48 replies to this topic

[Savage Wolf]

I have for the longest time been split in which mode I found most lacking: Skirmish or Assault. At least seen from the merits of a mode based on just fighting the enemy and not much else.

The problem with Skirmish is that there is nothing in the mode where you can force your enemy to fight. There is nothing preventing an enemy from simply hiding and evading you. You are just left in a sandbox with nothing of value or importance.

Assault on the other hand, has this: The bases. If your enemy refuses to fight, you can just cap his base. So either they fight or they lose. Problem is that it's also possible to just cap and not fight at all which kind of defeats the purpose.

So how do we get the best of both modes?

My suggestion is that capping a base by default takes about 10 minutes or so. The number of mechs, capping does not increase rate of capping. But in addition, each enemy mech destroyed is a multiplier on base capping.

This means that capping the enemy base if you have no enemies destroyed would take forever and leave plenty of time for your enemy to get to you and fight. So no base rush tactics or evasion is feasable for other purposes of just drawing out the enemy. But once there is only one enemy left your team would have such a high multiplier that you can easily cap the enemy base forcing the last enemy to fight or lose.

This should make matches more about fighting and more action packed and have less using 5 minutes chasing or searching for the last enemy mech.

[Jun Watarase]

Both modes have the same problem : nothing stops a team from just sitting in one spot and refusing to move. With assault, they can sit at their base. It makes mobility largely pointless.

[Pjwned]

Or just try actually defending the base ever.

That works too.

[Savage Wolf]

Jun Watarase, on 21 August 2017 - 05:44 AM, said:

Both modes have the same problem : nothing stops a team from just sitting in one spot and refusing to move. With assault, they can sit at their base. It makes mobility largely pointless.

That is true. You can always bunker down on your own base. And no, it will still not be a mobility based game mode. Those changes does not change that. But I think for the majority of the people who enjoy these modes (which actually doesn't include myself), mobility isn't really something they interested in except just for fighting.

For gameplay with mobility, Conquest is better hands down. Especially with respawns. But that's a different style of play for a different kind of player. To get more of that we need to get FP converted to a regular bucket like QP with mixed teams, pug/group queue and matchmaking and we need to fix rewards and ranking so it favors winning over farming. So a lot of work. But we can dream.

Pjwned, on 21 August 2017 - 05:52 AM, said:

Or just try actually defending the base ever.

That works too.

No, that defeats the point too if just both teams defend their base, then no fighting is happening.

Edited by Savage Wolf, 21 August 2017 - 05:57 AM.

[Pjwned]

Savage Wolf, on 21 August 2017 - 05:56 AM, said:

No, that defeats the point too if just both teams defend their base, then no fighting is happening.

Oh right, I forgot that last time I checked base defense is all or nothing, so either the whole team defends or nobody defends; no way to compromise there.

My bad.

[Coolant]

Not sure how you can fault Skirmish. It is the only pure combat mode in the game.

[InfinityBall]

Coolant, on 21 August 2017 - 07:21 AM, said:

Not sure how you can fault Skirmish. It is the only pure combat mode in the game.

15 minute matches where the last 10 minutes are a powered down light hiding someplace and the other team running around trying to find it

[Savage Wolf]

Pjwned, on 21 August 2017 - 07:18 AM, said:

Oh right, I forgot that last time I checked base defense is all or nothing, so either the whole team defends or nobody defends; no way to compromise there.

My bad.

Look, I don't mind the slower paced game play with scouting and then move cautiosly, but people who like Skirmish usually don't. The sooner we get to the fighting part, the better. And it's not like that really adds much to the game in Assault anyway, so I thought we might as well play to what the game is best suited for. Pure combat.

Then we who like more depth to our mech sim can play other game modes where these things matter more.

Coolant, on 21 August 2017 - 07:21 AM, said:

Not sure how you can fault Skirmish. It is the only pure combat mode in the game.

I explained that in my original post. But if you really like pure combat I'd like to hear your opinion as it's not really my preference, except if I had to play it, it might as well be good then.

[Khobai]

fixing assault mode is easy

delete it. its literally a beta testing gamemode that they never took out of the game.

Quote

Not sure how you can fault Skirmish. It is the only pure combat mode in the game.

that isnt really mechwarrior/battletech though

mechs dont exist just to fight other mechs. mechs exist to complete objectives and/or prevent the enemy from completing their objectives.

in war soldiers dont just kill eachother for no reason. its typically because theyre attacking or defending a strategic objective like a beachhead, bridge, landing strip, fortifications/bunkers, cities, factories, etc... they fight over stepping stones towards winning the eventual war.

thats how the gamemodes should be in MWO. more than just skirmish. conquest is a good example of how all the gamemodes should be.

Edited by Khobai, 21 August 2017 - 09:52 AM.

[Savage Wolf]

Khobai, on 21 August 2017 - 09:45 AM, said:

that isnt really mechwarrior/battletech though

mechs dont exist just to fight other mechs. mechs exist to complete objectives and/or prevent the enemy from completing their objectives.

in war soldiers dont just kill eachother for no reason. its typically because theyre attacking or defending a strategic objective like a beachhead, bridge, landing strip, fortifications/bunkers, cities, etc... they fight over stepping stones towards winning the eventual war.

thats how the gamemodes should be in MWO. more than just skirmish. conquest is a good example of how all the gamemodes should be.

I totally agree and we really should have more like that, but I also believe that we could have game modes for different kinds of player preferences. So yeah, this is for the ones who only want combat. And hopefully at some point we can salvage the good game modes of FW and have a place for people like us who likes movement and objectives.

[MechaBattler]

Russ said they would be reworking Assault to have an actual base. With one team defending and one attacking. What happened to that?

[Savage Wolf]

MechaBattler, on 21 August 2017 - 11:56 AM, said:

Russ said they would be reworking Assault to have an actual base. With one team defending and one attacking. What happened to that?

Incursion happened.

[QuantumButler]

MechaBattler, on 21 August 2017 - 11:56 AM, said:

Russ said they would be reworking Assault to have an actual base. With one team defending and one attacking. What happened to that?

That was just his position at the time.

Just steal the blue circle mechanic from Player Unknown's Battlegrounds for Skirmish, with the out of bounds area of the map gradually shrinking as the match progresses, forcing people to converge on randomly selected circles of the map so they have to move and fight.

Boom, Skirmish is fixed and made much more dynamic.

[Khobai]

Quote

Just steal the blue circle mechanic from Player Unknown's Battlegrounds for Skirmish, with the out of bounds area of the map gradually shrinking as the match progresses, forcing people to converge on randomly selected circles of the map so they have to move and fight


Boom, Skirmish is fixed and made much more dynamic.

Except people already dont use the whole map and both teams generally just fight in one spot anyway.

So no it wont fix skirmish or make skirmish more dynamic at all.

All it will do is force more of the same thing people already do, deathball in the middle. or in this case random circles which is just as bad.

That is why skirmish is a piss poor gamemode.

conquest is far better because players make use of the whole map. and it gives light mechs something to do. and it has a fairly balanced alternate win condition.

all gamemodes need to be more like conquest and less like skirmish.

Edited by Khobai, 21 August 2017 - 05:23 PM.

[El Bandito]

Now that incursion is here, remove assault mode.

[Khobai]

yep remove assault and fix incursion

incursion can be fixed just by making the buildings unkillable by mechs. only your team's dropship should be able to kill enemy buildings. that forces both teams to fight over energy pellets to call down the dropship. and fighting over energy is what incursion should be about.

[Fleeb the Mad]

Savage Wolf, on 21 August 2017 - 05:17 AM, said:

This means that capping the enemy base if you have no enemies destroyed would take forever and leave plenty of time for your enemy to get to you and fight. So no base rush tactics or evasion is feasable for other purposes of just drawing out the enemy. But once there is only one enemy left your team would have such a high multiplier that you can easily cap the enemy base forcing the last enemy to fight or lose.

This should make matches more about fighting and more action packed and have less using 5 minutes chasing or searching for the last enemy mech.

If anything the base capture timer needs to be shorter than it is now. Do you know how rare it is that someone actually succeeds in capturing the base? It takes so long for anything short of half a team to capture the base that it can generally only happen after the fight's already over. There's no need to watch for flanking or maneuvers because only an incredibly negligent team will lose to one or two enemy mechs on the cap. There's enough response time that virtually any mech on the field can return to deal with it.

I will add that any team that loses their match because they allowed a base cap to happen while 'winning' the fight deserves it.

There's just no excuse for a team with the advantage to not be able to deal with it. Either the enemy team played their strategy better or, more commonly, nobody on a team with the advantage feels like saving the base is their particular problem.

[Pjwned]

MechaBattler, on 21 August 2017 - 11:56 AM, said:

Russ said they would be reworking Assault to have an actual base. With one team defending and one attacking. What happened to that?

It turned into Incursion and then they ****ed it up by not following through with the attack & defend part, which is annoying because Incursion wouldn't be such a huge piece of crap if it was a proper attack & defend mode.

Khobai, on 21 August 2017 - 09:45 AM, said:

fixing assault mode is easy

delete it. its literally a beta testing gamemode that they never took out of the game.

There's no reason to delete it though, and if any mode were to be deleted it should be skirmish.

Quote

that isnt really mechwarrior/battletech though

mechs dont exist just to fight other mechs. mechs exist to complete objectives and/or prevent the enemy from completing their objectives.

in war soldiers dont just kill eachother for no reason. its typically because theyre attacking or defending a strategic objective like a beachhead, bridge, landing strip, fortifications/bunkers, cities, factories, etc... they fight over stepping stones towards winning the eventual war.

thats how the gamemodes should be in MWO. more than just skirmish. conquest is a good example of how all the gamemodes should be.

Sounds cooler but it's also delusional to expect that from PGI, and I don't want to see functional modes being deleted due to unrealistic expectations and not ever replaced with anything better.

QuantumButler, on 21 August 2017 - 04:49 PM, said:

That was just his position at the time.

Just steal the blue circle mechanic from Player Unknown's Battlegrounds for Skirmish, with the out of bounds area of the map gradually shrinking as the match progresses, forcing people to converge on randomly selected circles of the map so they have to move and fight.

Boom, Skirmish is fixed and made much more dynamic.

That's an absolutely terrible idea, most of the maps are already too small as is (for 12v12 anyways) and you want to make them even smaller?

Edited by Pjwned, 22 August 2017 - 03:58 AM.

[ocular tb]

Assault is fine. Skirmish is fine. I think they should leave them as they are.

Domination could use a few tweaks to change it up a little bit, such as moving the circle location from match to match.

Incursion and Escort could both use some major changes.

[Lykaon]

Savage Wolf, on 21 August 2017 - 05:17 AM, said:

I have for the longest time been split in which mode I found most lacking: Skirmish or Assault. At least seen from the merits of a mode based on just fighting the enemy and not much else.

The problem with Skirmish is that there is nothing in the mode where you can force your enemy to fight. There is nothing preventing an enemy from simply hiding and evading you. You are just left in a sandbox with nothing of value or importance.

Assault on the other hand, has this: The bases. If your enemy refuses to fight, you can just cap his base. So either they fight or they lose. Problem is that it's also possible to just cap and not fight at all which kind of defeats the purpose.

So how do we get the best of both modes?

My suggestion is that capping a base by default takes about 10 minutes or so. The number of mechs, capping does not increase rate of capping. But in addition, each enemy mech destroyed is a multiplier on base capping.

This means that capping the enemy base if you have no enemies destroyed would take forever and leave plenty of time for your enemy to get to you and fight. So no base rush tactics or evasion is feasable for other purposes of just drawing out the enemy. But once there is only one enemy left your team would have such a high multiplier that you can easily cap the enemy base forcing the last enemy to fight or lose.

This should make matches more about fighting and more action packed and have less using 5 minutes chasing or searching for the last enemy mech.

Another solution is asymetric objectives.

Why do we need two bases? Or for that matter why are there two opposing forces that have bases within a kilometer or two of each other?

One team has to assault a base the other defends a base. There may be need to tweak the game mode to equalize the forces because there is an innate advantage to defending on a mode like this but...honestly why two bases? We don't have two VIP mechs in escort.