69 replies to this topic

[El Bandito]

Dunno if every match is there, but they have been uploaded recently on MWO's YouTube account. Watch them here if you are interested in high level plays. https://www.youtube....oronline/videos

I can only say that the sheer amount of Clan mech spamming is not surprising.

Edited by El Bandito, 26 September 2017 - 10:03 AM.

[Bombast]

First match watched, Airstrike team kill.

Nice to see that sloppy red smoke isn't just a QP problem.

[Juodas Varnas]

Watched them live myself.

Wolfhound was like the only IS mech that was somewhat consistently used there, wasn't it?
Good thing PGI decided to nerf it! We can't have people use IS mechs in competitive!

[Bombast]

Juodas Varnas, on 26 September 2017 - 09:35 AM, said:

Wolfhound was like the only IS mech that was somewhat consistently used there, wasn't it?

I'm not all the way through, but I'm seeing Firestarters too.

There's some weird stuff going on in these matches - Just watched 2 Gargoyles try to rush the tunnel on Mining Collective. Some other questionable moves going on as well, stuff I would be shocked to see even in QP. Not sure if its smart in pro play or if I'm just watching bad teams being pruned.

[Snazzy Dragon]

Bombast, on 26 September 2017 - 09:51 AM, said:

I'm not all the way through, but I'm seeing Firestarters too.

There's some weird stuff going on in these matches - Just watched 2 Gargoyles try to rush the tunnel on Mining Collective. Some other questionable moves going on as well, stuff I would be shocked to see even in QP. Not sure if its smart in pro play or if I'm just watching bad teams being pruned.

There's more room to pull weird maneuvers in comp since it's only 8v8 rather than 12v12, but still.. I'll have to agree with you on that one.

[JC Daxion]

thank you

[justcallme A S H]

Bombast, on 26 September 2017 - 09:51 AM, said:

I'm not all the way through, but I'm seeing Firestarters too.

There's some weird stuff going on in these matches - Just watched 2 Gargoyles try to rush the tunnel on Mining Collective. Some other questionable moves going on as well, stuff I would be shocked to see even in QP. Not sure if its smart in pro play or if I'm just watching bad teams being pruned.

Bad teams.

Not everyone in the Top 12 is a Div A team due to queue farming/team dodging that PGI were made well aware of and did nothing about. So within the rules and some good teams missed out because of it.

And FYI - The games are ALL on twitch under 'piranhagames'. Have been for a while.

[Dimzi]

I'm disappointed in the spectator overhead mode. It feels like a completely different game. The audience has no idea what each players' heat, consumables, or cored sections are. The skill of targeting damaged components is gone. I feel it is overly reliant on the commentators trying to relay all of the information. The replays would have been so much better if they had gone into first person view. I would have preferred a split screen or even single screen of a mech so we can see the actual game.

They had a FP camera on the final match. That was nice.

[Krivvan]

Bombast, on 26 September 2017 - 09:51 AM, said:

I'm not all the way through, but I'm seeing Firestarters too.

There's some weird stuff going on in these matches - Just watched 2 Gargoyles try to rush the tunnel on Mining Collective. Some other questionable moves going on as well, stuff I would be shocked to see even in QP. Not sure if its smart in pro play or if I'm just watching bad teams being pruned.

Often decks end up getting picked solely as hard counters for other very specific teams, or designed for a specific map in particular. Stuff you can't normally do in QP. Other times there are decks that require very specific plays that you can't expect random pugs in QP to do. Last year we did things specific to the point of "hide this one streak mech we'd never normally take at this point, because judging by their previous matches their Lights are aggressive enough for go for the lone PPCing Hunchback; then when the Lights are occupied, our Lights need to hit their Grasshopper that often holds junk pile, but if it isn't there they will wrap around to here" etc. etc. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't and you gotta improvise.

I'm not sure what the plan of those two Gargoyles were, and it isn't from one of the best teams there, but Gargoyles do get picked now and then for comp when you need a certain kind of speed and pinpoint close-ish range firepower, and they seemed really intent on doing a push of some sort somewhere. It just so happened that the other team had a stronger brawl deck for the situation and were already set up for them, so it ended as expected.

There are I'd say two teams in the semifinals that are slightly out of their league though (although they did far better than I expected).

Edited by Krivvan, 26 September 2017 - 02:49 PM.

[Krivvan]

Juodas Varnas, on 26 September 2017 - 09:35 AM, said:

Wolfhound was like the only IS mech that was somewhat consistently used there, wasn't it?
Good thing PGI decided to nerf it! We can't have people use IS mechs in competitive!

The Assassin is considered one of the best Mediums in the game right now by a good margin, but many of these matches so far have taken place on Tourmaline where it wouldn't really get used much.

El Bandito, on 26 September 2017 - 08:14 AM, said:

I can only say that the sheer amount of Clan mech spamming is not surprising.

IS Lights have been stronger than many Clan for a while, with the Cheetah only recently being able to find a niche for itself with the new tech. Brawls also generally favor IS mechs.

Again, many of these matches have been tourmaline where Clan mechs would perform generally better. You end up seeing more IS mechs on those Mining and HPG matches for example.

[El Bandito]

Krivvan, on 26 September 2017 - 02:52 PM, said:

IS Lights have been stronger than many Clan for a while, with the Cheetah only recently being able to find a niche for itself with the new tech. Brawls also generally favor IS mechs.

Again, many of these matches have been tourmaline where Clan mechs would perform generally better. You end up seeing more IS mechs on those Mining and HPG matches for example.

Even on Mining Collective matches, there were overwhelming number of Clan mechs. Outnumbering IS mechs 7:1 in many cases.

[Y E O N N E]

Dimzi, on 26 September 2017 - 02:37 PM, said:

I'm disappointed in the spectator overhead mode. It feels like a completely different game. The audience has no idea what each players' heat, consumables, or cored sections are. The skill of targeting damaged components is gone. I feel it is overly reliant on the commentators trying to relay all of the information. The replays would have been so much better if they had gone into first person view. I would have preferred a split screen or even single screen of a mech so we can see the actual game.

They had a FP camera on the final match. That was nice.

My one major criticism for the casters is that they don't click around the 'Mechs enough. We could be viewing the Lights duking it out over a capture point but still have the Battlemaster on the other side of the map showing on the doll.

I'm not a fan of the PiP first-person thing. Too small to be worthwhile, but also eats up too much real estate in the main viewer.

[El Bandito]

Yeonne Greene, on 26 September 2017 - 04:28 PM, said:

My one major criticism for the casters is that they don't click around the 'Mechs enough. We could be viewing the Lights duking it out over a capture point but still have the Battlemaster on the other side of the map showing on the doll.

I'm not a fan of the PiP first-person thing. Too small to be worthwhile, but also eats up too much real estate in the main viewer.

[ocular tb]

I wouldn't mind more cockpit views but I think overall Bandit did a very good job of calling the matches and moving around the map to show what was going on. I don't usually pay much attention to the comp scene but some of these were pretty fun to watch.

[Y E O N N E]

JGx's ERLL death beam power positioning was pretty fun to watch, though seeing them learn from their mistakes against 228th when they got Canyon on Drop 3 against D5 was also pretty good.

Also, unless you are really good with your PPCs, I think ERLL just got cemented as the ranged weapon of choice. Whiffing on an ERPPC volley just savages your DPS against a target while he keeps scraping you with ERLL. I will say, though, D5 was throwing away a fundamental advantage to pop-tarting by pogo-sticking in-place rather than relocating.

[Nothar]

Just like last year bandits putting some serious hours into this game. Full credit to him being the face and voice of these comps. I do agree with spectator mode being heavily optimized more. Because more is better, i am liking the 'snap to' feature to smooth en the transitions of players! But its just missing that something.

As for Clan mechs dominating comp selections. Its clear and has always been clear which faction has the advantage in EVERY aspect of the game. So its no surprise to me seeing MORE clan mechs then last year with the release of some truly, blatantly unbalanced tech. But hey EMP ran a mauler with 7 clan mechs. ... . . . *crickets*

[MischiefSC]

not going to turn this into a balance talk, we have plenty of those.

I will say it's a good game to watch. Yes, some improvements on the casting tools would be great but as a spectator game it's actually a lot of fun. Better than Overwatch by a good margin.

I'm surprised to see even top tier trade players struggling against lasers.

These matches should be required watching. Especially by people saying lights suck and various other bad balance observations.

[Nothar]

oh yeah credit to mdm as well, i acknowledge your existence!

[kapusta11]

Casting leaves a lot to be desired. No build showcase, no first person view, no replay of interesting moments like in boxing for example, etc.

[Shifty McSwift]

ERPPC and ERLL trading for 90% of all 3 games, you can kind of make it fun to watch by having so many different shootouts going on, but it is a lot of turret fighting going on. And this really does display what airstrikes are actually used for, honestly a little boring for me, particularly considering they basically play the same game 3 times in a row..