15 replies to this topic

[Lethus]

Was wondering if anyone could provide some insight or drop me some knowledge.

I have been playing MWO on and off more or less since Beta. and I do in principle enjoy and like that game.

1) If I play solo, great. I have good games, I get 500ish damage and the odd kill in my mediums upwards. I win, I lose it seems ok really.

However....if I team up in a Duo with my brother it becomes frustrating to the point I almost want to quit the game. We will have game after game of being trashed more or less 12 - 0. night after night, and sometimes magically we will have a night where we win most games. However more often than not we're getting Nascar'd to oblivion.... whats up??? can anyone explain why this is? or what I/we can do to change this? Oddly We've found the more people on our team who are in the same clan the worse the team does .


2) Slightly different point, but was wondering where I could be going wrong, I enjoy playing all types of mechs. But Lights are becoming near unplayable for me. I have a Raven, Spider, Piranha, Mist Lynx, 3 Kit foxes, 3 Adders.

My adders are fine and my kit foxes are reasonable

Anything else. I die way to fast. Especially the Raven. I've put skills in mobility and survival and despite running about at a fair 147kph it seems I'm only good for 1 or 2 shots from anything and I'm dead (no exaggeration) Even a glancing sweep from a laser seems to put my arms and torso pieces orange..... I haven't changed the armour drastically other than shift some from the rear to the front. The same goes for my other lights in just varying degrees, the mist lynx is the next on the list that gets fragged as soon as a mech looks at me, then spider, and then piranha (that seems to take more of a beating).

The confusion comes from when I see other lights they seem to take WAAAY more damage than what I would. I try to torso twist and spread the best I can but when you only take 2-5 shots there's not much I can do.....

i know it's hard to decipher from someones forum ramblings but is there something that I could be doing catastrophically wrong?

[RickySpanish]

In group drop mode, I don't know if the MM makes any connection with your pilot skill. In general you will want to pick complimentary builds and work together to focus targets, otherwise you are essentially two single player buddies in a setting where everyone else will be playing in 2s or more.

Regarding your 'Mech survivability, it's hard to tell. The Raven is a bit of an easy target and so is the Spider, the Flea on the other hand is very hard to hit. Maybe your 'Mech choice is affecting you? How do you fair in a Commando? Perhaps latency could also be an issue, if you have a high ping you might be getting hit from "nowhere" with no chance to react.

Edited by RickySpanish, 27 June 2018 - 10:16 AM.

[Lethus]

RickySpanish, on 27 June 2018 - 10:12 AM, said:

In group drop mode, I don't know if the MM makes any connection with your pilot skill. In general you will want to pick complimentary builds and work together to focus targets, otherwise you are essentially two single player buddies in a setting where everyone else will be playing in 2s or more.

Regarding your 'Mech survivability, it's hard to tell. The Raven is a bit of an easy target and so is the Spider, the Flea on the other hand is very hard to hit. Maybe your 'Mech choice is affecting you? How do you fair in a Commando? Perhaps latency could also be an issue, if you have a high ping you might be getting hit from "nowhere" with no chance to react.

Me and my bro probably could work together a bit better the only problem I see is I don't see how much of a difference that would make when we lose 12 - 0. But Indeed we could work together better


Thanks, I haven't tried a commando in fairness. My ping is probably between 60 -100 varying from server to server. But maybe it's something to keep an eye on.

The mechs I currently have ready to go and use are the mechs I listed earlier and....

Mediums: ShadowHawk, Nova, Stormcrow

Heavy: Mad Dog, Summoner, Orion,

Assault: Atlas, Highlander, Awesome and a Dire Wolf

All of which i die in fairly quick to be fair if I'm not careful, I'd say the shadowhawk is probably the most sucessful mech of the lot.

I do tend to be a bit aggressive sometimes and flank (which I've learnt now is a waste of time really)

I guess it's somewhat hard to comment without knowing the exact loadouts and what I'm doing etc. But Something is a bit off .


I will try a commando out see what happens.

Thanks.

[Haipyng]

Lethus, on 27 June 2018 - 10:08 AM, said:

Was wondering if anyone could provide some insight or drop me some knowledge.

I have been playing MWO on and off more or less since Beta. and I do in principle enjoy and like that game.

1) If I play solo, great. I have good games, I get 500ish damage and the odd kill in my mediums upwards. I win, I lose it seems ok really.

However....if I team up in a Duo with my brother it becomes frustrating to the point I almost want to quit the game. We will have game after game of being trashed more or less 12 - 0. night after night, and sometimes magically we will have a night where we win most games. However more often than not we're getting Nascar'd to oblivion.... whats up??? can anyone explain why this is? or what I/we can do to change this? Oddly We've found the more people on our team who are in the same clan the worse the team does .

GP Match Maker only tries to make 12-man teams with what it is given for groups. There is no other filtering happening. No PSR or ELO measuring. It's only nod to balance is that the larger your group is, the lower the combined tonnage you are allowed to take out. This results in some wildly unbalanced matches. Either one team is way heavy, or way light. Skills are all over the map and could be stacked for you, or against you. It's the Wild-West. Playing for a time in GP and dropping back into QP makes QP MM look fair and well balanced.

Usually (but not always) landing on a larger group with same tags is a boon for you. Of course they might just be screwing around or having an off game. People are human. One drawback of the tonnage system that may be happening is you are dropping in light and medium mechs on your two man and getting paired with a team that is tonnage choked because of their size. So your team can have a serious tonnage handicap right from the start. Two mans should almost always drop with heavy or assault mechs because of that.

[Nightbird]

Don't use the commando or any light. Start with the heavy and assault classes (speed 60+), those are the easiest to learn.

[Vesper11]

GQ sucks, MM doesn't exist there, MWO has no casual friendly group play mode.

When using fast mechs always use terrain to your advantage and change approach vectors (attacking from the direction of your team isn't recommended). Raids should be short and targets (and location) switched pretty fast if you see that you draw someone's attention, if not, enjoy assault/heavy butts. Getting agro and breaking (LoS) line of sight to shoot another guy is beneficial to team as that will break coordination, sap attention and make enemy waste time trying to target you, and IF you agro someone (slow) so hard it chases you, you can draw that mech away from the team meaning that they have one guy less in a teamfight. Also don't be afraid to get heat (with overdrive as a precaution) and retreat to cool down. Oh, and, never run in straight line, especially away from someone, speeding up and slowing down a bit might help too.

[Daggett]

Nightbird, on 27 June 2018 - 10:40 AM, said:

Don't use the commando or any light. Start with the heavy and assault classes (speed 60+), those are the easiest to learn.

I agree to fast heavies (with 70+ kph, better 80+), but assaults are a different story. They are often the ones who decide when and where to push and mediums and heavies tend to gravitate around them as long as they are not in nascar-mode.

Which brings me to the next point: Even with 60+ kph an assault can easily be left behind during nascar if the pilot does not realize that nascar is happening or is unable to focus on keeping up or cutting corners. Many assault players tunnel-vision on some enemy and are then wondering where their team is gone..

In my opinion assaults and lights are the classes which are the hardest to play correctly. Of cause you probably learn the game faster when running these because those punish mistakes much harder, but because of that i don't think that this learning process is easier...

Vesper11, on 27 June 2018 - 11:02 AM, said:

GQ sucks, MM doesn't exist there, MWO has no casual friendly group play mode.

When using fast mechs always use terrain to your advantage and change approach vectors (attacking from the direction of your team isn't recommended). Raids should be short and targets (and location) switched pretty fast if you see that you draw someone's attention, if not, enjoy assault/heavy butts. Getting agro and breaking (LoS) line of sight to shoot another guy is beneficial to team as that will break coordination, sap attention and make enemy waste time trying to target you, and IF you agro someone (slow) so hard it chases you, you can draw that mech away from the team meaning that they have one guy less in a teamfight. Also don't be afraid to get heat (with overdrive as a precaution) and retreat to cool down. Oh, and, never run in straight line, especially away from someone, speeding up and slowing down a bit might help too.

I agree that MWO does not support bro-play. One reason a good friend of mine left the game was because as a lower-tier casual player he had no chance against the coordinated sharks in GQ when we played together.

Some extensions to your hints:
Attacking from the direction of your team can be stronger than flanking in some situations. For example if your assaults and heavies push you can fire on their targets from second line unscathed while they are drawing the enemy fire. Who would shoot a flea zipping around behind that Annihilator he supports?

I had countless situations where i was flanking and had to cut through 10pts of back-armor while the front armor was already opened by my team. If you add the time needed to get into such flanking positions it's quite often more efficient to just stay with your group and help focusing down their targets.

The trick is of cause to anticipate when a push on either side is happening and be at the right position when things start to roll.

Regarding override: I can only advise using override on lights if you are a very competent light pilot with good trigger discipline so you only scratch that heat-limit slightly.
That's because heat damage does not seem to scale with weight so a light gets the same heat damage as an assault. The result is that even a couple seconds on override can kill you, especially if you run XL and/or 20t lights. The more structure you have the safer it is to use override.

Lethus, on 27 June 2018 - 10:08 AM, said:

Anything else. I die way to fast. Especially the Raven.

In my opinion Ravens are the easiest to kill. If you want to learn light gameplay i'd rather start with an Arctic Cheetah or Wolfhound. Or fast mediums that play similar to lights like the Cicada or Assassin. All those are fast enough, pack enough firepower and are quite sturdy so you may survive one or two mistakes.

I bet you will have much more success with these than with the Raven or a glass-cannon like the Piranha.

Edited by Daggett, 28 June 2018 - 03:24 AM.

[Anastasius Foht]

Lethus, on 27 June 2018 - 10:08 AM, said:

Was wondering if anyone could provide some insight or drop me some knowledge.


Anything else. I die way to fast. Especially the Raven. I've put skills in mobility and survival

Never. Touch. Survival. Tree. As. Light. Mech. (Urbie is not light its disguised heavy)
Also - if ur mech is not have 6-8 ballistic slots use 500m+ range weapons to success (not lurms, have lrm5x2 scout in my game it was pathetic). Peek- hide, peek -hide to infinity.

[mailin]

I agree with the comment to not take assaults right away. As far as group play goes and MM, I was under the impression that it averages the PSR of each group then tries to group groups together with the same numbers. However, it only tries. After a certain time limit that restriction gets loosened. Also, as a 2 man you will sometimes drop with a whole bunch of randoms and face an 8-12 man group. I was having issues when grouping with my son who wasn't very good. Our average was T3, so it put us against T1 players sometimes. I was often fine, but he would die and get really frustrated. He has gotten better now so that it's much less an issue.

As far as mechs go, make sure you load up the armor. Especially on lights. If you need to, lower the armor on the head. (I generally run 4-6 on my head in all mechs.)

Survival tree . . . load it up on ALL mechs. Don't worry so much about firepower tree on lights. Mobility, survival and sensor are your friends. Also I LOVE dropping artillery strikes.

[Daggett]

Anastasius Foht, on 28 June 2018 - 02:30 AM, said:

Never. Touch. Survival. Tree. As. Light. Mech. (Urbie is not light its disguised heavy)
Also - if ur mech is not have 6-8 ballistic slots use 500m+ range weapons to success (not lurms, have lrm5x2 scout in my game it was pathetic). Peek- hide, peek -hide to infinity.

Never say never.

It all depends on your build. For instance if you want to knife-fight with MGs you don't need much from the firepower tree except the ammo-nodes and nothing from operations which usually leaves enough points left for survival.

And in such exposure-heavy playstyles the ~10 additional points of armor/structure can indeed make a difference, for example if your ST or Leg survives a dual-gauss hit or not.

If you do peek-a-boo at longer ranges however you can indeed do well without survival-nodes since you will receive much less return fire.

Another story are quirks. If your mech has serious armor/structure quirks like the Mist Lynx, Panther or Wolfhound then you will get much more out of the survival tree so it can even make sense on mid- and long-range builds.

Regarding mechs that are not mg-heavy: Keep in mind that 500m+ weapons have quite low dps (either because they are too heavy to boat on lights or are too hot) thus limiting your total damage potential during good opportunities. You will have to work very hard to get some nice scores within a typical 5min QP match.

So personally i'm more a fan of the 150-300m range bracket where i can boat cold and light weapons to reach some respectable sustained dps while still being quite safe from return fire when i did my positioning right and know my escape routes.

[Anastasius Foht]

Daggett, on 28 June 2018 - 04:11 AM, said:

Never say never.

It all depends on your build. For instance if you want to knife-fight with MGs you don't need much from the firepower tree except the ammo-nodes and nothing from operations which usually leaves enough points left for survival.

And in such exposure-heavy playstyles the ~10 additional points of armor/structure can indeed make a difference, for example if your ST or Leg survives a dual-gauss hit or not.

If you do peek-a-boo at longer ranges however you can indeed do well without survival-nodes since you will receive much less return fire.

Another story are quirks. If your mech has serious armor/structure quirks like the Mist Lynx, Panther or Wolfhound then you will get much more out of the survival tree so it can even make sense on mid- and long-range builds.

Regarding mechs that are not mg-heavy: Keep in mind that 500m+ weapons have quite low dps (either because they are too heavy to boat on lights or are too hot) thus limiting your total damage potential during good opportunities. You will have to work very hard to get some nice scores within a typical 5min QP match.

So personally i'm more a fan of the 150-300m range bracket where i can boat cold and light weapons to reach some respectable sustained dps while still being quite safe from return fire when i did my positioning right and know my escape routes.

Do you realise if ur side torso armor is 22 max its pontless to spent 16 skill tree points to get +20% on top of it (+3/4 armor lmao). You can add firepower (for example) and pwn enemys instead ( more effective way). Can agree its more effective if you choose long range fight (smart way) and tear ur enemy backs from 600m away and instant hiding after that. Close combat scouts rely on their teams too much, if your team is not aggressive (low count of good T1 players) you barely can get nice brawl without instant response.

[Daggett]

Anastasius Foht, on 28 June 2018 - 04:39 AM, said:

Do you realise if ur side torso armor is 22 max its pontless to spent 16 skill tree points to get +20% on top of it (+3/4 armor lmao). You can add firepower (for example) and pwn enemys instead ( more effective way).

Sure, but you forgot to factor in the structure. Take the Piranha for example: Max possible armor on front + structure together already is 30pts for an ST.

But without survivability nodes you will not only exactly lose that torso to typical dual gauss or 2xPPC + AC10 alphas, you will also have no back armor. 4 pts more armor not only give you the one point needed to survive such a hit, you also have some left to survive further damage or bolster your rear-armor. Then add some more structure points and you will not only take the dual gauss but also some strafing laser-ticks, LBX-pellets or AC2 hits to your ST.

Sure it's not huge, but it can help on some builds which do not need much from the other trees.

But here comes the REAL deal:
The surviability tree gives you additional tonnage if you scale down your extra armor to match regular values. So you can build your mech with the same HP values as before, but you will have about 0.5 - 1t more space to pimp your firepower on most mechs depending on quirks and your will to exchange armor for structure. I'm sure i don't need to explain how valuable this extra tonnage can be on a 20t mech...

You can also see it the other way around: If 3-4 pts of additional armor is not worth it, then why do we fully armor the torsos on our lights in the first place instead of investing that tonnage into more firepower? Why not run our lights with stock armor-values? Because on many builds every point can matter.

So basically the survivability-tree is free tonnage which you CAN spend on additional armor or on better equipment. Both ways may probably be worth more than additional firepower-nodes, depending on the build.

Edited by Daggett, 28 June 2018 - 05:52 AM.

[Asym]

It's all about population.... My friends and I dropped and we always see an 20/80% W/L. We lose far more often than we win.... Solo, I see about 50-50.

Effectiveness is tied to population. The older and more skilled what's left playing the game, the > the number of stomps....

Called skills concentration among low populations; because, there are so many fewer new players that experienced players who have "hung on" to MWO. you are playing "what's left" and they may just be a lot of very good to above average pilots...

Who knows but I'm down to just playing events and that seems to work "ok"....

Edited by Asym, 28 June 2018 - 09:36 AM.

[Vaalkimai]

A buddy and myself had a match where our side had 9 guys in a group (same tags different group than friend and I) and the enemy team was either all or 9+ same tags.

The enemy had 6, 100 ton assault mechs. 3 Fafnir, Two annilators and I think an atlas? My buddy and I were the only assaults on our side from what I could tell. Even then I was a warhawk, 85ton and he was in an ASP 90 ton. Now I took one of the first shots and the enemy team proceeded to primary me, chasing me around cover even. My buddy then noticed the three Fafnir as he proceeded to get pummeled....lol.

My warhawk and his ASP didn't last long (our fault). However the group we were with managed to last for a bit, losing by only 3 mechs I think. Needless to say it was pretty ridiculous as I thought that was never supposed to happen. We had a good laugh at the snowballs chance we had though.

[Wil McCullough]

Asym, on 28 June 2018 - 09:35 AM, said:

It's all about population.... My friends and I dropped and we always see an 20/80% W/L. We lose far more often than we win.... Solo, I see about 50-50.

Effectiveness is tied to population. The older and more skilled what's left playing the game, the > the number of stomps....

Called skills concentration among low populations; because, there are so many fewer new players that experienced players who have "hung on" to MWO. you are playing "what's left" and they may just be a lot of very good to above average pilots...

Who knows but I'm down to just playing events and that seems to work "ok"....

Yup stomps happen more when skill rises because of the snowball effect that comes with no respawn.

When pilots can coordinate and shoot at isolated components, matches snowball quickly into stomps once mistakes are made or risky plays backfire.

Stomps happen less in qp because pilots are usually doing their own thing so there's less punishment for mistakes and risky play. You peek a second or third time from the same corner against semi-coordinated teams and you'll get blown up as an example. In qp, you can keep humping the same corner or ridge until the end of days cos everyone seems to be having their own little duel.

[Anjian]

Lethus, on 27 June 2018 - 10:08 AM, said:

Was wondering if anyone could provide some insight or drop me some knowledge.

I have been playing MWO on and off more or less since Beta. and I do in principle enjoy and like that game.

1) If I play solo, great. I have good games, I get 500ish damage and the odd kill in my mediums upwards. I win, I lose it seems ok really.

However....if I team up in a Duo with my brother it becomes frustrating to the point I almost want to quit the game. We will have game after game of being trashed more or less 12 - 0. night after night, and sometimes magically we will have a night where we win most games. However more often than not we're getting Nascar'd to oblivion.... whats up??? can anyone explain why this is? or what I/we can do to change this? Oddly We've found the more people on our team who are in the same clan the worse the team does .


2) Slightly different point, but was wondering where I could be going wrong, I enjoy playing all types of mechs. But Lights are becoming near unplayable for me. I have a Raven, Spider, Piranha, Mist Lynx, 3 Kit foxes, 3 Adders.

My adders are fine and my kit foxes are reasonable

Anything else. I die way to fast. Especially the Raven. I've put skills in mobility and survival and despite running about at a fair 147kph it seems I'm only good for 1 or 2 shots from anything and I'm dead (no exaggeration) Even a glancing sweep from a laser seems to put my arms and torso pieces orange..... I haven't changed the armour drastically other than shift some from the rear to the front. The same goes for my other lights in just varying degrees, the mist lynx is the next on the list that gets fragged as soon as a mech looks at me, then spider, and then piranha (that seems to take more of a beating).

The confusion comes from when I see other lights they seem to take WAAAY more damage than what I would. I try to torso twist and spread the best I can but when you only take 2-5 shots there's not much I can do.....

i know it's hard to decipher from someones forum ramblings but is there something that I could be doing catastrophically wrong?

Do you check your ping?


I don't suggest you play lights if you have high ping. Same experience and reasons for me, in addition to experiencing desyncs and the server suddenly relocating me to a place I shouldn't be but it thought I should be.