25 replies to this topic

[GrizzlyViking]

Since the purpose of having undefended zones is to prevent the use of "no defense" as a strategy there is no reason to have undefended wins after the halfway mark of 8 for either attacker or counter attacker. What I am proposing is that undefended wins will only be allowed on planets that are below the halfway mark for attackers and above the halfway mark for defenders. That means if the planet is at 8 attack wins or above no more undefended attacks are allowed. If the planet is at 7 wins or below no undefended counter attacks would be allowed. This will eliminate spam attacks for undefended matches at the end of cycle.

Edited by GrizzlyViking, 24 December 2014 - 12:05 PM.

[Roadbeer]

I'm entirely on board with limiting the number of uncontested wins on a planet to 8 (or whatever 1 win over 50% ends up being).

I think a lot of that would be alleviated by multiple Cease Fire during the 24 hour period as it would move the actual fighting to what's immediately under contention, but it would still be somewhat necessary to have as 6/8/12 hours is still a lot of time.

A problem some of the lower population factions are having, is when they log in near Hot Zone time (the few hours prior to the cease fire) they're finding they're already at a 15 zone deficit because someone was turret dropping on them all day, so not only do they have to overcome that, they have to now actually fight to regain that territory and are in an uphill climb that whole period.

I get the argument, "But queue times" and I agree that it would increase the queue times, but as most are figuring out how to read the map and see where the actual battles are taking place, they're less likely to sit in an unpopulated queue on a planet that isn't currently being contested while typing up a post on the forums about low populations and queue times. It's your own fault you can't find a fight, there are plenty going on at any given moment, just maybe not on the planet your queued on.

[GrizzlyViking]

Roadbeer, on 24 December 2014 - 10:58 AM, said:

I get the argument, "But queue times" and I agree that it would increase the queue times, but as most are figuring out how to read the map and see where the actual battles are taking place, they're less likely to sit in an unpopulated queue on a planet that isn't currently being contested while typing up a post on the forums about low populations and queue times. It's your own fault you can't find a fight, there are plenty going on at any given moment, just maybe not on the planet your queued on.

Thanks for the response Roadbeer. I do understand the concern about queue time as well, but queue time is always going to be there with or without having undefended matches. How many players really want to sit in a queue waiting for players to join their 12 man and then end up in an undefended match? I think that having undefended matches actually exacerbates the issue by drawing players away from matches that actually have players in them. For example, if a Marik planet has 15 attack wins against it I am far more likely to sit in the queue to counter attack a Marik planet that has no opposition than I am to defend Kurita against real player clan attacks. I am not engaging in those undefended attacks because I like playing against turrets, I am only doing it because I do not want Marik to lose a planet. On the other hand, if I am attacking an undefended enemy planet the same stands true. I am not attacking because I like shooting turrets and generators, I am only attacking to shore up my position to take the planet later in the day. I would think that since this is MechWarrior Online and not TurretWarrior Online that PGI would want to limit undefended attacks to the minimum needed to take or defend a planet. All wins past the minimum should require actual opposition forces to advance the number of zones.

Back to the queue issue...players may need a Community Warfare tutorial that explains how the system works in more detail than what we have right now, especially new players. This, to help players understand where and when to attack/defend based on the actual data listed in the queue. Nobody really likes playing in undefended matches. If undefended matches are taken away, except for those undefended matches up to the first win that puts the match at over or under the 50% capture/defend mark, more real player matches will result. As for sitting in queue due to lack of players, well that's just how it goes. If there are no Community Warfare matches available, then there is the public queue where there are always matches available.

Edited by GrizzlyViking, 24 December 2014 - 07:47 PM.

[Roadbeer]

http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__4041845

[Deathlike]

I'll think about it.

Planets exclusively won by ghost wins won't stop, but on the other hand, at worst you wouldn't start behind the 8-ball on defense.

[Chagatay]

Random lockouts would just eliminate this all together. 12hr + 0-24hr (average 1 ceasefire per 24hr) make it a mantra. That and I always like perpetual war like the BT universe shoudl be not this only 4hrs before the lock out matters.

Edited by Chagatay, 24 December 2014 - 12:07 PM.

[ztac]

Stopping ghost wins or reducing their impact should be high on the balancing list, the problem is that once one faction starts they are turning out a constant win every 5 mins or so .... so in theory as opposed to a full 30 minute game one team could win 6 matches , whilst a team that is doing a legit win will do one every 30 mins (just for arguments sake).(Luckily the queue system should significantly reduce this and they could also raise the wait time for a match to start if no opposing team can be found).

Now there is a thought make the ghost team wait 25 minutes at least for a game! Or if a planet has people in a queue on both sides then at least make them wait till a team is made. But certainly you could ghost cap a lot of planets on the quiet.

[mp00]

I like the capping idea of ghost wins at 8 wins but I also would like to see real wins and ghost wins scored differently. It makes perfect sense to me that unopposed attacks should still succeed but with the minimum value needed.

A scoring system akin to football/soccer

3 (6% of planet) points for a combat win (with wait times and battle time vs players making these matches about 25-30 minutes)

1 (2% of planet) point for a ghost win (with wait times and battle time vs turrets in the 15 minute range)

Both the 50% cap on ghost wins and a reduction in ghost win value will help shift emphasis to actual combat.

[G SE7EN7]

Firstly its not a ghost cap.
Secondly poor souls have to waste there time in queue then go beat down the stupid cannon for the win, its a massive time waster.

Win deserved.

Fix the queues and you wont have this problem.

[Cerlin]

Russ already twitted the percentage was lower than 5%. Is this really the main issue? I think the way it is handled by time zone is a bigger issue than uncontested wins.

[GrizzlyViking]

Cerlin, on 24 December 2014 - 06:41 PM, said:

Russ already twitted the percentage was lower than 5%. Is this really the main issue? I think the way it is handled by time zone is a bigger issue than uncontested wins.

Percentage of undefended wins, no matter how much or how little, is irrelevant. Any undefended ghost wins are an issue because they impact the final outcome of a contested planet. For example, if there is one company defending and two companies attacking in the final hour before CF the two attacking companies could potentially log 8 wins in that hour while the lone defending company would only be able to log 2 wins in the same time period. Let's say the opposition only fields one ghost win in the one hour period instead of the potential 6 wins. Even if the defending unit wins both contested matches they only get credit for one because the other is nullified by the ghost win and they might not get that if the mode was defending instead of counter attacking. Defense mode is another plus in the attacker column simply because the defender gains nothing back for defending, but only holds current territory. Holding territory of a planet that is above 50% attacker wins in the last few hours before CF is of no significant advantage to the defending faction and further makes things lopsided in favor of the attacker.

Edited by GrizzlyViking, 24 December 2014 - 07:39 PM.

[StillRadioactive]

Roadbeer, on 24 December 2014 - 10:58 AM, said:

I'm entirely on board with limiting the number of uncontested wins on a planet to 8 (or whatever 1 win over 50% ends up being).

I think a lot of that would be alleviated by multiple Cease Fire during the 24 hour period as it would move the actual fighting to what's immediately under contention, but it would still be somewhat necessary to have as 6/8/12 hours is still a lot of time.

A problem some of the lower population factions are having, is when they log in near Hot Zone time (the few hours prior to the cease fire) they're finding they're already at a 15 zone deficit because someone was turret dropping on them all day, so not only do they have to overcome that, they have to now actually fight to regain that territory and are in an uphill climb that whole period.

I get the argument, "But queue times" and I agree that it would increase the queue times, but as most are figuring out how to read the map and see where the actual battles are taking place, they're less likely to sit in an unpopulated queue on a planet that isn't currently being contested while typing up a post on the forums about low populations and queue times. It's your own fault you can't find a fight, there are plenty going on at any given moment, just maybe not on the planet your queued on.

That's actually a problem that Davion has faced quite a lot as well. When Davion's NAs sign on, we see that at least two of our six planets have a 0/0 queue and have been grinded 100% against us while we were away. It happens on at least 2 planets (1/3 of our total operations) every day, and some days it's that way on every active world.

EDIT: Just wanna jump on this before someone says it, because I know it's coming... I'm not looking for sympathy here. I'm just reporting a fact from the perspective of someone who takes part in planning Davion's peak-hours operations because I want the experience of both sides in the conflict to be better, and the devs need input from everybody to make that happen.

Edited by StillRadioactive, 25 December 2014 - 09:44 AM.

[Jman5]

That's a great idea.

[StillRadioactive]

ztac, on 24 December 2014 - 12:12 PM, said:

Stopping ghost wins or reducing their impact should be high on the balancing list, the problem is that once one faction starts they are turning out a constant win every 5 mins or so .... so in theory as opposed to a full 30 minute game one team could win 6 matches , whilst a team that is doing a legit win will do one every 30 mins (just for arguments sake).(Luckily the queue system should significantly reduce this and they could also raise the wait time for a match to start if no opposing team can be found).

Now there is a thought make the ghost team wait 25 minutes at least for a game! Or if a planet has people in a queue on both sides then at least make them wait till a team is made. But certainly you could ghost cap a lot of planets on the quiet.

This is false. Matchmaker only works on one match at a time. This means that, when there's a mismatch between the number of attackers and defenders, extra attackers are meaningless.

Let's just take an extreme case as an example... say there are 48 defenders who came on at random times, and 600 attackers who all came on at once.

Out of those 600 attackers, matchmaker picks 12. It then holds that team for 10 minutes waiting for defenders to show up. The other 588 attackers are in limbo, so they'll see their timer counting up and up and up, with a lobby full of "PILOTS RECEIVING ORDERS."

Attackers playing: 0. Attackers queued: 12. Attackers in limbo: 588

When matchmaker can make a 12-man team of defenders, it launches the match and then finds another group of 12 attackers.

Attackers playing: 12. Attackers queued: 12. Attackers in limbo: 576

It holds this state for up to ten minutes, and during that time it find another group of 12 defenders and launches the match, then queues up another 12 attackers.

Attackers playing: 24. Attackers queued: 12. Attackers in limbo: 564

It holds this state for up to ten more minutes, and during that time it finds a third group of defenders and launches the match, then queues up 12 more attackers.

Attackers playing: 36. Attackers queued: 12. Attackers in limbo: 552

During this third match, the first match finishes and all its players go back into the queue. It then launches the fourth group of attackers against this recycled first group of defenders, while the first group of attackers go to the end of the line.

Attackers playing: 36. Attackers queued: 12. Attackers in limbo: 552.

Then the fourth group of defenders is formed and matchmaker launches a match for them.

Attackers playing: 48. Attackers queued: 12. Attackers in limbo: 540.

This cycle continues perpetually, with the number of attackers actually PLAYING limited to the number of defenders, so long as there are defenders on the planet.

This means that players from more populated factions end up staring at the "PILOTS RECEIVING ORDERS" screen for upwards of 30 minutes during peak times, waiting for defenders to come available.

Auto-wins only happen when there are no defenders available. This happens during times of low player population, or during the ceasefire when there is one more team queued for one side than for the other... and usually, the planet isn't close enough that the one auto-win doesn't decide its fate.

I know of only two times that this has happened for Davion, out of the 84 planet-days that have occurred so far (not counting planets that are protected by diplomatic arrangement). I think Jade Falcon lost one planet because of it too, out of their estimated 35 planet-days of fighting.

[BIoB]

Yep, I like this idea....kinda.....it certainly is part of the solution at the very least.

Although it would make zerging a planet in the last half an hour a lot easier. Combine this with multiple ceasefire blocks and we may be on to something

[Deathlike]

You know what's really needed?

Some sort of simple indicator like "<" or ">" instead of "/" to show if there are more defenders than attackers and vice versa.

"60+" is meaningless outside of knowing that 5 matches are going on.

[AssaultPig]

wouldn't this make the best way to 'defend' your faction's territory to simply not queue for those planets?

Edited by AssaultPig, 25 December 2014 - 01:29 PM.

[Roadbeer]

AssaultPig, on 25 December 2014 - 01:28 PM, said:

wouldn't this make the best way to 'defend' your faction's territory to simply not queue for those planets?

Yes and no.
It allows the attacker the win if nobody ever comes to defend it, but it allows the smaller population factions the ability to deal with defending their territory and not have an insurmountable hill to climb when they finally get the population on to do so.

[Jman5]

Roadbeer, on 25 December 2014 - 01:53 PM, said:

Yes and no.
It allows the attacker the win if nobody ever comes to defend it, but it allows the smaller population factions the ability to deal with defending their territory and not have an insurmountable hill to climb when they finally get the population on to do so.

My only concern is some last minute shenanigans on defense particularly for small population factions. So you ignore a planet all day and in the last minute you jump into the empty queue to knock it back down 1. Maybe in practice it wont be a problem, but it's worth thinking about.

What if you have a ghost win quota that slowly increases as you get closer to the ceasefire. So every few hours you can ghost win another pip.

[Roadbeer]

Jman5, on 25 December 2014 - 02:53 PM, said:

My only concern is some last minute shenanigans on defense particularly for small population factions. So you ignore a planet all day and in the last minute you jump into the empty queue to knock it back down 1. Maybe in practice it wont be a problem, but it's worth thinking about.

What if you have a ghost win quota that slowly increases as you get closer to the ceasefire. So every few hours you can ghost win another pip.

I agree completely that shenanigans would be an issue, in almost every facet of this every game.
I mean, as long as you have a mechlab, you have metahumping shenanigans, you're not going to stop people from min/maxing any aspect of the game possible and exploiting sportsmanship in the interest of an easy advantage, within the 'rules' of the game.

So it becomes a matter of finding a way to mitigate it for those who want to play to the spirit of the intent of the game to recover from the shenanigans of those more interested in that they won over how they won

I do really like the "quota" idea (though I really dislike that word) you put forward, and were it easy to do, I'd back your play, but I've learned to lower my expectations here so I can be pleasantly surprised rather than frustrated all the time