37 replies to this topic

[InnerSphereNews]

Greetings MechWarriors,

Now that the team is back in the office after the holiday break, we want to update everyone on where we stand with support tickets and what the support priorities will be over the next week or so.

Tickets related to purchase and billing issues (such as partially-processed payments, missing MC, missing purchase items, etc.) are currently our top priority. These tickets will be tackled together by the support staff, and will generally be approached in chronological order.

Tickets related to technical, account, and moderation support may experience a slightly longer response delay while we prioritize the above billing issues over the short-term.
We will be doing our absolute best to handle all other tickets alongside the priority tickets, and we apologize sincerely for any delays. Once we work through the priority tickets the support staff will be going back to our standard areas of responsibility.

In other news, check out Russ's 2014 Retrospective / January Roadmap post!

Hope everyone had a great holiday, and happy new year!

[Mumpitzmaster]

According to your list of items that will be discussed:

European Players:
Take all matches, played over the whole period, into account. The 15 Areas can stay as they are. That's for deciding if attack/defense or counter/hold is played. But if the planet goes to the attackers or stays at the defending faction, ALL matches count. So the effort of the european players is not worthless.

Grouping with all faction members:
Why can't you just allow public groups to drop in CW. The faction to drop for is either taken from the group leader or from the chosen planet. After the faction is clear, it is just an additional condition for the group to be able to launch. Just like the 3-3-3-3 Rule.

Queues in general:
Cant you just search possible groups in the background? Lets say a stack of ten possible matches where the player/group would fit into. If one match is filled up with another player/group, it is poped out of that match stack and another one is searched for. That all should happen in the background while the player is looking through his mechlab/skills, is chatting or doing nothing. If the player/groupleader the is clicking on the launch button, he should have instantly a match. The Match-Stack is discarded every time a mech/loadout changes. If there are no matches found between last stackchange and launch the you can still show the search circle.

Auto wins? Just make CW more attractive and this will solve by itself. We need more Maps and maybe also some other kinds of playmodes in CW. This are things that can only be done with time and resources. Add things constantly and this will also get better. For now, we may have to deal with it.

Take these ideas into your meeting and let us all know what YOU think about these.

Edited by Mumpitzmaster, 05 January 2015 - 12:53 PM.

[Slater01]

Top Priority for 2015 - Paul wearing a big Afro on the Dev logs

Edited by Slater01, 05 January 2015 - 02:41 PM.

[Lily from animove]

Slater01, on 05 January 2015 - 12:55 PM, said:

Top Priority for 2015 - Paul wearing a big azz Afro on the Dev logs

yes pls, i wanna see that xD

then make a paulfro bobble head cockpit item.

[AnimeFreak40K]

Interesting read and even if January is a bit of a wash regarding patches and such, I am pretty much okay with this, as you guys put in a LOT of effort to get things reasonably smoothed out ahead of your own posted schedules and deadlines. You then took a (well deserved) break for a couple of weeks and stuff’s piled up and it will take time to parse through it all… so any delays and such are understandable from my end of things.

As far as stuff that needs looking into and/or fixing for CW, I’m not exactly sure how the issue of the Light Mech Zerg-Rush can be fixed, adjusted or otherwise mitigated, if it can be done at all. I realize that increasing the minimum tonnage was designed to force players to take heavier mechs. Unfortunately, my observations in a handful of recent matches shows me that this really changed nothing at all.

I say this because even with the increased minimum tonnage, there is nothing stopping a group of running their first drop entirely in Spiders, Jenners, Ravens and Firestarters leaping over one (or all) of the gates and bulldozing over the objectives. Very little actual coordination is needed for this tactic other than the group deciding that everybody’s first mech should be a jump-jet capable light and leaping over the wall at the same time then swarming the sub-generators.

A reasonably competent group can easily kill all three sub-generators and deal grievous damage to the primary generator on this initial rush, making the second rush a walk in the park.

To be quite clear, I am aware that the current missions and maps heavily favor the Defenders. I am aware that for the Attackers to win, a sizable amount of coordination, timing and tactics are required; things that the defending force can pretty much eschew.

Interestingly enough, it seems to me that for a coordinated group to reliably win, the Light Mech Zerg Rush is really the only reliable and viable tactic, which pretty much goes in the exact opposite of what you guys were shooting for when it comes to how you wanted CW battles to be fought, especially when it comes to having large groups.

All of this being said, I’m just not sure if this is something that can be fixed without some serious overhauling of several aspects of the game…

Anyway, thanks again for all of your hard work and I look forward to seeing more great things in 2015.

[Rhialto]

Well... patience is a virtue they say. I have a ticket open since Nov 29th and I still haven't heard about it. I don't know in what category above it fits since it's purshase but also a technical problem.

[TiguriusX]

Some quick proposals for common CW items

Ceasefire issue
Replace the single ceasefire deadline with multiple deadlines
Anywhere from 3-5 would create a more dynamic CW experience for players outside NA (I am on the West Coast and can't even make the prime time hours because I have small children that take priority etc.)

This will also remove the "dead time" that is the first 16 hours or so of the current ceasefire. Multiple ceasefire deadlines create a constant incentive to go to war.

After 24 hours all the ceasefire results are tallied and planets officially change hands


Zerg rush issue
Modify the turrets to specifically stop lights
-Don't have pop ups. Leave them up
-Increase the damage potential of turrets so speed doesn't get you pass them

This makes turrets more deadly but lets you kill them from distance much easier. Heavier units will slow down and sweep the turrets before proceeding.

Lights have to stop or get decimated. Should help with zerg rushing


New player guidance
The objectives and scoring need to be changed to encourage TEAM play.

Track who kills or deals damage to turrets, gate generators, ogens and Omega itself for the attackers.
Greatly increase rewards for this behavior


*Edit*
Added new player guidance

Edited by TiguriusX, 05 January 2015 - 05:37 PM.

[Navid A1]

Thanks for the update.

Are you guys aware of what's been happening in the forums during your break?
Do we need to bump some of them?

[Void2258]

Many people in CW don't know what the generators actually look like. They keep trying to find them by cycling targets, but of course they don't come up. I have had multiple groups wandering around shooting everything until I tell them where to go because no one knows what to shoot. The Generators need to be more distinct and highlighted.

[Alaskan Nobody]

Void2258, on 05 January 2015 - 07:08 PM, said:

The Generators need to be more distinct and highlighted.

I thought they were highlighted pretty well (they glow blue on my usual settings) - but turning the settings down some and the blue disappears.

So yeah.

Supporting what you said.

[Void2258]

Also while you are fixing the UI could you make the out-of-match parts of the game windowed? There is no need for it to be full screen and it forces people to constantly alt+tab into and out of the game as they wait around for matchmaking. No one wants to sit there staring at the CW screen for 10 min while repetitive music plays. Make the game windowed with proper background alerts similar to how LoL handles things. That will make the waiting around more tolerable and will decrease the number of crashes.

Also please fix the crash interaction with VLC. I checked it with a bunch of other games. It's not them, it's you.

Edited by Void2258, 05 January 2015 - 07:14 PM.

[Rhialto]

Void2258, on 05 January 2015 - 07:13 PM, said:

forces people to constantly alt+tab into and out of the game as they wait around for matchmaking.

Hehe I'm not alone doing this... I only PUG but in 1-3 minutes it takes to find a match + countdown I have enough time to read a news or something. When a game is found I see MWO flash on the taskbar so it's not a problem and I almost never crash, I would say 1 out of 60 and when it happens I have time to rejoin.

[Bluefalcon13]

Void2258, on 05 January 2015 - 07:13 PM, said:

Also while you are fixing the UI could you make the out-of-match parts of the game windowed? There is no need for it to be full screen and it forces people to constantly alt+tab into and out of the game as they wait around for matchmaking. No one wants to sit there staring at the CW screen for 10 min while repetitive music plays. Make the game windowed with proper background alerts similar to how LoL handles things. That will make the waiting around more tolerable and will decrease the number of crashes.

Also please fix the crash interaction with VLC. I checked it with a bunch of other games. It's not them, it's you.

I launch the game from steam with overlay support. I just shift tab to steam overlay and lurk on the forums while waiting. Works well

Think you need to launch steam with admin privlages though.

[Goosfraba]

Rhialto, on 05 January 2015 - 07:21 PM, said:

Hehe I'm not alone doing this... I only PUG but in 1-3 minutes it takes to find a match + countdown I have enough time to read a news or something. When a game is found I see MWO flash on the taskbar so it's not a problem and I almost never crash, I would say 1 out of 60 and when it happens I have time to rejoin.

Heh, I watch episodes of MST3K while I wait.

[Void2258]

Also can we lower the number of confirmation windows in the UI when you fix it? And make the game not require admin privileges to run (this is the only modern game I have the needs this)?

[Bluefalcon13]

steam requires the admin elevation to launch from the patcher I believe, donno if that is what you are talking about or just the general game.

I have UAC disabled, which I dont recommend for most people, but hey, I worked in IT (going back to school on GI Bill now...) so I generally keep myself safe

[Void2258]

The game shouldn't need admin privileges. It's just lazy programming.

[Koniks]

Info about CW queues that would be useful to display:
When clicking on a planet, how many territories currently have an active match.
Timer on each territory's match.
Live score on each territory's match including Kills and generator health
# of full defender/attack groups in queue
# of incomplete defender/attack groups in queue & group slots open
Composition of each group eg 12 man, 4x3, PUGs, etc
# of tags by the most successful unit on the currently winning faction

Other suggestions: tweak matchmaker to prefer equal sized groups where possible, rather than strictly FIFO

[Appogee]

It's ridiculous that your entire customer support team disappeared for the past two weeks.

This is 2015. No business should be leaving its customers unsupported for two weeks.

This is especially true when your business is entertainment, and those two weeks are when your customers are going to be using your product the most.

At the very least you should have skeleton crew working through that period and dealing with priority issues.

Annual leave rostering - it's not hard.

Edited by Appogee, 06 January 2015 - 04:11 AM.

[Orion Starion]

First of all, thanks for working hard on MWO.

What I would really like to see in regards to UI2.0 is access to the store and mech lab via the web. Probably a drop deck builder and ability to view the CW map in there too.

I pretty much support all the previous requests as well.