Dlardrageth, on 11 January 2012 - 11:58 AM, said:
Give the "pro-respawners" their game mode and be done with it, I say. Just don't expect those of us who want a more in-depth tactical/strategic gameplay to bother with it as well. Make people tick a box in the lobby to make their intention clear, and that's it. Someone surely will now dramatize it by feigning an outcry of shock or something, claiming that splits the community, I'm sure. Well, just to make it clear, it won't split the community. Look at this thread and you can quite clearly see the "split" being there already.
Better to live with it than make sure a large parts depart MWO's shores and sets sail elsewhere after a while, I reckon. Because I cannot see me bothering with perma-respawns for long, and obviously some other players cannot be bothered to wait a minute or five eventually for their next match. So yeah, either we get both options or we'll lose a large part of the potential player base, I guess.
+1 (I ran out of likes for today). This is the kind of sensibility that needs to be used more often. Whether you're a pro-respawn player or a pro-wave/wait player, both types of gameplay simply come down to player preference. Some people want to meat grind a bit more, others want to go about things more slowly and deliberately. I agree with what a lot of people have been saying on this thread is this:
There should be some sort of hybrid system
I think those of us who are regulars have a pretty good feel for each other's preferences and overall camps we find ourselves in. On this issue, I'm actually right down the middle because I've played both types and they're both
good. We don't simply have to go with one or the other.
Here's my problem with making it entirely wave-based/no-respawn
Let's look at two fundamental things:
- Newbies are newbies. All of us have to start at some point. Some people start with more skill than others, but none of us are innate pros.
- A lot of the potential player base has no particular attachment to BT like the rest of us do (despite our philosophical differences within). They'll probably be newbies and there's a lot of people won't have a built-in tolerance or appreciation for wave-style because they're not immersed, they can't be, they don't know or care about BT. They're here to judge the game on its merits as a game, using a more broad understanding of what makes for a good or bad game. Immersion doesn't factor into their thinking, having never been a follower of BT, why would it?
A lot of potential players are going to have to appreciate the game itself first before they can get immersed in the lore. Most players won't become instant converts the moment they load up the game. Conversion into a MW/BT fan will prob have to stand up to the test of whether or not they like the game itself. If that point is satisfied, then, they'll probably permit themselves to become more immersed. Some people will never care about immersion, others will become adherents. Again, it's a matter of preference. But based on points 1 and 2, here's the problem scenario with forced wave:
- Newbie player drops into wave-style match. He's just been dropped into the middle of a game surrounded by people who are likely to be somewhat to significantly better than he is. Newbie gets torn to ribbons in a minute. He now gets to spend the next 9 minutes reflecting over how little he stood a chance. Next wave starts, and whammo, newbie gets cut down again. Newbie is starting to resent the fact that he's being punished so badly for being new to the game. He has spent 2 minutes getting his *** handed to him, and 18 minutes reflecting upon how he got his *** handed to him.
This is a bad precedent for any game. If we take this route, we risk alienating a lot of potential converts. We can't just dump them into the middle of the game and expect them to be die-hards out the gate. All us die-hards (regardless of philosophical camp) are going to be much more patient with this game (even if we don't like it in the end) than someone who has no prior connection to the game. We have to ease them into it.
Why both gametypes have their merits
I first started out in MW3 but never played online. When I first started MW4, it was playing meatgrinder FFA NHUA attrition games. They weren't very... traditional, but meat grinders are good at this: They're good at making you
good. What respawn games allow you to do is get back into the action faster and learn the fundamentals of playing the game. It's much harder to acquire raw piloting skill when you're sitting out for 90% of the match. Respawn games, and FFA in particular put you, the pilot, in the thick of things where you're constantly shooting, and constantly being shot at. You get a lot of
effective playtime in because you're never sitting on the sidelines, and it's the best way to build raw skills like aim and reaction time. However, what these games don't teach you is how to be a smart pilot.
I remember all the Planetary League matches in MWL (our meta-game for territory in MW4) were all wave-style. It made sense. Team games, and even more specifically, wave-style, force you to be more tactical and deliberate, You can't just go Leeroy/Rambo into the fray because your'e going to screw your team over. The meta-game/territory is a tool for immersion (and also for the cash shop too, I'm sure of it) so it makes sense that territorial/meta-game matches would be no respawn.
How I propose the tiered system should work
Have open servers with the freedom to customize your preferences. Have the persistence/territorial games to be more strict (IE wave-based). You're attacking a planet and landing on it with a certain amount of tonnage, it seems reasonable that waves would be implemented to ahem...
simulate (I hate using that word for purely semantic reasons, but for lack of all others) this. Allow the non-territory servers to allow players with different preferences to play as they wish, and it will allow newbies more flexibility in order to get a handle on the raw basics of handling and shooting before they jump into a less forgiving environment (wave-style).
Since I'm of the belief that the meta-game aspect will be heavily tied into the game's revenue, I propose even more. Since experience is drawn down many lines (pilot XP, mech XP, faction LP, role XP?) allow players to gain only, say, pilot XP in both open and meta-game servers. But, in order to funnel people into the meat and potatoes meta-game experience (and more importantly, the cash shop), make it so that they have to play these types of games in order to achieve the other types of XP. That way it eases people into the experience, and rewards them for being a participant in the deeper aspects of the game. We need the rewards to be part of the wave-style game. For a lot of players, the immersion is the reward itself. For less traditional players, there needs to be a reward system to allow them to tolerate the added wait times and make it worthwhile.
A few random things I want to address
Trailing on my last point about rewards:
This game isn't Counter-Strike, the wave-style worked better because maps were relatively smaller, it had objectives and most importantly, it had walls and corridors that funnelled players into choke-points. This last aspect is not present in a MechWarrior game. Maps are big, and they don't have hallways and corridors, they're much more open. In league matches, be they respawn or not, players had a
much higher tolerance for waiting around and not engaging in battle. Getting the 'W' (win) in a league match is massive reward in of itself, especially for those of us who are highly competitive. But as Barbaric Sould pointed out back on page 2, it was not uncommon for half hour matches to by without a single shot being fired. I've experienced this many times. Those who say "there's no way two teams can go without firing a shot" don't know what they're talking about. The unique incentives in the meta-game (the different types of XP) allow players who aren't immersion-minded to tolerate wave-style play, but there's a flipside to this, you can't make the incentives so high that neither team wants to risk themselves by attacking first. You have to balance it.
The argument that "if the devs aim to please everyone, they end up pleasing no one.":
This zero-sum view is so oft-repeated and retarded I don't know where to begin. If a compromise is such that each side loses maybe 5 percent of their enjoyment, so that both may enjoy the game, you still have 95% on either side with higher total/aggregate enjoyment overall. It's a given that this community is split, and we have to understand that neither side (and all the sub-divisions there-in) is going to get every single thing it hopes for. My camp is going to see a few things it would rather not see, your camp is going to see some things it'd rather not see. But, if you're the kind of player (regardless of which side you find yourself on) that won't play it
unless you get every last little thing you want, you need to stop posting now and delete your account. We're all going to have to give and take a little bit in this one, and that's where innovative compromises come in.
The "It splits the community, oh noes!":
This one is usually used as a smoke screen or euphemistic phrase for "
What I really want is for everyone to be forced to play the game exactly as I see it." As Dlardrageth said, divisions are part of this game that should be taken for granted. We need to allow some selective splitting with server options to allow the various camps to be happy (at least in the open, non-meta servers).
Edit: Grammar and syntax as I re-read this.
Edited by GaussDragon, 11 January 2012 - 06:04 PM.
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But yeah, most likely we'll have to endure the "arcade frenzy" for a month or three and then the majority of those players will move on to the next FOTM FPS anyway, like they always seem to do.
