Posted 23 January 2016 - 09:34 AM
tl;dr Trying to recruit from a dwindling player base with interest level issues for the hardcore proponents of it, is always going to be rough when there isn't an influx of new players committed to the mode (and right now, there isn't much reason unless you like to get stomped as a new player. Repeatedly.) Folks go where the least perceptible effort is, and that usually means big units that can front 12 mans easily and win often, vs giving a small, new or untested group a shot.
Don't ask me where Ostrea's hostile tone is entirely coming from, because I don't really know (though it seems fueled by some heavy levels of optimism in the face of all odds and a knee-jerk reaction to someone complaining about the state of affairs while trying damn hard to get a unit going despite it. I wouldn't read much more into it than that, honestly).
Recruitment is sluggish if you're not a pre-established unit and aren't grabbing folks from other gaming communities, with the major influxes few and far between with an unforgiving game mode that doesn't appeal to literally, 90% of the game. This is old hat for me; I call it musical chairs for good reason. Finding new players that want to give the mode a shot after practice and work (and getting stomped a **** ton) are pretty spotty, especially after initial souring experiences.
I'll be blunt, and I understand where the feelings are coming from (and I won't say they're not legitimate, but there's far more at work than the big-bad-PGI): The mode sucks for new players and many of the larger units haven't help matters. Some have, many have tried, but when you "want to play but don't have the deck or the polished skills to be competitive" you often get relegated to c or d drops, or get tossed through practice routines that... well, treat you more like a lemming than an active contributor.
Try recruiting in an echo-chamber that's more musical chairs than faction warfare. When you're actively trying to snag -new- members from a stagnated player base who's loosing more and more due to burnout, you're basically competing for an ever dwindling resource that only becomes more challenging to dip into.
This was a problem back in CW phase 1, never mind now, a big one in fact, and by the end of it folks knew it was in a downward spiral. The issue is most of the suggestions to fix it... are simply misplaced or outright bad and don't take into account... -gasp-, the bulk of the game could care less about unit-players. At all. Or what they say on the forums, let alone getting a game mode "to themselves" that just incessantly reinforces that through stomps and active unabashed farming. Bluntly put, much of the issue was from the practices of the CW community themselves and the -very- misplaced idea that a bunch of random strangers would listen, never drop into the mode (warnings aside, most folks assume they've got the skills and ability to thrive in it at first, vs not, because we are creatures of ego), never try an entire set of maps because "only for the elite", and it would somehow, I dunno, grow in that state.
It flopped, and it was a warranted flop. Now PGI is trying some quick fixes before upcoming changes and content additions.
Calling something community warefare, yet alienating the bulk of the playerbase, and just tacking on the idea it was end game contact and "hardcore" because it -lacked- basic features (hardcore to me is when you're constantly pitted against people your skill level or better, like most ranked ladder queues in other games), was fairly doomed to go sour. But many acted like it was all the fault of those poor new players for having the gall to want to play it, and thus, deserved getting stomped, farmed and chased off until... barely anyone played the damn thing. Yet -that- was somehow the right way to do it. Where they honestly expected to get new players is beyond me, but there seemed to be a lot of rose tinted glasses that they'd naturally gravitate to units from solo-queue, vs try the mode on their own.
The split queues might impact this for a while (as players get to play CW in a less vicious and toxic environment, then migrate and make their own units without the constant looming threat of being farmed every drop), but I only advocated that because I will take -any positive fix-, even a temporary bandaid that will encourage people to give the mode a shot and stick around, vs what we have now. Which, in the current queue format... is an outright failure.
As cynical as it is to say, many want to go where the wins are and get carried, because it's seen as -easier- to hop into a "winning" unit, than to give something new or smaller a shot. When that doesn't float, it's often the larger casual units that get the rest as folks burn out from "tryhard mode". Anything that trickles off of that then gets divided by the rest. Given that some actively try to stack the deck and win via bloat for unit events (of which I've seen from multiple groups, and by seen, have had leaders and membership outright state it...) with a zergish invite policy, it only makes the pickings slimmer.
The strongest teams I've seen, however, aren't the massively bloated, zergish invite types. They're the folks that play together, enjoy each others company, don't recruit aggressively and tend to be more concerned about enjoying the game (while winning), rather than, well, just going hyper competitive because, reasons. They're good because they're familiar with each other, and trust each other enough to not constantly micromanage (which only causes problems). Most of the time, they were pre-established from other games to boot, but they're rarely in a recruitment blitz.
It's an uphill battle that may not change until the game mode is much more inviting to the vast bulk of the player base. Right now, it simply isn't, with less than 10% actively participating and the before-mentioned stagnation really hurting the mode (which yes, is partly PGI, but also partly some of CW's serious community issues and denial-ridden outlooks).
The fact that (for now) it's primarily a 12 man or bust environment only makes recruitment harder because of the population issues. If you have trouble fronting even 1 12 man, a lot of folks simply migrate to the groups that can, assuming they'll be in whatever full premade is going on. It's a valid assumption, but often not true and misplaced. There aren't many groups fronting more than one 12 man, and being filler for a mixed group is more the norm, but the assumption is still "they'll get into the 12 man drop", and boom, the larger units continue to grow.
I'm hoping it changes, in that we get enough of the population giving it a go to eventually trickle into the unit queues, but I'm a realist at heart; if it takes work, folks will go for the easier alternative, and that's not joining small units, or starting them from scratch and trying to get folks on board.
As it stands, it's a pretty tall order to try and topple and grow under. Not impossible, but it's definitely not easy pickings. What you're facing, many others are as well, and it's a fairly time consuming process even with the Steam population giving things a whirl.
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