Victory is the carrot. Losing is the stick. At least for me. I'll do what it takes to win, even if that means being the guy making the risky run up the flank, or the guy cresting the hill to lay a base of fire.
You say the game rewards timidity.
I say the game rewards fast reading of the play, good positioning, movement and initiative.
That's the thing, though. Being the tip of the spear and leading a charge early on may eventually lead your team to victory, but it also means that you'll probably be the first one to die, which means either you sit around for eight minutes just to see if your team actually won, or you leave the game and never know. Those are pretty big sticks.
And that is just from a simple win/loss perspective. It gets worse when you consider resources. When you die early you make far less coin and xp. As far as the game design goes, win/loss is irrelivant, it's the amount of damage/spotting/capping you do that counts. Sure, your noble sacrifice early on may lead to a victory, but the game doesn't reward you for that behavior, it rewards the guys sniping from the back while other people take the damage, so that is what people gravitate towards.
So, because the game design penalizes being the first to die, people are more reluctant to do it. If, for example, the xp and c-bill rewards were based very heavily on win/loss, and if players weren't forced to stick around after being killed to recieve their full xp and c-bills, then you'd see a lot more people willing to get stuck in.
Actually I'm often the last guy alive and with the highest damage. It's the guy who was hiding and oblivious to the situation around him that died first.
Scratch that - if everyone chips in and does their bit theres no need for anyone to be last guy alive or even the first to die.
Edited by Indiandream, 31 January 2014 - 09:40 AM.
Actually I'm often the last guy alive and with the highest damage. It's the guy who was hiding and oblivious to the situation around him that died first.
Well, then, I would describe your situation as being atypical. For most players, they learn very quickly that the second you stick your nose out too far, you get crushed, so they learn to play extremely cautiously, because that is what the game rewards, that is what the game teaches.
All this wouldnt be so bad if it was like any other game where you can chose the server you want and play again the day after if you like the guys or avoid it. At least learn the guys that play on it, ok im with him and him so i can do this and that. We basicaly have no confidence in anyone backing you or knowing what to do when the time comes. Having 3 guys with you as you start taking damage is as good as having noone most of the times, they all run away without even knowing what we are facing.
Ofcourse you have the matter that money earning is the backbone of this game, that a win pays the same as a loss or a draw, that assist(just hitting someone once) pays so it push people to splash their damage rather than focus with 11 where getting a kill is almost the luck of the draw (we have damage rewarding cbills, remove assist completly, not the stat, the cbill earning).
Then it's a game realy hard on newbies because it's a lot more about knowledge than dexterity/reflex or what the gaming community call skills. The game is not viceral so you are less inclined to try hard, i can go right to bed after a game of mwo and i could never do that after a game of another fps.
So Much have to be learned, known realy fast as you lock into someone. We all come from other FPS i believe and we realy should come from RTS, you never focus the biggest ************* on the battlefield when he has a swarm with him. In other fps, if you're good, you can wreack 12 guys all by yourself if you play it right, 2 guys can win a game all by themselves. In mwo you only have one life, you need everyone to do his part even if that just mean absorbing all the damage while everyone move forward with him, sure you then get "i carried you all with my 900damage!!!1!" but it just shows his ignorance.
Totally agree with that. I've played a lot of Company of Heroes and Total War - These kinds of games teach you to probe the enemies line and defenses to find and exploit weak spots.
Edited by Indiandream, 31 January 2014 - 11:09 AM.
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Then it's a game realy hard on newbies because it's a lot more about knowledge than dexterity/reflex or what the gaming community call skills. The game is not viceral so you are less inclined to try hard, i can go right to bed after a game of mwo and i could never do that after a game of another fps.
...
...ERMAHGERD
You mean there might actually be video games out there which reward intelligence, forethought, and the ability to rapidly make and follow through on proper decisions in response to battlefield information more than blind-{Dezgra} meth-headed frag-obsessed twitchmonkeys with the rational-thinking ability of a half-rotted rutabaga? SAY IT AIN'T SO, DAYLEET! WE CAN'T POSSIBLY LET THE CALL OF DUTY FOLKS DOWN, CAN WE?!
Put a bit less sarcastically: I hold the entirely opposite opinion. A match of MechWarrior Online is much more deeply involving and rewarding then yet another slog through a few rounds of Call of Derpy or its various and attendant clones. It's impossible for a player's oh-so-vaunted Lightning Twitch Headshot Skillz to cover for the fact that said player's I.Q. is measured in fractions rather than integers in this game. If you're a good shot, but you're dumb, then in regular FPS games you're still one of the best players out there. In MWO, you're dead.
Certainly this comes as a culture shock to regular FPS folks, to whom kills are everything, survival is nothing, and brains are not only optional but actively discouraged. This doesn't mean we should try and swing back towards the Call of Derpy end of the spectrum, this means we should educate our rookies as to how to try and win fights even without the ability to respawn and take advantage of your own suicide scouting.
Which, funnily enough, struck me as being a large part of the entire point of this thread.
Anyone who PUGs solo often knows very well the high level of cowardice exhibited by most people. When I have to lead a charge in my Cicada 2A and kill a few mechs just to get the two wimpy Atlases hiding behind the hill on Alpine to follow me, you know something is wrong.
Perhaps it would be best if you let people play the game the way they want.
Do you realize that your own statement contradicts the principle it is trying to apply, and thus cannot be a valid thought? Not to mention, as has been mentioned, that this is the guides section. Your post is non-constructive. If you have anything to add to the conversation, please do. Troll more, and I'll report you to moderation.
Players behave timidly because that is what the game rewards.
If you want to change the way people act, chance the placement of the sticks and carrots.
Nikkoru, on 31 January 2014 - 09:30 AM, said:
Being the tip of the spear and leading a charge early on may eventually lead your team to victory, but it also means that you'll probably be the first one to die, which means either you sit around for eight minutes just to see if your team actually won, or you leave the game and never know. Those are pretty big sticks.
And that is just from a simple win/loss perspective. It gets worse when you consider resources. When you die early you make far less coin and xp. As far as the game design goes, win/loss is irrelivant, it's the amount of damage/spotting/capping you do that counts. Sure, your noble sacrifice early on may lead to a victory, but the game doesn't reward you for that behavior, it rewards the guys sniping from the back while other people take the damage, so that is what people gravitate towards.
So, because the game design penalizes being the first to die, people are more reluctant to do it. If, for example, the xp and c-bill rewards were based very heavily on win/loss, and if players weren't forced to stick around after being killed to recieve their full xp and c-bills, then you'd see a lot more people willing to get stuck in.
Like I said, game design drives behavior.
You're partially correct, but I have to disagree with a couple of things.
First, this is the guides section; I've posted other places about what I think is wrong with the metagame and what needs to be improved to bring things to better balance. But this thread is about how to live in the world game balance gives us.
Second, don't get sucked into the brawler-sniper-hider sub-debate that's been spawned in this thread (notably by people jabbering about tactics and Sun Tzu - while understanding neither.) I'm not telling people that they have to mass up and charge - or not. I'm telling them that while I understand why they're hiding in the back, there really is a carrot waiting at the end of the path of courage. The problem isn't that there's a lack of reward for playing with intelligent aggression (even while sniping.) The problem is that the behaviors that would result in those rewards are being precluded by the set of emergent player tactics we all call "the metagame." The relevant aspects of the meta are the combination of poptarts and dakka.
Jump sniping remains effective (though with a higher skill cap,) and the nerfs to some of the related weapons produced a rise in dakka-mechs. Because both dakka and poptarts excel at killing 'mechs who cross open areas, new players are often punished simply for trying to fight. Because of this, then never learn that there's another, better way to play the game than "hide and hope" cowering tactics. If one guy charges foolishly; he dies, and this is good. But if only one or two guys charge at the right time, they can still die - because their team did the wrong thing. Again, don't get hung up on this example; the same principle applies to flanking, or even falling back to a better position ("get out of the caldera!") If the team had taken proper action (which isn't as complex as it sounds; they just have to act as a team, even if they think the team is wrong,) they'd all have been rewarded with kills, damage, and victory. The reward, in victories and KDR, is there - but punishment is precluding those behaviors that lead to the reward.
That's the point of this guide, as well as the other that's in my signature: to tell people that there is a carrot behind Poptart Hill - if they just cooperate to go get it.
the thing that strikes me after reading a few other pages is this issue of cowardice is multifactorial. in previous mechwarrior games our radar was a bit more complete if that is the right word. I remember in MW4 I could cycle trhough the R key and see most of the enemy force at a given time on the battlefield and it was very difficult to sneak attack the enemy. secondly that siesmic sensor only works when you are still and costs more than most mechs running around. that plus no voice comms means that each person has extremely limited information and cannot quickly respond to say an enemy flank attack or a break in the line. hudding in a corner is not the response to any problem but its more diverse than just cowardice though.
I have a story of a recent match that exemplifies what Void is trying to say. I was pugging in an assault on Crimson Strait, my team moved out only to find that the other team turtled inside their base. Their plan was to basically let their turrets deal and take most of the damage, and if they were short on manpower, it would have been a good strategy. I was in my RVN-3L, and was the only light on my team, as well as the only ECM-equipped mech on my team. Since I couldn't get a direct LoS without being shot to pieces, I instead used the cover from the buildings to get close enough to launch my UAV, while at the same time, providing ECM cover for the forward units on my team.
We gradually ground down their defenses and won with few losses, and there are three reasons why we won:
1. They almost completely surrendered initiative to our team, only one light mech went out to scout, and suicided to a single lance early in the fight, he probably reported what he ran into, but missed the eight remaining mechs under my ECM, so his team had little to no intelligence on what they were really facing.
2. They failed to kill me, as I stated, I was the only mech on my team with ECM and scouting modules, and I used them to full effect, keeping my teammates relatively safe from LRM locks, while pinpointing enemy locations for our LRM carriers with my UAV. They knew I was there, as I did receive a fair bit of damage, but they never made any attempt to corner and kill me, even though I was close to their front line. Doing so would have exposed my team, and their LRM turrets would have been more useful, which brings me to #3.
3. They just sat in their base and stuck with their original strategy, even after it was trumped by assets they did not consider in their plans. Once they realized that the effectiveness of their turrets was gimped by an ECM cloud, and that they were visible to us, they should have moved out of the base and started clearing our forward units. Instead they sat in the open area of their base and waited for their turrets to magically save them while we stayed fairly mobile, wore them down with LRM support and took potshots at targets of opportunity. The only thing that relying on the turrets did for them was delay their defeat by ten minutes or so.
I just had match in Caustic Valley. The opposing team had an Awesome, a couple of Atlants and 4 (!) Stalkers, all of them crammed with LRMs. So it was pure LRM-hell.
What is the best way to deal with LRM-boats? - Get closer than 180 metres.
What did my team do? - Sniping and rock-hugging until the missiles had done their work.
And this happens almost every single game.
The LRM-buff would not be half that bad, if people were not so shy to get in close combat. Most people seem to be unable to adapt their tactic to a situation. All they do is sniping. The only time they get more aggressive is when they are leading like 8-4.
I just had match in Caustic Valley. The opposing team had an Awesome, a couple of Atlants and 4 (!) Stalkers, all of them crammed with LRMs. So it was pure LRM-hell.
What is the best way to deal with LRM-boats? - Get closer than 180 metres.
What did my team do? - Sniping and rock-hugging until the missiles had done their work.
And this happens almost every single game.
The LRM-buff would not be half that bad, if people were not so shy to get in close combat. Most people seem to be unable to adapt their tactic to a situation. All they do is sniping. The only time they get more aggressive is when they are leading like 8-4.
I was running my Catapult C1 pretty effectively over the weekend and the only time I really got owned was when on Forest colony, a Spider 5d and 3 Embers managed to sneak behind the lines and tear me appart. It was a really great execution and I congratulated them on it. I doubt though that they would have ever been able to pull it off with heavier/slower mechs.
Recently, maybe due to the new LRM mechanics, the best tactics have been either a) snipe from cover until the LRMs are close to empty and then charge or risk splitting up the group and hit them from 2+ flanks at once. The former requires patience which pays out, especially when impatient enemies begin feeding themselves to your team one or two at a time. The later works well vs. the "stalker blob of doom". I think the second one is also the reason why Arty is seen so often on the field; find a blob, stay outside of 1000m, drop a strike when you have enough enemies in one place, collect compoents at your leisure.
The times when a charge really pay out are when you have either 1) a lot of inexperienced enemies who panic when charged or are simply not paying attention 2) the enemy team is sufficiently "softened up" beforehand 3) your hand is forced because there is no escaping the LRM rain 4) you are confident you can win the race to get the superior position 5) you can take your enemy by surprise with your charge.
I have seen tons of Atlas led charges end in total failure. Lighter/faster forward scouts pull back to the group, sometimes dropping UAV along the way, while chipping away at the enemy. At some point he lands in the middle of the group and ends up dying horribly to focused fire. After that the group focus' fire on the next in line, the charge ends up loosing momentum and the agressors get picked appart while backpeddaling to cover. One in 10 such charges really works as intended and then it is just a total stomp, well earned I might say.
All this tells us, there is a time to charge and there is a time not to charge. Camping/sniping/charging are not always going to be the best tactic in every situation. You have to think, observe, and choose the best tactic to fit the situation.
I've had countless matches of frustration as a medium mech pilot waiting for my allies to do something. Anything. About 90% of the games I lose are because my allies sit back on a ridge, jumpjet, take a crapload of damage from the other team, and shoot off one ppc until they die. As a blackjack pilot, I have been forced to lead a charge because nobody else will move.
A rule of thumb when I play. Never lead a charge before 5 minutes into the game unless you are really, really sure that you have overwhelming firepower. So unless you have 3 atlases. Don't. If you see a big group of your allies charging in, you charge in after them. Even if it's bad tactics, you need to protect them from their own stupidity. Or maybe they see an opportunity that you can't see from your angle.
Pop-tartin till the day I die. Please, unless you are a pro, don't imitate a target at a gun range and soak up damage like a sponge. I have sooo many matches of mechs dropping like flies before the enemy team can even get within 500 meters.
A lot of medium mech pilots like myself desperately depend on heavies and assaults not camping in one place the entire match. Remember, your mech has legs for a good reason.
OK, archiving the OP, for real this time, because update!
Spoiler
This is for all the Atlas missile boats who don't realize that 60LRMS 40LRMS and two medium lasers (not a random example) is not a worthwhile Atlas build. This is for all the light 'mechs who refuse to poke their noses over Coward's Ridge in the Frozen City. This is for all the snipers who refuse to focus fire because that would require them to leave cover and assume the risk of actually taking damage.
This is for everyone who's just starting out to learn a role or the game itself - and doesn't know any better than to be guided by their fear.
Contrary to the line from Dune, fear is a necessary part of a rational mind. It focuses the attention and drives the mind toward survival. But like anger, or fire, while fear makes a useful servant, it is also a fickle friend - and a terrible master. Timidity is both the mindset that allows fear to become too important a factor in judgement, and the actions taken as a result. It is in the latter sense that I say, "Timidity is not a tactic."
The people doing the things I mentioned aren't Bad, Selfish People, in most cases. They're just allowing fear (not just of getting their 'mech shot up, but of failure to help the team) to govern their actions to an unwise extent. The guys milling around Coward's Ridge (the ridgeline halfway across Frozen City that contains the dropship wreck) don't want to be the "first one over" and die - not simply because it looks bad on the scoreboard and ends the match for them, but because dying without effect harms the team. This is a rational fear, but by listening to the fear too much, they've embraced bad tactics. A bad plan put into action now, and executed with violence of action, is better than the perfect plan executed too late. If it seems like nobody is going to take the plunge, by all means stay on our side of the ridge; but pull back to the buildings so you can have some cover instead of getting caught in the open if the other guys man up - and for the love of decency, if your Atlas is going to take the plunge - go in with him.
Scout 'mechs are sometimes the same way,
Spoiler
and the near-invulnerability some (but not all) people experience when exploiting the netcode has contributed to the bad tactics exhibited by lights. But just as bad as confidently charging the enemy team (and finding out that guy with 50 ping <em>does</em> know how to shoot at lag shields) is the Edit:Yay, the netcode is fixed!
following the timorous practice of hiding behind the Atlas until after the fighting starts. Now, hiding behind a 'mech whose armor tonnage is more than half your total battle weight would seem like a good idea on the surface - but that Atlas needs you to get out on the flanks and find the enemy before they come rolling through the tunnel behind us while everyone else is nervously eyeing Coward's Ridge.
Even that "fire support" Atlas [edit: LRM boat] (unless he's just experimenting) is making his poor loadout choice based on the principle that using the heaviest 'mech with lots of ammo as a fire support variant seems like it would be safe and able to win long-range duels due to its toughness. But in practice what this means is that he's taken up a slot that a Stalker could have filled better (and with more firepower) and not capitalizing on his chassis' primary benefit - it's a Fracking Atlastm, and people almost have to shoot at it first if it's on the front lines. Since it takes forever to kill an Atlas at long range, people will just focus on your lighter companions, and you'll tend to experience sub-optimal win rates - even if you yourself do well.
Spoiler
<span style="font-size: 12px;">Edit: with the buff to long-range beam weaponry, this point requires some revision and clarification. It is now quite plausible to fight with an Atlas in long-range combat, because ERPPCs and the like are now viable weapon systems. It is still, however, a bad idea to "boat" an Atlas with LRMs, since the Atlas simply cannot mount enough LRM launchers to make missiles it's sole significant armament (leaving aside the current state of LRMS; they'll be fixed, don't worry.)</span>
At the end of the day, you should be cautious up to a point - recklessness is the courage of a fool, after all. But you have to keep in mind that, just as you don't go to a knife fight without expecting to be cut, you can't go to a 'mech fight and not expect to be blasted apart and melted down into commemorative paperweights from time to time. The most important thing you can do is cooperate with your team, no matter what your build - maneuver for a flank shot with your sniper/missile build; being a "light killer" doesn't mean you can't scout so long as you stay close by the main body. If you can't focus fire from your position, you need to move, and if the big 'mech(s) are engaging, go in with them. Don't be stupid, but don't let fear (or tactical tunnel-vision) restrain you from helping the team. As one of the Fracking Atlas pilots, I do not mind dying a horrible death as long as the team backs me up - because teamwork, not fear, is the true key to survival.
Timidity is not a tactic.
Spoiler
<span style="font-size: 10px;">Edit: the Atlas example in paragraph 1 had 2 LRM 20s, not three (you can't get three on any one location.) Edited for accuracy. Also for hot-button words which bypass the higher brain functions of self-appointed experts who don't really read.</span> <img class="bbc_emoticon" alt=" " title=" " src="https://static.mwomercs.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/tongue.png" height="13" width="13"> <br></p><p><br></p><p><span style="font-size: 10px;">Edit again: Although matchmaking 3 will break weight class matching if it has to, it always tries to match by class first - none of which changes the fact that a Stalker will outperform an Atlas D-DC as a missile boat regardless. To be clear, my D-DC's primary armament at the time of this writing is 20 tons of missile launchers (plus Artemis,) but I still have 12 tons of heavy beam weapons to back them up. Supplementary Edit: the dang ECM hardpoint lock kinda borked the build IO was using - however, the problems with boating LRMs on an Atlas remain.</span><br></p><p>
Edit: Hey, everyone! Here we are again, with a supplementary treatise for this microguide! So, once more into the breach for...
Appendix I: The problem with camping (25July2013)
Recently, I've seen a lot of the sort of behavior that this guide encourages people to avoid. Upon reflection, aside from the points covered above, I suspect many players aren't understanding the tactical implications of staying in one spot for too long.
On the surface, it seems like a viable tactic: you set up your ambush, and wait for them to come to you. Wait for them to come just far enough into your trap, then smash their forward elements before they can react, gaining a decisive advantage. Sounds fun, and it's totally do-able... If you're a premade team with voice chat and experience playing with this tactic. Good on you, and well done, but this guide is dealing with the Pug/small group solo queue - by all means take what you can from it, but it is not for you.
In the solo queue environment, camping is a hazard, because you lack the communication and control that a voicechat system provides. While it can work, it is more likely to result in your being located and either bypassed to cap, flanked, or harassed to death. I'm not writing this to tell you not to set up ambushes - if you're feeling it with your team, by all means talk to each other and plan it out! But if you're not deliberately coordinating the ambush, I offer you these words of caution: camping is dangerous. It's not that the risk can't outweigh the reward, but understand that it is risky for a variety of reasons:
Camping cedes the initiative to the enemy. A commonly-cited principle of self-defense is that most fistfights are won by the first punch. Similarly, the first side in a match to have a major portion of their tonnage killed or crippled is at a major disadvantage. By staying in one place and waiting to see what the enemy does, you're allowing him that first swing. Sure, he might miss, or start too slow so you can counter-punch - but he gets to decide where and how to hit you, and you have to respond. The opportunity to make the first mistake is yours.
Camping muddles your forces' ability to react to enemy actions in a concerted manner. One of the ways a PUG communicates is by actions. When you are on the move, even without VoIP, you are all moving together, aside from the scouts (hopefully, but that's another thread.) This means that you're all going the same direction and doing the same thing. This means that people who aren't sure of the total situation can take their cue from those around them; that in turn makes it easier for players to act in concert with one another. If you stop moving, your pilots' minds will wander; they'll start looking in different directions, moving around, getting impatient... They'll start making their own plans. So while the enemy who hits you from the flank is acting in concert, your teammates are at least momentarily unsure of what to do - and the enemy gets in that first good punch.
The side that takes effective action wins. This touches on both the previous points, but it bears repeating. Whether in politics, videogames, or the very serious arena of modern war; the side that acts effectively wins. The best generals throughout history (yes, even Sun Tzu) desired the initiative, and suffered when they lost it. And it is very difficult, for reasons including those above, to take effective action from a static, defensive position - take a moment when your next match starts, and keep track of how long it takes everyone to get moving.
To be clear: fine art of the ambush should not be lost to MWO - nor must you always be charging randomly around the battlefield just for the sake of "doing something." I'm not telling you to never stop moving, or advocating any sort of "lemming bull-rush tactics." But you must realize that the lack of command and control inherent in the solo queue environment makes stopping and standing in place extremely hazardous - you should only do it if you have a specific plan, and have actually used your words to tell everyone what's going on.
If only I were better at convincing random PUGs that they need to be a little more aggressive...when one Jenner stands up to an Atlas two BJs and a Summoner, not a lot of good happens.
I had a match where I was given the opportunity to point out that when the Locust is taking more risks and dealing more damage than heavies and assaults, something is wrong.
It's not about convincing PuGs, though - it's nice, but you have to accept that it's not always going to happen. I just spam "stay together, focus fire, and keep moving" at the start of the match, then just be sure I'm relaying information to my team when I have the time. As a light, you can't lead with your feet like you can with larger 'mechs, because people expect you to be off away from the group. However, if you can tell your team where the enemy is and what he's doing, the team is more likely to make a concerted response than if they each just watch their own piece of the battlefield huddled behind cover like sheep in a thunderstorm.
Sometimes it amazes me how often people tend to try to follow me when I run off in my Spider-5D... and I look down at my radar, and I see the trail forming behind me, and I'm thinking, "Are they following me, or is this coincidence?"
I still don't know the answer to that question, but this happens very often... I hope it's not just me going the wrong direction to scout... lol
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Indiandream, on 31 January 2014 - 09:11 AM, said:
risk splitting up the group and hit them from 2+ flanks at once. The former requires patience which pays out, especially when impatient enemies begin feeding themselves to your team one or two at a time. The later works well vs. the "stalker blob of doom". I think the second one is also the reason why Arty is seen so often on the field; find a blob, stay outside of 1000m, drop a strike when you have enough enemies in one place, collect compoents at your leisure.
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