Note also that you don't have to touch a single scrap of Civil War tech, or even run a particularly meta 'mech to do well. You don't even really have to do much of anything, sometimes.
That came from this. It's a moderately meta build on the wrong 'mech for it (STK-M, ERLLas vomit), and all I did was plop down near O-GEN 2 and play turret mode for 17 minutes, bodyblocking the gen and continually calling for people to just stay and PTFO instead of poking or chasing kills. Granted, if you're on offense on siege you're not going to get a good score (since you pretty much are forced to lead objective rushes if you call them), but you can win just as trivially in pug vs. pug.
The impact of Civil War tech is that IS pugs are now slightly closer in mechanical effectiveness to clam pugs. Combined with the increased prevalence of pug vs. pug combat (partially because of the event, because there's less incentive for a bunch of units to stack clam side, and because the lower number of potential contested planets makes for healthier MM) and it becomes almost trivial to win/do well, as long as someone convinces your team to PTFO.
If there's any weight to the "clan pugs do better because they have more experienced players since the initial cost turns off newbies", it's down to them having more people willing to dropcall pug matches. In my experience, if someone with a mic will dropcall sensibly (that is, constantly and calmly repeat variations of basic organizational orders that amount to "PTFO, don't peek-a-boo with clanners"), you'll usually have at least 3-4 other people who'll agree in comms/chat, and that's usually enough to sway people who would otherwise wander around doing their own thing.
Folks are predisposed to follow the herd in MWO, it's why nascaring is so common even without communication. The key to pugging in FP is to tilt that herd movement in a productive direction (i.e. PTFOing). Ain't hard, as long as you're not scared of talking to 11 other dudes all trying to accomplish the same goal as you. I picked that match out as an example for another reason as well: 11/12 players on the IS side got their 150+ MS goal for the event from that. 7/12 of the clanners did. Don't just be selfish, be sensibly selfish and realize that the most effective way to consistently boost your personal outcome is to work with the team to win, even if it's on a mindnumbingly simple plan, or even a bad one.
Not kidding, I ad-hoc dropcalled four siege attack matches for this event so far. Every one, I didn't say anything early on. We got badly stomped in the first push. I talked people into just doing pure gen rushes, at least 5-6 listened, and we won in the next push or two. Only one other one in that mold ended in a loss (IIRC). That's literally all it takes. If you don't like losing pug matches and nobody else is dropcalling, try it yourself. Even if you **** up it's still better than everyone doing their own thing.
Edited by Alexander of Macedon, 27 July 2017 - 03:53 AM.
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meteorol, on 26 July 2017 - 12:45 AM, said:
But wait, doing so would make you a "tryhard", and being a tryhard is bad, it's no fun. Interestingly, I regularly see the world "tryhard" being used in a derogatory meaning on these here forums, and it usually comes from IS folk. Apparently, trying hard to become better at something is frowned upon in the Inner Sphere...
