36 replies to this topic

[CidemRaw]

Why do people get angry over people shotcalling, no matter wether i'm the highest performer on the team or the first to go down and just trying to help the team i seem to meet alot of negative feedback, even tho i try to keep my calls to simple call outs on targets and their parts.

Even when im feeling silent and someone else does it people seem to get angry, is it just venting and something to get used to or are calling expactions higher than people expect?

[Xiphias]

I haven't personally experienced this and I don't really shot call much so it's hard for me to say for sure, but one thing I do dislike is people who die and then proceed to backseat pilot for the rest of the match. Usually it's more distracting than helpful and it's really annoying when someone who is already dead and really doesn't know what they are doing is trying to direct the team (often poorly).

I'm totally fine with people calling out crit targets/components as long as it isn't excessive. Sometimes though I hear people making really bad target calls (e.g. chasing a light or some unimportant mech) and I can understand why people would get angry at that.

Other than that, there are a lot of players in this game who have been playing for a long time and think that they know what they are doing (when really they aren't as good as they think) this subsection of players hates being told what to do and immediately gets defensive/hostile when they feel like someone is questioning their ability.

Just work your best to make good calls, try not to be excessive, listen to constructive feedback from better players, and ignore the people that are getting angry without reason.

[thievingmagpi]

a lot of people probably think they're effective target-callers, most aren't. lots of people just shout out every single target as soon as they see them. that's not every effective. it doesn't serve anyone that you saw an Atlas in Delta 5. Ok..So? What about the other 11 mechs? Is the Atlas in Delta 5 worthy of everyone's attention?

many also call out every single target as they're shooting at it. great, you're shooting at Bravo, Summoner, right torso. Is anyone else? Is anyone near you? Are there better targets?



It's not simply about brevity in terminology (designation, chassis, weak spots, location) but also brevity in use. That means calling out high priority targets- out of position mechs, over exposed mechs (and not ones just peeking since they'll be gone in a second), damaged mechs, rushing mechs, mechs that aren't a threat etc.

Instead it's usually just a lot of people shouting over comms about mechs. Great, there are 12 of them. Pare down what's important here please.

And then there's backseat drivers. So much bad advice and annoying comms occurs when there's one or two (good) players left trying to clutch. At this stage in the game people should be able to identify skilled play or at least know names of good players. Stop talking. If you know the disposition of the enemy, great. Perfect. Blood asp is halved, cyclops is red ct, and there's a fresh jenner left. That's it. Stop trying to coach people who are demonstrably better than you.

Edited by thievingmagpi, 29 May 2020 - 03:45 PM.

[LordNothing]

thievingmagpi, on 29 May 2020 - 03:45 PM, said:

a lot of people probably think they're effective target-callers, most aren't. lots of people just shout out every single target as soon as they see them. that's not every effective. it doesn't serve anyone that you saw an Atlas in Delta 5. Ok..So? What about the other 11 mechs? Is the Atlas in Delta 5 worthy of everyone's attention?

many also call out every single target as they're shooting at it. great, you're shooting at Bravo, Summoner, right torso. Is anyone else? Is anyone near you? Are there better targets?



It's not simply about brevity in terminology (designation, chassis, weak spots, location) but also brevity in use. That means calling out high priority targets- out of position mechs, over exposed mechs (and not ones just peeking since they'll be gone in a second), damaged mechs, rushing mechs, mechs that aren't a threat etc.

Instead it's usually just a lot of people shouting over comms about mechs. Great, there are 12 of them. Pare down what's important here please.

And then there's backseat drivers. So much bad advice and annoying comms occurs when there's one or two (good) players left trying to clutch. At this stage in the game people should be able to identify skilled play or at least know names of good players. Stop talking. If you know the disposition of the enemy, great. Perfect. Blood asp is halved, cyclops is red ct, and there's a fresh jenner left. That's it. Stop trying to coach people who are demonstrably better than you.

idk about that, i see a lot of games where the only people left are the campers and lermers fighting other campers-lermers. or the stealth light doing hit and runs while the rest of the team gets itself killed (and thats usually not the light's fault).

Edited by LordNothing, 29 May 2020 - 04:55 PM.

[thievingmagpi]

LordNothing, on 29 May 2020 - 04:55 PM, said:

idk about that, i see a lot of games where the only people left are the campers and lermers fighting other campers-lermers. or the stealth light doing hit and runs while the rest of the team gets itself killed (and thats usually not the light's fault).

yeah, there are lots of games where the last person left is someone chainfiring MLs or hiding in the back shooting lrms at walls.

But there are a lot of games where good players are left clutching and clearly no one has any idea that this person is putting work in. Like guys, you don't to have Jarls' List open when playing.... but it's really important to be able to identify skilled play.

Edited by thievingmagpi, 29 May 2020 - 05:05 PM.

[GuardDogg]

CidemRaw, on 29 May 2020 - 03:29 PM, said:

Why do people get angry over people shotcalling, no matter wether i'm the highest performer on the team or the first to go down and just trying to help the team i seem to meet alot of negative feedback, even tho i try to keep my calls to simple call outs on targets and their parts.

Even when im feeling silent and someone else does it people seem to get angry, is it just venting and something to get used to or are calling expactions higher than people expect?

Exactly......Welcome to MWO.

[Jackal Noble]

thievingmagpi, on 29 May 2020 - 03:45 PM, said:

a lot of people probably think they're effective target-callers, most aren't. lots of people just shout out every single target as soon as they see them. that's not every effective. it doesn't serve anyone that you saw an Atlas in Delta 5. Ok..So? What about the other 11 mechs? Is the Atlas in Delta 5 worthy of everyone's attention?

One of my largest peeves if not largest peeve is this. Right next to that is the shot caller who does such behavior and is certain that they are a great team coordinator vs actually being a tunnel visioned player that uses gullible or helpful players to stay alive often at the cost of team efficacy.

[Nesutizale]

@OP

I am allways happy when someone calls shots. Even if they aren't the best at least they try to do the "teamplay" this game should be about.

Best shotcaller was someone thatsounded like a little kid? Very child like voice at least and lots of times the shot calling wasn't greate but everyone was supporting him and went with what he said. It was a fun game even while loosing.

To my experiance shotcallers are mostly welcome. Some exceptions to it when they are just bableing nonsense but in general they are welcome.

[VonBruinwald]

CidemRaw, on 29 May 2020 - 03:29 PM, said:

people seem to get angry, is it just venting and something to get used to or are calling expactions higher than people expect?

It depends. If you're taking command and calling the shots from the start of the match there's rarely an issue. But remember the following:

• People don't like being told what to do.
  
• When they die, they'll blame the shotcaller.
  
• When they lose, they'll blame the shotcaller.
  
• When they win, the shotcaller gets credit. And they'll get jealous.

As far as actually commanding/shot calling goes:

• Take command from the start, ideally from the drop screen, you need to establish leadership before you encounter the enemy. Even if the plan is a defacto, say it anyway*.
  
• Keep communicating during the fight. If you go silent the team will lose cohesion.
  
  If you're just shotcalling, communicate why you're calling targets**.
  
• If you haven't been communicating from the start don't start once you're dead. You're a back seat pilot. The only time this is acceptable is when a newb is doing something stupid ***.

And remember KISS. Use the commander options where possible to place markers. If your instructions can't be communicated using those options you're overcomplicating things.


-----

Examples:
*"Move to E5 and hold for the assaults", "When the assaults get here push D5",

**"Maddog in D6 is isolated", "Jager has no weapons ignore", "Cyclops left torso is open", "There's a sniper shadowcat on the wall in E6". Don't call every mech you see, give your team-mates time to react on the information you have given them and act on their own initiative. Remember to pay attention to enemy composition, if they have duplicate mechs you either need to communicate clearly which one it is or get your team focusing on something else. You also need to keep an eye on the enemies movement, if the enemy is pushing tell your team (and where) so they can act accordingly.

***Feel free to tell someone their Heavy PPC doesn't work within 90 meters or recommend they twist if they can. And remember, they're learning, you need to take things slowly and not blurt out everything. Ideally, type what you're saying in chat at the same time. If you can't type it in a timely manner then they're probably too focused on the fight to listen to you in the first place.

Edited by VonBruinwald, 30 May 2020 - 04:21 AM.

[TheFourthAlly]

The above post says it pretty well I think.

I appreciate drop callers of that sort, especially when they act practical and sensible. Proper targets, clear grids. Not this 'Hold here' - (where is here?), or 'watch your flank' - (who, watch where?), 'get to *ee6' - (Wut?, B6, D6, E6, they all sound the same on mics, use Bravo, Delta, Echo etc). And yeah, a brief 'CT/ST on Mech X open' is certainly good info imo. I try to remember what I am shooting at and/or might have in range, so happy to switch targets if it can secure a kill.

I get tunnelvision as much as the next driver blasting away, so sorry if I miss some of it. That's not on the caller.

With regards to the OP, I heard a loooot of salt on comms during the week last few days. I usually don't play much outside weekend evenings, but this week I tried to churn out some extra kills for the event and I noticed seriously salty comms each evening (mind you, evening in Melbourne Australia). It included utter whining at some poor drop callers I had no issues with or lengthy monologues regarding how to play a map/mode I tuned out five words in. Seriously weird vibes.

I wonder if you suffer more at certain times of day/week?

[Nearly Dead]

As someone who has enough difficulty doing "Shoot, Move, Communicate, pick two", I appreciate people who step up and call movement and focus fire targets.

There are some callers however who stream a non stop litany of "Warhammer, right side torso open", "Wolfhound, left leg", "Catapult, right arm". Most of it is useless to me even as an ATM boat with 1200m range, since I still need LOS on a specific target to fire effectively and 9 times out of 10 I can't see the target being called due to terrain. Even on a fairly compact firing line, move two mechs down and you see a completely different set of targets, at least if you are using terrain features to shield yourself at all and not firing LRMs.

I also think part of the problem is that you now have two different groups of players, group and solo, mixing. There are a lot of angry people in the game right now, experiencing stomps, mixed up tonnages, crazy lance mixes, behaviors and attitudes they aren't used to. and it is giving some people a rash.

[Leone]

Woah. Hold up. ATM's are not 1k range weaponry. At that range you might as well pack LRMs. For the tonnage you wanna be within ~450, that's the 2 points per missile threshold. Preferable within ~270,where they're like super streaks with 3 damage a pop.

~Leone.

[LordNothing]

Leone, on 30 May 2020 - 11:14 AM, said:

Woah. Hold up. ATM's are not 1k range weaponry. At that range you might as well pack LRMs. For the tonnage you wanna be within ~450, that's the 2 points per missile threshold. Preferable within ~270,where they're like super streaks with 3 damage a pop.

~Leone.

im usually somewhere between 120 and 450 meters of my target. i at least want to hit in the 2 damage band just to make the most out of the ammo. using it for one damage is such a waste. lerm boaters aren't going to have thousands of missiles to work with. you just cant carry many. tubes are heavy and you still need more if you want any hope of punching through ams spray, this leaves little room for ammo. short of gimping your build to get more missiles (good atm builds need to be nimble) there's not anything you can do other than minimize your range to get the most out of your limited ammunition supply.

that said every now and again i will use the long range bracket either to finish of a really damaged mech off in the distance, or if im providing suppressive fire (usually while doing a push). in either case im not expecting to need to fire a whole lot of missiles or for very long. or sometimes i will fire a single long range salvo at range as a way to say hello to the enemy.

[Aidan Crenshaw]

Leone, on 30 May 2020 - 11:14 AM, said:

Woah. Hold up. ATM's are not 1k range weaponry. At that range you might as well pack LRMs. For the tonnage you wanna be within ~450, that's the 2 points per missile threshold. Preferable within ~270,where they're like super streaks with 3 damage a pop.

~Leone.

Update for you, Leone, the optimal range got reduced to 245m some time ago.

edit: correct range

Edited by Aidan Crenshaw, 02 June 2020 - 01:14 AM.

[Dakkonn]

Literally just had this happen in a game.

Started off with 2 heavies getting WAY ahead of the pack but stopped once they got to the river. OK NP.

They call out an assault trying to lone nascar. Ok cool lets pounce on it for an easy kill as a team. Enemy Light shows up as support but we kill it first in like 15 secs. (up 1-0)

But in the mean time the rest of the enemy team managed to get into a flanking position. So we are caught in the open water with zero cover getting shot at from 2 sides.

At this point I had retreated to the shore but got my butt shot off by a triple Gauss shot to my CT rear. (1-1)

I figured I was dead and no one was calling anything so I'd call targets to help. First thing I said was "Finish Beta, open red CT then retreat out of the water back into cover of H5". Most of the enemy team is in the water at this point behind the cover given by the boat (while we were just out completely in the open) but H6 to our 8 o clock had only 2 AC2 sniper medium mechs (less than 300m away). Even retreating our team would have taken less fire cause the enemies own cover would have blocked the retreat. Instead the Daishi charges the cover getting killed followed up by the sniper ERPPCx3 mech charging into melee and followed up by 2 more mechs. The other half of the team retreated but was swiftly killed due to being outnumbered.

And you guessed it. After repreatedly asking people to NOT charge blindly into the meat grinder but to simply retreat someone piped back on comms telling me to "STFU! No one wants to hear it".

I was not screaming, I didn't say anything like "stop being stupid". I just said "retreat to H6 for cover, your exposed in the river" (only half the team listening while half charges in) "your taking to much fire and getting surrounded, everyone retreat to H6"

But he felt the need to tell me so "STFU!!". So I just said, fine and let them die. Which they did in record time after that. (1-12)

Edited by Dakkonn, 31 May 2020 - 02:00 AM.

[VonBruinwald]

Dakkonn, on 31 May 2020 - 01:56 AM, said:

-snip-

Going beyond the whole "Lead from the start not when you're dead and got nothing better to do".


What happened to the people who called the Assault at the start? Did they go silent after the first kill? We're they the ones screaming abuse at the end?

You probably picked the worst time to start calling, the team is surrounded, getting shot up, panicking, and lacking organisation. It's too late to start giving orders. You say "Finish beta and move to H6" but they haven't been paying to this information from the onset. It can take a good few seconds to switch your mind-set from "shoot-red" to "target-and-grid".

The other thing that likely exasperated this was your actual orders. Remember the following:

• Pugs are stupid, try and use one instruction at a time. - "Move here." "Shoot this."
  
• Avoid using identifiers with your team (you're!)- It separate you from your team-mates and results in a Us-vs-Them mentality within the unit, use "our". The only person you need to identify is the enemy. They're who you want your team mates aggression targeted at.
  
• Retreat is for cowards - The enemy retreats, we pull-back/re-group. If you can, try and get your team to push/flank into a different grid. If you need your team to get out a grid asap, tell them the enemy is pushing it.
  
• No commentary/narration - I know I'm getting shot up, I don't need you to tell me that.
  
• Try and identify the mech so people know what they're meant to be shooting, if you don't know the name, guess the class and use the designation, and make sure to use the designation if they have duplicates: Maddog > Maddog Beta > Heavy Beta.
  
• Pugs aren't stupid - If you give an order, and they're willing, they will attempt to carry it out without doing stupid. You don't need to micromanage. The more vague you are, the more they'll converge on the idea. If you try and micro they'll rebel.

To rephrase your orders:

Dakkonn, on 31 May 2020 - 01:56 AM, said:

• Maddog Beta open CT,
  
• Push to H6
  
• They're pushing the river.

The underlying mentality of the angry panda was probably something like this:

"Maybe, if you had led from the start we wouldn't have ended up in position where were our rear-CT's handed to us. Instead, you wait until you're dead then you start telling me what to do!"

[Nearly Dead]

Leone, on 30 May 2020 - 11:14 AM, said:

Woah. Hold up. ATM's are not 1k range weaponry. At that range you might as well pack LRMs. For the tonnage you wanna be within ~450, that's the 2 points per missile threshold. Preferable within ~270,where they're like super streaks with 3 damage a pop.

~Leone.

I know, I try to maneuver to get inside my 120-270 triple damage range box, but sometimes, like on Polar Highlands it is simply impossible, and I run out of armor more often than I run out of missiles anyway.

I'd rather be in the Bog where I can move around and do max damage, but then LRM boats want to be on Polar so all's fair.

[Nameless King]

CidemRaw, on 29 May 2020 - 03:29 PM, said:

Why do people get angry over people shotcalling, no matter wether i'm the highest performer on the team or the first to go down and just trying to help the team i seem to meet alot of negative feedback, even tho i try to keep my calls to simple call outs on targets and their parts.

Even when im feeling silent and someone else does it people seem to get angry, is it just venting and something to get used to or are calling expactions higher than people expect?

No anger just most have no clue what they are doing and should be ignored because they actually make the match much worse.

[VonBruinwald]

Nameless King, on 31 May 2020 - 09:49 AM, said:

No anger just most have no clue what they are doing and should be ignored because they actually make the match much worse.

Nothing wrong with bad shotcallers, as long as they're learning from their mistakes they'll improve with time. My biggest issue is them not doing it from the onset and only chiming in once they're dead or when it's too late to make a difference to the match.

[Xiphias]

VonBruinwald, on 31 May 2020 - 09:57 AM, said:

Nothing wrong with bad shotcallers, as long as they're learning from their mistakes they'll improve with time. My biggest issue is them not doing it from the onset and only chiming in once they're dead or when it's too late to make a difference to the match.

This right here is the problem. A lot of pilots in this game don't want to learn because they already think they know best. I got tired a long time ago of trying to be helpful and having to deal with people getting offended at the mere suggestion that they might not be making the best calls.

These days I just let my team make bad calls if they want to and if they die then they die. It's perhaps unfortunate for the newer players who are willing to learn, but most of the players in T1 matches are pretty set in their ways at this point.