24 replies to this topic

[Repasy Cooper]

Hello Devs!

I've been encouraged by several people to post my idea here for new factions. Quite a few people right now feel that the current loyalty rewards system does not reward faction loyalty but in fact rewards faction hopping. There are many people upset about large units hopping factions frequently and general player imbalance among factions. We've come up with an idea that could fix all that.

We were thinking that there needs to be more distinction between loyalist players and contract players. There should be privileges and restrictions on both play styles, but always more incentive to stick with one faction. This could make the player attendance per faction easier to track and manage.

The idea was started by Prussian Havoc in the following thread:

http://mwomercs.com/...r/page__st__500

Prussian Havoc, on 07 February 2015 - 09:01 PM, said:

Precisely.

This isn't EVE, a good faith effort needs to be made by PGI to provide CW with as many BattleTech Trappings as is possible. Mercenary Corps Units should NOT be able to set themselves up as Factions-onto-themselves. Example - Merc-Contracts should be for one Front alone. House Kurita for example could let contracts for Mercs to fight Marik or for Mercs to fight Davion, but under one contract the Mercenary could NOT fight along BOTH fronts. It is one or the other and the Merc CDR had better make the best decision possible to keep his Unit as fully occupied with potential matches.

Only LOYALIST Units should be able to move across ALL fronts for a given faction.

This dynamic (1-Front vice all-fronts) would come to define MWO:CW. Given time and it being incorporated well prior to Launch, it would be accepted as a foundational aspect of Gameplay, with expectations shifting accordingly.

According to Lore Mercenary Corps Units were EMPLOYED in just such a manner... AND NOT given UNCONSTRAINED free reign within a factions boundaries to ATTACK WHOMEVER THEY PLEASE.

The more I think on it, it is just patently wrong for a MERCENARY to pick and chose whom to attack - Ally and Foe-alike in potential and equal danger according to the whims of a CONTRACTED force.

Yes, it should be hard-wired that a CONTRACT is for one front and one front alone.

Let there be this and other undergirding, structured relationships between categories of units - Loyalists, Mercenaries, Pirate, Bandit.



Now in Beta is the right and proper time to hash all this out.

Hopefully soon PGI will give evidence if we are going with COMPLETELY unconstrained BattleTech-like environment (on the order of EVE) or if BT Lore will give purpose and consequential structure to Factional interactions.


Either way, I intend to continue to buy Mech Packages and play MWO all the chances I get.

I and several others liked the idea and attempted to develop it, here is what we have so far:

REWARDING LOYALTY

• Rewards for loyalty are currently hardlined as one-time rewards for consecutive time fighting with a faction. We propose that in order to promote more faction loyalty, these rewards should be a per-match % bonus that increases over consecutive time with a faction, but is lost after switching to another faction. This would mean that if you want your per-match % bonus again, you have to start from scratch each time you faction hop. This would increase the benefits of loyalty and penalize defecting frequently.
  
• The hardlined one-time bonuses we have in game could stay, but should be more of a Community Warfare participation reward available throughout all factions. It's useful to get more people to play, but this way it won't promote faction hopping.
  
• Loyalty rewards could include limited access to faction decals (so long as you remain loyal), rare gifts of consumable modules for continued service, and access to brief Faction-specific sales on mechs, components, weapons, modules, etc., that change frequently over time.
  
• Steeper penalties for players/units that faction-hop frequently, such as temporary penalties to C-Bills and exp earned, and temporary steeper fines when defecting.

SUPPORT FACTIONS PART ONE: MERCENARIES

• People who want to play mercenary style and hop between factions should instead get their own Mercenary Factions. Merc units/players could join one of these factions with the idea being that they are 'sponsored' by that Merc faction. The no-brainer factions to add would be: Gray Death Legion, Northwind Highlanders, Kell Hounds, and Wolf's Dragoons.
  
• Merc factions do not own territory, they support the assaults and defenses of IS House factions. Merc factions are support groups for the Inner Sphere, so their tech would be IS-based only. Any territory gained by a Merc faction is for a main IS faction.
  
• Each of the four Merc factions would have different contracts w/ House factions. These contracts would change over time with some sort of algorithm based on each House faction's loyal player base. These contracts would each be restricted to an individual attack lane, instead of all possible war fronts of a house faction.
  
• Mercenaries will receive the faction insignia of the House faction that their Merc faction is currently fighting for, with a notable difference to distinguish mercenaries from loyalists (ie. discoloration, merc symbol in the corner, etc.). The insignia will change based on whenever the Merc faction changes contracts. (Wildstreak, Feb 11 2015)

As an example: A player is sponsored by Wolf's Dragoons. This month, Wolf's Dragoons have a contract with Steiner as the loyal player attendance in House Steiner is low compared to other factions. There are currently three contracts a Wolf's Dragoon can choose from: There is the option to support the Clan Invasion resistance, the objective is to take and hold planet x from Jade Falcon forces for 7 days. If the planet is secured by the end of the contract a C-Bill bonus of 4,000,000 will be paid. There is a second contract availabe, the objective being to support defense of planet y from Marik assault for 4 days. If successfully defended, a C-Bill bonus of 2,250,000 will be paid. The third available contract is to perform a deep-space raid into Davion territory with the goal of capturing planet z. Successful completion will pay a bonus of 750,000. Each contract lists statistics on how many Dragoons are signed to the contract, how many extra slots are available, and how much enemy resistance to expect. New contracts become available as old ones are filled/completed. Breaking a contract results in a C-Bill fine comparable to the weight of the contract.

SUPPORT FACTIONS PART TWO: AUXILIARY CLANS

• The Auxiliary Clans are the clanner's option to play mercenary style. Essentially a mirror version of IS Mercenaries, the available Auxiliary Clans would be something like: Clan Diamond Shark, Clan Nova Cat, and Clan Steel Viper.
  
• The Auxiliary Clans would also not own territory. They would support Clan offensives and defensives and their tech would be Clan-based. Any territory gained by them would be for the clan they are supporting.
  
• Each of the three Auxiliaries would provide contract support to low-attendance Clans in the same way that Mercs support IS Houses. These support contracts would also be restricted by individual attack lanes in the same manner.
  
• Auxiliaries will receive the faction insignia of the main Clan faction that their Auxiliary faction is currently fighting for, with a notable difference to distinguish auxiliaries from loyalists (ie. discoloration, auxiliary symbol in the corner, etc.). The insignia will change based on whenever the Aux faction changes contracts. (Wildstreak, Feb 11 2015)

PLEDGING LOYALTY

• People who want to join a main IS faction or main Clan faction are restricted only to pledging loyalty. They cannot form contracts with the main faction, and as such would only be able to pay the high penalty for defecting.
  
• Mercenaries and Auxiliaries have the option for 7-day, 14-day, 30-day, and pledge of loyalty when joining. However, joining these factions would be restricted based on overall IS-vs-Clan player spread. If there was a surplus of IS players at the time you were joining a faction, you would have the option to join main Clans AND Auxiliaries, but you would only have option to join main Houses in the IS. Likewise, if there was a surplus of clanners, you would have option to join main Houses and Mercenaries, but only main Clans and not Auxiliaries in the Invasion.
  
• Both Mercenaries AND Auxiliaries would be available so long as the player balance IS-vs-Clan was more level.

Edited by Repasy, 12 February 2015 - 10:13 AM.

[Grimolfr]

There's one problem that I notice that causes a unit to go full mercenary. In fact, my unit does this for the same reason: IS and clan mechs. My unit has both IS and clan mechs. We like to be able to play both IS and clan mechs in CW, at the very least for variation and practice. We tend to do Davio for a month or so, then we do a clan for a week, and bounce like that. If units were able to have a bit more of a mech mix we would certainly not faction jump, but stick to most likely the Federated Suns.

That's my only problem with this proposal, is that, if I understand it correctly, it'd punish the units who want variety too much (but it certainly would promote more focused faction loyalty).

[Repasy Cooper]

Grimolfr, on 11 February 2015 - 01:35 PM, said:

There's one problem that I notice that causes a unit to go full mercenary. In fact, my unit does this for the same reason: IS and clan mechs. My unit has both IS and clan mechs. We like to be able to play both IS and clan mechs in CW, at the very least for variation and practice. We tend to do Davio for a month or so, then we do a clan for a week, and bounce like that. If units were able to have a bit more of a mech mix we would certainly not faction jump, but stick to most likely the Federated Suns.

That's my only problem with this proposal, is that, if I understand it correctly, it'd punish the units who want variety too much (but it certainly would promote more focused faction loyalty).

Well the point that I and others have been trying to make is that too many people are faction hopping. I understand the reasons why you guys want to be able to have access to both techs, but the hopping affects the game too much. The people who REALLY REALLY want to continue hopping should have the option available but there SHOULD be more penalties to doing so. You can't do anything about the tech restriction because cw is based on the lore of the Clan Invasion. This is how it was. What you're asking for totally destroys this concept. You might as well just have two buttons "Fight for IS" and "Fight for Clans" and get thrown into a random match for random faction because that's really all you're doing. Maybe this is the answer for mercenary units. I prefer my original concept though because it has a distinct battletech flavour and attempts to add something new to the game.

If you want IS/Clan mixtech there's always the public queue...

[Grimolfr]

I feel as though you read my response with too much salt.

I agree with a good chunk of what you said, I just think it could be done a bit better; such as increasing rewards to being faction specific rather than nerfing the hell out of merc units. Buffs are always more welcome than nerfs.

And while there is the public queue, there's no attack/defend game type to be found there.

[Prussian Havoc]

Great OP, good job Repasy!

Aff, complete and unqualified Aff with ALL aspects of your proposal here.

Grimolfr, on 11 February 2015 - 02:42 PM, said:

I feel as though you read my response with too much salt.

I agree with a good chunk of what you said, I just think it could be done a bit better; such as increasing rewards to being faction specific rather than nerfing the hell out of merc units. Buffs are always more welcome than nerfs.

And while there is the public queue, there's no attack/defend game type to be found there.

I hear your concerns over using both sets of PAID FOR (in many cases) Mechs.

I was in the same position but was fortunate enough to be able to take advantage of the free HUNCHBACK MASTERY PACKAGES from the recent PayPal promotion.

#MasteryOfTheHunch plus the recent Double XP and 2XP Conversion Weekend permitted me to flesh out 3 (Firestarter and BattleMasters too) fully Mastered, and Moduled Drop Decks. I realize just how lucky I am to have two accounts fully capable of competing in CW at the highest level of functionality (Mastered and Moduled.)


While THAT is an option for a few, most are left frustrated by the inability to easily be able to "Get BOTH you Is ON and your Clan ON!"


I think the biggest CW challenge with #GoingBothWays is the ACCOUNTABILITY being incorporated into an ENDURING BATTLETECH-LIKE MWO COMMUNITY WARFARE.

You only have to ask yourself, "What normally happens to a group of Warriors who constantly and repeatedly cross through battle-lines taking work from BOTH sides of a particular Conflict?

The answer is that the particular Unit soon ceases to exist as it gains ENEMIES from ALL those involved.

Don't you see?


CW has already been identified as MWO's #HardMode. Accountability, Sullying the name and reputation of your Unit, all this SHOULD be a #PartAndParcel of MWO.

ENDURING CONSEQUENCES BOTH BENEFICIAL AND DETRIMENTAL (IMO) can ONLY enrich CW immersion and refine CW gameplay.


However, I think you already hit on the right answer however... Release the maps to the Public Queue, (maybe make a weekend Challenge out of it - 50% and a CW Map will be released.)

[Wildstreak]

Offhand, the only two things I could see different are these.

Merc Factions - Problem with using canon Merc Units is they sometimes change employers. I say anyone who is not a Loyalist and fights for the IS should get a variation on the House symbol showing which House they work for but it differentiates them from Loyalists.
Clan Mercs can get the same but call them Freebirths for only the Trueborn are loyal.

[Repasy Cooper]

Wildstreak, on 11 February 2015 - 08:04 PM, said:

Offhand, the only two things I could see different are these.

Merc Factions - Problem with using canon Merc Units is they sometimes change employers. I say anyone who is not a Loyalist and fights for the IS should get a variation on the House symbol showing which House they work for but it differentiates them from Loyalists.
Clan Mercs can get the same but call them Freebirths for only the Trueborn are loyal.

This is a good idea. I was unsure myself how to best convey this difference. Another possible solution is to give them completely different symbols (ie. a Wolf's Dragoon mercenary would get a Wolf's Dragoon insignia, a Clan Nova Cat auxiliary would get a Clan Nova Cat insignia, etc.), but I suppose going this method it would become difficult to know exactly who a merc/aux faction was fighting for. I'll add your idea to the OP for now, will modify points of the feature suggestion as I get more feedback from people.

[Nightmare1]

You mean something like this?



Originally, there was supposed to be three separate "Lives."

Clan
Loyalist
Merc

Just watch the vid. If only that would come to pass!

[Repasy Cooper]

Nightmare1, on 12 February 2015 - 12:41 PM, said:

You mean something like this?



Originally, there was supposed to be three separate "Lives."

Clan
Loyalist
Merc

Just watch the vid. If only that would come to pass!

Yea if only. Currently there's no way to distinguish between any of those three 'lives'. Lone mercenaries can also be perceived as lone loyalists, and merc units can be perceived as loyal units. My idea hopefully would create a strong distinction at least between loyalist and non-loyalist players.

The 'Contract Rules' they talked about in the video sounds like it could be exactly what I'm getting at. There aren't any rules for contracts right now, so non-loyalist units can hop to a faction and attack whoever they want.

'Player Created Contracts'. This is EXACTLY what we need! There would finally be a defined connection between in-game and all the interesting RP politics on the forums. Why stop at player-created bounties? We could have all merc contracts created by loyalist players, THAT would be community warfare.

'Faction Chat'. Also missing... hmmmm...
'Unit Logistics'. Aaaaalso missing....
'Voting For Warfronts'. 'Faction Economics'. 'Mercs Playing Nice For Contracts'.

So much complexity promised in this video. I pray they haven't given up developing these features, we need much more structure in cw. I guess the OP was just an attempt to create more of that.

[Nightmare1]

Yeppers! Personally, the logistics is pretty interesting. Letting the Factions determine which Mechs are available to Loyalist Units, and then the planetary control determine which Factions have access to which Mechs and Tech, makes for veeery interesting CW dynamics! It also gives Units an actual reason to own a planet.

[Ultra-Laser]

I feel like the idea of a "sponsorship" setup for merc units is pointless at this stage, all I can see it doing is adding a sizable layer of complexity and design overhead without much payoff. Pseudo-factions are a novel idea on there own but adding them to the game as it is right now isn't going to add much while still failing to address the limited loyalist rewards issue. Auxiliary clans might be worth thinking about as a way to give the homeworld clans a bit of a presence in the game, perhaps expanding the concept to IS sub-factions like the Arkab Legions or Black Dragon Society or all those FWL member-states might be worth thinking about.

I'm not opposed to faction-hopping on principle, mercs gotta merc and all that, I just don't want players on a permanent contract to get locked out of the overwhelming majority of LP goodies simply for wanting to stay loyal. I started a thread in the CW subforum addressing the problem form an IS loyalist perspective, I'm eager to hear what people have to think of it.

http://mwomercs.com/...alist-question/

EDIT: Here's an idea for a pseudo-faction, the comguard/ROM, all their missions are built to sabotage whoever is doing "best" in CW at that moment.

Edited by Ultra-Laser, 08 March 2015 - 04:25 PM.

[Wildstreak]

Ultra-Laser, on 08 March 2015 - 04:20 PM, said:

EDIT: Here's an idea for a pseudo-faction, the comguard/ROM, all their missions are built to sabotage whoever is doing "best" in CW at that moment.

Problem with this is how do you do sabotage. A ComStar faction, it would be clear from their tag who they were unless they went covert as Mercs.

[Repasy Cooper]

Ultra-Laser, on 08 March 2015 - 04:20 PM, said:

I feel like the idea of a "sponsorship" setup for merc units is pointless at this stage, all I can see it doing is adding a sizable layer of complexity and design overhead without much payoff. Pseudo-factions are a novel idea on there own but adding them to the game as it is right now isn't going to add much while still failing to address the limited loyalist rewards issue. Auxiliary clans might be worth thinking about as a way to give the homeworld clans a bit of a presence in the game, perhaps expanding the concept to IS sub-factions like the Arkab Legions or Black Dragon Society or all those FWL member-states might be worth thinking about.

I'm not opposed to faction-hopping on principle, mercs gotta merc and all that, I just don't want players on a permanent contract to get locked out of the overwhelming majority of LP goodies simply for wanting to stay loyal. I started a thread in the CW subforum addressing the problem form an IS loyalist perspective, I'm eager to hear what people have to think of it.

http://mwomercs.com/...alist-question/

EDIT: Here's an idea for a pseudo-faction, the comguard/ROM, all their missions are built to sabotage whoever is doing "best" in CW at that moment.

I'm not so sure the idea of being "sabotaged" would go over well with much of the community. I proposed my OP as a way to "support" the factions that are doing the worst rather than handicap the factions that are doing the best. If we're to penalize the top faction that will lead to a large part of the community not wanting to do the best, and I think that might be weird and lead to unforeseen issues in the future.

[Ultra-Laser]

Repasy, on 08 March 2015 - 05:25 PM, said:

I'm not so sure the idea of being "sabotaged" would go over well with much of the community. I proposed my OP as a way to "support" the factions that are doing the worst rather than handicap the factions that are doing the best. If we're to penalize the top faction that will lead to a large part of the community not wanting to do the best, and I think that might be weird and lead to unforeseen issues in the future.

Good point, but having part of the logistics phase include a deep penetration/black ops raid game mode where you need to defend your faction's critical locations well behind your own lines but simply don't know who the attackers are working for sounds cool, even if actually designing it would be a total nightmare. A mission available only to Lone Wolves perhaps? Sure would be fun to see how that interacts with all they potential loyalist perks people have been discussing.

The idea that the comguard sub-faction would be there to swoop in if any given faction got overly weak or strong is the main thing, even if the specific emphasis changes. Still not expecting anything even close to this within a year though, which in why I'm arguing for an adjustment to the LP reward system instead.

[Repasy Cooper]

Ultra-Laser, on 08 March 2015 - 06:48 PM, said:

Good point, but having part of the logistics phase include a deep penetration/black ops raid game mode where you need to defend your faction's critical locations well behind your own lines but simply don't know who the attackers are working for sounds cool, even if actually designing it would be a total nightmare. A mission available only to Lone Wolves perhaps? Sure would be fun to see how that interacts with all they potential loyalist perks people have been discussing.

The idea that the comguard sub-faction would be there to swoop in if any given faction got overly weak or strong is the main thing, even if the specific emphasis changes. Still not expecting anything even close to this within a year though, which in why I'm arguing for an adjustment to the LP reward system instead.

I see what you're saying. It would be cool to see some special operations game modes involving smaller unit sizes, possibly some 4v4 objective gameplay.

The question is then how would these matches affect the gameplay of 12v12 4x drops, and how would it effect the overall capture of a planet? Each of these 4v4 special operations could maybe just increase/decrease the capture percentage of the planet by 1%, or maybe completing a spec-ops objective gives the 12v12 matches bonuses, such as disabling enemy turrets for 30 minutes, or increasing dropship ranges temporarily by +10 tons, or temporarily receiving double module ordinance in a match.

As for who plays these matches, would they be for pug drops (thus enabling pugs to get quicker drops into these 4v4 matches), or would they be played exclusively by these auxiliary factions, or perhaps it warrants a separate queue altogether (meaning each planet would have two options, [Attack/Defend] and [Spec-Ops]). I'm not sure which would be best...

As for the Comstar thing, I know they mentioned having Wolf's Dragoons as a special faction. Maybe Wolf's Dragoons would have the task of bolstering the forces of the weakest nation, and Comstar would have the task of sabotaging the strongest nation. But the enrollment into these special factions would have to be extremely limited. The original plan for Wolf's Dragoons is to be only available as a faction for those who have attained lvl 20 loyalty in every other faction, but I don't think this is sufficient. It means that nobody would be able to join this faction for a long time, but once a lot of people reach this point what happens if they all join it?

In general, I think there has to be better balancing of players per faction. Yes, this means that not everybody will be able to join their favourite faction, but that's a small price to pay for balanced gameplay without mass ghost drops. Inactive players have to be addressed too, because people can join a faction as a loyalist and then not play for months. I think that if a player is not sufficiently active for a month's period, even if they are loyalist they should be kicked back to choosing a faction, at which point they'd only be able to join factions with balanced / lower player counts.

[Ultra-Laser]

Repasy, on 08 March 2015 - 08:33 PM, said:

snip

If Wolf's Dragoons make it into CW it will probably exist as a bragging rights club deal for people who hit rank 20 in every faction. I'd be stunned if getting into Wolf's Dragoons got you anything more functional then some cosmetic goodies.

Going back to Comguard, I think it might work if combined with a players faction/planet holding faction rewards split I detailed in the thread I linked earlier as a way to give southern IS players a chance to attack the clans. As there is not a proper "owning faction" on attack have the other half of the contract rewards come from the Comguard, giving players another category of LP goodies and allowing the powers that be to ramp up the payouts any time it seems like the IS isn't throwing enough bodies at the clans without any fear of playing favorites. They could also allow other factions units to get their tag on a planet taken by them this way, although it would still be owned by the faction they were assisting. I'm sure this would leave the other houses loyalists a bit flustered, but all I can see that doing in leading them to make every possible effort to get one of their house unit's tags on that planet by sending even more teams to fight on the clan front. Everyone wins except the clans, as it should be.

Repasy, on 08 March 2015 - 08:33 PM, said:

In general, I think there has to be better balancing of players per faction. Yes, this means that not everybody will be able to join their favourite faction, but that's a small price to pay for balanced gameplay without mass ghost drops. Inactive players have to be addressed too, because people can join a faction as a loyalist and then not play for months. I think that if a player is not sufficiently active for a month's period, even if they are loyalist they should be kicked back to choosing a faction, at which point they'd only be able to join factions with balanced / lower player counts.

Holy ******* **** that's a stupid idea, I'm generally pretty detached about hypothetical forum stuff but good god, this is a whole new level of mad for me. I need to step away for a bit to calm down.




Still 200% mad, no reason to lie about it, may as well get it over with.
Okay, lets say I take a several months long break from MWO for whatever reason. Let's say that during this absence House Kurita goes on to have a MASSIVE winning streak and population boost without me. I come back and patch up MWO only to find that suddenly my "permanent" contract has expired, knowing PGI I'd probably need to pay to break my contract, reinstate my contract, or both. I might be able to refresh my contract by dropping with my unit, which is also on a permanent contract. But guess what, they're aren't enough active unit members for a full team, or maybe their playing a game mode that won't let inactive players join. The only option left at this point is solo dropping in CW. I know it's going to be painful, but all this Kurita specific gear in my inventory is going to waste otherwise, so I do what I must. Being a solo player I get bottom priority in the CW matchmaker, and with Kurita's seemingly unstoppable winning streak every front has an ample supply of 12-mans to send toward every front. Even if I do get a match HK might still be over it's quota for loyalist pilots, forcing me to wait until some other loser lets his contract expire before I can regain my factional status. Dealing with anything even approaching this level of bullshit would make me ragequit CW harder and faster then receiving a million pupstomps from a FoTM cheesemech 12-man could ever even come close to. Ghost drops are a necessary evil to punish factions who let their planets go undefended. If you want to deal with the issue of active vs inactive player populations then buff contract rewards so that mercs show up to shore up their numbers, that's what mercs are for. Locking returning players out of the loyalist game because their faction has "enough" in an effort to "fix" a mechanic you find mildly frustrating is the worst ******* idea. How does punishing loyalists fit with your goal of supporting the underdog? Who's on top today could be on the bottom tomorrow and underdog factions NEED a solid core of loyalists to lay the foundation for a comeback. We know this for a fact from House Kurita and Night Scorn. You said yourself that punishing factions for doing well "will lead to a large part of the community not wanting to do the best, and I think that might be weird and lead to unforeseen issues in the future.", please explain to me how letting permanent contracts expire simply because a faction has a high active population for a given period isn't punishing success.

TWO
HUNDRED
PERCENT
MAD

Edited by Ultra-Laser, 10 March 2015 - 02:29 AM.

[Repasy Cooper]

Ultra-Laser, on 10 March 2015 - 02:26 AM, said:

If Wolf's Dragoons make it into CW it will probably exist as a bragging rights club deal for people who hit rank 20 in every faction. I'd be stunned if getting into Wolf's Dragoons got you anything more functional then some cosmetic goodies.

Going back to Comguard, I think it might work if combined with a players faction/planet holding faction rewards split I detailed in the thread I linked earlier as a way to give southern IS players a chance to attack the clans. As there is not a proper "owning faction" on attack have the other half of the contract rewards come from the Comguard, giving players another category of LP goodies and allowing the powers that be to ramp up the payouts any time it seems like the IS isn't throwing enough bodies at the clans without any fear of playing favorites. They could also allow other factions units to get their tag on a planet taken by them this way, although it would still be owned by the faction they were assisting. I'm sure this would leave the other houses loyalists a bit flustered, but all I can see that doing in leading them to make every possible effort to get one of their house unit's tags on that planet by sending even more teams to fight on the clan front. Everyone wins except the clans, as it should be.


Holy ******* **** that's a stupid idea, I'm generally pretty detached about hypothetical forum stuff but good god, this is a whole new level of mad for me. I need to step away for a bit to calm down.




Still 200% mad, no reason to lie about it, may as well get it over with.
Okay, lets say I take a several months long break from MWO for whatever reason. Let's say that during this absence House Kurita goes on to have a MASSIVE winning streak and population boost without me. I come back and patch up MWO only to find that suddenly my "permanent" contract has expired, knowing PGI I'd probably need to pay to break my contract, reinstate my contract, or both. I might be able to refresh my contract by dropping with my unit, which is also on a permanent contract. But guess what, they're aren't enough active unit members for a full team, or maybe their playing a game mode that won't let inactive players join. The only option left at this point is solo dropping in CW. I know it's going to be painful, but all this Kurita specific gear in my inventory is going to waste otherwise, so I do what I must. Being a solo player I get bottom priority in the CW matchmaker, and with Kurita's seemingly unstoppable winning streak every front has an ample supply of 12-mans to send toward every front. Even if I do get a match HK might still be over it's quota for loyalist pilots, forcing me to wait until some other loser lets his contract expire before I can regain my factional status. Dealing with anything even approaching this level of bullshit would make me ragequit CW harder and faster then receiving a million pupstomps from a FoTM cheesemech 12-man could ever even come close to. Ghost drops are a necessary evil to punish factions who let their planets go undefended. If you want to deal with the issue of active vs inactive player populations then buff contract rewards so that mercs show up to shore up their numbers, that's what mercs are for. Locking returning players out of the loyalist game because their faction has "enough" in an effort to "fix" a mechanic you find mildly frustrating is the worst ******* idea. How does punishing loyalists fit with your goal of supporting the underdog? Who's on top today could be on the bottom tomorrow and underdog factions NEED a solid core of loyalists to lay the foundation for a comeback. We know this for a fact from House Kurita and Night Scorn. You said yourself that punishing factions for doing well "will lead to a large part of the community not wanting to do the best, and I think that might be weird and lead to unforeseen issues in the future.", please explain to me how letting permanent contracts expire simply because a faction has a high active population for a given period isn't punishing success.

TWO
HUNDRED
PERCENT
MAD

WELL WHAT THE *** I'M MAD NOW TOO LOL.

You clearly don't understand **** about what I'm trying to say. There is NO CONTROL on who gets to be in what faction right now, which means some factions are overpopulated and others are near empty.

And if you read my original post YOU'D UNDERSTAND THAT I WAS TALKING EXCLUSIVELY ABOUT NOT BEING ABLE TO JOIN AN AUXILIARY FACTION IF IS OR CLANS HAD EXCESS POPULATION IN ORDER TO HELP KEEP THE POPULATION BASE MORE EVEN BETWEEN CLAN AND IS DID YOU EVEN READ MY OP HOLY **** READING COMPREHENSION! YOU'RE ******* DUMB!!! ***-hole...

Jesus. Like, reading your post actually got my rage level to +9000.

Also FYI, your Comguard idea is never going to happen. PGI is Comguard.

[Ultra-Laser]

Repasy, on 10 March 2015 - 07:13 AM, said:

You clearly don't understand **** about what I'm trying to say. There is NO CONTROL on who gets to be in what faction right now, which means some factions are overpopulated and others are near empty.

Yeah, because trying to regulate this sort of thing is exactly the sort of thing I trust PGI to handle without any sort of apparent monetization angle to justify putting the effort and care necessary to satisfy all parties involved. Tell me, do you feel that the current c-bill rewards are an accurate reflection of which faction needs more players at the moment? Does having Liao, who has for several weeks been able to trade worlds with house Marik and push into davion urgently need more players then house Steiner, who despite a stubborn defense effort have been steadily eroded by Clan Jade Falcon and has Marik biting into its haunches? The c-bill rewards rewards for Houses Liao and Steiner are currently set at 100k and 50k respectively, so I guess they Lyran Alliance becoming the galaxies largest bird bath is fine and dandy according to PGI.

Creating pseudo-factions that generalizes Wolf/falcon/bear/jag into "clan" and Kurita/marik/steiner/davion/liao into "inner sphere" does nothing to address faction hopping, just reduces the hoppable factions into an opposing pair. You know how IS players generally put their home team first? Barring people from signing onto the clan auxiliaries won't make the IS players join the IS pseudo-factions any quicker.

Part of the fun of being a merc unit (both in lore and in game) is that you get to be your own boss, I imagine that having to have their overarching directives dictated by some massive mercenary conglomerate would rub plenty of them the wrong way too. Outright forcing merc units to bind themselves to one of the big four merc companies is such an obviously bad Idea I'm sure even you wouldn't fully endorse it, so what happens if enrollment with a given group isn't mandatory? Not much that's what. Now the already unified clans have another tool to keep on plowing their way to Earth while the Inner Sphere is not much less fractious then it was to start with. Only now PGI has precedent for enforcing factional population quotas. I'm sure whatever percentage of Davion players still play in CW won't be too bitter about it.

"But Wait" I hear you say, "The big four don't even add or remove any actual game content for those merc units save for a few cosmetics! All they do is add to the contract payouts on a win in some cases!". That's what I want to get at here. "Big four" contract bonus mechanics as a top-down method of population control for CW are pointless. If a given faction needs more players then you should just increase in contract payouts. Not build some half baked pseudo-faction system so that those rewards are only offered to a select fraction of the playerbase. If those factions need more players, then they need more players, they do not need to offer a fat bonus to a select group of whoever qualifies for your exclusive club because their so darned thankful that their faction is leaking players for whatever reason.

By the way, I noticed you were with clan wolf at the moment of my writing this post. Very interesting detail. Do you have a permanent contract with them? Or do just want to have the chance to play around with clantech in the invasion mode? Perfectly understandable I suppose, still, I myself might be a bit disappointed that I couldn't pilot my salvaged Loki in service of the FRR or Steiner or whoever. Shame no one seems to want some mechanic to allow for clan omnis to be used in IS teams even with all these discussions of possible expanded functions for loyalty mechanics to mitigate faction hopping. Oh well, I guess we're just doomed to a future of faction hopping and getting bored with the game the instant you fill out all your LP bars rather then allowing players from every faction to play the game in it's entirety without having to ditch their permanent house contract.

Repasy, on 10 March 2015 - 07:13 AM, said:

Also FYI, your Comguard idea is never going to happen. PGI is Comguard.

PGI is also the FRR, Kurita, Liao, Davion, Steiner, Marik, as well as being clans Wolf, Jade Falcon, Ghost Bear, and Smoke Jaguar. All that matters is that the alert that shows up when you win in CW has the correct LP and c-bill amounts on it.

Edited by Ultra-Laser, 11 March 2015 - 05:25 AM.

[CyclonerM]

I like your ideas, especially the sponsoring compromise. I am writing a list of suggestions myself on these issues, and i and others are trying to get the ball rolling to exchange feedback on these topics. I will post my own ideas once i finish writing them

[Repasy Cooper]

CyclonerM, on 11 March 2015 - 04:48 AM, said:

I like your ideas, especially the sponsoring compromise. I am writing a list of suggestions myself on these issues, and i and others are trying to get the ball rolling to exchange feedback on these topics. I will post my own ideas once i finish writing them

Awesome, send me a link when you're done and I'll support. +1