66 replies to this topic

[Mott]

wanderer, on 09 January 2015 - 10:27 AM, said:

At that point, raiding becomes a more efficient way of conquering a planet than 12-mans. Unacceptable- you have the same 12 players getting planetary control at an equal or better rate from 6 raids (especially as total 'Mech numbers drop- we already can kill 4 'Mechs in 3 minutes if you did 4x1) as they would running a single 12-man.

The 12-man attack/defense should always be the most effective way to take a planet, and by a significant margin.

Likewise, 1x12 still fails on the critical aspect of needing twelve players in the first place. 4x1 clogs the CW system with hordes of instances going so rapidly that 5 minute matches become the norm, which is why I suggested 4x3 and 15 minute matches instead. CW should never feel like the "instant action" matches. Even smaller groups should have that feeling of being part of a longer battle, rather than "Whelp, I got cored in the first 30 seconds. Guess I get to watch the other 11 derp around."

People should be bringing a drop deck to CW, being part of a match where they're making decisions that alter gameplay at multiple points based on what's happened in the match to date.

RE: weighting battles - i don't care, make it 30 Raid wins required before getting a single conquer point towards planetary control. All i care about is a better expenditure of my time.

RE: drop decks - i disagree. From both a gameplay and lore standpoint, these drop decks that are bringing 96 mechs (and 72 under your suggestion) are ridiculous. Only the largest battles for the most key worlds involved companies upon companies of mechs.

In reality, the vast majority of secondary worlds were fought with 2 or 3 companies MAX, more often than not just a few lances or stars.

CW needs a faster to access and play out game mode. The trade off to that faster game mode should be reduced influence on the Inner Sphere Map.

[HARDKOR]

Escort mode should be in there as well. 3 mechs protecting one mech from four mechs on a journey to and from a series of specific points, with multiple ways to get there.

[Revis Volek]

I am really just having a hard time understanding how you think creating ANOTHER game mode and ANOTHER queue is going to STOP the very first thing you stated in your post....

wanderer, on 08 January 2015 - 12:41 PM, said:

With CW, we're seeing the immense boredom in many cases of looooong waits for drops.

Or being forced to ghost drop. Or not being part of a large group and damned to PUGHell as target practice for a real unit group.

More modes, more queues just splits the small player base up even further....maybe i missed something. i re read you post a few times and still do not understand what this adds to the game other then another Mode.

I like it! Dont get me wrong....i would totally play these modes (lol) but i am failing to see where this fixes anything at all. It just creates more confusion in CW for new guys which is not explained at all to begin with.

[wanderer]

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RE: drop decks - i disagree. From both a gameplay and lore standpoint, these drop decks that are bringing 96 mechs (and 72 under your suggestion) are ridiculous. Only the largest battles for the most key worlds involved companies upon companies of mechs.

I agree with this, actually- in TT, we'd be throwing tanks and infantry and all kinds of combined arms into planetary conquest rather than simply marching legions of 'Mechs at planets. Likewise, those 'Mechs would be spread over multiple planets, fighting far longer for control.

Instead, MWO focuses an entire front's worth of 'Mechs on a single planet. I'd rather see more than a single option per cycle, and with raid modes, you could hopefully also spread out the playerbase WITHOUT making it so thinned that we'd just see everyone on a single planet anyway.

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More modes, more queues just splits the small player base up even further....maybe i missed something. i re read you post a few times and still do not understand what this adds to the game other then another Mode.

I like it! Dont get me wrong....i would totally play these modes (lol) but i am failing to see where this fixes anything at all. It just creates more confusion in CW for new guys which is not explained at all to begin with.

CW needs more players. As it stands, the general introduction to CW takes anything that isn't "large unit", chews it up, spits it out, and the disgusted player goes back to the pubbie queue and never plays CW again.

The path should be:

1) New player. Likely does his cadet time in the public solo queue.
2) Either remains in public queue or attempts CW once he's built up a few 'Mechs and modules
3) Raids in small groups, so he doesn't just experience CW as a series of pugstompings.
4) Remains a raider or joins a unit for 12mans.

As it is now it's:
1) New player.
2) Remains in public or gets the turds smacked out of him by hardcore large units when he tries, becomes frustrated and either returns to public or quits, or if he's reaaaaaaly masochistic/hardcore joins a large unit and prays he isn't waiting 60 minutes for a match.

CW is designed to be the core of the game. A core that discourages players left and right is useless and requires additions that WILL allow for enough players to participate to be that meaningful core.

Edited by wanderer, 09 January 2015 - 11:15 AM.

[DevlinCognito]

wanderer, on 09 January 2015 - 10:27 AM, said:

Not really. Your pubbies would still be put into a queue vs the same large units that burned them before. There's a reason for the public solo vs. group queue, and this would plow headlong into the same issues as we saw in the public queue with the need for large groups to have one queue, and smaller groups/soloists another option.

Putting raids on the older maps with appropriate modifications will give CW the smaller-scale (but still "unit") matches it needs and give those small group and solo players a place to be that isn't "fodder".

I disagree. Speaking as one of those in the solo queue with an avid interest in CW, the trouble isnt getting smashed by 12 mans, the sheer joy of getting a random bunch of solo players that actually want to work together as a team and beating a 12 man or getting into a drop with a unit that wants to work with you offsets the beatdowns. The problem is lack of numbers playing. I can wait for god knows how long in the attempt to get one game, or jump into the solo queue and get 4-5 games in the same time. Make every game a faction aligned game with the 'crunch' games Invasion and you'll see an uptick in population. If you have the misfortune to run into a 12man, well what happens when you drop onto a planet held by the GDL? Or Davion Heavy Gaurds? Or Sword of Light?

Dont get me wrong, I love the idea of another game mode that will be useful for determining the next days fights, but dont exclude public players from the rest of CW.

[Mercules]

wanderer, on 08 January 2015 - 12:41 PM, said:

With CW, we're seeing the immense boredom in many cases of looooong waits for drops.

Or being forced to ghost drop. Or not being part of a large group and damned to PUGHell as target practice for a real unit group.

While your ideas have merit these two issues could be immediately resolved by... you know... joining a unit.

[Felio]

Good point. Imagine how much easier it would be to find matches if they had not gone from 8v8 to 12v12.

[operatorZ]

Endorse.

[wanderer]

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Dont get me wrong, I love the idea of another game mode that will be useful for determining the next days fights, but dont exclude public players from the rest of CW.

All I can say is I've seen the results of a queue that combines large groups and small groups/singles without restraint.

PUGstomping. Stomping your solo-loving, special-snowflake face into the dirt until most less masochistic players left the game.

CW is a queue that combines large groups and small groups/singles without restraint. The result has been less masochistic players leaving CW and returning to pubbie play because for all your optimism, the truth is that 12-mans stomp pugs and they stomp smaller groups in an overwhelming majority of matches, and nothing you will do can stop it as the queue situation stands.

You either provide a separate but meaningful CW system for those smaller groups, or CW will become a desert bare of anything not big enough to have chances vs. the large unit behemoths. There is no compromise.

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While your ideas have merit these two issues could be immediately resolved by... you know... joining a unit.

If this was a viable solution, we'd all be in units, pubbie or CW queue and there'd never have been a need for the most populated queue in the game- the solo one - to exist. If you want a sufficient player pool in CW, you either find a place for small groups and soloists to grow into more large units- or you watch the pool shrivel to nothing but the diehards and enjoy your hour-long waits+ for matches. Maybe shooting up turrets for lack of actual opponents. Is that what you desire?

[Zibmo]

Bzerker01, on 08 January 2015 - 11:52 PM, said:

I don't think so, if the raid mode didn't allow you to put your name on the planet there would still be larger groups dropping to get their names on the worlds. Also small raids would help but to win worlds you need to fight real battles. If you made it so there was still required a certain number of actual matches to take a world people would still slug out in the 12 v 12 mode, especially those coordinated factions. By giving actual incentives to fight in the 12 man groups and join units you can prevent the larger queue from becoming a ghost town.

It's also possible that units would form based on this level of play that COULD challenge the established 12 mans.

Instead of the "I'm done with CW" pug posts. Which I sympathize with, by the way.

[DevlinCognito]

wanderer, on 09 January 2015 - 03:23 PM, said:

All I can say is I've seen the results of a queue that combines large groups and small groups/singles without restraint.

PUGstomping. Stomping your solo-loving, special-snowflake face into the dirt until most less masochistic players left the game.

CW is a queue that combines large groups and small groups/singles without restraint. The result has been less masochistic players leaving CW and returning to pubbie play because for all your optimism, the truth is that 12-mans stomp pugs and they stomp smaller groups in an overwhelming majority of matches, and nothing you will do can stop it as the queue situation stands.

You either provide a separate but meaningful CW system for those smaller groups, or CW will become a desert bare of anything not big enough to have chances vs. the large unit behemoths. There is no compromise.

I've also seen the results of 12 mans dropping wholesale in the public matches and seen the absolutely incredible amount of whining that resulted from it. I've also seen the result of pure 12 man only queues ...


*tumbleweed*


CW is meant to be [I]Hardcore [/] mode, if you get smashed by a 12 man 228th team that keeps dropping on Wazan, then dont go there. Wait, there is no other matches available because no-one else is playing CW and I've been waiting for 50 minutes to play a match? I'll stick to the solo queue to get a game ... AAAAAND then CW dies. We're already seeing the start of that and its only been around for under 5 weeks.


Ideally the Solo Queue stays the same. CW needs to be Invasion matches for the first and last slots on a planet, the rest are normal skirmish/conquest matches. That should help retain players as their normal matches mean something without only being forced to attack 12 mans on Boreal with a ragtag bunch of players some of whom .. well, seeing the final player attacking in an AS7-D with 2LRM10, MGs and 4 medium lasers is disheartening to say the least. With more players, you have a larger pool to pick from and  speed up matchmaking so you arent stuck queueing forever and a day.


I want to see your ideas for raids implemented as well, but for deciding what planets are fought over the next day. So if teams have locked down planets, cool, drop a raid somewhere else to try and get them to split a lance off. Give people a chance to get involved and they will play. Organised teams arent the issue as they will curbstomp a bunch of barely capable mech jocks in any mode as they should, its the endless waiting. Then jumping into the public queue and seeing herds of players who could be doing exactly the same thing, but for a reason.

[Sam Slade]

On the split the population argument: this mode would make PUGs relevant in CW... so more PUGs would play.

Hell, weight the MM heavily to give the real Assault on orbital gun to ONLY 12 man teams. Organized units could then co-ordinate for the grand Final Assault... but make unlocking all of the bits in between depend on raid missions. It's a great idea to keep PUGs in CW(and keep general numbers up).

[wanderer]

DevlinCognito, on 09 January 2015 - 06:20 PM, said:

CW is meant to be Hardcore [/] mode, if you get smashed by a 12 man 228th team that keeps dropping on Wazan, then dont go there. Wait, there is no other matches available because no-one else is playing CW and I've been waiting for 50 minutes to play a match? I'll stick to the solo queue to get a game ... AAAAAND then CW dies. We're already seeing the start of that and its only been around for under 5 weeks.

Screw "hardcore" mode. 12-man should get big rewards, but if we have a solo queue that's essentially the same, 12-mans become meaningless vs. the inevitable flood of PUG matches leaving any focused effort a drop of ink in the seabound tide.

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Ideally the Solo Queue stays the same. CW needs to be Invasion matches for the first and last slots on a planet, the rest are normal skirmish/conquest matches. That should help retain players as their normal matches mean something without only being forced to attack 12 mans on Boreal with a ragtag bunch of players some of whom .. well, seeing the final player attacking in an AS7-D with 2LRM10, MGs and 4 medium lasers is disheartening to say the least. With more players, you have a larger pool to pick from and speed up matchmaking so you arent stuck queueing forever and a day.

See above. Small groups and PUGs need to be doing something significantly different from 12-man efforts - and they need to be given the (commonly chosen) option to do it without being in potential 12-man muckery. No, standard skirmish/conquest isn't gonna do that, barring making it a copycat of the solo/group pubbie queue- in which case the units are basically useless for most of the process and have to sit there watching randoms randomly random and quite likely pissing away a planetary conquest while they're desperately waiting to be able to do the final assault- and the dedicated defending unit is stuck waiting for the randoms to come up as well.

Give them something suitable to small scale operations and leave the CW maps to 12-man/large group queue. It's not hard. Player picks the current attack/defend contracts, they go in the 12-man queue regardless of size. Player picks the raid/garrison contracts, they get put into the 4x3 vs 4x3 queue. Hardcores get to still do what hardcores do. Not-so-hardcores get to contribute in an effective fashion and NOT end up feeling skunked by the big groups. Everyone's happy in CW.

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I want to see your ideas for raids implemented as well, but for deciding what planets are fought over the next day. So if teams have locked down planets, cool, drop a raid somewhere else to try and get them to split a lance off. Give people a chance to get involved and they will play. Organised teams arent the issue as they will curbstomp a bunch of barely capable mech jocks in any mode as they should, its the endless waiting. Then jumping into the public queue and seeing herds of players who could be doing exactly the same thing, but for a reason.

Heck, in MBPT we could literally assault any planet that was available and we could draw a friendly line of systems to. The reason we can't in MWO is because they're afraid that player populations are too thin, from what I can gather. And heck, I wouldn't mind seeing raiding "opening up" planets- although that'd then be a dual-stage to conquering one. Raids could 1) Destabilize a planet enough to open it for full conquest and 2) Act as small pushes towards actual conquest once a planet becomes open for such actions. Basically, it'd allow Houses to choose their targets a ceasefire cycle in advance rather than have whatever system PGI has in place for pathing attacks.

Edited by wanderer, 09 January 2015 - 08:22 PM.

[Gierling]

I think that 4 and 8 man game modes using Skirmish, Assault, and Conquest would be great.

Also there should be asymmetric objective game modes on the existing maps, most of which have prominent features which represent assets (the Docks on River City, the industrial area on Caustic, the Radar Tower on Forest Colony, The dropship wreckage on Tourmaline, etc)

Also, why not a hide and seek recon game mode. One team has to target, and gain target info on all enemy mechs and some assets placed around the map, The enemy wins if a single mech or asset remains untargeted by an enemy which survives the match.Play with a small group size (6on6) and short time limit.

[wanderer]

Happy bump from Town Hall on the 15th:

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Q10 (considered smaller-unit modes in CW (3v3, 4v4, etc)?):
Basically they talked about this above, and yes, definitely. Scouting missions behind enemy lines, raids, etc. Not in the distant future, want to start working on it as soon as feb. Knows that this is a really good way to broaden the scope of CW for more players.

It's happening!

[Joseph Mallan]

wanderer, on 08 January 2015 - 12:41 PM, said:

*SNIP*

Good ideas, and likely "in the Pipe". But PGI is like Heinz Ketchup.

[Almond Brown]

wanderer, on 09 January 2015 - 11:03 AM, said:

stuff

How does the smaller Groups prevent this:

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3) Raids in small groups, so he doesn't just experience CW as a series of pugstompings.

At min an 8 man, with 2 Drops each, might be feasible in a Raid scenario. But in no way does having a smaller group prevent endless stomps for PUGS, unless ONLY Pugs get to RAID vs other PUGS.

Not sure how leaving out "Teams" from Raiding would be any better than leaving out PUGS from core CW?

Edited by Almond Brown, 16 January 2015 - 09:07 AM.

[AztecD]

Enable OUTREACH for small teams, raids for Info, cash, sabotage, etc.

You get a 4 man team, select a contract, fight profit

[wanderer]

Almond Brown, on 16 January 2015 - 09:04 AM, said:

How does the smaller Groups prevent this:



At min an 8 man, with 2 Drops each, might be feasible in a Raid scenario. But in no way does having a smaller group prevent endless stomps for PUGS, unless ONLY Pugs get to RAID vs other PUGS.

Not sure how leaving out "Teams" from Raiding would be any better than leaving out PUGS from core CW?

Let's put it to you this way.

12 people focusing one at a time evaporate PUGs like a death ray. Call target, melt target, repeat.

4 people focusing on one target is something that happens even in PUGsville. And amazingly, some people actually survive long enough with only 4 people shooting them at once to get away. Bonus: They have two more 'Mechs even if #1 dies. And it's easier for even the least aware players to deal with only 3 team-mates and 4 opponents vs. "Why did I die, I only ran into the open vs. the enemy team for 10 seconds."

Even in TT it was easy to see. There were players who pretty much lost any ability to be coherent if you handed them more 'Mechs than they had fingers- the more pieces on the board, the less effective they became because they simply couldn't keep track of everything at once. 4 is a nice small number of players. And hey, feel free to bring unit lances in on raids. No restrictions there. But keep it smaller, keep the map smaller, the rounds faster, and it'll be easier to set up people in queues.

One of the things older players noted with the change from 8v8 to 12v12 is how much easier it got to focus and kill targets. I'm betting that going from 12v12 to 4v4 will reverse that effect.

[ice trey]

I actually made a thread about this not long before you did... (http://mwomercs.com/...-micro-matches/) but it really didn't get enough posts in order to survive.

I also agree with the need for smaller match cues. Maybe not at such a small ratio that you're mentioning. A third of the mechs, a third of the territory was my mind set. Of course, chopping the fifteen territories down into smaller parts would be good, too. Maybe a way to prevent the 12-man drop from becoming irrelevant would be to reserve... let's say 40% of a world, for 12-man drops, and the remaining 60% for lance-drops.