17 replies to this topic

[Antonius Rex]

I just wanted to give a MercStar sized tip of the hat to all those currently fighting for Clan Jade Falcon.

After all but annihilating Bear and Jaguar, we came to Steiner hoping to find a good fight from Falcon. I am now pleased to say that, for the most part, we found it. At least the best fight yet of season 2.

You guys had something like 55 attackers on Somerset today during the EU phase. That has to be the highest clan numbers on the attack I have seen in all of S2 (can't speak for Wolf though, they may have had good numbers on the FRR border).

Also, you guys took Apollo during the Oceanic phase which was a feat in itself. No faction other than MercStar has yet to take a planet in the Oceanic since the start of Season 2.

Conclusion: Keep being awesome Falcons! You guys are holding your own in the current dark times for the Clans.

Also, keep that carry train going VRGD and KCOM

Edited by Antonius Rex, 17 May 2015 - 05:12 PM.

[unwary]

o7

[NGxT]

says the guy casting the shadow causing the dark times...

[slide]

As someone who plays in the Oceanic TZ I would also like to thank Clan Jade Falcon for being the only faction who provides consistent action.

Apollo has been an absolute bloodbath over the last couple of weeks with the JF often outnumbered more than 2 to 1 with players from all over the IS lining up for a piece of the action, as it is often the only game in town. When I logged on the other night, JF had Apollo up to 86% with about 2 hours to ceasefire. The end result was reliant on the last 3 games that ran into ceasefire. My own ghost drop on counter removed one sector leaving the other 2 active matches requiring at least 1 of the IS defending teams to hold (win on defense) to hang onto the planet. IS won but it was very close.

Whilst I must say that KCom v pugs is usually no contest I will give them points for not ruthlessly spawn camping and other duche bag type manouvers (they are good enough not to need to). It must be frustrating to not be able to take planets when it is basically KCom v everyone else and you win a lot. Personally I have had some great games against other more random JF teams.

Count on me to keep queuing up.

[Pat Kell]

We do what we can but as slide mentioned, we tend to be out numbered most times and there are a lot of good teams trying to knock us back to clan space. Love the challenge though guys so keep it coming. We plan to stay here fighting for the Falcons until most or all of us get to level 20. Thanks for the hat tip Antonius, always good matches against you all. Should here our comms sometimes. Usually joking around and then when we see MS or 228, it's all business and ****:)

[JT Black]

Falcons always had the more consistent units in the clans faction,since CW was introduced.But you knew that already.

Now your motivation "speech" needs another edit too add " please don't stop joining the Q we need more meat for the grinder."

In times like these you describe "dark times for the clans" ask yourself the question. Who created the unbalance coupled with the issues in the current technical content?

You still need to convince the other unit leaders to join the Falcons. Or is that beef finished by now? Hardly anyone left in that Q so good luck. Maybe another CW wide event will help the clans ,but if you move south they log in even less.

[Antonius Rex]

@ JT

I think you have partially stumbled on to MercStar's secret plans for Season 2 of CW. But first I will clear up a few of your points.

1. Falcons have indeed been fairly consistent throughout CW. But, depending on what your definition of consistent is, I would argue that Wolf is equally or more consistent. Falcon loyalist units that are noteworthy really only consist of KCOM and JFP, the rest tend to be Mercs (VRGD likely being the most prominent). Wolf though has the big 3 of CWI, SWOL, and CWDG as well as a few other decent loyalist units, as well as a goodly number of impressive Merc units that are in the area from time to time (-MS-, CI, + others). I think the reason Falcon looks stronger than Wolf to some people is the fact that Falcon only ever really has 1 IS lane, while Wolf has ranged from 2-3 for most of its life. Falcon fights its back and forth war, while Wolf either expands or shrinks, depending on where -MS- and CI are, as well as whether or not they are being hammered on all sides by nearly the full might of the IS.

2. Edit was for a typo. On the note of Q times, -MS- still practically insta drops most matches. Wait times are in the very acceptable range. As long as we fight Clan vs IS, the call to arms finds us a match 98% of the time. What we are looking for, is more games against strong, organized opponents. After the first 5 days of season 2, I knew that something needed to change. So I came up with a plan. A mighty plan that likely only MercStar could achieve. A plan that I hoped would bring some semblance of life back to the front lines of CW.

3. From your text, I am assuming you are implying -MS- is what has created the imbalance in CW. I suppose there is an argument for that. Much in the same way that SJR, EmP, Lords, and even SwK at a time, created a significant imbalance in competitive MWO. Simply put, there are very few team that can compete against those team at that high end level of play.

The same can be said about CW. -MS- the unit was created only 2 days before the start of CW, with the express interest in playing CW at a competitive level. We put our all into it. We play everyday, in all 3 phases. We recruit players, train them, get them in proper Tier 1 or 2 mechs, and give them the tools and support to thrive in CW. Hell, the only reason I really support -MS- fielding 2 (soon to be 3) 24 man competitive teams, is because comp play is amazing at teaching players the skills and comms and mechs that are needed to excel at robots in general, as well as CW.

So, does -MS- create an imbalance in CW? Quite possibly. Is it MercStar's responsibility to stop playing CW/handicap itself/disband into multiple units/generally be less awesome? Hell no. Would you ask that of (insert top sports team here)? Not likely. The reality is PGI needs to find a way to get people interested in CW again. I think having planet ownership actually do something would be a huge step. Nothing gets people interested like a profit motive. Even MercStar is seeing a slump in daily player numbers. we only average a pair of 12 mans at best these days. But apparently that is about 2 more 12 mans than anyone else is fielding. Heck, we destroyed CSJ and CGB with only 1 dedicated 12 man per night. we only ever had the second 12 man going for an hour or two at most on any nights, and certainly not every day.

So I guess at the end of the day, my point is this: If 24 or less pilots at any given time are enough to cripplingly unbalance CW, than CW is screwed and we all may as well find another game to play. Many people put the blame on MercStar for that. I say it is the other 99% of the community that is letting CW down. Where are the mighty legions of TCAF, Kurita High Command, the Free Worlds League ts server, and all the other organized conglomerates? Even most of the better Comp CW units, like 228th, QQ, AS, etc have been largely absent from this season of CW.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

MercStar's Super Secret Plan to Save CW has entered phase 2!

Phase 1: go out of our way to effectively destroy/remove a number of northern factions from CW.

We did this over the course of 9 days, while under paid contract from employers in Kurita. We took out CSJ and CGB almost entirely, which in turn removed all Clan attack lanes for Kurita. The goal of this two stage move was to "encourage" (through either destruction or lack of available attack lanes) most units away from those 3 factions, towards the western factions of Wolf, Falcon, FRR, and Steiner.

It was also hoped that any useful southern units would migrate North West due to a complete lack of anything to do down south.

The end result being, that we shift all available and participating CW units over to a reduced front line, involving only 4 of the 10 factions. This in turn would at least bolster pop numbers to the point where we could have a decent war involving most of the CW population.

This would appear to be working quite well actually. units are leaving HK, CGB, CSJ as expected. 9thSD went Falcon (Im pretty sure) NKVA went Steiner, NS is rumoured to be going FRR, if they havn't already. BSK went Falcon. Im sure some smoke Jag units have moved on. QQ left Kurita for FRR, then went Falcon. And the list goes on and on.

So far, the only real exceptions to this plans full success are fairly minor. I'm told Davion High Command actually went out and hired some Mercs of their own to stop the Kurita agression on their border (good on them btw, great to see them getting more involved in CW politics) the big names here are 228th, the Serephim, Cameron's Highlanders and a few others, though I cannot confirm which units are actually being paid to go there, and which simply chose to for other reasons. Antares Scorpions went Liao for some reason (I'd assume for the mechbay) and TCAF finally left their southern base in Liao and decided to try and fight real people up on the clan borders. Unfortunately for TCAF, their leadership picked the wrong friggin place to go, as they showed up 1 day after MercStar wiped out all of Kurita's Clan opponents. Now all TCAF has to do is ghost drop against Davion from the North rather than the South lol. I hope they didnt take a very long contract, cuz that was obviously the wrong choice

Anyways, to wrap this up, MercStar's plans are going pretty good. We are trying to do our part to help CW, and I feel we are doing a pretty damn good job of it. Simply put, no unit other than MercStar is apparently capable of accomplishing what we did (though, it only took our less than 2 12 mans 9 days to do it). I hope that things continue to shift this way, with every unit and their mother heading to the North Western 4 factions. Once this happens in full, we can have a good old brawl for a month or two until PGI resets things and we start on season 3. Hopefully with planet tags meaning something, a ton of new features, and a return of the populace to CW.

Thus Spoke MercStar.

[Volkodav]

Antonius Rex, on 18 May 2015 - 08:27 AM, said:

@ JT

I think you have partially stumbled on to MercStar's secret plans for Season 2 of CW. But first I will clear up a few of your points.

1. Falcons have indeed been fairly consistent throughout CW. But, depending on what your definition of consistent is, I would argue that Wolf is equally or more consistent. Falcon loyalist units that are noteworthy really only consist of KCOM and JFP, the rest tend to be Mercs (VRGD likely being the most prominent). Wolf though has the big 3 of CWI, SWOL, and CWDG as well as a few other decent loyalist units, as well as a goodly number of impressive Merc units that are in the area from time to time (-MS-, CI, + others). I think the reason Falcon looks stronger than Wolf to some people is the fact that Falcon only ever really has 1 IS lane, while Wolf has ranged from 2-3 for most of its life. Falcon fights its back and forth war, while Wolf either expands or shrinks, depending on where -MS- and CI are, as well as whether or not they are being hammered on all sides by nearly the full might of the IS.

2. Edit was for a typo. On the note of Q times, -MS- still practically insta drops most matches. Wait times are in the very acceptable range. As long as we fight Clan vs IS, the call to arms finds us a match 98% of the time. What we are looking for, is more games against strong, organized opponents. After the first 5 days of season 2, I knew that something needed to change. So I came up with a plan. A mighty plan that likely only MercStar could achieve. A plan that I hoped would bring some semblance of life back to the front lines of CW.

3. From your text, I am assuming you are implying -MS- is what has created the imbalance in CW. I suppose there is an argument for that. Much in the same way that SJR, EmP, Lords, and even SwK at a time, created a significant imbalance in competitive MWO. Simply put, there are very few team that can compete against those team at that high end level of play.

The same can be said about CW. -MS- the unit was created only 2 days before the start of CW, with the express interest in playing CW at a competitive level. We put our all into it. We play everyday, in all 3 phases. We recruit players, train them, get them in proper Tier 1 or 2 mechs, and give them the tools and support to thrive in CW. Hell, the only reason I really support -MS- fielding 2 (soon to be 3) 24 man competitive teams, is because comp play is amazing at teaching players the skills and comms and mechs that are needed to excel at robots in general, as well as CW.

So, does -MS- create an imbalance in CW? Quite possibly. Is it MercStar's responsibility to stop playing CW/handicap itself/disband into multiple units/generally be less awesome? Hell no. Would you ask that of (insert top sports team here)? Not likely. The reality is PGI needs to find a way to get people interested in CW again. I think having planet ownership actually do something would be a huge step. Nothing gets people interested like a profit motive. Even MercStar is seeing a slump in daily player numbers. we only average a pair of 12 mans at best these days. But apparently that is about 2 more 12 mans than anyone else is fielding. Heck, we destroyed CSJ and CGB with only 1 dedicated 12 man per night. we only ever had the second 12 man going for an hour or two at most on any nights, and certainly not every day.

So I guess at the end of the day, my point is this: If 24 or less pilots at any given time are enough to cripplingly unbalance CW, than CW is screwed and we all may as well find another game to play. Many people put the blame on MercStar for that. I say it is the other 99% of the community that is letting CW down. Where are the mighty legions of TCAF, Kurita High Command, the Free Worlds League ts server, and all the other organized conglomerates? Even most of the better Comp CW units, like 228th, QQ, AS, etc have been largely absent from this season of CW.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

MercStar's Super Secret Plan to Save CW has entered phase 2!

Phase 1: go out of our way to effectively destroy/remove a number of northern factions from CW.

We did this over the course of 9 days, while under paid contract from employers in Kurita. We took out CSJ and CGB almost entirely, which in turn removed all Clan attack lanes for Kurita. The goal of this two stage move was to "encourage" (through either destruction or lack of available attack lanes) most units away from those 3 factions, towards the western factions of Wolf, Falcon, FRR, and Steiner.

It was also hoped that any useful southern units would migrate North West due to a complete lack of anything to do down south.

The end result being, that we shift all available and participating CW units over to a reduced front line, involving only 4 of the 10 factions. This in turn would at least bolster pop numbers to the point where we could have a decent war involving most of the CW population.

This would appear to be working quite well actually. units are leaving HK, CGB, CSJ as expected. 9thSD went Falcon (Im pretty sure) NKVA went Steiner, NS is rumoured to be going FRR, if they havn't already. BSK went Falcon. Im sure some smoke Jag units have moved on. QQ left Kurita for FRR, then went Falcon. And the list goes on and on.

So far, the only real exceptions to this plans full success are fairly minor. I'm told Davion High Command actually went out and hired some Mercs of their own to stop the Kurita agression on their border (good on them btw, great to see them getting more involved in CW politics) the big names here are 228th, the Serephim, Cameron's Highlanders and a few others, though I cannot confirm which units are actually being paid to go there, and which simply chose to for other reasons. Antares Scorpions went Liao for some reason (I'd assume for the mechbay) and TCAF finally left their southern base in Liao and decided to try and fight real people up on the clan borders. Unfortunately for TCAF, their leadership picked the wrong friggin place to go, as they showed up 1 day after MercStar wiped out all of Kurita's Clan opponents. Now all TCAF has to do is ghost drop against Davion from the North rather than the South lol. I hope they didnt take a very long contract, cuz that was obviously the wrong choice

Anyways, to wrap this up, MercStar's plans are going pretty good. We are trying to do our part to help CW, and I feel we are doing a pretty damn good job of it. Simply put, no unit other than MercStar is apparently capable of accomplishing what we did (though, it only took our less than 2 12 mans 9 days to do it). I hope that things continue to shift this way, with every unit and their mother heading to the North Western 4 factions. Once this happens in full, we can have a good old brawl for a month or two until PGI resets things and we start on season 3. Hopefully with planet tags meaning something, a ton of new features, and a return of the populace to CW.

Thus Spoke MercStar.

May be make just one planet for fight, same rules of event Tukayyid? Let's say for a week. Only randomly giving for all (clan and sphere) mode "attack", or 50/50 %.

Next week - the next planet, depending who won, etc.

And for lore and RPG take mode "Historic Battle" a monthly big opening Event, with prizes. Where players at the time of the event period ( if they agreed to participate in it), the affiliation will be automatically selected, respectively, for a fraction.

Offer its PGI)

Quote

a return of the populace to CW.

Just need more CW events from PGI

Edited by Volkodav, 19 May 2015 - 02:20 AM.

[Toadflakz]

Volkodav, on 19 May 2015 - 01:26 AM, said:

Just need more CW events from PGI

This. I know that, for example, other large scale MMOs with a global/planetary warfare feature put in short-term objectives to get people to either move around or to play more during certain periods *cough Planetside 2 *cough*.

Doing something like having the final 2 hours of every CW cycle be double-XP or double-CBills or 5 games above 200 match score = Clan/IS faction skin or 25% extra XP/Cbills for attacking planets X, Y and Z would go a LONG way to motivating people to play more...

Even to the point where in PS2, they will say "Engineers earn 50% XP for next hour".. why not "Pilots in Battlemasters/Victors and Gargoyles earn 50% XP for next hour"... There need to be incentives to playing more and more diversely. :-)

[Metal Militia]

The fact that MS is doing all this in an attempt to move people to certain borders and thump their chest about how great they are, makes me want to play CW even less than I already do (not at all since Tuk).

[Wing 0]

Antonius Rex, on 17 May 2015 - 05:02 PM, said:

I just wanted to give a MercStar sized tip of the hat to all those currently fighting for Clan Jade Falcon.

After all but annihilating Bear and Jaguar, we came to Steiner hoping to find a good fight from Falcon. I am now pleased to say that, for the most part, we found it. At least the best fight yet of season 2.

You guys had something like 55 attackers on Somerset today during the EU phase. That has to be the highest clan numbers on the attack I have seen in all of S2 (can't speak for Wolf though, they may have had good numbers on the FRR border).

Also, you guys took Apollo during the Oceanic phase which was a feat in itself. No faction other than MercStar has yet to take a planet in the Oceanic since the start of Season 2.

Conclusion: Keep being awesome Falcons! You guys are holding your own in the current dark times for the Clans.

Also, keep that carry train going VRGD and KCOM

So let me get this straight Rex. to summarize your post for short.

You killed 2 inactive factions at a time when no one is willing to play cw anymore. Are you proud of that?

Why didn't you guys play for CSJ or CGB if that was the case? betting you would get games easily. let me guess still being paid by that 1 idiot I take it whos been paying units still to do HIS bidding.

Edited by Wing 0, 19 May 2015 - 08:58 AM.

[_Comrade_]

CJF is still licking its wounds from the battle of tukkayid and yet here we are fighting off a NKVA and MS coalition invasion and we aren't even at full strength. Thanks in large part to the leadership of KCOM and TFDV in leading the charge

The clan fought bravely at tukayyid and were ranked 2nd overall till kurita and Steiner made a push, and when the game goes live on steam those who remember the MW2 game will flock to jade falcon and wolf. We will one the largest factions , so CJF has nothing to fret about. We will always be one of the strongest factions

Edited by Grimwill, 19 May 2015 - 10:57 AM.

[Escaflow]

Fun Fact: what you are fighting against are the Whole clans, CSJ don't attack they only defend the Dogs and Birds.
Every time i drop on one of these dots i see more Teddys/Jaguars than Dog/Birds, 2-3 days ago we even got more Player on defend than the freebirth are sending to our allies (i even got 2 Ghost drops!).
Another thing is that i saw more Trail mecs than streamlined, my hope is that after Tuk some freebirth are joining the real warriors, but i fear that the 12 Mans Pug Stomps are driving them away faster then they join and the nerf will hit even harder..
PGI just lost the moment to fix the MM to Pug/Pug and Grp/Grp in the aftermath from Tuk (Planets were at 99+/99+ so it would be possible) to hold the playerbase in cw.
My sad prognosis is that cw will be dead again in a few weeks of Pug stomping and Dot loss without anny way to stop it.

[BSK]

Antonius Rex, on 18 May 2015 - 08:27 AM, said:

Anyways, to wrap this up, MercStar's plans are going pretty good. We are trying to do our part to help CW, and I feel we are doing a pretty damn good job of it.

You mean by putting it down? Why are you not playing for the hibernating mammal clans then?

Before the Battle of Tukayyid we tried to create an intelligence service for other clan units, and you didn't even answer me for which faction your unit is going to play after I asked you 5 times. And now you think you have the social skills to help the community? From my experience, you don't.

And I wish you could see how members of your unit behave in pug matches, you weren't so proud anymore ..

[Antonius Rex]

Respectfully BSK, you couldn't have done a very good job of reaching out to me 5 times, if I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. No emails, no MWO forum PM's, no visit to any of the 9 ts servers I auto log into every day. So, if it was 5 times, then perhaps trying that little bit harder would have been the key. If you are referring to 5 different posts you may have made on the mwo forums, its quite possible I could have missed them, and if so, I apologize. Oddly enough I really don't venture on to the forums that much. 55/70 of my posts have been new since the release of CW, and nearly all of the rest have been on our recruitment forums.

So here is a freebie in way of an apology. -MS- will be wolf in less than 4 hours. Not many outside of our alliance network know that. Not sure how much its worth, but there it is regardless.

But in the future, why don't you actually just come and have a chat about the things you want to know as well as make a snarky anti -MS- post on the forums. That way I think everyone can be happy and fulfilled.

If you do ever want to get in touch, you are always welcome to hit us up on our ts @ ts.mercstaralliance.com

Lastly, people are hopefully going to be reading a lot of my future plans for CW here soon. I am bringing back MCW for a 5th season, and its going to be fully based around Community Warfare. The plans I have underlined in previous posts have been potentially instrumental in getting this thing off the ground. For what was needed was a shift of useful and CW participating units over to the Northwestern most 4 factions, specifically falcon, wolf, steiner and FRR.

So far those plans are going really well, with a number of high profile units making the shift. And now it is finally time to go public with the concept for the league, and see what is possible. With that in mind, I wanted to thank BSK for leaving CGB and going Falcon, not only has it been great fun fighting you guys on the border again, but it falls into our hopes for building a better CW for everyone, by creating MWO's first CW league.

Catch you on the battlefield,
-M$-

[BSK]

It was 5 times ingame when you were actually on my friendslist, because during the week before Tukayyid I reached out to 60 leading members from 40 different units. Your contact was one of the useless and unprofessional ones that I deleted without any regrets. On my side please accept my apology that I tried to reach out to your unit as well, the community wouldn't have benefited from your reconnaissance anyway. Oh and like I already stated in this forum, we go Steiner on Friday. We prefer CW as it is like you prefer ER-Large Lasers ..

[Deadfire]

Just shh Tony, makes you look even more petty with these long posts on nothing.

[_Comrade_]

Thank you MS

we are loving all our mercs in our clan right now!

clan jade falcon will lead the way to terra after this event!

Edited by Grimwill, 22 May 2015 - 08:09 PM.