174 replies to this topic

[Logan Hawke]

Russ Bullock, on 09 October 2014 - 10:56 AM, said:

Could be called Shards - yah would be nice to just have the 4th or even 3rd succession war.

Now that's what I'm talking about!



Plus, and I'm sure you've already considered this, it would be a way to include different eras of mechs in the competitive/clan wars scene without them being auto win buttons.

[Airox]

It would be great if after a couple trial seasons to open up to 2 servers. This would naturally require a certain level of player base. Server one would be by seasons. Server two would not have seasons. Entirely separate worlds. Both groups happy, and players like me would probably participate in both on any given day.

[Almond Brown]

Prophetic, on 09 October 2014 - 10:41 AM, said:

I'm pretty sure the seasons are a way for them to implement new content and CW upgrades/fixes.
Mercs are not even in season one.

As things get better CW should be more self sustaining and therefore longer or outright continuous.

This would make the most sense.

Mercs are in. They will just be suckling on the over-flowing coffers of the Great House starting out.

[Roadbeer]

Almond Brown, on 09 October 2014 - 11:05 AM, said:

How can a decimated Faction fight back?

This has been handled very well in the past.

Capital cannot be taken, huge bonuses for Mercs to fight for loosing factions. Huge swaths of territory was taken, but factions were able to fight back, take the offensive and even ended up with huge swaths of territory in return.

Even individual battles meant something, and taking back ground became something to be proud of. Not once was "Meh, fuckit, server is resetting in 3 days anyway" uttered.

[Logan Hawke]

Roadbeer, on 09 October 2014 - 11:12 AM, said:

This has been handled very well in the past.

Capital cannot be taken, huge bonuses for Mercs to fight for loosing factions. Huge swaths of territory was taken, but factions were able to fight back, take the offensive and even ended up with huge swaths of territory in return.

Even individual battles meant something, and taking back ground became something to be proud of. Not once was "Meh, fuckit, server is resetting in 3 days anyway" uttered.

But then it just becomes the meaningless neverending circlejerk that is planetside2. That's definitely not something I want to see this game becoming. I can't stand planetside2 because there is no closure and no goal. It's just neverending fighting over meaningless objectives for the sake of fighting. At that point it should just be an arena shooter, which would be more fun since it would have the big battles (the only fun part of PS2) all the time.
Eternal crusade is looking to handle that the right way, they are also using seasons where there's definitive victors, losers, rewards and recognition before the reset (I think they call them campaigns though). If there's no goal there's no reason to fight, and while 'I want to fight for Marik because it's Marik' is alright for some, for the majority there needs to be goals and closure and a chance at victory.

Edited by Logan Hawke, 09 October 2014 - 11:20 AM.

[KraftySOT]

The only issue there is the model for PGI staying in business. You cant give anybody to much of a bonus or you came up with a way for them to avoid paying for anything.

They seem to indicate CW is kind of a money sink, so I dont know what kind of bonus you throw the mercs/lone wolves to faction up that gets the same results.

I mean then it seems more logical to be a merc, and just always fight for the people who have the bonuses, unless you have some specific attachment to a faction for personal reasons. If being a merc in CW is more profitable than solo queue grinding, theyll all be there...which might not be a bad thing for CW (actually it would be great, theres your balance right there, people jumping to the losing faction) but it might be bad for PGIs "unit coffers" heh.

[KraftySOT]

And of course there is the fact that people like to "win" and people dont generally enjoy victory being snatched from their grasp artificially.

But as said I think a combination of both ideas...is the best bet.

You have a set of criteria for what a "win" is, and then you have an event or series of events take place when that criteria is met, and that decides that new state of the map and the next set of criteria for a win.

You can make them fairly basic and lore friendly at first. Clans take X planets, or IS defends them for 3 months. At the end of that, you have some event battles, and youre back at it, now the criteria are take these IS planets now, while the IS holds them, or if the IS won and defended them and the clans also lost the event....invade from HERE now and take X planets etc.

Break down the seasons into little "lurches" forward in the timeline. Slowly opening the way for something more dynamic and persistent.

Finding the correct "bait" is the biggest part of this I think.

If PGI can do it, throwing up little items and stuff like "Hey, Marik is losing....help them win back planets X, Y and Z, and get a free Marik battle flag for your mech cockpit!" would work without effecting the cbill or xp grind.

Its unique enough to draw players, and its something that doesnt impact the flow of $$$ for other items, which they seem to be quite happy with atm. So no reason to start throwing a ton of cbills at people.

And of course when development hits a snag and you cant advance the timeline, or heck just every other few seasons...throw us a UNIQUE ERA season.

Lets go back to a succession war for 3 months. A stock mech season. Something to change up the pace, give people something unique that theyve never had before in a single MW game. Different eras.

Edited by KraftySOT, 09 October 2014 - 11:30 AM.

[Roadbeer]

Logan Hawke, on 09 October 2014 - 11:18 AM, said:

If there's no goal there's no reason to fight, and while 'I want to fight for Marik because it's Marik' is alright for some, for the majority there needs to be goals and closure and a chance at victory.

Care to cite your sources that make your opinion the thinking of the majority?

Because I can cite dozens of games that have no "endgame" and have been in business for several years.

Edited by Roadbeer, 09 October 2014 - 11:29 AM.

[KraftySOT]

Roadbeer, on 09 October 2014 - 11:28 AM, said:

Care to cite your sources that make your opinion the thinking of the majority?

Because I can cite dozens of games that have no "endgame" and have been in business for several years.

But to be fair how many of them have been around 13+ years?

The one holding that title is Battleground Europe...that has Seasons (Campaigns)

Though this does seem to break down to two schools of thought. The planetside perpetual war, or the WWIIOL campaign seasons.

To be completely fair theyre both valid. One isnt better than the other. Its just preference. Both can be successful for many years.

Edited by KraftySOT, 09 October 2014 - 11:33 AM.

[KraftySOT]

And for more background, the WWIIOL developer guys, came from Warbirds and Airwarrior...that were both perpetual wars, with hard resets when the system failed (generally because people gamed it, like, went to the forums and asked people to get all on one team, it was a small community so that was possible) and thats the entire reason they went with seasons. It was simply to hard to manage and they had the problem with people getting sick of there never being a winner or any side loyalty. This has been going on since 1993 when Airwarrior came to Kesmai.

So this isnt a newly discovered divide between gamers.

And that said I have no idea what kind of the two MWO should be.

A combination. But thats because I think like a fan who wants everything.

Edited by KraftySOT, 09 October 2014 - 11:38 AM.

[Johnny Z]

I say let it play out and see what happens. If for instance one clan or house takes terra and is pushing everyone else then some players and guilds will take it as a challenge to push them out...

Have to give it a chance to play out for a while at least.

Not in favour of the season resets either, but make it an option for obvious reasons like bugs when it first gets up and running or other reasons.

No one on these forums really knows yet what the succession wars will be like, so its anyones guess.

[Roadbeer]

KraftySOT, on 09 October 2014 - 11:33 AM, said:

But to be fair how many of them have been around 13+ years?

The one holding that title is Battleground Europe...that has Seasons (Campaigns)

I'll give you that one, but not necessarily set in a time-frame that allows for a lot of 'wiggle room' about events. Planetside is limited to what, 3 "worlds"? Not a lot of room for a campaign, especially with only 3 "factions".

Neither is really the case here, you have great potential for a far reaching war, that spans several years over hundreds of worlds on multiple fronts, without needing to 'reset' once.

[Deathlike]

I'm not sure this is easy to balance by design.

You have two "factions" arguing over different issues.

Faction 1 - Reset everything, because if everything is lost, then there's no point in continuing a war with a lost faction. It's an uphill battle. This allows for opportunities to tweak and fix stuff after something goes horribly wrong

Faction 2 - Keep everything, because otherwise it wouldn't be a victory or just "winning". Resetting should only be a last resort of if something goes horribly wrong... Changing rules and/or actively making adjustments would help in keeping persistence while not obliterating the victories that occurred.

I think you can have both, but it wouldn't satisfy everyone.

I can go with either idea, but doing Faction 1 "resets" sucks if there is a particular faction that is underrepresented or simply inferior (in terms of the players in that faction), invoking a jump-ship mentality when a faction is never playing out well. Nothing good comes out of such an imbalance.

Faction 2 requires a lot of adjustments to be made. Remember that CW Phase #2 will have ALL matches that are Clan vs IS.

What you "could do", is have some uncontestable planets... perhaps the homeworlds of all IS factions with maybe some subsidiary planets of importance. There will always be a guaranteed income/benefit because they cannot be captured and you want to be able to reinforce the ranks quickly when losing planets. However, there are planets still to be owned and taken over.

For the purposes of the current phase of CW, every IS faction has the same # of planets to be captured by the Clans. As a particular IS faction has less planets, the opposing Clan faction would require more money to attack that particular faction... thereby not straining a particular faction and giving reason to attack the IS faction that has the most planets retained.

So, if and when a particular IS faction has lost all the "claimable" planets (or a certain section or area), perhaps a special event would occur at the homeworld or important location. This would be what most people are looking for I think. This special battle would take place over that day (24 hour period) with some lucrative rewards... both for attacker and defender. Once that ends, regardless of the results, rewards are given to the victor... and everything will be back to normal. Possibly the "tokens" required for the ailing faction will be less while the opposing Clan faction would require more... because it would make it "easier" to win back territory, thus giving opportunities for new clans/pilots to make a name for themselves, and not just let a particular faction simply "roll over and die".

For a "reset" under these circumstance (possibly for rules or newly introduced phases), perhaps the planets could be reset to "neutral". No IS faction or Clan faction would have claim to said planet... and thus actual campaigns by different factions (IS and Clans) even for inner IS-Clan conflicts. Resetting these planets to neutral would be "fair" as giving a winning faction, whether IS or Clan, a headstart is a bad idea.

I don't think this is the best idea, but it is the kind of inclusive factoring that would need to be done in order for this to be successful.

Edited by Deathlike, 09 October 2014 - 11:44 AM.

[Johnny Z]

KraftySOT, on 09 October 2014 - 11:33 AM, said:

But to be fair how many of them have been around 13+ years?

The one holding that title is Battleground Europe...that has Seasons (Campaigns)

Though this does seem to break down to two schools of thought. The planetside perpetual war, or the WWIIOL campaign seasons.

To be completely fair theyre both valid. One isnt better than the other. Its just preference. Both can be successful for many years.

I dont like either of those ideas honestly. This game has more options since it has more factions.

If a house gets wiped have a 2 week timer that make all those house warriors become ronin/lone wolves and have to fight for other factions. Then after the timer is up their faction re-emerges suddenly and with a capital in their possession and so on. Maybe their first stask would be to recapture their capital world before reinforcements can be sent to defend it since it was behind enemy lines etc.

This isnt my idea, its done in strategy games, just hasnt been done in an online game yet.

Then if a faction has managed to capture say 80% of the innersphere and hold it for 2 weeks or something, then have a reset.

The planetside purpetual war is definately no fun since there is no winner or loser ever.

If they go for faction re-emergence and great cw rewards and maybe medals for being the faction that captures the inner sphere.... It would make for some epic battles. They wont take New Avalon though!

The clan home worlds would have to be alot tougher to take since they start with nearly no territory. This would give clan worlds some character different than inner sphere worlds as well... a matter of balance only really.

Frr would be in the toughest position, but that does add character to the map. They would have to be a tough bunch or rely on high paying merc contracts or something. This is a known factor any which way it is done anyway.

The could ally some of the houses and clans or maybe just the clans? 2 or 3 factions fighting only isnt very fun though since it misses the point of a dynamic intergalactic war of epic proportions!

If they do make it FFA will the clans have an unofficial truce and head to the inner sphere without fighting? Or will Clan Jade falcon try and unite the clans before heading in?

It will be interesting either way to see how faction wars are initially implemented and what addiditons they will make.

Edited by Johnny Z, 09 October 2014 - 12:23 PM.

[KraftySOT]

Roadbeer, on 09 October 2014 - 11:38 AM, said:

I'll give you that one, but not necessarily set in a time-frame that allows for a lot of 'wiggle room' about events. Planetside is limited to what, 3 "worlds"? Not a lot of room for a campaign, especially with only 3 "factions".

Neither is really the case here, you have great potential for a far reaching war, that spans several years over hundreds of worlds on multiple fronts, without needing to 'reset' once.

Very true, and WWIIOL had a 1:2 scale of all of north west Europe with hand built towns...it took ages to fight over.

The mechanic that seems easiest to achieve a perpetual 3 year long war, would be the mechanic governing how fast a planet changes hands. If it takes a week or two...you can do that without EVER worrying about something running away like mad quickly, and you always have the IMPRESSION at least, that you can in theory, "win the inner sphere".

I think thats what keeps planetside going, is the impression that in theory, you can win. It just doesnt usually or ever happen. I perferred the seasons to the perpetual war, but simply because it was more complex and challenging.

If you can bring persistence in a way that isnt just handing out cbills to mercs to get them to lulz horde whoever needs smacking down to size...that still offers the impression that you can "win"

Youve got a winner.

Johnny Z, on 09 October 2014 - 11:43 AM, said:

I dont like either of those ideas honestly. This game has more options since it has more factions.

If a house gets wiped have a 2 week timer that make all those house warriors become ronin/lone wolves and have to fight for other factions. Then after the timer is up their faction re-emerges suddenly and with a capital in their possession and so on. Maybe their first stask would be to recapture their capital world before reinforcements can be sent to defend it since it was behind enemy lines etc.

Also not a bad idea...requires "divine intervention" from PGI though, meaning they have to actively monitor things beyond the period where theyre actively monitoring to make sure it even works, then probably pull down the server and change things.

You know...

Im not even sure PGI can update the CW map without a patch?

Deathlike, on 09 October 2014 - 11:43 AM, said:

I'm not sure this is easy to balance by design.

You have two "factions" arguing over different issues.

Faction 1 - Reset everything, because if everything is lost, then there's no point in continuing a war with a lost faction. It's an uphill battle. This allows for opportunities to tweak and fix stuff after something goes horribly wrong

Faction 2 - Keep everything, because otherwise it wouldn't be a victory or just "winning". Resetting should only be a last resort of if something goes horribly wrong... Changing rules and/or actively making adjustments would help in keeping persistence while not obliterating the victories that occurred.

I think you can have both, but it wouldn't satisfy everyone.

I can go with either idea, but doing Faction 1 "resets" sucks if there is a particular faction that is underrepresented or simply inferior (in terms of the players in that faction), invoking a jump-ship mentality when a faction is never playing out well. Nothing good comes out of such an imbalance.

Faction 2 requires a lot of adjustments to be made. Remember that CW Phase #2 will have ALL matches that are Clan vs IS.

What you "could do", is have some uncontestable planets... perhaps the homeworlds of all IS factions with maybe some subsidiary planets of importance. There will always be a guaranteed income/benefit because they cannot be captured and you want to be able to reinforce the ranks quickly when losing planets. However, there are planets still to be owned and taken over.

For the purposes of the current phase of CW, every IS faction has the same # of planets to be captured by the Clans. As a particular IS faction has less planets, the opposing Clan faction would require more money to attack that particular faction... thereby not straining a particular faction and giving reason to attack the IS faction that has the most planets retained.

So, if and when a particular IS faction has lost all the "claimable" planets (or a certain section or area), perhaps a special event would occur at the homeworld or important location. This would be what most people are looking for I think. This special battle would take place over that day (24 hour period) with some lucrative rewards... both for attacker and defender. Once that ends, regardless of the results, rewards are given to the victor... and everything will be back to normal. Possibly the "tokens" required for the ailing faction will be less while the opposing Clan faction would require more... because it would make it "easier" to win back territory, thus giving opportunities for new clans/pilots to make a name for themselves, and not just let a particular faction simply "roll over and die".

For a "reset" under these circumstance (possibly for rules or newly introduced phases), perhaps the planets could be reset to "neutral". No IS faction or Clan faction would have claim to said planet... and thus actual campaigns by different factions (IS and Clans) even for inner IS-Clan conflicts. Resetting these planets to neutral would be "fair" as giving a winning faction, whether IS or Clan, a headstart is a bad idea.

I don't think this is the best idea, but it is the kind of inclusive factoring that would need to be done in order for this to be successful.

Yeah this sounds like Roadbeers idea about the "win criteria"

This is how I think a combination idea would work.

It might not please everyone, but it doesnt really piss off either camp either.

[Logan Hawke]

Roadbeer, on 09 October 2014 - 11:28 AM, said:

Care to cite your sources that make your opinion the thinking of the majority?

Because I can cite dozens of games that have no "endgame" and have been in business for several years.

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.

Edited by Logan Hawke, 09 October 2014 - 11:54 AM.

[KraftySOT]

You know what breaks immersion?

Real freaking life. I also am agape at that as a reason for anything outside of some Occulus Rift game.

Did the loading screen not already break that?

[KraftySOT]

And frankly the same argument exists the other way too. Doing the same campaign over and over again, is a "never ending campaign. It might seem nifty at first, pretty soon it just becomes stale and falls into patterns"

Its really only stale either way, if it becomes stale to you. Intellectual pursuits are still subject to the same entropy as everything else in the world.

No matter what we do, this game will eventually wither and die, just like all of us. How we get there is the important part and you cant use the inevitable result of life itself, stop you from doing something.

If you have a good solid reason to do one or the other, thats great...but just because it will eventually fall apart isnt a solid reason. Youll hit the same end result regardless of the path taken. Especially when its just an esoteric opinion pined by someone who just so happens to like seasons over a perpetual war.

I even like seasons myself...but id like to, if its possible, have a discussion on the merits of the two and decide which one we like, rather than just pine away like Kafka.

Edited by KraftySOT, 09 October 2014 - 12:01 PM.

[Logan Hawke]

KraftySOT, on 09 October 2014 - 11:59 AM, said:

And frankly the same argument exists the other way too. Doing the same campaign over and over again, is a "never ending campaign. It might seem nifty at first, pretty soon it just becomes stale and falls into patterns"

Its really only stale either way, if it becomes stale to you. Intellectual pursuits are still subject to the same entropy as everything else in the world.

No matter what we do, this game will eventually wither and die, just like all of us. How we get there is the important part and you cant use the inevitable result of life itself, stop you from doing something.

If you have a good solid reason to do one or the other, thats great...but just because it will eventually fall apart isnt a solid reason. Youll hit the same end result regardless of the path taken. Especially when its just an esoteric opinion pined by someone who just so happens to like seasons over a perpetual war.

I even like seasons myself...but id like to, if its possible, have a discussion on the merits of the two and decide which one we like, rather than just pine away like Kafka.

The thing with seasons is that not only can each one be different internally (in other words, different players in different factions making different actions), you can also run what I mentioned earlier and which Russ named 'shards'. Different campaign settings. It's like with legos. Sure, a few blocks can get boring pretty fast, but do you know how many possible combinations exist for six 2x4 lego bricks?
915,103,765
What I'm trying to say is that, while the same season over and over again gets old, multiple different ones exponentially increase possibilities for exciting and interesting outcomes.

[Roadbeer]

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.

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.

Edited by Roadbeer, 09 October 2014 - 12:25 PM.