103 replies to this topic

[Vajhra]

Had the silly idea to change ambient light levels based on distance from Terra.... so all Clan outer rim territory is night, and it gets lighter until Terra is full noon. Completely not based in anything real but would create a connection across the battlespace rather then just seeing the same map each time irregardless of where it might be in the scheme of invasion/defense.

[Av4tar]

Every planet your helped to conquer or defend will give you 50,000 C-Bill daily. That should bring ppl to play cw more.

[DI3T3R]

@Eden Blackheaven:
50,000 is a bit much, but the number of planets held/conquered should decide how much bonus you get for a won match.

[Triordinant]

Eden Blackheaven, on 19 May 2015 - 02:39 AM, said:

Every planet your helped to conquer or defend will give you 50,000 C-Bill daily. That should bring ppl to play cw more.

More bribes rewards won't fix it. This is the reason for low CW population.

[Hatsune Mechu]

Give us posibility do free lobbies, and people(nbt and others) give us decent CW.

[Kjudoon]

rastor76, on 19 May 2015 - 06:24 AM, said:

Give us posibility do free lobbies, and people(nbt and others) give us decent CW.

Lobbies do not fix major game design flaws.

[Malcolm Vordermark]

There needs to be some reward for the faction doing well. For example, the more planets the faction owns the bigger contract payout should be after a match.

There are some problems there, however. A faction like Smoke Jaguar starts with 4 or 5 planets while House Davion starts with nearly 600. Additionally, that would serve to shift more of the population to successful factions.

Perhaps they could work out a way to reward units for taking a planet or holding them. Since they already track some data to determine which unit gets their tag on the planet.

The scouting missions will be nice, I think. The way I understand it, it gives us a slightly different gameplay (4v4 feels different from 12v12) and also some control over the attack lanes.

The ghost defense drops need to go. Nobody likes ghost drops, but getting one that does not impact the planet's percentage is worse. If the timer goes to the last 5-10 seconds just switch it over to counter attack or invasion.

[Lugh]

For community warfare they need to have AI take the place of opposition that doesn't show in X time (being about 5 minutes)

Weight the games against AI at 1/1000th the weight against actual humans. That way planets can't be lost easily to ai banging.

This also allows those that want some easy mode AI games to get those too.

You could also break with lore and open wormholes across the maps to connect players to events from all over the galaxy. It doesn't matter who you are fighting

[oldradagast]

Triordinant, on 12 May 2015 - 04:45 PM, said:

It'll only be "fixed" if the vast majority of MWO players think it's fun. The last figure we have from Russ Bullock is only 13.5% of all the activity on MWO servers takes place in CW. Clearly what makes CW fun for those currently playing it is not fun for everybody else.

Shocking. It's almost as if all the problems so many of us were blasted on these forums for pointing out months ago are true. CW is, for the most part:

1) A stale, repetitive game mode. One, predictable target, limited map selection with basically zero variety in where the battles will take place. So, we're already into "dull and predictable" here.

2) Riddled with laughably unbalanced matches. No matchmaker, no attempt to use skill to balance the teams, nothing. Just toss everyone in a pit with a few generators and hope they somehow have "fun." Yeah... that's not working out so well now, is it, PGI?

In the end, we have a game mode that is, at best stale, repeatable, and solvable. At worst, it's a one-sided steamroll where the game is decided at match pairings and it takes longer to find a match than it does for it to be won.

And this doesn't even get into ghost drops, spawn camping, dismally unsportsmanlike conduct, and so on. GGclose.

Edited by oldradagast, 19 May 2015 - 05:45 PM.

[Tiberius Augustus]

let wave 1 clan mechs be back to early public test stats and we may see a big difference and a challenge in CW

[Red Legs Greaves]

So here's my two cents. Last night I played four CW matches, all of them were counter attack and both teams were mostly pugs. I won 3 and lost 1 but all the matches were very close and were very fun. The reason is that it seemed both teams by accident or design decided that they weren't going to worry about anything except blowing the crap out of each other. Both teams started on equal footings and the matches were decided by the skill and luck of the players.

So here is my ideas on how to fix the games modes and maps. I'm not going to go into rewards because there have been a lot of really good ideas already.

So first off get rid of attack and defend mode. Nobody seems to like it and it is a terrible introduction into CW if you are new. I would keep counter attack but call it something different. There will still be an attacking and a defending teams for the sake of who controls what planet but in the actual match it shouldn't really matter. I can think of few times in battletech that anyone has defend a static defensive position. It just doesn't make sense and it isn't much fun to play in a game with giant walking tanks.

Next I would add some new game modes. I would use conquest but just make the maps huge so the teams really have to think about what they're going to do. Each team could have a super fortified base to discourage spawn killing but if they don't come out they're going to loose on points.

Add a defend you base mode, basically counter-attack with two omegas. Defend you base while trying to destroy your enemies.

Add a waypoint mode where the attacking team has to get to a point or points on the map and secure an objects. Once again the map would be huge and hope fully with a large amount of options on which to move. One of the things that annoys me the most is that in the current maps you have 3 ways to go left, right, or up the middle. If you're really unlucky you get two.

I'm sure someone has already stated something similar but if we keep bugging PGI maybe we can get a fun CW. As it is now I don't see it lasting much longer, but I really want to love it.

[Smag]

A lot of good ideas there, Red Legs

[Xeraphale]

"What is needed to fix CW?"

A blank slate, first of all.

More maps. Open world, preferably.

Different game modes.

Capture points with neutral structures e.g turrets, gates, radar stations, bridges etc.

A few more mechs for the clans would be nice. It gets boring having to play TBRs, SCRs and HBRs becaue there are no other viable mechs.

An attempt to even up the faction populations.

Get rid of mercenaries - they change sides too often and seem to have populations greater than most factions. Mercs have way too much of a bearing on CW and they really shouldn't.

Two pliots on the same account - one for IS/Mercs and another for clans.

Stop people switching faction so often - restrict the length of contracts to a month or more. Make carrying faction tags be a proper consideration for a pilot.

If we are going to have mercs, then we need a hiring hall.

Repair and rearm.

A reason to fight over planets at all.

[Ingvay]

One thought/suggestion on the wait times: in many other games you can do other things while waiting for group drops, flashpoints, dungeons etc...

How about they give people the ability to access the mechlab, skills trees etc. while waiting for CW drops, and have a message window pop up on the screen that says "A CW Match/Battle has been made you will be dropping in 1 minute" then you could click on that and go back to the CW lobby screen.

It would help with the 'que jeopardy type music" boring wait times.

[Ingvay]

Rouken, on 19 May 2015 - 07:58 AM, said:

There needs to be some reward for the faction doing well. For example, the more planets the faction owns the bigger contract payout should be after a match.

Perhaps they could work out a way to reward units for taking a planet or holding them. Since they already track some data to determine which unit gets their tag on the planet.

The scouting missions will be nice, I think. The way I understand it, it gives us a slightly different gameplay (4v4 feels different from 12v12) and also some control over the attack lanes.

They long ago stated that units were to receive extra compensation for planets they took/conquered/captured. Not say planets that your faction already owned, but ones that you took from other factions on the borders of your space for instance. The unit was/is supposed to receive a c-bill boost to their contract, and also if the planet held resources or mech factories...a bonus/reward was supposed to apply to that as well. Sadly... this never happened. You just get your name on a planet and that's it.

Personally, I think the 2v2, 4v4, 8v8 battles will help, but as one of my unit members said, let's make those a pre-req for starting a 12v12 invasion on a world. i.e. you must win 4 2v2 scouting missions, 2 4v4 objective based missions and 1 8v8 assualt type mission before you can start regular 12v12CW drops on that world. I'd add that I'd also like to see worlds take longer to capture. Have the smaller maps for the 2v, 4v, 8v matches, and include ALL the current CW maps on a world, show them as hexes with a faction logo for who controls them. It should not take a day to capture a planet, it should take a couple days, based on the 2/4/8 person drops and a full set of 12mans. Finally... planetary conquest should happen in a more linear fashion, not jumping all over the place taking whichever planets you please.

Also PGI, if you read this thread... mobile repair consumables module for CW. i.e. Unlock with GXP, pay 3-4 mill c-bills for the module, then you can pay 100,000 c bills per use, like an arty strike, uav etc... and have a mech module that lets you drop/enter a mini repair structure during a match and get 50% repair and 50% ammo resupply of your mech but takes 1 minute to complete. Immersion... that is what's missing from CW.

Oh... and for the record I hope repair and re-arm after every match for c-bills NEVER comes back into the game.

Anyways... a few thoughts/ suggestions on CW improvements.

Edited by Ingvay, 01 June 2015 - 08:12 AM.

[HammerSwarm]

Xeraphale, on 21 May 2015 - 04:03 AM, said:

More maps. Open world, preferably.

Different game modes.

I don't need more maps, I need a reason to take my love of conquest over to CW. Like a support or pre assault mode to soften targets or something.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

What could make CW more fun?

1 - More maps like Vitric Forge, which is great. It's got open areas with rolling terrain, it's got choke points but they're not super restrictive MOBA-style lanes, and it's got a mix if high- and low-ground for a variety of builds and tactics to employ.

2 - 4v4 Combat Recon, 8v8 Raiding Party game modes. Maybe add some extra modes as well, like Convoy Escort.

3 - Successful planet captures/defenses should give some kind of bonus to everyone who participated on the winning side, prorated by the number of matches they dropped, with losses counting for 1 and wins counting for 2. Aside from making planetary ownership meaningful, it'd also make the drops outside of the last hour or two before the ceasefire a lot more important.

[BARBAR0SSA]

Persistent world combat! That's what I signed up for...MMO MWO where you had to manage your weapons and purchase and weigh out the loss of items and mechs.

Not going to happen but that's what it sounded like the game would be many years ago.

[Big Tin Man]

The long and short answer is simple: REWARDS.

Rewards can come from many places, but as it stands rewards are as such:

You earn enough C-bills to keep up with the pug life provided you meet all of the following criteria:
--You win
--You are playing for a house with a better than average win reward
--You kill all opposing mechs
--You get a quick drop

Tukkyyid worked because you got a quick drop, and since IS was defending or on counter-attack, most of the time every mech was killed. This took care of 2/4 of the criteria. As CW stands now, you are very likely to not keep up with pug match rewards, thus a bad CW population. A bad CW population leads into a downward population spiral which leads to a bad place.

How to fix CW? Many avenues, but the end result is the same, increase rewards

1. Just buff c-bill rewards
2. Buff win rewards
3. Make planets worth something, one time/daily/weekly rewards for takeover (if you participated in that attack time period) or holding
4. Make planets of importance give discounts on weapons/engines/mechs/etc
5. Reorganize the achievement ladder to make levels 7-20 less of a crazy grind, i.e. smaller steps for smaller rewards. (and add more/endless steps for the loyalists).

All of the additional game mode talk is nice, but at the moment is a ways out there. Buffing rewards will provide CW a population boost. We see it during every event, the rewards are increased Friday morning, population jumps and by mid to late Saturday, as people get the big rewards, population starts to fall off, being dead again by Sunday night.

Pugs go where c-bills flow.

[Astrocanis]

Alterac Valley. Cappable drop points with additional conquest-like objectives and, finally, a base assault. More than a dropdeck of 4 required.

Pick a battleground from Guild Wars 2. Large maps with more than 12v12 tactics available.