151 replies to this topic

[Telmasa]

Mystere, on 18 July 2015 - 07:46 AM, said:

FTFY.

By the way, this thread is about CW, and we already know you despise CW. So, if you want to talk about PVE, start another one.

Well, all you have to do is look at it from the perspective of your average casual gamer:
"If there's no single-player mode, it's not worth the time."

The vast majority of gamers play single-player modes on the games they have.

I once was included in this category for quite a while with MW:4 Mercs. Eventually I played some with the Kell Hounds (who I accidently ran across while playing World of Tanks, incidentally), and found it fun.

If MW:4 Mercs had never had a single-player experience? I would have never gotten into Mechwarrior, Battletech, or anything related to it.
__

For a PvP game to succeed, you *need* to have an established community of players enjoying it - or else be such a niche game that nobody else does what you do, while also being openly & easily accessible. (i.e. World of Tanks, though War Thunder did come along a year or two later).

For MW:O, the novelty of its existence has worn off on the gaming world (IGP-related stagnation & growing pains mostly to blame); so option 2, I think, isn't feasible anymore.

If you want people to come here and play the PvP, you gotta hook them into what the game is about first. That's what PvE campaign content will do.

'Is PvE content easy to make - and more importantly, to make it *good*?' No.

BUT, MW:O has an advantage here other games do not.
MW:O has all the prior MW PvE experiences to draw upon - PGI isn't having to work from a completely blank drawing board. There is already an established universe with established lore with all the detail you could ask for to draw upon.

So looking for a PvE campaign really isn't all that daunting a proposal.

Once players are hooked in, and find the multiplayer game fun to try (balance overhaul + map updates FTW), interest in Community Warfare will explode.


Honestly the only thing I'm worried about with all this is PGI's ability to keep the ball rolling at the pace they're setting - it's remarkable that they got it rolling against since last August, given it was pretty much at a total standstill - because getting CW content fleshed out the way we imagine it could be is gonna have to happen pretty quick in order to keep the interest of the masses.

[Mystere]

Telmasa, on 19 July 2015 - 07:47 PM, said:

PVE

As I said earlier, wrong thread.

[Khobai]

While im mostly opposed to standalone PVE I do think CW could benefit from the development of PVE assets. Like if we had CW gamemodes where you had to escort NPC convoys to capture the enemy base.

It makes no sense to have mechs capturing things. Mechs dont carry ground troops. You should have to escort APCs full of troops to capture objectives. That would add immersion.

Lack of immersion is one of the big reasons the current gamemodes suck. It doesnt feel like mechwarrior to me. It feels like a beta gamemode in some early access game.

Edited by Khobai, 19 July 2015 - 09:02 PM.

[Alex Morgaine]

GroovYChickeN, on 03 April 2015 - 06:15 AM, said:

I logged in just to like this post.

Dr. Wily approves of your like (replace cut scenes with moderately hard but not impossible challenges, we want to lure mega man into a false sense of security so he doesn't think to use the last power he got on this boss that just so happens to be weak to it.)

*reads date of oOP
Oh what another necro? Did I open the archive page by accident again

... oh well, by my power, make this thread live again!
ARISE!!!


bump.

[xX PUG Xx]

Yay, I fully support the efforts Dr. Franke... erm.... Nick... er... Frosty?

It'll actually be interesting to compare this thread and it's ideas against the next phase of CW/FW.

[Mystere]

I want Clan and IS formations, not this vanilla 12 vs. 12 crap.

I want Clans cluster vs IS Battalion:

• Clan Cluster
  
  • 10 players
    
  • 2 Binaries
    
  • 2-Mech 130-ton maximum drop deck per player
    
  • no minimum weight
• IS Battalion
  
  • 12 players
    
  • 3 Companies
    
  • 3-Mech 170-ton maximum drop deck per player
    
  • no minimum weight

(OP edited for the same)

Edited by Mystere, 22 December 2015 - 09:00 AM.

[Johnny Z]

This topic looks great.

[Varvar86]

We all dream about more depth in CW and more logic. PGI dreams about our money. There is a huge field for monetization and special fraction packs ETC. And I’m ready to donate for CW mode expansion to make it something deeper than brainless flat skirmish.

10 clans VS 12 IS -à unreal in existing quirks system, you need 2 timbers on each thunder to deal with it. This side of the Lore will not work in MWO because balance. Or they need to completely separate public random matches and CW and create absolutely separate balance quirks systems for each to make that idea work. So far PGI tries to balance system looking at public random drops – result of this you can see on CW map stomped down by 12 thunderbolt groups.

“More depth” – for me this is more background story and logic in CW. More game modes more unique events based on lore. More motivation for the ordinary player to participate. Balancing issues is not part of that – this is technical problems that must be solved step by step.

Talking about motivation. IMHO its VERY important to keep CW alive. Story depth and gamemods its only 60% of the deal. I paste here some thoughts about motivation system - this is good thread for CW ideas.

My view based on general popularization of CW for ordinary gamers. Those players will create armies for loyalist to manipulate. But to attract those armies we need some cookies for masses – we need rewards and goals. CW main goal – “capture everything” is not interesting and, truly, not accessible it’s something in the air and won’t attract players. Players want to hold something in their hands, something more real and accessible than “someday (never) we will win”. So we need intermediate rewards like

Personnel permanent fraction rewards:
1) Ordinary Personnel rewards, applied for each round win.
2) Achievement Personnel rewards, applied for fraction pilots as achieved. Anything you could think of starting from “defend 5 planets” and ending “destroy 1000 generators”
3) Special Achievement Personnel rewards. Can be modified like small lore-based events every week supported by unique rewards to make things exciting. Starting from “Comstar interceptions” take/hold planet, continuing to simpler with “revenge for khan – destroy 50 Liao mechs”, “last stand - hold territory for 12 hours” anything like that. Also will be cool to have some kind of personnel glory hall with All completed assignments placed in it.

Personnel temporary fraction bonuses:
Applied only for that fraction pilots who personally participated in territory conquer or lore-based event (participated in fights for planets/sectors themselves). That should prevent player’s migration among fractions for getting advantages just for signing contract. Bonuses are temporary and applied only while territory is under fraction control to which pilot belongs.
Level 1 bonuses – for holding periphery planets. Discount for some weapons/CBL’s consumables
Level 2 bonuses - for holding periphery sectors. Discount for some modules/MC consumables
Level 3 bonuses – for holding important sectors. Discount for mech models/ low CBL’s income per 24 hours.
Level 4 bonuses - for holding high priority sectors Free consumables/ major CBL’s income per 24 hours.
Level 5 bonuses - for holding central sectors (central planets) MC income per 24 hours, else.

Fraction applied temporary bonuses:
Bonuses are temporary and applied for every fraction pilot while territory is under fraction control. Special fraction bonuses useful only for CW and inside CW like for example shorter wait times for Dropship arrival with fresh mech, more life for generators, additional turrets, additional air strikes active only during CW matches, anything like that.

Here you have some basic economy grounds to start from, and some accessible goals you can reach and enjoy. Full scale economy model will require more items including unique items to trade and fight for. Steam may help with those. Manipulating with sectors value and lore-based events with unique rewards will create stable high population for CW, fast queues and good games.

Again this is ordinary mode for ordinary players who wants to enjoy game, not to live in it day by day. Combine it with advanced possibilities of advanced loyalist mode and this might work. Everyone plays on level they want.

[Apnu]

I was going to say "what thread necromancy is this" then I saw the above post. There's great stuff in it. He's right, CW is the thing that the game needs to thrive.

I've also thought the same and feel that most of the game should point toward the Inner Sphere map as much as possible. I think we should stop with the concept of "CW" as some other game within MWO. That design philosophy is ruining the game and wasting dev time.

So here's what I'd like to suggest:

Strip the "quick play" queues down to solo only, random maps, skirmish game mode only. Make it the place to goof around with builds, and/or to learn how to play the game, and maybe the spot for grinding MXP and leveling mechs.

Move everything else into CW (i'll still use that as a term so everybody knows what I'm talking about). Find ways to use Assault and Conquest as part of the CW experience. Point all the game's efforts into getting the player to look at the IS map and be interested in what's happening with it.

Give them incentives to be members of a faction or a merc unit, give them perks and bonsuses if the faction they belong to is doing well or not. And yes, give losing factions perks for being losers. Imagine, to drum up players, that a faction that's lost 50% of its planets, or maybe suffers a low population, gets a huge MXP bonus for players fighting for that faction. Join up with them and level mechs really fast as you take back territory! Why not?

I picked up Elder Scrolls Online on sale this past holiday season and I'm really impressed with how they did the Alliance War. They have a big map with lots of nodes on it. The major nodes are castles that need to be taken by siege. Around the castles are farms and mines and little villiages that can be taken to add to a facton's hold on the map. Between the castles are paths, if a faction has two castles linked by a path, they have a fast travel system to get to the next castle so players can speed to the front lines. Between those paths are natural choke points, rivers and bridges and things like that that players can assault or defend as they try to dominate the map.

Players can form up groups, ad-hoc in game and join other random players and groups sieging a castle, or they can simply go around the castle and try to take the farms around it, or try to walk and ride, deep into enemy territory and siege a castle or take minor nodes back there.

Another thing ESO has is bounty boards. Players can get extra rewards for scouting missions, kill X type of characters, taking certain major and minor nodes and so on. Its really fun to grab a "kill 20 sorcerers" bounty then run to the front and hunt those guys down. Or grab a scouting mission and stealth around behind enemy lines trying to gather intel and get back home w/out being slaughtered.

Each faction has two major castles in their corner of the map (there are three alliance factions in ESO) that are the main base, plus each faction has a object (called an elder scroll) the other factions want. So each faction has a reason to drive deep into enemy territory and try to get that scroll.

And finally factions can "win" by taking and holding a majority of the map and the highest scoring player for that faction is "Emperor" and gets unique perks for that.

Imagine all that but, and lets keep is small and easy, say the map is a section of the IS map that all the factions can see. Say between Tukyadd and Terra. Then make each castle a star system and make have each star system have a major planet and minor planets (the farms from above) that all need to be taken in order for an attacking faction to control that system.

Then use existing game modes and maps for the planets. Conquest for the farms, Assault too. Invasion for the siege mechanic.

ESO runs in a massive map that all Alliance players are on. I can walk from one end of the map to the other and never see a loading screen. There's no grouping except for what my pals come up with, and we can just run to the front lines fight, win or die and move on. If we die, we can wait for a player to resurrect us, or respawn back at the nearest castle our faction controls.

Its amazing how easy it is to get involved in the Alliance War in ESO either as a solo or in a group. Its also really easy to ignore huge sieges and go off and do something else to help your faction, if you're not good at the game yet or just want some solo/small group time. The player has the choice to flow into smaller engagements or huge brawls.

I've been having fun playing it but I keep thinking: 'Man this would be awesome if I was in a mech.'

[Mystere]

Varvar86, on 14 January 2016 - 06:06 AM, said:

10 clans VS 12 IS -à unreal in existing quirks system, you need 2 timbers on each thunder to deal with it. This side of the Lore will not work in MWO because balance. Or they need to completely separate public random matches and CW and create absolutely separate balance quirks systems for each to make that idea work. So far PGI tries to balance system looking at public random drops – result of this you can see on CW map stomped down by 12 thunderbolt groups.

There is no need to create separate balancing systems. We just need to get rid of mixed-tech drops on the public solo queue and replace it with forced IS vs. IS, Clan vs. Clan, and IS vs. Clan fights depending on player availability. The mixed-tech is what is creating all of these balancing complications which in turn are holding back the rest of the game.

As for the group queue, nothing needs to be changed. It can remain mixed-tech as it currently is right now under the assumption that everyone dropping there knows what they are doing.

Edited by Mystere, 15 January 2016 - 01:15 PM.

[Mystere]

Apnu, on 15 January 2016 - 10:42 AM, said:

I was going to say "what thread necromancy is this" then I saw the above post. There's great stuff in it. He's right, CW is the thing that the game needs to thrive.

I've also thought the same and feel that most of the game should point toward the Inner Sphere map as much as possible. I think we should stop with the concept of "CW" as some other game within MWO. That design philosophy is ruining the game and wasting dev time.

You are correct, CW should be "The Game" (or half of it anyway). The public queues need to be eliminated and replaced with more suitable modules within the Training Academy and a separate Solaris VII mode. The lore/simulation folks can go to CW and the eSports crowd can go to Solaris. By defining clear boundaries, game development can proceed with more focus.

[TheArisen]

This isn't on the same line but I think CW would have events based on what's going on in CW.

Is Kurita killing Smoke Jag.? An event to rally the Clans. http://mwomercs.com/...ap-based-event/