118 replies to this topic

[ZippySpeedMonkey]

You have to “Heavy / Assault Shame” them...

Make disparaging comments about their cowardice and lack of effectiveness. Their embarrassment should motivate them...

[Fox With A Shotgun]

Dee Eight, on 10 October 2017 - 10:26 PM, said:

mAYBE stop playing nothing but kit foxes ?

The whole point is, if a KFX can make it there in time - the main body of the team should be able to make it there too. Barring the obvious case of 100 ton assaults, which with the biggest possible engines and Speed Tweak still ends up being about a minute late to the party. KFXes aren't the fastest lights; they're essentially pocket slow mediums.

The Lurm Wurm, on 10 October 2017 - 11:07 PM, said:

Oh, rest assured, it's not just fatties.

I've been first to the circle in my 75 KPH Archer.

It's just rank cowardice; baddies more concerned with protecting their precious K/D than winning the match.

Figured that this might be one of the biggest 'motivators' for hiders. I wonder if they realise that the best way to preserve K/D is to make sure that the enemy dies before their team does? After all, a dead enemy is one that can't do damage back.

Lykaon, on 11 October 2017 - 02:46 AM, said:

I agree because it's actually not a very complex issue to solve. You just need co-operation.

Assaults initiate a push...
Heavy mechs rotate forward of the assaults literally blocking fire if needed to allow assault mechs cooling time
Mediums pick off the weakened enemy
Lights sow confusion from flanks or rear picking off damaged or over heating enemy mechs


Another attack formation players should learn is the wheel.

Slowest mechs are the "hub" and the "spoke" of the wheel is made up of mechs progressing outward from the "hub" in order of speed. Slowest closest to the center.

The hub is the anchor that dictates the place of the engagement. The spokes swing out clockwise or counter clockwise (depending on enemy possitions) to flush the enemy in front of the "hub" mechs.

If you enemy remains in possition and does not fall back (to end up in front of the "hub") the spoke wraps around the enemy formation encircling it and the HUB moves inward.

This gives the possitioning of the battle to the slowest mechs in the formation yet still leverages the speed of faster mechs.

I wish this could actually be reality in a PUG match, but...a fox can dream :C The level of teamwork achieved is greater than what my poor D20 can roll out of the MM.

[VXJaeger]

Best player will be the one who superiorly hides behind meatwall and rakes dmg & easy kills from there.

[Athom83]

OP, I don't know either. I'm usually the first on my team to contact the enemy in my Highlander and Atlas.

[TWIAFU]

VXJaeger, on 11 October 2017 - 03:02 AM, said:

Best player will be the one who superiorly hides behind meatwall and rakes dmg & easy kills from there.

While that "best player' is playing only for himself in a team based game, that 'best player' still looses. That 'best player' is sitting in the back sandbagging and ofc is last alive and, not surprisingly, once targetted by enemy, cannot fight at all.

That 'best player' is the worse player to have on your team.

That 'best player' think's he is the best and takes that false assumption into CW and we all know what happens then...

[Skipmagnet]

I combat this in two ways: 1) Voting for game modes that don't require my team to do anything complicated and 2) Recognizing that as a player of Light mechs, my team is not going to do a God damned thing to help me, even if I ask. Such is life in YoloQ. You want different, go play in GroupQ or FP with the seal clubbers.

[Dogstar]

Lykaon, on 11 October 2017 - 02:34 AM, said:

tick tock tick tock

While everyone is waiting around the clock is ticking

30 seconds
20 seconds
10 seconds
5
4
3
2
1

LOSS!

Someone needs to anchor if the enemy has done so. It's a limitation of the game mode. I have seen several Dominations where noone from my team anchors the point long enough for anyone to get into possition to actually fight.

tick tock... someone needs to hold the clock.

This is why I think there should be a ring of hostile turrets and fortifications surrounding the capture zone. That way no one can capture the zone until most of the team is close enough to take out the defenses that would be too much for a light or two.

I realise it would introduce other complications but at least we'd all get some mindless destruction in and it would increase the tactical choices.

[adamts01]

Fox With A Shotgun, on 10 October 2017 - 09:52 PM, said:

I don't know what drives fatmech pilots to do this, but I want to find out. Please. Just help me figure this one out.

Bad builds. If they're not set up to trade then they'll hang back till someone else does the hard work. During my week back I stopped running anything but big alpha trading machines, because half my team was apparently made up of "support" mechs and didn't feel like shooting the bad guys. Probably the same guys saying their "mech isn't bad, you just have to play it right". Which usually means waiting till a teammate is getting focused to step out and deal some damage without taking any in return.

[Asym]

There is a saying: "You can only reap what you've sown"....

Last night, MM decided that a QP team needed only 2 mediums... 6 seconds left till a slow medium followed by a fast heavy stopped the clock. Guess what happened to those two........with the other team having 6 or 7 lights and mediums waiting for them? A massacre. Was the "team" negligent? No. Simple physics: we lacked the speed and the distance was too great....... Big loss.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the MWO culture has changed and is fragmenting into niches that are incompatiable...

The founders can't seem to grasp where the current generation of pilots is coming from and those of us new to MWO, weren't here at the beginning so we really don't know or care (for me, intentionally because of the very bad reviews.)
Then, there are the competitive crew who've mastered the algorithms of the game and gleefully exploit them on a massive scale driving new players out... Farming, seal clubbing, etc...
Then there are, as you'all have named them, "whales" who like to buy stuff and play MWO; some good, some bad and they don't care which way MWO goes because this game is fun for them.
Then there are the casual players who bop in and bop out and play multiple games and really care but, have other priorities....

See where this is going. MWO has grown and evolved into "something else" and lacks a strategic focus so that we are all headed in the same direction. Right now, we're wandering and what is called "adaptive friction" is building (read Toffler's and Maslow's seminal works on those theories...)

To quote a movie: "You can't stop the signal Mel......" and you can't stop "social groups" from evolving towards or away from new technologies...... MWO lacks a purpose anymore because the e-Sports trend has no appeal to the masses..... All of the "balancing efforts" are fueling change no one really understands and that is the source of the "adaptive friction"..... faction play is dead and faction play is the real reason MWO exists because that is where the "story line is..." It is the "signal" and has been for decades in the MW universe.... A strategic focus.....

PGI needs to anchor MWO to "something" and make whatever that is rock solid, technically first rate and then convince us, the average players, that it is for us these changes will improve the game...... If not, there won't be enough players to do anything.

Edited by Asym, 11 October 2017 - 05:46 AM.

[James Argent]

If you're in a fast mech and you're holding the circle alone, just watch your minimap and when the rest of your team stops, inform them that "if you don't get moving again I'll come join you, because everybody knows that grouping up is important. I've held the circle long enough for you to find your position, that should be good enough for me as well."

[Bombast]

Asym, on 11 October 2017 - 05:45 AM, said:

The founders can't...

More on point, the hell is your post trying to say? It's a bunch of random remarks barely related to each other, let alone the topic. How does the Founders being 'out of touch' make mechs slow? How does a whale make people into pokers who refuse to advance? How does the random book you happen to be reading relate to all this gibberish?

On a larger scale, Asym, you really need to learn to cut down on the pointless, random, unrelated fluff and just type what you mean. Stop tap dancing and spit it out.

[Ghogiel]

The issue is more to do with potatoes thinking they have to hold the circle. They probably don't know you can just shoot mechs instead. I find myself forever telling people you don't have to go into the circle on Dom to stop the timer. Just shoot more.

Protip- There is no need to be in the circle in Dom> as long as you are shooting potatoes trying to "hold the circle" you're good. Which should be easy enough because QP is full of plebs trying to do just that.

Dom Grim is a good example of a map where it's not necessary to "scout" or "hold the circle".
You can pretty much stop the timer indefinitely here> this is because pug teams usually have 1 or 2 glue eating potatoes "holding the circle", even though it's a big death bowl and not worth being in unless you are just going to imediately cross to the otherside, meanwhile the rest of the team are terriscared potatoes sitting back, in which case, you can just drop strikes all day until they give up "holding"/die, or get angles and pwn the leeroy holders with direct fire without commiting too much into bad positions, Or just push and pwn them if the rest of their team sits back too much. Both instances the plebs "holding the circles" have no idea what they are doing and probably think they were actually stopping the timer or being a team player. And then dieing without doing much shooting, and then blaming their team for their own incompetence.

Wasting any armor to primarily "hold" is dumb. get angles to shoot, lighter and faster mechs should be doing that and not leeroy holding anything. They have the ability to repos best to achieve that.

[Bombast]

Ghogiel, on 11 October 2017 - 06:12 AM, said:

The issue is more to do with potatoes thinking they have to hold the circle. They probably don't know you can just shoot mechs instead.

I've heard people say that, all the time, in game. Always from people outside the circle.

Always lose those matches.

[Ghogiel]

Bombast, on 11 October 2017 - 06:13 AM, said:

I've heard people say that, all the time, in game. Always from people outside the circle.

Always lose those matches.

Don't get your point, You say that like to imply that they capped you out a lot , but since 99% of the time the Dom timer doesn't count out until every mech is dead, maybe the other team was simply positioning and shooting better.

[Bombast]

Ghogiel, on 11 October 2017 - 06:20 AM, said:

Don't get your point, You say that like to imply that they capped you out a lot , but since 99% of the time the Dom timer doesn't count out until every mech is dead, maybe the other team was simply positioning and shooting better.

No. We got capped out.

I'm not even kidding or exaggerating. Whenever I see someone say 'Just shoot in,' we lose, usually with 4+ mechs alive. It's a bad strategy to run an entire match, and its barely a good one to run for 20 seconds - A person in the circle is putting pressure on the cap 100% of the time. A person 'shooting in' is only helping for as long as the enemy team is stupid enough to sit out in his field of view. As soon as they catch on, all they need to do is reposition, and either wait for the timer to run out, or for the enemy team to panic and come in half assed.

Certainly, trying to cram 12 people into the circle is stupid - Not everyone needs to be in there. But someone has to be either in there, or maneuvering to enter, all the time. Sharing the circle is the only thing that 100% will stop it.

[Ghogiel]

Bombast, on 11 October 2017 - 06:28 AM, said:

No. We got capped out.

I'm not even kidding or exaggerating. Whenever I see someone say 'Just shoot in,' we lose, usually with 4+ mechs alive. It's a bad strategy to run an entire match, and its barely a good one to run for 20 seconds - A person in the circle is putting pressure on the cap 100% of the time. A person 'shooting in' is only helping for as long as the enemy team is stupid enough to sit out in his field of view. As soon as they catch on, all they need to do is reposition, and either wait for the timer to run out, or for the enemy team to panic and come in half assed.

Certainly, trying to cram 12 people into the circle is stupid - Not everyone needs to be in there. But someone has to be either in there, or maneuvering to enter, all the time. Sharing the circle is the only thing that 100% will stop it.

sounds like a you issue. I suggest you learn to try shooting the mechs youself to stop the timer. that way you won't be getting capped out.

Irony is only times I see the dom timer run out with out 12 people dead is some noob light running away at the end or some lurm potato hiding in the back about to get rolled.

[Bombast]

Ghogiel, on 11 October 2017 - 06:38 AM, said:

sounds like a you issue. I suggest you learn to try shooting the mechs youself to stop the timer. that way you won't be getting capped out.

I'm always long dead by then, because I have better things to do than sit 500 meters away from an objective, wondering why the enemy in the circle refuses to come out and let me reset the time by pinging them.

Frankly, i"m trying to figure out how you think this works. All but maybe 3 domination circles have ample cover to prevent people being shot from most directions. How exactly do you reset a hiding Cheetah?

Edited by Bombast, 11 October 2017 - 06:43 AM.

[Bigbacon]

they dothis because they will just get 90 point alpha melted as soon as they show up while the medium mech that did it waltzes off unfazed.

[Rakshasa]

There are several reasons thicc mechs might hang back. When I'm in my SNV, for example, I know that, because I have an XL300 engine that propels me at the blinding speed of 54kmh, if I make a mistake in positioning then I'm probably buggered. This can be compounded by where the rest of the team are, where the rest of the enemy team might be, availability of cover, sight lines, exposure to LRM fire, the current phase of the moon, whether the stars are right and R'lyeh rises and so on.

Sometimes I also hang back because my lasers can reach out and touch fluffy tail targets effectively at around 1km, and the enemy are wandering past out of cover and unable to return fire. Shaving a few tons of armour off the enemy team, even if it's a bit beyond optimal range, serves the Greater Good once the teams collide.

This doesn't mean there aren't heavies and assaults who hang back because they want to preserve their KDR, or who wait to mop up the stragglers for easy rewards once the heavy lifting has been done. There are, absolutely, and in QP you see them all the time. There are valid reasons for the big boys to hang back too, is all I'm saying.

Edited by Rakshasa, 11 October 2017 - 06:48 AM.

[Bombast]

Rakshasa, on 11 October 2017 - 06:46 AM, said:

...When I'm in my SNV, for example, I know that, because I have an XL300 engine that propels me at the blinding speed of 54kmh...

Generally speaking, it's not the Supernova running an XL300 that's a problem. It's the jerk running a 250, puttering around at 45kph and taking snack breaks behind every bit of cover from spawn to objective that's the issue.

EDIT: And thank you for actually putting a decent engine into your Supernova. The teams that don't have to watch you die alone 200 meters away from where you spawned appreciate it, I assure you.

Edited by Bombast, 11 October 2017 - 06:55 AM.