472 replies to this topic

[Kjudoon]

There were ghost drops on ALL the worlds tonight. Tsinghai, Campertown, No Return... all of them by all sides. Why? Because that is the way to win right now. And it should not be. Ghost Drops should be dealing with edge cases and tie breakers, not be the difinitive way to win as it currently stands.

1. The pace of the game needs to slow down taking place over 3 or more days to take a planet.
2. The number of victories MUST increase significantly as well and decrease the significance of ghost drops or find a way to mitigate their impact.
3. Reset the map after this has been done. (Yes it sucks with all the drama, but sorry, it's gotta be and hopefully the next one is persistent.)

[Scoops Kerensky]

It's almost like ghost drops are a fundamentally bad mechanic and as long as they exist nobody will believe the paper map reflects their efforts.

[Tiger 6]

As a drop commander, I find the turret drops useful for training purposes if nothing else - currently there is no other way to drop onto those maps so its the only way I can do a 'walk through' with the team. I wouldn't want to lose the ability to do this until PGI allow private lobby drops on those maps.

[Tiger 6]

Kjudoon, on 07 January 2015 - 02:29 AM, said:

There were ghost drops on ALL the worlds tonight. Tsinghai, Campertown, No Return... all of them by all sides. Why? Because that is the way to win right now.

We need to get past the idea that "Ghost dropping = a cheap way to win", and look at the underlying problems. If PGI took ghost drops out of the game tomorrow, would that fix CW? Or would people just be stuck the game queue for longer, and eventually decide not to bother with that game mode?

[Kjudoon]

We need to quit thinking Ghost Drops AREN'T a cheap way to win. It favors a large faction population (Davion) over a small one (everyone else) and provides an unfair advantage in a game. Of course, the best way to fix this would be to reduce financial/loyalty rewards for the factions based on the number of worlds they have and population size compared to others and modified by number of fronts so the bigger the faction, the smaller the payout.

As for longer waits, which would you rather the cause? having to wait for contested matches or because the population plummets further because large groups are predestined to exterminate their enemies without skill? Or because they can't get a match because there are not enough players on one side since they're in ghost drops or just not there anyway, discouraged by ghost dropping stealing worlds so they don't bother?

You're preaching to the extreme minority.

Edited by Kjudoon, 07 January 2015 - 04:08 AM.

[Alexander Steel]

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And this is why it needs to be fixed so Ghost Drops do not count or are rendered nearly worthless. They are pretty much the only way to win now.

I've said this before, and it's still true. If you remove Ghost Drops or some other punishing mechanic for realms that don't defend then the best way to defend against an invasion will be to not have anybody show up. Why? Because then the attacker will be stuck in the MM system, and never get a match, and the world will never be at risk.

That's even worse than having Ghost Drops be the way to win. A battle system that favors not fighting back as the ultimate trump card and auto win is completely and totally broken.

Socop, on 07 January 2015 - 02:43 AM, said:

It's almost like ghost drops are a fundamentally bad mechanic and as long as they exist nobody will believe the paper map reflects their efforts.

They are a bad mechanic that prevents an even worse problem. Finding a "good" mechanic is going to be much tougher, because how much you feel numbers should matter in a war game will very much color what your think is "good".

[Kjudoon]

Alexander Steel, on 07 January 2015 - 04:13 AM, said:

I've said this before, and it's still true. If you remove Ghost Drops or some other punishing mechanic for realms that don't defend then the best way to defend against an invasion will be to not have anybody show up. Why? Because then the attacker will be stuck in the MM system, and never get a match, and the world will never be at risk.

That's even worse than having Ghost Drops be the way to win. A battle system that favors not fighting back as the ultimate trump card and auto win is completely and totally broken.



They are a bad mechanic that prevents an even worse problem. Finding a "good" mechanic is going to be much tougher, because how much you feel numbers should matter in a war game will very much color what your think is "good".

So you solve that by making Ghost Drops valid ONLY when the defender refuses to defend a territory. Then it flips to the attacker. Of course that requires a fundamental change to how victory is attained, and I've already proposed a few ideas on how to fix that like most everyone else.

[Alexander Steel]

So you've changed the best way to defend territory from not defending at all to only defending with 12 pilots to jam up the MM and make the planet flip as slowly as possible.

That's a good thing for the game?

Edited by Alexander Steel, 07 January 2015 - 05:39 AM.

[Gorgo7]

So last night i finally saw MischiefSC(GB) in game!
He and his 8-10 man attempted a Zerg rush and while partially successful initially, i am happy to say we beat them back without much difficulty once we smoked their lights.
I have to say for someone who spends a lot of time sucking up to Liao you will have to improve your game play before we will let you join us...
Practice, practice, practice.

[Maxwell Albritten]

Just wanna say we lost No Return ultimately to ghost drops last night. Sat there during Ceasefire and saw the player count at 24/0 and **** I could do about it. And, of course, we lost by one block.

Just throwin' that out there.

Edited by Maxwell Albritten, 07 January 2015 - 07:00 AM.

[Tiger 6]

Kjudoon, on 07 January 2015 - 04:07 AM, said:

We need to quit thinking Ghost Drops AREN'T a cheap way to win.

Like I said, people need to let go of the outrage over ghost dropping. Most of us here agree its not ideal.
Focus on why it happens, and what the alternatives could be.

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It favors a large faction population (Davion) over a small one (everyone else) and provides an unfair advantage in a game. Of course, the best way to fix this would be to reduce financial/loyalty rewards for the factions based on the number of worlds they have and population size compared to others and modified by number of fronts so the bigger the faction, the smaller the payout.

Again those of us who came here to do something productive, agree with that.

The problem is (as stated several pages ago, before an avalanche of stupid buried the thread) how to get people to come over to a 'less fashionable' faction. Most of the Davion units are not about to be persuaded to leave Davion, because they want to be Davion. You can blame Mike Stackpole all you want, but that ain't going to change things...

Money only goes so far - as said earlier, a lot of the top players don't need the cash, they want to fight other top players -
I'm sure some of my Davion colleagues are going to be unhappy with me for saying this, but many of the guys I know in the faction aren't exactly House of Lords material...!
Those guys also want to play with their shiny clan toys. Liao does not offer those opportunities currently - perhaps they should?

Early access to clan mechs for Liao players could be a game changer here perhaps?

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As for longer waits, which would you rather the cause? having to wait for contested matches or because the population plummets further because large groups are predestined to exterminate their enemies without skill? Or because they can't get a match because there are not enough players on one side since they're in ghost drops or just not there anyway, discouraged by ghost dropping stealing worlds so they don't bother?

There you go with the outrage again. Those of us here with half a brain don't want to see a faction crushed by shear weight of numbers, because it means that factions players will likely quit playing the game. What good does that do anybody? We want people to play the CW, not be turned off by it.

This is a beta. Please come join the conversation about what can be done to fix it, in a way that PGI will actually bother to look at. In my day job when I'm looking for information online, I tend to stop reading forum posts once the topic descends into of pages of people yelling at each other.

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You're preaching to the extreme minority.

I was hoping to have a rational conversation with adults - guys like BlakeAteIt and a few other certainly seem to be interested in kicking ideas around, but yes, based on the last few pages of this tread, I guess sadly you are right on that score...

[Dimento Graven]

Kjudoon, on 07 January 2015 - 02:29 AM, said:

There were ghost drops on ALL the worlds tonight. Tsinghai, Campertown, No Return... all of them by all sides. Why? Because that is the way to win right now. And it should not be. Ghost Drops should be dealing with edge cases and tie breakers, not be the difinitive way to win as it currently stands.

1. The pace of the game needs to slow down taking place over 3 or more days to take a planet.
2. The number of victories MUST increase significantly as well and decrease the significance of ghost drops or find a way to mitigate their impact.
3. Reset the map after this has been done. (Yes it sucks with all the drama, but sorry, it's gotta be and hopefully the next one is persistent.)

Again, too extreme a viewpoint in my opinion. It's that it's "THE" way, and ONLY way, to win a planet, as I feel like you're implying, it's just that when a planet is heavily contested, they are more probably likely to occur.

1. Slowing the pace of planet capture, not a good plan in my opinion. A 24 hour cycle is about as long as it should be.
2. Probably yes, the mechanic of scoring needs to change. Someone listed a thread indicating it should be the total number of victories in a 24 hour period. It would increase the interest in CW for non-NA prime time players as their efforts would be AS important if not MORE SO. That's probably not a bad idea and I'd be willing to try it out for at least as long as we've had the current mechanic just to see how it works.
3. There will 'probably' be a map reset at some point, though I'm guessing not any time in the next few weeks... If they change the scoring mechanic, it would probably be a good idea to reset the map...

[Dimento Graven]

Socop, on 07 January 2015 - 02:43 AM, said:

It's almost like ghost drops are a fundamentally bad mechanic and as long as they exist nobody will believe the paper map reflects their efforts.

I don't think it's a 'bad' mechanic, so much as more of an 'incomplete implementation' of a better mechanic.

Again, make a ghost drop a heck of a lot harder than it currently is and I'm betting these complaints go away.

No one is asking for "new" or "better" AI, the simplest thing would be to dump another 250 turrets onto the map when no one shows up. Something where if a player isn't careful in his approach he'll be dead rather quickly, and something that it's just not possible to load up enough long range ballistics to snipe to death from safety...

Tiger 6, on 07 January 2015 - 03:17 AM, said:

As a drop commander, I find the turret drops useful for training purposes if nothing else - currently there is no other way to drop onto those maps so its the only way I can do a 'walk through' with the team. I wouldn't want to lose the ability to do this until PGI allow private lobby drops on those maps.

This is also reasonable and would be good for the game long term. Allow these maps/game modes to be selectable from private lobbies and Training Grounds.

[Dimento Graven]

Tiger 6, on 07 January 2015 - 04:03 AM, said:

We need to get past the idea that "Ghost dropping = a cheap way to win", and look at the underlying problems. If PGI took ghost drops out of the game tomorrow, would that fix CW? Or would people just be stuck the game queue for longer, and eventually decide not to bother with that game mode?

Considering that ONE of the two turret runs I participated in last night occurred after a greater than 25 minute waits (15 minutes for the match timer to start counting down, 10 minute wait for the enemy) I would say anything that causes MORE ******* delays in this game is an EXTREMELY bad idea.

Night after night after night after night after night after night of logging in, and waiting for an hour for crap to start happening is what killed my interest in the last MMORPG I was playing.

[Vas79]

We went Liao to start because of the pay and LP increase before Christmas. Before CW dropped we had talked about what factions to support and FRR, Liao and Marik came out as our top three during an in house poll. We'll be staying for awhile yet because we're finding that the fights are fun and have a different flavour then the Clan vs IS matches.

As for the ghost drops I understand that the mechanic is there for a reason and most likely always will be, we as a team were a touch frustrated when we came out from our last match of the night and saw 12 attackers with no defenders and knew that that particular ghost drop was going to be the match that flipped the planet. It would have been a different story if we hadn't dropped our last defense of the night.

[Dimento Graven]

Kjudoon, on 07 January 2015 - 04:07 AM, said:

We need to quit thinking Ghost Drops AREN'T a cheap way to win. It favors a large faction population (Davion) over a small one (everyone else) and provides an unfair advantage in a game. Of course, the best way to fix this would be to reduce financial/loyalty rewards for the factions based on the number of worlds they have and population size compared to others and modified by number of fronts so the bigger the faction, the smaller the payout.

As for longer waits, which would you rather the cause? having to wait for contested matches or because the population plummets further because large groups are predestined to exterminate their enemies without skill? Or because they can't get a match because there are not enough players on one side since they're in ghost drops or just not there anyway, discouraged by ghost dropping stealing worlds so they don't bother?

You're preaching to the extreme minority.

Again, I think their are some false assumptions on your part. The existence of turret runs favors the side that can motivate more players to be active in CW. PGI is encouraging the populations 'smaller' factions to play more by increasing their rewards (as mentioned earlier we have someone RP'ing Chancellor Liao 'machining it rain'), and this reward will also pull in 'mercs' from the other factions over to start playing for them as well.

Considering the jump in numbers Liao, Marik, and FRR has had recently I'm thinking this is working. We'll see PGI tune those rewards upwards as the map conditions of a faction worsen.

The scoring methodology should probably change, I think we can all agree on that, but let's not inflict atrocious wait times on people, it will cause ALL factions to lose player due to lack of interest as NO ONE will want to play ONE match (or less) per hour....

Kjudoon, on 07 January 2015 - 04:20 AM, said:

So you solve that by making Ghost Drops valid ONLY when the defender refuses to defend a territory. Then it flips to the attacker. Of course that requires a fundamental change to how victory is attained, and I've already proposed a few ideas on how to fix that like most everyone else.

So... What's the logic you'd use for determining when an enemy has 'refused' to defend a territory?

I am honestly interested in this.

Currently the logic is: Enemy does not provide a 12 man counter to an attacking force, within 10 minutes of the attack.

What's your criteria?

Maxwell Albritten, on 07 January 2015 - 06:59 AM, said:

Just wanna say we lost No Return ultimately to ghost drops last night. Sat there during Ceasefire and saw the player count at 24/0 and **** I could do about it. And, of course, we lost by one block.

Just throwin' that out there.

When I saw it, it was 12/0. I never saw it at 24/0 (I suppose it could have been that way before I came out of my last match).

However, the planet was lost by a SINGLE victory, had the 'owners' of the planet been able to put together another 12 man within the 10 minute window, AND won the match, the planet wouldn't have switched.

[MischiefSC]

Kjudoon, on 07 January 2015 - 04:07 AM, said:

We need to quit thinking Ghost Drops AREN'T a cheap way to win. It favors a large faction population (Davion) over a small one (everyone else) and provides an unfair advantage in a game. Of course, the best way to fix this would be to reduce financial/loyalty rewards for the factions based on the number of worlds they have and population size compared to others and modified by number of fronts so the bigger the faction, the smaller the payout.

As for longer waits, which would you rather the cause? having to wait for contested matches or because the population plummets further because large groups are predestined to exterminate their enemies without skill? Or because they can't get a match because there are not enough players on one side since they're in ghost drops or just not there anyway, discouraged by ghost dropping stealing worlds so they don't bother?

You're preaching to the extreme minority.

Actually we lost words to ghost drops the last 3 days. Right now population does *not* favor us.

Would it be better to have matches split by queue population then? So a queue of 12/24 would drop as 2 sets of 6 v 12?

You'll notice there was not a thread like this 2 days ago when Davion lost 2 worlds to ghost drops. We didn't *****, didn't complain, we didn't show in the right places in the right numbers and we lost due to that.

You don't get to not show up for a fight and still get to win. Any sort of mechanic that removes turret drops favors gaming the crap out of the system. It also means that you're better off *not* pugging or having pugs - just don't show up until your whole 12man is present. Drop less often, discourage your pugs from dropping, just drop in bigger, organized groups. That's a bad option.

Overall the better solution is the one that combines with a solution for a full 24 hour window to make every match at every playtime matter. My unit really isn't around in force until just after the ceasefire window - so there really isn't a point for us to play CW when we're all around. Some sort of solution that removes the whole 'crunch time' bit all together fixes the whole 'only matches in the last 3 hours matter' as well as the impression that turret drops are what flips worlds (it isn't).

Dimento Graven, on 07 January 2015 - 07:43 AM, said:

Again, I think their are some false assumptions on your part. The existence of turret runs favors the side that can motivate more players to be active in CW. PGI is encouraging the populations 'smaller' factions to play more by increasing their rewards (as mentioned earlier we have someone RP'ing Chancellor Liao 'machining it rain'), and this reward will also pull in 'mercs' from the other factions over to start playing for them as well.

Considering the jump in numbers Liao, Marik, and FRR has had recently I'm thinking this is working. We'll see PGI tune those rewards upwards as the map conditions of a faction worsen.

The scoring methodology should probably change, I think we can all agree on that, but let's not inflict atrocious wait times on people, it will cause ALL factions to lose player due to lack of interest as NO ONE will want to play ONE match (or less) per hour....

So... What's the logic you'd use for determining when an enemy has 'refused' to defend a territory?

I am honestly interested in this.

Currently the logic is: Enemy does not provide a 12 man counter to an attacking force, within 10 minutes of the attack.

What's your criteria?

When I saw it, it was 12/0. I never saw it at 24/0 (I suppose it could have been that way before I came out of my last match).

However, the planet was lost by a SINGLE victory, had the 'owners' of the planet been able to put together another 12 man within the 10 minute window, AND won the match, the planet wouldn't have switched.

Not to mention any of the 100+ matches fought over No Return could have been won that was lost or vice versa. I don't think we've had a world go over with Marik by more or less than 1 victory in the last few days; it's all been razor close. Then again it's been like that with Marik all through December.

Turret drops are about 3% of wins. If you lose a world by 1%, that 3% isn't what flipped it. The prior 47% is. That and flat out not showing up. Warlock got marched up to 100% with ghost drops. I watched it happen; there were less than 12 defenders in queue and at one point in the day 24 attackers. There is not a thread on the Davion forum about this; why? Because the issue wasn't turret walks. It's that Liao had more people to put on that planet than Davion did. We had to make some decisions as a faction about what we were going to fight for and what we were going to have to give up. That's a part of the game and an important tactical one. Again, I'd rather we have something that eliminates 'crunch time', like a 6 hour window after a world goes to 50% where the defender has to get it under 50% in that 6 hour time to keep it from flipping.

Currently though Davion is losing worlds - often 2 a day - and has been for days, due to not having as many people as the total number attacking our borders. That's cool and appropriate even. Numbers matter, organization of numbers matters, and it should matter. What needs fixed is that it only matters in a 3 hour window.

[Vas79]

An individual planet cool down as opposed to a map wide cease fire would go along way towards making fights matter in all time zones.

[Tiger 6]

Vas79, on 07 January 2015 - 08:13 AM, said:

An individual planet cool down as opposed to a map wide cease fire would go along way towards making fights matter in all time zones.

I like the idea, could you expand on how that would work?

[Vas79]

Once a planet is worked to 100% it would go into cool down on it's own and opens up the next planet in the corridor. The biggest issue for non NA units is that all the work you put in during your peak playing time can be for naught when the NA teams come on board and start playing.

Teng right now is sitting at 46% for the attackers with 27 attackers and 24 defenders. If it flipped at 100% sometime this afternoon it would give all of those players in that queue right now the feeling that they have accomplished something for their faction and it may allow for smaller units to end up gaining a planet with their tag on it.

It would also allow for the feeling of a more fluid front.