17 replies to this topic

[Jagergrenadiere]

Not gonna lie.
This game was a lot more fun when it wasn't completely focused on damage.
Now you don't just compete against the other team but with your own.
And the rewards?
Same as it ever was...not what you put into it.
Haven't really played this version in 2 years and not really encouraged to do so now.
182 mechs later.
No attempt to bump it up to the Mechwarrior 5 level has be made either.

[pattonesque]

Jagergrenadiere, on 12 July 2022 - 11:32 AM, said:

Not gonna lie.
This game was a lot more fun when it wasn't completely focused on damage.

when was this?

[Nightbird]

he's probably talking about the PSR change to being competing with your teammates for damage

[ScrapIron Prime]

Jagergrenadiere, on 12 July 2022 - 11:32 AM, said:

Not gonna lie.
This game was a lot more fun when it wasn't completely focused on damage.
Now you don't just compete against the other team but with your own.

Ah, you must be referring to having to get good match score compared to other players in order to advance in Tier. The Tier system is there to protect new players from being farmed. (Yes, its not working right now, but that's another topic.) If you're a better player than the average person, you'll bubble up in Tier no problem.

But the important thing here is... who the F cares? It's a first person shooter, you're fragging bots. Unless you are driven to be the "best of the best", Tier makes no functional difference in your enjoyment of the game, does it?

What rewards were you expecting outside of mountains of freebies every month just for playing?

[D V Devnull]

Jagergrenadiere, on 12 July 2022 - 11:32 AM, said:

Not gonna lie.
This game was a lot more fun when it wasn't completely focused on damage.
Now you don't just compete against the other team but with your own.
And the rewards?
Same as it ever was...not what you put into it.

pattonesque, on 12 July 2022 - 02:56 PM, said:

when was this?

Nightbird, on 12 July 2022 - 04:02 PM, said:

he's probably talking about the PSR change to being competing with your teammates for damage

ScrapIron Prime, on 12 July 2022 - 04:03 PM, said:

Ah, you must be referring to having to get good match score compared to other players in order to advance in Tier. The Tier system is there to protect new players from being farmed. (Yes, its not working right now, but that's another topic.) If you're a better player than the average person, you'll bubble up in Tier no problem.

But the important thing here is... who the F cares? It's a first person shooter, you're fragging bots. Unless you are driven to be the "best of the best", Tier makes no functional difference in your enjoyment of the game, does it?

What rewards were you expecting outside of mountains of freebies every month just for playing?

Actually everyone, in this case, I do believe they are referring to about 6 years ago (based on when this post is being put on the Forums now) or a little more. It was a time back in my earlier experience when...

• Communication Usage was far more ubiquitous than it is now, even without the Command Wheel available, and people knew the rule about "Silence is Death, so don't be THAT quiet person" too.
  
• People used to think more about keeping Teammates alive and the game's built-in incentive for doing so. I can say with reasonable certainty that the incentive may be unfashionably overdue for review, and honest serious increase of how much it gives per instance.
  
• People paid more attention to Completing Objectives (and doing it the exact right way in Assault Mode back then, as well as Incursion Mode now... where you down 11 Enemy Mechs then strand the 12th alive and go complete the Objective for the coup-de-grace finish, instead of treating it like a Skirmish without bonuses) in order to get the best for their entire Team
  
• LRMs had enough Baseline Range (Yeah, that 1000-Meter Baseline really meant something...) with reasonable not-painfully-slow Lock Times (because even without a 1000-Meter Baseline to use, this was still hellishly critical) to honestly counter the Snipers and their Gauss/'ER PPC'/AC2/'LB 2-X'/ERLL Meta just as much as the Snipers could counter the LRMs during the battle, making it an even trade back-and-forth for superiority. Even a bump of that Baseline Range to something around 950 Meters now with the current climate of the game would essentially resolve this, even if the 1000 Meter point is something that people are unwilling to let return. Those rather unreasonable Lock Times need to drop hard to 75% of what they are now in order to repair that part. Choose one or both, because without either fix, there is an unconscionable imbalance in the favor of Snipers across the entire game versus literally everyone else.
  
• Brawlers, Snipers, LRM Support, etc. all possessed better respect for each other and worked together for the common goal, in which they worked to keep their whole Team alive and get the best payouts for the whole Team as much as possible, thereby forcing the results of a Match to tend towards being less stomp-laden and more closely fought.
  
• Air Strikes actually felt comparable to Artillery Strikes in how useful they can be, as opposed to only being a short-strip joke even when fully enhanced... The same could potentially be said of the UAVs to a lesser extent.
  
• (...and some other things which are not coming to the surface of my mind right now, so please pardon me for not posting them right this split-second... memory can be as much a joy as it can be a pain, you know...)

...but who knows... I might be "rose tinting" that a little because I was much newer to the game back then, and the experience did not seem quite as cold compared to how it probably feels to newer players now. It simply feels like the game is lacking some kind of "friendly feeling" now that it had back then, even though PGI's MWO Team and those who comprise The Cauldron have been making changes that repaired a portion of things. That said, some of what is here now is actually darn good, but it still does not discount that some of what was left in the past that is good needs to come forward to the current day too.

With all of that said, there is STILL one last issue. The current baseline Armor & Structure of ALL the Mechs is simply not high enough in a 12v12 (or even in some cases 8v8) gameplay situation. It's really seriously in need of a boost to either 2.5x TT or 3x TT levels in order to provide proper forgiveness for errors on the battlefields, because not everyone out there understands the value of keeping Teammates alive and the 2x TT values currently allow snowballs a little too easily.

In short, the issue that 'Jagergrenadiere' has with MWO is not really something about Direct Combat or Damage or Match Score or even a player's Tier for the MatchMaker and its' operations. It has to do with the Community and their nature in any Match which MWO's systems place them in. Fix the problem of the Community's mentality in tandem with the game's balance being part of that repair, and then MWO becomes far more inviting to newer players, including being more enjoyable for all including us long-time players. I know some of you will disagree, but the sad truth is quick fragging of opponents is not the be-all-end-all to everyone!

~D. V. "seeing MWO's deep gash, including what hurts 'Jagergrenadiere's enjoyment, and what would heal it" Devnull

[crazytimes]

PSR is not a reward system. Play however you want to have fun.

[Gagis]

crazytimes, on 13 July 2022 - 01:35 AM, said:

Play however you want to have fun.

No one can stop you, but I still recommend everyone against sabotaging their team by not contributing to winning.

[Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie]

Gagis, on 13 July 2022 - 01:37 AM, said:

No one can stop you, but I still recommend everyone against sabotaging their team by not contributing to winning.

I don't think he's talking about "sabotaging" a match, but rather about the fine line that is "run the metastuff-only" vs "run stuff that puts a smile on your face".
the one is doing "the best" to win a match, the other one is doing the best to keep you interested in playing at all.

Edited by Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie, 13 July 2022 - 03:21 AM.

[D V Devnull]

crazytimes, on 13 July 2022 - 01:35 AM, said:

PSR is not a reward system. Play however you want to have fun.

Gagis, on 13 July 2022 - 01:37 AM, said:

No one can stop you, but I still recommend everyone against sabotaging their team by not contributing to winning.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie, on 13 July 2022 - 03:19 AM, said:

I don't think he's talking about "sabotaging" a match, but rather about the fine line that is "run the metastuff-only" vs "run stuff that puts a smile on your face".
the one is doing "the best" to win a match, the other one is doing the best to keep you interested in playing at all.

And of course, there is one exception which we can all agree upon... If someone's idea of fun is treating a Match like a 24-man free-for-all without regard to what Team they are on, then they have to accept the thought of shooting Teammates is not something to ever act upon, as it's a clean hard violation of the rules. Regardless of whether someone is a newer player or a long-time veteran, going around doing that sabotage – and therefore hurting your Teammates when it should not happen – ruins the fun for everyone... right?

~D. V. "providing understanding of an ugly way that unwanted sabotage happens for newer players to read later" Devnull

[Magnus Santini]

D V Devnull, on 13 July 2022 - 08:40 AM, said:

. . . Regardless of whether someone is a newer player or a long-time veteran, going around doing that sabotage – and therefore hurting your Teammates when it should not happen – ruins the fun for everyone... right?

Right, that is not something that should ever happen. But if you are in T5, or have played with a beginner player recently due to the unfortunateness, you should remember that there are players right now today who do not have a good grasp yet of how to tell an enemy from a teammate, aim and shoot at the same time (I swear it looks like some play with one finger), or not ignore stealth enemies who lack the "red dorito."

[BellatorMonk]

Some of these arguments are the same reason I stopped playing WoT and came back here. Frankly, if you are not playing to win and only to have "fun"..there is really no reasoning with you. If winning is not fun for you then you are "sabotaging" the other 11 people's gameplay.

[PocketYoda]

I don't personally care about PSR or Match Score, i'm just tired of Damage focus on everything.. Battletech was not designed that way..

That game needed alternative ways to do things and alternative types of game play.. this skirmish alpha game play gets super old super fast imo.

Go into a match core a few mechs get cored yourself game over.. not exactly riveting game design.

Edited by Nomad Tech, 14 July 2022 - 07:52 PM.

[Curccu]

Nomad Tech, on 14 July 2022 - 07:51 PM, said:

I don't personally care about PSR or Match Score, i'm just tired of Damage focus on everything.. Battletech was not designed that way..

That game needed alternative ways to do things and alternative types of game play.. this skirmish alpha game play gets super old super fast imo.

Go into a match core a few mechs get cored yourself game over.. not exactly riveting game design.

Killing enemy mechs isn't main point of BT? Sure you can do some scenarios to protect something etc.. but still most likely there is heavy focus on killing enemy mechs.

Well this game is about 10 Years old now... alpha skirmish since day 1 really.

Out of curiosity what would you like to do in this game if not kill enemy mechs?

[YueFei]

BellatorMonk, on 14 July 2022 - 03:03 PM, said:

Some of these arguments are the same reason I stopped playing WoT and came back here. Frankly, if you are not playing to win and only to have "fun"..there is really no reasoning with you. If winning is not fun for you then you are "sabotaging" the other 11 people's gameplay.

Well, people gotta at least be actively playing, not team-killing, and not engaging in outright non-participation. But QP is like a friendly pick-up game of soccer. It should be treated as such, where nobody should feel entitled to get everyone else's best effort.

Imagine the dude who just pulled a 12 hour shift to put food on the table and a roof over his kids' heads and just wants to shoot robots for 30 minutes, getting yelled at by some salty 12 year old kid because he made a mistake in a video game. Like come on man, have some perspective and chill out.

[Zeddicuus]

Gotta agree with Yuefei. When I'm playing, of course I'm trying to win. But having fun is more of a priority to me over winning. I've had a long day at work, then you get home to do things to get the home in order and spend time with the kids. I get maybe an hour in the evening every few days, so having the 'it's only fun if I'm winning' is not a mentality I like to have.

I won't play a game to win if I'm not having fun. If the fun is not there, I'm going to lose interest and simply find a different game.

[BellatorMonk]

No one is having a hissy fit and needs to "chill out". It's a basic conversation about a team based game and wanting to win is all. I doubt you got to be PR1 by simply playing and having fun with the unwashed masses who didn't give a crap about winning and such?

Your anecdote is amusing, however I just got out of a match with someone who exactly matches that description, got off a 12hr shift, kids crying in the background and he was on comms, chipper and WANTED to win and have fun doing so.

Mechwarrior 5 is an excellent single player and even 4 person multiplayer for those you describe as wanting to shoot robots for 30mins and not caring about pissing off 11 other people?

If someone doesn't want the burden of a team based game..then don't play one?

It's really quite simple and shouldn't be this hard to accept the most people have fun by winning and not having others waste their actual real life time by not caring about winning. Winning in most games means more rewards at a faster pace.

Why should I have to play 4 matches to make 800k cbills losing when I could make that in 2 matches by winning? Because the other guy wants F off and be goofy? Who is more selfish? The one guy or the 11 others?

[Zeddicuus]

@Bellatormonk, I'd say both are being selfish and both for the same reason. Both, in your example, seem to be of the mindset that the fun of others doesn't matter and only their own definition of fun is the proper definition.

As mentioned in your own post, you can indeed have people that want to have fun while winning, but that doesn't mean winning should take precedent over people having fun. This can also work the other way, in cases where a player 'trying to have fun' is actively sabatoging the odds of wining ie team ganking.

Maybe someone is finding it fun playing an SRM missileboat so they can nuke someone at close range. While that might interfere slightly with your odds of winning, that doesn't mean someone has the right to 'get salty' at the other player. On the flip side, if I'm finding it fun zipping off on my own as a scout and I get absolutely wrecked because of it and am dead within the first two minutes of the game, raging out at your team because you died isn't right either.

After all, if a player is only playing to win and only winning is fun and nothing else, maybe a team based game where other people will have differing definitions of fun is not a game for that player. If a player is playing because they want to have fun, but that fun involves running an obviously ridiculous build just for the lulz, that's not fair to the other players on your team.

There is a happy medium that can be met, but both sides have to be willing to meet in the middle and not demand everyone stand on the extreme side of their viewpoint.

[Knownswift]

Every game in this series revolves around out damaging your opposition in order to secure your objective.

Even the table top game, and especially in engaging campaigns, revolves around out damaging the opposition.