174 replies to this topic

[Hardin4188]

Logan Hawke, on 09 October 2014 - 11:53 AM, said:

You know I speak for majority as much as you can. E.G. hello hyperbole. The reason I have that impression however, stems from people I've talked to and past experiences in games like Planetside (which has been losing a steady trickle of players for a good time now according to my old PS2 group).
I told the leader of my clan that someone from the RP crowd had started an anti-seasons thread back when the idea first came out because 'it breaks immersion and makes things meaningless'.
He laughed and thought that I had to be joking.

The thing is, while the neverending campaign might seem nifty at first, pretty soon it just becomes stale and falls into patterns. TR takes the crown, Vanu and NC team up to drive them out. Wash rinse repeat (if you'll forgive an outdated reference to an old PS2 pattern). Nothing new happens, nothing truly changes internally, there is no purpose or victory or closure or goals. Territory doesn't matter because you will never win. There is no such thing as strategic victory. It's just a bunch of battles that don't really make any sort of statement. The clans will never take terra, nor will they be driven out, because that would result in the campaign ending.

I can't speak about Planetside 2, but I know in the experience of the first game having seasonal resets would just be annoying. There were a few server resets where bases became neutral again, but mostly the enjoyment was having week long battles for one continent and even day long battles for a single base. I know I would be annoyed if one of these skirmishes happened right before a seasonal reset with the server going down for no real reason. Plus it was always satisfying when you cont locked the enemy.

I do think though the best thing for this game would be to even seasonal resets to allow for the timeline to move forward and to have a dynamic map that still mostly aligns with the canon timeline.

Edited by Hardin4188, 09 October 2014 - 12:42 PM.

[Logan Hawke]

Roadbeer, on 09 October 2014 - 12:25 PM, said:

Um, I only speak for myself. I don't presume to speak for a majority, unless I see that a majority is speaking that way. You just throw "majority" out with some anecdotal number of "people" you've talked to.

Now, if we want to make things 'anecdotal' I'm pretty sure that the number of people I've spoken to among the 2,000+ members of http://housemarik.enjin.com trumps the number of people you've spoken to in your "clan"

Hyperbole and anecdotal evidence = I win.

Hyperbole and anecdotal evidence count for nothing but mean everything. Neither of us 'win', we'll both continue to make our points and claim that the other options suck until a final decision is made and then some.

I have anecdotal evidence to prove that you'll do so

[Sadist Cain]

Roadbeer, on 09 October 2014 - 10:15 AM, said:

Seeing as how, the second a battle is engaged in CW, it starts a "splinter Universe" where we're only loosely following lore. Wouldn't it be conceivable that there could be multiple "Battle of Tukyyid"s?

Keep the time-line flowing on a 1-1 ratio, but once certain criteria are met, say a Clan or IS push and all surrounding planets are captured by one or the other sides a multi-day/week long "Battle of Tukyyid" event is created. With bonuses and awards for participating.

^That's the ticket right there

[CyclonerM]

Rouken, on 09 October 2014 - 08:47 AM, said:

Seems to me that your choice are:

1) Be allowed to win/lose with resets
2) No resets but you can't actually win (Clans take Terra) or lose (be forced out of the game completely). Might be a problem with the second option if one faction takes over everything.

Well, i think it is not realistically possible for a single faction to conquer the whole Inner Sphere. Even for the Clans as a whole it may be an impossible task.

I will explain with an example:
many have talked about Planetside, but i bring you another game: Tom Clancy's End War. It is a 2007 strategy game. These days i am starting to play it again on my PS3. It has a pretty decent online persistent campaign, called "Theater of War" (ToW) which is basically World War III. It is fought by 3 factions, basically Europe, USA and Russia. It does have "seasons", but it is quite different from what CW would be. In ToW, there are only 3 factions and there are precise victory conditions, very similar to Risiko: a faction wins when it holds 27 territories or 2 capitals. Basically, it would hold the vast majority of the territories so it would be safe to say that faction has "conquered the world". In CW, instead, there will be a lot of factions. In a similar battle of attrition, if a faction ever started to win too many battles, the other factions could turn on it and break its progress, even pushing it back.

For example, in End War, currently the Russians are very close to Washington, but Europe (my faction, obviously) has started taking back some of the territories it lost to Russia. We were close to be defeted, but instead of waiting for a reset, we started pushing both the poor Yankees and the Russians. I would rather have it this way than having a reset "saving" us. It is just a defeat. If i do not lose anything fighting, i prefer to fight

Russ Bullock, on 09 October 2014 - 08:56 AM, said:

At this point we do not know how many people will participate in the CW feature, maybe a lot, maybe 20% of our players. Will the MWO playerbase grow when CW is present?

Many players also want to be able to switch factions and want to be able to play all of their mechs both Clan and IS in CW - this can only be accomplished with a faction change. Should they be allowed to without a seasonal reset? How often.

What if a team locks down the Inner Sphere.

Thank you for stepping in, Russ.

Your concern about the number of players is fair.

I would say that faction players should be allowed to switch factions once every three months, or every month if they are not allowed to join back their previous faction for a certain amount of time. You know, if you leave House Davion for the Capellan Confederation or the Free Worlds League, you are a traitor, and you would not quite be welcomed warmly if you came back..

Mercenaries, instead, should be able to switch like every month or two weeks. Maybe they could have different contracts: 2 weeks , 1 month, 3 months. Longer term contracts give more LPs, but you get most of them at the end of your contract: if you leave the faction you are working for before the end of your contract, you do not get most of the LPs of the contract, and you actually lose some with the faction you leave (maybe scaled, based on how many days before the end of the contract you left..).

As i said, i really do not think a single team (unit?) or faction could ever lock down the whole Sphere.

KraftySOT, on 09 October 2014 - 09:21 AM, said:

Definitely. You WILL hit a wall eventually where everyone has "been there done that". That might very well be the eventual goal, and if they CAN get there and do something persistent, it will keep the game alive till 2020 and possibly even be worth renewing the license.

Persistent is great dont get me wrong. Eve....Star Citizen...theyre glowing giant neon signs attesting to the awesomeness of persistence.


I would also love to see something hardcore. Capitals being lost isnt something that ever happened in BT3025. There were no winners and no losers. As General Patton said "A war without risk? Nothing lost, nothing gained? No heroes no heroics? By god im glad ill be dead before I see it"

Seasons and resets allow you to go balls to the wall with that kind of stuff. And its also cool for the bragging rights and attachment to your team. Being the Season 3 Winners and getting some sort of fluff for it...is pretty darned cool too.

Well, this game will not last until 2020 if CW is the exactly same war over and over i think
Exactly. A war without risks is not realistic. If i die in a FPS game, i can respawn, so, aside from stats, i do not risk much myself dying. CW is the same: if i am losing planets and lose my capital, what does it matter? Just wait until the end of the month and everything is fine again. I call that a war without risks
Instead, if the universe is persistent, if my faction loses many planets, i know we have to do something, because we will not get them back for free

Dracol, on 09 October 2014 - 09:28 AM, said:

[/size]
One issue I always had with the 1:1 timeline was the time spread between battles. With weeks/months of transport time between planets in lore, it was clear that battles would not be going on at a daily rate. At least with seasons, the daily CW can take place and the timeline of the invasion is compacted. Sure, we could fight over a planet for a week, but by lore standards the next attack in that corridor would be days if not weeks later.

Even when they will implement logistics, we will never have to wait weeks of course. Well, i know we cannot just make our invasion last exactly as long as it did in the lore, but again, in the lore most of the IS planets were conquered after 1, more rarely 2 or 3 battles, not 10 or more

Joseph Mallan, on 09 October 2014 - 09:52 AM, said:

I never read books 2 & 3, Now the last Grey Death book was 100% fiat against the Legion. Every thing that could go wrong did! Observant Non rates, Actually Clearing a stronghold room by room!

Or the

Spoiler

Damaged Shadow Hawk in the repair bay suddenly powering up and pulverizing a lot of brave men?
I remember something of that book. Now that i have read half of the Game of Thrones books.. Everything that could go wrong goes wrong? I have a de-jà-vu, if you know what i mean

Logan Hawke, on 09 October 2014 - 10:06 AM, said:

I think seasons are great because it gives a visible goal, allows people to actually affect the overall campaign to the point of actually being able to declare victory, and lets people fight a campaign the whole way through for their chosen faction.

E.G. I want to fight in the battle of Tukayyid on the side of the clans and the side of the inner sphere. I want to be able to drive the freebirths all the way to terra and declare victory, and I also want to send the clanner scum back to where they came from. I want to crush house kurita and champion house kurita, and each time I want there to be a goal that I'm working towards.

In other words, seasons give closure and variety.

I think that , in the invasion time frame, the factions have actually a goal. Each Clan must reach Terra first and become the IlClan; the IS nations on their path must stop them. CC and FWL.. Well, they may take advantage of the invasion to bite their powerful neighbours since we cannot sell war material to other players..

And if the Clans take Terra? We shall see! As i said in my first post, the players should make their own objectives and rewrite the history of the Inner Sphere. I want to see it!

Void Angel, on 09 October 2014 - 10:20 AM, said:

This is a team-based competitive shooter game - not a LARP platform. Seasons are used for a variety of reasons, many of which have already been mentioned in this thread, and all of which apply to MWO. "It breaks immersion," isn't a strong objection, not least because it's entirely subjective. Similarly, if you'd "be done" after two seasons - once defending and once attacking the Inner Spere - I have bad news for you: you don't enjoy the game. In a sense, you don't want this game - you're looking for a BattleTech MMORPG. If you want to rewrite BattleTech history in an eternally persistent world, you'll be better served setting up a gaming group at your local hobby store.

Sure, but the whole concept of "having fun" is subjective. A player has fun winning 12-0 with the most stupid and unbalanced builds, taunting the enemy (ggclose!), others spending hours in the mechlab tweaking their "perfect" configuration, others just playing with their friends, and others immersing themselves in the BT universe, piloting their favourite 'Mechs and playing in a lore-based unit. Obviously, it is not so rigid and simple, but you will often recognize a predominance of one of these types (i am a mixture of all of them but especially the latter as you may know ).

I do not see what would be the issue with a persistent universe based on the BT universe giving you immersion in the BT universe Well, if there was a BT MMORPG or something similar i would totally love it, but you cannot rule out lore and roleplay from a game based on such a rich universe. It is like telling a player of a Star Wars game that he is not a Jedi fighting for the Republic, and if he wants to feel like he is, he should play with fake light sabers outdoor with his friends

And there are reasons for not having seasons, too, besides the immersion argument, and they have been mentioned.

[Deadmeat313]

Whether we go the Seasonal or the Persistent route, one thing is certain: If we want to recreate major events like Tukayyid then the campaign will have to be "shepherded" somewhat by PGI, to a greater or lesser extent.

3025 era would pretty much run itself. You could just set it off and leave the players to drop into factions and then slug it out over border worlds. Make it take a week or so to capture a single world and the map would shift slowly and subtly enough that you could go away for a few days and still recognise the place when you got back. Easy peasy.

The fear that many have of the whole IS being dominated by one faction are - I believe - unfounded. I actually spent a few months in MWO plotting the results of hundreds of my games onto my own IS map. Each player has a roughly 50/50 win/loss rate, so what happens when you go to grand scale is that nothing much changes. Factions lose worlds at roughly the rate they gain them - BUT, importantly, they don't always lose and gain the same worlds. Marik takes Loric but loses Uhuru, etc.

The front line shifts as the 50/50 becomes eg 60/40 in one sector but worse elsewhere, completely arbitarily.

Here's a snapshot I took of the Davion/Kurita border during my game:



This may perhaps sound a bit soul-less and rubbish, a bit of an anti-climax for those looking to carve their destinies on the Inner Sphere map? In practice it works out quite well though. As a player you feel proud when a world falls to your faction, or when you successfully defend. Of course not everything can be defended all the time so your side will suffer losses. That should just give you cause to counter-attack. Regain the territory.

Back to the plot. Operation Revival has to be different than the simple 3025 mode.

The Clans need an artificial advantage during the invasion. If they are 50/50 W/L - and they can lose worlds as easily as gain them - then they will be nothing more than another Periphery Faction. Hence the campaign would need to be supervised.

For example - PGI could declare that for the duration of REVIVAL the Clans are considered to be mission focused, so they will not fight among themselves. In return, their victories vs the Inner Sphere factions in the invasion corridor gain them increased "capture points". This will last until a Clan nears Tukayyid. At that point a Major Event is triggered. The Battle of Tukayyid could then rage for 2-3 weeks.

Afterwards, assuming the Clans lost, the Truce Line is added to the map. The Clans are suddenly allowed to fight each other, and their inherent "invasion bonus" is removed. They become new Successor States - albeit still with the shiny toys.

... And back we would go to the free style border raids and subtle map shifts.

[CyclonerM]

Deadmeat313, on 09 October 2014 - 01:41 PM, said:

Back to the plot. Operation Revival has to be different than the simple 3025 mode.

The Clans need an artificial advantage during the invasion. If they are 50/50 W/L - and they can lose worlds as easily as gain them - then they will be nothing more than another Periphery Faction. Hence the campaign would need to be supervised.

For example - PGI could declare that for the duration of REVIVAL the Clans are considered to be mission focused, so they will not fight among themselves. In return, their victories vs the Inner Sphere factions in the invasion corridor gain them increased "capture points". This will last until a Clan nears Tukayyid. At that point a Major Event is triggered. The Battle of Tukayyid could then rage for 2-3 weeks.

Afterwards, assuming the Clans lost, the Truce Line is added to the map. The Clans are suddenly allowed to fight each other, and their inherent "invasion bonus" is removed. They become new Successor States - albeit still with the shiny toys.

... And back we would go to the free style border raids and subtle map shifts.

I like this, i have something similar in mind.

After a Clan takes Terra, they would probably fight among themselves, or maybe challenge the IlClan, as the power balance would change suddenly and quickly.

I imagine that the contested worlds will reflect the invasion corridors, at least until Tukayyid.

[Deadmeat313]

True. I reckon it could be enforced by either forcing the Clans to only strike down their specific invasion corridors - or by only giving them the "Invasion bonus" in those corridor worlds. I'd favour the latter.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Xarian, on 09 October 2014 - 07:21 AM, said:

The alternatives:

• No game updates at all
  
• Or, change game mechanics in the middle of everyone competing using said game mechanics

rofl not extremist at all

Deadmeat313, on 09 October 2014 - 01:41 PM, said:

Whether we go the Seasonal or the Persistent route, one thing is certain: If we want to recreate major events like Tukayyid then the campaign will have to be "shepherded" somewhat by PGI, to a greater or lesser extent.

I have a better question, what if the IS mechs stop the clans?

Ive been asking that question for years. I cant imagine ppl would be happy with having their planet turned over to the clans when they won because: story reasons.

Edited by Mechwarrior Buddah, 09 October 2014 - 03:06 PM.

[KraftySOT]

Deadmeat313, on 09 October 2014 - 01:41 PM, said:

Whether we go the Seasonal or the Persistent route, one thing is certain: If we want to recreate major events like Tukayyid then the campaign will have to be "shepherded" somewhat by PGI, to a greater or lesser extent.

3025 era would pretty much run itself. You could just set it off and leave the players to drop into factions and then slug it out over border worlds. Make it take a week or so to capture a single world and the map would shift slowly and subtly enough that you could go away for a few days and still recognise the place when you got back. Easy peasy.

The fear that many have of the whole IS being dominated by one faction are - I believe - unfounded. I actually spent a few months in MWO plotting the results of hundreds of my games onto my own IS map. Each player has a roughly 50/50 win/loss rate, so what happens when you go to grand scale is that nothing much changes. Factions lose worlds at roughly the rate they gain them - BUT, importantly, they don't always lose and gain the same worlds. Marik takes Loric but loses Uhuru, etc.

The front line shifts as the 50/50 becomes eg 60/40 in one sector but worse elsewhere, completely arbitarily.

Here's a snapshot I took of the Davion/Kurita border during my game:



This may perhaps sound a bit soul-less and rubbish, a bit of an anti-climax for those looking to carve their destinies on the Inner Sphere map? In practice it works out quite well though. As a player you feel proud when a world falls to your faction, or when you successfully defend. Of course not everything can be defended all the time so your side will suffer losses. That should just give you cause to counter-attack. Regain the territory.

Back to the plot. Operation Revival has to be different than the simple 3025 mode.

The Clans need an artificial advantage during the invasion. If they are 50/50 W/L - and they can lose worlds as easily as gain them - then they will be nothing more than another Periphery Faction. Hence the campaign would need to be supervised.

For example - PGI could declare that for the duration of REVIVAL the Clans are considered to be mission focused, so they will not fight among themselves. In return, their victories vs the Inner Sphere factions in the invasion corridor gain them increased "capture points". This will last until a Clan nears Tukayyid. At that point a Major Event is triggered. The Battle of Tukayyid could then rage for 2-3 weeks.

Afterwards, assuming the Clans lost, the Truce Line is added to the map. The Clans are suddenly allowed to fight each other, and their inherent "invasion bonus" is removed. They become new Successor States - albeit still with the shiny toys.

... And back we would go to the free style border raids and subtle map shifts.

This is smart posting.

Theres going to have to be some shepharding or hamfisting or whatever you want to call it, by PGI if we want to get the results that match up with the actual timeline. Theres alot of ways to handle it but I dont think it can be as open ended as people want, and even if it was, with the fact most players have a 50/50 win loss rate, its not going to be dramatic.

Thats another concern besides "Marik takes over the Inner sphere" is that no faction actually makes net gains, which of course makes the entire thing an exercise in frustration.

Its going to have to be managed at first, and thats fine. I think all us reasonable adults can accept that.

[Kirkland Langue]

Don't get hung up on the seasons thing. Let's just get the ball rolling.

It won't be hard for PGI to add more content, and increase the length of seasons, after things get started. For all we know, the first season is 3 months, the second 6, the third a year. It could be that by time we get to the 4th season, there will be so much content that the game enters "persistence" and seasons disappear.

Heck, if the game was planned to be persistent from the get go, I'd be more concerned. I'd fully expect one of the factions to get annihilated early and the devs wanting to do a reset anyways.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Sadist Cain, on 09 October 2014 - 09:06 AM, said:

I believe the faction switching should be available at all times

Especially if youre merc

[Cimarb]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 09 October 2014 - 04:52 PM, said:

Especially if youre merc

While I agree, I think mercenaries should be under contract and have some serious penalties for breaking contract. The contracts could be 1 week to 3 months long, with more severe penalties the longer they have left in their existing contract.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Cimarb, on 09 October 2014 - 04:54 PM, said:

While I agree, I think mercenaries should be under contract and have some serious penalties for breaking contract. The contracts could be 1 week to 3 months long, with more severe penalties the longer they have left in their existing contract.

I wish we could switch teams MID MATCH like you did on that one mission in MW2 I think

[Cimarb]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 09 October 2014 - 05:55 PM, said:

I wish we could switch teams MID MATCH like you did on that one mission in MW2 I think

Go turncoat? While I see a great storyline tool in that, I do not think it would make for a very fun game long term, lol...

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

KraftySOT, on 09 October 2014 - 03:35 PM, said:

This is smart posting.

Theres going to have to be some shepharding or hamfisting or whatever you want to call it

No; theyre going with 3 month seasons then resetting the map. They dont need to guide the fight, it wont matter

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

In my view, there are two concerns ...

(1) Players and Units should be able to switch factions, but there is potential for everyone to want to be on the winning side, or the side with the best rewards, or the side with access to the best technology ... my idea for helping balance this:
- Individual players (who are not members of a Unit) should be able to change factions, and
- Units should be able to change factions
... however ...
- There should be a penalty for leaving a faction
- Changing from one extreme to another (say Kurita to Jade Falcon) should not be easy
... one idea ...
- Limit the choices for each type of faction ... a player or unit aligned to a Great House should only be able to shift alignment to Mercenary or Lone Wolf ... Merc > Great House or Lone Wolf ... Lone Wolf > Great house, Merc, or Dagger Star ... Dagger Star > Lone Wolf or Major Clan ... Major Clan > Dagger Star or Lone Wolf
- Limit the number of alignment shifts over a certain period of time (one per week or month, for example) or a dramatic shift is heavily penalized (a unit shifting alignment from Kurita to Davion, for example, may suffer a huge Loyalty Point penalty for Kurita and a minor LP penalty for other houses and even the Major Clans)
... along similar lines ...
- Factions that are currently not performing particularly well should offer significant rewards for players and units that join their cause
- In addition to trinkets, skins, etc. awarded with LP, LP should be a modifier to C-Bills earned for fighting for a faction, and the rewards provided for loyalty to factions that are currently the most popular (or most successful) should be less than those that are struggling

(2) If one faction or side dominates the Inner Sphere, the effects could snowball and make CW stale and/or unfun, and a "reset" or "seasons" may be necessary ... my comments first ...
- (for the players) this may be unavoidable, if it happens, it's not the end of the world
- (for PGI) please don't take away LP earned from one season to the next ... if we earn it, we should keep it
... my ideas for mitigating it ...
- there should be a balanced "supply" and "demand" between the factions and the players and units ... if one faction is in dire straits, they should be pulling out all the stops to attract players and units to join their cause ... give us more LP rewards and C-Bill rewards for joining and fighting for those factions (and make those rewards more valuable than sticking with the faction that's currently winning)

We've been waiting for this for a long time, and have lived through some pretty painful times while PGI has sorted out all manner of balance and game play issues ... there are going to be balance and game play issues with CW. There are going to be things that we as players and units will figure out and exploit that PGI (or us) could never have dreamed of. It's not the end of the world when PGI calls "all stop" and tries to fix things and (hopefully) make the game better.

Edited by Kageru Ikazuchi, 09 October 2014 - 06:18 PM.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Well the idea of taking caps is moot being the last thing I saw on that was we were only fighting on border worlds anyways

[EgoSlayer]

I like the idea of seasons for a number of reasons, many of which have been mentioned.

It allows for non-canon battles and player determined outcomes by removing the locks on the timeline for certain battles to occur or to be prevented.
It divorces it from the time line, and this is a good thing because it opens up possibilities of different time periods so that different event scenarios can be played out, canon history or other created ones. Or the time line can advance faster like 1, 2 or 5 years each month, allowing the drop decks to perhaps change with improved technology. It expands the potential technology inclusions, assuming PGI has the resources to complete some of the technology further down the time line.

It allows seasons to become a 3 month (or how ever long) tournament, with each faction having different rewards and criteria for "Victory" prize awards, e.g. cockpit items, duty ribbons, etc. Then that last three days of the season becomes doubly important of needing to hold, or accomplish some goal or set of goals.

It allows for corrections if one or more factions are dominating by population, reset and provide incentives for the lacking faction(s). Nothing says It has to be a full reset - maybe some sections only get trimmed back a little and the rest is left as is with new "victory" criteria for each faction.

And, assuming it all goes well and there is a large enough player base, maybe, just maybe, there could be more than one season running at a time each with different criteria or time lines.

I see it as all goodness and see how the seasons can be tailored to each provide different experiences so that it doesn't always seem like just the same fight over and over again.

Edited by EgoSlayer, 09 October 2014 - 07:28 PM.

[Greenjulius]

Have we established what Loyalty points are even for, besides bragging rights and silly cockpit items? If it allows me to color my mechs like the Davion Guards however... Perhaps I might stay IS for a long time, even with my Clan Wave 2 purchase.

Props to Viereth for the great art.

Otherwise, I feel like I will need the option to jump over to a clan eventually so I don't feel like I've wasted time and money buying and grinding c-bills for Wave 2 and the Kitfoxes.

Edited by Greenjulius, 09 October 2014 - 07:42 PM.

[Dracol]

KraftySOT, on 09 October 2014 - 03:35 PM, said:

with the fact most players have a 50/50 win loss rate, its not going to be dramatic.

From what I read, ELO in group/solo queue is used to push people to that 50/50 ratio, but CW will not be using ELO to determine match ups. It looks to be more of a first come, first serve (if they fit into available space) basis.

If that is the case, then it could get really dramatic.