11 replies to this topic

[DAYLEET]

I was thinking, "eventualy" we will be able to play in a similar fashion as the other fps, join a lobby/server and when the match ends you stay in the lobby and stay with the same people. Would it be a good idea to let people vote on map at all? Then everyone will spec for cold maps and only play those. Therma and caustic can suck sometimes but they do add variety and forces people to get better.

[Leded]

jeez, i'm not sure i liked the sound of much of that. people running servers? setting map rotations? sounded very battlefield/call of duty'ish. Mechwarrior already took enough punches to the soul over the last couple years

[Kenyon Burguess]

my greatest concern is that if 8 ppl who know each other want to stay on hot maps to optimize their loadouts, they run the risk of having ppl who don't want to be on hot maps, to drop out on them at the beginning of the match.

[Leded]

crap i almost forgot something important

DAYLEET, on 09 February 2014 - 08:17 AM, said:

I was thinking, "eventualy" we will be able to play in a similar fashion as the other fps,

i just kind of bothers me deep down in the cockles of my heart when Mechwarrior is described with the "F" word

[DAYLEET]

It's, or was, part of the lunch module. So that's why i asked, id rather have forced map rotation. I never liked playing one map only unless it's a realy hard game where you have to practice a lot like Americas Army or a crazy good map like Strike at Karkand.

[DAYLEET]

Sterling M Archer, on 09 February 2014 - 03:23 PM, said:

you wouldn't have Elo complaints on rented servers, when you walked into someone else's house/server, you would be expected to act decently or be shown the door, you would also know who you were up against 99% of the time.

This is what i would like about rented server, they could/should ditch the whole elo things. People could find server that match their playing expectation on both difficulty of opfor and playing style. I expect servers to be called snipers only or brawlers only. Imagine a locust only server lol shit would be nice!.

[Dracol]

Dedicated servers are fine, as long as you don't want to make cbills.

The amount of gaming the system inherent to predetermined groups dropping against each other precludes any player determined match up allowing cbill earning.

[Dracol]

Sterling M Archer, on 10 February 2014 - 09:00 AM, said:

Nah all the stats can be tracked no problem.
Other titles allow 3rd parties to show stats right down to the smallest detail.
Tracking kills, assists, etc etc etc would be no big deal, and leagues would be easier, so on and so forth.....[snip]

Stats aren't the issue. Its the cbills that are required to purchase new mechs that is. PGI has an internal formula for the average cbill gain per hour per player with and without premium.

With predetermined match-ups, two teams could work together to maximize cbill earnings. Something as blatant as switch off which team gets each mech completely disabled, to more discrete collusion such as using TS to inform when best to place a UAV.

Now, I agree plenty of games have private servers. Can you name one though that is following a similar f2p biz model like PGI is? I can not think of one, but then again I don't look into other games all that much at the moment.

Edited by Dracol, 10 February 2014 - 07:18 PM.

[Dracol]

Sterling M Archer, on 12 February 2014 - 10:12 AM, said:

[snip]
(they might lose revenue on on Mechs because some modders would possibly be able to create their own Mechs for mods and such.

Dedicated servers would be nice but I think PGI believes they would lose money on it.)

There ya go.

Ya, sure, private servers would be nice, but its not going to happen.

Here's why:
Written into the PGI company business plan, there is a section that outlines how the company will make money (note: if they don't have a biz plan, god help us all). As evident by the way MW:0 has been structured, income is generated by selling three things:
- A way to reduce the # of matches a player needs to acquire items usable on the battlefield
- Cosmetic items that have no effect on the battlefield
- Early access to content

Any means for a player to farm c-bills cuts the legs out from under the first pillar of the means of income.

Any game in which players will be able to adjust settings, like you outlined prior, could not reward cbills, else they would lose money since it undermines one of their three means of revenue generation.

[Zerberus]

As long as private matches and /or private servers neither give any rewards nor have any effect on ACTUAL Community Warfare (meaning PGIs implementation, when and if it arrives, which is what the MWO community at large will be engaged in), it doesn`t bother me at all what people do in them, because they´re essentially removing themselves from the community, anyway.

But as soon as C-bills /gxp get awarded and /or it has any effect on the course of Faction warfare /planetary conquest, it should not be allowed at all.

The last thing we need is people gaming the system in private matches or servers spilling over into the community at large, completely borking the IG experience for, well, everybody else not directly involved in said match. Many games have made this mistake before, trying to keep a centralized system but decentralizing the infrastructure, and all of them paid for it with their life.

Edited by Zerberus, 13 February 2014 - 06:48 PM.

[xhrit]

Dracol, on 10 February 2014 - 07:17 PM, said:

Now, I agree plenty of games have private servers. Can you name one though that is following a similar f2p biz model like PGI is? I can not think of one, but then again I don't look into other games all that much at the moment.

Blacklight Retrubition, by Zombie Studios / Perfect World. It is a Free to Play sci-fi first person shooter with super fast paced low time to kill twitch action, and I love the aesthetics. It is my alt game, when I get bored of the slow pace of Mechwarrior and just want some brainless fun.







You can unlock new items by earning exp, but you purchase them with GP earned ingame, or Zen, which is purchased with real money. You can also bypass earning an item with XP and unlock it with Zen.



Players can rent private servers for 1, 3, 5, 7 or 30 days, using Zen. They are allowed to name the server and configure everything about it - map rotation, game rules, team size limits, time limits. There are options for things like adding bots, forcing stock loadout, and restricting mechs or datanodes (blacklight's equivalent of module slots). They can also kick / mute / ban people and shuffle teams / restart map / etc.

Not only are GP and EXP earned in private servers, but private servers actually have a GP and XP boost, making renting a private server the fastest way to grind.



Of course all this sounds good but what happens in drop in drop out style games with no matchmaker... is skilled people dominate, and the only thing less skilled people can do is drop server, and try to find one that isn't being locked down by a pro.

Edited by xhrit, 14 February 2014 - 04:43 AM.

[Zerberus]

^^ That works fine in a game that has no persistent world that everybody is part of.

That is, however, not the plan for MWO.

Imagine the following scenario: You and your merc corp X would like to attack Planet X to gain access to Factory X that makey Mech X or Weapon X.

The planet is defended by Merc Corp Y

You assault the planet in a public match and win, Planet X is yours.

The Merc Corp Y however has a contingency plan: The call up thier friends from Merc Corp Z whoi have all bneen playing since MW1 or earlier and are all hardcore competitive gamers. They assault you in a public match with all they have, and just wipe the planet with you.

So Planet X now belongs to Merc Corp Z.

Y calls up Z again, a private match is arranged, and Z drops in the lightest possible configuration and does not fight back, anyway.

And lo and behold, planet X is once again under the control of Merc Corp Y, because the match was rigged.

And that is the entire reason that private matches paying out, well, anything, cannot realistically coincide with a persistent MMO-style world, in ANY game, ever. Enough large developers have already learned this the hard way and these games are remembered as "bad", "grossly unfair", "full of cheaters", "a waste of time", if at all...

Edited by Zerberus, 14 February 2014 - 08:18 PM.