19 replies to this topic

[masCh]

Then the current reward system in this CW event is not the way to do it.

The proper way to do it would be :

Planetary rewards (dog tags, hula girl, whatever else) only for the top 50 members in the Unit.

That would encourage a lot of the larger units to break up because everyone would like to have those rewards.

Or hard-code into the system that Mercenary units cannot be larger than the 5-th largest loyalist unit in the Faction they wish to pledge to.

[Soulstrom]

Not a bad idea, but I doubt PGI would want to program that into the game or if they ever would consider doing it, it would come out well after the community has collapsed.

[Crockdaddy]

Most so called large units only drop at best 15 to 30% of their membership in a given week. During events active units might climb up to 70%. NS dropped 59 of like 97 during Tukayyid ... I suspect we will get around 40/50 of 100 dropping this week. Hopefully stats will be furnished again so we can see.

Edited by Crockdaddy, 01 July 2015 - 09:32 PM.

[TWIAFU]

Crockdaddy, on 01 July 2015 - 09:32 PM, said:

Most so called large units only drop at best 15 to 30% of their membership in a given week. During events active units might climb up to 70%. NS dropped 59 of like 97 during Tukayyid ... I suspect we will get around 40/50 of 100 dropping this week. Hopefully stats will be furnished again so we can see.

Do you see?

It is not fair to everyone else that 85% of your members are not active. You have to be limited to a max Unit size because you have to many members, ignoring that most are not even playing. It is only fair to playing pilots that you kick out 85% of your membership.

You should be happy that someone else has decided you are to big and those 85% of inactive members have to go make a separate Unit in a different faction as intended. See how well this is going to work for you?

Community, up unit we tell you your community is to big for you, Warfare brought to you by small and non unit players in CW.

[Chemie]

I LOL'd at this weeks rewards on the heels of Russ saying he wants to incentive smaller units.

The ONLY unit that wins this is the massive player units. They designed this around the unit with the most drops wins. A 50 player unit could win 100% of games and won't even place.

Edited by Chemie, 02 July 2015 - 09:37 AM.

[Necromantion]

masCh, on 01 July 2015 - 06:16 AM, said:

Then the current reward system in this CW event is not the way to do it.

The proper way to do it would be :

Planetary rewards (dog tags, hula girl, whatever else) only for the top 50 members in the Unit.

That would encourage a lot of the larger units to break up because everyone would like to have those rewards.

Or hard-code into the system that Mercenary units cannot be larger than the 5-th largest loyalist unit in the Faction they wish to pledge to.

Rewards as you suggest are basically already in game for players who play a lot and most of us who have been playing for a long time and are in larger units dont care for those things really as much as we care about playing with the people we enjoy playing with.

The hard coding you suggested is just foolish and shows you didnt think at all into the implications of this suggestion.

You would force merc units to dissolve if they wished to swap to Ras or Marik because those factions have tiny units? You want to force players to have to play factions they dont want to? You will see more players leaving CW than coming back with that suggestion. Large merc units help whatever faction they join, maybe there should be some incentive system to get mercs to help smaller factions but not dissolve into tiny units to quiet the whining of the lowest common denominator.

http://mwomercs.com/...ts-wont-fix-cw/

Read that.

[DaFrog]

What the MS and CI people are telling you is this: get in a unit, stick with that unit for the next 3 years, get stomped by us regardless, and then you will be good at CW and will be able to match us.

[Necromantion]

DaFrog you are one of the most butthurt players ive seen in CW and on the forums. If you could stop crying and maybe read the post you would see that what I have said makes total sense.

I dont speak for MS, CI or anyone else. I am sharing what is the blatant truth, and that is the fact that large groups working together and having fun playing together are not going to stop doing that if they make unit sizes smaller.

[MischiefSC]

That PGI looks at this issue and thinks the solution is to try and break up groups is part of why it's really hard to get motivated to play mwo.

The issue is that there is no incentive to make the factions relevant and membership relevant. Then populations can settle and equalize over time.

The issue isn't big groups. The issue is big transient groups.

[Necromantion]

MischiefSC, on 02 July 2015 - 08:52 AM, said:

That PGI looks at this issue and thinks the solution is to try and break up groups is part of why it's really hard to get motivated to play mwo.

The issue is that there is no incentive to make the factions relevant and membership relevant. Then populations can settle and equalize over time.

The issue isn't big groups. The issue is big transient groups.

Exactly but balancing incentives to equalize population balance is a tricky task, essentially there needs to be bigger incentives to be loyalist otherwise all that will happen is large merc units bouncing around where the goodies are. Though on the flipside some people like playing both factions especially when you have like 150+ mechs and enjoy most of them.

Its a tough situation to balance but it could be handled a lot better.

[Havyek]

DaFrog, on 02 July 2015 - 08:37 AM, said:

What the MS and CI people are telling you is this: get in a unit, stick with that unit for the next 3 years, get stomped by us regardless, and then you will be good at CW and will be able to match us.

Well, if you get in a large unit, play with them for 3 years, and STILL get stomped you suck pretty hard dontcha?

Maybe instead of complaining about a unit's size like THAT is the reason you're losing, you should maybe, you know, improve?

[MischiefSC]

Trying to invent people to join small factions is part of the problem.

If a faction is losing that faction needs to take steps to fix that. I would love a system that gave loyalist units tools to hire mercs but regardless there should not be game mechanics trying to promote players moving around. The game mechanics should reward staying put, player driven mechanics should motivate players moving around.

PGI should handle mech balance and mechanics balance.

[BaconCouch]

The best way to incentivize small units is to bring in LOGISTICS COSTS to CW, which are much higher to bring a large group to the field, as opposed to a small group.

I mean, hell, before they announced they didnt know what to do with the unit coffers....PL has like....500,000,000 Cbiils sitting around collecting dust :/

[Necromantion]

MischiefSC, on 02 July 2015 - 09:10 AM, said:

Trying to invent people to join small factions is part of the problem.

If a faction is losing that faction needs to take steps to fix that. I would love a system that gave loyalist units tools to hire mercs but regardless there should not be game mechanics trying to promote players moving around. The game mechanics should reward staying put, player driven mechanics should motivate players moving around.

PGI should handle mech balance and mechanics balance.

Yep thats what I suggested on my other thread, i think mechs are fine but the game balance is totally off when it comes to CW.

[Gallowglas]

Trying to set a hard limit on unit size would be a pointless exercise. First, players would meta-game the limitation (e.g. Mercstar - Unit Alpha, Beta, etc.). Secondarily, it would basically punish units that have a segment of their player base that are more inactive. The relevant statistic is *active* user base.

The better idea is to find subtle ways to incentivize participation by smaller units. Give smaller groups extra rewards. In tournaments like the current one, cap the points a unit accumulates based on the top X games posted by the unit. The bigger units still get an advantage in that system, but it's not insurmountable. Small units with amazing players could still beat out a large unit, but a larger unit is posting more scores, so there are more chances to post big scores. Adding game modes that make single lance participation (including lance-based tournament brackets!) would contribute to a more compelling experience.

Heck, there's even some really low-hanging fruit here. Add achievements for small-unit and single-lance accomplishments.

[Murphy7]

And in other units this just comes across as annoying.

[9SD] currently has about 130 or so members on the roster, and we struggle to find the numbers to field a full 12 man at times.

Something that would be nice for unit management is if the unit leader could set an inactive period, after which a player might be automatically removed from roster for having not logged into the game in a month or three months. Hell, having the info as to when player last logged in would be welcome in manually managing a roster.

[Xavier]

DaFrog, on 02 July 2015 - 08:37 AM, said:

What the MS and CI people are telling you is this: get in a unit, stick with that unit for the next 3 years, get stomped by us regardless, and then you will be good at CW and will be able to match us.

I have dropped with you many times and -MS- suffers its defeats just like it enjoys its victories. We get greater matches against organized groups. 98% of the losses we experience are from organized groups. We aren't telling you to join a unit just to try to win. What we have at -MS- is a group of people united around a single common goal that enjoy playing together. Victories do not hold us together, a camaraderie amongst us and a genuine joy of mutual goals is what holds us together.

What -MS- really stands for is the unity of people that genuinely enjoy spending time together attempting to achieve a common goal. Unit camaraderie is something everyone should experience. People that have never joined a unit should give it a try. This game can achieve many more levels of enjoyment when you are part of a unit.

If you have never been a part of a unit and have only ever dropped solo I must tell you that you are missing out and an enjoyable experience. Join us or another unit ti doesn't matter -MS- just seeks to prove that unit combat is a worthwhile endeavor

[Moldur]

First off, I don't think anyone can accurately judge the unit dynamic in MWO when on the outside looking in.
Units don't have to be hardcore 24/7 mountain dew and doritos-fed basement spawn.

More to the point, what we're essentially admitting by asking to reduce the size of units is that Mechwarrior Online's balance is a fragile system held in place by a gum and toothpicks concoction known as disorganization. A million times over, I'd rather have the root of the problem fixed.

[MischiefSC]

Said it before, will say it again -

attempting to reduce unit size is like gauss charge up, ghost heat and the long, depressing list of other broken ideas designed to offset other broken ideas instead of fixing an actual problem.

You strongly reward long term positions in factions and then empower permacontract factions to help attract new members and attract mercs for shorter term contracts for specific goals and you fix the issue completely when combined with faction membership meaning something and taking worlds meaning something.

In no way, shape or form is the actual issue 'unit size'. The issue is unit transience. Stable populations self-regulate and adapt. The problem is that most the population shuffles around, making faction membership irrelevant and sides of a conflict completely mercurial and as such winners and losers (at a faction level) irrelevant.

Unit size? CW would work better if there was only 6 IS and 4 Clan units - one per faction. Unit size is totally and completely irrelevant to the problem.

Just that PGI seems to have this affection for screwy solutions that have, historically, always introduced more problems than they ostensibly fix. Always and without exception.

So given that trying to reduce unit size is a terrible solution that will bugger stuff up and invite whole new fields of things to exploit I strongly expect it to be prioritized above any useful or semi-useful improvement to the game and be introduced in the next big release.

[Deathlike]

Murphy7, on 02 July 2015 - 10:06 AM, said:

And in other units this just comes across as annoying.

[9SD] currently has about 130 or so members on the roster, and we struggle to find the numbers to field a full 12 man at times.

Something that would be nice for unit management is if the unit leader could set an inactive period, after which a player might be automatically removed from roster for having not logged into the game in a month or three months. Hell, having the info as to when player last logged in would be welcome in manually managing a roster.

Roster management related info is Lostech.

They kinda need a separate tag or something in the roster management to tag people "available for CW" to account for logistics and those who need to be added to a CW roster would need some sort of delay (kinda like the contract delay for cancelling a contract) before they can be immediately added back due to inactivity.

Having more active people on a CW roster would be beneficial as that would offset whatever recurring costs for having such a large active CW roster (you don't want to be penalized by carrying so many that are away or uninterested in CW).

Edited by Deathlike, 02 July 2015 - 07:04 PM.