YOUR combat style!

[Danny]

B's got a sick sig.

 

 

Depends, I normally wait for my opponent to make the first move in a match, usually it ends up with a kiku to face and 0 AP.

 

Lol, stupid lag bladers, never learn, do they?

[Dark-Kaiser]

Mostly, I try to keep pace with my opponent and go mid range. I keep a blade for close-encounters then when we go mid range, I combine OTOGO and whatever rifle I have equipped for mid-range mayhem. then I stick to mobility for long range. I just try to be felxible in my thinking.

 

I simply try to adapt to every situation. of course if I was a better ac builder, then I might be winning instead of getting my bum handed to me in PvP.

[Barrettiel]

My style varies but i do like CQC and using a blade. Just been a while since i played AC4. When i do ill let you what my actual style is in more detail. I just know for a fact that im a CQC but i am also a hit & run pilot

[Vincent210]

Ground-to-face Hi-Laser Firepower offset by a surprisingly fast quad-legged AC. I hit the ground running with Sirius+Becrux and attempt a point-balnk shot to do damage and catch the foe off-guard, and from there can branch into one of three strategies:

 

1. If I have caught you by surprise or you just can't seem to keep up with me, I start-up a circle-strafe and switch direction every now and then when I think you've gotten the rhythm.

 

2. If we both hit each other hard and do substantial damage, I'll fall into a hit-and-run strategy. I'll blast and OB, keeping a watchful eye for any signs that I've been anticipated, in which case I break formation and backpedal with some rifle-fire to give myself thinking time, and fall into the appropriate strategy afterward.

 

3. If you completely overwhelm me on my 1st charge I immediately go on the defensive and focus myself on keeping you in sight and at the distance most troublesome to you. If I'm out of optimum Laser range I'll simply plink until I can discover a weakness in form or if I'm in range of Lasers I'll let off barrages whenever possible (i.e. after their usual QB chain, while the foe is OBing forward)

 

This is just how I run my staple

 

http://i40.tinypic.com/2rxab8x.png

 

 

EDIT: I went back to the 1st page to see if there were any interesting bits, noob's post toward the end made my day.

Edited April 21, 2010 by Vincent210

[Taurus]

1. dual bazooka (especially, dual BROCKEN and dual dual GAN02-NSS-WBS)

 

2. BROCKEN+ER-O705.

 

3. MARVE+HITMAN (or CANTUTA in some case)+TRESOR in same side with HITMAN.

 

4. mid-air chain QB combination. (but not too high from ground)

 

5. dual WGP with GAN01-SS-A arms.

 

with 5 choices, I like 3. and 4. for the most.

[Matchstick]

I like the mid range to give myself some room to work with. I never stay on the ground and always boosting like a bad man lol!

weapons of choice is MG's with some type of backup missiles. i'll put up the layout of my AC "speedGear V2"

 

PS. how do you take screenshots on the ps3?

Edited April 22, 2010 by Matchstick

[Vincent210]

Your question is invalid, for there is no way to do this. What you want to ask is: "where can I get a capture card? Preferably not a crappy one."

[SUMERIAN BLOOD GOD]

Or you could just take a picture of the television and process in PS like me and Owen do. Owen has the advantage since his TV/camera/PS skills are all better than mine.

 

He's still a fag though.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r81/jmodum90/3136tj5.gif

[Draxus]

I'm a defensive/support type of person. I like helping people in games and protecting them, while also being heavily armored myself. I like heavy quads and tanks now.

 

I only use solid weapons, as I just cant find myself to care for any of the energy weapons. My favorite is gattling guns which my staple in ACV will probably use, either that or dual machine gun arms.

 

I want to be known as one of the best in AC, and in ACV I'm hoping to do just that. I'm highly competitive in life when it comes to the things I want to be good at.

[Griffon]

I've found that I tend to go for long-range cannon usage, often with some kind of light missile support just to throw people off their dodging game. Also with some sort of powerful mid/close range weapon to fend off people who get closer than I like, something like a gatling or bazooka.

 

Another theme some of my secondary designs tend to go for is simply massive damage. I like seeing just how quickly I can end some of these fights. I don't mean to toot my own horn but a couple of my more notorious designs in 4 could flatten ACs in just a couple hits.

 

But yeah, I like cannon sniping mostly.

Edited May 19, 2011 by Griffon

[Vincent210]

This thread is going to make me try & recreate my old middles quad. Now if only I remembered the boosters..

[Densuo]

I prefer oddball weapons and Reverse Joints.

 

When I first played AC4 I tried and failed horribly at running a Sniper RJ. all it did was get me bodied quite quickly. I wasn't very good running cookie cutter Dual Rifle builds either. ditto with AST/MG builds. nothing really fit.

 

I found a niche rocking the token Pilebunker. Until it was shown weird lag happens with Blade/Pilebunker. so I went all in, built a hw AC focusing purely on EN Defense and a pair of pilebunkers. Quite the ugly AC as it was all white and sported question marks of random colors errwhere.

 

After frustration mounted again with my Reverse Joints, StriferZer0 presented me with the idea of the token hand missile. No lock grenades were easy to land. Poplar was pretty good, and the Canopus gave the RJ the fear factor it needed. something to prevent me from getting rushed down so hard as I always backpedalled.

 

I got rid of the constant backpedalling or as Exo called it "Getting pushed around" and finally got the hang of it all.... then fucking ACFA came out and threw it all away.

 

I also had created a Heavyweight biped with Bazooka arms and a Hi laser on the back. very simple but obscenely effective in what became my main role. Support/Flanking

 

Basically, if it's not a simplified AC or some sort of weird design it's not gonna work with me. I hate cookie cutter ACs above all else.

 

And if it's not obvious yet, I favor Reverse Joints like I like my Comic Sans.

Edited May 19, 2011 by Densuo

[Tsuranga]

I just kinda make ac's I like and do whatever. I don't care too much to "try" I just pick weapons that I like and moderately work well together on passable internals and frame XD. Soo I end up losing, a lot. But fuckit. I tend to prefer midweights and lw's and ESPECIALLY prefer mg's/bullets. I don't like small shotguns.. but heavy shotties are good times :3. And gattling guns are my favorite

 

I also like rushing and OB'ing for no reason XD XD XD I just like going fast :3

It's gotten me a couple tickets though...

Edited May 19, 2011 by Tsuranga

[Rogan]

I go forward.

[Harakiri Tiger]

So you play like an LR AI, huh?

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

Liger status huh

[Malikayl]

I lean towards Anti-CQC/CQC with aggresive, high powered light midweights, but I have a large variety of ACs. Most of the time im playing for the fun of it, not to win. I have a better time drawing it down to the last AP than being in a one sided match. Other then that, I prefer bipeds over quads and RJs. I hate backpeddling more than three times, I dont circle jerk, and missles are boring. I rarely use the same AC more than twice unless im testing. I just want to see mechs blown up in awesome ways, including myself.

[Mom]

I make love to qb button.

[Lenin]

Range, patience, angles and random belligerence.

[Harakiri Tiger]

I hate backpeddling more than three times

 

I'm not sure what this means? Do you mean fully retreat from combat 3x in a match or do you mean like back QB 3x in a row or in an entire match? I've never referred to actual QB movements as backpedaling. I think that's what you mean, tho. Backpedaling is normally a tactic or strategy (depending) in which you try to pull your opponent into your shots or try to increase distance between you. It typically encompasses any large number of movements that achieve either of those two goals, including sideways movement.

 

Backpedaling isn't running away, though. That's an enormous misconception. Those are two different concepts. Running for cover, or running away from your opponent, typically involves an attempt at full disengagement from combat. Backpedaling maintains combat and is simply another method to control range. Backpedaling is no different in core concept from rushing. Typically the negative canotation that follows things like backpedaling is the result of an ego trap. Gamers develop this kinda stuff all the time. They perceive a specific form of play as being the "correct" form of play, regardless of the real world and then try to enforce it on others. You can see it in fighting games a lot. The end goal of an ego trap is simply to validate ones own skill by trying to pretend it's the right way to play. Minorities (I don't mean racial) invoke this a lot, too. It's equivalent to saying something like being left-handed is ballsier or better than being right-handed. It's a silly thing to say. Especially if you try to say it seriously to someone.

 

The interesting thing is this tends to develop in the midling or older community of players. In Steet Fighter, for example, you'll see players who are semi-decent or decent have this mentality a lot more than really new players or very good players. "Fucking stop throwing me!" Same thing in StarCraft: Brood War. "Fucking bullshit 1a2a3a Protoss!" For cult games like Armored Core the overall popularity of the game leads to a lower overall skill level for competition, meaning we never really develop too many people who you can truly call very good players. So you end up with new players and semi-decent and decent players, with the decent players thinking they're magical AC pros and the semi-decent players thinking they're pretty damn good. This leads to the "pros" displaying that ego trapped mentality, which then works its way down the community polluting the older yet not as skillful players.

 

Sometimes I worry about the anti-backpedaling mentality in fA players, especially. Kinda like Rogan there. It's definitely not a positive thing to avoid backpedaling to that degree. I don't know how someone can actually even think that it would be a good thing. It seems like fA player especially dislike the act of backpedaling so much that they'd rather play an AI-like linear style of drive-by after drive-by simply so they can avoid the tag of backpedaling or they literally play like AI and fly at your face the way TR-Liger does. He does little mid-air circles and loops, too. He even tries to flank somewhat. It's still a clearly mindless style of play, though. I'm not saying Rogan plays like an AI for sure, but there's a high chance he probably does if he really does favor going forward too much. I would say the same for you if you dislike going backwards that much.

 

There are two major things that define AI-like play in real time, relatively fast-paced action games like Armored Core. Reaction and mechanical prowess. AIs in games like this do not display a strong ability to predict. They rarely display any ability to predict and run almost exclusively off of reactionary play. This doesn't mean they don't predict things at all, though. Even AC AIs have a slight bit of movement prediction, but it's very poor. Sometimes quite noticeably poor (TR-Liger). The second major trait, mechanical prowess, is something that all AIs are given because without it their reactionary play would be completely obsolete. Reactionary play requires strong mechanics. AIs typically display very strong mechanical ability at whatever game they're part of. AC AIs will display near perfect tracking, etc. Most of the time developers will keep the AI dumbed down to a certain point so it doesn't actually dodge everything you do or fully avoid genbusts or always instantly QB out of your lockbox (they know where you're looking at all times). A forced stupidity, basically. This is why stupid genius AI play exists, really.

 

Humans that play like AI are just humans that display a low level of predictive power and rely mostly on reactionary/mechanical power to back them up. This doesn't mean they're bad. It actually means they're good at reactionary play and probably have good mechanics. That's what most people mean when they call things AI-like, though. That's at least what I mean, anyway.

 

Anyway, you should always look to maximize your tactical and strategical ability, even if you have preferences on one specific subset of play (playstyle). Don't play off of just reaction, use prediction. You won't ever be able to take full advantage of predictionary play unless you escape any ego traps you may have set up, though. This isn't to say you have to sacrifice your style of play, but that you should be unafraid to incorporate different tactics into it. Don't label or even imply tactics as being "wrong" or "right". It's easy to fall into an ego trap that way. If you're going to label them, only label them according to their power or efficiency. Like "game breaking" or "useful" or "useless".

 

There's a pretty strong difference between not choosing to use something in your play because you feel like it doesn't fit and not using something in your play because it is the "wrong" or "bad" way to play.

 

 

 

PS: This rant wasn't specifically focused at you or Rogan, btw. I just remember looking through profiles and topics and stuff a while back on ACO and noticing this mentality was really picking up in general so I felt like ranting after seeing a few posts that implied it on my forum. I'm fairly certain this mentality is polluting the community slowly from the top down somewhere, though. It typically stems from a few King of the Cul-de-Sac players in cult games like AC. If I knew the moron or morons who are spreading it I'd enjoy kicking a GAC up their ass. It's one thing to complain about a playstyle, strategy, or tactic. It's another to try and demonize it so that other players shy away from it just to validate your own style of play.

 

=(

[Malikayl]

Im very familiar with the concept of what backpeddling is and how it is used in AC:FA. It is a very effective, yet frustrating, style of play. Its just not for me. I am currently in the process of learning to shut this type of playstyle down. I personally dislike it because I find it boring and id rather break off and fight someone who actually wants to engage me. Even if I do beat the backpeddler, I find that ive often wasted alot of ammo and cannot participate in another battle if there are more than one opponent. More importantly, I play to have fun, not to always win every match and people dont talk about the cool backpeddling match they had against so and so, they talk about the close matches that came down to the last AP. Edited May 22, 2011 by Malikayl

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

The interesting thing is this tends to develop in the midling or older community of players. In Steet Fighter, for example, you'll see players who are semi-decent or decent have this mentality a lot more than really new players or very good players. "Fucking stop throwing me!" Same thing in StarCraft: Brood War. "Fucking bullshit 1a2a3a Protoss!" For cult games like Armored Core the overall popularity of the game leads to a lower overall skill level for competition, meaning we never really develop too many people who you can truly call very good players. So you end up with new players and semi-decent and decent players, with the decent players thinking they're magical AC pros and the semi-decent players thinking they're pretty damn good. This leads to the "pros" displaying that ego trapped mentality, which then works its way down the community polluting the older yet not as skillful players.

 

haha yes! The masters of their little groups!

 

There are two things I'd like to contribute here. One being something I've seen that supports the post, and something I've seen that refutes the post some.

 

1. It's totally true that a group of players will develop a sense of what is "right" and "wrong" in just about any game. It's also true that in many instances people will say the always exciting "you're doing it wrong" phrase as a way of covering up for being trash at the game, or being frustrated at running into something you couldn't win against. As I understand it, there's been lots of evidence in the chat room lately!

 

2. I do think that it is important to try and be exciting. At least, for people who were in influencing the scene...sort of like setting an example. You can't change a person, but you can at least show them as many ways to do thing as you can, and then empower/enable them to take up whatever way they want, and even to make the way they choose be something we all can watch and enjoy. I don't mean that you need to be some sort of OB-heavy acrobatic type or anything, but I guess it's like that guy Proximo said to Maximus in 'Gladiator': that you can be good, but you can't be great until you win the crowd.

 

Reactionary play requires strong mechanics.

 

I'm confused here. I'll use myself as an example to explain how I'm confused:

 

My style of play is generally really reactionary. (super simplifying) I tend to constantly feel out the situation, assess what my bot can do, produce a plan, and then act on that plan as best I can. What I do out on the field is directly tied to what my opponents do. Originally (AA-SL), I used high finger speed and precise control to make things happen. Essentially, I tried to outplay the guy in terms of bot vs bot combat. This often lead to me not making the most optimized choices in design and in actual battle, but it didn't matter because I was faster, mentally and physically, than my opponents.

 

In LR, my hands were already starting to break down significantly, so I had to re-learn how to play, as it were. My control and precision dropped dramatically, so I revisited my old books on strategy and tried to learn to play smarter. This made me rely a lot more on manipulation of the...meta-elements (for lack of a better term) of the match; things like AP, time left, the battlefield proper, the nature of the equipment my opponent and I were using, predicting moves, etc. I tried to think my way through matches a lot more, because I had to. The thing is, it was still reactionary. My mechanics were/are pretty weak now compared to before, but my fundamentals were still fairly good.

 

I think this is why I'm confused by the statement: I feel like I me during the LR era was a good example of that bolded part not being true. I also feel that that can be duplicated as long as the player is the type who keeps an open mind and stays composed while they're playing. Are you saying by mechanics like fundamentals of playing, as opposed to just godly control? In that case I guess I actually agree with you.

[Harakiri Tiger]

More importantly, I play to have fun, not to always win every match and people dont talk about the cool backpeddling match they had against so and so, they talk about the close matches that came down to the last AP.

 

It's not about winning every match and it's very much about playing to have fun too. The idea that backpedaling isn't fun is like saying thinking isn't fun. It's more likely that you just attached a negative canotation on it because you think it's skillless or something, but I'm willing to concede that you could very well just not enjoy backpedaling. Some people like chess and some don't, after all. Haha.

 

The bolded sentence is fA's fault, mostly. The game doesn't exactly favor tense play much to begin with, it generally favors heavily rushed or heavily drawn out play. That's a big killer for it, so I can understand that. TM and I (both major CQC players) had a legendary fun tank vs tank match in LR a while ago that was full of cover play and backpedaling with the occasional bulldogging. We very much talked about the backpedaling and cover play in an excited manner. It was more than a cool mathc. That was probably one of my favorite LR matches of all time and inspired me to learn tanks a lot more.

 

This also comes back to the last bit of the quote, too. It may just be that the general community doesn't know how to appreciate the play, either because of lack of experience or negative canotation. It sounds to me more like they can't discern what occurs in the match so much so that they need to have a false sense of tensity provided instead. Coming down to the last AP may very well be correlated to a tense game, but it is not exclusively caused by a tense game. There are many, many, many tense matches that occur in a large slew of games that come nowhere near the last drop of health/ap/hp/shieds/whatever.

 

1. It's totally true that a group of players will develop a sense of what is "right" and "wrong" in just about any game. It's also true that in many instances people will say the always exciting "you're doing it wrong" phrase as a way of covering up for being trash at the game, or being frustrated at running into something you couldn't win against. As I understand it, there's been lots of evidence in the chat room lately!

 

WET EYE!

 

2. I do think that it is important to try and be exciting. At least, for people who were in influencing the scene...sort of like setting an example. You can't change a person, but you can at least show them as many ways to do thing as you can, and then empower/enable them to take up whatever way they want, and even to make the way they choose be something we all can watch and enjoy. I don't mean that you need to be some sort of OB-heavy acrobatic type or anything, but I guess it's like that guy Proximo said to Maximus in 'Gladiator': that you can be good, but you can't be great until you win the crowd.

 

I never said you had to not be exciting. I'm a person who highly enjoys exciting play.

 

=3

 

I also don't think anyone should change their style of play. Like I said before, "There's a pretty strong difference between not choosing to use something in your play because you feel like it doesn't fit and not using something in your play because it is the "wrong" or "bad" way to play."

 

I'm worried that this crazy revulsion against backpedaling is an ego trap instead of just a regular complaint. That's my problem with it. Many people in the 4/fA community have started to basically demonize backpedaling instead of just not liking it or simply complaining about it occasionaly. It feels way too much like they're trying to invalidate the very tactic/strategy of backpedaling as "wrong". Which is both embarassing and crazy.

 

Like I said here, basically. "It's one thing to complain about a playstyle, strategy, or tactic. It's another to try and demonize it so that other players shy away from it just to validate your own style of play."

 

I very much feel like that's happening right now, too. It may just be me being too sensitive to a just a bunch of harmless complaining, though. Who knows? Haha.

 

What I do out on the field is directly tied to what my opponents do.

 

There's no other way to play reactionary or predictive play, though. You can't predict without reaction. What I mean by predictive play is that you're reacting to your opponent in a long-term/large-scale sense. Without knowing what they might do or could do are have done before, it's really almost impossible to play predictively. The best way to put it is that when I say predictive play I mean you're taking a large amount of information in and trying make long-term assumptions off of it. Strong predictionary play is risky by nature, because it relies on assumptions. The more predictive you get, the more far-sighted your assumptions become. The stakes are raised in predictionary play all around.

 

Even reactionary play is still predictive, it's just very, very short term prediction. If you display any sort of long-term game plan that's also adapted as the game occurs you are definitely playing predictively. Short-term game plans, tactics, and long-term game plans without adaptation are typically reactionary.

 

Originally (AA-SL), I used high finger speed and precise control to make things happen. Essentially, I tried to outplay the guy in terms of bot vs bot combat. This often lead to me not making the most optimized choices in design and in actual battle, but it didn't matter because I was faster, mentally and physically, than my opponents.

 

That's what I call reactionary play. You had the short-term reactions and the mechanics to really back it up. Success in reactionary play on any major scale typically revolves entirely off of mechanical aptitude since the player doesn't take too many high-stakes risks (at least not knowingly) and doesn't use long-term strategy to counter-act and offset his opponent on an overall scale.

 

I find it hard to believe that you ever really played without a heavy focus on the long-term, though. You just don't strike me as the kind of player who wouldn't be thinking in the long-term. I think it may just be that you got better at thinking in the long-term later on. I also haven't watched many of your older games, though. Haha. I mostly have only seen a bit of your MoC play and some of your LR play. I always considered you and Yaka to be two of the more examplary people for showcasing high quality mechanics and predictive play in the AC community.

 

In LR, my hands were already starting to break down significantly, so I had to re-learn how to play, as it were. My control and precision dropped dramatically, so I revisited my old books on strategy and tried to learn to play smarter. This made me rely a lot more on manipulation of the...meta-elements (for lack of a better term) of the match; things like AP, time left, the battlefield proper, the nature of the equipment my opponent and I were using, predicting moves, etc. I tried to think my way through matches a lot more, because I had to. The thing is, it was still reactionary. My mechanics were/are pretty weak now compared to before, but my fundamentals were still fairly good.

 

That is dead-on what I would call predictive play. You definitely have to be reactionary to be predictive. You just have to be make far reaching reactions. Predictions, in other words. The better you are at not being tunnel-visioned when you make those long-term predictions, the less risk there is to taking them and the more dangerous you become.

 

=3

[Malikayl]

Okay, I want to clarify something. I never complained about backpeddling. I just said that I dont like to do it more than three time in a row, that is MY personal preference. I did not say that I think its cheap to backpeddle more than three times. Hence my post mentioning that I am attemping to find a way to shut that fighting style down by coming up with a personal style to defeat it. People dislike it because it is difficult to beat, draws the game out, and it can be dull. Backpeddlers can be tough to fight if your AC is not designed to handle them.

 

I like fighting people who think, it makes me that much better of a player. After all, you are usually only limited to the skill of those you play with.

[Harakiri Tiger]

I never complained about backpeddling.

 

If I thought you were just complaining about it, I would have been ok with it. I know you didn't complain about it, but that post also implies that there may be something "wrong" with backpedaling. Same way Rogan's post that says he goes forward carries the same implication. The reason why I feel it implies that is that it sounds like you consider the actual concept of backwards motion, even a single backwards QB, to equate to backpedaling. I noticed a trend from the general community of backpedaling being something of a demonized tactic, so I assumed that may be a source of where that's coming from. It's something I definitely don't want to see the AC community consumed by, either.

 

I just said that I dont like to do it more than three time in a row

 

That's why I asked you what you meant by it in that first post I made about it, first paragraph too. Doing backpedaling three times in a row is an incredibly confusing sentence for me. This is because you can't really do it in a row. You're either backpedaling or you're not.

 

I see that as similar to me saying, "PD backpedaled three times in a row against me in a match." I'm not sure how he could do it three times in a row. He's either backpedaling or he isn't. It's a tactic with a purpose, goal, and field of application. It's not a singular movement. This is why I said maybe you're calling backwards QB backpedaling, which only makes my belief of some kind of strange negative canotation to it stronger. This also underlines a bizarre understanding of backpedaling. It's like you're forgetting the purpose or goal of backpedaling, in lieu of just the direction of movement.