869 replies to this topic

[Hoffenstein]

I won't be able to watch this round table (sad, teary face) so hopefully Mr. Bombadil will be able to ask this question in my stead:

Will we see AI units in Faction Warfare before Q1 of 2017? Looking forward to feeling the the king of the battlefield... in my Commando.

Edited by Hoffenstein, 22 July 2016 - 09:06 PM.

[p4r4g0n]

There needs to be a reason to care what happens to the dots on the Inner Sphere map. If this issue cannot be addressed, it will end up with one queue, one bucket.

There needs to be an alignment of loyalist, mercenary, unit pilots and solo pilot interests in FP and the only real way in-game is through an economy that affects all parties.

Create an economy for loyalists based on how many planets are faction owned at the end of a specified period, pay them a combat bonus based on that and the number of FP battles they have participated in during said specified period. Some other metric will be required for Clan factions at least during the initial stages of Clan Invasion (assuming a reset occurs).

Mercenary units are ranked by the Mercenary Review and Bonding Commission based on their respective performance in FP.

Top #Y units are eligible for faction exclusive contracts that pay MC bonuses at the end of each specific period based on overall Faction's performance for a specified period. Alternatively, no limit on eligibility of units for exclusive contracts but amount of MC payable is MRBC rank related.

Faction loyalist determine the number of units they wish to employ and allocation of MC defence budget.

Amount of MC available to hire mercenary units are affected by number of planets owned. Some other metric will be required for Clan factions.

Merc unit/pilot combat pay (C-Bills) for each FP battle based on rank e.g. lowest level, standard contract rates with increased bonus rates for each higher rank/level.

Just some thoughts about FP that I have been mulling over .... needs fleshing out.

Edited by p4r4g0n, 22 July 2016 - 08:25 PM.

[Stoneblade]

Dee Eight, on 22 July 2016 - 07:52 PM, said:

As a former Wizkids Mechwarrior clix player and tournament referee, might I suggest faction abilities... unique skills for belonging to a particular faction.

As a former Wizkids Mechwarrior Darkage Player, ref, Community organizer: I can say that this idea is more of a "Power Creep" idea. It didn't work well in the game, it power-creeped the game overmuch and into it's death.



But I digress:
Faction Play, from a gamer standpoint needs a form of Unique-ness to it. Making the drop-decks unique to each faction could help. The drop decks would reflect what a standard soldier would bring. They would be the default trial deck after you switch factions.
For example: Davion dropdeck: 2 Enforcers, 2 Jagers. Liao would be 2 Ravens, 1 Cicada, 1 Cataphract; pull examples from Lore.

Have you thought of limiting the Tonnage available for a drop based on the whether a pilot is a Loyalist or a Merc/freelancer?
For example: 250 is the Merc drop weight, where a Loyalist gets 260. This would add the flavor of Mercs being better quipped, but not able to have better logistics.


Have you thought of rewarding Clan pilots for having their drop decks less then the drop limit? Say it they bring 40 tons under they get 1.5x C-bills and 10 MC on a win(Non-ghost drop).

[Jman5]

While there are plenty of big changes that could dramatically improve FP, I have tried to think of smaller fixes that could nudge the game mode in the right direction.

Improving the Loyalty Experience

1. When voting on who to attack, give Loyalists a vote multiplier based on their rank within a faction. This way a faction's most dedicated players have a greater say than some rank 1 alt account.

2. Give loyalists something to grind beyond Level 20. I think loyalists should be able to keep leveling up. Perhaps it could be a seasonal grind that resets every new season. This opens the door to seasonal prizes and encourages people to show up.

Improving the Mercenary Experience

1. Make weekly contract modifiers based on active population within that faction instead of just a sum total of players with the faction tag. Some factions have a lot of inactive accounts or players who stick to quickplay. If a player hasn't played a Faction Play game in 2 weeks he shouldn't count toward that faction's population.

2. Show a mercenary unit's faction contract in the leaderboard. For people like me with large friends list, I can usually piece together who is where, but for the rest of your players, this information should be more readily available.

Improving Invasion/Attack

Players should be awarded and recognized for damaging Generators and Turrets. Currently the only thing they get is a small reward for a turret killing blow. Instead, it should be based on damage dealt and expanded to include generators. Ideally, I would like to see this sort of team play put on the public end-of-round screen next to damage. If that's too difficult, then you could just lump it into their total damage. Either way, a player who is shooting at the objectives should not feel like they are wasting their ammo while their teammates are ignoring it. The cbill reward could match the regular mech damage reward.

Improving Scout Mode

1. The Gatherers should not be allowed to hide next to the extraction zone and leap into it at the last second when Protectors are sitting in the square. There needs to be some sort of bone thrown to the protectors here. Even if it's as simple as the extracting mech has to stay in the square for 5 seconds before he can leave. You could make it intuitive for players by adding an "uploading intel" progress bar when you enter the square.

2. Drop max tonnage down to 50. I think the 55 tonners create too many issues on both sides. Lowering the tonnage would also give the light mechs more of a fighting chance.


Other:

1. Bribe people into accepting Call to Arms. Could give people 30% boost to Cbills for joining a call to arms, or some small bit of MC. You could even add achievements: "join 1,10,50,100 call to arms matches..."

2. Replace Long Tom with something else. Something that provides an indirect advantage without scaring players off the planet.

3. MC payout for planet capture should be proportional instead of winner-take-all. This will allow smaller units to get their fair share and will encourage people to care more about planet capture.
_________________________________________________________________________

Some potentially larger things that I can't help but mention

1. Mercenary Hiring hall. We need a way for struggling loyalists to hire guns for their faction.

2. Something needs to be done for struggling factions. Either they need to be killable, or we need some sort of alliance/vassal system to give people in these dead-end factions a way to succeed.

3. I think loyalists should be able to vote for specific planet to direct their front as they desire.

4. We need planets like capital worlds and Terra to be contestable. Right now it's so anti-climatic for a faction to reach Terra. There needs to be some sort of special event for these major worlds.

5. More base-stuff. I like what I'm hearing about the new Assault Mode. We should have that stuff in Faction Play too.

6. Capturable Forward Drop Zones. If these drop zones were placed by the gates of bases, they could allow attackers to reinforce back into the fight just as the defenders do. Cutting off an attacker's reinforcements by disabling the drop zone would be an important task for the defenders. This would make the game much more fluid as a steady stream of reinforcing attackers fight a steady stream or reinforcing defenders. Placement of these drop zones would be key for proper balance and players would need to be given choice over which drop zone they want to drop in to avoid being swarmed/camped. The dropships would also need to be weaponless to give defenders a chance of disabling them.

7. Factions need Unique attributes or Quirks that set them apart from one another. Joining Liao should be different than joining Marik. These "quirks" should be Faction-Play related bonuses instead of generic weapon/hitpoint buffs. For example, one faction could start every attack phase with scouting at 55%. Another Faction could have 255 ton drop decks to work with instead of 250. A third faction might have dropships that come every 15 seconds instead of every 30. You guys get the idea. FP-specific quirks that make joining a specific faction more meaningful for the player.

Ugh this turned into a TLDR. Sorry!

Edited by Jman5, 22 July 2016 - 10:42 PM.

[AnTi90d]

I have compiled my suggestions:


Low Cost / Low Effort Solution To Increase F.p. Participation



1.) ALLIED FACTIONS SHARING ATTACK/DEFENSE LANES

• Let allied factions share attack and defense queues.

Either manually set certain factions to be permanent allies or introduce a member vote, similar to voting for attack lanes.


This would effectively combine faction populations without destroying the market for faction-specific camos/decals.


2.) ALLIED FACTIONS GROUPING

• Let allied factions form FP groups with eachother.

3.) ALLIED FACTIONS CHAT

• Create a new tab in the FP chat menu for Allied Chat to facilitate coordination and grouping.

4.) FREELANCER FP:LFG

• Allow Freelancers to go into FP:LFG and group with any faction.

5.) GLOBAL FP CHAT

• Create a third chat tab in the FP chat menu for Global Chat. Allow Freelancers and any faction to chat here.

6.) REWARD ALL INVASION PLAYERS WITH MC

• 1 Invasion loss = 1 MC rewarded.

• 1 Invasion win = 2 MC rewarded.

This will not impact the purchase of MC but would rather be an incentive to get people to play FP and keep playing FP. (Even if someone played all day, everyday, it would take weeks on end to be able to save up for anything worthwhile like a mechbay. Most people would probably use this pittance of MC to buy supply crate keys or single-shot camos.



7.) REMOVE THE LONG TOM

Look at this poll and read the opinions: http://mwomercs.com/...e-your-opinion/

We do not want unstoppable damage to rain down upon us or our enemies. We want to shoot them and be shot by them. When the Long Tom is enabled, we stop queuing for FP. At this point, we don't even care how much you nerf it; nerfing isn't enough; we want it utterly and permanently removed. The only people that don't stop are the ones that don't know any better.. and then they give up on FP entirely from being spawnkilled over and over by an invisible artillery god.

I don't remember if it was Kinetix or Kell, but one of them had a decent suggestion: enable seismic sensor instead of the Long Tom.. maybe even extend the sensor's range from the module. Scouting is supposed to be information warfare, not full on, unending nuclear bombardment.

But, hell.. basically anything you come up with would be better than unending damage from nowhere.


8.) GIVE THE MINIMAP DIRECTIONAL ARROWS FOR FRIENDLY UNITS

This was the single easiest way to organize people in FP. Drop callers need to be able to see where their people are and which way they're facing. Organizing pugs in defense is infinitely more difficult without friendly directional arrows letting you know when a good firing line is set up and when a few guys are in the right spot but looking the wrong way.

You don't even have to remove the ability to see weight classes. Look at this quick mock-up of improved map arrows:

http://i59.photobuck...zpswh4o16nd.png



This was made in five minutes. I'm sure PGI could do a better job in the same amount of time.


9.) REDUCE SCOUTING TONNAGE TO 40 TONS

55 tons gives the clans a scouting advantage. 45 and 50 tons gives the IS a scouting advantage.

The 40 ton mechs for both IS and the clans are reasonably balanced.

-----

I'm sure PGI/Russ will hear a lot of suggestions at the FP Round Table.

I'm also sure that many people will make suggestions that may be out of the current price range that PGI is able/willing to currently throw at FP. Of course, we do want more maps and many people want the current maps to be altered, but that takes a lot of time and money.

Please consider these suggestions, as they shouldn't be that difficult or costly to implement. These should get you, "the most bang for your buck," so to speak.

If you are a PGI employee and you've actually read this to the end, then I sincerely thank you for your time and patience.

Good day, sir and/or madam.

[Kurbeks]

Faction play map is moved by mercs not Loyalists like it should be in Lore. So decrease merc rewards or increase loyalists.
For example take away MC/mech bay reward for merc levels. Mercs are mercs so only Cbills for them. Might increase those.

[Alex Reed]

1. FP maps should not have artificial chokepoints. If the Clan mechs beat you to that chokepoint, it is game over before it starts. Place FP on existing quickplay maps ... that adds familiarity for beginning players and adds a challenge as objectives can be reached from different angles, not just two artificial chokepoints.

2. Let the players choose attack lanes and the actual planets they want to attack. No more zigzagging with an algorithm. It doesn't matter how much the algorithm cost ... more player choice = deeper player immersion and interest.

3. Currently, there is no reason to stay loyalist in the lower Houses of the Inner Sphere when you cannot get any fights (except for defenses for other factions). As units flip-flop allegiances, there are no real incentives for units to stay loyal which is driving away the player base. Adding incentives to contracts is not attracting players to the southern houses. Is there a plan to rectify that?

[Talos7]

Maybe a few things such as:

Voting weight for attack lanes or even planets (Loyalist > Merc),
Ability to unlock special House/Clan specific paint jobs through LP (and loss thereof if and when they change factions),
House/Clan specific decals (famous units, etc) through LP (and loss thereof if and when they change factions),
Ability for all Houses/Clans to (vote for and) attack all other House/Clans regardless of borders shared,
Major events (Battle of Luthien?),
Elementals!!!!

and last but not least, MORE MECH BAY SALES!!!!

Edit: Because I don't know what I'm doing, I just like pushing buttons!!!

Edited by Talos7, 22 July 2016 - 09:50 PM.

[Zuesacoatl]

I do not play FW anymore because of how much sway the big units have. Units like MS and others that avoid fighting other skilled units in hopes of the seal clubbing extravaganzas they get when they are on the same side as 228, and not facing great units like that. Find a way to sway them from this behavior, I have no ideas on this, but at least discuss it.

There is also a lack of....payment. Being a merc should have rewards past the battlefield. If you own a merc unit, you should get a flow of c-bills in accordance with the faction you are with, and how many planets it currently owns, the size of your unit, and if you participated in any battles for that week. It is affected by the sign on bonus when you choose your contract as well, so if you are a member of the Jade Falcon seal clubbers, you would have a big -% from the weekly allotment of c-bills. Keep the MC for planet holders, but sweeten the pot for super small units, and even solos if they assisted that week. Help with the grind, don't help to make it worse.

Last but not least, make unit cbills transferable for petes sake. If your unit has a giant cache of c-bills, and one of your players needs a module, allow that unit to transfer that 6 mil to them. I know the bigger units can take advantage of this and deck out alt accounts in no time, or new recruits, but in the end, it helps the smaller groups spread the wealth, or to help to bring them on par equipment wise with some other players. Not everyone is a steely eyed missile man with 100billion cbills to their names.

Edited by Zuesacoatl, 22 July 2016 - 10:21 PM.

[El Bandito]

Too many corridors in the FW makes queues empty due to small population. Make it only 3 corridors max for IS and Clans as a whole.

Edited by El Bandito, 22 July 2016 - 10:35 PM.

[BLOOD WOLF]

El Bandito, on 22 July 2016 - 10:35 PM, said:

small population.

Wha???

[N0MAD]

Bombadil a developer? i have names mixed up...
But on topic,,,
With CW being a community orientated venture, why wont PGI introduce proper Chat lobbies where the whole community can meet.. cant remember any PvP game ive played where a Chat lobby is not provided,, look at Warplanes,, Ships etc, etc, all current games provide them. There are so many advantages it bogles my mind MWO doesnt provide this great community building tool.

[Dee Eight]

Stoneblade, on 22 July 2016 - 08:25 PM, said:

As a former Wizkids Mechwarrior Darkage Player, ref, Community organizer: I can say that this idea is more of a "Power Creep" idea. It didn't work well in the game, it power-creeped the game overmuch and into it's death.

It didn't work in that game because it was badly executed, the abilities were overpowered, and the whole game relied on a points system to balance opposing forces the same way Battleforce rules for battletech worked. It had nothing to do with how MWO operates as a first-person shooter trying to balance tonnages alone. Individual players in this game already have pilot specific skills for their mechs, there's no reason we couldn't have faction specific skills for mechs also, and they could easily tie them to the success of the scouting mission mode and use the skills to eliminate long tom in the process.

[El Bandito]

BLOOD WOLF, on 22 July 2016 - 10:37 PM, said:

Wha???

FW has small population, so it is necessary to consolidate the opposing factions together (fewer lanes) to keep the queues busy.

[BLOOD WOLF]

El Bandito, on 22 July 2016 - 10:51 PM, said:

FW has small population, so it is necessary to consolidate the opposing factions together (fewer lanes) to keep the queues busy.

I know, i kida miffed a joke there.

I if they do that then there needs to be a way to still have a possibility to snag more planets per attack phase if that is going to work.

[T I N M A N]

El Bandito, on 22 July 2016 - 10:51 PM, said:

FW has small population, so it is necessary to consolidate the opposing factions together (fewer lanes) to keep the queues busy.

I agree, you would have more matches. But consolidation would alienate many of the last of the dedicated fans, which make up the majority of the community. That would stray away from the necessity of adding more lore to the game, which honestly, is the only way to save this game mode.

Edited by NightStalker97, 22 July 2016 - 11:15 PM.

[Desintegrator]

No thanks, I will NOT join the discussion !

4 years of intense development on Community Warfare and we still not have a Drop Deck where we can save certain drop loadouts for the games. That's catastrophic !

Even the "simple and easy" design things are not solved in CW !!

No, not with me - I join the "Quick Play" for the next 10 years.

[BLOOD WOLF]

Desintegrator, on 22 July 2016 - 11:18 PM, said:

No thanks, I will NOT join the discussion !

4 years of intense development on Community Warfare and we still not have a Drop Deck where we can save certain drop loadouts for the games. That's catastrophic !

Even the "simple and easy" design things are not solved in CW !!

No, not with me - I join the "Quick Play" for the next 10 years.

ummmm. Does anyone even know how to respond to this?

[Jman5]

NightStalker97, on 22 July 2016 - 11:03 PM, said:

I agree, you would have more matches. But consolidation would alienate many of the last of the dedicated fans, which make up the majority of the community. That would stray away from the necessity of adding more lore to the game, which honestly, is the only way to save this game mode.

I think there is a compromise here and that would be to allow faction loyalists to vote for alliances or to be vassals of a larger faction. This way the choice becomes a player one instead of PGI just excluding certain factions from the game. It would also be a dynamic system that could naturally evolve as the playerbase moves around.

[T I N M A N]

Jman5, on 22 July 2016 - 11:26 PM, said:

I think there is a compromise here and that would be to allow faction loyalists to vote for alliances or to be vassals of a larger faction. This way the choice becomes a player one instead of PGI just excluding certain factions from the game. It would also be a dynamic system that could naturally evolve as the playerbase moves around.

I was just about to quote the post about it. Keeps it lore (in at least some loose form) and player controlled.

Once enough players come in, multiple attack avenues can come in and alliances can form and break daily, as they should.

Edited by NightStalker97, 22 July 2016 - 11:34 PM.