Posted 24 July 2016 - 09:39 PM
I've been pondering a reply on this since I noticed the announcement of the Round Table discussion. I've had a lot of thoughts and it's impossible to try to put them into one post . . . but I can certainly still leave a big wall of text for Mr. Bombadil/Daeron. Many of the concepts throughout the thread are great ideas, and I'll be echoing some of them. At least the more they're mentioned the more it shows the popularity of some of these items.
1. Some of the problems for Faction Warfare aren't just in that game mode, but in fact feel like game-wide issues. Balancing/re-engineering of equipment (Flamers, Jump Jets, Command Consoles, etc. . . . I've given the list many times), information warfare, and other factors will make for improvements in the game as a whole. These affect all game modes and should be taken into consideration as factors in the discussion. Overall gameplay and equipment balance will immensely help with faction balance and the overall feel of the game. While not centric to this round-table, I sincerely hope it is considered for the future.
2. Long Tom, as it exists, should die in a fire. The actual usefulness of artillery in TT and Lore, as mentioned by others, was area bombardment and saturation. You'd get half-a-dozen units bombarding an area and providing things like strategic area denial and breaking of formations. However, the damage done by these things alone wasn't enough to shred mechs . . . it was merely enough to deter movement and control the flow of battle. Some concepts for fixing this:
- Lower Long Tom damage drastically (I like the 30/20/10pt damage at 30/60/90m range split mentioned elsewhere), but make them fire a volley like the current artillery consumable . . . or fire a single shell more often.
- Make Long Tom use TAG dependent, as it is in lore. No TAG, no artillery. This emphasizes the use of Info Warfare and scouting mechs per their roles.
3. Provide greater disparity in the various "Professions" of faction Warfare. There are a lot of great ways to do this, and some of them you almost grasped in the initial concept of Phase 3, but fell very short on.
- Make faction loyalists have larger drop deck tonnages but restrict them on Lore-Friendly chassis and/or variants. A 255 ton drop deck could let a Kurita pilot take 2 Awesomes, a Dragon, and a Panther or Jenner (or other faction friendly mechs). On the other hand, a Lone Wolf or Merc Unit can take whatever chassis they want, but they're limited to a 220 ton drop deck.
- It can work for both IS and Clan, with "Dagger Star" affiliated Clanners filling the roles of Merc Units within the Clans. There are 23 Chassis for the Clans . . . some Clans can certainly have a few mechs that they either MUST or CANNOT put in their Drop Decks to be lore friendly and add flavor. This could possibly be expanded to restricting certain omnipods from certain factions.
- If you're going to restrict the Lone Wolves from even developing ranks on the Merc Line (a very, VERY bad move on PGI's part; and probably one of the biggest reasons the solo queue failed), then give them something truly unique for what they do. You're already giving them the lowest pay and the least interaction. Either fix that and let them build up the Mercenary points or let them do something like take ANY mechs that they want no matter where they're fighting, since they're just fillers anyway. If the Lone Wolf wants a drop deck of a Crab, Stormcrow, Jenner IIC, and Marauder for a 215/220 ton drop deck . . . then let them do it.
- Even if you drastically drop the queue lanes or "buckets" you can still maintain this flavor in faction affiliation. Even though various factions will be teaming up to fight the IS vs. Clan battles, each faction would be bringing its own strengths and weaknesses in their chassis, and the Mercs/Lone-Wolves will be able to throw wildcards in there but with lower overall drop deck tonnages.
4. The drop deck tonnages have just gotten too high. Medium mechs were the workhorses of Battletech. In MWO the Faction Play drop decks are set to encourage a nearly pure-heavy-mech drop deck setup. Yes, people have their mechs that they love and the mechs that they want to play, but you also need to balance a game and make it so that a guy who wants to bring a light or two on his drop deck isn't bringing the team down with their nearly all-heavy decks. Consider something like I listed above . . . even dropping the deck tonnages a mere 15-30 tons will make a huge difference in how people need to configure their drop decks. It's not like I'm saying the drop decks should be something like 160 tons where if you want an Atlas then you're taking 3 Locusts.
5. I strongly concur that the maps need to be more open. If the defenders want to force the opposing team into choke-points, then there should be necessary tactics for them to do that, like securing Long Tom capability and having the defenders put TAG users in place to deter enemy movement via Artillery spotting. Some of the maps are already reasonably well set up for this.
- For example: If the attackers wanted to take the long way around on Grim Portico then let them! Sure, it'll take longer for any reinforcements to show up . . . but you can bypass all the defenses and catch the enemy by surprise . . . especially if your scouts are keeping them busy at the gates.
6. Something needs to be done to eliminate the Attacking Faction on counter-attack just hiding out among their drop ships when they have the kill lead. If you want to spice the mode up, consider doing something like the Domination "King of the Hill" quick play game mode. Make it so that if the Defending Factions retakes and holds their base zone for X number of points, then they win the match . . kills or not.
7. Speaking of which, from number six, intertwine the facets of Quick Play and Faction Play more, so that they feel more familiar to any players of the game. Right now you've got two play modes that are completely alien to each other aside from the fact that they normally devolve into Team Deathmatch. I just highlighted a way to make the Counter Attack feel like Domination. Attack/Defend should feel like Assault (pending Assault's rework we've been waiting on for ages), and occasionally there should be Attrition battles that feel like Skirmish or Supply-Line battles that feel like Conquest.
8. Make Scouting more meaningful to the mechs that should be dominating that game mode . . . scouts. Sure, the IS can easily beat a Streak-Crow . . . if they take one of two Griffon variants or other comparable IS 55 tonner. However, that's two Frint-Line Combat Mediums (depending on variant) duking it out. Why?
- Drop the weight limit to no higher than 45 tons. If you want the primary Faction Play modes to be about heavies/assaults with larger mediums, then Scouting should be about the Lights and the smaller Mediums that would typically lead scout lances.
- At the same time, make it about objective completion over combat. Attackers are trying to gather intel while Defenders are trying to purge intel; and doing so should be worth a lot of c-bills (25k+ per node) to encourage proper play.
- Then, only Survivors should be getting the intel points for their team. If a Defender or Attacker dies then it wasn't successfully purged, but it wasn't successfully extracted either. Those points are lost. For each Defender alive the defending faction gets their points, and for each Attacker alive the attacking faction gets their points. If the attackers didn't extract more points than the defenders, then the attackers don't gain enough intel to be useful.
- These changes force the game mode into 3 stages. The first is scatter and collect. The attackers and defenders are both trying to frantically collect as much data as possible. The second stage is the skirmishing that occurs when individual team members bump into each other . . . but neither wants to die because neither wants to lose their points . . . which keeps these encounters touch-and-go. The third stage is the battle/hunt before extraction, where if the attackers have move than the defenders, then it's evasion until their extraction arrives . . . but if the defenders have more, then the attackers will want to eliminate enough defenders that their final score is higher before extraction and thusly awarding points for their team.
9. Last but certainly not least, and as others have mentioned . . . LORE, LORE, LORE!!! There are so many ways to better emphasize the vast wealth of lore in Battletech for MWO, but it's so poorly utilized in its current iteration. That, quite possibly above all else (yet many of the other suggestions fall into Lore and are intimately connected) will be one of the greatest factors in saving MWO Faction Play.
That's all I've got for now in relation to the Round-Table. While I admittedly have very little faith in PGI at this point, at least this round-table discussion gave me a reason to log in and provide feedback. I appreciate Bombadil/Daeron taking the time to read through this mess; and I hope that this round table is productive. I do love the Battletech IP and really want to see Battletech games succeed . . . but PGI has a lot of work to do to fix the game, as it currently stands.
As a final note . . . I do have to agree with some others here. PGI needs our money to survive and do anything with the game. While, yes, we should be happy that someone actually touched the IP and did something with it after so many years, they're also beholden to our wallets to have anything successful. Therefore, the respect needs to go both ways and players have given up just as much of their free time to provide feedback to PGI and given their money to help fund the game as PGI has put development hours into creating the game and the occasional town hall. Many of Russ's comments in the recent town halls from Russ (I shouldn't have to cite them, Bombadil, NGNG hosts them) really haven't harbored the kind of good symbiotic relationship that the Company/Customer needs here . . . from "It is what it is" to "MWO isn't made for the solo player and this isn't the game for them" to "You should just be happy we made the game we've made" . . . it hasn't been pretty or productive. People can be chastised here all you or PGI wants, but that respect and common decency needs to go both ways . . . especially when coming from the President of the company, which carries a lot of the weight of the company's image.
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