353 replies to this topic

[Gattsus]

Quote

Any thoughts about opening up an experience of contested planets to the solo queue allowing players to pick an involved house, carry its banner and run its favored 'Mechs for the match, get a loyalty points for that house and a tiny bit for their permanently declared faction? Wouldn't have to affect the planet's control much or at all; essentially, themed public matches.
[color=#00FFFF]
Not immediately out of the gate but this is something could eventually address.[/color]

Please!!!
I'm a usual "solo queuer" and I would like to defend the marik space!
Moreover, I'm in asia, therefore it is difficult for me to join US time zone events.

Edited by Gattsus, 25 September 2014 - 08:43 PM.

[Sarlic]

Thanks for the clear com!

[Mechsniper]

So, I see major problems for you.

1 You have no voip working. Maybe this is why you want no large corps? 12 mans on ts3 will destroy all before them. You REALLY need to have an integral, working VOIP for CW to work. A mute button fixes all complaints about such.

2 Large merc corps members have spent a LOT of money on getting both IS and Clan mechs. Why should someone buy another clan mech at all if they are in a corps now, since we won't be able to use them? Do you not like our money?

3 Merc Corps MUST have the ability to earn LP, but also to switch factions at will. We are here for the C-bills. Otherwise, factions just won't pay for contracts, and will only pay whatever you set as min. price.

4 You will destroy some large player groups and run off players by forcing a choice of house with corps.

Some of these decisions hurt your player base a some of your biggest spending customers.

[Thorn Hallis]

Well, as expected it is not as expected.

Edited by Thorn Hallis, 26 September 2014 - 07:17 AM.

[Cavendish]

Mechsniper, on 25 September 2014 - 09:45 PM, said:

So, I see major problems for you.

1 You have no voip working. Maybe this is why you want no large corps? 12 mans on ts3 will destroy all before them. You REALLY need to have an integral, working VOIP for CW to work. A mute button fixes all complaints about such.

2 Large merc corps members have spent a LOT of money on getting both IS and Clan mechs. Why should someone buy another clan mech at all if they are in a corps now, since we won't be able to use them? Do you not like our money?

3 Merc Corps MUST have the ability to earn LP, but also to switch factions at will. We are here for the C-bills. Otherwise, factions just won't pay for contracts, and will only pay whatever you set as min. price.

4 You will destroy some large player groups and run off players by forcing a choice of house with corps.

Some of these decisions hurt your player base a some of your biggest spending customers.

1) Would be helpful for this but on the other hand there are several availible TS provided by the community for people to use, if you want to drop in an organized fashion you can. This does not mean I dont wanna see a VOIP in game, but its not as critical as getting a working CW going.

2) IS faction will still buy Hero mechs, and so will Clans if they ever start making them. How many Clan players do you think would pay for an IS pack today?

3) Mercs should earn money and have their own faction ranks (my suggestion would to give mercs "Reputation" instead of standing with any house. Reputation would affect what equipment they would have access to, for example Wolfs Dragoons can probl. get a special mech design produced for them by a mech factory due to size, wealth and influence, where Bakers Bushwhackers who has spent half a year guarding a mineral mining operation and owns 2 mechs would not). Same option should be open to Lone Wolves.

4) Agreed, most mercs are a corporation looking for profit, not an unsactioned arm of the house military forces. They sign on to do a job, and once that is over they collect their fee and move on. They should have Reputation instead of being forced to stick to one house. Honestly how hard is it to introduce that? "IS side, allied with "MERCS"-faction"

[JollyT95]

Here is a couple questions question:

If to attack a planet you have to take a "contract" and when a Merc unit works for a House they are taking a contract, then why will a Merc Unit have to be aligned to a House before they can play in CW? They are working for a house on that contract.

If ANY Faction can defend a planet except for the faction of the attacking side, then why can't Merc units defend planets and stay independent? Would it really be that hard to just allow Mercs to play both sides?

The point I am trying to make is that it does not seem to me to be that hard to just leave the Merc Units independent and just count Merc units Victories as whichever faction that they took the contract for.
The balance would be that a Merc Unit's LP would be spread out amongst all of the factions and so their progress towards faction rewards would take longer than a House Unit.

2 Examples:

1. A Merc Unit leader sees that there is a FRR planet on the Kurita boarder that is available for attack. The leader accepts the contract and enters the attacking queue with his 6-man unit. The matchmaker places him into the queue as a Kurita unit and any victory or defeat credit would go to Kurita and the Unit would get some LP and cash.

2. A Merc unit is attacking an FRR planet for Kurita and the call to arms has gone out to defend the planet. Another Merc Unit responds to the call and joins the defending side. Any victory or defeat would be handled the same way as if a Steiner unit came to the aid of the FRR.

So would it be possible to have the system recognize Merc Units as wildcards and automatically shift their faction for that contract? This would allow Merc Units continue to be independent and keep the role playing feel of what a Merc Unit should be like without having to be aligned to a single house for however long a "season" will be.

Edited by JollyT95, 26 September 2014 - 04:13 AM.

[TuntematonSika]

Can't wait for phase 2!

Regarding drops though, will the mechs be physically dropped in the start of the match and in respawns, or will they just magically appear?

[SixstringSamurai]

Okay I might be understanding this in the wrong way but first, won't flipping the contested planet every 24 hours mean that absolutely 0 progress will be made? Or is this 24 hour flip to the dominate faction that claimed it? Going off of the fortification question I take this to mean that it's not the latter.

Second thing is I forsee this being an entirely frustrating first season simply because hypothetically lets say my faction has teams A,B,C, and D supporting it. We all attack the same planet. Team A wins but teams B,C, and D all lose making Team A's efforts futile. Meaning Team A potentially makes no progress and the faction overall gets stomped upon even though Team A has a winning record.

I think the unlimited attack/defend based on timezone should really be looked at a lot harder and instead shifted to round (time limit) based activity. I also think the timezone thing is a huge mistake. I think you should actually have 3 maps going at a time that players opt into based on unit locations of EU, NA, and OC and the fight is instead 24 hours ongoing for each. A fight takes place and then locked for 30, 45 minutes, or perhaps an hour to allow defenders and attackers to regroup. Multiple attackers are queued and given an approximation on when to return to fight or simply given the option to find some other planet to attack. All border edge planets should be open to attack to accommodate this with the line being static as wins and loss occur. The proposed method is going to span way too long I think otherwise and due to real life a lot of teams are going to find participation spotty at best. The peak timezone thing further increases this.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

So how will the timeline of the game be butting up against this seasonal reset thing?

Or did I miss a bit where the timeline idea was tossed entirely?

[Dark Horse X]

Resetting the planet's ownership every 24 hours? Who thought this to be a good idea? This isn't CW, it's nothing even close to CW. CW does NOT mean faction vs faction, or clans, or whatever simply for the "ambience"..........CW is to be an immersive, persistent environment where what a pilot/group/faction achieves means something in the broader scope of everything.

And only three (3) 2-hour slots of CW per day? How much of the player base is going to be able to participate?

You really are out-thinking yourself here PGI. There are a ton of models of CW on the internet, this menagerie is not one of them.

[PhoenixNMGLB]

Vlad Dragu, on 26 September 2014 - 12:14 AM, said:

Resetting the planet's ownership every 24 hours? Who thought this to be a good idea? This isn't CW, it's nothing even close to CW. CW does NOT mean faction vs faction, or clans, or whatever simply for the "ambience"..........CW is to be an immersive, persistent environment where what a pilot/group/faction achieves means something in the broader scope of everything.

And only three (3) 2-hour slots of CW per day? How much of the player base is going to be able to participate?

You really are out-thinking yourself here PGI. There are a ton of models of CW on the internet, this menagerie is not one of them.

I don't read this as PGI will change the ownership of planets every 24 hours but more like because the combat time is 24 hours then that is the smallest length of time someone can hold a planet.

I agree that three, two hour slots are not enough. It should be more like six at least.

[Reno Blade]

In regards to the ability to defend all other factions border planets:

I think there could be a great solution including mercs and lone wolves in this rather than give everyone the same "defend-all" ability.

- Faction players can only defend their own factions border-planets AND attack only planets on their borders
- Lone wolves can defend all border planets, but can not attack any planet
- Mercs can defend all border planets AND can also attack planets on the border of the house they are serving (requires a contract).

This would give quite easy roles for the curent limits to faction vs faction warfare described in the CC post.

As this does not deviate much from the curent plan, it might be not too much work to implement this way.

It would require:
Lonewolves to be a faction without a faction territory to be able to defend all borders
Mercs to be able to allign to a faction, but be able to defend all borders (like the curent concept for all factions)
Faction players changed to only defend their own borders (just a small change compared to the curent concept)

[Lily from animove]

Please give people the ability to join CW as lonely guys, We really should be able to fill defense/attacking forces as single plyers as well, and also be able to join another Units team.

I mean why should the 13ths unit of clan wolf not drop with the 12th unit of clan wolf when they wanna invade a planet? As long as they are in the same faction they should really be allowed to form groups.

This would also directly allow solo players to join groups and participate in CW.

[VoodooLou Kerensky]

As a suggestion to knock the bugs out of the works do this entire CW on the Public Test Server for at least a Month before going live with it. To be Honest I think the Public Test Server should ALWAYS be up but when anything is changed (either a hotfix or patch etc) everything is reset to the last 'snap-shot' of players accounts and resets the map. This will save y'all (The Devs) from having Us (The Community) show up en-masse to do bad things to you because you just tossed it on the Live Server Barby and ohh we gotta hotfix a week later but that hotfix will wipe the map clean back to Start of Clan Invasion just as Clan Black Sheep is putting boots on the Ground At ComStar Central on Hilton Head To become the ILClan (which is going to happen anyways since Lore isnt going to be followed and everything in between the edge of IS Space and Terra is Window Dressing with out Jump Point Restrictions. Not that that wouldve stopped us either since Repair/ReSupply is throttled back drastically if you dont stop in every system to beat the defenders in those systems, and even more so if you happen to use large (Say like the size of Texas) Class M-Asteroids brought up to say 1/4th the speed of light (which in Terms of Spatial Distances is very slow, but is still faster than anything man has put into space YET) to impact on said defended planet eliminating it as a potential threat to our 'back door', as well as being the ultimate in Batchal Cutdown (like we are going to announce it anyways!! HAH! You think we are stupid? What fool tells the OpFor the size of his attack?! Thats not Honor thats straight out 'Im too dumb to pour piss outta a boot with directions written on the heel' foolish) there is no way to prove that the asteroid impact wasnt a natural event (Asteroids/Meteors are known to impact on planets you know and the 1/4th speed of light push to get the asteroid there is to prevent the planets defenders from being able to just happen to detect by occlusion that Texas is about to smack into said planet in 2 days from a Nadir (instead of on the Ecliptical) insertion (making detection that much harder)), so there will be no need to leave behind Garrison forces to maintain 'Soveriegnity' of the systems we "Rock Steady'. The Clan Invasion was not about Resources, but a Return of The Original Star League Defense Forces to put an end to the Successor States Wars (Y'all had 4 of them in the 300 years the SLDF was absent to defend the star league that didnt exist anymore which means you stagnated instead of exploring anymore of the galaxy, let alone the universe or Uniting mankind to further itself) so that Humanity wouldnt degrade to something that looks like its the 20th/21st Centuries on Terra).
http://www.quotation...quote/3027.html

[Jakob Knight]

Kyone Akashi, on 25 September 2014 - 07:04 PM, said:

Additionally, the seasons could serve as the "contract length" for mercenary alignments. In the Battletech lore, it is quite common for mercs to be contracted to a particular House for not just weeks but months (seeing as travel time alone from a jump point to a targeted planet is measured in weeks, to say nothing of the actual campaign!), so this could serve as a neat cop-out for why the various merc units have to choose a particular faction as their employer, with whom they'd have to stick until the reset and thus contract fulfilment.

The primary issue with this idea is that it turns Mercenaries into window-dressing. How is what you are proposing any different than being a House unit? Yet, Mercs are as different to House units as Clan units are to Inner Sphere units....Mercs are the third Faction, after all.

The only way Seasons could count towards the fulfillment of what Mercs were always declared to be in MWO from Day One would be if House and Clan players and Units could not change their faction at all. In other words, you become a House Kurita Unit or Clan Ghost Bear Unit, you are that for the rest of your playtime in MWO. Otherwise, there is no credit to the idea that Seasons=Contracts, because House and Clan units do not use Contracts, and so would not have any grounds for being able to change factions in the same way at the same rate and with the same benefits.

Right now, a Season is 'the entire history' of the Inner Sphere. When a Season ends, everything is reset, all history wiped out, all dates reset to 3049, and all progress reversed. Telling a Merc group that they have a contract for a 'Season' is no different than telling a House or Clan unit that they are with a faction until the 'end of history'. Both are the same, and it effectively eliminates Mercs from the game except in name alone.

I don't understand why it is so hard for the Devs to put in what they promised they would, yet this seems to be an ongoing issue. Why is having two Factions (Clan and Inner Sphere now instead of the five Inner Sphere states that were promised when CW was outlined for all players) and a third Faction that can ally with either but not get the full benefits of permanent alignment with either (Mercenaries) so difficult? Just do it and let the game progress as it should, rather than trying to micro-manage how the Invasion progresses.

Edited by Jakob Knight, 26 September 2014 - 03:02 AM.

[OznerpaG]

i notice some people are bringing up ' merc contracts' - it doesn't have to be so complicated. if a planet is being contested, any IS-aligned person (and any clan aligned person on the other side) should be able drop in on the fight, and if you are a merc/lone wolf dropping on that planet that would be 'your contract' - all your contracts are a single fight.

lets say there are 3 possibilities for payouts on any particular battle/planet. i think there are 2 possible payouts, loyalty points and cash:

if the planet belongs to the house you are aligned to (kurita, davion etc), you should get lots of loyalty points (although if you are part of kurita/davion/etc you are already loyal? not sure on what loyalty points are for) but little cash (your drop should be paid for by your house)

if you belong to a house and you drop on a planet owned by another house (marik/liao, etc), you should get no or few loyalty points (since you stay loyal to your own house), but lots of cash since you have to pay for the drop/transport/etc

if you belong to a lone wolf/merc group and you drop on any planet, you get some loyalty points for the house the planet belonged to, and some cash


these are just suggestions by the way

Edited by JagdFlanker, 26 September 2014 - 03:09 AM.

[Kharax]

Sounds pretty good at least,

But what is about Maps !??

I seriusly think this is going boring fast without a significant ammount of NEW Maps,
comming in the near Future.

Dont you think there is a horrobily lack of new maps?
Instead of new gamemodes on the existing ones?
Or wonderfull new Menues to click arround.

[LordHarco]

Two things i see 1)spawn camping 2)with no eject mechanic striping an legging a mech and leaving it to gimp it way out of bounds

[OznerpaG]

LordHarco, on 26 September 2014 - 04:46 AM, said:

Two things i see 1)spawn camping 2)with no eject mechanic striping an legging a mech and leaving it to gimp it way out of bounds

there should be an option for eject/quit mech, but then the other team should get to split a salvage (maybe a simple cash bonus) on the 'mission-killed' mech, and maybe the person who ejected would get a 1min respawn penalty, THEN join the respawn queue

spawn camping could be trickier - maybe have 4-8 respawn points (depending on the size of the map) that are used after the initial spawn. every time there is a respawn it would occur at the furthest point from where the bulk of the enemy is located. if there are 4+ respawn points then it become difficult to guard them all, and if you do you will not be able to outnumber the respawned mechs so you'l likely get killed for your efforts. spawn guarding this many spawn points would split up your team which, if you play PUG, is known to be a death sentence


again, these are just suggestions for fun - great points LordHarco!

Edited by JagdFlanker, 26 September 2014 - 05:12 AM.

[bane]

I think people are slightly confused. Go figure with the lack of real defined information and a clear vision having been laid out.

• Flipping Planets: I believe what was stated is meant as a planet will only flip ownership to the controlling side once every 24 hours. This does not mean that it will be reset to the original, but to the current dominating force.
  
• Seasons: This is going to be an expected movement of the invasion. i.e. Season 1 will last 30 days. The most the invasion can move forward would be upwards of 60 planets roughly(based on 2 planets being able to be attacked per day along the corridor, side planets into Kurita and Steiner not withstanding)
  
• Merc Units: In order for a merc unit to work in a given Houses boundaries it requires a contract to do so, merc units really never took one contract in Kurita and the next day was working in Marik (the logistics and costs would make that prohibitive in the "real BT world"). This means that you would take a contract for a specific amount of time, hence a season. The way they currently have things aimed at, you will still be able to fly around the universe getting on planets willy nilly cause they have no real rules for travel, movement of logistics, et al, so you will be able to work for Kurita and defend Marik.
  
• Forced Faction: They are so far behind the eight ball at this point, they won't be able to flesh out CW to do everything it should be. So they are going to have to treat this less as a merc aimed game but to a faction specific aimed game (i.e. Clan vs IS). In phase 3, sometime in 2026, they'll add in the things we might actually want to see to replace the things that we are forced to do due to limited resources to program up, let alone design, envision, PM, and bring to fruition the things they have promised the game would be.

Edited by bane, 26 September 2014 - 05:32 AM.