45 replies to this topic

[Half Ear]

Quote

i just get my builds from streamers and youtube. i only have one that i made up that i really like playing. its a summoner with like a bajillion srm. its so fun. but the fact that i made it up and still play it is probably why i suck in tier 3.

No, not bad, especially at lower tiers. It is essentially an ambush mech with that setup. It can be effective at higher tiers but it is about the speed and timing. And for lights, aim for the legs. Get one leg and they are toast.

Also understand that Tier 3/4 players tend to have players who have played MWO for years, and many do not follow the "meta". I do not really follow the "meta" though either. My setups are primarily three types of weapon systems that revolve around mediums and heavies. Speed is king, being able to reposition often, draw some into the location some of team who arent aggressive enough

[dumbcat]

Half Ear, on 03 August 2025 - 06:45 PM, said:

No, not bad, especially at lower tiers. It is essentially an ambush mech with that setup. It can be effective at higher tiers but it is about the speed and timing. And for lights, aim for the legs. Get one leg and they are toast.

Also understand that Tier 3/4 players tend to have players who have played MWO for years, and many do not follow the "meta". I do not really follow the "meta" though either. My setups are primarily three types of weapon systems that revolve around mediums and heavies. Speed is king, being able to reposition often, draw some into the location some of team who arent aggressive enough

exactly right. it has been super fun setting up the ambush for just the right time then charging in when theres a good moment and yoloing until im dead or they are. lol.

i did some "research" and took the advice of the various folks who chimed in for this thread (thank you) and changed to a different mech that has some range and it helps so much. i always played close to the enemy team and i think thats the thing that has been making my life so difficult in tier 3. being away from the enemy team lets you see so much more! and its a lot harder for enemies to swarm you if you are far away. i still get destroyed by good players as i should, but that one adjustment is so huge. i can see why the longer range maps and the long range builds are so prevalent in tier 3 vs tier 4/5. its less fun than the srms but not dying on half the maps just because of range is really nice.

the downside is that now instead of the fast small enemies avoiding me, they target me. lol. i guess its kind of a paper rock scissors game in that way. thats probably as it should be as well.

i still think tier 3 is an unnecessarily bad/huge change compared to 4/5. i still feel like very little that i thought i learned up until now translates. i definitely need to learn a ton before i get matched up with really good players. but thanks to everyone's help here i feel like i at least figured one thing out that should help quite a lot. maybe once i learn all the maps while bouncing around in tier 3 i can figure out how to play the short range stuff i like better.

edit: i think i am coming to the understanding that there are basically two tiers. there's the 4/5 tier that has a certain gameplay style thats more slow/stationary in general, and there is the 1/2/3 tier that has a constantly moving more swarmy/snipery gameplay style. i think the reason my short range build doesnt work as well is less about it suddenly being bad and more that the types of mechs people build and the way they play is entirely different once you get into the 1/2/3 tier.

Edited by dumbcat, 04 August 2025 - 12:23 AM.

[Void Angel]

dumbcat, on 01 August 2025 - 09:34 PM, said:

so i have to throw matches to get out of tier 3? ooooooof. i think that will just upset the people on my team? do people actually do this?

Generally, people do not do this. It happens organically, but you shouldn't do it deliberately - you'd just be ruining other people's matches by throwing, only to go right back up to Tier 3 when you stopped doing that. Your only viable option is to adapt to T3 tactics.

The "match fun" cliff you're experiencing - and the uneven quality of players - is a function of your presence in Tier 3. Advance higher, and you lose the people who are still fumbling around unable to find their assets with both hands and a flashlight. Fall lower, and you're not exposed to truly adept players. But being in Tier 3 is the worst of both worlds - which is why people tend to either advance past the tier, or continually "bounce off," getting trounced in Tier 3 matches until they fall back to Tier 4.

[Void Angel]

dumbcat, on 03 August 2025 - 11:20 AM, said:

idk. from your comment it seems like youre surprised. maybe im not giving myself enough credit but i didnt think it was too hard to pull off more often than not. it let me create situations where i could pick a target where i would have an advantage and wouldnt need a lot of skill to win. i dont have a lot of skill anyway.

My brother in Comstar. This game is notoriously difficult for a lot of people to wrap their heads around. There is a reason there is an arrow on the ground telling you where your legs point; it wasn't always there. Now, I grew up playing the tabletop game, so the way things work is intuitive, but for some reason a lot of people have trouble with the game's specific mechanics - most notably having their feet face a different direction than they are looking. Now, that doesn't mean you're a magically skilled pilot - but it does mean that your ability to analyze the game is better than a large number of past and current players. Your SRM-bomber Summoner is a case in point: that build is one of the primary ways experienced players use that Summoner - for the exact reasons you described. It's fairly fast and mobile, and all those SRMs inflict massive damage at close range.

The issue you're having in T3 is that players are more aware of their opponents and the map. If I spot your SRM bomber on the enemy team, I'm going to tell my team something like "Echo is an SRM bomb Summoner," which lets everyone know that they need to watch their back. Will they always? Hahahaha, no - but it still makes your job more difficult. Tier 3 players are much more likely to warn the team when the enemy kills them with a surprise flanking attack or a Light wolf pack, instead of just dying in silence and immediately disconnecting to find another match. They're also more aware of the danger posed by an SRM splat build at close range.

Now, for Gauss Rifles, they can be tricky. It's one of those very heavy ballistics that you found hard to fit onto your 'mech (you have to boat them with a larger chassis, or supplement them with lasers or PPCs.) As you've noticed, the weapon deals a large amount of pinpoint damage "from Narnia;" it also produces a single point of heat when fired, and throws the slug downrange at Mach Stupid. This made it... problematic... in the past, as Assaults with Jump Jets would mix them with ERPPCs and bounce up from behind cover to slam a huge pinpoint alpha at you from across the map. Changes were made to reign in that synergy, namely the charge mechanic and heat scale systems. It's the charge mechanic that makes Gauss fiddly - and harder for new players to use. I think Halfear means by his comment that in lower Tiers, you probably haven't often seen what Gauss Rifles can really do. A properly positioned Gauss sniper can control sight lines and restrict the avenues whereby close range 'mechs like yours can approach the enemy.

As for Jarl's, that's not quite what that means. I actually don't think Jarl's pays attention to Tier in its stats analysis - it just pays attention to the publicly-facing metrics it harvests, and then weights its rating based on weight class (it's harder to do a lot of damage in a Light as opposed to an Assault, for example.) So what that first month's rating means is that while you were in Tier 4/5, your stat metrics were in the 97th percentile of all players. That's why you were catapulted up to Tier 3 so quickly.

When you start seeing championship players in your matches, wait a few minutes. Like, literally take a pause for three minutes to go get a snack, drink some water, work on your operatic skills, whatever - and then queue up again (or queue up immediately if you die really early in the match.) There's usually not just one match going on, so doing this can stop you from being matched with them as often - because those matches are really frustrating sometimes. It's not just because they're good players, either (though they are) - it's because everyone and their cat sees those CS Series tags (or just recognizes the name) and collectively loses their mind. They'll run off to some semi-random part of the map instead going where they should, because they're trying to avoid the named players on the other team (this is the stupidest thing they could do, but that's a rant for another thread.). This leaves those of us with a spinal cord playing catch-up and trying to do the right thing without half the team actually trying to fight back.

That's... rough - and heavily dependent on where you are in the world (and thus how likely your playing times are to coincide with theirs.) It's also sadly unavoidable. Just a matter of math and player counts; there's not enough players to have stricter Tier matching - and not enough high-level players to fill out their own Tier - so while the matchmaker does do the best it can... it's inevitable that you (and I) are going to get top-level players in your matches.

That's something that going to an 8v8 match format might help - people don't want to reduce the team sizes back to what they used to be, because you'd have to restrict premade goups more, and the larger team sizes make things a bit more dynamic - but with lower player counts, it might be unavoidable. Incidentally, they're doing a trial period to consider that - and in an 8v8 format, your SRM bomber will be more effective. =}

Edited by Void Angel, 04 August 2025 - 09:26 AM.

[CFC Conky]

dumbcat, on 01 August 2025 - 09:34 PM, said:

...

so i have to throw matches to get out of tier 3? ooooooof. i think that will just upset the people on my team? do people actually do this?

You don't have to throw matches dumbcat, just play a different weight class and/or weapons system you're not familiar with and tier will take care of itself, plus you'll learn more about the different mechs and weapons in the game which is never a bad thing imo.

Good hunting,
CFC Conky

[dumbcat]

Void Angel, on 04 August 2025 - 09:25 AM, said:

My brother in Comstar. This game is notoriously difficult for a lot of people to wrap their heads around. There is a reason there is an arrow on the ground telling you where your legs point; it wasn't always there. Now, I grew up playing the tabletop game, so the way things work is intuitive, but for some reason a lot of people have trouble with the game's specific mechanics - most notably having their feet face a different direction than they are looking. Now, that doesn't mean you're a magically skilled pilot - but it does mean that your ability to analyze the game is better than a large number of past and current players. Your SRM-bomber Summoner is a case in point: that build is one of the primary ways experienced players use that Summoner - for the exact reasons you described. It's fairly fast and mobile, and all those SRMs inflict massive damage at close range.

The issue you're having in T3 is that players are more aware of their opponents and the map. If I spot your SRM bomber on the enemy team, I'm going to tell my team something like "Echo is an SRM bomb Summoner," which lets everyone know that they need to watch their back. Will they always? Hahahaha, no - but it still makes your job more difficult. Tier 3 players are much more likely to warn the team when the enemy kills them with a surprise flanking attack or a Light wolf pack, instead of just dying in silence and immediately disconnecting to find another match. They're also more aware of the danger posed by an SRM splat build at close range.

Now, for Gauss Rifles, they can be tricky. It's one of those very heavy ballistics that you found hard to fit onto your 'mech (you have to boat them with a larger chassis, or supplement them with lasers or PPCs.) As you've noticed, the weapon deals a large amount of pinpoint damage "from Narnia;" it also produces a single point of heat when fired, and throws the slug downrange at Mach Stupid. This made it... problematic... in the past, as Assaults with Jump Jets would mix them with ERPPCs and bounce up from behind cover to slam a huge pinpoint alpha at you from across the map. Changes were made to reign in that synergy, namely the charge mechanic and heat scale systems. It's the charge mechanic that makes Gauss fiddly - and harder for new players to use. I think Halfear means by his comment that in lower Tiers, you probably haven't often seen what Gauss Rifles can really do. A properly positioned Gauss sniper can control sight lines and restrict the avenues whereby close range 'mechs like yours can approach the enemy.

As for Jarl's, that's not quite what that means. I actually don't think Jarl's pays attention to Tier in its stats analysis - it just pays attention to the publicly-facing metrics it harvests, and then weights its rating based on weight class (it's harder to do a lot of damage in a Light as opposed to an Assault, for example.) So what that first month's rating means is that while you were in Tier 4/5, your stat metrics were in the 97th percentile of all players. That's why you were catapulted up to Tier 3 so quickly.

When you start seeing championship players in your matches, wait a few minutes. Like, literally take a pause for three minutes to go get a snack, drink some water, work on your operatic skills, whatever - and then queue up again (or queue up immediately if you die really early in the match.) There's usually not just one match going on, so doing this can stop you from being matched with them as often - because those matches are really frustrating sometimes. It's not just because they're good players, either (though they are) - it's because everyone and their cat sees those CS Series tags (or just recognizes the name) and collectively loses their mind. They'll run off to some semi-random part of the map instead going where they should, because they're trying to avoid the named players on the other team (this is the stupidest thing they could do, but that's a rant for another thread.). This leaves those of us with a spinal cord playing catch-up and trying to do the right thing without half the team actually trying to fight back.

That's... rough - and heavily dependent on where you are in the world (and thus how likely your playing times are to coincide with theirs.) It's also sadly unavoidable. Just a matter of math and player counts; there's not enough players to have stricter Tier matching - and not enough high-level players to fill out their own Tier - so while the matchmaker does do the best it can... it's inevitable that you (and I) are going to get top-level players in your matches.

That's something that going to an 8v8 match format might help - people don't want to reduce the team sizes back to what they used to be, because you'd have to restrict premade goups more, and the larger team sizes make things a bit more dynamic - but with lower player counts, it might be unavoidable. Incidentally, they're doing a trial period to consider that - and in an 8v8 format, your SRM bomber will be more effective. =}

what a great post thank you. so my understanding is that i built a summoner that people way better than me actually use to do the thing im trying to do better than i can, and good players have ways of dealing with it that i just wouldnt have run into in tier 4/5. that makes a lot of sense actually. my intuition kept telling me that once i got into tier 3 people were way more "ready" and less panicky which seemed to nullify the advantages of my little pocket strat quite a bit. instead of running away people were much more likely to try to turn and face me even if they werent the one getting attacked.

i also now understand that being in tier 3 can put you in any of the following "tier" matches: 3/4/5, 2/3/4, or 1/2/3. depending which of those it is, is the reason that my matches have felt so random in terms of player quality and gameplay style, and overall made so little sense. for this to be true though, it must mean that its the influence of tier 1 that is so huge. because in tier 4 i would have met a lot of tier 2 players and not realized it. meaning that tier 2 does not influence the gameplay style and all of that sudden change is purely from the tier 1 people. that seems odd. i am coming to believe that the skill ceiling in this game might actually be quite high though, in which case theres probably a big difference between tier 2 and tier 1 in skill level. idk. i guess i'll find out eventually. but the world champion players ive seen in my games have been truly ridiculous so i'd believe it.

i think an improvement would be to borrow the wows system of displaying what tier your allies and opponents are. in that game if you're in a tier 8 and you get matched with tier 10 (the highest/most powerful) you know because its on the scoreboard, and you can adjust accordingly. in this game i have no way of knowing if the opponent is a tier 1 or a tier 5. honestly, just knowing that would help these matches make way more sense than they do. right now im having to infer based on how swarmy the match is, how accurate the opposing long range people are, the behaviors that players have, and honestly, just how long i live.

speaking of the world champion players being in my matches. i dont know enough to know whether they warped the attitudes of my teammates or not. i dont have a good sense for how my teammates "normally" play, and in tier 3 it kinda never made sense to me anyway. but for my part i snuck around in alleyways trying to find them and nuke them i only ever found one successfully and was mostly dead by the time i did. he was super sneaky despite playing a giant mech. the thing i can say though is that i definitely get the feeling people who play this game play very "cautious" overall, and i dont understand why. the game is so much more fun when the team is aggressive and the game devolves into a sloppy rock fight. but i mostly see teammates hiding and getting whittled down slowly instead of stepping out and throwing rocks back at the enemy. maybe i should care more about dying but i dont know why i would. i can just exit and play again. so to me it just makes the most sense to disrupt the enemy team and do as much as i can in the situations that develop and leave the rest to the team. if i die i die who cares.

Edited by dumbcat, 04 August 2025 - 08:24 PM.

[dumbcat]

CFC Conky, on 04 August 2025 - 01:30 PM, said:

You don't have to throw matches dumbcat, just play a different weight class and/or weapons system you're not familiar with and tier will take care of itself, plus you'll learn more about the different mechs and weapons in the game which is never a bad thing imo.

Good hunting,
CFC Conky

i appreciate it. i tried doing as you said (playing random stuff mostly the trial mechs) for about half a day doing my best to win, but i just couldnt go back down. i think my habits from similar games are just too strongly ingrained, and this game is "built" the same way. the more i discuss it here, the more i get the sense that i'm succeeding despite my newness because of habits and nothing more.

i suppose that is also why tier 3 pisses me off so much. i'm used to a gradual skill development curve. in this game there was basic skill development in the tutorial, it went up a notch in tiers 4/5, and then went up 500 notches in tier 3. to succeed in tier 3 requires like 50x the skill it took to succeed in tier 4 and that's very uncool. i keep telling myself that based on what i know now, the upside or it all is that the skill i need to succeed in tier 3 is the same skill to succeed in tier 2 and tier 1, but it doesnt really help blunt the trauma lol.

Edited by dumbcat, 04 August 2025 - 08:21 PM.

[dumbcat]

Void Angel, on 04 August 2025 - 09:25 AM, said:

My brother in Comstar. This game is notoriously difficult for a lot of people to wrap their heads around. There is a reason there is an arrow on the ground telling you where your legs point; it wasn't always there. Now, I grew up playing the tabletop game, so the way things work is intuitive, but for some reason a lot of people have trouble with the game's specific mechanics - most notably having their feet face a different direction than they are looking.

for this part specifically, this is where i probably just have a ton of advantages compared to people who are maybe coming from more normal shooters. in both wows and wot your weapons and your vision arc are often facing different ways from your direction of travel/movement orientation. so its totally natural for me to park half my brain cells on the idea of which way the throttle will make me go, and assign the other three brain cells to aiming and firing. i can see it being weird for a lot of folks but its honestly not for me. in fact movement in this game is way sharper, more responsive, and more controllable than i'm used to. there are ships in wows that take 30+ seconds to turn their turrets, need 30 seconds to reach full speed, about as long to stop, and an entire map to turn a circle. compared to that even the worst things ive tried in this game feel like ballerinas. lol.

Edited by dumbcat, 04 August 2025 - 04:43 PM.

[Void Angel]

dumbcat, on 04 August 2025 - 04:04 PM, said:

i dont know enough to know whether they warped the attitudes of my teammates or not. i dont have a good sense for how my teammates "normally" play, and in tier 3 it kinda never made sense to me anyway. but for my part i snuck around in alleyways trying to find them and nuke them i only ever found one successfully and was mostly dead by the time i did. he was super sneaky despite playing a giant mech. the thing i can say though is that i definitely get the feeling people who play this game play very "cautious" overall, and i dont understand why. the game is so much more fun when the team is aggressive and the game devolves into a sloppy rock fight. but i mostly see teammates hiding and getting whittled down slowly instead of stepping out and throwing rocks back at the enemy. maybe i should care more about dying but i dont know why i would. i can just exit and play again. so to me it just makes the most sense to disrupt the enemy team and do as much as i can in the situations that develop and leave the rest to the team. if i die i die who cares.

Well, people like to be successful, which means damage and kills - and zero hp always yields zero DPS. So people - particularly if they have long-range builds - sometimes tend to play more conservatively. This is very much the case in higher tiers, where good marksmanship is more common (remember the discussion of Gauss Rifles.) But in general - yes; people do need to be more aggressive a lot of the time, even if they're not playing a knife-range splat Summoner. The guide linked in my signature bar used to be titled "Cowardice Is Not a Tactic" (it's a bit outdated; I'm thinking about reworking it a bit.)

As far as Tier 2 players and tactics, you really are seeing different tactics from them, but two things mitigate their impact: they're not fully adapted yet because a lot of their matches are still against Tier 4 and 5 players, and there's not as many of them. Tier 4/5 players make up the greater majority of the player base, so even at Tier 4 you're only seeing a few Tier 2s, and they don't always see Tier 1s, either. Even when I was in Tier 2, my out-of-tier matches would more often be against players ranked lower - it's not until Tier 3 that I would always see Tier 1 players in my match. This is a bit paradoxical; we're telling you that exposure to Tier 1 is why you're running into a difficulty cliff, but now I'm saying that Tier 2s, who are in contact with Tier 1, don't have the same impact when you reach Tier 4.

The way the paradox resolves is that Tier 1s don't have their full impact until you get to Tier 1 yourself. Tier 2s do have an impact in Tier 4 matches, but it's not nearly as noticeable compared to Tier 3 - when all the Tier 1s are added into the mix. Since players are social, player actions and attitudes tend to spread. That's partly why you'll often see one team take the initiative while the other reacts, especially toward the middle or end of a match. It's also why certain streamers like Sean Lang are so difficult to fight - they often coordinate their teams, and are well-known and skilled enough that people listen to them.

[dumbcat]

Void Angel, on 04 August 2025 - 08:29 PM, said:

Well, people like to be successful, which means damage and kills - and zero hp always yields zero DPS. So people - particularly if they have long-range builds - sometimes tend to play more conservatively. This is very much the case in higher tiers, where good marksmanship is more common (remember the discussion of Gauss Rifles.) But in general - yes; people do need to be more aggressive a lot of the time, even if they're not playing a knife-range splat Summoner. The guide linked in my signature bar used to be titled "Cowardice Is Not a Tactic" (it's a bit outdated; I'm thinking about reworking it a bit.)

As far as Tier 2 players and tactics, you really are seeing different tactics from them, but two things mitigate their impact: they're not fully adapted yet because a lot of their matches are still against Tier 4 and 5 players, and there's not as many of them. Tier 4/5 players make up the greater majority of the player base, so even at Tier 4 you're only seeing a few Tier 2s, and they don't always see Tier 1s, either. Even when I was in Tier 2, my out-of-tier matches would more often be against players ranked lower - it's not until Tier 3 that I would always see Tier 1 players in my match. This is a bit paradoxical; we're telling you that exposure to Tier 1 is why you're running into a difficulty cliff, but now I'm saying that Tier 2s, who are in contact with Tier 1, don't have the same impact when you reach Tier 4.

The way the paradox resolves is that Tier 1s don't have their full impact until you get to Tier 1 yourself. Tier 2s do have an impact in Tier 4 matches, but it's not nearly as noticeable compared to Tier 3 - when all the Tier 1s are added into the mix. Since players are social, player actions and attitudes tend to spread. That's partly why you'll often see one team take the initiative while the other reacts, especially toward the middle or end of a match. It's also why certain streamers like Sean Lang are so difficult to fight - they often coordinate their teams, and are well-known and skilled enough that people listen to them.

i read it and it totally jives with my experience. although i feel like maybe because im not "indoctrinated" to mw a lot of it does not apply to me. i definitely have had matches like you describe where the team huddles together like penguins trying to stay warm and just kind of sits there. but i dont. haha. i didnt even know there were stats until a few days ago, and based on what i've learned in this thread they are pretty much meaningless anyway. theres a fine line between being aggressive and being dumb/suicidal but i'd like to think people who play a game like this know the difference and can ride the line pretty well.

the psychological aspect you mention in the guide resonates with me. but at the same time, if someone is playing a game where you get to shoot other players and dont expect to get shot a lot in return, i think theres a problem. pvp games are zero sum, someones gonna win, someones gonna lose, you are always working with incomplete information, and with strangers both as allies and enemies. i dont see any reason to play scared. just accept that sometimes things will work out and sometimes they wont. sometimes the other guy is just better than you. sometimes the other team is just better. sometimes you can make a horrible tactic work with enough aggression and a bit of coordination. thats what makes games like this fun.

bringing it back to the focus of this thread - all of this is reinforcing to me that i was correct when i made this thread and tier 3 is a very problematic tier. assuming the average player is somewhat like me and feels confident in their ability, they want to climb up to tier 1 to learn fast and fight against good players. but tier 3 being such a mess of skill levels and tactics makes it really hard to learn "how" to play well. i go into a given match understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the thing i built. i know more or less what i want to do. in the games where it works, yay, positive reinforcement. but in tier 3 did it work because the players were less skilled? or did it work because i did something good? who knows. and vice versa too. if i failed in my tactics and got nuked, did i fail because i messed up? or did i fail because the opponents were super good? who knows. this kind of situation actively hinders learning. there is no way to know why you're doing well or poorly. the feedback loop is random and incomplete and extraordinarily frustrating.

Edited by dumbcat, 04 August 2025 - 09:27 PM.

[Void Angel]

Bah, sorry - lost a post and didn't notice very soon.

I wouldn't say it's random, but it is definitely inconsistent - and often delayed, which is worse. The best thing you can do is to spectate the people who seem to be doing well, seeing what they build and how they use it. That paradoxically slows your personal feedback loop, but it gives you clarifying information that you can use to evaluate your own performance, so it's worth it. Just be aware that host state rewind is not visible through spectation. =)

[dumbcat]

Void Angel, on 06 August 2025 - 09:54 PM, said:

Bah, sorry - lost a post and didn't notice very soon.

I wouldn't say it's random, but it is definitely inconsistent - and often delayed, which is worse. The best thing you can do is to spectate the people who seem to be doing well, seeing what they build and how they use it. That paradoxically slows your personal feedback loop, but it gives you clarifying information that you can use to evaluate your own performance, so it's worth it. Just be aware that host state rewind is not visible through spectation. =)

no worries, i appreciate that youre willing to keep chatting about this. here's an update if you or anyone else cares: ive gotten some advice from nice people in the community who reached out to help me navigate the tier 3 weirdness. for anyone else newer, definitely recommend chatting with good players. they know so much. anyway, a lot of the advice was about getting further away from the mass of blobs so i can observe the patterns of where people go on each map and what tactics i see most often. of course no two games are the same but following that advice has been helpful.

that said, i still play the summoner a lot because its just too damn fun. sometimes things go well sometimes not, but the stuff ive learned by staying further back has helped me position better for short range shenanigans. now that ive seen more of where enemies typically go, and taken a few notes so i can remind myself where "not" to be on the various maps, it has helped me do even better when i ambush people.

i was advised to get ecm and ranged mechs, which i did. i hated most of the laser ones but i like the night gyr. i installed the build with a bunch of uac2s so i can spam bullets at people from super far away. im not sure im helping the team as much but i am definitely farming damage with it. in a given match i can usually cripple (where you delete half their upper body or a leg) at least 2-3 enemies in the summoner which makes them easier for teammates to kill. in the night gyr i seem to somewhat damage a bunch of people without crippling or killing them, so in the end idk if i really make as much of a difference.

i also wanted to try assault so i watched a bunch of TTB vids and got an executioner. its definitely stressful being slow but since its a walking turret i mostly just find spots on maps that seem to have good lines and try to fire hose the enemy down when i see them. ive had some stupid games in it and a bunch of games where i die to being slow or making bad decisions. but im learning. not sure if assault is right for me but i am getting to see the game from a different perspective which has been eye opening. some of the maps i enjoy in the summoner i hate in the executioner, which was a surprise.

lastly - even with so much help, tier 3 is still bad. ive started taking screenshots of the score screens to remember the players and guilds that are really strong. turns out super strong guys were in a LOT of my matches over the last week. and always in groups. and funny enough, the games that feel really bad and i cant do anything right are almost always the games where its these 10-20 same crazy strong people in groups. its super annoying. you never get a fair fight. they pick a guy and gang up on him then go down the list overwhelming everyone 4v1. your team is down 10-0 in 1 minute and the game is dumb as hell. that this is allowed in this game is catastrophically stupid. is there a mech that can fight 1v4 coordinated high skill enemies at the same time? if not, then get rid of groups or balance the matchmaker to give high skill groups less skilled teammates so the opposing team has a chance.

edit: the strangest thing about my experience in tier 3 is that ive seen stats that say most of the players are in tiers 3, 4, and 5. yet i'd say 2/3 of my matches are the tier 1/2/3 kind, not the 3/4/5 kind. it should be pretty rare for me to encounter tier 1s, but instead its very common. not sure whats up with that.

Edited by dumbcat, 07 August 2025 - 05:52 PM.

[Radar Glitch]

My 2 cents...

Back when there were far fewer maps I was primarily a SDR-5D pilot. Every time a new map was introduced I would go to the Testing Grounds and scout around, see where I could jump and where I couldn't, where I could run up a hill and where I couldn't, etc. Before clan mechs were introduced into MWO it was a nice little mech, but I digress...

Just pick the most common 3-5 maps and scout them out in a light so when you look down at the map you know what's there.

I also happen to be right where you are, at the bottom of Tier 3. In my case it has a lot to do with the fact that I like to play the mechs I like to play and don't really care about Tiers, but I get just as frustrated as you do with T3 matchmaking, groups in QP, picking short range mechs in Alpine and then long range mechs in Solaris City...I try to focus on whether or not I was doing what I should have been doing, and if I was and the team split up and got a 12-0 "gg close", I just try to let it go.

Comms help more than they hurt, and sometimes you can type "rotate left?" in the chat at the beginning and good things happen like magic...

Also, since you like SRMs, try the Arctic Wolf, ACW-1. You can get 5 SRM 6 + 3 SRM 4 on a 111 kph medium, although it is not JJ capable like your Summoner. The ACW-Prime can equip JJ's and ECM, but you can only put 4 SRM 6 (with Artemis for a tighter volley) with only 4 missile hardpoints (TTB has a video or 2 in the ACW-Prime).

[dumbcat]

Radar Glitch, on 10 August 2025 - 02:57 PM, said:

My 2 cents...

Back when there were far fewer maps I was primarily a SDR-5D pilot. Every time a new map was introduced I would go to the Testing Grounds and scout around, see where I could jump and where I couldn't, where I could run up a hill and where I couldn't, etc. Before clan mechs were introduced into MWO it was a nice little mech, but I digress...

Just pick the most common 3-5 maps and scout them out in a light so when you look down at the map you know what's there.

I also happen to be right where you are, at the bottom of Tier 3. In my case it has a lot to do with the fact that I like to play the mechs I like to play and don't really care about Tiers, but I get just as frustrated as you do with T3 matchmaking, groups in QP, picking short range mechs in Alpine and then long range mechs in Solaris City...I try to focus on whether or not I was doing what I should have been doing, and if I was and the team split up and got a 12-0 "gg close", I just try to let it go.

Comms help more than they hurt, and sometimes you can type "rotate left?" in the chat at the beginning and good things happen like magic...

Also, since you like SRMs, try the Arctic Wolf, ACW-1. You can get 5 SRM 6 + 3 SRM 4 on a 111 kph medium, although it is not JJ capable like your Summoner. The ACW-Prime can equip JJ's and ECM, but you can only put 4 SRM 6 (with Artemis for a tighter volley) with only 4 missile hardpoints (TTB has a video or 2 in the ACW-Prime).

thats helpful to hear for a lot of reasons. that someone who has been playing for so long gets frustrated at the same things is reassuring. the idea of learning the maps outside of actual games is smart too. both of those things are good to hear.

i dont trust myself to tell people what to do, in comms or otherwise. i know im very late in finding this game. the idea that someone who doesnt know anything is trying to tell people who have been playing for 10 years what to do and where to go wouldnt sit right with me if i were a veteran, so idk, it feels presumptuous.

my attitude toward games like this is: there should be an outlet for people who want to try hard. liked wows ranked battles or the big competitions. it seems that there is a competitive scene in this game as well, which is awesome. but things like the "quick play" you have here should be like fun, more casual, places to play the game without needing all the sweaty stuff. imo it should never become the kind of place where people feel like trying hard, doing comms, picking perfect places to fight and playing the best stuff is needed. i dont care too much about winning or losing, although i do try to win. i care about having fun in the game mode that seems like it should be about fun. if i lost every game with a group in it, but they were fun games, i never would have made this thread. the reason i hate tier 3 and groups is because the presence of a tier 1 group makes the game zero fun. that group can just decide that the 4 best people out of everyone in the match are all on one side. and they know each other and communicate. its just an overwhelming advantage that the rest of the system seems totally unable to balance against.

edit: the reason i complain about it so much is that i dont have fun fighting against these groups, and i also dont like having them on my team being dictatorial or splitting off to do what they want independent of everyone else. im sure the people in the group get to have fun. but in so many of these matches, it seems like the group people are the only people that get to have fun. is the fun of those 4 people worth prioritizing over the fun of everyone else in the match? i cant think of a single reason why it is.

also, i did look at the arctic wolf that can run lots of srms. i dont think im good enough to play it though. it seems really fragile, and my experience in similar games has taught me that speed is only an advantage in the hands of someone good. cant tell you how many dd players in wows use their speed to rush a cap, get themselves into trouble they cant get out of, and are dead in the first minute. im staying away from the really fast mechs for that reason. i have watched some vids about it, and to be successful its this constant skirmishing playstyle where you have to engage and disengage and know places to hide and stuff like that. thats definitely too advanced for me. with the summoner i just pick one moment and full commit to that moment. so its important to me that its tanky enough to live awhile after i commit.

edit2: i guess the other reason i havent played that arctic wolf is that ive run into them quite a bit in the summoner and i dont think ive lost a single time to one. 1v1 in a back alley if i find one i always win or cripple it and it runs away. but my impression from my own games is that its just a faster but less powerful version of the thing i play. i could be remembering wrong but i always feel super confident when i run into them. haha.

Edited by dumbcat, 10 August 2025 - 05:14 PM.

[Radar Glitch]

The worse response I've gotten in chat is "no", or someone will click "negative". Sometimes I'll start a match asking, "where we headed?" and if nobody replies I forget it ever happened. Outside of a unit name and badge I don't see how another pilot would know you're new unless you're in a trial mech (and that isn't always a good indicator...I sometimes play one if I'm thinking about buying one). Many pilots have smurf accounts that look like they're new just so they can face lower tier pilots, so even if you "look" new, they can't know for sure. Feel free to chat.

Being smaller and faster is often more valuable than armor. Just don't stand still unless you're sure it's safe (and that comes with experience). Trying lights and mediums and struggling in the beginning is also a good way to drop into a lower tier while learning new playstyles and trying new weapons and equipment. Right now, with 8v8, I would stick to what you're most comfortable in, hopefully they'll decide that 12v12 is better long term imo.

[Void Angel]

Fricking smurfs... don't get me started.

dumbcat, on 06 August 2025 - 11:29 PM, said:

i was advised to get ecm and ranged mechs, which i did. i hated most of the laser ones but i like the night gyr. i installed the build with a bunch of uac2s so i can spam bullets at people from super far away. im not sure im helping the team as much but i am definitely farming damage with it.

they pick a guy and gang up on him then go down the list overwhelming everyone 4v1. your team is down 10-0 in 1 minute and the game is dumb as hell. that this is allowed in this game is catastrophically stupid. is there a mech that can fight 1v4 coordinated high skill enemies at the same time? if not, then get rid of groups or balance the matchmaker to give high skill groups less skilled teammates so the opposing team has a chance.

edit: the strangest thing about my experience in tier 3 is that ive seen stats that say most of the players are in tiers 3, 4, and 5. yet i'd say 2/3 of my matches are the tier 1/2/3 kind, not the 3/4/5 kind. it should be pretty rare for me to encounter tier 1s, but instead its very common. not sure whats up with that.

The Night Gyr is one of the strongest ballistic-armed heavies in the game. =) If you're doing a lot of damage, you're helping - the reason you're not killing them is because you're doing damage incrementally, and they have a chance to hide. But trust me, they are hiding; once a 'mech sustains significant armor damage or has an open torso, it's much more vulnerable to being shot - those players you dealt significant damage to now have to play more defensively, and have to work harder to win trades. That helps you and the rest of the team achieve fire superiority, which is seriously helpful. People deprecate "damage farming" too much sometimes.

With comms, you don't have to tell the team what to do if you're not comfortable - just call out where you see enemies, and call out good targets or threats they might not have seen. "Focusing Bravo," "Lights in our rear," Fafnir flanking on the right!" - that sort of thing. Be terse and don't fill the airwaves, so that others can talk, and you'll help the team. People particularly need to know the location of the main force of enemies, enemies that are critically damaged and could be finished off, and the presence of ambushes or Light harassers attacking a vulnerable point.

Now, with those high-level players, there's a few things going on. First, you're not the only one who recognizes them. People see certain names or guild tags on the enemy team, and they just lose their minds. Team cohesion collapses before your 'mechs even power on, as people split off to odd locations or cower behind cover for most of the match. This learned helplessness leads inevitably to losses that then reinforce the cowardice response. That's why they're so able to mow through your team so efficiently: it's not because they're super-strong (they are, but not that strong) it's that some of your teammates have already decided the match is lost, and the resultant cowardice makes sure of it.

There's not much you can do about those behaviors, other than calling targets and doing your best. But there's a couple of reasons you might be seeing them over and over: First, there's the 8v8 event. A lot of posters on the forums are screaming about 8v8 while failing to adapt to it, so a lot of people may be checked out of the game for now - particularly the ones that aren't willing to get on the forums and get help. Then there's the timing effect. There's never just one match going on, but with matches lasting as long as they can, there might be only one match starting exactly when your matches end. If you queue up right after the match, you might just get put right back in with them - sometimes on the same team, sometimes not. So what you do is desynch your drops. If you're dead early, you can try and re-queue immediately, but the safest bet is to spectate the match, learning what you can - then go spend 3-5 minutes making a sandwich, learning interpretive dance, doing push-ups... whatever. When you get back, with any luck you'll be matched with other people.

It's also possible that you're playing in a low-volume time window, so Tier 1s (and specifically high-level players) are more prevalent - and with the other (thankfully temporary) factors, you're just facing an outsized chance of getting those guys in matches every time you roll the matchmaking dice. Only thing you can do about that is change the times you play, if you're able, or disable the EU or NA server on your quickplay settings (the tiny arrow by the button) if they only seem to show up on those servers.

Additionally, you can join a guild of your own - a number of "Companies," including mine, are always looking for new members, and will happily help you out, just like the people who reached out to you because of your forum posts.

[dumbcat]

Void Angel, on 10 August 2025 - 07:03 PM, said:

The Night Gyr is one of the strongest ballistic-armed heavies in the game. =) If you're doing a lot of damage, you're helping - the reason you're not killing them is because you're doing damage incrementally, and they have a chance to hide. But trust me, they are hiding; once a 'mech sustains significant armor damage or has an open torso, it's much more vulnerable to being shot - those players you dealt significant damage to now have to play more defensively, and have to work harder to win trades. That helps you and the rest of the team achieve fire superiority, which is seriously helpful. People deprecate "damage farming" too much sometimes.

With comms, you don't have to tell the team what to do if you're not comfortable - just call out where you see enemies, and call out good targets or threats they might not have seen. "Focusing Bravo," "Lights in our rear," Fafnir flanking on the right!" - that sort of thing. Be terse and don't fill the airwaves, so that others can talk, and you'll help the team. People particularly need to know the location of the main force of enemies, enemies that are critically damaged and could be finished off, and the presence of ambushes or Light harassers attacking a vulnerable point.

Now, with those high-level players, there's a few things going on. First, you're not the only one who recognizes them. People see certain names or guild tags on the enemy team, and they just lose their minds. Team cohesion collapses before your 'mechs even power on, as people split off to odd locations or cower behind cover for most of the match. This learned helplessness leads inevitably to losses that then reinforce the cowardice response. That's why they're so able to mow through your team so efficiently: it's not because they're super-strong (they are, but not that strong) it's that some of your teammates have already decided the match is lost, and the resultant cowardice makes sure of it.

There's not much you can do about those behaviors, other than calling targets and doing your best. But there's a couple of reasons you might be seeing them over and over: First, there's the 8v8 event. A lot of posters on the forums are screaming about 8v8 while failing to adapt to it, so a lot of people may be checked out of the game for now - particularly the ones that aren't willing to get on the forums and get help. Then there's the timing effect. There's never just one match going on, but with matches lasting as long as they can, there might be only one match starting exactly when your matches end. If you queue up right after the match, you might just get put right back in with them - sometimes on the same team, sometimes not. So what you do is desynch your drops. If you're dead early, you can try and re-queue immediately, but the safest bet is to spectate the match, learning what you can - then go spend 3-5 minutes making a sandwich, learning interpretive dance, doing push-ups... whatever. When you get back, with any luck you'll be matched with other people.

It's also possible that you're playing in a low-volume time window, so Tier 1s (and specifically high-level players) are more prevalent - and with the other (thankfully temporary) factors, you're just facing an outsized chance of getting those guys in matches every time you roll the matchmaking dice. Only thing you can do about that is change the times you play, if you're able, or disable the EU or NA server on your quickplay settings (the tiny arrow by the button) if they only seem to show up on those servers.

Additionally, you can join a guild of your own - a number of "Companies," including mine, are always looking for new members, and will happily help you out, just like the people who reached out to you because of your forum posts.

that makes sense. the guy who recommended these mechs to me said they were all really good as long as i played them to their role. with the night gyr my job is fire support so i just need to make sure people on the other team are constantly getting shot, the psychological effect of constantly getting shot being more important than the actual damage. i think that encouraged me to keep shooting even if its not doing too much, lol.

to your point and Radar's point about comms, thats a bridge i'll probably have to cross eventually. but im still at a point where i feel too "new". if i tried to say anything on comms right now it would be like "um, one really wide mech that looks like a person with antennas is on the rock that looks like a mushroom in e5" or whatever and i think it would probably hurt more than help. the people who ive heard who are good at that stuff say things like you mentioned, the specific kind of mech it is and where its damaged and what its doing that makes it vulnerable and all that. they know whats important for their team to know. i dont. maybe i can do that someday but that day is not today. haha.

and yeah i hear you about the psychological effect of super good players. but to be fair, they (as individuals) need to play too. i dont think theres a way (based on what you guys have taught me) to insulate tier 3 from the best players. but the decision to allow them also to be in groups seems unwise, without a mechanism to balance around it. if we say one top tier player in a high time to kill game is worth 3 medium skill players, then a group of 4 of these is basically already the same power as the opposing teams 12 players. then you add the communication and coordination aspects, and add their other 8 teammates, and it becomes dramatically unbalanced. this being the reason why i havent been saying there shouldnt be group play at all, it just needs its own queue where players who want to play in a coordinated, more serious way can play against others who want that. or there needs to be a way for the mm to balance around their inclusion way better. otherwise there is no space for medium skill players who want to play more casually to exist without just being hit points for these groups to farm.

maybe a better way to say it is that the solo tier 3 player needs agency too. since starting this thread i have learned that i lose agency to better players than me (tier 3 vs tier 1), and i cant be insulated. fine. im willing to accept that its on me to get better as a solo player to regain my agency there. but there is no way i can deal with groups that have coordinated tactics, especially if as individual players they are better than me anyway. to have a decent, fun game i can learn from in tier 3, my only agency is to pray to get the occasional game where there is no tier 1 group completely distorting the game either in my teams or the opposing teams favor. that seems like the kind of situation that arises from a bad decision to include groups without taking steps to balance around it, and nothing more. i dont see anything wrong with pointing at that bad decision and asking why everyone is okay with it. hopefully thats coming across. not mad at the players for being good. not mad at the idea of groups. just saying that the implementation of the current system is poor.

[dumbcat]

oh and also, the tips about re-queuing to desync, and deselecting server regions are pretty cool. i'll have to try those out. thanks as always for your willingness to help.

[Void Angel]

Heheh - I got news for you: you're going to fumble around on comms no matter what when you first start. It's just a multi-tasking issue your brain will have to learn to do. I honestly can't visually identify a lot of 'mechs without thinking about it, so despite the examples I used, my comms are normally "multiple at Fox Three, Assaults and Heavies," or "Flankers at Echo Nine." I used Fafnir as an example because they tend to be Brutal Close-Range Brawlers and if it's able to blindside the team, that's a bad day in the making. But do what you're comfortable with.

For groups, PGI did take steps to balance them (limiting them to 3 spots instead of four,) but they're stuck between a rock and a hard place. PGI's goal with all of this is to explore ways to keep the game alive for longer. But, there's competing concerns: many players want to play with their friends; but if there are too many groups (or the groups are too large,) they end up being oppressive to solo players. Groups can also slow down matchmaking or cause repetitive match compositions (where the same groups appear over and over on opposite sides of the match.) So for speed of matchmaking, and the best tier balancing possible, you want no groups; but people want to play socially, so groups have to be supported.

All of this has been exacerbated by population over the years. MWO's peak player count was much, much higher than it is today - we used to have an entirely separate group queue. But as the population fell, they had to roll groups into the main queue (this is what the slur "Soup Queue" is about.) A very similar push and pull effect happened with the tonnage limits on groups (total allowed tonnage falls as groups get larger,) and one of the drawbacks to 8v8 is that groups have an out-sized effect on matches - as indeed you know. A player from the 2024 World Championship team recommended eliminating groups (or else requiring Tier 1 to group) yesterday. His first suggestion may well be correct for the moment, but it won't be viable long-term. And I think he's wrong on the second suggestion, but with how the matches are going, I can see where he's coming from - I've seen top-tier compie groups square off against total randos, with predictable results. If enough people are checking out of the game, the 3-tier match window is going to be widened, which will allow Tier 4 players to match with Tier 1 - the results of that are already... predictable, and mismatched groups just make it worse. All of this leads PGI to dilemmas, not choices. These issues are all solvable, but the solutions also have drawbacks, and solving the problem inevitably will anger people who wouldn't have noticed as the game burned down around them, so long as they got to stay in their favorite chair.

If you poke around the forums, you'll see a lot of people act like this particular test phase, the merger of group and solo queues, and even matchmaking parameters in general, are all some kind of arbitrary decisions made by PGI when clearly better options were available for the asking. This is magical thinking, and you should simply ignore their complaints. This is all happening because population is falling off again, and the problems which that causes have to be solved, before they snowball into a rapid decline - one that could crash a game that otherwise might remain fun and playable for years.

Edited by Void Angel, 11 August 2025 - 10:59 AM.

[dumbcat]

Void Angel, on 11 August 2025 - 10:58 AM, said:

Heheh - I got news for you: you're going to fumble around on comms no matter what when you first start. It's just a multi-tasking issue your brain will have to learn to do. I honestly can't visually identify a lot of 'mechs without thinking about it, so despite the examples I used, my comms are normally "multiple at Fox Three, Assaults and Heavies," or "Flankers at Echo Nine." I used Fafnir as an example because they tend to be Brutal Close-Range Brawlers and if it's able to blindside the team, that's a bad day in the making. But do what you're comfortable with.

For groups, PGI did take steps to balance them (limiting them to 3 spots instead of four,) but they're stuck between a rock and a hard place. PGI's goal with all of this is to explore ways to keep the game alive for longer. But, there's competing concerns: many players want to play with their friends; but if there are too many groups (or the groups are too large,) they end up being oppressive to solo players. Groups can also slow down matchmaking or cause repetitive match compositions (where the same groups appear over and over on opposite sides of the match.) So for speed of matchmaking, and the best tier balancing possible, you want no groups; but people want to play socially, so groups have to be supported.

All of this has been exacerbated by population over the years. MWO's peak player count was much, much higher than it is today - we used to have an entirely separate group queue. But as the population fell, they had to roll groups into the main queue (this is what the slur "Soup Queue" is about.) A very similar push and pull effect happened with the tonnage limits on groups (total allowed tonnage falls as groups get larger,) and one of the drawbacks to 8v8 is that groups have an out-sized effect on matches - as indeed you know. A player from the 2024 World Championship team recommended eliminating groups (or else requiring Tier 1 to group) yesterday. His first suggestion may well be correct for the moment, but it won't be viable long-term. And I think he's wrong on the second suggestion, but with how the matches are going, I can see where he's coming from - I've seen top-tier compie groups square off against total randos, with predictable results. If enough people are checking out of the game, the 3-tier match window is going to be widened, which will allow Tier 4 players to match with Tier 1 - the results of that are already... predictable, and mismatched groups just make it worse. All of this leads PGI to dilemmas, not choices. These issues are all solvable, but the solutions also have drawbacks, and solving the problem inevitably will anger people who wouldn't have noticed as the game burned down around them, so long as they got to stay in their favorite chair.

If you poke around the forums, you'll see a lot of people act like this particular test phase, the merger of group and solo queues, and even matchmaking parameters in general, are all some kind of arbitrary decisions made by PGI when clearly better options were available for the asking. This is magical thinking, and you should simply ignore their complaints. This is all happening because population is falling off again, and the problems which that causes have to be solved, before they snowball into a rapid decline - one that could crash a game that otherwise might remain fun and playable for years.

i hear you on the developer feeling stuck and all that. but there are ways to integrate groups with solo players with much more balance than this. giving group players a damage/hp penalty based on group size for example. or rebalancing the lobby around the skill level of the groups involved after the players are all selected. or allowing solo players in matches with groups to select a buff that lasts for that match only to compensate for their disadvantage. not saying these are good ideas or the only ideas but the general direction should be to provide some kind of balancing factor so that being in a group =/= automatic advantage for you and disadvantage for everyone else in your game. i dont think tonnage as a balancing factor is a good variable to solve for. more tonnage is not more impact when we are talking about really good players in groups. or at least that has not been my experience, i may be wrong.

the population problem is completely tied to the experience imo. as i've said in this thread, my tier 3 experience has been awful. luckily for me i guess i'm really stubborn so i've stuck with it, but i dont think everyone would. the current system really is a "bait and switch" where the experience you get in tier 5 and tier 4 is suddenly replaced with an altogether different and much worse experience in tier 3. thats not cool. not just that but its infuriating and exactly the kind of thing that would drive people out of the game. when i was first told in this thread the game had a population issue, my reaction was not "oh thats surprising", it was "of course it does!" because this tier 4 to tier 3 experience is that horrible. you simply cannot expect a newer player to suddenly adapt to the entire game changing around them as soon as they hit tier 3. everything you learned is suddenly wrong. the things you thought you were doing right, arent right anymore. the basic skills you learned dont matter. you feel like youre just there to be hp for the enemy to farm and it feels crazy bad. of course people leave.