Group and PUG Queue
Quote Russ all you want about CW being more Unit focused, that doesn't mean that punishing PUGs is a good idea. PUGs wander into CW to try it out, get stomped, leave CW and maybe even MWO and don't come back. The game and PGI already has an up hill battle with marketing and selling with previous reputations earned from the games development. That being said I believe you can still make CW focused towards Units with out punishing solo players.
Separating solo PUGs and groups like is already done in public matches would help solo players experience CW to get a flavor of the game play to see if they enjoy it. Now of course you will have to make sure that these solo drops aren't going to be more effective than unit drops in the group queue. This can be done by simply making two separate counts for planetary conquests, they can averaged together, be separate, or be some other way. Making the group queue have less requirements for total victory will convince people to join units but of course there could be other things to make it more advantageous for people to join groups and Units.
Unit Perks
Units are a big thing, and should come with a big boost for the players in them. Below I will give a few examples of some things which units might get access to over your average solo players. There could always be balance issues which can be worked out, and these are generally ideas and not perfect on their own, but in general the idea is to give some advantage for people to join and play CW with a unit.
- Unit Dropships: Having Dropships which are upgradeable and multiple types of dropships would give some serious perks in a battle to units. Allowing for ships to have custom weapons load outs, dropping in ammo or repair items to aid the team as a whole. Perhaps even having Union Class and up which stay on the field to act as defense, refit, and repair for the team for the units with the most cash.
- Unit Commands: Being able to drop markers for unit members as well as having markers for unit members in other lances when playing in multiple group drops.
- Unit Mechs: Units able to donate old mechs to function like slightly modifiable trial mechs for other mermbers, with permissions. However these mechs can be reclaimed only by the original owner. This way people will be more interested in joining units as they can try out other mechs which they can tweak to see if they like with out dumping c-bills.
Edited by Bzerker01, 05 January 2015 - 12:33 AM.