68 replies to this topic

[A Really Old Clan Dude]

I consider myself average. I contribute and do most of the right things but I still have bad habits.

The main thing is positioning. If you can get this right and move/shoot as part of the group you usually do ok.

For me I cut my teeth on two main mechs, the timber wolf and the nova prime. Each require a totally different game play style but if im in the right place at the right time I can get some very high damage scores. I stayed away from the assault class for a long time because if you fail to carry your weight in a match your team will usually lose.

[Kyrie]

I found that I am at my worst as the mech-speed approaches 48 kph, and when the mech is faster than 120 kph.

When I am too slow, I manage to get myself in a very bad position on the map too easily, and this is an unrecoverable error.
When I am too fast, I take too many risks and isolate myself from the team.

Between 80-100 kph I manage to keep myself close enough to the herd to avoid the usual focus-fire death of incompetence.

[DAYLEET]

Stf Sgt Marblez, on 01 August 2017 - 11:19 AM, said:

I started off cutting my teeth on this game last year (august), my first mech ever straight out of my cadet bonus matches was a KGC-000B, the oh so slow 100 ton assault that we all know and love/hate. Needless to say I never made it out of T5 in that thing, in fact it put me further back than before I had bought it but I liked it enough that I saved the c-bills up and bought the other two King Crab Chassis (still own all three to this day =]) but after piloting those a while i got sick of being sooooooooo slooooooww and constantly left behind. So I switched it up, looked at the trial mechs and lo and behold theres a Raven 3L with 2 ERLL, I thought well hell one arm on my King Crab prly weighs as much as the whole Raven, and 2 lasers? Thats it? MEh, try it anyways...once again I fell in love with the complete opposite reason of buying the 3 Crabs, its tiny, nimble, and had ecm whats not to like? For me I wanted massive gun platforms when I started bc that to me was fun, and it ended up costing my team many a game, I ended up piloting lights almost exclusively just because of the rush of running around in a mech that is a complete thorn in the enemys backside (provided you know what you're doing, and I still prly dont). Long story short Find what works best for you, take it and run with it. This game is only punishing if you let it be that way. Chin up, reactor online, lets blow some stuff up shall we? o7

Now that things are better for you in your raven, do you go back to the king sometimes? What would you identify as the major problem you had with it? loadout, hardpoint, hitbox, you being new, your team not using you?

[Shifty McSwift]

Metaccini Alfredo, on 01 August 2017 - 12:30 PM, said:

Just remember - "Kaizen"

It's a japanese philosophy of constant self-improvement. Success is found within failure and all that - at it's core, constant self review and adjustment will keep you on the path of improvement.

Sounds similar to notions of reflexivity, where one tries to operate within "third spaces" between binary positions (for example, self and other, or right and wrong). It goes further to suggest all information and discourse requires constant reviewal/questioning by those same standards of reflexivity, including our ideals of self, in notions of identity, individuality, etc.

It does sound like reflexivity at least somewhat incorporates the Kaizen notion, reflexivity is quite a contemporary notion, so perhaps the idea has drawn from this ideal too.

Edited by Shifty McSwift, 01 August 2017 - 02:11 PM.

[Baba Yogi]

I guess it is a relative term as we constantly improve our gameplay. I always played MWO on and off since the beta, but i guess i'd say last year and year and half i started to feel i was playing well. 1k damage games became a regular occurance so i think i compare it with that. If you can play a mech consistantly well, you are good at it, simple as that. That doesnt end there though, there are always things to improve.

[InspectorG]

Took me about a year to get decent. 500 Damage per drop in Solo with a kill or two. But after some 6 month hiatus I get rusty and sloppy.
Another month I'll get ba k to my old performance levels assuming my laptop holds up.

I notice I slip back into tunnel vision aggression and don't read the map. My aim is rusty as well. Plus, goofing arou d with new tech has netted me some terrible matches.

You just have to pay your dues in MWO, unless you are already a strong gamer.
This game is very unforgiving and has a steep learning curve.

[JediPanther]

I got good after spending so much time with the same mech and load out that I ran it for a good part of a year then switched mech class as i wanted to try the other mechs. I primarily ran the C1 as a lrm mech in closed beta. Had a fun time blowing stuff up and showing how well the cat could do.

Then I switched to the jenner and got hooked on speed. Spiders came into the game and I went rambo enough with the spiders I got contacted to run in a unit for the first time. that lasted a few months until internal fighting with a few people of that unit decided to head off on my own again. Eventually wound up in a better unit for two years as a lrm expert and light mech recon. That unit disbanded over time due to constant "improvements" pgi kept making to cw.

Now I run solo ops for the hell of it. Been playing over five years buying the rare mech that gets me with the i-want-it-take-my-money bug. You might come across me in a light some where. Ain't going to post stats as I believe them to be just numbers. I'd rather be the guy who gets a kill with super low damage than one who does lots of damage and no kills. No matter what game you play there will always be some one better than you and some one worse. Eventually you will lose so just have fun with it.

[Aim64C]

I suppose if we are going for advice on how exactly to 'get good...'

I would love to say that each 'mech is relatively equally valid to other 'mechs in the game... but that's just not the reality. Playing some 'mechs is akin to playing hard mode because of the way their weapons are mounted (king crab, for example) - or because of the sheer size of your mech giving opponents ample room to target you (king crab, for example)... or because your mobility is just so low that you will be soaking damage at the back of your team from LRM fire as opposed to soaking damage at the front of your team (king crab).

That is another aspect to keep in mind - sometimes you do need to get up front and out in the open (even as a massive LRM-boat assault) to draw a bit of fire along with your team. Obviously - this is where coordination comes in. Sometimes, you have to move into enemy fire. The freshest 'mechs should be the ones to break out first and take the damage so that the rest of the team can push out and capitalize on the recycle delay of the enemy's weapons.

In practice - it more equates to good assault players knowing how to spread damage around their mech and survive. Damage done is only one metric of performance - if your assault team is hovering around 30% health by the end of the match and your heavies and mediums have 500-600 damage ... you did your job right, even if you're only around 400 damage.

For the Inner Sphere - 'mechs like the Battlemaster are some of the better 'mechs out there. The Bushwacker seems to play okay - but has some weird hardpoint configurations that I wouldn't recommend for beginners. The Hunchback is popular, but I've never played it, much.

The best thing to remember is to keep relatively close to your team. Try not to bunch up on them like sardines - but you want to be in a situation where if they start taking fire, you can move pretty quick to draw down on what is shooting at them.

After you die - always watch some of the other players and how they play. Sometimes it is a good example - sometimes it is a bad example... and a lot of times, it's a mixed bag - you see a player doing some things very right and then something else entirely wrong. You have the advantage of being able to purely observe without the stress of having to respond.

[Ghogiel]

No joke, but for the first 3 years every time I improved was with and facilitated by new hardware upgrades.

[Tarl Cabot]

Always learning but I cut my teeth with the MPBT (Multiplayer Battletech) series from 92 to 2001, as well as the MW series.

[Mar-X-maN]

Potato for life!!!

[Revis Volek]

Still not gud...




Adequate. at best.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Belacose, on 01 August 2017 - 10:41 AM, said:

So... please tell me how long it took you yourself to become a good player? Did you already have experience playing the previous Mech Warrior video games? What walls did you hit along the way? When did you make the move to join a UNIT, etc...?

I played MW4 for several years in NBT (which was the highest competition you could find) and got experience just playing with and against other good players (I played a little bit outside of a unit, but my goal was to always join a team, so I was a PUG like 2 months in). It took a couple years before I actually got competent but it helps when you have good people to play with and learn from. The biggest problem you'll find is resistance to change and learning from good players (though what defines a good player is somewhat ambiguous so it can be hard to figure out who to learn from), hell I've been guilty of it even and I consider myself good. Always be willing to experiment and keep at it if people are making it work or it seems like their is potential but also be willing to throw that experiment away if after trying it, it just doesn't ever click.

Really though, the best way to start actively improving is to surround yourself with the same desire/attitude and begin to learn.

As Ghogiel mentions though, good hardware certainly doesn't hurt. Up until 2 years ago, I averaged 15 FPS trying to play MWO, it can make it really hard to play games where the tiniest mistake or tech hiccup can be the difference between an 8-0 and a 0-8.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 01 August 2017 - 03:29 PM.

[VitriolicViolet]

im ok. it took me years to get here though. my K/D is just below even but my win to loss has been even (season 13). i have generally used average match score to see how ive been doing, from 180 in season one to 285 season 13. so im not really sure? is 285 average match score good or average?

[oldradagast]

I still suck at it and will probably never be truly good. A mix of playing too aggressively, mediocre reflexes, disinterest in playing nothing but top-tier mechs (I play some, but not just that), and just general bad luck guarantees unimpressive performance indefinitely. And yet, I'll probably someday end up in Tier 1, despite having no business being there.

Edited by oldradagast, 01 August 2017 - 04:03 PM.

[Angel of Annihilation]

It took me at least several months to even get the basics down. It was just really hard to keep everything straight. You had to be aware of your leg direction, torso direction, torso crosshairs, arm crosshairs, remember which weapons were mounted on the torso, which on the arms, which weapons group fired what weapon and if that weapon was on the arms or torso. Then you had to also learn to monitor your heat, remember how much heat each weapons group triggered, keep an eye on the minimap while also watching your screen and fire at the enemy. Then you had to learn how to watch both the minimap and enemy movements and predict how they would move. Then there was how to use cover, how to use JJs, followed by how to use torso twisting to extend your life. Oh and then there was learning how to avoid LRMs and doing things like backing away at an angle so the LRMs would pass threw where you were standing before rather than through you like would happen if you backed straight back. Then there was getting the timing down so I could feel when a weapon came off cooldown rather than see it was available. Then there was learning the correct muscle memory for everything. Oh and learning how to lead a target for each weapon type I used. Also learning about the characteristics of mechs so I could identify which mechs might have an XL based on the build. I mean I could go on but I think everyone gets the idea.

Also to tell the truth, I am still learning things even though I have over 7k matches between Closed Beta and now and have a long way to go before becoming truly good at the game because I can honestly say, I make a ton of sloppy mistakes in my gameplay.

Honestly if you want to get right down to it, this game requires a truly massive amount of skill if you want to actually be good at it (taking top 5% of players here) but I would say about 2-3 months to be good enough that you can be competitive. With that learning curve, I guess it isn't surprising there isn't a larger population.

[nehebkau]

Belacose, on 01 August 2017 - 10:41 AM, said:

First few months of playing MWO I was about to throw in the towel same as my real life friends had already done after the shock of moving up a Tier rank. Wasn't fun getting Gauss/PPC poptarted to death playing late at night after hitting Tier 3. So instead of quitting I created an alt account simply to drop Tier. The game became fun again. Was back where I should have been as opposed to fodder for the bear_claws and foxes with shotguns in the middle of the night.

One thing that inspired me enough to keep going was a post I read from a good player claiming he "sucked" for the first couple years or so. Pretty sure that was El Bandito? Tried to use his post to boost the morale of my friends but they gave up anyways. Before that they would never play after 9:00 PM due to getting thrown in with much better skilled players during the early morning wee hours.

So... please tell me how long it took you yourself to become a good player? Did you already have experience playing the previous Mech Warrior video games? What walls did you hit along the way? When did you make the move to join a UNIT, etc...?

MWO is my first go at this sort of game. Previously I had mostly just played typical MMOs. Generally remain a pug for a good year before ever joining a guild but have been at this for about 15 months now and still have yet to do so.

I only improved once I started paying closer attention to the mechs I was dropping with and the load outs. When I had proper mechs I was able to live longer, do more and the small mistake that would have ended my game in a poorer mech would afford me the opportunity to live and then try to stay alive with a badly damaged mech. When I started trusting my mechs more I then started taking more chances and trying new things that kept challenging me to get better.

Having said that -- there is always room to get better.

Edited by nehebkau, 01 August 2017 - 04:47 PM.

[8Ball-]

5 yrs., never got gud. Just older and slower.

[JC Daxion]

a long time lol..

my first 100 matches i had a .43 KDR, and 61/80 win/loss a good match was 200 damage

by around 1600 i upped it to a .8 KDR and 804/840 win/loss, a good match i could hit 400 or so.

The next few years i got a bit more consistant, and climbed to about even win/loss, and had some KDR's in the + 1.0 range.

These days, i can be in the top 3 fairly regularly. I still don't get a ton of kills, but i think that's more because i play laser mechs often. My AC20 mechs i do better with that, but being a brawler, i can die before the fight gets going if everyone decides to play long range mechs. good matches are in the 600-800 range

I never played shooters before this game, outside old mechwarrior games, and really only pve.

[BlueStrat]

WW8Ball, on 01 August 2017 - 05:10 PM, said:

5 yrs., never got gud. Just older and slower.

Old MW3/4/Mercs ladder-league vet. I'll never be gud in MWO. I'm too old and my PC is a potato that struggles to keep my FPS over 12 with bloated, slow AF Cryengine (although it works great on other graphics-heavy games). I'm lucky if half my hits register at the server. My avg match score is around 170.

With the pool of players currently seemingly filled with more potatoes (in 3 hour's play, I watched 4 different players trying to walk their 'mechs thru a wall...D'OHH!), I don't really try that hard anymore. Heck, I've got a bunch of empty mechbays that will probably stay empty for a good while, maybe forever. Not feeling motivated to grind new 'mechs/skills. Now I mostly play simply to annoy the F out of everyone. At least I'm a top-scorer in *that* regard!

Edited by BlueStrat, 01 August 2017 - 06:11 PM.