53 replies to this topic

[John Wolf]

Hey Everyone,

Posting as a regular player here. (Note the standard font).

I thought I'd share my opinion on Community Warfare, and the one potential flaw I see in it. Right now I'm signed on with Liao. (Yes, I feel dirty) But we were defending or attempting to defend Maladar from the Davions.

Solid defense all day, and at a best guess.. the world still had 0 wins for Davion at 2 hours till the ceasefire deadline.

At that point however, 60+ Davions were in queue, and at best only 30 Liao players were visible for me.

In the next two hours, the planet was swarmed by Davion players and in the end Davion will take the planet with 12/15 Wins, 80% of the world.

I had 5 or 6 drops in that time, all of them were wins. The issue or potential flaw that I see with the system is this.. no matter how many wins you have through 22 hours in the day a swarm of active players near the end can come in and snipe a world. A lot like an ebay auction, you ignore it for 99% of the time and come in at the end with your bid.

Changing the time of the ceasefire might help a bit, but only on some days. I don't like how the system devalues wins, and supports a numbers mentality. I don't know how many of those wins today were ghost drops and base cake walks.. but I'm certain there were several.

I of course can't speak for all the liao drops today, and if the other groups were getting hammered by good premades but I believe that there were at least a few ghost wins to tip the scales.

If there is a 12 v 12 balance in a match, but no balance at the faction level.. how will any lower pop faction make any progress in the game?

I know this is beta, but I'd like to see a system that works more towards a total score over the entire day.. so everyone who contributes through the day is working towards the end goal.. not just a last minute run. I also completely understand that in a fight you'd throw those massive numbers against a smaller force to overwhelm and win.. but, in a game where its a balanced number system.. CW has no similar scale.

Increasing contracts may help bring players over, if they're willing to leave their faction. But, continually losing worlds with no hope of turning that process around will potentially push players out of the smaller factions to the larger winning factions as well.. tipping things even further.

This is not just a defense problem, but an attack one as well. If a faction fills a planet through the day, a large group can simply clear it out within the end time to counter.

So, thoughts? Opinions? Do you think this system thats in place is the best.. have you come up with something else? Share.. keep it constructive please.

John

Edit: I see Mentasta was wrapped up with 0 wins at the ceasefire. (Data to support the point of view.)

Edit 2.0: Davion groups that dropped on those worlds.. can you provide some input? Did you have many ghost drops? Were they all against groups? Any estimate on how many players you had online in the last couple hours?

Edited by John Wolf, 23 December 2014 - 09:04 PM.
Adding info.. twice.

[Lord Ikka]

Welcome to CW- Kurita has been dealing with this, as have FRR/Marik/Liao and to an extent Smoke Jags, from the get go. Until something can come balance the Factions- such as heavy bonuses for mercs to side with embattled factions, you won't see any real change. I'm not going to blame ghost drops either- just the fact that the smaller factions can't drop with as many dedicated 12-mans kills their attacks/defenses.

I'm at a loss to really figure out an easy solution. Faction chat would help to better organize a factions PUGs to defend/attack the needed worlds, but PGI has been pretty touchy about dealing with all the issues that come with having tons of people on chat (trolling/rudeness/all the crap that comes from anonymus internet peoples).

[John Wolf]

You're right, and a public chat would be hell on their systems.

I don't want to blame the ghost drops, but tonight was one of the first nights I was really able to invest time right up to the ceasefire. So I was able to get as much information as possible before forming my opinion.

You're right though, the smaller groups who don't have 3 or more 12 mans to queue and start games at will handicaps the smaller groups/factions. Faction groups will likely help this a bit.. allowing more 12 mans to be formed, though we'll need a place/way to organize those groups into 12 mans.. public voice chat services.. etc.

[Ax2Grind]

As an attacker who got wins throughout the night and this morning on Maladar, I never felt like my wins didn't count, even when I came back to find that your faction had evened things up once again. For every successful attack we had, you had to take the time to knock it back down again. The fact that you did shows your effort in the war. Speaking for the MS units I dropped with, we got teams every time but one when facing this planet last night. Mostly WoL 12's or 8's, but sometimes mixed as well. When there stopped being people in the queue we stopped attacking. This morning there was another turret game before the population kicked back in. At crunch time there always seems to be at least one or two turret wins that happen no matter what world we attack or defend, or the pop numbers listed in the planet finder.

On the other Davion border we were attacked by Kurita forces all day, with mixed wins and losses (nice work Kurita), and every time they got the counter closer to 8 wins we had to work hard to get it back down again so that come crunch time we could rest assured we would not lose that planet.

From my perspective, every one of those attacks and defenses mattered. I will agree that the last two hours crunch time of NA timezone has the biggest impact on the final results. That is clear and I know that is at the core of what your getting at. I do not know how we could solve that issue. But I do feel like all of those battles made some kind of impact and helped to decide the outcome.

As a last thought, MS might have attacked elsewhere had Kurita not been attacking one of our worlds in Davion space all day. But they were. All day they poured attacks on. So we were not able to ignore our defenses and just attack on other fronts. Again from my perspective, waiting till crunch time would have been extremely difficult with the number of fronts in question. Hope that helps.

Edit: And we had about 20-24 people on the last two hours of battle today, broken into 3-4 teams depending on the time.

~Ax

Edited by Ax2Grind, 23 December 2014 - 09:32 PM.

[Roadbeer]

Marik has been fighting the numbers game since the beginning.

It's not that we don't have the numbers, it that the numbers we're facing is overwhelming. With Liao doing what they can (and please tell me that you're not all up fighting the clans while we're taking most of the pressure off of you) and Kurita having their problems, the Marik/Davion border is a meatgrinder and in the last 2 hours, we're forced to defend or attack as we can't do both and assure a victory at either.

But the last 2 hour push is really annoying as if I have a day off and want to drop CW, everything I do is completely invalidated by turret drops between then and primetime.

[Ax2Grind]

Roadbeer, on 23 December 2014 - 09:35 PM, said:

Marik has been fighting the numbers game since the beginning.

It's not that we don't have the numbers, it that the numbers we're facing is overwhelming. With Liao doing what they can (and please tell me that you're not all up fighting the clans while we're taking most of the pressure off of you) and Kurita having their problems, the Marik/Davion border is a meatgrinder and in the last 2 hours, we're forced to defend or attack as we can't do both and assure a victory at either.

But the last 2 hour push is really annoying as if I have a day off and want to drop CW, everything I do is completely invalidated by turret drops between then and primetime.

I can attest to multiple WoL 12's fighting clan battles when MS was Clan Ghost Bear.

Most of the games MS plays during crunch time are against players, PUG and Group. Not turrets and ghost wins. We might have to start cataloging every win so we can post the screenshots but at least on our fronts (can't speak for the other fronts) Ghost wins are not the primary factor for our victories even though they happen more than we would like during crunch time (we like attacking/defending against other mechs).

Edited by Ax2Grind, 23 December 2014 - 09:43 PM.

[John Wolf]

Thanks for the input Ax, and Roadbeer.

I can assure you the Liao players I drop with are fighting on the IS border whenever possible. Early day matches seem to be clan based since we can't get 12 players in the queue. But once the numbers are there its on the worlds we have a shot at.

Ax, you're part of the davion alliance correct? Can you collect some more intel for us on the numbers at play since in game it only shows 60+?

[Kyrie]

A faction wide chat should be a fairly simple thing to implement. A game chat system has been long overdue in this game, and now finally PGI acknowledges this fact. It is being looked into as per the most recent Town Hall with Russ.

[Ax2Grind]

Faction wide chat, and faction grouping and better use of shared TS can only help the current situation, especially for smaller groups that can never get a 12 man team together on their own. I am still surprised by the PUG's I run into in CW that are against joining a group or using a TS, even when we place it into the chat and offer to have folks join us. I am not surprised that often times these players don't know how to get the gates down, split up and get killed on their own, and tend to lose sight of the objectives and get tunnel vision on a mech battle, even if the match is being decided. Let's just say, I bet every faction has a number of matches that fall into this category and make it tougher for the rest of the teams in the faction to overcome. Smaller populated factions might be at a larger disadvantage for this, though when I look at SJ, a low pop faction, they seem to do very well on their front once they organized the various teams with SA leading the charge.

[Tennex]

Increase autowin setoff time at the last 2 hours to 15minutes instead of 10 minutes?

[InspectorG]

Lord Ikka, on 23 December 2014 - 09:08 PM, said:

Welcome to CW- Kurita has been dealing with this, as have FRR/Marik/Liao and to an extent Smoke Jags, from the get go. Until something can come balance the Factions- such as heavy bonuses for mercs to side with embattled factions, you won't see any real change. I'm not going to blame ghost drops either- just the fact that the smaller factions can't drop with as many dedicated 12-mans kills their attacks/defenses.

I'm at a loss to really figure out an easy solution. Faction chat would help to better organize a factions PUGs to defend/attack the needed worlds, but PGI has been pretty touchy about dealing with all the issues that come with having tons of people on chat (trolling/rudeness/all the crap that comes from anonymus internet peoples).

Faction chat.

Faction lobby...perhaps a mini forum where faction units can coordinated and leave memos to the other timezone units.

Weigh ghost drops differently than battles. 10 to 1? Could be scaled to game population participating in CW/pugs.

Rewards should be bigger/different and i think they should implement differing reward scales for decisive/marginal victory - draw - loss/etc.

Occupied planets should give bonuses to the owner. Small planets could give cbill bonuses to all faction members, larger ones discounts on mechs/equips/whatever.

[Ax2Grind]

Tennex, on 23 December 2014 - 10:07 PM, said:

Increase autowin setoff time at the last 2 hours to 15 minutes instead of 10 minutes?

I think there needs to be a better solution. Making the queue even longer during crunch time just wastes more time and makes the game less fun. During crunch time we can sometimes be in the queue for 10-20 minutes just to get a "match" (on planets with 60+ pop) and start on the 10 minute countdown timer, and lately we have gotten a number of matches in the last 30 seconds of that second queue, resetting the queue for another minute in the lobby, then another minute to ready up. If you add in the problem with getting folks to ready up quickly (and often if you add players or switch planets), it's ridiculous. This may be ignorant of me but I want less wait times, less auto wins, and more battles. I don't have an answer for how to get there but that would be a better CW in my eyes.

[Slepnir]

I only see a few ways to solve this-
1. count all matches in the comat window, all 20 hours of it as part of the final tally
2.randomise or short rotate ceasefire every 6 hours or
3.limit both sides to equal numbers of attackers/defenders

basically were looking for a way for everbodies contributions to count.

[Roadbeer]

Slepnir, on 23 December 2014 - 10:30 PM, said:

I only see a few ways to solve this-
1. count all matches in the comat window, all 20 hours of it as part of the final tally
2.randomise or short rotate ceasefire every 6 hours or
3.limit both sides to equal numbers of attackers/defenders

basically were looking for a way for everbodies contributions to count.

I like your first 2 ideas, but you went completely off the rails with the 3rd. Sounds too close to being "fair" and I'm totally against "fair" warfare.

[Tennex]

Roadbeer, on 23 December 2014 - 10:32 PM, said:

I like your first 2 ideas, but you went completely off the rails with the 3rd. Sounds too close to being "fair" and I'm totally against "fair" warfare.

problem with #3 is defenders can just stop queueing at 49% with 0 defenders in queue, attackers wont be able to get it past 49

[Tennex]

Ax2Grind, on 23 December 2014 - 10:17 PM, said:

Making the queue even longer during crunch time just wastes more time and makes the game less fun. During crunch time we can sometimes be in the queue for 10-20 minutes just to get a "match"

Autowins arn't really fun matches tho

think of it this way: you get 5 more minutes to find a real match.

[Roadbeer]

I'd rather have asymmetrical drops.

At the 5/10 minute mark, the queue dumps with what it has on both sides, sure you'll get some lopsided matches (probably many) but at least it wouldn't be turret wins.

[Truthstar]

You can't expect balance on the large scale when it isn't prioritized in actual battles.

For those who are against Class limitations per drop I say to you, now deal with your House/Faction imbalances. War isn't fair. Recruit more people.

Hard pill to swallow when its your portion of the game being messed up eh.

Edited by Truthstar, 23 December 2014 - 11:09 PM.

[Ax2Grind]

I see no reason why the possible matches are limited, or capped, at 15. What is the downside to allowing every match to count for the entire attack period? If 100 units decide to attack on one day,on one planet, more power to them for getting 100 win's on said planet and making the defenders either focus or leave it. This may not eliminate turret games but I think eliminating planet caps for attacks would help. If we are going to have a ceasefire, simply tally the wins and losses and the planet goes to the faction that managed a majority. End of story.

As to why I don't like extending the timer to 15 minutes for turret games...if I have to play turrets I have to sit around a lobby for a quarter of an hour? That is a horrible idea. People are getting fed up and quitting matches already due to the 10 minute timer...15 is ridiculous. This is a game. If we can't have enough population or matchmaking prowess to get a real match going on, penalizing folks willing to play by making them sit and do nothing for an extra 5 minutes makes no sense whatsoever. Especially since this takes units away from what they really want to do which is get back in the queue and find a real match vs actual players. My gut is pretty solid on this; extending downtime for a game is how you kill the game, not make it better for everyone.

Edited by Ax2Grind, 23 December 2014 - 11:29 PM.

[Trev Firestorm]

I think this was either suggested elsewhere or planned or something but one thing that would help against turret drops would be a merc queue, that is an option to drop where needed as needed to fill out short groups or even full on 12 man, it should speed queues up overall as well... very pug friendly but its better than solos jumping from planet to planet for hours just to constantly find incomplete groups that never fill due to other solos doing the same. It'll lead to a bit of a disconnect between those players and the campaign map but the players this is most intended for likely don't care anyway but it will still benefit those who do by filling the games they line up and are looking for.