777 replies to this topic

[Deathz Jester]

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.

you can also throw in the Battlemaster missile variant, I have one that runs 2xLRM20's, 2xSRM6s and, 4xMedium Lasers

[Wintersdark]

wintersborn, on 21 October 2013 - 06:44 PM, said:

PUGs are for fun, team play is for effectiveness or who and how to win with the "Roles" and tactics etc.

I don't play to contribute to my PUG's anything, only to have fun and I don't take orders from those that try to force me to other than just that.

As an example in a MMO PUGs are Solo/Pick Up Group questing with others around. Clan/Lance team play is like Raiding and I do not want to do that in a PUG.

This is all fine advice for those looking to play as a team but to talk smack about those that don't fit Team roles/builds for solo PUG's is again BS.

Then why are you here?

This thread, as i said in my last post, is specifically about tactics in pugs. This is a thing, whether or not you want to admit it.

See, MWO is a team game. Those pug drops? It's not you against the world, it's your team against theirs. Working together is the single most important contributing factor to victory. Now, I can respect that you don't like to win, and I'm ok with that: It ensures I'll never need to worry about your being on my team, because you'll comfortably remain in the steering wheel underhive. But if you are totally resistant to the notion of working together with a team, and don't care about your team winning matches (and thus YOU winning matches) why are you in a tactics thread? Why are you so against the discussion of tactics, in a guide thread, in the *********** guide forum?

Discussion of the strategies are welcome, but coming to a guide/training thread just to say "Don't tell me what to do!" ... That's drifting to under the bridge territory.

[Void Angel]

Iron Harlequin, on 21 October 2013 - 08:45 PM, said:

you can also throw in the Battlemaster missile variant, I have one that runs 2xLRM20's, 2xSRM6s and, 4xMedium Lasers

Heh. I think that has more to do with the place LRMs are in right now than the limitations of the chassis. The 1S can throw 50 missiles in a volley if you're willing to eat the heat penalties, or 25 in two volleys - but I can't get it to put out decent numbers.

Edited by Void Angel, 21 October 2013 - 10:03 PM.

[Alpha087]

You heard it here first folks, charge out from cover and pretend we're in Call of MechWarrior so that the twelve 'mechs on the other team can burn you down in seconds. Builds that focus on long range? Don't use 'em, brawlers are the only thing that makes sense. Everyone needs to get out there and give me more easy gauss rifle kills.

[Wintersdark]

Alpha087, on 21 October 2013 - 09:09 PM, said:

You heard it here first folks, charge out from cover and pretend we're in Call of MechWarrior so that the twelve 'mechs on the other team can burn you down in seconds. Builds that focus on long range? Don't use 'em, brawlers are the only thing that makes sense. Everyone needs to get out there and give me more easy gauss rifle kills.

What? That's not what this says at all.

[Void Angel]

Well, it's not totally off base, but it's not quite a fair critique either. Assuming he's not a raving psychotic, and is responding to Wintersborn...

Edited by Void Angel, 21 October 2013 - 11:09 PM.

[wintersborn]

OP's words.
"This is for the Atlas missile boats"
"They are not a worthwhile build"
"Poor load out choice"
"Its a Fracking Atlas"

Seems obvious that he does not like and discourages builds or play styles that do not fit a specific role. While his opinion is fine for organized clan/lance/team games it should not be the attitude for PUG's.

When someone plays captain commander in a PUG and barks orders or talks {Scrap} about your build etc. I have to laugh because its a PUG!

"Then why are you here?" = To play a video game and have fun as I said before.

"This thread, as i said in my last post, is specifically about tactics in pugs." = PUG's are a free for all do what you want game type.

Edited by wintersborn, 22 October 2013 - 07:05 PM.

[YueFei]

Ghogiel, you don't understand that Void Angel's advice is on par with advice for people in a pick-up football game. It's not meant to be given to a professional football team that already has coaches for every position, a slate of playbooks on both sides of the ball and on special teams, etc.

It's specifically meant to address players in uncoordinated PUG environments, where players are so timid that they don't even put themselves in a position to support their teammates at all. You may not see this issue at your level of play, but you already admitted to seeing hilarious things on your Alt account, and I've seen teammates do some very silly things as well. We're not just talking about not pushing with your teammates when they push, but things like not even maintaining proper sight lines to lay down support fire. I have a friend who doesn't grasp video games intuitively, and I've seen him do it countless times even on defense. We're looking in one direction, firing upon the enemy advance, and he's behind the lines somewhere blocking his own view of the unfolding battle and contributing diddly-squat to the team.

If your team sits in one spot, then teammates must at least setup shop in a location that lets them help. And if the team advances, it does no good to hang back while they get killed, even if the push they are making is ill-advised, you may as well step in and take a few free shots while the enemies are shooting at your teammates. If you don't at least push forward and toss off a few shots, your teammates are still going to die, and you'll have done zero damage while they're dying.

In general terms: In an uncoordinated PUG, flow with your team, and put yourself in a position to shoot at the same guys your buddies are engaging. This seems so simple, so much plain old common sense, that you might think it doesn't need to be said, but even as simple as this is, there are lots of folks who can't manage to do it.

[Artillery Witch Viridia]

The brawling meta game seems pretty much dead. The few brawlers left seem to get chewed up by Poptart:Online players. Lrm players are almost entirely negated and in really bad shape in the game right now due to the overwhelming use of the sit behind hill or building jump up and fire a shot briefly and fall back down state of the game. Now it's not that crippling on every map but you can certainly tell what the game has turned into when all you see are Highlanders and Shadow Hawks on teams. I don't know if they will ever do it but if pgi negated weapon systems when a jumpjet is used or functioning for 2-3 seconds I think it would kill the sit behind buildings and jump shot all match play. Bring back real maneuvering and terrain play. My 2 cents on the timid tart multiplayer the game has become. I also feel Lrm users are almost extinct now. ECM although used much less often is still rather broke, poptarts effectively render missiles useless as well. I don't feel a damage or velocity increase would combat this and it need not become missile boat warrior online either. Just maybe a direct los for the missile user allowing lock even if direct visual target is under ecm and the requirement of tag if you are getting a non los lock assist from a teammate. A 1.5 ton piece of equipment should not always negate Direct line of site fire of a players weapons. Also Tag does not always even pierce through ecm even if there is only one present under some circumstances but that is more likely a bug. I rarely play any of my lrm builds anymore now, they just seem completely useless in some matches and maps due to the metagame.

[Vanguard319]

Teralitha, on 10 February 2013 - 09:44 AM, said:

I find your atlas driving methods interesting.... your in the front alot... you die alot...... but then you said you also win alot... I think I can gleen from this that you also have a premade team alot carrying you. Driving an atlas to the front line of the battle is not smart. Expecting eeryone on your team to follow you and save you from the enemy... just bad thnking. This way of piloting speaks volumes. You are bad, and your team is generally good, if they can recover from what IMHO is stupid play.

But thats how you like to play, and I wouldnt tell you to not do what you find fun. I am a tactical thinking player, but even I find some fun in saying what the hell and charging in on occasion hoping my team is behind me and not caring about the results. Sometimes it works, but because it works sometimes, doesnt mean its a good strategy.

I noticed one of your siglines is "follow the fracking atlas" Well I hate to tell you this but... if your team isnt following you to the enemy team to die, they are better players than you. When I play 4 man premade and I see a lone atlas charging straight ahead alone, I let them go alone. I cant stop them from suiciding, and I wont risk my team trying to save them either. better to have only 1 member of the team get into a bad situation than half of it, its easier to save the match down only 1 mech instead of 3 or 4. I cna only hope those lone atlas piltos charging blindly into the enemy team will one day learn their folly and change.

It doesn't matter how good a premade is if the other team is coordinated and competent. I think Void's point is that as the mech with the single heaviest amount of armor in the game, an Atlas should not be cowering behind cover while his team mates bear the brunt of the other team's firepower; Considering the current metagame of coordinating massed fire on one player, it's one of the only mechs that can withstand that kind of abuse for any period of time. It's true that a few light mechs can disrupt an enemy force for a time, but if their heavier team mates don't move in and support them, they will get swatted like the bugs they are once the enemy regroups, which may not take long if the lights have very little effective firepower. (think MG builds)

An Atlas is an assault mech, it should be leading the push, not sniping behind cover while everyone else moves forward.

[Deathz Jester]

Void Angel, on 21 October 2013 - 09:08 PM, said:

Heh. I think that has more to do with the place LRMs are in right now than the limitations of the chassis. The 1S can throw 50 missiles in a volley if you're willing to eat the heat penalties, or 25 in two volleys - but I can't get it to put out decent numbers.

I tried a 2 LRM 20 , 2 LRM 10 Build, without doubleheatsinks initially.... and since not having missile boated since when the Stalker released, I derped. So I fired, and then boom goes my ammunition stores from the heat. lol


I hate missile boating, its boring, its like the people who use artillery in world of tanks. They love sitting in one spot doing jack **** for their team.

[Wintersdark]

wintersborn, on 22 October 2013 - 07:05 PM, said:

OP's words.
"This is for the Atlas missile boats"
"They are not a worthwhile build"
"Poor load out choice"
"Its a Fracking Atlas"

Seems obvious that he does not like and discourages builds or play styles that do not fit a specific role. While his opinion is fine for organized clan/lance/team games it should not be the attitude for PUG's.

When someone plays captain commander in a PUG and barks orders or talks {Scrap} about your build etc. I have to laugh because its a PUG!

He's not talking about what you should say in a PUG. I'm not sure if you're being obtuse, or just not reading what I've said, but the whole purpose of this thread is to help people do better in PUGs. People who want to do better, anyways. As I said, if you don't want to win, that's fine. If you don't want to discuss tactics in pugs, that's also fine. Go away. This is a PUG tactics thread, for gods sake. Is that too confusing for you?
nd have fun as I said before.

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"This thread, as i said in my last post, is specifically about tactics in pugs." = PUG's are a free for all do what you want game type.

Just because you say that, doesn't make it true. MWO, even in PUG's, is a team game. This isn't open to interpretation, that just is what it is.

Now, you can elect to avoid teamwork, and do what you want. Of course you can. You'll lose a lot, but that's ok too - you'll end up in the steering wheel underhive with all the other horrible PUG players who refuse to work together, and then you'll stop losing so much because everyone is equally bad. But seriously, if you don't want to discuss tactics, get out of the tactics thread.

But don't for a moment think that everyone - or even most - people share your opinions. Very many people are interested in learning how to play better, and that's why this forum is here, so we can share ideas and ways to work together.

See, it's been my experience since the start of open beta, over some 3500 solo pug drops, that the vast bulk of people want to work together, but it's hard to find ways to do that given limited communication options and time constraints (nobody wants to sit down with strangers and hash out a strategy every drop, it's just too much a pain in the ***). The solution is finding the most effective "Default strategies". When everyone learns these, people work together "automatically", and they win a whole lot more.

And, for a whole lot of people? The game is a lot more fun - winning or losing - when you're working together and losses are just due to being outplayed, rather than because half your team was off being useless.

Playing to win and playing for fun are not mutually exclusive.

[Ghogiel]

Void Angel, on 21 October 2013 - 02:18 PM, said:

Specific, generalized reasoning as to why camping is dangerous in the PuG environment is not "cherry picking scenarios." Your specious practice of dismissing all examples as "cherry picked" is not going to work for you here, nor is your amateur-hour sophistry of saying "No, YOU," and then pretending a statement means the opposite of what it said.



You quote me pointing out that your estimation of PuG intelligence is inconsistent, insert a counter-accusation ("no, you're being inconsistent!") move on to a straw man oversimplification, and then wrap up your statement by trying to shift definitions and subjects again. We're not talking about your vague definition of smart PuGs; we're talking about how you apply that definition inconsistently in a circular merry-go-round of egocentric logic. PuGs in your imaginary dream world are only smart enough to take roughly coordinated action when they're doing what you think they ought to do. Ask them to camp a spot, and they're smart; ask them to gather up their brawlers and move together? Nope! That's "herding cats," and Puggers are way to stupid to attack something in a group - suddenly, their IQ drops into the basement.

In fact I never said either of those things. It's also a false dichotomy. But perhaps I am not clear to you when I addressed your argument.

If PUGs did gather up their brawlers and move together correctly, I never said that is a stupid action. I actually said that if they are a disadvantage to me, then they are a disadvantage to me. But I think you are getting that statement confused with when I pointed out about your presumption that PUGs become more stupid if they camp and will wander off etc, but at the same time you said they could manage to organize and push. IMO they could do either/or with equal stupidity/intelligence, but trying to ascribe intelligence to one scenario but not the other, like you are doing, is inconsistant. You are applying different standards of PUG coordination to each scenario.

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My argument actually doesn't rely on intelligence at all. I simply explain why camping for too long exacerbates the coordination and communication problems inherent in the PuG environment - at any level of intelligence.

Same problems in Push like I've been saying.

It's just your scenarios ignore the fact every problem a PUG has with coordination when faced with camping also affects pushing. So it simply boils down to risk management.

And "too long"? Come off it, you start adding clauses like that after the fact.

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Time and again, you've resorted to fallacious appeals to your own authority and snide insults aimed at "the underhive." The people you play with are all "known teams that have eanrt reps" - unless you're slumming with your "other" account. How can you be so oblivious to the implications of your own beliefs? If you really are part the creme de la creme of MWO, your player group is numerically insignificant. You say all your teammates use "meta" builds without understanding that a large part of The Meta's effectiveness derives from the Thomas Theorem in action. If everyone else on your team is playing a certain way, being the lone visible nail will just get you hammered down; this has a negative impact on innovation, because early adopters of new metas will have to be very persistent to succeed. You and your buddies may play all the cookie-cutter jump-sniping poptart builds you like - but many people do not slavishly follow The Meta, and the effect of this on most people's games cannot be blithely hand-waved away. Here, yet again you employ bad logic and a double standard. "The underhive" is to be looked down on because they don't play like you do - but the implications of their differing practices is blithely ignored.

Wow really. Well imo it doesn't matter what anyone plays as long as it works and can strongly compete and can/will take you to the highest level of play in this game. The only thing that matters is winning. Also stop assuming the top players aren't experimenting, and aren't setting the trends, including any new ones. That's just silly now. And yeah if their drop deck get's hammered in by the over arching meta, they stop using it and move to something that works.

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There are more command and control issues inherent in camping than in a push. Certainly both can go wrong, but we're talking about how likely that is to happen. I've explained over and over to you the reasons that is, and you've simply ran and hid behind diversionary tactics and thrown up one straw man after another.

Yeah by relying on cherry picked scenarios and then by ascribing bias and favortism, like coordination, to one group over the other.

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Well, I'm done. "To give truth to him who loves it not is merely to give him more manifold reasons for misinterpretation." You have continually misrepresented statements you've quoted, in an sophomoric and futile attempt to score a logical kill - while simultaneously avoiding contrary reasoning like the plague. I have no doubt that you'll pollute my thread with another diatribe - you cannot resist "getting the last word," since you view argument as a form of social competition instead of a way to find truth. So be it; you may vent your spleen all you wish - but I will no longer see your posts.

I ain't here to please. I'm here to point out that your scenarios are biased and one sided. And it's clear that "getting the last word" is how you think you 'win' an argument. Just put your fingers in your ears and 'lalalala' like a sophomoric.. etc.

[Ghogiel]

YueFei, on 22 October 2013 - 07:49 PM, said:

Ghogiel, you don't understand that Void Angel's advice is on par with advice for people in a pick-up football game. It's not meant to be given to a professional football team that already has coaches for every position, a slate of playbooks on both sides of the ball and on special teams, etc.

It's specifically meant to address players in uncoordinated PUG environments, where players are so timid that they don't even put themselves in a position to support their teammates at all.

Actually, that is my point.

If the general climate is one of timidity, then you must factor that into your risk assessment. For example if a greater number than 50% of pushes fail due to timidity or whatever, then it's usually more costly than beneficial.

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If your team sits in one spot, then teammates must at least setup shop in a location that lets them help. And if the team advances, it does no good to hang back while they get killed, even if the push they are making is ill-advised, you may as well step in and take a few free shots while the enemies are shooting at your teammates. If you don't at least push forward and toss off a few shots, your teammates are still going to die, and you'll have done zero damage while they're dying.

Well of course, you won't be top player on your team without being super aggressive. But you can't do that if you are dead.

Besides cherry picking scenarios, there are a million ways things can play out. The question is, is the reason for this topic because more pushes fail due to timidity than not. If they do you should factor that in to the odds, and capitalize on the enemy making failed pushes and being timid.

I mean if it's such a thing and a common experience, then in PUGs it's imo better to use the way the games usually play out to your advantage rather than try to get people to play differently. I can't even imagine the tiny fraction of the people in PUG matches that would have read this topic anyway.

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In general terms: In an uncoordinated PUG, flow with your team, and put yourself in a position to shoot at the same guys your buddies are engaging. This seems so simple, so much plain old common sense, that you might think it doesn't need to be said, but even as simple as this is, there are lots of folks who can't manage to do it.

Well yeah. While there are strong positions on every map that hold innate advantages, and those are usually camped and are really hard to assault without high risk.

If the battle happens elsewhere, camping even those areas are useless. Strong positions are reactionary and fluid, not entirely static. Few exceptions I can think of, like holding back to prevent base caps on big maps like alpine.

[Von Falkenstein]

Discard Pugging. Get on a team. Team uses tactics. Issue solved.

[Mighty Spike]

Wonder how many Bull....t runs under Guides& Strategies....

[Void Angel]

Please make comments constructive - if you disagree, give reasons. Sniping with unsupported insults or nonsensical recommendations to "stop pugging" are embarrassing to any organizations in your signature(s) - and helpful only in keeping the thread which you so incoherently dislike at the top of the forums.

[wintersborn]

Von Falkenstein, on 23 October 2013 - 01:36 AM, said:

Discard Pugging. Get on a team. Team uses tactics. Issue solved.

Correct.

Like I said opinions are fine but way to many people have this attitude about how or what people should be doing in PUG's. How many games do you see Commanders talking {Scrap} about your build, ironically after they are dead or crying about what you did not do that caused their death.

If you want to play with team based tactics with others that do the same you should not be in a PUG.

There can be a million articles on how to play like a winning team and it will never change the fact that most PUG players are in a PUG for one reason, FUN! When they want to get competitive and grow a e-peen they will join a team etc. and not PUG anymore.

If it wasn't for the attitude towards PUG players I would not care but I call it when I see it.

Edited by wintersborn, 23 October 2013 - 02:56 PM.

[Xmasterspy]

Void Angel, on 22 January 2013 - 04:19 PM, said:

Eh, we all had to learn sometime - I remember when I was one of those stupid people on the Horde side who just wouldn't charge the bridge in Alterac Valley (if any of you are vanilla WoW players, you know what I mean.)

LOL I just made a post called "Chasing lights". I made the same referance about people not pushing the bridge in AV! It drove me crazy that the rest of the team would not recognize or watch that when I would run past all the alliance people, they would all give chase to me and leave the bridge wide open for the rest of my team to follow behind a bit and take the gy/bridge.

http://mwomercs.com/...chasing-lights/

[Void Angel]

Hah! You were a Shaman, too!