533 replies to this topic

[Icebound]

Set it to any mode and you'll get conquest most of the time. Even in 8mans you get a lot of teams centered around cap racing =/

[Tarantoga]

why would you 8man vs antohet team when you can play 4 and pubstomp?

[Nuck Fewton]

I'd love to play more 8 mans but getting eight dudes in Kong at the same time can be problematic. It's also frustrating when you do get a match going and 30 sec into the match you see "your base is under attack". If you're in 8 man trying to speed cap, you're the worst.

[GaussDragon]

Onward, valiant threadnaught.

[Duckwalk]

I'm up for 8 mans anytime, feel free to message me on the board, in game as "duckwalk" or find me on the skye-rangers.net TS.

Tarantoga, on 02 January 2013 - 03:05 PM, said:

why would you 8man vs antohet team when you can play 4 and pubstomp?

Because rolling PUGs with 2-4 people gets really old after a while. What do I need with 30 million CBills?

-Duckwalk

[Mavairo]

One of the reasons I left the 8 man que (and quit playing MWO so religiously) if I wanted to face the exact same thing over and over and over again, I'd have gone back to STO.

ECM pretty much killed any build diversity in the 8 man ques. Anyone that says it's not OP just simply has to look at the preferred chassis of the 8 man ques, and the preferred chassis of the guys defending it. Lets face it and be honest, if ECM weren't all that and a bag of chips it wouldn't have completely changed, and ruined team composition over night.

It also doesn't help that frankly, right now the new game mode blows because the maps are far far too small for it, and the other there is no point in capping what so ever either because no one makes $ off of it. It dumbed down the overall strategy for assault. Not that Assault was exactly tactically and strategically deep anyway. Why they bothered putting conquest in without large maps is beyond my understanding though. Talk about a bitter pill to swallow. A new game mode which promised to make the faster chassis more appealing.... and then they put all of those objectives on the same tiny maps we've been playing on since closed beta.

If anything Conquest only encourages zerging in Big Mechs over and over again instead of being in faster medium and heavy mechs.

That, and the complete removal of significant capping bonuses, we're still playing on the same old tiny brawler friendly maps, and ECM pretty much put the 8 man ques into a "well sure.... maybe once in a while" instead of me just grabbing one or two of my friends and going around the pug ques where at least I'll see something other than DDC Fatlases, and ECM Ravens. It's also nice having the ability to play my Dragons without people groaning on vent or TS too because it's not an ECM Spam Carrier. There's still memory leak, and CTD issues, General FPS isn't quite where it should be yet (It's much closer than it was mind you! I can now use FRAPS and record at 30 fps at least on high settings), and lagshield/teleporting mechs are still enough of an annoyance that I just want to put the game aside for anything but casual play right now.


The ''challenge'' aspect has nothing to do with it. I don't like rolling right over other players. That very thing is why I left STO. Because there was no competition left and on average I could solo entire 5 man teams half the time without dropping below 75 percent health. I'm not in 8 mans because right now, the game's not ready for Premade Metagame tweaking, one of the game modes Sucks Balls, and on the software side it's still not optimized enough. Nothing says annoying as ***** when you get in an 8 man premade and 2 of your guys either CTD, get a black screen bug, or yellow screen bug, or get the FPS memory leak out of no where.

Especially since I have stuff like my car to continue restoring, and modifying, games like Halo 4, Forza Horizon, and Forza4 console side to play, as well as Endless Space, Sins of a solar empire Rebellion, and now Star Ruler pc side. And we've just come out of the Holidays. From Thanksgiving to New Years is pretty much one family and friends get together after another.

So, new gaming toys, new car goodies, iffy metagame, iffy software, and family pretty much conspired to me not playin a whole lot of 8 man drops lately.

[LordBraxton]

Duckwalk, on 02 January 2013 - 04:40 PM, said:

I'm up for 8 mans anytime, feel free to message me on the board, in game as "duckwalk" or find me on the skye-rangers.net TS.




Because rolling PUGs with 2-4 people gets really old after a while. What do I need with 30 million CBills?

-Duckwalk

10th actually managed to field 8 for about an hour soon after you left!

Got about 5 games in, won 3 lost 2 to the same team who used massed LRMs to ridiculous effect, kudos to them I forget their name.

My team struggles to get 8 men on at the same time but when we do we always go right to the 8v8s! But then someone's wife gets home ect and everyone splits and says their goodbyes.

[ConnorSinclair]

I only see a few people in here who actually roll 8mans.

The rest are just pretending to be aloof at the fact they've abandoned it to abuse sync dropping because they get murdered with no real reason to be murdered on 8man.

If there was a ranking system or a ladder or you could earn a teeny bit of MC, but no.

So these groups rather just Syncdrop the ghetto to pad their KDR or sure up their Cbills.

I'm probably the only one who even enjoys 8mans and it's because I follow threads like these, Write down Duckwalk's name and group. And then proceed to shame him, taking as many screenshots, recordings and making as many insults and insinuations about his sexuality as humanly possible.

This is the only fun I have in 8mans,

[Bishop Steiner]

Dihm, on 02 January 2013 - 02:06 PM, said:

That makes you a bad player according to some though Bishop.

Very true.

Funny part, is most of the "ZOMG I'm so AMAZING!" pilots on here I would bet fall into the same trap as on nearly all other games.. they can excel as long as they are in an environment where they can run a very select Min/Max build, but probably can't actually survive in more versatile environs.... which lack of any type of weight balancer has made largely non existent in 8man. The ECM actually doesn't bug me much, dropping in a Centurion and finding the enemy running 8 DDCs and 2 Cicadas, is the kicker for me.

But it is what it is in the current implementation. ELO sure won't change much, because the stats are so easily gamed on this game as to be largely pointless.

Regardless, whatever players do or don't do, the QQ crowd (not the merc unit) are gonna continue to make up "facts", ignore the truth, and basically call any of us who don't fit into their narrow preconcieved view of why they lose, liars, so I honestly could give a flip less.

You guys always seem pretty chill though, I should probably add ya to my "merc rotation list", lol, that is, if you Rasahuagians can deal with a Steiner Ex-Pat.....

[Mavairo]

Bishop Steiner, on 02 January 2013 - 07:44 PM, said:

Very true.

Funny part, is most of the "ZOMG I'm so AMAZING!" pilots on here I would bet fall into the same trap as on nearly all other games.. they can excel as long as they are in an environment where they can run a very select Min/Max build, but probably can't actually survive in more versatile environs.... which lack of any type of weight balancer has made largely non existent in 8man. The ECM actually doesn't bug me much, dropping in a Centurion and finding the enemy running 8 DDCs and 2 Cicadas, is the kicker for me.

But it is what it is in the current implementation. ELO sure won't change much, because the stats are so easily gamed on this game as to be largely pointless.

Regardless, whatever players do or don't do, the QQ crowd (not the merc unit) are gonna continue to make up "facts", ignore the truth, and basically call any of us who don't fit into their narrow preconcieved view of why they lose, liars, so I honestly could give a flip less.

You guys always seem pretty chill though, I should probably add ya to my "merc rotation list", lol, that is, if you Rasahuagians can deal with a Steiner Ex-Pat.....

I think it would be fun to game with you, for what it's worth. Assuming you could put up with my lolz build stalker, if I decide to play assault instead of one of my dragons.

[Grraarrgghh]

Mavairo, on 02 January 2013 - 07:32 PM, said:

ECM pretty much killed any build diversity in the 8 man ques. Anyone that says it's not OP just simply has to look at the preferred chassis of the 8 man ques, and the preferred chassis of the guys defending it. Lets face it and be honest, if ECM weren't all that and a bag of chips it wouldn't have completely changed, and ruined team composition over night.

You say this, but as anyone running in RHOD or other scrims/tourneys knows, class restrictions that variate either each week (or in RHODs case, each round) really make the loadouts switch up.

When people have to bring mediums, it's not all Cicada's. When you have to bring 3 heavies, you can't stack ECM.

[Mavairo]

Grraarrgghh, on 02 January 2013 - 08:00 PM, said:

You say this, but as anyone running in RHOD or other scrims/tourneys knows, class restrictions that variate either each week (or in RHODs case, each round) really make the loadouts switch up.

When people have to bring mediums, it's not all Cicada's. When you have to bring 3 heavies, you can't stack ECM.

See, people used to use this same argument in STO (I did myself at one time) about X not being all that bad when the metagame was -forced- to have special restrictions. But the thing is, that's why those restrictions get made. It's not the Normal Metagame that you deal with day in and day out in the ques. And I found even among the highest end premades in STO, very few if any players actually would abide by ''tourny metagame restrictions'' outside of events. Eventually Cryptic broke the game so hard, and would do it intentionally just about the time we'd have tournament dates, to the point where the tournaments just stopped being organized. And people quit having any pretense of following the format outside of them, outside of outlier cases (like myself).

Tournaments aren't the standard metagame. Tournaments that intentionally change things to avoid things like the DDC, 3L spam being an issue only highlight it to be that much worse.

When I last played 8 mans about 2 weeks or so (maybe 3? has it been that long?) the metagame was as much DDC and 3L as you can stuff on a team as your conscience could justify. Because anything else, barring a skill level disparity that's fairly signficant, puts you at a noted disadvantage. Now unless there's been a stealth nerf that I'm unaware of I don't think it's changed all that much since early /mid december.

Edited by Mavairo, 02 January 2013 - 08:14 PM.

[Falso]

Wow, what a thread!

Obviously this is a big issue based on the amount of replies.

Currently, sure there a lot of people taking time for the holidays with family, and I am sure 8-man will pick up considerably in the coming weeks.

I can only speak for my experience, but for me it seems to have honestly started with the forced 4-man groups of P1MM almost 2 months ago, that took a LOT of enthusiasm out of playing the game for many, but the more hard-core fans continued to play.

Many of the more casual players who enjoyed an 8-man match moved on to something else for now, and therefore, you are left with more competitive players.

You don't have to be ultra competitive to be successful at this game, or have no life, however, right now you DO need to bring your "A" game to 8-man.

I think it's great we have a choice, go 4-man for casual play, 8 man when you want a challenge! (Just wish there were more people that felt the same to play with ... oh well, each to their own!)

Why are less people are playing 8-man?

1) Netcode, Bugs & Game Imbalance.

Lag shields, ever present memory leak bugs, CTD, Black & Yellow screen bugs all can put serious hurt on your chances in an 8-man.

(When a light mech can take several full alphas from an assault, even when running straight to/from you in a straight line, this can be discouraging. No excuse for not playing 8-man, however, I can see these as reasons why people aren't)

Finding ways to deal with these problems only make you a better player, and believe it or not, you still CAN kill lag shield lights, just have to work a lot harder at it.

2) No real balance in Battle Value/Tonnage/Mech Class or Type.

I really LIKE how ECM has forced me to use a different mech than I was used too, seriously, variety is the spice of life right?

ECM didn't break LRM's, it just means you have to work harder, and tighter as a team to use them. They are still highly effective used correctly, yes even in 8-man teams. Good scouts spotting/counter ECM'ing targets & TAG are crucial, so LRM's take more skill now, but they are hardly broken.

Do they have to be used differently? Absolutely. What's wrong with change?

3) Casual players will loose 70%+ of the time in current 8-man groups.

Is this really a bad thing? Sure I would LOVE it if we had a real lobby for everyone to get the game we would all prefer best, (casual 8-man VS competitive 8-man etc.) however, I started as a casual pug, learned about premades and was THRILLED that I could I get into a team!!

Where does this pre-made hate come from? I have no idea how anyone can come to a team oriented game, that is PvP and expect it NOT to favor teamwork, superior mech design, and accurate gunnery skills?

Honestly, there are enough Corps and Clans to go around where you can find just about as hard-core or casual play as you like, why is there such drama about how the other guy chooses to play?


I really don't mean to speak for my current unit, only my experiences during the times that I get to play (3 nights a week, 3 hours at a time usually) but I have seen much of what has been discussed here on our vent server.

We have lost quite a few that played very regularly since the introduction of the 4-man only, not completely in many cases, but they have just found other things to do until P3MM and some form of BV/drop weight balance is reintroduced.

I have also noticed just generally, that we have lost many light pilots (perhaps since the preferred Jenner has been largely replaced by the Raven 3L, again, is this REALLY a bad thing? before we had almost everyone running 6 S. Laser Jenners, now people have a better reason to run a Raven, and Electronic Warfare is SUPPOSED to be it's thing. Sure, ECM will be adjusted in ways just as much as weapons over time, etc.).

Some are just playing different mechs, some are playing Planetside 2.

We usually drop around 8 - 11PM PST for our 8-man practices, and I would love more variety!

It would seem in general either a game mechanic or lack of teams has us facing the same teams 2 - 3 times in a row (often one of the other 8-man groups in our unit too) so not sure what exactly is causing that, but I don't think it's JUST a lack of 8 man groups, otherwise we would be dropping against our own more than 1 - 2 times a night in 3 hours.

I would be honored to drop against other teams that are preparing for the meta game!

I have no illusions that there are better players, and I will only get better playing against them, one great result of the new much more competitive 8-man groups is they force you to see mistakes in strategy/mech design tactics like never before!

Any to anyone who is of the opinion that it's some magic formula of the right mechs & builds to have a recipe for success I encourage you to test that theory.

From where I am sitting, it's more the pilot behind the right mech for their skill set, being used the right way in a TEAM using a good tactic as much as it is anything.

They have more firepower? play keep-away with speed and wear them down, don't give them a head-on fight, and reverse it when you can if your team is the one running heavier.

Sure it's more difficult with no real MM to know what to prepare for, but it can only make you a better pilot when you succeed while at a disadvantage!

Edited by Falso, 02 January 2013 - 08:26 PM.

[Bishop Steiner]

Mavairo, on 02 January 2013 - 07:51 PM, said:

I think it would be fun to game with you, for what it's worth. Assuming you could put up with my lolz build stalker, if I decide to play assault instead of one of my dragons.

I'm always open.. cna usually be found on past 9pm EST, on the Comstar NA server... either hanging solo, or dropping with some other group, depending on the availability.

[Grraarrgghh]

Mavairo, on 02 January 2013 - 08:12 PM, said:

Words

If you haven't logged on in 3 weeks, then you have no idea if the metagame has changed.

Hint: it did.

[Duckwalk]

ConnorSinclair, on 02 January 2013 - 07:43 PM, said:

I'm probably the only one who even enjoys 8mans and it's because I follow threads like these, Write down Duckwalk's name and group. And then proceed to shame him, taking as many screenshots, recordings and making as many insults and insinuations about his sexuality as humanly possible.

This is the only fun I have in 8mans,

I guess I should be worried some anonymous forum troll is out to get me. Too bad I've never heard of you and you neglected to mention who you drop with/when.



Duckwalk
Skye-Rangers.net

Look me up any time

Edited by Duckwalk, 02 January 2013 - 11:06 PM.

[Kraven Kor]

Teralitha, on 29 December 2012 - 12:54 AM, said:

This only works if you have a wide variety of possible scenarios, and a huge variety of totally balanced viable mechs and equipment. a WIDE VARIETY... AND BALANCED.

This game isnt there yet.

I won't argue the merits of this, but will say that "adapt and overcome" is not at all reliant on "fair and balanced." You win with what you have, not with what you want.

[Mycrus]

again... all the issues that have been raised can be fixed by ourselves... (in the meantime)...

we can specify rules (such as 2A/2H/2M/2L) and sync drop 8man vs 8man

we have been organizing 8-man drops and all are welcome...

we had a fun time with joint drops with other units and an mixed 8-man team is active as write this (ARMD/WBH/SHARKS/OTLWS)...

we are at the NGNG teamspeak 3 server

Server: voip01.n1585.hypernia.net:9992
Password: mechwarrior
Channel: Australasian Royal Mechanised Division

[silentD11]

Mycrus, on 03 January 2013 - 09:52 AM, said:

again... all the issues that have been raised can be fixed by ourselves... (in the meantime)...

we can specify rules (such as 2A/2H/2M/2L) and sync drop 8man vs 8man

we have been organizing 8-man drops and all are welcome...

we had a fun time with joint drops with other units and an mixed 8-man team is active as write this (ARMD/WBH/SHARKS/OTLWS)...

we are at the NGNG teamspeak 3 server

Server: voip01.n1585.hypernia.net:9992
Password: mechwarrior
Channel: Australasian Royal Mechanised Division

While this is cute and all (your heart is certainly in the right place) it's hardly a solution. Any solutions like this which are community side are like slapping a Dora The Explorer bandage over the sucking chest wound that is the current 8v8 implementation, it's not really a solution.

I'm not sure that making 8 mans require even yet more effort to get working are a solution when one of the biggest reasons to drop in 4s is that they aren't as obnoxious as getting an 8 man going. Drop restrictions need to come from the PGI side. People will naturally migrate to 8 mans when it's simple to do and the games are enjoyable. Right now it's just too much planning and hoop jumping in the hopes the drops work out.

[SilentWolff]

As it stands now,the 8 man is an exercise in frustration anyway. If the bugs and constant crashing doesnt get ya, the 5 Atlas DC's with 3 Raven 3L's will.

Edited by SilentWolff, 03 January 2013 - 11:11 AM.