67 replies to this topic

[Alaric the Arcane]

Serapth, on 04 February 2013 - 04:46 PM, said:

I cant, Im too busy doing something that requires skill....

Your sister.

I don't have a sister. You should have gone with mother.

[Serapth]

Alaric the Arcane, on 04 February 2013 - 04:49 PM, said:

I don't have a sister. You should have gone with mother.

But that wouldn't require skill

[Caleb Lee]

Bushwick Bill, on 04 February 2013 - 08:22 AM, said:

Before the implementation of the 8 man queue many of the big groups stated 'give us 8 man and pug stomps will end'....' we don't enjoy pug stomping, but we have no choice....'. There were a few posts of concern from the 8 man crowd over the lack of weight limits, but most had retorts such as ' a balanced team... ' or 'it is the pilot not the mech...'. Bottom line seemed to be the 8 man sect wanted a competitive queue. Many, myself included, warned that, as in other games, such a queue would quickly dwindle as the few true competitive groups would dominate. See current situation.

There should be no surprise that the 8 man queue (the competitive queue) has teams running what they see as competitive, min/max style. The statements such as 'every team runs nothing but ecm ravens and ddc's' however is pure bunk. My son plays 8 mans and out of 12 matches i watched I saw only one full raven/ ddc team. There were some ravens and ddc's on most teams, but also stalkers, k2's, a1's , etc.. I was surprised because after reading these boards you get the impression it is a raven/ ddc only club - not true.

Bottom line, in my opinion, is people want an advantage. Look into the public ts servers and see how many 4 mans are there. If those 4 mans wanted a challenge they would group and queue 8 mans, but that is not happening. It is easier to claim the competitive 8 man queue is 'unfair' (too challenging) for whatever reason and return to pug stomping because 'they have no choice.'

Actually, I call BS on most of what you've said. The one point I will agree with you is most players like having an advantage and the truly competitive players will min/max.

It may be true that groups are finally getting tired of the complete min/max of mostly DDC and 3Ls with a few sniper/direct fire builds. Frankly, we no longer have the numbers to get on and try. Why? See my earlier post.

In a nutshell our experience of bringing min/maxed lights/mediums/heavies with the odd assault in a 'realistic' mech deployment still won about 35% of our matches post ECM. Prior to ECM that % was a lot higher, probably around 70%+ even with no tonnage limits in place. Our experience post ECM was an almost complete return to Atlas Online from closed beta with a new twist, Atlas-DDC Online.

I was pretty pissed about the no tonnage limits and for good reason. Assaults are expensive and few Houses even could afford the flat out %'s we saw online. Coming from competitive leagues to this nonsense was the last straw for most of our players after hanging tight through Artemis Online and other stupid decisions by the devs.

My impression of those that continue to play the 8 man game are diehards who don't care how much cheese they have to use so long as they win.

If they bring back class matching/battle value/tonnage limits that actually make sense, fix ECM, then we will see you all online once more in the 8v8 or 12v12 (if enough still will even play after all this) once more.

Edited by Caleb Lee, 04 February 2013 - 06:54 PM.

[Caleb Lee]

Zylo, on 04 February 2013 - 02:25 PM, said:

I really don't see too many problems dropping in 8's without weight limits. It adds additional challenge to the matches since you never know exactly what the other team will bring to the match.

Wrong... setting in weight ranges, face it, they won't have enough mechs in the exact same weight to actually do hard tonnage limits will accomplish the exact same thing. The enemy team could drop with any mix of mechs as long as they fall within that range. What it will mean is not having a herd of DDCs come over the ridge and with the current ECM no way to call targets unless someone is tagging continuously. Meanwhile while you have scouted them, and have been sniping at most of them somewhat randomly they still enjoy almost a 2 to 1 tonnage advantage and that's very, very hard to overcome. Especially when you maybe have one ECM mech in a 'realistic' setup.

[Zylo]

Caleb Lee, on 04 February 2013 - 07:02 PM, said:

Wrong... setting in weight ranges, face it, they won't have enough mechs in the exact same weight to actually do hard tonnage limits will accomplish the exact same thing. The enemy team could drop with any mix of mechs as long as they fall within that range. What it will mean is not having a herd of DDCs come over the ridge and with the current ECM no way to call targets unless someone is tagging continuously. Meanwhile while you have scouted them, and have been sniping at most of them somewhat randomly they still enjoy almost a 2 to 1 tonnage advantage and that's very, very hard to overcome. Especially when you maybe have one ECM mech in a 'realistic' setup.

I am saying Hell's Ponies has no issues dropping with the current rules. When we have 8 on we run 8-man drops rather than whine about the problems with the system. We don't run 8x DDC's, we don't run 8x Raven 3L's, hell we don't even run more than 2 or 3 ECM capable mechs most 8-man drops.

Tonnage and ECM won't win the fight, look at which mechs work best for your pilots and run those. You'll do better than you expect in many cases. You probably aren't going to win 100% of your fights but you wouldn't be doing that anyway with a full DDC team if you're complaining about the current system. If you avoid relying on locking weapons ECM really doesn't create many problems.

I call BS on your complaints. What was your team build that left you at a 2:1 tonnage disadvantage? I want to know your exact build that put you at this disadvantage but I think you're probably just full of **** and are making up excuses.

[Az0r]

Vassago Rain, on 04 February 2013 - 02:07 PM, said:

Right now, 8 manz is basically Kong, ponies, Kaos, and some australians.

Why do you hate us

[Alaric the Arcane]

Serapth, on 04 February 2013 - 04:53 PM, said:

But that wouldn't require skill

touché

Edited by Alaric the Arcane, 04 February 2013 - 07:45 PM.

[Caleb Lee]

Zylo, on 04 February 2013 - 07:12 PM, said:

I am saying Hell's Ponies has no issues dropping with the current rules. When we have 8 on we run 8-man drops rather than whine about the problems with the system. We don't run 8x DDC's, we don't run 8x Raven 3L's, hell we don't even run more than 2 or 3 ECM capable mechs most 8-man drops.

You know, you were probably one of the rare teams we might have run into then as 2 out of 3 had mostly DDC and 3L at the time. I'm glad you don't have any issues, most of our guys however were from NBT and other leagues and are actual BT/MW fans who don't like seeing stupid builds like 6 DDC and 2 3L that were common at the time. Even if that's not the case now, I still doubt we'll go back anytime soon as the underlying problem hasn't resolved itself in our opinion... i.e. matchmaking with a Battle Value system or at minimum tonnage ranges.

Zylo, on 04 February 2013 - 07:12 PM, said:

Tonnage and ECM won't win the fight, look at which mechs work best for your pilots and run those. You'll do better than you expect in many cases. You probably aren't going to win 100% of your fights but you wouldn't be doing that anyway with a full DDC team if you're complaining about the current system. If you avoid relying on locking weapons ECM really doesn't create many problems.

In the hands of the best pilots, that's normally the case. Take it to the extreme, a bunch of good light pilots versus good heavy pilots with decent netcode and ping (It's getting better now) and you can toss that argument out the window. Hence 2 to 1 tonnage ratio like a Jenner/Raven versus Cataphracts. And that's really how it should be based on cannon and TT which they are trying to 'emulate' after all. And if ECM didn't make any difference, then why are soo many mech pilots running ECM builds these days and so many threads stating how OP the current implementation is? As in 60%+ of the population thinks so with some 15% or so indifferent. I'd wager that most that think it's not are all ECM pilots.

Zylo, on 04 February 2013 - 07:12 PM, said:

I call BS on your complaints. What was your team build that left you at a 2:1 tonnage disadvantage? I want to know your exact build that put you at this disadvantage but I think you're probably just full of **** and are making up excuses.

Well, as in partial answer to the paragraph above, we let our pilots play what works best for them. Some have older systems and can only run LRM type support roles. Until the recent ECM OP implementation they could contribute with differing levels of effectiveness based on the Devs changes to LRMs at the time.

For the most part we run mostly medium/heavy mechs with some very good light pilots and very few assault pilots. Primarily because most leagues didn't allow you many assault mechs similar to canon and the BT universe. We work best in hard hitting, fast moving lances with good scouts and adapting to terrain and enemy movements. Almost all of these maps are close range brawl fests compared to prior mech games and even the new maps coming down the road for MWO.

I don't have any 'exact builds' that you seem to want to demand as it varied depending on what pilots where on and what they wanted to play. As a general rule, most of our team builds, while min/maxed where at minimum a 1/3 to 1/2 lighter than the teams we ran into and had maybe a 1/3 of the ECM.

Which meant we had no way to counter and no way to call targets, it also meant some of our players were ineffective and sat on the sideline. Yes, we could play and not include everyone and force players to up their tonnage but why???

It's not fun, realistic and even remotely Battletech/MW canon, TT, prior games any of it. We like variety, we like a somewhat even playing ground tonnage wise versus always playing as underdogs because we refuse to turn cheddar and just 'accept' the current state of affairs.

Hence why most players and units I talk to are switching to comms like Comstar NA because their unit participation is so low at this point they can't get 8 mans off the ground if they wanted to. I think the word 'fun' is the key here, not whether or not we have legitimate complaints.

We will probably just have to agree to disagree as I haven't played an 8 man in several weeks and can't vouch for the current state of affairs. What I do know is until some serious changes are in place I have about 0% chance of getting my guys out there again. If they had a lobby/selective matchmaking where we could scrimmage/practice with other like minded units or start up a league, our participation would go right back up. Then when things get fixed we would happily play against other units in random drops again.