83 replies to this topic

[Funk1777]

Strikes do a lot of damage, you can go stealth light and suicide early on and get 400 damage from strikes and a couple salvos before you pop. You can be a meatshield being the tip of the spear and get focused down as your team mates use you for cover and get sub 100 dmg and still be useful. Strike lockouts cause a lot of damage disparity as people just hammer the button to get them down at the ideal time and lock the rest of the team out of using them at that perfect moment. I got a 600 damage game in a piranha and only actually shot and killed 1 person. I'm pretty sure 550 of that was strike damage.

In solo qp you never know what your team is going to actually do so it's harder to gauge how aggressive you should be and you either pressure too fast or get stuck behind the good shooters mowing down enemies and blocking the firing lanes and it leads to some sad damage matches.

[cougurt]

Bohxim, on 06 February 2018 - 07:30 PM, said:

In fairness, I've seen aggressive urbie and other light play and even soemtimes they out damage the assault lance while still defending the objectives.
Imo mwo game play mechanics and reward systems tend to favor the fight over the objective play. Heck, most of my losses are better paying than the early game objective wins. So it's reasonable that most ppl out a heavier sense of importance on damage numbers

conquest is pretty much the only mode with a relevant objective, and you still generally need to keep up on kills in order to survive long enough for a cap win.

[Jackal Noble]

Where the hell is McGral on this thread? He's got plenty to say regarding scores..

[Bombast]

JackalBeast, on 06 February 2018 - 08:36 PM, said:

Where the hell is McGral on this thread? He's got plenty to say regarding scores..

He ran through and liked stuff. Guess he doesn't feel the need to get involved himself.

[Humpday]

Ok so here is somewhat, of what damage should look like when everyone pitches in and does work.
8 people were in the upper end of 350+ and not 1 or 2 people were just absolutely destroying the other team. Some people got caught but you know, it happens, plus kitfoxes aren't exactly known to rack up tons of damage, but the rest of the team was able to work together to damage the enemy team together. Not one person heavily outscored everyone because the entire team worked as a unit.

Take note here, that this wasn't a full rofl stomp, up until the end there we were struggling.

Now look at the whole of the entire enemy team 1 person broke 400, and the other only 300, barely. Now what do you think would have happened if say, 4-5 of those guys merely broke 400? They could have changed the course of the game and taken the win.

Damage...damage your opponent. If they have no armor, they die.



Anyway, thats the last for me this thread. I've lost interest. Like talking to rocks....oh sorry potatoes.

Edited by Humpday, 06 February 2018 - 09:16 PM.

[ANOM O MECH]

JackalBeast, on 06 February 2018 - 08:36 PM, said:

Where the hell is McGral on this thread? He's got plenty to say regarding scores..

Yeah we are saving the talent for the last push.

He's the closer.

[r4zen]

PoohPuss, on 05 February 2018 - 04:47 PM, said:

If the above is correct it seems to me that high damage output is only a badge of honor if there are only a few on a team acieving it, simply showing that there are players of differing experience and skill in the match? Or would that be a misconception?

It's mostly a misconception. I started to to write a long, detailed response to this, but instead I've decided to be brief:

• Damage alone with no context is relatively meaningless - though as a general rule it is absolutely true that if you can deal much more damage than an opposing team, you are much more likely to cripple or destroy their 'mechs and therefore win
  
• While CT killshots are the most efficient way to outright destroy enemy 'mechs (IS XL 'mechs aside), because 'mechs have distinct hitboxes it is impossible for even the most skilled (or aimbotting) player to exclusively hit this component with every shot or every tic of a laserburn - the difficulty increases against an opponent who knows how to use terrain, non-critical components as a shield, or knows they can simply out-tank your CT shots and kill you first (another way to look at this: as a player receiving damage, you want to spread it as wide as possible over non-critical components, so you survive longer)
  
• Damage as a metric, and associated damage-causing activities/events such as component destruction, hit-and-run, flanking, etc. are rewarded (incentivized) by game design, the more you do to even non-critical components, the more you're rewarded
  
• There are many distinct situations during gameplay where it may make more sense to aim for a non-critical component; for example, you're up against an ebon jaguar and he has his side torso exposed, dealing 50 points of damage to it (and you will be credited with an additional ~30 points of damage, for the remaining structure of the arm attached to his torso) will remove over half of his weapons and reduce his maximum speed, vs. just aiming for CT and burning armor off - and eating his full alpha in return. Now you'll stil have to get through his full CT armor/structure now, but you've just crippled him and made that an easier job for yourself. Or you can move on and leave him to limp around.

I suppose the general point of all of this is to say, of course damage isn't a complete analogue for player skill, but higher-skill players tend to do more - a lot more, on average - than lower skill players. And it's not because they're poor shots, or make a lot of bad decisions, or intentionally farm damage (but all of those things do of course occur).

[Kroete]

Escef, on 06 February 2018 - 10:17 AM, said:

What game are you guys playing? No, seriously, I regularly see matches where both top damage is below 600 and 3/4s of the winning team deals less than 400 on a regular basis. I just fail to see how you can realistically have standards like that.

Just look at the stomps,
there you can see that around 300 average damage (3600 together) of the team is enough to kill all enemys.

Bombast, on 05 February 2018 - 03:29 PM, said:

Generally speaking:

500 damage - Doing your part
600 damage - Doing really well
750 damage - Calm down and save some for the rest of us

3600 damage is more the enough to kill the enemy,
if some does only 100, some needs to do 500,
but if your team needs an average of 500 (6000 together) to win,
it should practice shooting a lot more.

Or are you talking about lrms?
Because i try to get 600 at least with my svn with missiles.

Edited by Kroete, 07 February 2018 - 03:03 AM.

[Grus]

Damage is a metric, and it is subjective. if you did 500+ damage and got 1 assist no kills.. aim buddy.. if you did 500+ damage and got 1-2 kills and 3 assists you're helping your team and "doing your part" in FP this adds up with coordination on not just movement but targeting, builds, and timing. small mistakes by one, or many, can lead to disaster quick.

So in FP the "doing your part" is going for that 2k damage over 4 mechs (if you use all 4). now this changes depending on who you drop with. if you drop with a group that doesn't need to deal a lot of damage to get a kill then the damage to kill ratio goes down.

So use the damage metric with some give, its never 100% correct.

Edited by Grus, 07 February 2018 - 11:51 AM.

[VonBruinwald]

PoohPuss, on 05 February 2018 - 03:17 PM, said:

So I'm wondering what I'm missing regarding the whole "if you do less than 2k damage you're dung" attitude?

Elitest playing with their E-Peens.

Any newb in a meta-hellbringer can score 500+ damage by hanging at the back, spamming strikes and scoring glancing blows at 1000m while the rest of his team fight on the front.

These same guys will also condescend you if you score more damage than them using lurms because "muh' effective damage". Use lasers and they'll say "muh' ppfld is better". Score solo headshots using ppfld and they'll be back to saying "I caused more damage". You can't win because their e-peen is only matched by their ego and their desperation to inflate it.

Damage will make or break a match but you don't have to be the one delivering it to be mvp (unless you only care about the scoreboard).

[Yosharian]

VonBruinwald, on 07 February 2018 - 03:56 PM, said:

Elitest playing with their E-Peens.

Any newb in a meta-hellbringer can score 500+ damage by hanging at the back, spamming strikes and scoring glancing blows at 1000m while the rest of his team fight on the front.

These same guys will also condescend you if you score more damage than them using lurms because "muh' effective damage". Use lasers and they'll say "muh' ppfld is better". Score solo headshots using ppfld and they'll be back to saying "I caused more damage". You can't win because their e-peen is only matched by their ego and their desperation to inflate it.

Damage will make or break a match but you don't have to be the one delivering it to be mvp (unless you only care about the scoreboard).

Ok there is a lot wrong with this

> Any newb in a meta-hellbringer can score 500+ damage by hanging at the back, spamming strikes and scoring glancing blows at 1000m while the rest of his team fight on the front.

A Hellbie is not an effective tanking mech. It has no armor/structure quirks and its hitboxes are not particularly strong.

It is effective at poking from range/cover, since it has high mounts and ECM (which allows it to hide better and generally be sneaky).

So the mech is very good at, as you say, hanging at the back.

Secondly, if you do 500 damage in any mech, you've done pretty well, as has been the consensus in this thread for a while. Criticism is being directed at sub-400 damage scores. 500 damage is not a poor score.

> condescend you if you score more damage than them using lurms because "muh' effective damage"

That's because LRMs are, as you say, an inefficient way of dealing damage. They spread damage across all mech components, which is not an effective way to deal damage to core components of a mech (Side torsos or CT generally). So yes, 'muh effective damage'.

> Use lasers and they'll say "muh' ppfld is better"

What. Lasers are great. Who says lasers are not good? Dunno where you got that from.

> Score solo headshots using ppfld and they'll be back to saying "I caused more damage"

I'd love to find anyone saying anything like that. What a stupid thing that would be if someone actually said it.

[Escef]

Yosharian, on 07 February 2018 - 04:39 PM, said:

Ok there is a lot wrong with this...

He does use a bit of hyperbole, but his core message, that some people will pervert metrics in such a way as to flatter themselves and berate others, is on target.

Yosharian, on 07 February 2018 - 04:39 PM, said:

> Any newb in a meta-hellbringer can score 500+ damage by hanging at the back, spamming strikes and scoring glancing blows at 1000m while the rest of his team fight on the front.

A Hellbie is not an effective tanking mech. It has no armor/structure quirks and its hitboxes are not particularly strong.

It is effective at poking from range/cover, since it has high mounts and ECM (which allows it to hide better and generally be sneaky).

So the mech is very good at, as you say, hanging at the back.

Secondly, if you do 500 damage in any mech, you've done pretty well, as has been the consensus in this thread for a while. Criticism is being directed at sub-400 damage scores. 500 damage is not a poor score.

His point here was that certain builds and tactics do not require skill, or even effectively contributing, to score good damage numbers. Just as an example, I can think of a former HHoD member that is infamous in the solo queue for using 2 or 3 ERLLs on an ECM Raven, hanging as far back from the fight as possible, and ending the match with a generous damage total while paradoxically doing very little to aid the team. (He's sniping at stragglers, going for arms when he can, etc.; but not aiding team members that are actively involved in combat.)

Yosharian, on 07 February 2018 - 04:39 PM, said:

> condescend you if you score more damage than them using lurms because "muh' effective damage"

That's because LRMs are, as you say, an inefficient way of dealing damage. They spread damage across all mech components, which is not an effective way to deal damage to core components of a mech (Side torsos or CT generally). So yes, 'muh effective damage'.

LRM's damage is inefficient, very sandblaster-ish (same for Streaks, ATMs, RACs, MRMs, LBX canons; to a lesser degree any AC2-type, multishot UACs, SRMs, and even lasers if the target is particularly cagey and your beams have a long burn time). LRMs do have an interesting psychological effect of curbing enemy aggression, but this is less pronounced at higher tiers or in the group queue (virtually non-existent against high tier groups, but high tier solo queue it is still surprisingly common).

Yosharian, on 07 February 2018 - 04:39 PM, said:

> Use lasers and they'll say "muh' ppfld is better"

What. Lasers are great. Who says lasers are not good? Dunno where you got that from.

Believe it or not, there was a time when lasers were considered to be 2nd class filler weapons, when ACs, PPCs, and Gauss ruled the battlefield. Right now, believe it or not, most weapons have some use, and are at least viable in a mid-tier poops'n'giggles build, or perhaps a very narrow-purpose filler weapon. (Despite cries otherwise, LRMs are far from useless, but they also aren't viable in top tier competitive/group play. The real lemons right now appear to be flamers, microPL, HMGs, NARC, TAG, LB5X, and LB2X. And even flamers and LB2X have some gimmicky builds that use them.)

Yosharian, on 07 February 2018 - 04:39 PM, said:

> Score solo headshots using ppfld and they'll be back to saying "I caused more damage"

I'd love to find anyone saying anything like that. What a stupid thing that would be if someone actually said it.

People that don't know you were chopping heads WILL say that. As I said earlier, some folks will twist interpretations of stats as much as possible to flatter themselves and belittle others.

At any rate, I think what a lot of us are arguing for are realistic appraisals, which are often difficult to perform.

Do you know if the Cyclops on your team moved up to an area he thought was going to be safe, got focused, lost all his guns, but barely survived, and continued to provide ECM, UAV, & seismic support while doing his best to help coordinate the team? Maybe you heard him coordinating, but the end of match results only show a Cyclops that survived the match and did 86 damage. Obviously, in that hypothetical situation, he contributed more than the numbers show. (Not common, but it does happen.)

And what about the guy on the losing team that cleared 600 damage with 2 kills and 2 assists? Did you know that his 2 kills were against a DC and an opportunity shot against a guy at 16%, and he spent the whole match trying to farm damage on assault arms and trash talking his own team? (Sadly more common than you'd think, I run into 1 or 2 like this just about every week.)

We all have our good and bad matches. I've had days where I took out a mediocre mech, got 2 matches where I scored 600+ damage each; then on the third match went somewhere I shouldn't have, didn't break 100, and got called a newb. It's like, WTF? Have 1 bad match and you're a newb? I mean, even that poor guy in 228 with that infamously dismal match in his Executioner is obviously not a bad player, but he did have a horrible match (for which I'm sure he's still catching friendly abuse from his unit-mates).

In the end, the best we can really do is work with what we've got, and try to give people that are under-performing friendly advice. And try not to be ***holes to each other.

[Relishcakes]

Bombast, on 05 February 2018 - 03:29 PM, said:

Your numbers are kind of all over the place. 500 is generally the 'You did your part' cut off, unless you did kill a bunch of people in which case you get a 'pass,' and the 2000 damage standard people throw around isn't for QP, but for FP. Because four mechs at 500 damage a piece is 2000.

Yes, efficient killing means less damage, but in practice efficient killing just means you should be shooting at something else faster. A good players damage will stay high regardless of how accurate they are simply because good players are always engaged, or trying to engage.

Generally speaking:

500 damage - Doing your part
600 damage - Doing really well
750 damage - Calm down and save some for the rest of us

If someone's racking up a crap ton of kills while doing less damage than that, that's awesome too. But I think you'll find high kill count players also have high damage averages as well.

I dunno, earlier i hit almost 800 damage and got 0 kills. I know for a fact it was because i was jumping in on the focus pile and just a coincidence that I never got the final blow..but still
I've also had a match where i hit 250 damage and 3 kills.. weird **** happens.

Edited by Relishcakes, 07 February 2018 - 09:05 PM.

[wamX]

I will say the grand majority of this thread is laughable; some very good points being made, but mostly epeen stroking about how "if you aren't as good as me you're trash".

Damage means nothing, and to an extent kills mean nothing (bear with me for a moment here)

The key component of this game is infowar.

Do you know what mech you are piloting?
Do you know what the enemy is piloting?
Have you pressed R?
Have you taken that moment to look at their paperdoll?
Have you considered what build they might be running?

In games I've targeted fresh jagermechs to see dual AC/20s or dual Gauss and the only thing ill ever say to my team is
"Target [designation], shoot sides"

That right there is "doing my part"

Maybe I'm in a LOLcust that taking on a heavy with AC/40 equiv of damage on a lucky shot would cripple or kill me and make me useless to my team. Or maybe I'm in a Battlemaster and I can tank an initial shot before punching the Jager side torso and securing a kill.

In that example I've given two ways I've both
1. done zero damage and contributed
2. done damage and contributed.

I've done 600 damage in a raven and 10 damage in an Atlas. The 12 DMG EXE meme comes to mind.

Whoever gets the kill doesn't matter, because when two or more people focus the target, it dies faster and you never know whose trigger pull will be the right one, and in the end, the team still gets 1 of 12 kills.

I wish MWO rewarded this.
Say a given mech has fresh everything but their left torso is stripped and orange. (Hypothetical)
If I push R, and the first instance of damage I do is into that torso, I should be rewarded for "Combat Efficiency" for choosing to weaken the enemy mech further than spam the trigger on the CT for a kill.

The more you communicate, the more you win.

Run with your lances, stay with your unit, do whatever you need to do to but communicate everything. The smallest "Im overheating" is enough to get a lance mate to cover you and keep you in the fight.

Edited by wamX, 08 February 2018 - 06:32 PM.

[r4zen]

wamX, on 08 February 2018 - 07:57 AM, said:

Damage means nothing, and to an extent kills mean nothing (bear with me for a moment here)
...
In games I've targeted fresh jagermechs to see dual AC/20s or dual Gauss and the only thing ill ever say to my team is
"Target [designation], shoot sides"

That right there is "doing my part"

Hyperbole aside, someone still has to do that damage that you're talking about. Yelling about open components is only helpful if someone, you know, shoots it.

wamX, on 08 February 2018 - 07:57 AM, said:

The more you communicate, the more you win.

Run with your lances, stay with your unit, do whatever you need to do to but communicate everything. The smallest "Im overheating" is enough to get a lance mate to cover you and keep you in the fight.

I feel like this is less true in Solo Queue and much more true in group or FP.

[DerHuhnTeufel]

If I saw someone with 2k damage and they didn't single handedly wipe the entire enemy team, I'd have serious concerns about their accuracy.

I can get 900 damage in a raven 3L pretty regularly. In my death's knell, breaking 500 is pretty rare, but I get way more kills in the TDK because it's all pinpoint focused, whereas most of the raven's DPS is from missiles which inevitably go all over the place.

I'm much more impressed with a high K/D ratio and low damage than I am with high damage and high kills. Sure, you could possibly leech DBs and do that but I haven't seen anyone who was good enough to do that regularly who would also need to do that.

[ramp4ge]

r4zen, on 08 February 2018 - 10:50 AM, said:

I feel like this is less true in Solo Queue and much more true in group or FP.

The only communication you need in solo queue is, at the beginning, say "murderball and push", and if they listen, you win.

In my ATM18 Cougar, which is my favorite mech right now, +-500 damage feels really rewarding, and my current average is +-350 and climbing.

I don't consider 350 average damage for a 35 ton mech to be bad at all.

Edited by ramp4ge, 08 February 2018 - 12:41 PM.

[NRP]

I'm more impressed with cooperative teammates than I am with one's individual skills.

[cougurt]

wamX, on 08 February 2018 - 07:57 AM, said:

I will say the grand majority of this thread is laughable. Some very good points being made, but mostly epeen stroking about how "if you aren't as good as me you're trash".

Damage means nothing, and to an extent kills mean nothing (bear with me for a moment here)

The key component of this game is infowar.

Do you know what mech you are piloting?
Do you know what the enemy is piloting?
Have you pressed R?
Have you taken that moment to look at their paperdoll?
Have you considered what build they might be running?

In games I've targeted fresh jagermechs to see dual AC/20s or dual Gauss and the only thing ill ever say to my team is
"Target [designation], shoot sides"

That right there is "doing my part"

Maybe I'm in a LOLcust that taking on a heavy with AC/40 equiv of damage on a lucky shot would cripple or kill me and make me useless to my team. Or maybe I'm in a Battlemaster and I can tank an initial shot before punching the Jager side torso and securing a kill.

In that example I've given two ways I've both
1. done zero damage and contributed
2. done damage and contributed.

I've done 600 damage in a raven and 10 damage in an Atlas. The 12 DMG EXE meme comes to mind.

Whoever gets the kill doesn't matter, because when two or more people focus the target, it dies faster and you never know whose trigger pull will be the right one, and in the end, the team still gets 1 of 12 kills.

I wish MWO rewarded this.
Say a given mech has fresh everything but their left torso is stripped and orange. (Hypothetical)
If I push R, and the first instance of damage I do is into that torso, I should be rewarded for "Combat Efficiency" for choosing to weaken the enemy mech further than spam the trigger on the CT for a kill.

The more you communicate, the more you win.

Run with your lances, stay with your unit, do whatever you need to do to but communicate everything. The smallest "Im overheating" is enough to get a lance mate to cover you and keep you in the fight.

i'd rather have someone who can both call out targets AND do damage. the two aren't mutually exclusive, you know. targeting enemies and identifying their loadouts is the absolute bare minimum of what should be expected from a competent player.

[Yosharian]

DerHuhnTeufel, on 08 February 2018 - 12:28 PM, said:

If I saw someone with 2k damage and they didn't single handedly wipe the entire enemy team, I'd have serious concerns about their accuracy.

I can get 900 damage in a raven 3L pretty regularly. In my death's knell, breaking 500 is pretty rare, but I get way more kills in the TDK because it's all pinpoint focused, whereas most of the raven's DPS is from missiles which inevitably go all over the place.

I'm much more impressed with a high K/D ratio and low damage than I am with high damage and high kills. Sure, you could possibly leech DBs and do that but I haven't seen anyone who was good enough to do that regularly who would also need to do that.

I'd like to see your Raven 3L's average damage?

Just curious