79 replies to this topic

[Kaethir]

latinisator, on 26 June 2017 - 08:22 AM, said:

What do you expect with the cadet bonus? A Dire Wolf fully pimped?

I was actually able to afford a fully equipped (at the time, minus modules) DWF with my cadet bonus...

[r4plez]

Cadoazreal, on 26 June 2017 - 05:33 AM, said:

Thankyou for a good laugh. You are delusional. Most of the "whales" are 40+ who use to play this game as model minature figurines in the 80's and have succesdful careers. Someone needs to take a good long look at their self in a mirror and stop lashing out in anger to try to blind themselves to their own fear and pain. Best of luck to you.

Most of them dont play for more than a few hours a week and dont have the fastest reaction times/reflexes but 80% of skill is time spent developing muscle memory, 9% is how good you pc is. 9% is your internet connection and 2% is individual talent.

Btw i love the money stacks picture.

[latinisator]

Kaethir, on 26 June 2017 - 10:04 AM, said:

I was actually able to afford a fully equipped (at the time, minus modules) DWF with my cadet bonus...

Good for you. Was during a sale I suppose, for the Dire is sitting at a nice 17 million CBills. Or you have been an exceptionally good padawan and earned more CBills than the "normal" newbie.

[Aim64C]

latinisator, on 26 June 2017 - 10:56 AM, said:

Good for you. Was during a sale I suppose, for the Dire is sitting at a nice 17 million CBills. Or you have been an exceptionally good padawan and earned more CBills than the "normal" newbie.

If you do the tutorial missions at the beginning, you get quite a C-bill drop.

Not sure if he's talking about before those were available, or not.

[Kaethir]

latinisator, on 26 June 2017 - 10:56 AM, said:

Good for you. Was during a sale I suppose, for the Dire is sitting at a nice 17 million CBills. Or you have been an exceptionally good padawan and earned more CBills than the "normal" newbie.

Might have been during a sale. was over 6 months ago, and I have kids, so I don't remember details.

[vandalhooch]

Medicine Man, on 25 June 2017 - 09:49 PM, said:

This game is defintely pay to win. Try pugging with a trial mech and coming up through the ranks without even being able to use skills. I dare you.

Stop using terms that you don't understand. Pay to win means that spending real money gives you an advantage over others who don't. This game doesn't have that in any form.

New players get enough from cadet bonuses to buy their own mech nearly from the very start. Your "challenge" to others is not representative of the new player experience at all.

[Gwahlur]

latinisator, on 26 June 2017 - 10:56 AM, said:

Good for you. Was during a sale I suppose, for the Dire is sitting at a nice 17 million CBills. Or you have been an exceptionally good padawan and earned more CBills than the "normal" newbie.

I had around 25 mill cbills after my 25 cadet matches (I think)

Edited by Gwahlur, 26 June 2017 - 11:28 AM.

[MechaBattler]

My brother's been playing for a few months now. And we don't play together in group queue unless it's for an event. It's not always bad. But it often is. Not just because of pre-made groups. But because people don't drop with their max tonnage. Sometimes you get a really light team. That's why when we do drop in group play, we drop close to max tonnage. Banshee and Battlemaster Bros.

[mogs01gt]

Ruben Faust, on 25 June 2017 - 03:02 PM, said:

As most people on this forum know, it is always potato season. I was wondering why I keep seeing people shoot LRMs at past max range, so I tested it.

On a brand new account, I planned on playing as few games as possible before I started hitting names I recognize as being in top tier play, guys from top units and the like. Then on the first drop it happened... Even though I was in a brand spanking new account, I ended up in a game with Afr0Thund3r, whom I believe is a T1 player.

Had a blast of a game with a trial mech, but it showed me that this is likely going to kill the game.

The game shouldn't put EMP vs new players, though that is a bit of an exaggeration.

The game is loosing more than new players. I've been waiting for some significant changes before I starting played. Game is the same game play every match.

[latinisator]

mogs01gt, on 26 June 2017 - 11:46 AM, said:

Game is the same game play every match.

Which is a pilot problem, not a fault by PGI. Just saying.

vandalhooch, on 26 June 2017 - 11:15 AM, said:

This game doesn't have that in any form.

To keep it honest, the Kitfox Purifier is at least "pay to be better". Extra high energy hardpoints anybody?

[Noey Bunny]

So, just throwing this out there.. but to be frank, getting stomped should be expected for a new player when they go into a PvP game, and this game has a pretty solid system for solo queue +/-2 of your PSR. if you're PSR5, then you'll play with PSR3's at the highest.

That being said, ANY player who joins ANY game not expecting to get trashed for their first 20~ hours of game time is expecting to get handled with kid gloves, and that's simply not how PvP environments go. This game is very rewarding to new players, giving them enough C-bills after their first 20 matches or so to buy literally any mech they want. (my friend started recently and has 21million including c-bills from the events) The trial mechs are actually very well set up since they got reworked, and are surprisingly competitive.

So, I don't think the reason this isn't new player friendly, is because Either they're going up against top tier players, OR because the trial mechs are bad. it's because this game is very alien in practice by comparison to almost any other game in the 'arena shooter' genre. or w/e you wanna call this. aim speed locked to torso twist speed makes the game feel slow and sluggish; and there are tons of concepts that exist here that don't exist elsewhere, and the learning curve is fairly steep.

[DANKnuggz]

I'm not sure the tier MM system is even working for single player drops.... I'm T2 and I seem to get dropped with T4 and T5 players all the time. I'm guessing this may be a low pop problem where the server just needs to put a game together but doesn't have all the right pieces so it just grabs 24 players and starts a match.

The problem with a full T4/T5 match is that its potato vs potato and there is only so much you can learn from a potato when you're a potato yourself. Yes dropping against better players will mean some *** kickin's but it will also FORCE you to get better and adapt or die. Only when challenged do we gain in skill.

[Aim64C]

DANKnuggz, on 26 June 2017 - 12:46 PM, said:

I'm not sure the tier MM system is even working for single player drops.... I'm T2 and I seem to get dropped with T4 and T5 players all the time. I'm guessing this may be a low pop problem where the server just needs to put a game together but doesn't have all the right pieces so it just grabs 24 players and starts a match.

The problem with a full T4/T5 match is that its potato vs potato and there is only so much you can learn from a potato when you're a potato yourself. Yes dropping against better players will mean some *** kickin's but it will also FORCE you to get better and adapt or die. Only when challenged do we gain in skill.

The 'problem' is the cost of learning. Single-elimination means that you're made to sit out of the fight. You can't return to 'try again' - to see what works better or worse.

I continually reference this game... :



The reason is simple - death is an accepted part of the gameplay. It has consequence, as you lose your special character/equipment/vehicle that you had to earn the credits for through participating in the game... but it's not the end of the game, and it's not of particular importance to the team's win/loss odds. You can die ... a lot ... rushes and pushes can fail ... a lot ... and the game still keep going. You re-group and try something else. While PUGs vs clans can quickly get nasty in such a game, individual player competence isn't as great of a factor. You can have a 500:1 K/D ratio (everyone on your team can), and you can still lose to a team that is able to complete the objective over preserving their K/D ratio.

The entire tiered system is essentially a form of league play for e-sports. So is single-elimination. It's a tournament style setup that you would expect to see in Solaris - a form of sport. MWO is designed with aspirations of being an E-sport over being an engaging and enjoyable multiplayer game (from which a tournament mode would be made). Since no one wants to see blow-out matches, the tiered system allows for players to effectively work through 'house party' (T5) up to 'Nationals' (T1) without having the geographic groupings we see for things like MTG tournaments.

For me, MWO is a sort of virtual collectors chest. I have stompy robots that I can take out and pretend to blow things up with. Apparently, I'm ascending toward Tier 1 while derping about... so... I guess that means I don't suck? I mean... I noticed a bit of a change of how people played between the T3 queue and the T2 queue ... but ... I now notice worse overall gunnery discipline. People in T2 shower LRMs beyond max range to great hilarity. I will just stand out in the open on Frozen City and watch the fireworks a few hundred meters from my cockpit as the missiles self-destruct. The laser fire is usually negligible at that range, and the ACs hit more of the ground than me. I figure it's best to let them spend half their ammo to get 50 points of damage than it is to hide behind cover and let them keep it to do 300 points of damage during the push.

And I've actually managed to score some hits on stationary mechs with LRMs in T2. Assaults just gawking at nothing until it starts hailing missiles on their head. I was flabbergasted.

Blowout matches are much more common, it seems, in T2. I can't tell if this is because players are just, on the whole, more lethal and a team caught out of position will quickly lose a numerical advantage that gets pushed more reliably than in T3 - or if the quality of player has somehow gone down. It seems to be very related to what time I'm playing - the evening hours here in the Midwest tend to see more blowout matches (where the match maker graces me with being on the ********* team) while the matches later in the evening and night tend to go more evenly.

[Elkfire]

Doesn't it all come down to the fact that the playerbase isn't extensive enough for the tiers to actually separate people and still have enough players per 'bracket'?

[Aim64C]

Elkfire, on 26 June 2017 - 03:10 PM, said:

Doesn't it all come down to the fact that the playerbase isn't extensive enough for the tiers to actually separate people and still have enough players per 'bracket'?

Without player population data, it's really hard to tell. I would estimate that, within the algo's pooling bracket, I tend to drop with the same 70-80 ish people for the given time increment. It's hard to guess the exact size of the pool - but I'll notice two or three repeat names in a fair number of matches throughout a few plays. So, I would guess there are several other server populations at that time.

It could be much larger and I just notice the people who all hit the launch button right after the match ends. But I don't get a sense that it's more than, perhaps, 300 people during its peak demand.

How that factors out with faction play and, now, competitive play is hard to say. I am just talking the PUG queue.

[mogs01gt]

latinisator, on 26 June 2017 - 11:55 AM, said:

Which is a pilot problem, not a fault by PGI. Just saying.

umm not, that is bs. Its a lack of game mode problem. Forcing killing as a win mechanic is a complete failure of an FPS. CoD(older versions anyways) did conquest correctly. If went for kills without caps, you lost.

[Prototelis]

latinisator, on 26 June 2017 - 11:55 AM, said:

To keep it honest, the Kitfox Purifier is at least "pay to be better". Extra high energy hardpoints anybody?

Agreed.

HMN-PA could be put on that list too, with 8of8 quirks and skills you get a 40% turn rate bonus, if you add HMN-P arms you get 8 missile hardpoints.

[oldradagast]

Elkfire, on 26 June 2017 - 03:10 PM, said:

Doesn't it all come down to the fact that the playerbase isn't extensive enough for the tiers to actually separate people and still have enough players per 'bracket'?

And that's the sad part of it all, really.

Battletech has a huge amount of lore and plenty of stories to tell. With updated artwork, as we see in this game, the robots look amazing, and then toss the story on top, and you have IP that *could* become something like "Game of Thrones in Space - with Giant Robots!" The franchise has so much to it that normally draws people of all types in: combat, storytelling, giant robots, political intrigue, etc.

But, so many things hold it back: a horrible web of licensing issues, mediocre developers just looking for a buck, other developers that just game up, and so on. So many franchises out there are blown up to more than they really are, but Battletech is the opposite of that - it is a franchise with so much unrealized potential. And that's just sad, really.

As I stomp around in my admittedly mediocre Awesome or deliver AC20 rounds in my old, worn Hunchback, I'm left to think about these things. How a guy like me who didn't grow up with Battletech ends up gaining enough sense of the Lore through a "Lore free" game like this to have favorite mechs and actually care about the IP... but I'm also left to wonder how much more it could become if the right people with the right resources were given a chance.

Edited by oldradagast, 26 June 2017 - 04:08 PM.

[50 50]

oldradagast, on 26 June 2017 - 04:07 PM, said:

....something like "Game of Thrones in Space - with Giant Robots!"

Now there is a show I'd watch.

[chucklesMuch]

Alistair Winter, on 25 June 2017 - 04:11 PM, said:

MWO may not be kind to new solo players, but it's absolutely crushing for new players who try to join a friend and play in the group queue. 2-player groups with inexperienced players are nothing but shark bait and cannon fodder in this game.

This is one of the big contributers to none of my normal/prior/usual gaming budies playing this game... 4 or 5 of us were interested... and grouped up and played for a while... you can imagine how much carry was needed of 4 or 5 new players in group play... most lost interest (and others in our group, based on negative feedback didn't bother trying)... I moved to SQ... and stayed for while.