I noticed relatively quick out of the gates that the new lance format has changed the way some people play. I saw lances going places and doing things on maps that prior to the patch would be considered unorthodox or outright silly. It seems that the entirety of the group isn't as cohesive but at the same time the individual lances acting a bit more autonomously has changed the tactics I am seeing. Ran into a mixed unit lance of enemies on Alpine that decided to go defend theta rather than the brawl at epsilon. Sure their epsilon lance got wiped out, but our cap lance took a major hit. Ultimately we just called in our other lance for support and cleaned them up for an easy win. The point is this is a move I never saw prior to today and I like the direction the individual lance approach brought to the game. I don't know quite how to describe it or even put my finger on it but for some reason the game feels more Battletechy now and I like that. Thoughts, experiences, opinions thus far?
So far, for the last 1.5 hours, my teammates have been utter CRAP. I don't know if it's the lance system, or new matchmaking, or what, but everyone seems a LOT more disorganized. In most matches, our lances were intermingling, making it hard to keep track of your lancemates' health and location, essentially negating the usefulness of the new UI features. I don't think the lance changes improved anything, as far as I can tell. It's still just a mess of PuGs randomly doing stupid things and getting killed. There was one match where I thought we were going to split into lances and work together, but the second the shooting started, everyone turned into idiots, or Atlas charged in and got himself killed, and the fight went to crap. Maybe I'm just having bad luck, but the game has been no fun at ALL so far post patch...
Sounds like you hit the problem on the head: pugs. Groups really are the best way to go and not really hard to find. Not getting on coms and working together with a group is really cheating yourself of half of the game. You will find yourself meeting much more success.
Are there any groups that only use ingame type chat? The live chat thing just isn't for me. I don't "hang out" on TS. I just want to get in, effectively blow stuff up with a minimum of chatter, and get out. I don't want to hear group chatter, jokes, etc. I have more friends than I want already in AFK-land, I just need combat wingmen. Any groups like that? Because I'd like to run with a group sometimes, but I'm not really a "group" guy. I've had pretty good sucess with pugging most of the time. Ever since they started tracking more stats, I have a 1.6 W/L ratio, and a 2.3 K/D ratio, so I think I'm doing pretty good for PuG-only, but today was a real downer. Hopefully it'll get better again.
I dont like TS much myself, never been one to chat with people online, either audibly or in a chat room MWO changed that it makes such a HUGE difference playing with a group on TS you can ask zer0, i rarely ever speak when im on the TS server and we are in the game its very handy for knowing who to concentrate fire on and its also great being able to tell everyone that my catapult is being raped by a jenner lol its worth getting out of that comfort zone, you win more fights and have more fun
