57 replies to this topic

[PocketYoda]

Theodore, on 04 March 2021 - 10:52 AM, said:

I think one of the problems with eliminating Nascar (regardless of what the devs do) is what I like to call zombie apocalypse syndrome.

-It is my assumption that there are players out there who literally only care about their own stats, and their own lives. (honestly that is fine, as this is a game of course).

--But within that subset of players, there are those who will actively use their team mates in devious ways to pad their own stats.

This happens far more than you'd think.. and as tiers progress it gets worse.. I don't know if some countries train their people to act like this but they do. They very much do not have a team mentality, they will use their teams as fodder.

I've seen some shoot through their team mates in a battle with no care for anyone but their stats.

I've seen it a lot since i returned, 2 years ago i did not see it so much.

Edited by Samial, 06 March 2021 - 04:55 PM.

[Nightbird]

Why do you blame the players when the game and mode is designed to reward Nascaring and punish those those that don't?

[Scout Derek]

Nightbird, on 06 March 2021 - 05:43 PM, said:

Why do you blame the players when the game and mode is designed to reward Nascaring and punish those those that don't?

Maybe because your opinion is wrong?

[LordNothing]

SirSmokes, on 06 March 2021 - 01:35 PM, said:

Moon made of crack?

according to the late gwar frontman oderus urungus, earth is the only planet in the universe that has crack. if you cant trust a scumdog who can you trust?

Edited by LordNothing, 06 March 2021 - 10:29 PM.

[Nightbird]

Scout Derek, on 06 March 2021 - 09:59 PM, said:

Maybe because your opinion is wrong?

Which part? So far not a single person has said that Nascar is not the optimal winning strategy resulting from the current game design. People only differ on how changes should be made to prevent this. Will you step out on a limb to say that we're all wrong?

[Sjorpha]

Nightbird, on 03 March 2021 - 10:08 AM, said:

I'm not talking about "video game" theory, but game theory, developed in the field of economics to scientifically describe how humans make decisions.

If you want to read the long version, take a look here: https://plato.stanfo...es/game-theory/

The greatly shortened version of it is, people act rationally in a way that benefits themselves. It is possible to model this decision making in the form of a decision tree: if I decide A, what are my risks and benefits, if I decide B, ditto.

How does this relate to MWO? Let's take the Quick Play (random teams) conquest mode for example, as designed, suppose the choice in front of a player is: A: 12 vs 12 nascar in the center, I will ignore caps, and B: 11 vs 12 nascar in the center, I will try to cap. Let's say decision A has a 50:50 chance of winning or losing. Decision B, based on how MWO Conquest is designed (TTK, cap location, number of points needed for cap victory etc) means the chance of winning reduces to 40:60.

Each player, after experiencing A and B enough times, will choose decision A because it benefits them more.

Of course, MWO QP is not just conquest, but you can try this thought process with any game mode, any map. Should I choose a sniper, brawler or mid-range mechs? Should I NASCAR or snipe or cap or flank? As it is designed, MWO QP favors mid-range nascar over any other tactic.

Well, how do you fix this? Let's go back to QP conquest for a moment. Suppose when the decision tree comes up: A: 12 vs 12 nascar in the center, I will ignore caps, and B: 11 vs 12 nascar in the center, I will try to cap. How do you design the game mode so that B is the better choice? Well, you just need to make it so that B has better than a 50:50 chance of winning, which can be done for example by lowering the number of points needed for cap victory to 300-400 points. The team that devotes more resource AWAY from the center nascar has a BETTER chance of winning, when this is true nascar ends.

my 2 cents

Yeah, you can even see this logic proven in Faction Play where the cap requirement is lower (relatively speaking)

In Faction Play you HAVE TO both cap and fight because you can't realistically kill the whole enemy team before a cap win happens. This means that when you fight other mechs in FP conquest the goal of the fighting is to defend or win a cap point. Consequently there is no nascars in FP conquest.

Now the cap requirements in FP could be probably be increased a little bit because sometimes matches end a bit too fast, but the basic concept of having the cap requirement low enough to actually make game mode into the primary objective works really well and I consider the FP conquest to be the best mode in the game currently.

Respawns are another thing that reduces nascaring in FP i think, it's often not rational to nascar blindly into newly spawned mechs.

I think in general since we have a mode with nascar (quickplay) and one with basically no nascar (faction play), it makes sense to compare them if we're looking for ways to reduce nascaring.

It's also worth pointing out that non-siege matches in FP are played on the same maps as quickplay and with the same spawn points, an still there is little to no nascaring. In other words nascaring is not only about map design or spawns.

Edited by Sjorpha, 07 March 2021 - 08:52 AM.

[Sjorpha]

I would add that it's not simply that nascar is the best option individually, but rather that it's the bast option in the absence of actively talking and deciding on another plan as a team.

Lots of people in quickplay aren't there to talk or listen, so nascar ends up being a rational choice quite often.

It doesn't help to moralize over this or say that people should be more teamwork oriented or whatever, ultimately it's not useful to play the blame game when solving a problem. There's lots of players and this is how people are and that's what we have to work with.

The only way to change it is to change things so that nascar becomes irrational from the individual perspective even with no communication.

Edited by Sjorpha, 07 March 2021 - 09:18 AM.

[LordNothing]

Metalgod69, on 07 March 2021 - 12:03 AM, said:

What do you need for a winning firing line ?
.
.
.
.
Good aim, good communication, good builds. Thats why nowadays playerbase doesnt like it and nascar.

a simple recipe for victory for sure. but there is that fun thing. so long as people play games to have fun you will have all kinds of shenanigans on the battlefield. thats why im more for refunning the game than more balancing. you cant expect a bunch of t2-5 players to play like t1 players over night, or ever. i suppose you could buff the 200 worst variants in the game, so when the lower tier players bring junk, they arent so outmatched.

ultimately the only way to get rid of nascar is to make everyone play fp and get rid of qp, and id be all for that. except that it would kill the game simply by shooing away all the filthy casuals. thats what killed fp, because the pros couldnt take one for the team, the greater team, the whole damn community. and good luck funding servers with just the t1s. and there is plenty of blame to go around here. because pgi dug fp's grave by driving the wedge between the casual pugs and the better teamplay types. and its not like the pugs didnt do anything wrong either, like bringing their screw around builds to a mans game and refusing to support their team.

Edited by LordNothing, 07 March 2021 - 10:32 AM.

[GARION26]

Nightbird said:

1615098597[/url]' post='6380645']
Which part? So far not a single person has said that Nascar is not the optimal winning strategy resulting from the current game design. People only differ on how changes should be made to prevent this. Will you step out on a limb to say that we're all wrong?

Agree entirely. NASCAR is generally felt to be more prevalent in higher tier games- meaning players who generally score better then their opponents over many games on average. It works that’s why they do it. If it didn’t work it would be more prevalent at lower tiers.
A coordinated firing line would be better in many situations. But given the multilingual nature of the player base, folks who purposefully shut off coms, and other players gun shy about being burned in the past by bad or not followed calls it’s very hard to coordinate people.
I know in the land of tier 4 there are plenty of games no one responds to any communication I attempt. And it’s very rare to have a drop caller.

Edited by GARION26, 07 March 2021 - 10:28 AM.

[_Magno_]

Anjian, on 04 March 2021 - 10:05 PM, said:

Every PvP team vs. team game I have seen that has:

Small maps with multiple objective paths.

Capture objectives.

Limited numbers of players on each side.

Respawns

Player selectable respawn points

Time limits on the match.


Never had nascaring or camping. Game play is highly dynamic, prone to brawling, gives weight to both the fast player, the tanky player, the brawler and the sniper.

But most of these other games don’t have the spawning character with a large and varied health pool and most have a regenerating mechanic often shields.
Or they have healing.

And most of these other games are free for all or more than one team. And they certainly are more 3D in movement and fast movement.

Edited by _Magno_, 07 March 2021 - 07:33 PM.

[Nightbird]

Yep, to be clear that respawn would fix Nascaring as well... but we know game dev is anathema to PGI right now so I limit myself to the simplest suggestions. Dom and Skirmish can't be fix this way (simple timer or resource change) so I didn't bother. Assault is a waste of space.

Edited by Nightbird, 09 March 2021 - 04:04 PM.

[Vlad Ward]

Nightbird, on 09 March 2021 - 01:04 PM, said:

Yep, to be clear that respawn would fix Nascaring as well... but we know game dev is anathema to PGI right now so I limit myself to the simplest suggestions. Dom and Skirmish can't be fix this way so I didn't bother. Assault is a waste of space.

I honestly think every game mode could be solved with respawns. Hell, implement a drop dock and let people drop into any of their 4 Mechs any time they spawn. If people want to take a 1200 ton company or even a 240 ton company to Conquest, let them.

We'd need to add a kill limit to Assault and Skirmish, but otherwise the rest of the game modes would actually work significantly better with respawns imo. While we're at it, selectable bloody spawn points.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Staring down an enemy mech often results in death or near death. So the alternative is to try and flank. What is nascar but a perpetual flanking maneuver? But you also have strength in numbers. If you have one mech on your team going one way and another going another way, too often the enemy team has won because of divide and conquer. That reinforces nascar over setting up a firing line. Years ago, MWO matches played differently. There was lots of poking and pop-tarting. What changed? In part, the maps. The maps got bigger so you could actually move around. Play on the classic maps and there is little if any nascaring. They're too small to do it on.

[Vlad Ward]

TheCaptainJZ, on 09 March 2021 - 02:59 PM, said:

There was lots of poking and pop-tarting. What changed?

People also whinged for years about opponents with decent aim being able to kill them from >500m away. Ranged pinpoint damage has been repeatedly nerfed as far into the ground as folks can get away with without removing canon weapons from the game entirely.

You'll still see poking and pop-tarting in tip top level play, but the barrier to entry to do it well is so high now that it's extinct anywhere else. The sole exception I've encountered is T4-5 level play where people will make an effort to poke but generally don't have the aim to trade effectively.

[Rear Admiral Tier 6]

no matter how good the map design,players are drawn to the centre and circle it like ants,watch "ant death spiral" on youtube and youll see what i mean

[Mochyn Pupur]

Scrap three landing points and make it one per side - many nascars start with lights being dropped on the right side who then run in to pack kill the poor assaults who dropped on the opposite left side . . . and so it goes.

Remove this basic vulnerability/reward and there is a greater likelihood that the team will stay together rather than the usual stringing out and slowest is killed first experience.