40 replies to this topic

[Rhent]

Lets be frank, there are 5 Inner Sphere houses, Rasahague and 5 Clans, meaning there are 10 factions for planet conquest, To supposedly help with CW there are 2 non aligned factions Lone Wolf and Merc-Corps.

There is no way Piranha will have enough players per house to have ANY kind of meaningful planet conquest. In fact, how Piranha stated they'd handle CW would be that combat was absolutely TOTALLy pointless. You would fight historical battles with pre-drawn out conclusions. Who the hell wants to play a game where no matter how well you fight, you LOSE always?

If Piranha had common sense, they would create the tools that would allow the player base themselves to create their own leagues where battlefield results are automatically recorded and stored. There would be star maps created that would require a certain percentage of wins to open up the next jump point and so on. Let there be a Kurita vs Davion run where the teams decide when they play and what the objectives are and that is that.

I have a very strong feeling there will be no star map and no objective. Everyone will simply get an imaginary house rank and access to slightly better gear, yippie and pointless as all can be.

[Sandslice]

Rhent, on 03 August 2014 - 11:02 AM, said:

Lets be frank, there are 5 Inner Sphere houses, Rasahague and 5 Clans, meaning there are 10 factions for planet conquest, To supposedly help with CW there are 2 non aligned factions Lone Wolf and Merc-Corps.

There is no way Piranha will have enough players per house to have ANY kind of meaningful planet conquest. In fact, how Piranha stated they'd handle CW would be that combat was absolutely TOTALLy pointless. You would fight historical battles with pre-drawn out conclusions. Who the hell wants to play a game where no matter how well you fight, you LOSE always?

If Piranha had common sense, they would create the tools that would allow the player base themselves to create their own leagues where battlefield results are automatically recorded and stored. There would be star maps created that would require a certain percentage of wins to open up the next jump point and so on. Let there be a Kurita vs Davion run where the teams decide when they play and what the objectives are and that is that.

I have a very strong feeling there will be no star map and no objective. Everyone will simply get an imaginary house rank and access to slightly better gear, yippie and pointless as all can be.

Four clans (CJF, CW, CGB, CSJ) which will expand to seven (CSV, CNC, CDS/CSF) in the near future; and they were added the way they were because Ulric Kerensky is the biggest troll ever. No, not really; but he was a jerk, who could only accept two outcomes for the Invasion: a total Wolf victory, or a failed Invasion --- with the latter being preferred because politics.

[AlexEss]

@Rhent

Does ot matter even if you are right... They have to deliver CW no matter what.

But i do not see how it would help to have 30 tiny CW´s floating around with varying degrees of quality over one official. Trust me people are creating all the tools they need any way. In fact my bet is that if you give it a half a year and there will be a lot of what you ask for. Player run leagues and campaigns.

And you can be as pessimistic as you like but until it is delivered i prefer to keep a positive attitude, it **** my harmony.

[Chagatay]

Absolutely. But I could be pleasantly surprised.

[Appogee]

Having observed PGI closely for 2 years now, I do think CW will fall well short of the community's expectations, for two reasons:

1. Expectations are very high.
2. PGI consistently take the easiest easiest/laziest option in any design decision.

The idea that PGI are going to pull a rabbit out of a hat, and unveil some major advance in metagaming is beyond optimistic. Especially when Paul told us in April this year that the design for CW hadn't even been completed at that point.

These guys have had two years to have big ideas about CW. Yet at this point we have a couple of sketchy design blog posts, Phoenix loyalty medallions which still don't actually do anything, some faction icons that only appear in the game forums, and... yet another commitment to release CW at yet another date yet to arrive.

It hardly inspires confidence, does it.

Edited by Appogee, 03 August 2014 - 11:37 AM.

[Utilyan]

Rhent, on 03 August 2014 - 11:02 AM, said:

Who the hell wants to play a game where no matter how well you fight, you LOSE always?

There are crazy mf'ers out there. There are some who get happier as things are impossibly stacked against them. Urbanmech Pilots.

[Graugger]

THE CW WE WILL GET WILL BE POINTLESS


Did you ever imagine otherwise?

[Gyrok]

Sandslice, on 03 August 2014 - 11:25 AM, said:

Four clans (CJF, CW, CGB, CSJ) which will expand to seven (CSV, CNC, CDS/CSF) in the near future; and they were added the way they were because Ulric Kerensky is the biggest troll ever. No, not really; but he was a jerk, who could only accept two outcomes for the Invasion: a total Wolf victory, or a failed Invasion --- with the latter being preferred because politics.

Let me correct you...

Leo Showers mandated only 4 Clans invade...Ulric Kerensky brought in the 3 reserve clans. Were it not for him, they would perhaps never have seen action.

As for his machinations, every clan wants to win all out. That is part and parcel of society.

As for the idea that he wanted the invasion to fail. I disagree, he wanted to become the ilClan and rule the Inner Sphere and the Clans. He attempted on many levels to warn the other clans of the tactics that would be used against them, and even warned them not to bid down against ComStar. However, they tossed his advice to the wind like the trolls they were and went on to lose the proxy battle for Terra at Tukayyid.

So, say what you want about Leo Showers...however, Ulric Kerensky is THE reason the other 3 clans entered when they did.

[Yokaiko]

Graugger, on 03 August 2014 - 11:58 AM, said:

THE CW WE WILL GET WILL BE POINTLESS


Did you ever imagine otherwise?

There are only a few maps. I've no idea what people expect, its going to the exact same game with a leaderboard.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

This is not a game, it's a glorified cash shop

[Graugger]

DV McKenna, on 03 August 2014 - 12:11 PM, said:

This is not a game, it's a glorified cash shop

We have a WINNER!

[MadPanda]

DV McKenna, on 03 August 2014 - 12:11 PM, said:

This is not a game, it's a glorified cash shop

I don't know man, you do get to stomp around with the robots and shoot stuff .

[Aim64C]

I actually have to stop you for a minute and deliver a blunt message.

While your conclusions are correct, your assumptions about the game couldn't be more misguided.

Mechwarrior is set in the Battletech universe - the 'knights' of the battlefield were Battlemechs. The pawns and the rooks/bishops were infantry and various tracked/wheeled vehicles with aircraft sprinkled in.

Battles between MechWarriors were sights to behold - they were the climax of an evolving war-front. Before the Helm Memory Core - many of the battlemechs were so cherished that they were almost never used for planetary invasions.

This sets the proper context for community warfare and the overall game.

It is not Team Solaris. Team Solaris is a theatrical slug-fest of giant robots.

A real war has objectives beyond "king of the hill" - it involves delivering supplies across potentially hostile terrain. It involves securing landing zones in preparation for an invasion. It involves patrolling for hostiles and intercepting scouts.

In other words - it is a persistent environment with no defined numbers of enemies and a varied set of enemies - from infantry with shoulder-fired rockets or man-portable PPCs to a small convoy of artillery missile launchers that can bust an assault lance/star wide open... but can't do a damned thing about the locust that happened across them.

Now you can actually have 'historic' battles that last for weeks or months on hosted servers. Players join a game in progress, complete missions (some of which may be player driven - offer up a contract for something to be done and players contribute to the reward pool based on how valid they see the objective), manage their repair and rearm costs (which can be justly implemented because not all player-on-player combat comes with a high likelihood that you will completely lose your mech - falling back from a bad situation is a valid strategy when you can repair behind friendly lines for far less cost.... using a time-depreciation on repairs could introduce a natural 'cool down' - say, every five minutes the price to repair/rearm decreases by 8% from the principle amount (so after an hour, repair/rearm costs 4% with a total discount of 96%). Anniversaries can be marked by a week long special server hosting of the historic 'map' - so you aren't completely reliant upon new content for continued interest. Having a few 'generic' 'resource rich' areas in vague areas could also be done without being offensive (so long as the 'epic historic battles' are done well).

Games like Command&Conquer: Renegade had (and I believe, still have) a very active online community for over a decade even though most of the maps in server cycles were the original multiplayer maps that shipped with the game. While server scripts extended the number of players to as many as 128 total (and they would fill) as well as added support for things like stat tracking and 'experience' - the core game was still very enjoyable years later.

Part of the reason for this was the asymmetric design of the game's factions, as well as the simple 'ploys' used to drive players into the field. Scripted, repetitive events that benefited the team (a harvester going to and returning from the resource rewarded a bonus of credits for the whole team) gave early reason to throw one's self into combat even ahead of kill/death ratio. Consequences for a building being destroyed meant there was a reason for players to shift between roles (the 1337 sniper you have can't repair buildings - and you're right near one that is getting hammered). Rewarding players with credits for repairing/healing others (at a somewhat lower rate than the gain of dealing damage) gave a nice reason for players joining in progress to support the players who were already driving the expensive vehicles.

It is a great example of a persistent game that made very effective use of role warfare to create a player-driven environment. While it was not without its flaws - it was a well crafted multiplayer experience.

MWO should have followed that model and expanded upon it. Larger battlefields suitable for the types of weapons and gameplay, a few scripted events to coax people out into the battlefield and trigger the conflicts, and then some bases that convey bonuses/consequences to the players for having or not having them operational.

Even without a 'guild' or 'chat room' system - you could have a very powerful community game where players could feel like they have the time to work out strategies via group chat (it worked in C&C Renegade - and that was just as, if not more fast paced than this game currently is - it was just that the context of the conflict was completely different and individual death was not nearly as consequential to the overall success/failure).

Factions can be more than simple banners, but not a permanent status one chooses.

The idea that you can make community warfare in Team Solaris is just insane. It doesn't work. Which is largely why the game is in the abysmal balancing mess it is in.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

MadPanda, on 03 August 2014 - 12:18 PM, said:

I don't know man, you do get to stomp around with the robots and shoot stuff .

Until everything is linked by ghost heat that we can't fire a single machine gun without the mech going nuclear i guess so.

[Henree]

Rhent, on 03 August 2014 - 11:02 AM, said:

Lets be frank, there are 5 Inner Sphere houses, Rasahague and 5 Clans, meaning there are 10 factions for planet conquest, To supposedly help with CW there are 2 non aligned factions Lone Wolf and Merc-Corps.

There is no way Piranha will have enough players per house to have ANY kind of meaningful planet conquest. In fact, how Piranha stated they'd handle CW would be that combat was absolutely TOTALLy pointless. You would fight historical battles with pre-drawn out conclusions. Who the hell wants to play a game where no matter how well you fight, you LOSE always?

If Piranha had common sense, they would create the tools that would allow the player base themselves to create their own leagues where battlefield results are automatically recorded and stored. There would be star maps created that would require a certain percentage of wins to open up the next jump point and so on. Let there be a Kurita vs Davion run where the teams decide when they play and what the objectives are and that is that.

I have a very strong feeling there will be no star map and no objective. Everyone will simply get an imaginary house rank and access to slightly better gear, yippie and pointless as all can be.

I disagree on the easiest solution there (see below)

Aim64C, on 03 August 2014 - 12:20 PM, said:

I actually have to stop you for a minute and deliver a blunt message.


While your conclusions are correct, your assumptions about the game couldn't be more misguided.


Mechwarrior is set in the Battletech universe - the 'knights' of the battlefield were Battlemechs. The pawns and the rooks/bishops were infantry and various tracked/wheeled vehicles with aircraft sprinkled in.


Battles between MechWarriors were sights to behold - they were the climax of an evolving war-front. Before the Helm Memory Core - many of the battlemechs were so cherished that they were almost never used for planetary invasions.


This sets the proper context for community warfare and the overall game.


It is not Team Solaris. Team Solaris is a theatrical slug-fest of giant robots.


A real war has objectives beyond "king of the hill" - it involves delivering supplies across potentially hostile terrain. It involves securing landing zones in preparation for an invasion. It involves patrolling for hostiles and intercepting scouts.


In other words - it is a persistent environment with no defined numbers of enemies and a varied set of enemies - from infantry with shoulder-fired rockets or man-portable PPCs to a small convoy of artillery missile launchers that can bust an assault lance/star wide open... but can't do a damned thing about the locust that happened across them.


Now you can actually have 'historic' battles that last for weeks or months on hosted servers. Players join a game in progress, complete missions (some of which may be player driven - offer up a contract for something to be done and players contribute to the reward pool based on how valid they see the objective), manage their repair and rearm costs (which can be justly implemented because not all player-on-player combat comes with a high likelihood that you will completely lose your mech - falling back from a bad situation is a valid strategy when you can repair behind friendly lines for far less cost.... using a time-depreciation on repairs could introduce a natural 'cool down' - say, every five minutes the price to repair/rearm decreases by 8% from the principle amount (so after an hour, repair/rearm costs 4% with a total discount of 96%). Anniversaries can be marked by a week long special server hosting of the historic 'map' - so you aren't completely reliant upon new content for continued interest. Having a few 'generic' 'resource rich' areas in vague areas could also be done without being offensive (so long as the 'epic historic battles' are done well).


Games like Command&Conquer: Renegade had (and I believe, still have) a very active online community for over a decade even though most of the maps in server cycles were the original multiplayer maps that shipped with the game. While server scripts extended the number of players to as many as 128 total (and they would fill) as well as added support for things like stat tracking and 'experience' - the core game was still very enjoyable years later.


Part of the reason for this was the asymmetric design of the game's factions, as well as the simple 'ploys' used to drive players into the field. Scripted, repetitive events that benefited the team (a harvester going to and returning from the resource rewarded a bonus of credits for the whole team) gave early reason to throw one's self into combat even ahead of kill/death ratio. Consequences for a building being destroyed meant there was a reason for players to shift between roles (the 1337 sniper you have can't repair buildings - and you're right near one that is getting hammered). Rewarding players with credits for repairing/healing others (at a somewhat lower rate than the gain of dealing damage) gave a nice reason for players joining in progress to support the players who were already driving the expensive vehicles.


It is a great example of a persistent game that made very effective use of role warfare to create a player-driven environment. While it was not without its flaws - it was a well crafted multiplayer experience.


MWO should have followed that model and expanded upon it. Larger battlefields suitable for the types of weapons and gameplay, a few scripted events to coax people out into the battlefield and trigger the conflicts, and then some bases that convey bonuses/consequences to the players for having or not having them operational.


Even without a 'guild' or 'chat room' system - you could have a very powerful community game where players could feel like they have the time to work out strategies via group chat (it worked in C&C Renegade - and that was just as, if not more fast paced than this game currently is - it was just that the context of the conflict was completely different and individual death was not nearly as consequential to the overall success/failure).


Factions can be more than simple banners, but not a permanent status one chooses.


The idea that you can make community warfare in Team Solaris is just insane. It doesn't work. Which is largely why the game is in the abysmal balancing mess it is in.

They should have stuck with the original design decision, which was to battle over urban environments on a planet. Much easier to implement, not stuck to a preset outcome and you could come up with lots of cool stuff later in development. It could be small battles that decide the overall outcome i am not thinking Sony scale here.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Appogee, on 03 August 2014 - 11:33 AM, said:

Having observed PGI closely for 2 years now, I do think CW will fall well short of the community's expectations, for two reasons:

1. Expectations are very high.
2. PGI consistently take the easiest easiest/laziest option in any design decision.

The idea that PGI are going to pull a rabbit out of a hat, and unveil some major advance in metagaming is beyond optimistic. Especially when Paul told us in April this year that the design for CW hadn't even been completed at that point.

These guys have had two years to have big ideas about CW. Yet at this point we have a couple of sketchy design blog posts, Phoenix loyalty medallions which still don't actually do anything, some faction icons that only appear in the game forums, and... yet another commitment to release CW at yet another date yet to arrive.

It hardly inspires confidence, does it.

I feel the same way. What I want to see is a start map that ebbs and flows based on how well each factions does with a very distinct possibility of one or more factions getting totally wiped out and absorbed by someone else (of course the once absorbed, the option to rebel and start anew would always be there).

What we are going to get is more of the same old, same old mixed battles, with the only difference being that you will now earn points that goes toward your factions rankings. As you earn more points, your faction gets a few tiny, minor bonuses. Hell there might even be a star map that shows territory expanding or contracting based on how many points a faction has, but this will be just graphical and nothing to do with players actually taking over a planet.

[Coolant]

Rhent, on 03 August 2014 - 11:02 AM, said:

Lets be frank, there are 5 Inner Sphere houses, Rasahague and 5 Clans, meaning there are 10 factions for planet conquest, To supposedly help with CW there are 2 non aligned factions Lone Wolf and Merc-Corps.

There is no way Piranha will have enough players per house to have ANY kind of meaningful planet conquest. In fact, how Piranha stated they'd handle CW would be that combat was absolutely TOTALLy pointless. You would fight historical battles with pre-drawn out conclusions. Who the hell wants to play a game where no matter how well you fight, you LOSE always?

If Piranha had common sense, they would create the tools that would allow the player base themselves to create their own leagues where battlefield results are automatically recorded and stored. There would be star maps created that would require a certain percentage of wins to open up the next jump point and so on. Let there be a Kurita vs Davion run where the teams decide when they play and what the objectives are and that is that.

I have a very strong feeling there will be no star map and no objective. Everyone will simply get an imaginary house rank and access to slightly better gear, yippie and pointless as all can be.

So glad you are so much in the know, have visited their studios, got a tour by Russ himself, got a look at the code, met every developer and now have them on speed-dial, and have an open invitation to alpha test every build...

[Lightfoot]

You see, while you fight the battles that follow a timeline, your unit, if you join a player made unit, will be winning planets you win battles on and this will grant some faction perks and I assume the player units will be ranked against each other by wins. Hopefully, this will translate into deeper roleplay, but as yet things are still shaping up.

I do expect some sort of tracked competitive league of player units with lonewolves fighting for the Houses and Clans.

[E_Crow]

I'm curious- were you excited when you heard about community warfare? Were you angry when they pushed it back? You need to make up your mind. Just because you assume that there aren't enough people doesn't mean that there magically aren't. And (I might be wrong here) The timeline is mainly in place for the sake of introducing technology. I would love to know where you got the idea that all the battles are decided already.

Also, the reason why they don't give the players the tools to make their own leagues is the same reason why there is no community modding- because it keeps the game securer and harder to hack.

Rhent, on 03 August 2014 - 11:02 AM, said:

I have a very strong feeling there will be no star map and no objective. Everyone will simply get an imaginary house rank and access to slightly better gear, yippie and pointless as all can be.

First: You have a feeling!? Really? I have a feeling that they will introduce the Urbanmech for real, but does that mean they will? Second: Whats wrong with access to slightly better gear? Thats part of the whole faction bonus.

Rhent, on 03 August 2014 - 11:02 AM, said:

If Piranha had common sense, they would create the tools that would allow the player base themselves to create their own leagues where battlefield results are automatically recorded and stored.

If Piranha had any common sense? So you are saying that your singular, biased opinion should override the discussion and play testing of QUALIFIED game designers? If you hate what piranha is doing so much, why are you still around? Probably because despite your issue with the fact that they are attempting to improve upon a game that you obviously still enjoy enough to keep playing, you refuse to be happy until they put their game under your direct supervision?

Also, how would as you put it, Kurita and Davion decide to have a battle and let the players have it out? Would the faction elect a leader every week? The whole point of CW is to be able to say Alright, I want to go fight Kuritans, but I like Marik so I won't fight them. Unless you want Piranha staff members to be the permanent leaders of each faction. But then the people that you clearly believe are incompetent would be in charge. (Hell, even I don't want one singular leader for each faction, no matter who it is.)

On a different note, I think your idea of wins opening up new jump points is excellent, and I wouldn't mind seeing that in game.

[NovaFury]

It's a shame Comguard ROM isn't one of the factions, seeing as they play a fairly significant role in the invasion.