34 replies to this topic

[WardenWolf]

The devs stated recently that the fourth of their main gameplay pillars, Community Warfare, will not be ready at game launch. Since it sounds like it is still being worked on, but hasn't been finalized (if it isn't yet implemented), I wanted to put in some ideas I had about how this could work. Devs, if you are listening, I hope this helps


The Big Idea:

To me, what the devs have described so far about CW makes sense. There will be borders between major powers which are contested, with some changing of hands taking place - but no major changes to core planets, outside of dev-driven events. Here is how I would want to see that work:

On each border between major powers, one to three planets would be 'contested' at any given time. The number would depend on the size of the border involved. As battles are fought, a slider would move back and forth between the two factions involved. Once it got to a 'tipping point' of a certain number of battles won or a certain percentage of victories for a given side, then control would change hands and a different planet would be contested instead.


Faction Restrictions on Battles:

- A given House-affiliated player would be able to participate in any battle in which his faction is involved.

- When grouped with other faction players, a House-affiliated player could then participate in any battle as long as it did *not* involve going against his own house. This would allow more flexibility in grouping with friends who may not have the same alignment.

- A lone-wolf Merc could join any battle at any time

- Someone in the employ of a Merc company could also join any battle at any time, but companies would have the option to sign up on a contract with a specific house. That would give their members a boost to income when fighting for that house, with the trade-off being that they could not fight against that house while the contract was in effect.


Faction Benefits:

- Joining a House faction would also have perks, like discounts on certain weapons or mechs perhaps. This, along with a ranking system, would be there to offset the more limited selection of battles.

- Rank in a House might confer some special abilities: selecting the next planet to be attacked at the highest ranks, and many priority selection to be lance or company commander at lower levels. There could even be a threshold at which a player could be allowed to set up faction-oriented groups for other players.

- Merc companies would be able to set their own ranks as desired.

- Merc companies could also fight eachother for control of periphery worlds. These would be much more structured - decided by single battles or small campaigns, instead of over the course of days or weeks. They would also confer some benefit to those in control of the various worlds available (similar to faction boosts, but not as large unless your merc group controlled more than a few worlds).

- Lone wolf players would gain reputation with a faction as they fight for it, and lose reputation when they fight against it. This could have some small impact on the pay rate (houses might pay more for mercs they like).


Control Screen:

What I would envision the interface looking like, when going to join a battle (once CW is in-game) is as follows. You have a screen with a map of the Inner Sphere at the top, covering a good part of the screen. There are controls to move around, zoom in and out, etc. Links to the mechlab, settings, the in-game store, etc would be around the edge - but the main thing besides the map would be the tollowing buttons:

- Next Available Battle

- Select Battle

The first would simply queue you up, in your selected mech, for the next battle which you qualify for. The later would pop out a list, below the main map, of the various planets currently being contested on which you could fight. The list would show basics, like who is fighting over the planet, and then clicking on a given battle would zoom to that planet on the map.

From there, you could then review planetary conditions (see next section) that might be applicable to what mech to bring. You could also see which side is winning, and what the pay for fighting there is (maybe offer higher pay for mercs joining on sides that are losing and/or have less players queued up, to help balance things out). You could then queue up for that battle, or select another.

For folks joining in a group, only the person who started the group (invited the others) would be able to actually make these selections, but all the players could view the info.


Planetary Stats:

- Population, which determines the relatively likelihood of fighting in a city map

- Planet / ecosystem type, which determines things like temperature and eligibility of some maps (a desert planet would never have an icy map, for example)

- Temperature, which would affect how effective heatsinks are and also relate to the ecosystem

- Gravity (if they have it vary, which would be really neat!)

Those would help players pick an appropriate mech to bring, which would have to be decided on before joining the battle and finding out the exact map used, etc. This would prevent people from cherry-picking the best mech to bring, while allowing them to make an informed decision... and it would be the advantage of folks who manually selected where to fight. The advantage for the folks who simply quick-join is less downtime, making for a nice trade-off.


At Launch:
As enough players queue up on each side of a battle, the matchmaking system could select from the groups and individual players an appropriate force for each side. Ideally this would be balanced somehow - either by tonnage or some sort of 'battle value'. If going with BV, it could factor in tonnage, weapon types, and even player stats (behind the scenes, of course).

While that is going on, the matchmaker would also pick an exact map and semi-random weather conditions, based on what is likely given the planet's stats. Day vs night (and maybe dawn / dusk too), clear vs cloudy, optional rain, snow, and fog... maybe even other things I haven't considered would all be picked here by the server.

Once the group for each side is assigned, all the players would be dropped into a short waiting area while everyone's map loads. This would last for 30-60 seconds, and would let people say hi. If an established chain of command is to be enforced, this is when it would be assigned. Then once the time is up, everyone is dropped into the game and it goes from there!


I'm curious to see what other folks envision when they hear the devs talk about community warfare, and I hope these ideas can help shape this game into one everyone in the community will love! Thanks for reading

Edited by WardenWolf, 25 June 2012 - 08:29 PM.

[seta]

got to say i like your ideas and think that would be cool to see. but insted of a permant house benefits i think it would be more intersting if the leavel of the benefits where determand by how many of the contested world are in a house/merc company control. the idea being that if a house or merc company has more plants thay also have more resorses.

[Radick]

First, I would like to say this is all well written. Now, there is something I have to say.

WardenWolf, on 25 June 2012 - 08:28 PM, said:

- Someone in the employ of a Merc company could also join any battle at any time, but companies would have the option to sign up on a contract with a specific house. That would give their members a boost to income when fighting for that house, with the trade-off being that they could not fight against that house while the contract was in effect.

I am glad that you say that a mercenary employed by a company can not attack the House that the company is working for, However, I think a mercenary employed by a mercenary company should not be able to, or at the very least take a penalty, for joining up with an enemy of the company's employer. This make sense because a mercenary company would not want their reputation hurt because one of their hired hands worked for the enemy. I still think there should be a bonus for working specifically for the House the mercenary's company is working for. This maybe would be a bonus from the company as well as a payment from the House.

Here would be a possible example explaining my idea: Jeremy Smith is a mercenary. He is in the mercenary company Crazed Carnivores. This mercenary company is working for House Davion. House Davion is only at war with House Kurita. Jeremy Smith can take up contracts for all Houses except Kurita. Jeremy can not fight with a group attacking House Davion. Jeremy will get a bonus if he fights alongside House Davion.

I hope that scenario explains any possible misconceptions that could be derived from my statements. Other than this point here, I think I could agree with WardenWolf. Feel free to discuss.

<S>

Edit: I implemented a minor fix to the reply, everything should be good now.

Edited by Radick, 26 June 2012 - 08:52 PM.

[WardenWolf]

seta, on 26 June 2012 - 04:34 PM, said:

got to say i like your ideas and think that would be cool to see. but insted of a permant house benefits i think it would be more intersting if the leavel of the benefits where determand by how many of the contested world are in a house/merc company control. the idea being that if a house or merc company has more plants thay also have more resorses.

That is a fantastic idea! At the same time, I would hate for a losing side to end up in a death spiral as they lose planets and any bonus associated with them. Perhaps something that cuts both ways: planets confer bonuses to advancement (+1% XP gain for your faction, cheaper mechs of a certain chassis, etc) but losing battles also gives a benefit: cheaper repairs and reloads, maybe, to give defenders a sense of more urgency and funds being poured in from their government as they start to lose ground? Anyway, great food for thought!

[WardenWolf]

Radick, on 26 June 2012 - 05:01 PM, said:

Here would be a possible example explaining my idea: Jeremy Smith is a mercenary. He is in the mercenary company Crazed Carnivores. This mercenary company is working for House Davion. House Davion is only at war with House Kurita. Jeremy Smith can take up contracts for all Houses except Kurita. Jeremy can not fight with a group attacking House Davion. Jeremy will get a bonus if he fights alongside House Davion.

I think that is what I had in mind, save for the addition of no fighting for a house at war with the one you are affiliated. Using your example, I would have thought that fighting for Kurita against another house (but not Davion) would be okay for the merc... but I can definitely see where a contract might forbid that altogether. I just don't want to limit things too much, and make merc players (who should have more freedom than house players) feel stuck.

Lets expand on this, with your example. It is likely that the Davions will be at war with Kurita and the Capellans - so they could still fight for the FRR, Marik, or Stiener. I guess that is enough potential combat opportunities, and I think each house is likely to have 2 enemies it borders and fights, so this would apply to any house-contracted mercs. Good call, Radick

[Seabear]

I like the general ideas presented here. I would add one element to the list - that of selecting the border upon which the unit is deployed. For example, since I claim the Southwestern worlds as home, I would focus on the Lyran border battles. The idea of fighting one battle on the Lyran front and immediately jumping into the next battle on the Capellan front. No, wait! The Capellans are our trusted allies.... By focusing on one front rivlries will form as one faces many of the same units in combat multiple times - just as happened in the lore. As well, many units would begin to idenify with cetain planets and regions as they establish a sphere of influence - something many posterson the forums seem to want.

[Radick]

Seabear, on 26 June 2012 - 09:25 PM, said:

.... By focusing on one front rivlries will form as one faces many of the same units in combat multiple times - just as happened in the lore. As well, many units would begin to idenify with cetain planets and regions as they establish a sphere of influence - something many posterson the forums seem to want.

I personally like this idea, it will add to the community warfare. Say it takes a day to transfer to a different front. The Kuritans decide that they are going to attack against a Davion homeworld. The Davions expect some attack and have some people stationed. The Kuritans decide they want to powerhouse the invasion and organize a massive group of people for the assault. They go through with the plan and start hitting the Davions hard. I do not think it would be hard to have the devs set up a system where general battle value of the units is higher for Kurita, or they could even give them more units. This would give the Davion players a good reason to ask all their friends to help out so they are not put up against superior units/numbers. Then maybe a few days later, if Davion players are willing to risk not playing for a day, the numbers start to shift back to a "fair" amount on each side (War is never fair).

There could also be a different form of transfer for mercenary companies. They could pay a large sum of C-bills to move all of their equipment/battlemechs/pilots and other things. This would be instant but costly. It would make sense to have a difference between the transfer of a mercenary company and a House player. The House player for example might have to wait for the next dropship off (the next day), but he is employed by the military and all his expenses are payed for. Now, for the lone wolf mercenary, he may have to also pay as a company would but it would be a lot cheaper (yet still pricy enough not to constantly change at the players every whim) because he is only transporting himself and his battlemech.

Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

Radick,
<S>

[WardenWolf]

I have heard a lot of folks on other parts of the forum complain about not wanting *any* time sinks outside of actual gameplay, so I suspect that requiring time to travel from one front to another or something would not fly with much of the game population. Also, it would limit the number of battles a give player could choose from at a time, which means longer queue times for each individual battle. Its a nice idea from a canon / lore perspective, but I don't think it is transferable to a MMO

[Radick]

WardenWolf, on 27 June 2012 - 12:21 PM, said:

I have heard a lot of folks on other parts of the forum complain about not wanting *any* time sinks outside of actual gameplay, so I suspect that requiring time to travel from one front to another or something would not fly with much of the game population. Also, it would limit the number of battles a give player could choose from at a time, which means longer queue times for each individual battle. Its a nice idea from a canon / lore perspective, but I don't think it is transferable to a MMO

Okay I understand this point. Time sinks would suck. I do think that if they made it so there was some type of transfer time it would make choosing a front more important, just like choosing your battlemech would be important. I assume that you will not be able to just buy whatever battlemech with whatever weapons/equipment whenever you feel like it. I hope that you will have enough C-bills to buy a battlemech or two with the weapons/equipment you want and than work towards other designs and battlemechs you decide you want. This takes time too.

I guess that a player could make the argument that they will not get to play a lot because of real life and they want to be able to play when they can. This is simple to take care of. They either play where they are, which should have plenty of fun battles too, or, they decide to go to a different front the day before. It does not take long to log in, pick a front to travel to and log out. This should not really mess up their real life. There is of course the other type of player that has all the time in the world. My advice to them would be to pick there fronts carefully, and then spend a quality amount of time at them. This would help groups become known in certain areas as already said in an earlier reply.

I really do think it would be cool to have certain bands of warriors respected and/or feared in certain fronts. This would help people to get to know different groups by either repeatedly fight alongside or against them. What do you think?

Radick,
<S>

[CCC Dober]

OP: Not too shabby for a first idea, nice =)

I'd ask you to add two things that could be considered necessary:
1. objectives (primary, seondary, tertiary, optional, special etc) and how they might not just affect the current, but nearby and following battles
2. suggest methods to avoid/suppress exploitation - think in worst case scenarios, i.e. organised group vs pubbies, faction overload tipping the global balance etc.

[WardenWolf]

CCC Dober, on 27 June 2012 - 01:41 PM, said:

OP: Not too shabby for a first idea, nice =)

I'd ask you to add two things that could be considered necessary:
1. objectives (primary, seondary, tertiary, optional, special etc) and how they might not just affect the current, but nearby and following battles
2. suggest methods to avoid/suppress exploitation - think in worst case scenarios, i.e. organised group vs pubbies, faction overload tipping the global balance etc.

Thanks for the feedback!

1) At the moment it seems that the only game mode is going to be team wipe / base capture, but if alternate game modes were available then I could see that working into this. For example, when a planet from faction A is attacked by faction B, at first the battles might be focused on team B needing to capture A's base (an assault mode, so to speak). Once enough of those had been won it might progress to a more normal mode, and then eventually if B continues to win more than they lose maybe it would change to another game mode. Just ideas at this point, since it would involve altering another of the core pillars, but definitely neat to think about!

2) I would have balance in a couple of ways:

One, faction population balance could be aided by having mercenary players offered better pay for entering a battle on the side of a faction with less players. That way if there are 50 people from faction A trying to join a battle but only 20 people from faction B, mercs could fill in to increase the ranks of faction B's side and keep the queue from being too long for faction A players.

Also, as one faction starts to lose ground in the overall map the matchmaker might start to skew balance *slightly* in their favor. Giving then a 5% tonnage advantage, for example, or something like that; maybe even increasing the advantage as they lose more ground. This would make it harder to push a given faction too far back into their territory.

Because the more core worlds couldn't change hands anyway, I think that might be enough - but this sort of balance stuff would likely have to be tweaked by the devs as time goes on.

Keep the ideas and questions coming!

[CCC Dober]

As for your balance considerations, you might keep those canon units in mind that are considered 'untouchable'. Their political and military influence might have an impact on how fights are balanced. If you take Steiner's top notch Elite units, then you could assume to face much stiffer resistance the more you are closing in on core worlds or home planets/protectorates of said units. I wouldn't be surprised if reinfocements would suddenly show up in the middle of the fight or if the enemy unit suddenly lacks a Mech or two because their dropship got 'compromised'. Stuff like that always happened in the novels. In return, the influence of said 'untouchable' units rapidly diminishes with the distance of the fight from their 'turf'. Another thing to consider are roaming fleets or rapid response/strike forces that prowl the borders. I'm not too sure if something like this has been taken into account in BT. But I sure know that it's part of 40k (see Cadian Gate and Boros Gate as examples) and I think that makes for a welcome layer of forward defense. The main idea is to have a sizeable force of top notch units that can react to changing situations with overwhelming firepower in a very short time. It is technically possible in BT given the added flexibility of jumpdrives equipped with Lithium batteries, allowing 2 jumps in short order instead of just 1. The possible jump range allows to bypass forward defenses on border worlds.

But the main problem still remains and that is how the influence of organised teams can be compensated for when they are intent on pubstomping. Sure it's fun for them, but if they are distorting the balance of power and also at the expense of new/disorganised players, then you might be inclined to agree that this is something working against the spirit of the game. Lone Wolfs and small Merc units will not be able to enjoy the game if it comes to that. In essence it may just force people to stick to larger Clans in order to not get stomped and discarded like they don't matter.

If the game gives all players enough information, tools and individual objectives to organize themselves it might work out. But still, an organised group would have better communication and unit cohesion on their side. Some sort of ranking system could help to close the gap, but I'm not holding my breath that it can do the job all by itself. It's a team game after all and not really a one-man-army thing. The metrics to judge performance of individuals or random groups are very, very different. So the question remains: what can be done to further close the gap between an organised unit and a seemingly disorganised unit when they are matched?

[WardenWolf]

CCC Dober, on 28 June 2012 - 03:03 AM, said:

So the question remains: what can be done to further close the gap between an organised unit and a seemingly disorganised unit when they are matched?

In the case of one side of a battle being fully organized and the other not at all, I am not sure what can be done. Sometimes (rarely) a team with several stellar individual pilots may stand a good chance... and hopefully there will be a good implementation of orders and rewards to make the role warfare work out with a commander for the team as well as individual lances. Still, organization will often win out.

If this becomes a big enough issue that balance is required, then the matchmaker could potentially take into account players being grouped when they queue up. Perhaps have their tonnage or battle value artificially increased - 10% higher if a full lance enters together, 20% higher if the entire team is pre-made. That way the opposing team would have a boost in tonnage on their side to help compensate.

A lot of this is extreme theorycrafting, though, until we see what sort of matchmaking the devs actually implement. Once we know that, we can make more specific suggestions about how to balance and counteract one faction overwhelming another due to player organization.

[WardenWolf]

Radick, on 27 June 2012 - 01:15 PM, said:

I guess that a player could make the argument that they will not get to play a lot because of real life and they want to be able to play when they can. This is simple to take care of. They either play where they are, which should have plenty of fun battles too, or, they decide to go to a different front the day before. It does not take long to log in, pick a front to travel to and log out. This should not really mess up their real life. There is of course the other type of player that has all the time in the world. My advice to them would be to pick there fronts carefully, and then spend a quality amount of time at them. This would help groups become known in certain areas as already said in an earlier reply.

Think about how much you want to be in the beta, playing MWO - assuming you are not - and then tell me if you think you'd be okay with having large blocks of time like that for as long as the game is out, where you couldn't play because your character was in transit between war fronts. It sounds nice on paper, adds a small amount of realism, etc... but in today's fast-paced world it wouldn't fly with 90%+ of the playerbase (myself included, I think).

In a single-player game, where time could be sped up, maybe... but here I think we will have to sacrifice a lot of realism in order to gain mass appeal and make the game fun. What the community warfare pillar should be about is drawing players together and giving a metagame, or overarching goals for players outside of individual battles, which will keep folks playing and give rewards for factions or merc companies working well together

[CCC Dober]

Yes, essentially it's theory and may not happen at all. Still, games like WoT or Space Marine showed me that team balance is a problem that has not been sufficiently solved in all these years, although you could rightfully assume that there would be enough skill and budget available in case of Space Marine. Also, LoLs system (ELO) can easily balance individual players, but it's not able to account for the synergies of good team play and inherent numerical advantages during confrontations. This is only negated if both sides display a similar level of skill.

So yeah, chances are that team balance will become a big topic sooner or later, unless the pillar can deal with it sufficiently.

[Radick]

WardenWolf, on 28 June 2012 - 09:07 AM, said:

Think about how much you want to be in the beta, playing MWO - assuming you are not - and then tell me if you think you'd be okay with having large blocks of time like that for as long as the game is out, where you couldn't play because your character was in transit between war fronts. It sounds nice on paper, adds a small amount of realism, etc... but in today's fast-paced world it wouldn't fly with 90%+ of the playerbase (myself included, I think).

In a single-player game, where time could be sped up, maybe... but here I think we will have to sacrifice a lot of realism in order to gain mass appeal and make the game fun. What the community warfare pillar should be about is drawing players together and giving a metagame, or overarching goals for players outside of individual battles, which will keep folks playing and give rewards for factions or merc companies working well together

I already said it would suck to have a time sink. I also said it would make it more important to pick were you wanted to fight. If you actually think about which front you want to fight on and then stay their for a few days or a week, then you are not losing a lot of time traveling between worlds. You could even live without time sinks at all buy planning your travel times to fit in with times in real life that you will be doing something other than gaming.

Before you bring up the point of people who pay for premium accounts I will explain that as well. It could be as simple as premium accounts have no downtime between fronts. This way those people who want to play more during their premium time can play all the time that they paid for without any hindrance.

Radick,
<S>

[Fire for Effect]

Nice idea sounds quite reasonable in the broad perspective. Maybe there needs to be some small things ironed out but in general sounds good

[WardenWolf]

Radick, on 28 June 2012 - 01:53 PM, said:

Before you bring up the point of people who pay for premium accounts I will explain that as well. It could be as simple as premium accounts have no downtime between fronts. This way those people who want to play more during their premium time can play all the time that they paid for without any hindrance.

Uh oh, don't give the Devs any crazy ideas!

[Radick]

WardenWolf, on 28 June 2012 - 03:03 PM, said:

Uh oh, don't give the Devs any crazy ideas!

What is wrong with allowing premium players to move more freely? It has nothing to do with balance in the combat and allows them to play all of their premium time. It would be bad business practice to limit their playing time since they actually paid for it. It could also encourage people to pay without giving them an advantage during fights. I see nothing wrong with this, do you?

Radick,
<S>

[IceSerpent]

Just a few comments...

WardenWolf, on 25 June 2012 - 08:28 PM, said:

On each border between major powers, one to three planets would be 'contested' at any given time. The number would depend on the size of the border involved.

It's better to base it on the number of players currently online, who associate with a given faction. This way a more heavily populated faction can fight more battles and you don't run in a problem with 12 players trying to defend 3 planets at once.

Quote

As battles are fought, a slider would move back and forth between the two factions involved. Once it got to a 'tipping point' of a certain number of battles won or a certain percentage of victories for a given side, then control would change hands and a different planet would be contested instead.

This is essentially how it was done in ISW (Inner Sphere Wars) and it caused an issue with neither side being able to progress, especially when "core" teams are in different timezones. I.e. one side wins a few fights, players go to bed, the other side gets their A-team online and pushes the slider back.

I think a better way of doing it is to have different planets having different number of "mechs in the garrison", which would determine how many mechs can be killed on each side. Let's say a planet has a garrison of 3 companies (36 mechs). Regardless of how many players are on each team, the planet changes hands if attackers get 36 kills and remains under the same flag (just stops being contested) if defenders get 36 kills. This works the same way whether it's lance vs. lance or company vs. company battles, just the number of matches changes.

Edit: Just thought of something - to prevent losing team from playing hide-and seek until the end of the match, the victory conditions should be to either get required number of kills (i.e. "wipe the opposing foce") or achieve the required number of objectives. Something like a planet with 3 companies in garrison also has 3 bases to capture, which work like you originally suggested (slider). The team that gets all 3 objectives in a row (pushes slider all the way) wins regardless of casualties, provided that they don't run out of mechs in the process.

Quote

- Joining a House faction would also have perks, like discounts on certain weapons or mechs perhaps. This, along with a ranking system, would be there to offset the more limited selection of battles.

The amount (and possibly type) of planets your House currently owns should also affect those perks, i.e. the more industrial words - the cheaper repairs or something like that.

Quote

- Lone wolf players would gain reputation with a faction as they fight for it, and lose reputation when they fight against it. This could have some small impact on the pay rate (houses might pay more for mercs they like).

Same should go for merc companies - even though they fight on a different set of worlds, I think those border worlds are still part of a House, so loyalty points should affect mercs' benefits.

Edited by IceSerpent, 28 June 2012 - 04:49 PM.