76 replies to this topic

[Papaspud]

Nope, not wrong in QP, any other way is doing yourself a disservice.

[Ghogiel]

adamts01, on 07 October 2017 - 05:10 PM, said:

500 isn't special though. That's a kill on 1 assault if you spread your damage. I've done half of that in my Locust bylegging an assault in the start of the match that never made it to the fight to help his team, and then killing 2 lights by taking off the legs. It all depends. And if it's Assault or Conquest, lights sometimes don't get to do much shooting and might win the match for the team without firing a shot, which is why I hate those modes in pug land.

MischiefSC, on 07 October 2017 - 05:04 PM, said:

I would in group queue. I would in FW.

In pug queue the odds are too high that the "high damage" is mostly worthless from LRMs or spamming LBX with joystick aim.

I'll take the player who's good at teamwork even if I have to carry the damage/kills.

Firstly the odds are higest that the dmg would be most worthless in FP as thats has the lowest skill games you can find because of no MM and higher % of lurm potatoes than any other mode. But thats besides the point because statistically it actually doesn't matter what mode we are talking about. A 500 dmg player is going to do 2k in FP where as the 150dmg player is barely turning up. One equates to above average performance which will drive wins the other is potato.

Neither of you can even find a player in the game that averages 150 dmg and isn't a complete potato statisical potato. Find me one statisitcal outlier and present a myopic case as to how that mythical player is better than one that is guaranteed to drop a 500 and I would be surprised and humoured.

Lastly this is all exposed in the vast amount of data collection that has been done that shows the correlation bewteen dmg and winning, so don't take my word for it, look at the numbers yourself and to how much of a statistical difference there is of w/l between 500 dmg and 150dmg averages.

[Atomic Hamster]

Bombast, on 07 October 2017 - 08:12 PM, said:

Unrelated, another thing that doesn't work: Typing 'FIGHT GOD DAMN IT' while you're at 98% heat, trying to hold off a flanking maneuver by yourself when there are 8 friendly mechs within 100 meters of you, all camping the same (And wrong) corner, rarely gets results, but I'm not sure what else to type when I'm in a blind panic and getting pounded to scrap.

That scenario is oddly familiar. Nowadays I'd shout something like 'They're flanking us!' on VOIP before getting vaporised by 5+ alphas - irc doesn't make much difference if the rest of the team are still focused on sniping the 3 or so mechs on the other side of the map.

Now have started playing American servers have noticed a variation in PUG behaviour - don't want to generalise too much, but it seems that some of these PUGs have a more 'YOLO' approach than the familiar one of everyone camping behind cover and sniping - not necessarily more successful, but definitely more fun.

Re the OP, sticking with a group, sharing aggro and focusing targets doesn't seem particularly selfish to me. What does seem selfish (and counter-productive) is camping at the back of the map to 'snipe'/lob LRMs or just sitting behind cover while the rest of the team pushes - and being 'selfish' is ultimately self-defeating because if your team gets rolled, chances are you won't survive much longer (unless you try to hide forever which is usually pointless). Of course when the majority of the team (except a few lights) is camping, doesn't seem that you have much choice but to do the same if you're in a slowish mech, which is pretty frustrating if you don't have a long range loadout.

Edited by Atomic Hamster, 08 October 2017 - 03:39 AM.

[Chados]

Well, just running off like John Rambo against a deathball only leads to spectating for 11 minutes while some idiot in a sniper build...it is much, much, more annoying to see an assault sniper build do this than an ERLL Raven...tries to hide from the ten enemy mechs searching for him.

Honestly, I'd rather see LRM assaults than sniper assaults.

[Chados]

Bombast, on 07 October 2017 - 08:12 PM, said:

I try not to get negative when I can. I rarely see it work, and my blood pressure is bad enough without me 'baiting' myself by being a ****.

Unrelated, another thing that doesn't work: Typing 'FIGHT GOD DAMN IT' while you're at 98% heat, trying to hold off a flanking maneuver by yourself when there are 8 friendly mechs within 100 meters of you, all camping the same (And wrong) corner, rarely gets results, but I'm not sure what else to type when I'm in a blind panic and getting pounded to scrap.

Also unrelated, dropping an arty strike on your own team often does get results (But you shouldn't do it, if for no other reason that when it doesn't work, you've basically killed your team). This is just an observation, not a suggestion.

LOL

Yes, solo PuG is an exercise in herd mentality and leads to "everyone for herself" thinking. I'm more like Tarogato, though. I try to watch what the group is doing and adapt to that. If I'm in a direct fire build I'll usually pick an assault mech and wingman him, and shoot what is shooting at him. That's why as I go up in tier I tend to go down in weight of chassis. Medium mechs tend to give that good blend of all-directions mobility and just enough firepower to make it work. But when my heavy or assault partner dies...I'm usually dead shortly thereafter. And if I pick the wrong partner...the team goes down faster because they're down two, not one. I've had matches where I've kept the lights off my Scorch or DS or Fatlas I'm working with and it's been amazing, and I rack 750 damage in a 50 ton Uziel and four kills. I've also got nailed 90 seconds in and left with 68 damage, or realized that my chosen partner is John Rambo and the team is over there...leading to having to change horses in mid fight and that's bad...or getting stuck in a deathball with an Annihilator trying to hide behind my Phoenix Hawk-I kid you not, that happens more often then you think. But it's fun.

By the way, QP solo queue teaches bad habits. One reason I truly suck in FP and hate it like poison, I think.

[Lightfoot]

Yes. It is wrong to abandon your team. You should not blindly follow either, type "No" in the chat or something if you think someone is wrong.

Last night someone was having a lapse or something and sayin if they aren't in the domination circle we needed to push the citadel NOW!!! Well duh?!!, the timer isn't counting down so where the heck do you think they are? So he kept on whining 'push now' and they did and they all died. I said, "no, they are all there", but stupid is as stupid does.

[Alvar Von Kenesthor]

You don't need to listen to every single whiner about your playstyle.This is just a game, play anyway you want in QP.
You can stay at the back throwing lasers and missiles at anything that moves without giving a damn about your team, or you can go lone-wolfing YOLOing across the map as long as you have fun doing so (and getting kills in the process of course) and understanding that if this gets you killed, it's YOUR FAULT, nothing to do with your team

Two of the biggest youtubers of this game, Baradul and TheB33f do this and get praised by everyone for carrying their teams.
Baradul sure calls out the team for when and where to push or flank, but in the end almost always resorts to using his teammates as meatshields.
And B33f pretty much runs around the map soloing and killing any enemy that still moves, getting 3-6 average kills per match unless he decides to go full DERP build.

The so called strats are never used in PUG battles unless someone decides to take command, which probability is the same as you seeing a missile build for a Spider. You're not ruining the experience for anyone since most PUGs already do this, and the ones annoyed by this aren't having fun in the first place

Edited by Alvar Von Kenesthor, 08 October 2017 - 07:28 AM.

[C E Dwyer]

There has to be an element of team work for success, even in Q.P

Those teams that have someone willing to call, has the confidence and ability to make the right calls, with enough people doing it, pretty much guarantee's a win, unless you happen to be facing another team with as good a caller, this is rare.

12-0 happen because the losing team is full of people thinking the same way you are thinking.

Off topic some what but even without callers, all maps have established places on them you need to be at, to win, and places you avoid to lose.

Yet people still wander repeatedly into some of the biggest kill zones on the maps, because they refuse to learn. Or refuse to go to the best places because they would rather throw a game and do something stupid, on their own, than to win the game.

[James Argent]

What everyone is missing about the 150/500 damage thing is that in the example the 150 was accomplished with a light mech and the 500 was accomplished with a heavy/assault. You can't translate that into FW numbers via direct comparison...no drop deck is going to have four lights or four assaults. If someone is doing 150 QP damage in a light, their projected FW damage isn't going to be simply four times that. What the poster was saying was in that specific example, 150 damage from someone who keeps four mechs occupied for five minutes is way more tactically valuable toward winning the match than 500 damage from someone playing a no-share sniper or HideWarrior type of match.

[MischiefSC]

Kiiyor, on 07 October 2017 - 07:56 PM, said:

I'm a PUG optimist. The glass is half full...

...but I bet one of my bloody teammates will spill it anyway.

Pugs like treats. I'm running just shy of a 66% win rate with almost 100 pug queue matches with only having play MADs (not IICs, just IS MADs, mostly with UAC/RAC/MRM builds) not because I'm super heavy carrying but by practicing pug herding.

Start out of the gate saying lets stay on the move, just not rushing but keep moving. Campers get rolled. Most pugs recognize this and will stay on the move. This is a critical first step. Next you want to help them get kills. Open some mechs up and call out "Delta, Awesome, one tuch. Griffin legged in G6". Your timid little puggles will skitter over to get their puggle treat.

THAT is when you call the push. Inertia is powerful thing. When the enemy team sees enemies pushing, many will fall back - leaving their teammates to die. You you help get your puggles moving that way, they'll see enemies falling back and see a chance for a 3 on 1 and get the roll going.

You just can't call a push though. You need them moving, you need a clearly identifiable weak mech/flank to push and you need to give them solid support for it. As soon as you see two enemy kills pop up and you've got a lead your pugs will steamroll, even respond to called targets.

Pugs will push happily when they're hanging up on an easy kill and they'll respond to simple, clearly logical calls.

[MischiefSC]

Ghogiel, on 08 October 2017 - 02:47 AM, said:

Firstly the odds are higest that the dmg would be most worthless in FP as thats has the lowest skill games you can find because of no MM and higher % of lurm potatoes than any other mode. But thats besides the point because statistically it actually doesn't matter what mode we are talking about. A 500 dmg player is going to do 2k in FP where as the 150dmg player is barely turning up. One equates to above average performance which will drive wins the other is potato.

Neither of you can even find a player in the game that averages 150 dmg and isn't a complete potato statisical potato. Find me one statisitcal outlier and present a myopic case as to how that mythical player is better than one that is guaranteed to drop a 500 and I would be surprised and humoured.

Lastly this is all exposed in the vast amount of data collection that has been done that shows the correlation bewteen dmg and winning, so don't take my word for it, look at the numbers yourself and to how much of a statistical difference there is of w/l between 500 dmg and 150dmg averages.

Context.

I said I'll take the good team player over the bad team player regardless of damage but the good team player will learn to do more damage and usually probably does. For example KCom has plenty of matches where people who regularly put up 2500 damage did 800 because they were running caps or covering base from squirrels or just led all 4 pushes and died early.

Also I consistently see people in QP with high damage but a **** w/l. LRM and sniper players pretty consistently. The ACH pilot I mentioned earlier who was getting 2 kills then running off to hide and power down had a KDR just shy of 3 but a w/l of barely 1.0.

Yes, good players do good damage. However they do good damage by playing well. Game winning players know when it's worth it to sacrifice some personal stats to drive the win.

A high w/l is almost always tied to good damage averages. A high average damage or KDR is NOT almost always tied to a high w/l.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

James Argent, on 08 October 2017 - 07:39 AM, said:

What everyone is missing about the 150/500 damage thing is that in the example the 150 was accomplished with a light mech and the 500 was accomplished with a heavy/assault. You can't translate that into FW numbers via direct comparison...no drop deck is going to have four lights or four assaults. If someone is doing 150 QP damage in a light, their projected FW damage isn't going to be simply four times that. What the poster was saying was in that specific example, 150 damage from someone who keeps four mechs occupied for five minutes is way more tactically valuable toward winning the match than 500 damage from someone playing a no-share sniper or HideWarrior type of match.

Whoever is getting 150 damage in a light really isn't doing all that much, even accounting for being a light. A good light, Wolfhound for example, fires 30-36 damage alphas, I prefer the 6 MPLs. If I fire 5 times at an enemy I get 180 damage. They should be firing at least 10 times at the enemy minimum with a mech that can get into positions to hit the enemy so often.

Being a light is no excuse for having just 150 damage, good light pilots put up way more than that all the time with ease.

If one light mech was able to keep 4 enemies occupied with it for a full 5 minutes then you guys didn't even need the light at all, the enemies were potatoes.


Why are we even coming up with these hypotheticals?

[MischiefSC]

Dakota1000, on 08 October 2017 - 08:18 AM, said:

Whoever is getting 150 damage in a light really isn't doing all that much, even accounting for being a light. A good light, Wolfhound for example, fires 30-36 damage alphas, I prefer the 6 MPLs. If I fire 5 times at an enemy I get 180 damage. They should be firing at least 10 times at the enemy minimum with a mech that can get into positions to hit the enemy so often.

Being a light is no excuse for having just 150 damage, good light pilots put up way more than that all the time with ease.

If one light mech was able to keep 4 enemies occupied with it for a full 5 minutes then you guys didn't even need the light at all, the enemies were potatoes.


Why are we even coming up with these hypotheticals?

Because it's based on actual matches.

Most teams are mostly potatoes, it's getting them to spud off so I can wrangle my potatoes to stop walking in to walls and licking windows long enough to bring their LBX 5, erll, 2spl and a streak 4 Kit Fox to aim with their joystick on the remaining enemies.

In QP damage /= contribution to win. Contribution to win usually does = damage, but not always. Maybe it's just the first guy into the push who goes down in a blaze of glory so the rest of us can roll the enemy.

Again, context. A good player who contributes to the win by making good choices (even if their damage that match is bad) is more valuable than a bad making bad choices with decent damage. The guy in the light running caps on Polar is another good example.

[Atomic Hamster]

MischiefSC, on 08 October 2017 - 07:43 AM, said:

Pugs like treats. ..
.. Your timid little puggles will skitter over to get their puggle treat.
Pugs will push happily when they're hanging up on an easy kill and they'll respond to simple, clearly logical calls.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

MischiefSC, on 08 October 2017 - 08:35 AM, said:

Because it's based on actual matches.

Most teams are mostly potatoes, it's getting them to spud off so I can wrangle my potatoes to stop walking in to walls and licking windows long enough to bring their LBX 5, erll, 2spl and a streak 4 Kit Fox to aim with their joystick on the remaining enemies.

In QP damage /= contribution to win. Contribution to win usually does = damage, but not always. Maybe it's just the first guy into the push who goes down in a blaze of glory so the rest of us can roll the enemy.

Again, context. A good player who contributes to the win by making good choices (even if their damage that match is bad) is more valuable than a bad making bad choices with decent damage. The guy in the light running caps on Polar is another good example.

If the enemies are mostly potatoes then that would mean that bringing an LRM assault would just as fine an idea as bringing a light mech in. One makes spuds run for cover or get obliterated and the other is 100% invincible fighting guys who bring the laser with the highest duration so they can "at least get some of the damage on target".

Outside of capping, I'd assume that a good player making good choices, at least the most optimal ones, would be doing good damage. I'd be pretty annoyed if the one good player on our team decided he was going to lead the charge and die quick instead of carry us after we all die in the charge because we can't aim and their team's good player is still alive and can aim.

Being the guy who dies first in an attempt to inspire your team to greatness or give them an opening to do so is often just a dice roll, you can't really trust that those 11 teammates left will do any good, and sometimes you'll be sitting there at the end watching the last guy alive against a couple completely opened up mechs but the guy just aims for the wrong components, runs away, misses, overheats, or whatever until the two whittle his health away and you just regret your decision to die early instead of secure victory yourself.


As far as I can tell, in a game that can always be won simply by killing every enemy there is, damage is always some contribution to victory, even if you're sitting way back with LRMs, if you did 50 damage you're bad, if you did 1000 sitting back then you softened the enemies up for your allies, saving them an extra alpha strike, saving them from overheating, saving them time enough that the enemy doesn't finish his cooldown. This is why I'd prefer an ally who did 500 damage in some LRM assault compared to a light who did 150, the damage adds up and even with LRMs it keeps the enemy's heads down a bit since no one likes their paint scratched in this game. In the end both things cause there to be less enemies actively counter poking at any given moment but one causes more damage than the other.

[Ghogiel]

MischiefSC, on 08 October 2017 - 08:08 AM, said:

Context.

I said I'll take the good team player over the bad team player regardless of damage but the good team player will learn to do more damage and usually probably does. For example KCom has plenty of matches where people who regularly put up 2500 damage did 800 because they were running caps or covering base from squirrels or just led all 4 pushes and died early.

Also I consistently see people in QP with high damage but a **** w/l. LRM and sniper players pretty consistently. The ACH pilot I mentioned earlier who was getting 2 kills then running off to hide and power down had a KDR just shy of 3 but a w/l of barely 1.0.

Your concept of team player is irrelevent to me. I do not buy that you see that consistantly either. Those types of players are unicorns, and consistantly seeing them wouldn't make sense. It's actually rare enough that you can barely find a few examples of people consistantly doing high dmg and having a **** w/l at all in the full player data.

Quote

Yes, good players do good damage. However they do good damage by playing well. Game winning players know when it's worth it to sacrifice some personal stats to drive the win.

Fact is doing any of that shows up in less than 95% of what is important in this game. It's nigh statistically irrelevent to what does drive wins> which is killing the other team gud.

Quote

A high w/l is almost always tied to good damage averages. A high average damage or KDR is NOT almost always tied to a high w/l.

Have you seen the actual data? As K/D goes up so does W/L> almost always. DMG similarly correlates with W/L.

I can't find these low dmg, low KD potato who is winning loads in any statistically relevent sample.

Also you probably have it a bit backwards about high w/l being tied to good dmg, Even just using the leaderboards and mk1 eyeball parsing the stats it's actually easier to find players without good dmg on the first pages if sorted by W/L than is it to find bad W/L when sorted by dmg.

Edited by Ghogiel, 08 October 2017 - 10:49 AM.

[UnofficialOperator]

Its possible to have high KD (above 2.0) and negative or break even WLR though.

I think a good player needs to strike a balance between being too gung ho and trying to face tank everything vs staying alive and dealing damage at an optimal distance. If you are dead, you can't help the team anymore. And if you are just plinking damage at a very safe and far distance, then that isn't optimal to your team mates too. Regardless, everyone knows the risks when they click solo QP. If you don't like it, just go team play then.

IMO, WLR is definitely a more impressive ratio to look at for solo QP than KDR.

Edited by UnofficialOperator, 09 October 2017 - 07:04 AM.