257 replies to this topic

[Fragnot]

Averen, on 19 December 2014 - 02:03 PM, said:

Stomping pugs, whuich have inherently less coordination, is not what teamwork, or Community Warfare, is about. This isn't about PUGS and Premades, both can exist just fine in CW, it's about MATCHMAKING.

I'm not so sure about that...I think Community Warfare is about seeing which Units can own the most planets for their Faction.

[RG Notch]

I'm going to waste my time asking this again in one of these threads, although it seems once a thread goes past a certain point no one reads anything unless they're being quoted but, anyways: If 12 man units are so prevalent that they dominate CW and the group queues, why shouldn't PGI cater to them? If they aren't so numerous as to be that influential, then why are people so hung up about them? It seems like it should be either or. EITHER they are so numerous that they can provide the numbers and cash to keep the game running OR they are vastly outnumbered by the PUGs and casuals and shouldn't be that common.
My opinion is that they aren't numerous enough to fund the game nor for people to be constantly encountering them. It seems like people run into them on occasion and they are simply a boogie man to use to push for more catering to the casuals.
Also I haven't run in groups large or small in a long time and don't have a problem dropping against them occasionally in CW. My anecdotal evidence is that they aren't all that common, at least not when I've been playing.
Also bonus points if someone can tell me how there can be a matchmaker to match unit size that allows choosing planets to attack that doesn't involve enormous waiting times.
Although I figure all I'm going to see is the same people going back and forth in quotes.

[psihius]

After spectating some solo match players, and mostly group queue, I can say that this is natural, Just like in the lore - IS is a bunch of meat that can't fight clans until they have an upper hand 2-3 times and just zerg-rushing clanners. Also, many clan units are comprised of highly-skilled players, that are able able to put damage into same location over and over of you are not using your speed.

Just to illustrate - my unit, VRGD (FRR I might say, Inner Sphere), was pounding a planet, we won 4 matches in a row, not as a 12 man, but 9 of us and 3 randoms. Well, one guy in one of the matches brought to attack 4 LRM mech's - PURE LRM BOATS WITH NO F****ING SUPPORT. Did 130 damage in 25 minutes, basically he was useless (well, he was a juicy bait, so helped as a punching bag). Other randoms did better, but nothing to be worth mentioning. We did most of the heavy lifting.

I can't say we are like all great at this game (certainly not like LORD's), not all of us are top notch players (although we have some), but we are decent and don't hide from a challenge, we try to play pro-active, we don't sit behind one cover half the game - we like to push enemies back, take better positions. Well, one thing I can say for sure - we don't suck at aiming... And what I have evidenced in the group random play - 70% really SUCK at aiming... Like totally. It's one thing to shoot a firestarter with AC/20 at close range and another at missing an atlas at 100m with AC/20, SRM's, even some times lasers....

So, just look at yourself. If you are not able to bring 500-600 damage from a random game at least half the time, you are bad at shooting or/and tactics. In cheese builds at least 700...

Why Clans play better? Well, did you see the requirements and rigorous training programs units employ? If you are not at least at the middle level generally, they just reject you... And this is why clans may win more. There are just not that many great units on the IS side to offset clans. But we have some, who are able to push back and even offensive. Give it time, people will learn, adapt, skill up.

Edited by psihius, 22 December 2014 - 01:52 PM.

[AlmightyAeng]

psihius, on 22 December 2014 - 01:41 PM, said:

So, just look at yourself. If you are not able to bring 500-600 damage from a random game at least half the time, you are bad at shooting or/and tactics. In cheese builds at least 700...

Lol...if you're playing a Public Queue game.

Up that 'doing decently' number to about 800, with an expectation of at least 1000 in good games as a low baseline.

[psihius]

Ghost Badger, on 22 December 2014 - 01:43 PM, said:

Lol...if you're playing a Public Queue game.

Up that 'doing decently' number to about 800, with an expectation of at least 1000 in good games as a low baseline.

Not everyones ELO bracket allows to rip 800-1000 damage matches all the time. And secondly, if you you get to 1000 damage, that can be two things: you either ripped appart 6-7 enemies, probably as many kills and shoot more or less everybody else and you are awesome, but enemies probably where just dumb (I had a match like that, got my "Ace of spades" for 9 kills and 2 more assists - 2 months ago) or you are bad at killing enemies and spraying them with damage all over the place and not really doing much killing.

And besides, you may have your prefered mech that you play uber-well, but can you play a wide range of them like that? Thought most of the chassis and classes (i'm bad with lights, mostly with the surviving aspect), not just your prefered 2-3 mech models.

In CW big damage is not a good thing, that means you spend too much time not killing anyone. A kill has to be swift - 3-4 volleys and enemy should be at least without half a mech. If you rack up like 10-15 kills with 1.5-2k damage - that's good. If you rack up like 3k+ - your aim is crap. And you can't shoot exposed enemy locations to finish them off decently. Or just don't know the soft spots.

As an example - a good gaus jagger pilot kills 4-5 people with a bunch of assists doing under 400 damage. That's a good aim and good efficiency and minimal waste of ammo.

Edited by psihius, 22 December 2014 - 02:29 PM.

[N0MAD]

If youre a solo player or a small group and not enjoying CW take the advice of the people like Sandpit, go back to the Pub Q.
What the casual/solo player forgets is they are truly the majority, let your numbers count, go back to the Pub Q and see how CW develops with only the Larger groups playing it.
Do you wonder why the Large groups dont want a seperate solo Q in CW? if you do just look at how the 12 man group Q was populated..
The Pub group Q is doing very well atm, very short waiting times, good battles against many small teams, altho over the last week i see alot of bigger groups there.
Just saying..

[DaFrog]

I am done with Community Warfare. Time Consuming. Not enjoyable. Impossible to oust premade CLAN units sporting artillery, ecm and so on. Spent 5 solid days and over 40 matches on it. I give up.

[Kjudoon]

ztac, on 19 December 2014 - 01:03 PM, said:

12 mans can slaughter PUG's again ... hooray !
Is this what CW was all about ? Certainly feels that way . Still it's only redeeming feature is longer battle time and multiple drops ... other than that it is quite boring and gets very old very fast . 2 years and this is what is on offer?

Well, we kinda knew that going in this was 'hard mode' for every solo player. It's designed for teams and team players. Sorry, but that's been the case since day one. I do understand your pain though cause I dropped one or two solo matches and boy... they suck.

The problem is not the unit v. pug drops. That's an old issue that goes back to open release. It's the anybody v. nobody "ghost drops" actually COUNTING as victories. They shouldn't.

Solve this and a multitude of other problems get solved. Of course, it raises the problems of "Absentee defense" where you just don't send ANY units to defend and it can't be attacked.

Another way to deal with it and probably the easiest and best, is making every victory count during a period, and eliminate sectors completely. So if a unit is able to get 151 wins versus another teams 120, they win the world. Now every match matters, only matches contested count, planet sniping doesn't exist because you can't overwhelm them and flip a planet with only minutes remaining unless you have a body of work put in beforehand. This would be themost equitable solution I can think of to date... simple too. It also won't matter if you have a larger population either because only contested matches count AND that means both sides have a zero sum game of who takes them. Even if a faction has 300 units total and the other has 75 units, it's only the battles fought that matter. So if each unit fights once for a world, only 75 matches will matter for that world because it could only be defended 75 times. The numerical superiority then becomes a disadvantage.

If PGI wanted to prevent absentee defense by causing worlds left undefended by any defender for 2 days to become 'rebellious' and leave for the attacker, that could help there too "You obviously didn't want us to be part of your empire, and they just seemed so nice... and had cookies. We had to leave". It'd also really suck for the faction that had that happen, or lose a planet with 2 battles played for it.

Lastly, after these problems are fixed, reset the map. These are major competitive changes in a GAME... not a war. A game that had a fundamental rule flaw in it that PGI probably couldn't have seen and didn't realize people would both willfully and ignorantly exploit. Let everyone keep their money and whatever else gained on a personal level, but start over. Otherwise it's like getting out of prison and getting to keep the money from the bank job.

Also, this way NOBODY can claim that they were given preferential treatment.

Repair, Reset, Restart.

N0MAD, on 22 December 2014 - 02:24 PM, said:

If youre a solo player or a small group and not enjoying CW take the advice of the people like Sandpit, go back to the Pub Q.
What the casual/solo player forgets is they are truly the majority, let your numbers count, go back to the Pub Q and see how CW develops with only the Larger groups playing it.
Do you wonder why the Large groups dont want a seperate solo Q in CW? if you do just look at how the 12 man group Q was populated..
The Pub group Q is doing very well atm, very short waiting times, good battles against many small teams, altho over the last week i see alot of bigger groups there.
Just saying..

People are rapidly getting fed up with thugs and obviously flawed resolutions that favor large groups who can get uncontested victories in a short period of time rendering all the rest of the day worthless.

[TVMA Doc]

I think that the other side of "why not remove in game chat" is "why does a multiplayer team game not have in-game voice coms?" That would at least help to mitigate some of the advantage that large groups enjoy. It's impossible to coordinate attacks midstream if you must type the messages.

[pwnface]

I made a suggestion on solving ghost drops giving factions easy victories but still forcing defenders to defend their planets.

http://mwomercs.com/...-drop-solution/

I think the entire attack/defend/counter-attack mechanic is far too confusing and unnatural.

This is how they should simplify the system:

The faction with less than 50% control of the planet should always be attacking.
The faction with more than 50% control of the planet should always be defending.

Winning an attack against live opponents gives 5% control of planet to attacking team.
Defending an attack against live opponents gives 5% control of planet to defending team.

Attacking a planet that has no defenders (after 10 minute wait) gives the attackers 1% control.
Defending a planet that has no attackers (after a 10 minute wait) gives the defenders 1% control.

This is a simple system that is EASY for people to understand and allows a smaller faction to defend against a larger attacking force if they actually win their defense matches.

Real matches against live opponents should be weighted more heavily than no attacker/defender freebie wins.

Attackers and defenders should also be able to make progress on a planet if the opposing faction doesn't want to defend or continue attacking a planet.

Edited by pwnface, 23 December 2014 - 09:28 AM.

[MischiefSC]

So if one faction is bigger it doesnt have an advantage? why not just settle it with a series of 1 on 1 duels?

Besides, ghost drops are not settling wins. A tiny fraction of matches. I get that some want to say it happens all the time but they are rare. Full matches are what is settling the game. If you have 5x the number of people attacking as defending then its going to get overwhelmed.

[Sandpit]

MischiefSC, on 23 December 2014 - 11:42 AM, said:

So if one faction is bigger it doesnt have an advantage? why not just settle it with a series of 1 on 1 duels?

Besides, ghost drops are not settling wins. A tiny fraction of matches. I get that some want to say it happens all the time but they are rare. Full matches are what is settling the game. If you have 5x the number of people attacking as defending then its going to get overwhelmed.

Ghost drops are only about 12% of matches

[pwnface]

The bigger faction does still have an advantage as it can gain 1% per team that can't find a match every 10 minutes. If you have 1 defending team and 5 attacking teams, attackers get 4% per 10 minutes automatically and would gain an additional 5% if they won the attack. This is a better solution than defending team wins to gain 5% but the 4 ghost drops gain 20% for a 15% net loss for defenders.

[pwnface]

12% doesn't seem like much but if they are all one the same planets it feels like a lot more. Larger coordinated factions can literally ghost drop their way to capturing a planet even if there are 3 active 12 mans defending a planet and winning every defense. This doesn't seem right to me.

[Prophetic]

12% is huge when it happens in the last hour leading up to planets being decided.

Even more so when that 12% come from one particular house.

Edited by Prophetic, 23 December 2014 - 12:31 PM.

[DEMAX51]

Prophetic, on 23 December 2014 - 12:31 PM, said:

12% is huge when it happens in the last hour leading up to planets being decided.

Well, luckily, auto-wins only account for 2-3% of all matches played in the three-hour run up to Ceasefire.
Source: https://twitter.com/...135947607789569 (first tweet in that thread).

[Prophetic]

DEMAX51, on 23 December 2014 - 12:39 PM, said:

Well, luckily, auto-wins only account for 2-3% of all matches played in the three-hour run up to Ceasefire.
Source: https://twitter.com/...135947607789569 (first tweet in that thread).

I'm sorry but that stat is not believable. It would mean 3 out of 100 drops are ghost drops.
I can confirm my own unit gets more then 3 ghost drops every three hours while doing 12s.

So a zerg house like Davion is way up there.

Unless u think NS is responsible for all the ghost drop data.

[DEMAX51]

Prophetic, on 23 December 2014 - 12:48 PM, said:

I'm sorry but that stat is not believable. It would mean 3 out of 100 drops are ghost drops.
I can confirm my own unit gets more then 3 ghost drops every three hours while doing 12s.

So a zerg house like Davion is way up there.

Unless u think NS is responsible for all the ghost drop data.

K. Well, take it up with Russ on twitter if you don't believe him them.

I can tell you, though, since the patch showing the number of players in each queue, and lengthening the wait to find an enemy team to 10 minutes, I haven't played a single auto-win (and I'm currently aligned with Davion, and most of my CW time is spent in those few hours of NA primetime right before the ceasefire).

[BenMartin]

Prophetic, on 23 December 2014 - 12:48 PM, said:

I'm sorry but that stat is not believable. It would mean 3 out of 100 drops are ghost drops.
I can confirm my own unit gets more then 3 ghost drops every three hours while doing 12s.

I put up a few theoretical extrapolations on this subject here:
http://mwomercs.com/...63#entry4037663

BenMartin, on 23 December 2014 - 04:45 AM, said:

Russ says that only 2-3% of all matches are ‘ghost-drops’ - within the last 2-3 hours of the 24-hour window.

Let’s look at that for a moment.

First, know that the 2-3% statistic must be for ALL matches, averaged across ALL planets. It might be significantly higher for any single planet (such as, say the contested planets at the border with the largest population disparity between factions)…

Imagine a planet with a full queue on each side (60+). This means that a match is dropping there between every 1-10 minutes (1 min between when there is a 12-man ready-up on each side, 10 min when only 1 side is ready).

Each match takes between 5-30 minutes.

Between these two things, there is a huge range of variability (I’m not even going to attempt to calculate the ‘average time’ here), but suffice to say, teams are going to be constantly dropping in & out of matches when the population is full – the 10 minute wait is enough that only rarely will one side have enough more people to get a ghost drop. Maybe that is 1/100 (1%) overall matches, maybe it’s only 1/20 (5%). Either of those is totally believable, I think, and neither would make an insurmountable difference in the 11 (now 15) wins on a planet over the course of a day, or even a couple hours time...

BUT

Consider the 2-3 hour period he's talking about for that given planet. Assume that the queue has been relatively full for that time period– so there have been possibly more than 150 matches for that planet during that period (one per minute is the max possible under their programming, IIRC).

Now we get to the last drop possible before cease-fire. The populations are full for both sides. The queues are long (and because PGI capped what we see as “60+”, we can’t know HOW long). But if the number of dropping teams one side outnumbers the other, by, 2, or 3, or 5 12-mans, they could get that many ghost-drops right at the end. This runs up the score, and what percentage is 5/150? 3%.

So that 2-3% ghost-caps, if they come at the end (as at least a couple ALWAYS do), are in fact highly significant. In fact their value is completely out of proportion to the number itself. Because they change the score on the planet WHEN IT CAN’T BE REVERSED.

TL;DR Version of the above:
Even assuming that the 2-3% stat is dead-basll-on accurate, if those ghost-cap drops occur at the end (and we know at least some do), they have a notice-able effect on the final tally for a given planet.

In that thread, I also put up (a longer version of) the following thoughts:
Think about it another way - in those last 2-3 hours, on a given planet in contention, we KNOW that the opposition has more population (we know the units involved, etc). At the end of the night (just before cease-fire), every unit fighting gets their final drop. They get two ghost-cap wins (sure that's a guess, but it's a fairly safe one, IMO). Back-casting, that means that we didn't need to hold them to fewer than six wins (now eight) all night, we needed to hold them to fewer than FOUR (now six), because we KNOW they're getting a couple free-bies at the end.

Maybe they're getting only one ghost-cap win per hour in the last 2-3 hours of the day. 1/50 drops per hour on that planet = 2%. Plus another 1% for the final couple ghost-caps during cease-fire...

It changes the goalposts enough to make that job of defending against a larger population significantly harder. More to the point, it shows that you can't take Russ's "only 2-3%...." at face value.

Right now, I don’t believe it’s an insurmountable difference (not that Marik has proven that on the Davion border, mind you). It's hard to say without being able to see with more fidelity the tracking, not for the last 2-3 hours (Russ's tweet), but for the last ONE hour, including within the cease-fire window.

Either way, in my opinion, a larger population SHOULD have an advantage. In BT-lore or out, this situation is fine, on some level. It would be a bloody boring game if nobody took an opposing planet, ever.

If the only change made was to not allow a ghost-cap drop after the cease-fire window started, that alone would make enough difference, immediately, that I think we’d see population disparities make a lot less impact (maybe even too little).

[Prophetic]

Supposedly the 2-3% only show the 3 hours leading you to the 24hr cut off.
What about all the ghost capping that get planets to 15 wins now.

That is a huge lead to overcome in a few hours.

Planets need to change more often. Try dividing the day into 3-4 windows. Every six hours would make more players happy.

Also ghost caps need to count for 1/3 of what they do already.