30 replies to this topic

[AeusDeif]

Roadbeer, on 27 December 2014 - 01:08 PM, said:

A factions overpopulation is held in check by the fact that there can only be 15 concurrent battles on a planet, regardless of how many people are in the queue. So, if you take the standard faction that has 4 borders, 2 planets per border and 15 zones per planet, there can only be a maximum of 1,440 pilots fighting at once, everyone else is waiting in a queue. (Adjust that number to tailor fit your faction by adding or subtracting 360 pilots per border). Overpopulated factions actually get less play time, not more.

There are a lot of misconceptions about how the queues work, I suggest
http://mwomercs.com/...45#entry4041845
http://mwomercs.com/...ing-peak-hours/

As further reading on the topic.

There are still ways an overpopulated attacker may gain an advantage here;

1. If the defending population has under the maximum amount of people online at peak hours. I see no reason to assume either side is fully populated even at peak hours, and the more lopsided it is, the more ghost drops there will be.

2. If the defending population has a lower 12-man to pug ratio than the attackers. This seems like it would be the case if the overpopulated faction has more units than the underpopulated one.

In my experience with early CW beta, ghost drops were common; a sizable fraction of wins, although less so now. And this was up against a more populated faction.

Drops made in a 12 man were overall quite expedient. Whether or not ghost drops are still much of a factor, a superior number of units fielding full premades is still a great advantage.

They have made ghost drops less frequent with added wait time, and yet there is now more room for population difference on a planet due to increased match capacity (from 11 to 15). What is needed is accurate statistics about how many active players are on at peak times to see how the population ratios are manifesting. Then on top of that you'd have to take into account how the pug-to-unit ratio is effecting the formation of fragmented teams vs. full premades.

edit: also, using the point bar and 2 planets on a front as a limiter for population effects means that if they ever add more planets to fight over each turn, or if they change the win conditions to a raw win/loss ratio, there will be less mitigation of lopsided populations.

Edited by AeusDeif, 27 December 2014 - 10:54 PM.

[AeusDeif]

Ax2Grind, on 27 December 2014 - 12:48 PM, said:

1. A better player should trump a less skilled player. A group of players who pool their skill together and use teamwork should beat those who choose to not do this. This is not broken, it is working. On the hopeful side of MWO we may have a game mode that actually incentives playing in a group and learning teamwork!

As I've said elsewhere, this system means that people can 'choose not to' use teamwork on purpose. They can sabotage another faction by joining it and playing badly. We have all seen people who griefed their team by just giving up or teamkilling when frustrated. Now there is a political incentive to do this.

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3. I am not sure we want something in place to keep all the factions evenly populated. If all factions are made equal, and all player skill and group play mitigated, why even have CW or the game for that matter?

I am tired of people talking about a population advantage as if it's part of competition. As if there will be no way to win if all factions had equal population, and CW would just stagnate. Do you watch a lot of sports with one team fielding several more players than the other? People inherently find that boring because they don't see the match defined by player skill, but by something more arbitrary. And yet on CW forums people often defend something which might arbitrarily give one side an advantage.

Nothing I've suggested would mitigate player skill or group play.

Edited by AeusDeif, 27 December 2014 - 10:52 PM.

[AeusDeif]

CarnageINC, on 27 December 2014 - 05:40 AM, said:

If I get your blessing I may create a new post with them integrated within the Tonnage Balance System.

sure, feel free to put up your own take on it

[Ax2Grind]

AeusDeif, on 27 December 2014 - 10:52 PM, said:

As I've said elsewhere, this system means that people can 'choose not to' use teamwork on purpose. They can sabotage another faction by joining it and playing badly. We have all seen people who griefed their team by just giving up or teamkilling when frustrated. Now there is a political incentive to do this.

You can't force anyone to play a certain way...just like there is no way to stop someone from going AFK in a match. Asking for a game mechanic to "fix" the fact that a group is stronger than individual pilots makes no sense. What are you going for here, to force everyone to play individually with no comms? That will solve your suggested problem with sabotage how?

AeusDeif, on 27 December 2014 - 10:52 PM, said:

I am tired of people talking about a population advantage as if it's part of competition. As if there will be no way to win if all factions had equal population, and CW would just stagnate. Do you watch a lot of sports with one team fielding several more players than the other? People inherently find that boring because they don't see the match defined by player skill, but by something more arbitrary. And yet on CW forums people often defend something which might arbitrarily give one side an advantage.

Nothing I've suggested would mitigate player skill or group play.

I'm tired of people completely missing the point of a post, but hey it still happens. This is not a strict competition. It's a war game. Pop advantage plays a roll in a war game. My point however was not to suggest that an even population alone would take away from the conflict but rather that this type of argument just leads to more inane concepts of balance that can not be managed in a game like this. You want even population. Other folks want balanced skill. Other folks want balanced mechs. Other folks want balanced maps. If you make it so that Maps, Pop, Skill, Mechs, and Pilots are all exactly the same, other than being a miracle for it's impossibility to exist you would have essentially nerfed any point to having conflict. A good game mechanic will supply challenge. Those who understand a particular challenge and master it will always be better than those who don't. The only way to balance that is to take away all the challenges. There are mechanical problems with CW that need to be addressed. I don't believe a perfectly balanced population is one of them. It's a war game. We have the freedom to join any faction. Be an incredible ambassador for your faction and get everyone to work with you! The fact that we can choose our faction, and that the choice has an impact on the overall conflict, is one of the best things going for this game mode.

If you want to experience MWO competitions, create or join a comp team and enter one of the many amazing community run events. CW is not a strict competition nor has it been presented as such in any way.

Besides the common sense of what I am presenting there is another thing to consider...how could it ever work well to force perfectly even population on CW? Your telling me that you think it would be fine if you weren't allowed to play because the factions are full? It would be ok if you were forced to play random factions to always keep the teams balanced? That's silly talk.

[AeusDeif]

I already suggested solutions which would Mitigate the effect of population imbalance. Which is something war games also do, because larger armies are more difficult to manage.

So, that is a wall of text made irrelevant by previous posts. I asked people to make constructive contributions, so please do so.

The regular game already mitigates 12-mans vs. pugs in various ways, without mechanically preventing it. And CW was indeed presented as more competitive than normal play.

[Star Witch Esperanza]

Jesus christ guys, people are allowed to not be good at a game.

[Khobai]

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You realise IS have the range advantage right? IS ERPPC can outrange their clan counterparts and that includes lasers!

Except lasers hit instantly and ERPPCs have travel time. ERPPCs are fairly easy to dodge at long range. So the range advantage definitely goes to clans.

[Musashi Alexander]

My biggest gripe with CW is that the majority of games are not actually meaningful. There's a window of about 3 hrs in which things matter...outside that window, you could dominate but for no purpose. How is it improved? They talked of rolling that 3 hour window so that it hits all time zones eventually. I'm not sure that's going far enough. I think it needs more work than that sort of quick fix. I've not really thought it all through but here are a few ideas which might help make every drop in CW meaningful

- Apply meaning to every single slide of the planet pie, for instance, each slice provides an element of defenses to each engagement. Therefore if a planet has 15 slices, each slice represents 1 turret and, say, 6.67% of a full complement of dropship lasers. If you lose a CW defensive engagement, it hurts future defenses. If you win an offensive engagement, it matters for future attacks. This means that if a planet is brought down to zero 8 hours from the crucial 3 hour window, there's still an uphill battle to climb for people in that last window.

- There could be a more progessive system put in place so that if a planet requires all 15 'slices' to be taken, then after the first 4 are taken, the next defense is a highly buffed planetary defense - something not easily overcome and which marks an achievement. Again, taking one or two of these (or keeping them) ensures that a 3 hour window is less important as the time required is insufficient to really get through the 3 highly buffed locks.

- Something should be done with unopposed drops...these will happen, fair enough, but they should not be a foregone conclusion, boring and somewhat pointless (considering the current 3 hour critical CW window). For instance, if unopposed, allow only a single mech from dropship to drop and reduce the time available considerably so that teams have to finely balance sending a bunch of lights in which get chewed up by turrets or else heavies which are too slow to make it in time. For 3 'lock' planets for instance, as above, it can be unopposed but the chances of achieving a win there against highly buffed planetary defense should be no more than 25%. On a normal planet engagement maybe it's around 50/50. A cool idea might be where there is no opposition, arty/air strikes are dropped randomly withing a zone when key installations are hit, making the job or winning trickier

- Adjust setting for clans (10 v 12 or increased planetary defenses in attack of reduced defensive in attack) or buff quirks for IS defending. This doesn't apply when they fight each other. I think it's right that there should be a window where clans are overwhelming so a way in which a gradual reduction of the efficacy of clans is introduced (for instance, week 1 low planetary defenses, week 2 slightly increased planetary defenses, etc or buff IS quirks over time, etc)

- A bit more transparency of aligned unit involvement in CW...I understand the mechanics of bonuses etc but it feels like a bit of a bolt on and largely without significant meaning. Being a house aligned unit should have rewards that are meaningful because being totally aligned to a single house is also limiting. Could be that when a unit is assigned to a planet it gets increased planetary defenses, increased bonuses or what have you when fighting on it or something

- A central lore master from PGI, someone providing information, weaving a narrative and creating more immersion

- Alongside the above, there should be some impact from actual house units, from political decisions, etc. This could be, for instance, that Liao has counterattacked with forces mainly from McCarron's Armored Cavalry and recaptured planets X, Y and Z from Davion. This is then reflected in the CW map and potentially, bonuses are provided to Liao aligned units in attacking Davion...reduced planetary defenses, increased buffs, bonuses, etc

Obviously also more maps and modes, etc....variety is great.

Also, if there someway to get other AI types of units involved (tanks, hovercraft, long toms, infantry, etc) that would be awesome.

Edited by Musashi Alexander, 03 January 2015 - 06:06 AM.

[Ax2Grind]

Except that games previous to the 3 hours are actually indeed meaningful and often do set the stage for the final 3 hours of conflict...

Maybe define what "actually meaningful" means since my version and your version seem to have nothing to do with each other. If you cap a planet out early in the day it still has to be counter-attacked repeatedly...how is that not meaningful?

AeusDeif, on 02 January 2015 - 05:32 PM, said:

I asked people to make constructive contributions, so please do so.

The regular game already mitigates 12-mans vs. pugs in various ways, without mechanically preventing it. And CW was indeed presented as more competitive than normal play.

I ask people to post and debate like an intelligent adult, so please do so.

More competitive play does not equal a strict competition. Those are two very different things. I would argue that for most players the CW game mode is absolutely more challenging than the regular queue and there is quite a bit of competition as teams rally for their factions. CW however bears no resemblance to a strict competition nor should it. Two different things. Grok the difference. If you want a strict competition, please sign up for the myriad of community events that are available.

Edited by Ax2Grind, 04 January 2015 - 03:21 PM.

[oldradagast]

NextGame, on 23 December 2014 - 09:10 AM, said:

Nope, play hard or go home. We've waited 3 years for this game mode, and the exclusively solo's have no business trying to ruin it. If you cant take the heat get outta the kitchen, etc.

You're poking at an issue that doesn't actually exist. 4 & 5 are also non-issues.

Lol... seriously?

We've been waiting 3 years for a game mode that consists of one team shooting NPC's, mob charging into kill-zones, and then shooting more NPC's for paltry rewards? We've been waiting 3 years for a game mode that allows "skilled" try-hards to sit on a hill and poke sitting ducks as they march through the same paths game after game? And you don't want the rest of us to "ruin" it for you? Got news for yah - the game mode is pretty well "ruined" on its own as is.

This has NOTHING to do with "skill" or a lack thereof. The facts are that CW in its current form is: stale, repetitive, grossly one-sided, lacking in any role warfare, and utterly pointless for people playing in time zones where their conquests get negated because of when the cease-fires happen. And that doesn't even touch upon the bugs, wait times, terrible map designs, laughable match-making, and so on.

I'm sure some people are enjoying it, and that's fine, but they have no right to tell the rest of us to "get out of the kitchen," particularly when anyone with any experience in this game can see the flaws in CW as being glaring obvious. Maybe certain percentages of the population don't care so long as their 12-man can pot-shot helpless Pug's stumbling through the kill-zones on Boreal, but the majority of us would actually like a game mode worth playing... and skill level has nothing to do with our complaints.

Nephera, on 03 January 2015 - 02:03 AM, said:

Jesus christ guys, people are allowed to not be good at a game.

No, as we've heard soooo many times on this forum, if you're not "elite" you should go home.... stripping the game of 80% or more of its population, leaving the rest to be proud of being great at a dead video game. Yeah, it makes no sense to me either, especially since there is NOTHING prohibiting CW games from having some sane level of match-making vs. throwing uncoordinated PUG's against 12-mans on voice coms.

Edited by oldradagast, 04 January 2015 - 04:45 PM.

[AeusDeif]

Might as well bump the thread. here's an idea I had for balancing Boreal.

http://mwomercs.com/...27#entry4068227

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More competitive play does not equal a strict competition. blah blah blah If you want a strict competition, please sign up for the myriad of community events that are available.

As I already said, even normal gameplay is more competitive than CW due to various kinds of tiering. CW has no tiering whatsoever. As a result, CW purported to be competitive but the competition is at the state similar to MWO beta.

Speaking of grokking, your responses suggest you either aren't reading our posts or you don't understand them. Feel free to go make your own thread about how great CW is, you're contributing nothing here.