29 replies to this topic

[jaxjace]

Sjorpha, on 13 May 2015 - 02:09 AM, said:

The first and foremost thing that is missing in CW is the actual simulation of war.

Owning planets need to give significant advantages, both in terms of resources of some kind and for the purpose of strategic progress. And for the unit as well as the faction.

And there needs to be a macro scale end game, a way to actually win the war, in which the aquiring of planets is a means of progression not limited to colouring the blips.

PGI seems afraid of the prospect that a faction could actually beat another, but that is the whole point of war. If taking over more and more planets does not convey an increasing advantage but instead, as now, actually punishes you for success, then there is no point. Resets or the galactic map should ultimately be driven by the extermination or otherwise determined victory of one side in the conflict.

A good start would be to reverse the system of reward adjusments to reward success rather than failure, the more planets you take the more your faction should pay you, because the will have more money to do so with. This could be balanced by dividing payouts by population, so that players of overpopulated factions gets paid less, which makes sense does it not? This way the number of planets owned by a faction determines indirectly the limits of that factions population.

Rewarding success should also go for individual success in terms of rank and loyalty. Simply pay a player more per match the higher rank he has within a faction, this way you encourage faction loyalty continuously as well as through specific rewards.

Last but not least the tools for organisation and strategic impact of units must be vastly increased and improved. Loyalist players (permanent contracts) might for example be able to elect leaders for their factions, who can then issue merc contracts to be taken by units. This right to vote for leadership or otherwise faction related issues could be the defining difference between loyalists and mercenaries.

Also allow units to do something with their money, why not upgrade defences on planets they control, or even buy mechs owned by the unit to be borrowed in dropdecks of unit members, with appropriate downsides as compared to owning private mechs for balance sake. Perhaps attach a maintenace cost for dropping in them, cut them out of the skill tree and so forth, but still a way to gear up your unit members for a given mission. Why not allow units to upgrade their dropships to be more lethal etc. Perhaps access to airstrike consumables in CW could be determined by if and how many aircraft bombers the unit has bought. Perhaps UAV, or why not all modules, is usable only if the unit has invested in the appropriate technology, and perhaps there is a maintenance cost to include that technology in a given drop. Bottom line is that units and their resources must be given real impact.

Hands down some of the best core ideas to save CW and MWO by default.

[kesmai]

if you remember the launch event (when the game got out of beta), then you would remember that pgi had a vision close to the one you posted. I fear that vision has met the harsh reality of bits and bytes and the means, skill and money to realize such a grand scope.

[Triordinant]

Unfortunately, CW is a niche within a niche. The bigger niche being Battletech/Mechwarrior fans and the smaller one inside it being those fans that want to (and are able to) group up and form Units. The smaller niche is 10 to 15% of the already small MWO playerbase and it's not likely to get bigger. There simply aren't enough players to populate any grand vision.

Edited by Triordinant, 15 May 2015 - 05:14 AM.

[Khereg]

Quote

Owning planets need to give significant advantages, both in terms of resources of some kind and for the purpose of strategic progress. And for the unit as well as the faction.

I don't disagree, but since planet count will translate directly into power for the units and factions (and really the players in those factions), we have a sticky situation where different factions start with vastly different numbers of planets. Players will be incented to join factions with the richest rewards, making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Obvious options to balance include:

1. Adjust planet counts (and possibly starting positions) away from lore
2. Adjust value of individual planets to balance out total power for each faction
3. Only give value to "conquered" planets (i.e. planets not in your unit's or faction's starting inventory)

Or some combination of the above.

1 will infuriate the RP crowd while 2 will make certain planets very, very rich targets to attack and own, making them very difficult for the owning faction to hold.

3 would seem to be the best option. Power is gained by your faction's growth rather than the raw planet count. A combination of 2 and 3 would seem to be workable, also, as long as the differences in individual planet value aren't extreme.

I think it's clear PGI intends to make CW a much more rich environment - the question is how long it will take them to do it. They have to be concerned about balance every step of the way and while the end vision may have balance, it's another level of complexity to roll that out incrementally without skewing the balance significantly while making progress.

Edited by Khereg, 15 May 2015 - 06:57 AM.

[crustydog]

I agree with the concept of "significance" as being one of the key factors lacking in CW - as in significant, ongoing rewards for performance.

Two contests have proven when the rewards are excellent, so is the player participation.

Basing rewards, in part, on obtained rank and planet ownership would lead directly to greater player participation - as in, there is a now a good reason to get in line to get something of value that cannot be easily obtained otherwise. There is now something worth fighting for more than bragging rights... something that is significantly important to obtain.

Bringing in the players will offer relief of the current queue problems.

This is an area where small steps can bring big changes for CW... and PGI as a whole.

[crustydog]

Khereg, on 15 May 2015 - 06:56 AM, said:

I don't disagree, but since planet count will translate directly into power for the units and factions (and really the players in those factions), we have a sticky situation where different factions start with vastly different numbers of planets. Players will be incented to join factions with the richest rewards, making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

If the rewards per planet had to be divided by total number of players per faction... as mentioned above - this would help to balance larger vrs smaller factions. Mercs may choose to go with smaller factions to enjoy greater rewards per player from their conquests, shifting the power balance back towards equilibrium.

[PappySmurf]

Not bad OP but MWO has deeper problems than those MWO overall is this shallow antisocial game that PGI wants everyone to enjoy and its not working player population is down 85-90% since closed beta and Russ and PGI will not listen to any kind of reason or common sense to rebuild the game back into the Social competitive game that made it popular .

So many old guard players 20+ year MechWarrior players/fans/league owners and even past Activision and Fasa personnel have tried to help MWO and most have been ignored or banned PGI is MekTek reincarnated only worse and the game is on life support.

Edited by PappySmurf, 15 May 2015 - 07:50 AM.

[Appogee]

It's a nice dream.

But PGI's actual plan seems to be to put 80% of its effort into producing Mech Packs, and 20% into making just enough incremental improvements in the base game to keep us all believing there's a bright future down the track, if only we just keep buying more Mech Packs.

At some point, enough whales like me will say "I have more than enough Mechs, now I want a proper game to play them in". We'll stop buying more Packs and start demanding that the game itself be significantly improved... hitreg, ping, game modes, maps, CW logistics. Without the revenue from Mech Packs to keep paying their own wages, PGI will then shutter the company, declaring "lack of player support made further development of MWO unviable".

If we're lucky they'll pay up for the servers to stay switched on for 3 months or something, to avoid litigation by people who just took delivery of the final Mech Pack.

I'm sorry to be pessimistic. But it's increasingly clear to me where we're headed. So let's make the most of Mech Barbie Dressup Assorted Hardpoint Deathmatch Online while we can.

There's one light on the horizon that might save us. Steam, and the exposure to further millions of potential players might shift PGI's revenue stream to a more sustainable micro-payment model, if they rethink their pricing structure.

Edited by Appogee, 15 May 2015 - 08:07 AM.

[UberStuka]

one would assume that when it comes out of "beta2" they would do something with CW

other than a unit tag on some planet

[Summon3r]

kesmai, on 15 May 2015 - 04:57 AM, said:

if you remember the launch event (when the game got out of beta), then you would remember that pgi had a vision close to the one you posted. I fear that vision has met the harsh reality of bits and bytes and the means, skill and money to realize such a grand scope.

good post OP, PGI's vision they conveyed to the community both in closed beta to open beta to now is nothing but dust in the wind, a bunch of BS that i doubt they ever had any intention of bringing to fruition.

[Appogee]

Summon3r, on 15 May 2015 - 08:04 AM, said:

good post OP, PGI's vision they conveyed to the community both in closed beta to open beta to now is nothing but dust in the wind, a bunch of BS that i doubt they ever had any intention of bringing to fruition.

At (both) times they outlined their vision to the community, some of us thought there was some plan and substance behind PGI's ideas.

I think it's pretty clear now that it all just was a bunch of lunch napkin doodles dumped into a Powerpoint deck so they had something interesting to say during the 'launch'.

Edited by Appogee, 15 May 2015 - 08:11 AM.

[martian]

PappySmurf, on 15 May 2015 - 07:50 AM, said:

player population is down 85-90% since closed beta

Your source, please?

[Summon3r]

martian, on 15 May 2015 - 08:14 AM, said:

Your source, please?

common sense id say, when you play 3-4 nights a week and see the exact same people every second drop if not every drop just mixed up differently. The state of things is pretty obvious.

BTW pappysmurf that pic brings back some great memories!!

[Lyoto Machida]

Appogee, on 15 May 2015 - 08:10 AM, said:

At (both) times they outlined their vision to the community, some of us thought there was some plan and substance behind PGI's ideas.

I think it's pretty clear now that it all just was a bunch of lunch napkin doodles dumped into a Powerpoint deck so they had something interesting to say during the 'launch'.

Hence why I didn't even bother watching Ekman's thing and went to the open bar that started right when he began speaking.

[martian]

Summon3r, on 15 May 2015 - 08:33 AM, said:

common sense id say, when you play 3-4 nights a week and see the exact same people every second drop if not every drop just mixed up differently. The state of things is pretty obvious.

BTW pappysmurf that pic brings back some great memories!!

Sorry, but "because you are saying so" is not a valid source ...

[Summon3r]

martian, on 15 May 2015 - 09:50 AM, said:

Sorry, but "because you are saying so" is not a valid source ...

ok how about the dismal numbers for the total participation in the tukayyid event? 17k players is an extremely small number

[sycocys]

And that 17k was likely the total, including all the people that came back from hiatus, managed to get into 1 match after a ridiculous wait and said the hell with it.

I can pretty well back up his numbers with my experience as well. Very, very few people on compared to how many there used to be pre-CW and even in the last couple months the numbers have been steadily dropping.

[martian]

Summon3r, on 15 May 2015 - 10:10 AM, said:

ok how about the dismal numbers for the total participation in the tukayyid event? 17k players is an extremely small number

"Extremely small number" compared to what number?

[Lyoto Machida]

martian, on 15 May 2015 - 10:25 AM, said:

"Extremely small number" compared to what number?

No idea, since we really don't have a player counter anymore and PGI probably won't reveal the average number of games or time played by each of the 17,000.

Saying 17,000 is one thing but it doesn't mean much if the average number of games played by those 17,000 is like 3.

[ztac]

There is a base problem with CW in that there is no way to balance out players. So one faction has a lot more and can ghost cap to win planets.. Not to mention that giving some kind of a bonus will just make things worse, If you consider the current state now where hardly anyone really plays it now all these ideas will do is to drive a lot of what is left away especially the bread and butter of MWO.... the PUGS!

Yes unit people don't want to believe it but the PUGS are just as important as nay unit! Possibly more so! But then that is one of CW biggest failings in that PGI and Units think it is ok for the PUGS to be stomped by Units all the time! On PGI's part the reason there is no solo queue is probably more down to low player base.