A note to keep matches fun

[=KoS= Eldragon]

If I were to design a game mode, I would have 3 or so objectives on each map. The longer your team holds that objective, the more points (and bonus c-bills to each player holding) the team gets. These locations could also give a variety of terrain advantages, making them hard to capture. e.g. The Perfect hill to rain LRM fire down on the enemy, with a trench for Jump sniping. There could also be "death-trap" objectives that offer a massive bonus in points, but very hard to hold. e.g. open terrain in the middle of a valley.

While capturing the opposing spawn point would be fun, I'd rather create a game type that encourages people to fight over the entire map, not just get to the enemy base and start raping. Once one team starts losing, the players on that team will quit or switch to the other team. As it happens on so many other games out there. I've played too many games over the years where it is just a race to the enemy spawn point, with the rest of the map mostly ignored.

[pht]

The easiest fix is no respawn.  Whether that fits your definition of fun...

No respawn would make it worse. It would give them another reason to hang out near their repair facilities. 

[Arghy]

The best thing would be no respawn with multiple resupply bases around the map except your armor cant get back to 100%. Your armor can only be repaired a few times before theres just nothing you can do.

Orbital drop spawning with limited repair/ammo options, random team placement on the map with multiple objectives ranging from capture and hold to destroy.

[Fa1lomenon]

Ok Striker, chill out. I guess the whole reason we are having this here argument (thus ruining a thread) is because the game does not have any objectives rather than K/D and cbills (as said many times before). So yeah, the tactic of staying close to the base is "efficient"...however IMHO it's also boring. As i said before, some like having high K/D, as that's their definition of "having fun"; whereas some prefer going passive, flanking and then unloading UAC20's on them "efficient" players. When I say charging in, I mean intelligently, with backup, in passive mode and using terrain for cover, not like the morons you mentioned who just feed cbills to the enemy.

I guess my playstyle is more like Clan (aggressive) and yours is more like IS (defensive). Thanks for the "avenger of the internet" moniker though, gave me like 2 lulz.

Back to the issue at hand: until the game has modes that reward players with ways other than K/D and c-bills for kills per se, no amount of threads will help rectify the situation that some would prefer one gameplay style or another as they are all flavors of a deathmatch. Look at Battlefield series for example: camping is useless, sniping is only useful when actually supporting the combat line, and players are rewarded for non-direct combat duties such as healing and resupplying. Notice that nobody has to make threads about how to make the game more fun, as it is by design.

So I decided to quit MWLL until the next patch is released with new game modes etc. Until then, I will support the community by hosting a dedicated server with community maps in rotation (as soon as I get paid).

[=]FC[=Striker]

Ok Striker, chill out.

I get this a lot when I crush someone with logic. I am absolutely "chilled out", I just write effectively. I do tend to be particularly straight forward and harsh when I see an individual directly quote me out of context. If anyone ruined the thread it would be you, as without your intentional misrepresentation of my words, I would not have been forced to explain to you exactly where you were wrong. That being said, even during my rebuttal to your misrepresentation I was speaking on topic and reiterating my points, which were clearly above reproach, at least in relation to anything you could say.

FYI: On the battlefield I manipulate the enemy into making bad tactical decisions that increase my overall effectiveness while limiting the danger to myself. You may call this a defensive playstyle, but I just call it kicking your ass.   

Striker

[~SJ~ Blhurr]

I've actually forced my mech to go prone merely at the sight of Striker.  Did not end well for me I dare say.

[phobeste]

I really wish that teamwork started going on more... naturally I guess. I'm not sure why it doesn't, with integrated voice comms - although I turned them off because I heard they hurt performance.  Am I fooling myself?

The thing is, this wouldn't be an issue with more teamwork. The team being blocked into their base would organize a good loadout to break out of their base or the team being camped would switch to the appropriate assets to break the camp. But teamwork just doesn't happen organically.

That said, you'll never see me camping inside my base for the same reason you'll very very rarely see me driving an LRM boat - because games are about having fun as well as having the biggest number next to my name, and if by breaking a camp I can have fun in a hectic combat then that's all the reason I need to do it. Extra bonus if the chaos I create means my team can clean up!

If more people thought like that then I think this would be a better game. Not sure why people think that sitting in a tank, putting a circle over someone until they hear a *beeeeeep*, then hitting mouse3 is fun.

[Snowball]

Teamwork is fairly difficult to accomplish in a Team Deathmatch mode where the vast majority of players don't know each other.  Objective based modes tend to force teamwork unless you really like to lose, so hopefully when objective modes make it in game, everyone'll start seeing more teamwork.

That being said, the primary reason for lack of teamwork as far is I can see is that people don't know each other.  New players are often timid and don't speak up/ask for help, and that goes for seasoned players as well.  While it's true that in-game chat is slow and clunky, it can still serve as a basic organization tool; all you have to do is speak up and listen, and just not assume that you know best.

I played a match yesterday on Sandblasted that had one of the most organized starts I've ever been a part of.  It was a fairly good size match, maybe 14-18 people at the start.  At the very beginning, nearly everyone on my team grabbed a Light Mech, and we all moved as a single blob up the north dunes.  The other team had fanned out as single units, and we just pounced on them one by one, just bombarding them with bodies.  We killed other Light Mechs, tanks, and even Aircraft just by teamwork, and seized the majority of the map.  This trend continued through the entire game, with our team barricading the other team near their spawn (to be clear, there was no spawn camping); I don't think we were ever pushed back pass the mid point of the map, and we won by a wide margin.

[Nitro_R]

I was playing on Sandblasted in my Shadowcat A 12-on-12ish.  I formed up with two Gauss Vultures.  We hung around the Pyramid on the right side of the map looking down at the dunes and rocks on that side.  As a Lance of 3, we took down an Awesome, Thanatos, Shadowcat, Vulture and Osiris stealthily.

The mechs all came one at a time unorganized.  If they had all worked together we would be toast.  But because we teamed up, we got the upper hand on those that did not.  It was great.

[Gallonigher]

4. Create a "dampening field" around bases that causes all weapons not to fire until someone is physically clear of the base's dimensions - for safety's sake, there's a lot of expensive equipment in here, right? - and have it automatically turn off if someone hostile comes within X radius of the base.

Roughly analogous to "weapons free" in the world of combat aviation.  I like this idea and i reckon it would translate well to MWLL.  The base should be a safe zone, not an oversized bunker. 

Some bigger guns on the base turrets might be an idea. IIRC the dropships in MW4:Mercs packed some mean hardware which made them very difficult to approach, and if anything I'd expect a large field base to be much more heavily defended.   

[~SJ~ Xarg Talasko]

You might need to downsize the range on the base defense then, as walking in to a wall of gauss rifles, ppc's and probably erlbl's will quickly cut most 'Mechs to shreds.

[pht]

I don't see where teamwork would really help with the base camping issue.  Base camping is incentivised by the repair and reloading capabilities - strong base static defenses don't help the issue either.  Teamwork could very well just mean that *everyone* figures out how to camp the base, instead of most people on a team doing it.

Gotta remove the incentive to get people out of their foxhole. 

[~SJ~ Blhurr]

It's also incentivized in that if I only have to take 10 steps to get in on the action then why take more?  Moreover threats such as BAs drop off dramatically the closer to your own base you are.  A BA might be the perfect counter to a missileboat but what BVA is going to take a harasser all the way across the map to harass a missilecamper?  I might try this on the next marshes I play just to test for ease of use and feasibility.

[Arghy]

You could always make it a long walk to get in and out of the mech hangars with lots of high walls and rubble obstructing the paths out. If it takes a 3 minute walk to get from where you can shoot your enemy to were you can repair you'd see alot less people doing it. This would only work if there were mobile field bases though because the long walk would encourage everyone to play carefully because respawning isent so easy but who the hell wants to keep their mech alive when its a 20 minute walk back to the repair station?

It would be really badass to have bunkers where mechs could walk into and repair/rearm scattered all around the map--make multiple entrances that are covered and come out in different areas to encourage skirmishers to control that part of the map.