11 replies to this topic

[LoklanZFG]

So, I've fixed CW! In my head at least. The game mode itself is fun as hell when you are in a match with opponents. But I think we could improve the overall experience of getting into those matches and how planet capturing functions. With just some simple changes!

1. The attacking faction is always attacking in match, and the defending faction is always defending in match.

2. The current system of whoever queues first gets to flip a tick on the planet goes out the window. Instead, it goes up a tick whenever an attacker wins or down a tick when the defender wins.

3. More than 15 ticks on the planet.

4. Instead of resetting planets every 8 hours during ceasefire, let a planet run all the way until its 100% fallen. At that point the planet becomes unalterable (but you can still queue just for a fight) until the next ceasefire. During ceasefire, the only borders the guys on Terra would have to update would be ones with planets that reached 100%.

Instead of 3 hour windows of action before ceasefires that come down to who queues up the fastest to flip that 53% tick on the planet before it gets reset, we could have planetary battles that last for days if they are hotly contested. (insert tales of Wazan here. o7 Mariks and Davs)
Slowing down the planet flip would give factions more time to react and organize, instead of logging in to 100% planets with only 2-3 hours till ceasefire. It would also obviously benefit players and units who aren't able to be online during crunch time.

The only real problem to be figured out here is how many ticks to 100% on a planet? Enough that taking a planet feels like more of a faction-wide accomplishment, but not so many that winning a single match feels like it has no impact.

5. Maybe do away with the call to arms spam, and instead give pugs a streamlined faction queue button for CW. Dunno if this would work, since it would involve linking all the contested planet queues for one faction, and then slotting in pugs where they are needed, or when there are 12 of them.

I really believe these tweaks to the system would make the Map and the match finding much more fun and fluid and interesting.

Edited by LoklanZFG, 28 January 2015 - 03:17 AM.

[LoklanZFG]

And to elaborate on the interaction of defenders always being on defense with their ability to affect the progress on the planet, we can just do away with turret walks. The attackers just gain a tick if no one shows in 10 minutes, or the defenders knock a tick off if no attackers come to harass them after 10 minutes. Otherwise, ghost drops would gaurantee a planet's eventual fall unless a faction had defenders on call 24/7.
Also, not having planets reset to 0 on a set time table will reduce the incentive to ghost drop anyways. Most people would rather find a match, and only ghost drop a time or two to get someone to come out and play.

Edited by LoklanZFG, 28 January 2015 - 03:05 AM.

[Stealth Raptor]

I would also like to addess another fundamental issue, the fact that numbers matter more then skill. No im not talking about ghost drops. Ghost drops can happen at most once every ten minutes, and if you have at least three but ideally four groups on a planet, no matter how many tney have stacked up against you, only one ghost cap is getting through every ten minutes, and if you have three or more groups on the planet, one of their matches will invariably end before the ghost cap timer and prevent the ghost cap, then the next group in line starts the next 10 minute timer, etc and so forth, so they arent the issue. what i am referring to are the combined mechanics of 1) only the attacker can put a tick on/take a tick off and 2) if you drop into a cw queue with noone immediately available on the other side, you will always get attack or counter attack. why is this an issue?

as this was relevant last night, im going to use the davions as an example. so far in our most recent little fighting, the davions have outnumbered us. generally only one or two groups, not a huge deal that should matter. but lets say we are defending elidere at say 20% and we have three defending groups and they have four attacker groups. as i described above there is little if any ghost dropping. lets say my group gets out of a win, yay NS! we ready up and launch, bam we run into the group in ghost cap timer, and we are launched into a game where we are the defenders and they are the attackers, lets say we win. yay NS! because we were defending we dont get a tick back. oh well launch again. we hit that 4th group sitting in ghost cap timer, we are defending. we win again, yay NS! however we dont gain a tick back. see the problem? every group on ourside that relaunches runs into that 4th group, and they are always attacking. even if kurita wins 95% of the time (we dont) we will not get a single tick back, but conversely we will lose a tick once every 20 matches, even though we are winning 95% of the time! obviously in real life kurita isnt winning 95% of our matches against davion, but the lower our win rate goes the faster they accumulate ticks that we can never take off. this is true if we are attacking them- their 4th group will always launch into a counter attack, so as long as they have more groups then we do, we will never gain a single tick due to the fact we are defending every time and every win they get gains them a tick back. This is a very unfair system for any faction that has less numbers then another.

there are two simple solutions: altrenate attack and counter attack between the two factions so both have equal chance to get ticks/take them off, or make it so defenders can also get ticks. Either will take away the numbers component and allow skill to matter. Again i only use davion as it was the most recent example in my head, and other then the three vs four groups on a planet, every number was made up to drive home the point

[pwnface]

I pretty much agree with everything here and have iterated so in the past.

The Attack/Defend vs Counter-Attack/Hold Territory mechanic is TERRIBLE.

Attackers should be attacking
Defenders should be defending
Reach 100% control then switch

Why does it need to be more complex than this?

Ghost Drops are also a terrible waste of time. If I have a 12man team queued up for an hour just give us multiple ticks instead of making us kill turrets every 10 minutes.

Ghost Drops (or waiting in queue if the mechanic is changed) need to be worth LESS than actual drops. Implementing a system that doesn't rely on ceasefire cutoff times that reset control percentages would encourage players to play CW all the time rather than have a 90% drop in activity post ceasefire.

I'd like to see planetary control require maybe 25-30 wins rather than just 8. If control percentages aren't reset every ceasefire, it would take coordination between multiple time zones to keep up pressure on specific planets. It would be much more interesting to see long drawn out battles over planets rather than fast 2-3 hour sprints and then stacking 2 or 3 teams to ghost drop right before ceasefire for uncontested wins.

Edited by pwnface, 28 January 2015 - 03:14 PM.

[Koniving]

This may fix the "peak gameplay times" being 2 to 3 hours before the ceasefire window, as it'd remove the ceasefire windows.

[PerfectDuck]

The removal of ceasefire scheduling and the implementation of some other cooldown control to keep factions from winning too many planets too quickly would be nice, too. I digress, though. It's a complicated subject and I don't really feel like I know the solution.

Edited by PerfectDuck, 28 January 2015 - 03:37 PM.

[pwnface]

Koniving, on 28 January 2015 - 03:16 PM, said:

This may fix the "peak gameplay times" being 2 to 3 hours before the ceasefire window, as it'd remove the ceasefire windows.

I think these are the natural peak gameplay times anyway or at least that is how they were designed to be. It would certainly fix the issue of massive drops in activity right after ceasefire. I'd imagine that an ideal situation would be for activity to gradually fade as people log for the night until SEA picks up again.

Edited by pwnface, 28 January 2015 - 03:51 PM.

[LoklanZFG]

Technically, the ceasefire windows would probably still be there. They would just be much less important. Having it flip instantly at 100% like Pwn said would be great, but that might be a huge re-work on the developer's end. Using the ceasefire windows to only update planets that have fallen would likely be the easiest (and quickest) way to implement the change.

The worst case scenario with this system would be if a faction finished a planet off right after ceasefire, and couldn't affect that border on offense for 6-7 hours. But on the other hand that faction would have the planet secured at an unalterable 100%, and they would be free to shift their focus elsewhere. Or, keep dropping on the fallen planet just for fun matches and C-bills. If you are a faction that only has 1 active front, It's kinda lame if you can't keep attacking even though the other faction might have pilots who will queue up for a fight.

[pwnface]

I really wish someone from PGI would read this. Too bad they are busy trying to fix AC2s

[LoklanZFG]

Someone give me a list of their emails/social media and I will spam them with it.

[Almond Brown]

pwnface, on 29 January 2015 - 10:38 AM, said:

I really wish someone from PGI would read this. Too bad they are busy trying to fix AC2s

Typical Forum rhetoric.

"Fix the GD AC2's already!"
"Fix the GD CW already!"
"Why the frack are they fixing the GD AC2's now?"

Simply amazing...

[pwnface]

Almond Brown, on 30 January 2015 - 10:44 AM, said:

Typical Forum rhetoric.

"Fix the GD AC2's already!"
"Fix the GD CW already!"
"Why the frack are they fixing the GD AC2's now?"

Simply amazing...

Ghost heat was never the problem with AC2s, the base heat is prohibitively high. There isn't a reason to take an AC2 over an AC5 EVER. If the heat was reduced to 0.75 per shot instead of 1 per shot, we might actually see people use it as a long range suppression weapon. In any case, I think fixing CW is more important than fixing 1 weapon.