To be frank, a lot of your suggestions are very short sighted in terms of their implementation and the effect they would have on the game in its current state but here goes...
Aidan Pendragon, on 03 March 2015 - 07:28 PM, said:
1. The real issue is not whether IS or Clan forces have an advantage; it's that random PUG or mixed groups are thrown into the meat grinder of 12-man premades with little hope of survival. The rare fun I had in CW was when I lucked into dropping with a group twice and rolled our poor opponents. VOIP is no cure for this. Matchmaking needs fixing such that A. premades are limited to 6, with 6 other onesies/twosies filling in; and/or B. there is a private queue for CW.
PGI, you are alienating part of your player base by having CW be so heavily team dependent. Those of us who aren't part of a group, and can't or don't want to join one, would also like to do something broader in this game--like fight for control of the IS?--after years of grinding it out in random deathmatches. (Please spare me the "CW is teh hard mode!!!" or "teamz only!" comments. There's no reason it needs to be, or that something can't be done to make it fun for everyone in the playing/paying base, not just 12-mans.)
PGI stated only about 15-20% of the playerbase is playing CW currently (obviously for various reasons) that creates a problem right away when you outline an idea of segregating drops between pugs and groups as is done in the public queue. The population is currently not big enough in CW to support this without people having monumental wait times for matches and even MORE turret drops than groups get currently. Incentives need to be in place as well as various other issues addressed to increase the population before this could ever be considered.
However even if it was considered there are other problems that come up with this, are there going to be two separate CW maps? One for pug queue and one for teams? This would kind of defeat the purpose of CW, no?
To be frank the amount of pilots on the forums from IS whining about how OP clans are and who dont even understand how to optimize quirks and alter their play to make the most of those quirks makes me question how many inexperienced players there are. I say this because I understand that Clan mechs are more expensive and for newer players who are not inclined at throwing money at this game they are not an attractive option.
That all being said I believe there should be a gating process, a trial of sorts if you will, that new players have to master 4 mechs before they can play CW or something of that sort (im just spitballing here)
Also they are making 4v4 and 8v8 games that eventually will be part of CW too jfyi.
Aidan Pendragon, on 03 March 2015 - 07:28 PM, said:
2. That said, Clan 'mechs still ARE ton-for-ton superior to their IS counterparts--or at least, the Stormcrows, Hellbringers, and Timber Wolves everybody drops with in CW are superior. The ubiquity of ECM Hellbringers is especially an issue (of course, the long-standing cloaking-device nature of ECM is a larger problem, but in the absence of fixing that...). An extra 10 tons for IS doesn't cut it. Clans should be limited to 10 'mechs/2 Stars per side, versus an IS company. That has the advantage of being true to Battletech, too.
Alternatively or in conjunction, PGI should implement canon-accurate penalties & incentives for Clan pilots. Fire on an enemy that a teammate fired on? Lose X C-bills/loyalty points/whatever. Kill a 'mech yourself? Extra XP/loyalty. All the mechanics are built into the game to track such actions...just use them.
Saying this you are falling into the group I outlined above, IS mechs with the appropriate quirks are able to stand toe to toe with Clans. ECM is just as available to IS and the only thing that it hard counters for IS is LRMs at range for which there are things like TAG/NARC/UAV's/PPCs and counter ECM for. Our group who plays 50/50 between Clans and IS has no issues pulling the same numbers and win/loss regardless of faction. This all comes back to player skill, knowing optimal mechs and loadouts and altering your playstyle to complement your loadout. This game is all about teamwork, things like this are the equivalent of a COD player going to BF4 and wondering why they arent doing as well in larger game modes that require coordination and teamwork.
10v12? No. Every type of drop in this game is always going to be multiples of 4. Why? Because that is what the current and future game modes are going to be as PGI has already stated 4v4/8v8/12v12. Why should a unit have 1-2 players sitting each game to balance things when they go clans? Lore/TT rules are not going to be the answer to every issue this game faces, this "issue" being nothing other than players not understanding how to optimize their loadouts and play well. Sorry, but its true.
Reduced rewards for assisting killing something in a game where its basically a teamwork fps game? This is not some RPG buddy, its a sim sure but its not an RPG by any means. This would just increase squabbling in games and on the forums beyond what is currently happening. You want pugs to be organized but then expect a pug clan group to communicate on every single target?
Aidan Pendragon, on 03 March 2015 - 07:28 PM, said:
3. Light/zerg rushes are the main annoyance when fighting an IS premade. Nothing like waiting 10 minutes for a game, then having it be over in 2. There should be a cool-down period between when the generators are destroyed and the gun is vulnerable, at least; that way all those lights would have to flee instead of just squatting in front of the gun.
Many potential solutions have been brought forward from increasing min tonnage of dropdecks, to forcing x amount of kills to damage gens, raising gen hp or the like.
I feel the same about it but sadly right now that is in PGIs hands as to how or whether they will address it. Frankly light rushes are easy to deal with as Clans due to streaks and only slightly more challenging as IS though AC20/Gauss and pulse lasers do the trick well too. This once again comes down to player skill at least on the IS side though group organization and communication are key and pug drops in the window before a match are hardly going to say "were fighting IS, bring 3-4 light killers"
Aidan Pendragon, on 03 March 2015 - 07:28 PM, said:
4. Spawn camping is ridiculous...nothing like dropping and having half your armor shot off before you can even move. Why can't we choose our spawn point from among the three instead of being tied to one? And give us a radar map of what friends/foes are nearby while you're at it. Surely the Dropship pilots can eyeball the enemies hunkered down, even under 10,000 ECMs. If the maps were more conducive, I'd say move the drop points farther back and put indestructible LL turrets there to discourage camping, at least on the defenders' side.
PGI put the spawns where they are, thing is moving them wont fix this at all if anything may cause more problems. If a team gets stomped that badly its unfortunate but at least the match finishes sooner. Choosing a spawn point is a decent idea, and while it sucks being defenders dropped among the attackers objectives if you move the spwans back then the time it takes to get to your gens to defend becomes an issue.
Even if they made drop areas out of bounds that poses issues, people would sit back there and camp shooting from an out of bounds area in their tantrum when getting rolled or just sit out there and extend match times as people already do running up into the mountains in boreal for example.
Also dropships weapons are not effected by ECM if that is what you were getting at.
Indestructible turrets? No. Why? Because light pilots at the end of the match would run around or hide around them forcing the turrets to do work for them so they can prolong the match or potentially scratch out a victory.
Aidan Pendragon, on 03 March 2015 - 07:28 PM, said:
5. Why not give us a retreat option? Indeed, can we get away from the creaky walls/generators dynamic and have different objectives and victory conditions? Many Battletech scenarios did just this, and gave one side the chance to escape and deny the victors points for each 'mech that got away. Heck, even mixing up the "normal" maps with capping, capture the base, etc. would be a nice change. How many SDS planetary defense guns can post-Star League worlds have, anyway?
Retreat option may be an idea perhaps after half a teams mechs have been defeated however this could cause more problems and drama, does it have to be a unanimous vote? Does it have to be a majority? Like in WoW to kick someone from a group would groups over X players have advantage to grief other players by taking a majority vote and ending a game early or stopping it from being ended? This would cause a lot more grief in the player base than bad players/disorganized groups getting farmed does.
They will be adding different match sizes, game types and all kinds of things in the coming months. They have said that and this is still Beta for CW.
Aidan Pendragon, on 03 March 2015 - 07:28 PM, said:
Really, it would be nice to see CW work something like this: only a limited (3-4) planets per faction per day up for grabs, to concentrate players and cull the list of 10-15 planets with 0 attackers and 0 defenders we have now; Clan bidding along invasion corridors; global IS alliances or relations rather than the current hodgepodge of lone wolves picking fights; real campaigns that involve at least some level of losses & logistics from one battle to the next (e.g., if you lose a 'mech, it has a 24-hour cooldown in CW and/or can't be used again in the current string of battles for that planet?).
No, no limit on planets per faction per day, all that will do is increase squabbling and the spam of counterattack deathmatches that have no real dynamic to them. The current system could use some implementation of loyalists to select additional attack lanes or the like to add more incentive for people to be loyalists over mercs and also some new regulations for mercs would help too. The game in its current implementation creates the lack of strategy, once more game types and sizes are added along with other dynamics im sure we will see more diverse game play.
Aidan Pendragon, on 03 March 2015 - 07:28 PM, said:
Spleen vented. Feedback given. Good luck, PGI. Right now CW makes me want to delete the game...I hope it gets better. (on the bright side, deathmatch is so much more fun, again, by comparison!)
Lastly you really should look at the repercussions and long term effects of some things you suggest and at least acknowledge them and suggest some ways to mitigate or avoid them as the majority of your suggestions basically are "well i dont like this and this is what i think a fix that would suit me is" rather than looking at how it affects the rest of the community in light of this game being a multiplayer sim/fps.
I am not omniscient or omnipotent but it is clear that the balance of this game to try to make it different than just a run of the mill fps game while adhering to lore to keep it "mechwarrior" enough to appeal to the old players and TT/Lore geeks while having balanced play that encourages new players and allows for groups of any size to have fun is a lot more difficult and complex than most people seem to understand.
Edited by Necromantion, 04 March 2015 - 03:09 PM.
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