84 replies to this topic

[Danjo San]

Koniving, on 15 June 2016 - 03:58 AM, said:

At that note, allow the FW drop as soon as both sides have four people and as players answer the call to arms, allow them to join mid match. There is no real reason every participant has to be there right off the bat. I could be content knowing that reinforcements are on the way and I just need to hold out until then. Of course only allow players in as groups of two (one per side) so that enemies and allies come in as pairs.

This is a nice Idea that has not been thought about yet... I like the angle,
What if you'd allow "Reinforcement Style Drops" The Match starts out as soon as 4 vs 4 is met, reinforcements roll in as soon as the second 4 vs. 4 is complete, equally balancing and filling up the match on the fly.
If you however start out with a group of 8, the first 4 in the Queue, will drop with the enemy 4, whereas the other 4 will still be waiting in the lobby until their group is filled. It would definetly change the dynamic. It would definetly help from the aspect of low population.

[MovinTarget]

On the topic of "big units" ...and i suspect the poster means "big merc units" more than loyalists...

I have problem with simply capping the # of unit members that can queue at a time.

I am in 228 which some consider "big" but we seldom field more than 18 in FP at any given time. You want to limit merc units, say they can't drop more than 20-24 at any give time. If players want to drop more they will have to splinter which will normalize the ability for groups to nab planet tags...

...thought tbh i don't really care about it... i come for big stompy robot battles...

[Koniving]

Danjo San, on 15 June 2016 - 04:39 AM, said:

This is a nice Idea that has not been thought about yet... I like the angle,
What if you'd allow "Reinforcement Style Drops" The Match starts out as soon as 4 vs 4 is met, reinforcements roll in as soon as the second 4 vs. 4 is complete, equally balancing and filling up the match on the fly.
If you however start out with a group of 8, the first 4 in the Queue, will drop with the enemy 4, whereas the other 4 will still be waiting in the lobby until their group is filled. It would definetly change the dynamic. It would definetly help from the aspect of low population.

Indeed. Doesn't remove waits for sequential quartets as the enemy/ally pairs would but at least it significantly reduces wait times and dependcy on 24 active players to start a match. The drop ships would also look cooler with four coming out during reinforcement. And quartets on each side keeps the drop system consistent, so you always know you'll drop with four rather than "okay so am I starting with the initial four of will I drop as soon as an opposing enemy takes the call?".

Consistency I've noticed works very well as it is predictable and "fair". Such is why people so strongly oppose random chance.

You pointed out some other flaws which I'm aware of and an edge case I didn't think of. I think I'm gonna like bouncing ideas back and forth with you.

Edited by Koniving, 15 June 2016 - 05:16 AM.

[Odanan]

Well, at least Steiner should be merged with Davion (forming a Steiner-Davion faction)... the Federated Commonwealth is a thing in the current timeline.

EDIT: here, PGI:

Edited by Odanan, 01 July 2016 - 04:58 AM.

[MovinTarget]

Odanan, on 15 June 2016 - 05:23 AM, said:

Well, at least Steiner should be merged with Davion (forming a Steiner-Davion faction)... the Federated Commonwealth is a thing in the current timeline.

I thought about that, but you are then combining 2 of the largest IS houses permanently.

This is why I was thinking that making the alliances dynamic and votable may not be completely lore, but make diplomacy meaningful and beneficial.

I won't lie either, the idea of setting up some IS + Clan alliances is *really* tempting if only to mix things up so that you have more creative group loadouts.

Edited by MovinTarget, 15 June 2016 - 06:07 AM.

[Danjo San]

MovinTarget, on 15 June 2016 - 05:07 AM, said:

On the topic of "big units" ...and i suspect the poster means "big merc units" more than loyalists...

I have problem with simply capping the # of unit members that can queue at a time.

I am in 228 which some consider "big" but we seldom field more than 18 in FP at any given time. You want to limit merc units, say they can't drop more than 20-24 at any give time. If players want to drop more they will have to splinter which will normalize the ability for groups to nab planet tags...

...thought tbh i don't really care about it... i come for big stompy robot battles...

big units in general. mercs as well as loyalists.

[Danjo San]

Koniving, on 15 June 2016 - 05:12 AM, said:

Indeed. Doesn't remove waits for sequential quartets as the enemy/ally pairs would but at least it significantly reduces wait times and dependcy on 24 active players to start a match. The drop ships would also look cooler with four coming out during reinforcement. And quartets on each side keeps the drop system consistent, so you always know you'll drop with four rather than "okay so am I starting with the initial four of will I drop as soon as an opposing enemy takes the call?".

Consistency I've noticed works very well as it is predictable and "fair". Such is why people so strongly oppose random chance.

You pointed out some other flaws which I'm aware of and an edge case I didn't think of. I think I'm gonna like bouncing ideas back and forth with you.

Yeah, think about Bitchin Betty saying "Reinforcements arriving in T-30 seconds"
You could add Invader Landing Beacons that need to be capped to have the reinforcements drop closer to the frontline. They can of course be uncapped by the defenders forcing reinforcements to drop further back again.

[Memnon Valerius Thrax]

disable public mode and we have enough ppl for CW.

only 5% of all Players play CW. Thats the reason why nobody except Steiner and Falcons get matches.

[MovinTarget]

Danjo San, on 15 June 2016 - 07:05 AM, said:

big units in general. mercs as well as loyalists.

I was thinking of letting the loyalists be as big as they want, the usual complaint is that when MS, or some other big merc unit moves, there is this big shift in power.

Loyalist units are pretty much rooted in one place so its not like they move and all hell breaks loose.

Besides, it would be another "carrot" to lure in players as loyalists... you would have bigger units, more people to play with where Merc life is kind of solitary and nomadic.

My thing is that a lot of people don't think merc units should have such huge impact on the map, and I agree... believe it or not...

[Danjo San]

MovinTarget, on 15 June 2016 - 07:42 AM, said:

I was thinking of letting the loyalists be as big as they want, the usual complaint is that when MS, or some other big merc unit moves, there is this big shift in power.

Loyalist units are pretty much rooted in one place so its not like they move and all hell breaks loose.

Besides, it would be another "carrot" to lure in players as loyalists... you would have bigger units, more people to play with where Merc life is kind of solitary and nomadic.

My thing is that a lot of people don't think merc units should have such huge impact on the map, and I agree... believe it or not...

However big loyalist groups are also killing incentive for the casuals. With a loyalist group in your timezone 5 times the size of your loyalist group, chances for rewards are slim to none etc. etc.
I personally don't care if I get some of the meager 15MC a Planet drops, I just want to drop and get matches. it is however a issue and it is holding casuals back from playing. Also you should not have to join the large units just to be under the "impression" your participation counts.
And yes big Merc Units are having the largest impact on the map. and there are several reasons for this. And with Phase 3 PGI even catered towards more people going Merc, by offering the Mercs an entire new set of rewards and leaving loyalists stuck with what they have.
With a unit cap and a cap on contracts based upon current active population you could mitigate the risk of mercs cluttering in one faction, and thus creating a more equal balance of population and power.

[MovinTarget]

perhaps they should divvy up the actual planetary rewards amongst the victorious units, where no unit can acquire more than 15 MC per planet, but any unit with a positive W/L on the planet with some minimum representation get something, even if it's 1 MC per cycle (3 MC/day)...

Perhaps:
Best representation + W/L = 15MC/cycle
2nd Best = 10MC/cycle
3rd Best = 5MC/cycle
The rest = 1MC/cycle

This would then allow for both Mercs and Loyalists to be invested in holding a planet and possible improving one's rank on the planet.
I would still maintain that Unit caps would be *really* bad for some units that have lots of people that are in various comp teams and only a fraction play FP. Why should they be penalized? If you want to limit their impact in FP, make it by affect the active FP population, not the unit as a whole. This is why I propose that there be a realtime limit to unit players in FP at any given time. If they want to drop more, they have to splinter, if they splinter they will eventually start moving off on their own as they'll likely chase the contracts that are most lucrative at that moment.

[Baphomech]

After including the aforementioned suggestons about improving gameplay mechanics, what do we say to a timeline jump to sweeten the deal?

Repeating the Clan Invasion again and again is getting stale, and has likely contributed to losing players. My suggestion: move to 3059, and focus on Operation Bulldog. http://www.sarna.net...eration_Bulldog

New mechs, new weapons (Clan Heavy Lasers, anyone?), and a new map. For those who aren't familiar, Operation Bulldog is a pivotal conflict in the lore, when all the Houses of the Inner Sphere work together, under the banner of the reconstituted Star League, to send a message to the other clans by destroying the villainous Smoke Jaguars. Primary conflict zone on the map would be Star League vs Jaguars (you're flagged as one or the other when you join a match, regardless of your current faction, but you still earn the rep for your faction).

This could help give things a shot in the arm - what do you guys think?

[Koniving]

Danjo San, on 15 June 2016 - 07:10 AM, said:

Yeah, think about Bitchin Betty saying "Reinforcements arriving in T-30 seconds"
You could add Invader Landing Beacons that need to be capped to have the reinforcements drop closer to the frontline. They can of course be uncapped by the defenders forcing reinforcements to drop further back again.

I have had similar ideas in the past. In mine however the landing zone would dynamically update by distance from the front line.

Alternatively, a list of available drop points would come up to choose from.

I do see the problem with updating drop points dynamicallynwith a moving front line. Unreal Ed and StarCraft campaign makers have taught me about location based triggers though. If enough players traverse past a point it should become available to drop -- what makes this interesting is even of the superior defending force takes the battle out to the field.... (say it's a big organized group and the attackers were just too disorganized to hold a front line) nothing would stop an army from using the air to drop troops behind the defensive line. If you made it past X point you could be dropped there even if the enemies are spawn killing your past points.

So that is in the style I had thought of.

Now... capturable points. This adds controlled reasons to hold ground and reason for both sides to push if that ground can be recaptured. My worry is that it is clearly defined as in "we will land here in 10 seconds". Okay so instead of recapturing, we camp here with a firing line of Gauss rifles and slaughter them as soon as they drop. This could easily go awry into frustration territory without at least having selection in which drop zone to use.

[MovinTarget]

Baphomech, on 15 June 2016 - 09:35 AM, said:

, when all the Houses of the Inner Sphere work together, under the banner of the reconstituted Star League, to send a message to the other clans by destroying the villainous Smoke Jaguars.

I just checked the map, ok, smoke jags still do exist I guess we could proceed...

You got me thinking, if they would have coded up FP so that it was easy to swap in/out missions they could have just made each drop a random selection of relevant battles of the times. That would have been pretty cool...

[Koniving]

Baphomech, on 15 June 2016 - 09:35 AM, said:

After including the aforementioned suggestons about improving gameplay mechanics, what do we say to a timeline jump to sweeten the deal?

Repeating the Clan Invasion again and again is getting stale, and has likely contributed to losing players. My suggestion: move to 3059, and focus on Operation Bulldog. http://www.sarna.net...eration_Bulldog

New mechs, new weapons (Clan Heavy Lasers, anyone?), and a new map. For those who aren't familiar, Operation Bulldog is a pivotal conflict in the lore, when all the Houses of the Inner Sphere work together, under the banner of the reconstituted Star League, to send a message to the other clans by destroying the villainous Smoke Jaguars. Primary conflict zone on the map would be Star League vs Jaguars (you're flagged as one or the other when you join a match, regardless of your current faction, but you still earn the rep for your faction).

This could help give things a shot in the arm - what do you guys think?

Mech warrior 3 makes it so much better. But bouncing around specific campaigns would actually be pretty sweet. So whether canonical or made up, assigning actual campaigns and faction-wide objectives would really give some purpose to FW other than "well let's earn another notch on the planet".

Some of my group's guys, almost none of which will even touch MWO now even though many have spent hundreds of dollars and 7 of the 22 members having in excess of 100 million cbills... won't touch it with a sharp stick now since balance had been fuddled with, Russ, Paul, goofy mechanics instead of fixing the broken heat system and then going from there.... they were talking about Electronic arts and MPBT 3025. This one faction had a group this guy was in. And one night they decided they were gonna make a B-line straight for a fraction's capital. So each night they would attack garrison after garrison. They did not spend time setting up supply lines or their own Garrisons. After the second or third night their faction realized what they were doing and shipped units over to start setting up supply lines and establish garrisoning forces. They had made it 5 jumps out before the enemy really picked up on it and one jump away from the fraction's homeworks when about 70 players had jumped to neighboring planets to systematically counter attack and stamp them out. Others had attacked undefended planets along the line, cutting off the supply line for repairs, Garrisons and reinforcements before the line could ever reach his team. Finally they ran out of mechs and were squashed.

That is the kind of "logistics and what we do matters" that we were told about when CW was planned but it isn't here.

Campaigns with objectives and goals that a faction can work together towards, where a faction can be completely eliminated from even if only temporarily, where logistics, traveling, supply lines and the like matter. It would be truly interesting.

Another thought is one I had when gauging the sort of experience I would like based entirely on the hype we were given by PGI.
...how things turned are really different, but feel free to give it a read and if it makes you cry, drop a like on it and if you want comment about it here?

Edited by Koniving, 15 June 2016 - 10:39 AM.

[Danjo San]

MovinTarget, on 15 June 2016 - 09:32 AM, said:

perhaps they should divvy up the actual planetary rewards amongst the victorious units, where no unit can acquire more than 15 MC per planet, but any unit with a positive W/L on the planet with some minimum representation get something, even if it's 1 MC per cycle (3 MC/day)...

Perhaps:
Best representation + W/L = 15MC/cycle
2nd Best = 10MC/cycle
3rd Best = 5MC/cycle
The rest = 1MC/cycle

This would then allow for both Mercs and Loyalists to be invested in holding a planet and possible improving one's rank on the planet.
I would still maintain that Unit caps would be *really* bad for some units that have lots of people that are in various comp teams and only a fraction play FP. Why should they be penalized? If you want to limit their impact in FP, make it by affect the active FP population, not the unit as a whole. This is why I propose that there be a realtime limit to unit players in FP at any given time. If they want to drop more, they have to splinter, if they splinter they will eventually start moving off on their own as they'll likely chase the contracts that are most lucrative at that moment.

I don't see the cap as penalizing large units. Most of the large units work in subdivisions anyway with separate commanders for each dropset. Now the community would not change, you'd still have your community but said subdivisions would have subdivison tags. Dislike FP be part of a subdivision that does not play FP ... etc. A cap of 52 Players (4 Dropships plus backup) should be sufficient for this. esp. if you say you only have 18 tops that play CW...
People often mistake that a cap is not meant to delete your friends, you can still be friends and drop together and do everything the same way as always. There however would be a chance of Communities not having their units move to the same faction and thus creating a more equal balance... so there are players that only play comp and not FP, they probably give two flying f's about what faction they belong to... they might even choose to stay "freelancers" no need to represent a faction if not for faction warfare or gaining loyalty rewards, which in return would reflect a clearer population balance.
It would also take all the wind out of the sails of players that say, this or that unit only wins by zerging planets with 500 players each timezone... Maybe their FP subdivisions are good, maybe they win by zerging. hiding behind numbers the casual outsider can't tell. so he assumes he stands no chance, he chooses not to participate. So the population remains small.

I mean don't get me wrong we are all on the same page. We would not be discussing issues like that if we weren't in it for the love of Mechwarrior and Community Warfare. I know I want it to succeed, I want the population to grow, and I want all players to be able to enjoy FP. that includes players in small Units, the casuals, the beginners, the competitives... etc.
PGI realized large Units are a problem. Players have been complaining about this for a long time. So they tried to mangage it softly and it did not work. The large Units are still large, and a whole bunch of casuals said eff that, we're out! And it is continuing to decline in the same direction. It's been complained about in Phase 1, and in Phase 2, it is still an issue in Phase 3.

So when you say why should the large units be penalized. Turn the point of view around, look at it from a casuals perspective. The impression they get is, they say they will do something about the large units, and they don't. why are we being punished for not wanting to play in large groups?

There are always two sides. And I believe the angle we need to focus on is not only to cater towards the established players and groups, but also to include all the new players and casuals and keep them intersted and willing to stay and fight in FP. We need to create incentive for them. And if three phases long a majority has been complaining about large units I say we should give the cap a go.

[MovinTarget]

So your solution would be to tell all the comp teams that wear the same tag with pride and don't play FP:

"/shrug, sucks to be you."

228 has 4-5 different comp teams for different times/leagues.

They only field 18 *at most* for FP at a time...

/shrug sucks to be us I guess.

Edited by MovinTarget, 15 June 2016 - 11:27 AM.

[Jman5]

I would do 4 Clan factions vs 4 Inner Sphere Factions.

The IS/Clan player disparity lines up suspiciously with the number of factions in the game. I suspect things would be more even if each side had the same number of factions.

[Danjo San]

MovinTarget, on 15 June 2016 - 11:27 AM, said:

So your solution would be to tell all the comp teams that wear the same tag with pride and don't play FP:

"/shrug, sucks to be you."

228 has 4-5 different comp teams for different times/leagues.

They only field 18 *at most* for FP at a time...

/shrug sucks to be us I guess.

Would it really be so bad to have
[1ST] 228th - First Division Rangers
[2nD] 228th - Second Divison
[228F] 228th - Faction Warfare Force
[WWW] 228th - Wicked Wild Warriors

*shrugs

[Danjo San]

Funny thing ... back during Phase 2... when everything was stagnant. TCAF created TCSF for some of their players to go merc and harvest MechBays. Everyone knew they are from TCAF, eventhough they had a different Tag... same goes for MS and MS-R
Is there less pride involved, I don't think so

Edited by Danjo San, 15 June 2016 - 11:55 AM.