now. I only played around 200 LRM mech games in recent times (most of them in T2), and the stats are only going up. It was no real difference going from T3 to T2, I don't expect the change from T2 to T1 to be any different.

The leaderboards in MWO are hugely inaccurate, however the FW ones have never been reset and as such law of large numbers has brought them pretty far along. Especially when you start looking at W/L; you inevitably play other good teams and as such how often you play other good teams and still win is reflected in the relative value of W/L. Not so much the total - the spud bowl ensures that if you're playing in a group and even half trying you're over 1.0. However relative to each other it's pretty accurate.

Also, only one team in the top half of the front page plays meta. That's part of what I like about FW - the meta isn't very meta there. LRMs are still bad but that's because the weapon system is bad. For example though some Emp guys dropped with us the other day. A lot of fun by the way; they were fun, funny, good guys. If you didn't know better you'd think they were just some fun guys playing a game of big stompy robbits and talking on TS. However we had to wait a while while they built dropdecks because pretty much nothing they had ready was going to fit into how KCom plays.

There's some teams that run mostly LPL BLRs and LPL/ML Whammy builds but that's still not the rule.

Most of my matches anymore are FW. I've played LRMs to varying amounts in QP for 5 years or so, so yeah. Thousands of matches. I still do play LRMs sometimes, again, in QP for giggles.

I'd love to see LRMs get made viable. Currently though, against a decent team, they're not. That's the crux of the conversation. Their value declines based on the skill of who you're playing. Direct fire doesn't. That's the beginning and the end of the discussion. The real argument here is keeping newer people from getting lied to by people saying 'LRMs have the highest skill cap' and 'they work fine if you use them right'. That's only true if 'use them right' means 'use them against bad players'.

[MischiefSC]

Ruar, on 24 April 2017 - 10:01 AM, said:

The biggest issue with LRMs is their group contribution is difficult to judge even if the individual returns are high. Did the LRM mech share it's armor? Did the LRM mech attract attention and divert the enemy team which created mismatches in other areas of the map? Did the LRM mech apply damage to key components or was the damage spread?

The answer to these questions most of the time is no. The LRM mechs don't share armor, they don't help create mismatches, and they don't apply damage critically. There will be a few matches that go great for the LRM boats. Like the last match I played where I missed seeing a UAV on polar and got annihilated in about 20 secs in my Roughneck. GG LRM boats.

However, it takes a perfect storm of events to happen to make LRM mechs rewarding to the team. I can take a brawling or sniping mech and make my own luck for the most part.

Which is why people don't like LRM boats in general and really don't like them on mechs with enough weight to defend against a push or help make a push happen. People don't like to see key mechs sitting in the back cranking up their individual score while ignoring the team overall. A 12-10 win feels unsatisfying if you are one of the 10 who died and you know... absolutely know... that if the LRM mech had only been up front then more people on your team would still be alive at the end of the match.

So that's why people don't like LRM boats and it's going to continue to be this way until PGI changes LRM mechanics to make them require the pilots to be group friendly and less sitting the back providing "support".

The other day in FW we were in a KCom (and friends) 12man. Skirmish on Polar, we were on the West dropzone (with the long approach to the mountain). We brought brawl to mid range, because KCom. The other team was a 12man team that wasn't bad at all.

We hustled towards the central hill, objective being to get height, suppress the enemy, move to the hill overlooking their north dropzone and force them to push us to keep us from farming it out.

However as we crossed that big flat open area one of us got NARCed and the rain started. They took an LRM focused drop deck and had a couple of scouts with NARC and TAG and they caught us out in the open. It was, without question, the best possible situation for them and the worst possible situation for us involving LRMs vs direct fire. Result?

Guys who were NARCed just stuck with the team. 12 v 2 we focus-fired down both scouts the second they popped their heads up again and ignored the LRMs. Two of us got LRMed down however the remaining 10 go to cover on the side of the hill, then pushed. They had some guys in Maulers and who had ERLLs + LRMs on their Stalkers. However the instant any of them poked up to get LOS to shoot they got focused by ~10 people to their CT and died. We took some heavy fire but because we were always all sharing armor and focusing the same location on the same target we ended the first wave 14 - 12.

However by the 2nd wave we came ready, took a cover-focused approach, brought ECM mechs scatterd the last 2 waves and a scout to see their NARC/TAG equipped scouts and we destroyed them the instant they tried to get into position to target us. Most of us were still on our 2nd or 3rd mech when the match ended like 22-48.

Because in the best possible scenario, every conceivable thing favoring LRMs catching a direct fire team with their pants down in the open, is having 1 decent wave. After that even though they largely had mixed LRM + direct fire we were doing all our damage more consistently, more accurately and against fewer targets because they were relying on teammates locks instead of always being exposed when their teammates were. Also our damage was all more focused; even if both sides were firing approximately the same amount our damage went to 1 or 2 locations and theirs spread and was easy to avoid with even half cover nearby.

That's the long and the short of it. If they'd brought all direct fire and used the same level of coordination that would have been a hard fight. As it was we struggled on wave 1 because we were not paying attention but then utterly dominated 2-4. Because direct fire > LRMs.

[Dimento Graven]

MischiefSC, on 24 April 2017 - 01:11 PM, said:

...

I'd love to see LRMs get made viable. Currently though, against a decent team, they're not. That's the crux of the conversation. Their value declines based on the skill of who you're playing. Direct fire doesn't. That's the beginning and the end of the discussion. The real argument here is keeping newer people from getting lied to by people saying 'LRMs have the highest skill cap' and 'they work fine if you use them right'. That's only true if 'use them right' means 'use them against bad players'.

The problem with making LRM's 'viable' is scaling.

When you make them 'ok' or 'good' for one 'mech, pretty soon you start seeing them on 4, 5, upwards of 10 'mechs per side and you get another 'dawn of LRMageddon'.

Keep in mind, had any of the previous LRMageddons had only 2 or 3 'mechs maximum packing LRMs, they'd probably have not even been a thing.

Even now, a coordinated team using LRMs can be abso-friggin-lutely deadly with them if there's limited ability to close in, because let's face it, being pecked to death by chickens still results in death.

[Scout Derek]

LRMs are just not fun. You can get more out of a AC/2 even if you use one.

Direct Fire is fun. Indirect isn't. That's as simple as it gets in a game like this. LRM hatred is resulting in people pressing their ideas that others cannot or wish to accept.

Either way, point still stands, LRMs are effective and useful when being used in coordination. You cannot do well with them on your own, that is, in maps with close corners such as Mining Collective.


Other than that they are fun for trolling. Took myself a Kodiak Spirit Bear on polar incursion with 4 LRM 15 and a LB 20, had someone power up radar, someone pop a UAV, instant access to all targets with LRMs.

Oh, and there was lots of salt. I had 1200+ LRM rounds. 1 Kill, 800 DMG.

[Ted Wayz]

What does comp play have to do in a game without a comp scene? No one cares what your meta build is because no one is watching except your grandma when you send her a youtube link. And even she is wondering "why just why?"

I am just troubled by all this talk about loadout being important to anyone other than those who takes this game too seriously.

All it does is distract everyone from "why aren't all mechs viable"? Short answer, the focus on damage in this game.

Play the builds that make this game fun. Because having fun is what keeps this game "fun"ded. Not some non-existent comp scene.

[Ruar]

Ted Wayz, on 24 April 2017 - 03:10 PM, said:

What does comp play have to do in a game without a comp scene? No one cares what your meta build is because no one is watching except your grandma when you send her a youtube link. And even she is wondering "why just why?"

I am just troubled by all this talk about loadout being important to anyone other than those who takes this game too seriously.

All it does is distract everyone from "why aren't all mechs viable"? Short answer, the focus on damage in this game.

Play the builds that make this game fun. Because having fun is what keeps this game "fun"ded. Not some non-existent comp scene.

Fun to me is playing well, having a competent team, and the battle being competitive. Fun for someone else might be damage numbers and pretty fireworks shooting into the air.

Don't sit there and say have fun and then try to tell people what fun is supposed to look like.

Edited by Ruar, 24 April 2017 - 03:33 PM.

[Ted Wayz]

Ruar, on 24 April 2017 - 03:32 PM, said:

Fun to me is playing well, having a competent team, and the battle being competitive. Fun for someone else might be damage numbers and pretty fireworks shooting into the air.

Don't sit there and say have fun and then try to tell people what fun is supposed to look like.

Sorry Roar, but me telling people to have fun means enjoy playing the game the way you like. You trying to denigrate that sentiment because of the source is just....

If you have fun your way then prepared to be disappointed when it doesn't happen. Notice I don't judge the way people play and therefore no one can let me down. You relying people to play in a certain construct that meets your definition of being "competent" makes me wonder if the people who are not competent on your team are ever you.