777 replies to this topic

[Kmieciu]

An Atlas with 2xLRM20 and 2xMedium lasers may not be THE best build in the game.
But if it has enough heat sinks and ammo to shoot for the entire match, racking up 8 assist and 1000+ damage while not leaving cover, the pilot is clearly more useful than some fool in a brawler Atlas who charged our team head on and got owned in 10 seconds. It`s not about who`s the bravest or who has the best aim. The most important thing is to support your team.

Edited by Kmieciu, 14 February 2013 - 03:52 AM.

[evilC]

Void Angel, on 13 February 2013 - 10:50 PM, said:

I chose the more evocative wording initially because I wanted to grab people's attention and get them to read the post - that worked, in most cases.

That was exactly my point - the title of the thread was way too sensationalist, and as a soundbite gave exactly the opposite advice to that which I would like to see going out to new players.

[1453 R]

And if those new players actually read the opening post - even just the opening post, not the rest of the thread - they'd see what what's being encouraged here is intelligently aggressive play, not blind berserker bloodrages. Intelligently aggressive is the pinnacle we're reaching for here.

And frankly, I still say that newbies who go absolutely apeshit-bonkers and charge the enemy lines like a Jade Falcon Elemental point hopped up on meth a week before their Bloodname trials start are more helpful than the ones that're so paralyzed by caution and timidity that they don't actually fight at all until the battle's already won or lost. At least the first sort will find the enemy for you, and they may even do some damage before they go down. They'll also learn really, really quick how to dial it back. Heh...or alternatively, how to be a meth-headed Jade Falcon berserker and win fights, which I would consider one of the most awesome combat skills you can pick up in this game.

That guy in the back, though? The one in an HBK firing one LRM salvo every forty seconds from maximum range? He's not going to learn jack, because he's working so hard on staying out of the game that he doesn't have a chance to.

[Abivard]

"BOOT'em, don't SPATTER'em!" Heinz Guderian

Edited by Abivard, 14 February 2013 - 12:25 PM.

[Void Angel]

evilC, on 14 February 2013 - 04:26 AM, said:

That was exactly my point - the title of the thread was way too sensationalist, and as a soundbite gave exactly the opposite advice to that which I would like to see going out to new players.

What you described earlier was often not the result of too much aggression - the sniper 'mech standing in Dropship Gap on Coward's ridge and just slugging it out with the entire enemy team is a great example. He's not trying to "be brave and do his bit," he's just trying to fight, cautiously and from cover - and doesn't know how. Look around you since the last patch, and you'll often see entire teams doing this. They're trying out the buffed weapons, which is great - but they're really doing it wrong from a tactical standpoint.

They pick a place with cover, and then walk (or jump) out of that cover to snipe. If they're subjected to fire, they turtle up again and poke out a different side of their cover, or wait a bit to see if their opponent is busy. Since it's hard for two 'mechs to conveniently use the same bit of cover, they're all spread out; because of this dispersion they're often in poor positions for mutual support. All of this makes them easy prey for a team that coordinates on the attack.

As for telling new players to be cautious? Take it from a military professional - you're approaching the socialization of new players in exactly the wrong way. In any fight, virtual or otherwise, the side that takes coordinated action wins. If you tell people to be cautious, they won't be coordinated; even if they try, they've got to type it out - and people who are intelligently aggressive will roll over them. Barring a clearly communicated plan, you need to keep everyone moving in the same direction with the same goal, because the sum total of 8 separate judgement calls is not likely to add up to concentrated action. You can follow any simple plan: you don't all have to run at them in a drooling horde - The OP clearly states this. There's also a lot more to tactics, but that's another thread.

[AdultPuppetShow]

Methinks OP believes himself a trueborn.

One word: Tukayyid

[Deathlike]

All I can say is that I've seen times where some players are more spectators than they are agitators. That's not helpful. You need to be productive on the field as much as you possibly can.

I would still like people to not rush over the place to get killed unless this is a coordinated type of distraction. It is very difficult at times to make the proper read on the situation and react accordingly... a heads up is most helpful. It's OK to be aggressive, but then again, it's not OK to watch the squirrel being chased to the detriment of thet eam. Since success is defined by the contribution of your teammates, I would like to see them help out as much as they can, and not spectate on the field while they are still alive.

Edited by Deathlike, 14 February 2013 - 09:30 PM.

[Void Angel]

Kmieciu, on 14 February 2013 - 03:52 AM, said:

An Atlas with 2xLRM20 and 2xMedium lasers may not be THE best build in the game.
But if it has enough heat sinks and ammo to shoot for the entire match, racking up 8 assist and 1000+ damage while not leaving cover, the pilot is clearly more useful than some fool in a brawler Atlas who charged our team head on and got owned in 10 seconds. It`s not about who`s the bravest or who has the best aim. The most important thing is to support your team.

The problem is that you're sporting a weapons loadout that literally belongs on a Catapult. Sure, you have ECM, and you can fill your "extra" tonnage up with ammo for the sake of combat endurance, but a couple of Large Lasers or PPCs (ER or normal) will really round out your DPS while simultaneously expanding your combat options - and they don't run out of ammo. Two LRMs and a brace of Medium Lasers really is a bad build. When a Commando is carrying four times the defensive firepower of your Atlas (and more than half of that Atlas's total firepower,) it's time to re-think your design philosophy.

Teamwork is always paramount, of course, and you should certainly support your team - starting with a good build!

Edited by Void Angel, 15 February 2013 - 12:06 AM.

[Rejarial Galatan]

Uspez, on 09 February 2013 - 01:41 PM, said:

I agree that this is definitely an issue and keeps most games from being fun. The timidity is a mystery to me since there's nothing riding on these games right now: win or lose it's just a short pug game and you can start another one in a few minutes anyway. Be more brave people!

practicing tactics that will be more viable once full features are implemented is just intelligent warfare practice. Why practice getting yourself blown to bits when it will become costly down the road to do just this?

[Warskull]

Rejarial Galatan, on 15 February 2013 - 07:49 PM, said:

practicing tactics that will be more viable once full features are implemented is just intelligent warfare practice. Why practice getting yourself blown to bits when it will become costly down the road to do just this?

When you are timid, the only thing you are practicing is being bad. Are you currently dishing you damage? If not and there is fighting going on, you are being a drag on your team. No advanced strategy revolves around not doing damage. You can still be aggressive on an LRM mech or a sniper. You can still use cover and positioning while being aggressive.

People try to hide behind a cloak of 'tactics', 'fire support', and 'sniping.' In reality you are not participating in fights, letting the enemy take out your best players, and passively letting them steam roll you. The good sniper teams don't just sit behind the ridge and hope enemies come into view. They position themselves to take potshots, they force the enemy to come to them. They take risks to gain rewards.

Grab yourself a 4SP and brawl for a bit. It will teach you a lot about the game.

Edited by Warskull, 15 February 2013 - 10:47 PM.

[Orionche]

Rejarial Galatan, on 15 February 2013 - 07:49 PM, said:

practicing tactics that will be more viable once full features are implemented is just intelligent warfare practice. Why practice getting yourself blown to bits when it will become costly down the road to do just this?

And what if those features don't turn out to be what you expected and you're forced to change your tactics? Are you gonna come rage at the devs on the forums or you gonna man up, refit the mech and go kill something?

Stop going with the rest of the lemmings, leave the box your teachers/bosses/parents told you to be in, get in a brawler, FORCE YOURSELF to get into someones face. You will die horribly the first time. You will die stupidly the second time. You will die the third time, but the other guy is gonna go home bleeding. On the forth battle you will have a "GF". On the fifth that Atlas is gonna respect your light mech more. On the sixth you're gonna have top damage on the team in that "****** no ECM underpowered" mech that no one drives.

Good players push themselves, are constantly changing and aren't afraid to shoot someone bigger than themselves and show them the finger whilst doing it. Its okay to be a newbie, its just ******* horrid to be that guy with over a 1000 matches playing his sniping build and still suck at it.

Its a game. You lose absolutely NOTHING by trying something new. Open your mind, stop being afraid and leave your comfort zone. Its nothing but ******** pixels.

[Ignatz22]

We Scout; we weave and dodge, no rain of missiles. We ignore the Guns to the Right, the Lasers to the Left, we boldly Go Where No Mech Has Gone Before (in-match) and because we're new, because we in the OTHER Raven the one without the umbrella and the shiney paint or we have the "Support Mech" with few attachments for HEAVY METAL DEATH, again we find the battlemap clear of friendlies.
We die.
We see the comments light up - "Noob!" "Moron" "*******" as the unresrained wrath of the F*^%tards rains harder and faster than it did in-game. NOW our backs are covered...with knives. NOW we paint a goat on our Mech.

"Ride, Boldly RIDE!" -but fully expect NOT to have the impressive stats, to have waffle-print stomp damage on your mech and the disdain of your fellows.....

Been there, done that.

[Joseph Mallan]

Orionche, on 16 February 2013 - 06:26 AM, said:

And what if those features don't turn out to be what you expected and you're forced to change your tactics? Are you gonna come rage at the devs on the forums or you gonna man up, refit the mech and go kill something?

Stop going with the rest of the lemmings, leave the box your teachers/bosses/parents told you to be in, get in a brawler, FORCE YOURSELF to get into someones face. You will die horribly the first time. You will die stupidly the second time. You will die the third time, but the other guy is gonna go home bleeding. On the forth battle you will have a "GF". On the fifth that Atlas is gonna respect your light mech more. On the sixth you're gonna have top damage on the team in that "****** no ECM underpowered" mech that no one drives.

Good players push themselves, are constantly changing and aren't afraid to shoot someone bigger than themselves and show them the finger whilst doing it. Its okay to be a newbie, its just ******* horrid to be that guy with over a 1000 matches playing his sniping build and still suck at it.

Its a game. You lose absolutely NOTHING by trying something new. Open your mind, stop being afraid and leave your comfort zone. Its nothing but ******** pixels.

I like this. I like it because it is both right and wrong at the same time. It is definitely good to know all the roles on the battlefield, but in doing that, if you find you have an affinity with LRMs or Sniping. Then focus on that. Your role is best served by performing the mission you have the best aptitude for. Don't let players try to shame you out of fulfilling your role because they don't like it. Also if you have bad frame rates you should stay back and Lob missiles. You do your team the most benefit by doing any damage for as long as you can(ECM permitting). LRMs give you that opportunity with low frame rates. As long as you are attacking, you are doing your part. Whether you are in the enemy's face or a different timezone.

[Wendigo Vendetta]

Void Angel, on 18 January 2013 - 11:06 PM, said:

3. A fire support Atlas (the only 'mech I mentioned in this point,) meaning an LRM boat, is a stupid build. Anything you can do in that role with an Atlas, the Stalker (and possibly the Awesome) does better. There's nothing inherently wrong with putting in some LRMS for long-range engagements - but you can't afford to make them your primary armament (seriously! The guy had TWO MEDIUM LASERS on an Assault chassis.) An Atlas shines when he's soaking up firepower at medium to short range. It does this not only by being amazingly tough, but by being a rallying point for other 'mechs. I've seen fire support Atlas builds with less firepower than an equivalent catapult. It's just a bad build.

I generally agree with everything Void has said, but must take exception to this one.
1-I have done very well with a fire support Atlas. The right build (definately not the one you mention) in the right hands does wonders.
2- Atlas drivers tend to gravitate to these longer range, no LOS builds after many experiences with non-supportive team mates who will not back up the big target brawlers. The environment we adapt to includes the player-base and if they make this the saner build, it is on them to change. I assure you, the Atlas drivers are not any more stupid than the rest of the players. They are only hung out to dry by non-team-players far more often.

[Wendigo Vendetta]

Ignatz22, on 16 February 2013 - 06:54 AM, said:

"Ride, Boldly RIDE!" -but fully expect NOT to have the impressive stats, to have waffle-print stomp damage on your mech and the disdain of your fellows.....

You'd have no disdain from me... if one of you would ever report back what you see or hold an R-lock long enough for the rockets to arrive...

[Orionche]

Joseph Mallan, on 16 February 2013 - 07:28 AM, said:

I like this. I like it because it is both right and wrong at the same time. It is definitely good to know all the roles on the battlefield, but in doing that, if you find you have an affinity with LRMs or Sniping. Then focus on that. Your role is best served by performing the mission you have the best aptitude for. Don't let players try to shame you out of fulfilling your role because they don't like it. Also if you have bad frame rates you should stay back and Lob missiles. You do your team the most benefit by doing any damage for as long as you can(ECM permitting). LRMs give you that opportunity with low frame rates. As long as you are attacking, you are doing your part. Whether you are in the enemy's face or a different timezone.

While I agree partially with what you wrote, in the end you're still shifting the blame to having a s*itty computer that runs the game at 10fps instead of player mentality which is EXACTLY the same in every other highly populated "MMO". Stop enabling this passive behavior with poor excuses. You wanna get good and win or maintain the status quo? I'm bored of standing around.

Edited by Orionche, 16 February 2013 - 08:19 AM.

[1453 R]

Right attitude, moderately flawed message, Orion.

That's absolutely what we want newer players to do, but they don't have to do it in a brawler. If they like LRMs and want to learn to be the Tech Fire Support Guy, then by all means let them do that. I have a friend, new to the game, who used an Escapist MC code he had sitting around to purchase all four Catapult variants before his first match because he knew from previous MW games that he liked LRMs and being that guy who pounds enemies to dust from a distance. He loaded up his stock CPLT-C4, dove in, and made me proud to fight at his side. Why?

He was a brand new player running a 'Mech armed almost exclusively with LRMs, but he was also moving with the team. He'd use friendlies' targeting locks if they were solid, but if they weren't he'd jockey around trying to find his own lock so that he could get those launchers into play. Yeah, he stayed well behind the front-line brawlers, but when his sole close-range armament were a pair of small lasers, that was perfectly fine with the front-line brawlers. Staying behind the guys with the large lasers and the autocannons and the SRM-18s was intelligent.

He was also being aggressive, forcing himself into positions where he could fire his weapons at their maximum rates and do as much damage to the enemy as possible. He actually ran into heat problems with the stock CPLT-C4 because the default single sinks couldn't vent heat buildup from those oversized LRM launchers fast enough. At one point, and remaining his favorite kill to date, he was mixing it up in the front lines at the end of a match because he'd shot his launchers dry (and because we had five guys left to the enemy's badly-damaged two anyways), and he ended up small lasering a jumping Spider to death for the match-ending kill.

That's the kind of new guy we want. That's the kind of intelligently aggressive play Void's shooting for. The new guys who'd take a stock C4, move two hundred meters away from their DZ, and park themselves behind a hill before proceeding to kvetch out their teammates for not holding locks long enough - the new guys who'd fire maybe four LRM salvos a match because "I don't have close-range weapons!" - are not going to learn how to be effective and valuable Fire Support Guys. My buddy up there? When he gets enough experience under him in that tricked-out C4 we put together for him, he's going to be a credit to the team and someone you'd love to have around.

The players who have five hundred matches under them and still go into battle with an Atlas carrying a virtually identical armament to a stock CPLT-C4 and do the exact same thing? They're disgraceful, not tactical. A Dedicated Fire Support Atlas is an Atlas that has a Gauss rifle (two Ultra AC/5 are acceptable if not ideal), large lasers, PPCs, all metric butt-tons of weapons that aren't LRMs as well as LRMs. A Dedicated Fire Support Atlas can do to you at 600 meters what a Dedicated Face-Punching Brawler Atlas can at 200. If your DFSA can't do that, you're building your Atlas wrong. If your DFSA can do that but never does because you're sitting behind a rock somewhere 'conserving your firepower', then you are piloting that Atlas wrong. That's all.

Edited by 1453 R, 16 February 2013 - 08:42 AM.

[Orionche]

1453 R, on 16 February 2013 - 08:41 AM, said:

Right attitude, moderately flawed message, Orion.

I had a wall of text and decided to TL;DR it since I slightly went off topic with it. Its a bigger "issue" that I could talk all day long about. Then again, I'm coming from a competitive mindset and I'm on the same wave length as Void so I might be slightly biased(?) in that regard.

Your friend had some fun and was good while doing it. Good on him. =)

[Void Angel]

Wendigo Vendetta, on 16 February 2013 - 07:35 AM, said:

I generally agree with everything Void has said, but must take exception to this one.
1-I have done very well with a fire support Atlas. The right build (definately not the one you mention) in the right hands does wonders.
2- Atlas drivers tend to gravitate to these longer range, no LOS builds after many experiences with non-supportive team mates who will not back up the big target brawlers. The environment we adapt to includes the player-base and if they make this the saner build, it is on them to change. I assure you, the Atlas drivers are not any more stupid than the rest of the players. They are only hung out to dry by non-team-players far more often.

Well, I specifically defined "fire support Atlas" to be a missile boat - where missiles are the primary armament. You can do an Atlas build with LRMS; you can even focus on long-range combat (remember, the heavy beam weapons buff was not in place when this was originally written.) What you cannot do is try to use LRMs as your only major armament - not only do you only have three hardpoints, but they're all on the same location. As soon as I finish buying up the modules I've unlocked, I'm probably going to go for an LRM build on my own D-DC.

Your second point rather proves my point by way of disagreeing with me. I wrote this as an Atlas driver, as a matter of fact, in part because people were doing just what you describe. I can certainly understand why an Atlas pilot would gravitate toward long-range firepower - but again there's a problem with going pure LRMs. There simply isn't a good build for that.

Rejarial Galatan, on 15 February 2013 - 07:49 PM, said:

practicing tactics that will be more viable once full features are implemented is just intelligent warfare practice. Why practice getting yourself blown to bits when it will become costly down the road to do just this?

I can see what you're saying, but the catch is that the tactical mistakes I'm criticizing here will never be viable. I'm not telling people to never snipe; I'm telling people to snipe intelligently. I'm not telling people they always have to rush in and brawl; I'm telling them to brawl intelligently - and without being governed by insecurity. A team that takes decisive action will always tend to win out. A team that scatters out to find the best "safe" points, or never recognizes when the "sniper phase" is over and it's time to stand and fight may win from time to time, but they're not as effective as they should be.
"Cutting, whatever form of cutting it is, is decisive, with a resolute spirit. Slashing is nothing more than touching the enemy. Even if you slash strongly, and even if the enemy dies instantly, it is slashing. When you cut, your spirit is resolved. You must appreciate this. - Miamoto Mushashi, A Book of Five Rings."

Edited by Void Angel, 16 February 2013 - 10:46 AM.

[TheFlyingScotsman]

OP makes a very good, very valid point.

In so many words, failing to attack because you are afraid to take damage is a tactic that reduces the amount of damage your enemy is taking. Obviously, peeking and taking damage as people on the other side return fire is a better way to die than win, but that doesn't mean you need to camp. There are many ways to approach in every map, one of which is usually a safe way to send a lance in to flank while the rest (usually slower classes) attack from another side.

Assault pilots. You are not campy firebases, you are battering rams that can batter from a distance. Heavy (and even some mediums) are going to be doing comparable damage as you, so camping to avoid taking damage is a waste of your true purpose. Absorbing fire while the heavies behind you dish it out. You cant do this while camping, you can only do it by being a big, unignorable distraction. With lasers.