353 replies to this topic

[Joe Mallad]

Mercs SHOULD NOT be forced to play or side with any one single house faction. Those that decide they WANT to side with a House and ONLY take contracts from that House, should be able to. But we as Mercs are really getting the shaft here IMO. I dont want to be forced to play for one House and one House only.

Edited by Yoseful Mallad, 26 September 2014 - 01:50 PM.

[Syrkres]

The whole point of Mercs is jumping to the best contact, Switching sides, Going behind ones back...

[Chemie]

Exploit #1: Large units form small divisions and then team up for their 12 man
Saving on costs

Exploit #2: You can leave a unit and rejoin another to quickly form drops

Exploit #3: 12-man premades have huge advantage. MM will team them with 2-5 teams assembled by MM. We have this today in 12-man queue and the outcome is 10:1 in favor of 12-man. "30 seconds" just makes it even easier.

Bad Decision Decision: You take 4 mechs and MM tells you which one you will pilot. Ouch.
Bad Design Decision: Basically a rehash of current 12-man queue

Concern: How much it costs vs what it pays. Is this just a CB sink feature? 9i.e. 12-man lose pays about 1.2MM and win pays about 2MM. What did they each pay to defend? Why would a team spend money on the planet contract to begin with? or does PGI set the value? If the system is not kicking in money, then it won't take long for people to realize this is like private matches and stop playing for need of CB.

[Kharax]

Hello PGi whats about maps?

[Naduk]

slide, on 24 September 2014 - 06:56 PM, said:

I am disappointed that Merc units will have to align with a faction at first but the rest of it sounds ok.

Edit:

I have had some time to think about this further and I fully understand that a full contracting system is too much to bite off at the moment, but I also recognize that a lot of units take pride in their status as a Merc Unit and will take um-bridge at having to choose a faction even if they do have a preferred faction they will play for. So what I suggest is (I will limit this discussion to IS units because I fail to see how Clans would use mercs but it would work for them as well):

SPONSORED UNIT STATUS.

-At the start of each season a Unit leader will elect to play for the Merc Faction. Once this is chosen you are locked into to playing as merc the same as any other faction.

-After this the unit leader get a splash screen showing all the houses and their bonus with a check box, selecting one gets you sponsored by that house for a period of time during that season. Lets say a week. When this happens the units faction tag changes from our familiar friend to one reflecting our sponsored status (excuse my art skills) Davion in this case



This would obviously have to cascade through to all the unit members but that function should already be in place.

-once you are sponsored you can only play for that faction the same any faction player.

At this point you would effectively be a faction player whilst retaining your merc status.

What do I get?

-all players belonging to a sponsored unit (in CW matches only) would get a 10% cbill bonus to in game earnings but do not get any other bonus's that regular faction players get such as cheaper faction specific mechs

-loyalty retainer, for every week a unit stays loyal to their sponsor they could get and additional 1% bonus (up to a maximum of say 20%)

At the end of the week the unit leader then decides to stay (do nothing) or get sponsored by another house.

It could get very interesting here as the Sponsor bonus could be used to get merc units to move to more active fronts.

Example: Davion is rampaging through Liao space. Liao doesn't have enough players to defend all the time. Increase the sponsor bonus to 20% to get more mercs to sign on with Liao. Similarly you could do the same for the FRR against the clans.

Addtionally you could allow units to break their contract in less time than the week stipulated at the cost of Cbills from the unit's coffers, say 5 million Cbills the first time and escalating from there to stop units changing sides every 5 minutes.

Most of the tools to make this happen should be in place or on the drawing board, It requires about 10 minutes from an artist (new icons) a new splash page in the UI for choosing a sponsor and a bit of data base work tracking who is doing what which should be mostly in place anyway.

Just my thoughts, you could do much more but lets keep it simple to start with.

here ya go

Edited by Naduk, 26 September 2014 - 08:08 PM.

[Fanatic]

Kain Thul, on 25 September 2014 - 03:47 PM, said:

Not quite.

HPG manifold is clearly a zero or low atmosphere environment that is not compatible with any of the other maps we see as far as "could it exist on the same planet" goes.

Caustic's atmosphere looks Venusian and I don't see that being compatible with any of the other maps either. Tourmaline is pretty exotic as well--I wouldn't expect that to exist on the same planet as many of these other maps.

They also give you specific gravity numbers for the maps....if it is different it can't be the same planet.

We do have a lot of maps though that it wouldn't be difficult to believe existing on the same planet--River City, Alpine, Forest Colony, Frozen City, Crimson Straight, Canyon Network, Mining Collective. I'd even throw Terra Therma in there--a planet with inhabitable regions could feasibly have a very vulcanized region as well. It'd be like deciding to fight over Mt Kilauea and Mauna Loa here on earth for some reason.

i did a suggestion in the german sub forum about assigning map sets to specific planets. Example Donegal (Equatorial temperature 40°C (Warm-Temperate), Surface water 80%).......

Tourmaline, HPG and eventually Terra Therma could be used (exclusive) for the moons.

map sets = reused mashes/textures of a existing map = increasing the map production for PGI

Example: Alpine Peaks 1 (existing Map), Alpine Peaks 2 "Outpost", Alpine Peaks 3 "Bunker", Alpine Peaks 4 "Mountain Pass", Alpine Peaks 5 "Blizzard" (Alpine Peaks 1 with a Blizzard), Alpine Peaks 6 "Glacier".

[slide]

Naduk, on 26 September 2014 - 07:58 PM, said:

here ya go

Thats perfect mate. Exactly what i had in mind.

My imagination exceeds my artistic abilities.

[SilentScreamer]

My apologies if this has come up already ( I did not see it in the first two pages of this thread).

The current plan for Phase 2 of Community Warfare calls for each mechwarrior to bring four mechs to the battlefield, and picking one to "respawn" when the player's current mech is destroyed.

This could be used as an exploit if a pilot's mech is crippled rather than destroyed. The enemy team could avoid destroying an enemy who currently has no weapons or ammunition, thus preventing (or delaying) the opponent from respawning with a fresh mech.

The simple solution would be an eject feature for the pilot. A second possibilty would be an "extraction zone" the pilot must reach with his current mech to respawn in a new one.

The only current remedies are either suicide by the pilot ( out of bounds ) or having your teamates kill you.

[Gremlich Johns]

what's a Dagger Star? Does this mean a Clan Star of mechs?

Edited by Gremlich Johns, 27 September 2014 - 12:28 PM.

[JeremyCrow]

Eveerything looks great. Damn you PGI for giving me hope again.

Just a couple of remarks:

1) Don't overthink it. The features you laid out look fine for launch and can be fine tuned later on.
2) Some clarification about "seasons" should be given. The only way I could see this working is if you use something akin to the Clan invasion waves. Otherwise it just look like e-sports all over again and breaks immersion. Most of us that are waiting for CW want it for the roleplay aspect of it.

Otherwise, two thumbs up!

[SixstringSamurai]

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 was really hoping for something closer to say Heroes & Generals beta with a static map and Risk type movement where the forces and pieces were dictated by what players brought to it via owned equipment. The map being entirely static and reset once either capital was captured or force was eliminated. Seasons or Wars being tracked by number and kept active 24/7. That would be so much more fun then whatever this weird system they proposed.

First off people that can't participate in the narrow windows can't participate. Remember that people have lives, it would be nice to be able to sit down when I want to or have time and make a meaningful impact on the war effort.

Speaking of meaningful efforts, this LP system sounds about as fun as breaking a rock with a hammer. it provides very little if any sort of meaningful impact by a player. You could be the most skilled pilot in mechwarrior and have next to no progress if your faction has less LP then the opposition. This also undercuts units entirely in the same way. Look at Proxis it was a static map, the progress was slow because of the mechanics in place ingame requiring match scheduling but it worked and no one ran away with the galaxy. It led to the game and league actually having more depth because units started making alliances and plots in the backend. This led to coordinated attacks and all sorts of plot twists. This is why I think the map should be static and active all the time. Keep the queues to fill the defense and attack teams filled but I don't see why they need the timezone thing here. If you provide a Faction Chat players could easily start coordinating Teamspeak/voice comms and plan attacks or where resources need to be focused.

This current module seems lackluster and a bit disappointing after waiting all this time for it. I'm actually thinking of purposefully avoiding it because it sounds like too little fun. Quite frankly the current player driven leagues have more depth and actual impact for me versus more grinding for possibly no progress.

Edited by SixStringSamurai, 27 September 2014 - 01:17 PM.

[GentlemanBryan]

Will CW open up to all to play (Beta) before going live? Feedback from the players should drive the planning of CW.

[Ensaine]

Well, I have one question.

Before we have to sub to this or that faction, and spend current C-Bills, WHY in hell are we not putting this on the test server, where no one has to spend their hard earned C-Bills, no season, no resets, just testing, testing, and more testing. till we get it right?

Unbelievable . Pre-arranged 'peak time' matches? Really?

Ok, that was 2 questions.

Feedback: way too complicated. Been in MW franchise since MW2 for DoS.......this is WAY too complicated, and limited.

Edited by Ensaine, 27 September 2014 - 01:45 PM.

[Jakob Knight]

Gremlich Johns, on 27 September 2014 - 10:18 AM, said:

what's a Dagger Star? Does this mean a Clan Star of mechs?

A Dagger Star is just the MWO Clan equivalent to an Inner Sphere independent, or Mercenary. They are supposed to represent members of Clans other than the Invading Clans, even though such warriors would never have been allowed to fight in the invasion (such warriors were occasionally allowed as observers or advisers, but no Clan would put them in the field instead of or beside their own warriors due to the very real possibility the Clan so doing would be challenged for it's lack of confidence in it's own forces).

Technically, the Dagger Star is the term for the symbol, a form of the Cameron Star of the Star League.

Edited by Jakob Knight, 27 September 2014 - 01:48 PM.

[DevlinCognito]

After having my hopes for an NBT style CW steadily dashed, I gradually began to hope for at least a Heroes and Generals style campaign .. but I see even that is aiming waaaay to high.

[Monsoon]

Gremlich Johns, on 27 September 2014 - 10:18 AM, said:

what's a Dagger Star? Does this mean a Clan Star of mechs?

Essentially anyone (like yourself) who's aligned with the clams, but chosen not to go with one of the four initial invading clams.

(yeah, that's right clammer!)

Edited by Monsoon, 27 September 2014 - 04:14 PM.

[Werewolf]

I am wondering if, should lore be used in any way, the additional invading Clans will take to the field at some point in the future.

A close second to that would be my question whether there will be a ComGuard faction someday. While the nature of CW obviously makes a 100% accurate replay of the invasion up until and including the Battle of Tukayyid moot (well, that would be some awesome grinding anyway), having the ComGuards represented would be quite cool.

[Asmosis]

Sounds like a lot of fun for group play, but reading between the lines this means you could potentially be matching a 12 man premade up against a group of casual pugs?

Will there still be alternatives to CW i.e. "instant action/fight" which is essentially the mode we have now?

Players will naturally gravitate towards whatever gives them the biggest chance of winning, like the old 8-man premades in closed beta. If we're going back to that format its going to marginalize and possibly alienate solo drop players.

Edited by Asmosis, 27 September 2014 - 07:29 PM.

[Hoax415]

CW is an optional gamemode that is much less concerned with crafting even fights than normal "public" drops are.

CW is an optional gamemode that at this time we only know is operating for sure 6 hours of the day and we know for sure is not intended to be running 24/7 so probably will never be on more than 12 hours on a weekday once all of the timezones are covered well enough for PGI's liking.

If you play solo in CW you are probably signing up to play against some 12 man teams because there will be no elo or wait time penalty to making a full team and as you said people gravitate towards winning and forming a full team certainly doesn't hurt your chances.

The modes we have now (public queues), are not going away and its unclear how much of the playerbase CW will pull from them. Presumably the solo queue numbers will be the least affected but group queue may be massively reduced during CW times.

Edited by Hoax415, 28 September 2014 - 06:36 AM.

[Cest7]

I hope your making enough money from these clan collections. This CW blatantly looks pay to play and does not look appealing to lone wolfs like me. Shame this game took a turn for the worse prioritizing Monitization over content.