98 replies to this topic

[zverofaust]

Grits N Gravy, on 17 November 2012 - 06:28 PM, said:

Wipe outs are so common in MWO because of a confluence of factors relating more to the design of the game than whether someone is grouped or not.

• Double armor, a penalizing heat scale, all done to fulfill the dev's desire for longer game have made blobing the single most viable tactic in MWO. He who blobs best wins the most.
  
• The current maps aren't designed in a way which plays to strengths or weakness of the combat system. They tend to be open spaces with little regard for pathing or placement of cover in a manner which would induce tactical play. Their size and layout allow teams to spread out just enough to allow you to be picked off one by one, but not far enough that flanking moves are viable.

Wipe outs are so prevalent because success in the current design relies on overwhelming your opposition with numbers more than any other factor.

Finally, someone actually gets it.

[Grits N Gravy]

Guido, on 17 November 2012 - 07:53 PM, said:

Go watch the tourney fights from the RHOD tournaments, and you'll notice that the Merc Units have very differing tactics than what you've seen on the field.

So instead of having 8 guys on the field blobbing together, you now have 4 teams on the field. It's extremely effective because it's flexible as long as the teams can support each other. The only thing preventing this from happening regularly and effectively is inexperience and the matchmaking. Units still practice wing-man maneuvering, which makes them more effective than two guys that are lumbering around in a group. Not to mention that those little hills, buildings, and objects all have a use in advancement. You simply need to know when and where to move to counter X mech builds with the environment.
else.

A. 99% of the people who ever play MWO will never play at a tournament level. I would be surprised if more than 20% of the people playing MWO ever group with more than 2 people. I was in closed beta, the pop on the public team speak was never more than 1 percent of the people online at the time.

B. 4 teams of 2 supporting each other is blobbing, smarter blobbing but still blobbing. MWO at a high level is hardly chess, and a long way from Go.

C. There are tons of other games out there that have a tactical dynamic to them in public matches with low group or platoon numbers. The weapon systems and maps in these games are designed in a why which creates a synergy that promotes a tactical dynamic. Just because at a high level of play this game is tactical, there is no reason for it not to be at a low level.

[Vassago Rain]

Grits N Gravy, on 17 November 2012 - 08:50 PM, said:

A. 99% of the people who ever play MWO will never play at a tournament level. I would be surprised if more than 20% of the people playing MWO ever group with more than 2 people. I was in closed beta, the pop on the public team speak was never more than 1 percent of the people online at the time.

B. 4 teams of 2 supporting each other is blobbing, smarter blobbing but still blobbing. MWO at a high level is hardly chess, and a long way from Go.

C. There are tons of other games out there that have a tactical dynamic to them in public matches with low group or platoon numbers. The weapon systems and maps in these games are designed in a why which creates a synergy that promotes a tactical dynamic. Just because at a high level of play this game is tactical, there is no reason for it not to be at a low level.

They'll need to change a lot of things to make this anything even remotely related to tactical, including making better maps. Right now, you just deathball up, and put your ball in the enemy's base, or somewhere the enemy team has to go through.

[Archon Adam Steiner]

Have people become so dysfunctional that in an MMO - a genre that is defined by cooperation with others - people cannot be bothered to try to coordinate? There are free (and multiple) voice servers provided. The time required (and hard-drive space) to operate these is literally next to nothing. The effort is next to nothing. This is not a single-player game. This is not CoD, where everyone is a one-man army bereft of the need to even consider that other people exist on their team. I would honestly, desperately want to know why in a team game that people cannot be bothered to actually truly engage in playing with others, and in fact go out of their way to avoid using simple tools that take minimal effort/skill/time to use. Is it raw principle? If so, then stick by your principles (as we all do in life), and accept the consequences thereof.

I have very little understanding of people who think that a team game actually requiring team coordination is a bad thing. Don't want to use a voice comm program? Don't want to use a team? Don't! ...but that is your choice, and as with all choices in life, there are consequences. To me, the idea that many people would rather just continue to lose instead of (literally) taking two minutes to run a voice program... it's baffling.

Edited by Arrachtas, 17 November 2012 - 10:28 PM.

[Greyfyl]

Arrachtas, on 17 November 2012 - 10:24 PM, said:

Have people become so dysfunctional that in an MMO - a genre that is defined by cooperation with others - people cannot be bothered to try to coordinate? There are free (and multiple) voice servers provided. The time required (and hard-drive space) to operate these is literally next to nothing. The effort is next to nothing. This is not a single-player game. This is not CoD, where everyone is a one-man army bereft of the need to even consider that other people exist on their team. I would honestly, desperately want to know why in a team game that people cannot be bothered to actually truly engage in playing with others, and in fact go out of their way to avoid using simple tools that take minimal effort/skill/time to use. Is it raw principle? If so, then stick by your principles (as we all do in life), and accept the consequences thereof.

I have very little understanding of people who think that a team game actually requiring team coordination is a bad thing. Don't want to use a voice comm program? Don't want to use a team? Don't! ...but that is your choice, and as with all choices in life, there are consequences. To me, the idea that many people would rather just continue to lose instead of (literally) taking two minutes to run a voice program... it's baffling.

It has nothing to do with being 'dysfunctional'. The fact is many people don't want to be forced into a voip group just to play a game. The 'why' is irrelevant. This segment of the potential playerbase is large - much larger in fact than the diehards that are in clans.

PGI can ignore this and continue to let them get slaugtered and most of them will just uninstall the game.

Those of you 'functional' players will be left wondering why they shut the servers down.

[Operant]

Again, there is an easy way to resolve the issue of getting pugs to play as a team.

Free-for-all death match.

[lsp]

http://mwomercs.com/...ough-is-enough/ problem solved, drop in and play when you want how you want. Leave when you want, if not continue to get stomped by people who actually use teamwork.

[Archon Adam Steiner]

Greyfyl, on 17 November 2012 - 11:19 PM, said:

The 'why' is irrelevant.

No, the why is not irrelevant.

This game attracts (generally) a somewhat more educated and clearly expressive community - it's an old intellectual property, so it has older fans. Unless one's highschool teachers (particularly the English and Socials ones) failed horribly, they should have impressed upon their students the very real need to be able to express more than just a 'raw' opinion; 'it sucks' or 'I dunno' is not good enough - not for adults. If people are going to complain, complain loudly, and (in your case) make wild prognostications of doom and gloom, then there needs to be a reason.

Irrelevant? Not in the least.

[197mmCannon]

Firion Corodix, on 17 November 2012 - 02:27 PM, said:

I think teams of four should work fine in pugs, what MWO just needs is bigger matches. Right now it's 8vs8 against WoTs 15vs15. To get the same 5:1 ratio teams of 2 would even be too big. But bigger matches would probably be a very bad idea until they fix the netcode issues, since if you increase the amount of players per match those issues will probably grow in severity too.
They are working towards increasing the size to 12vs12, aren't they? So at least it's going in the right direction

I agree this is a big part of it. And it's not just because a premade is 1/2 the team but even if it was 8 pugs vs 8 pugs it is really easy for an early lead to turn into a stomp because of the small team size.

You start the game with a disco or a suicide or one guy is an ***** and just runs in and gets killed, you just lost 1/8 your team.

Once one team gets first blood and then maybe one more kill it is very easy for that lead to snowball into a 8-0 win.

Larger teams will make it easier to come back from losing 1 or 2 guys initially.

[Asmosis]

Operant, on 17 November 2012 - 11:41 PM, said:

Again, there is an easy way to resolve the issue of getting pugs to play as a team.

Free-for-all death match.

I am hoping for this on solaris when it arrives. Or co-op deathmatch where multiple teams go at it (with no public chat so no teaming up).

[Teralitha]

Panzer76, on 17 November 2012 - 02:22 PM, said:

Absolutely. Im not saying it should be as I want. It's just that if wont be like that I would like to know, so I can stop spending time on it.

Its a team game, if you dont like that... you should not waste your time here

[The Amazing Atomic Spaniel]

Teralitha, on 18 November 2012 - 01:12 AM, said:

Its a team game, if you dont like that... you should not waste your time here

But it's a team game which has been released with no built in voice comms and no other comms beyond a chat window you have to type into. This is absolutely extraordinary for a game released in 2012.

It's my biggest "what were they thinking" comment about MWO. Even a simple drop down menu of the sort that has been used in flight sims for more than 10 years would be very effective.

[ollo]

Teralitha, on 18 November 2012 - 01:12 AM, said:

Its a team game, if you dont like that... you should not waste your time here

Be careful what you wish for, you might get it! He and the others will propably no longer waste their time here, and they'll take your game with them...

[SPARTAN 104]

Dear mods, here's another issue i have with the game as described by the OP.

[Sean von Steinike]

OP, eventually you should balance out around 1 to 1 W/L if you play enough PUG matches. You'l go through periods where you get stomped, then you'll get the stomping team. Somewhere in that you'll get plenty of good matches that could have gone either way. Even a wipeout where your side only kills 2 can be a good, long fight if you have damaged the enemy team a lot before going down.

Of course, could go down easy street and join premades if you want almost no challenge. That'll be changing though if matchmaker ever gets in order.

[Percival Hasek]

If a free-for-all option comes out, you may be more happy..or less, since in a free for all, ultimately there is only one survivor, and a lot of roadkill.

Right now, in this current beta, team matches are the default option As long as there is any form of team play, coordianted teams will beat packs of lone wolf players time and time again, and there is nothing anyone in the word can do about this, nor should anything be done about this for team-style matches. Unccordinated teams without communications should be stomped by teams of skilled coordianated players.


This is a multi-player online game: this is not a single player game. There is no player vs AI mode, and no single player vs single player mode at this time. If you want to play a single player game, then this is not the game for you. If you dont want to be part of a team in a team based game, you want to lose.

It takes very little time to find a group to team up with. If it takes longer than five minutes, you are trying the wrong server/time zone. In the meatime, work at establishing a few measures that may make the fight more interesting: communicating by text very early, adopting a defensive posture, typing out targets..not that it will make PUGs winners, but you might get completely stomped somewhat less, if you are lucky rnough to have puggers who are experienced, bother to read the team chat, and are willing to follow your instructions. Most will run off on their own and die.

[Black Ivan]

The match finder is still broken. We thought today against 4 Atlaes, without even having a single Assault Mech ourselfs, exluding the AFK farmers.

This game needs some serious penalties for AFK Farmers, suiciders and make balanced matches. That does not work!

[Percival Hasek]

Operant, on 17 November 2012 - 11:41 PM, said:

Again, there is an easy way to resolve the issue of getting pugs to play as a team. Free-for-all death match.

Where the player who hangs back and refuses to engage until the end if rewarded. So, to minimize that, games get hosted on a flat, featureless area to prevent hiding..and I can't imagine a more boring style of match than that.

[DogmeatX]

The people suggesting TS etc. are totally missing the point. The majority of people do NOT read the forum and this will be most casual players. Ergo most casuals won't be on teamspeak, vent, mumble or anything else. Most casual players will not be in a clan/group/tribe etc.

As the game currently stands the only thing they'll know about (if that even) will be the ingame text chat. Currently they probably won't know about that either due to zero tutorial, hints or anything of the sort.

The basic problem is the actual game itself does not have anything really ingame to encourage coordination. At the very least it could do with some kind of voice macros - "regroup" "fire on my target" "follow me" "help!" just basic things like that maybe with some waypoints/ingame markers.

Edited by DogmeatX, 18 November 2012 - 11:04 AM.