228 replies to this topic

[Kin3ticX]

https://youtu.be/aGb0potff-k?t=350

One of the things I somehow missed during the townhall was when Russ explained that some of the phase 3 features will be designed to incentivize units of 200-300 to break up down to 50-100.

This is cool and all but I suspect it makes too many assumptions about what big units are right now and what the average small unit can withstand.

Take a look at this list of unit size during Tukayidd with the # of planets tagged as of recent during season 2.


*Chart is not meant to be proof, units that play only IS right now wont be fairly tagging planets. It's too one sided, especially after the wave 3 shift. If you guys are playing CW until your eyes melt, make your voice heard.

Just need to point out that there are 5 units bigger than Mercstar and only one of them seems to be doing anything. I don't know this for sure, it just seems that way. I don't think I have seen these units play much. In hibernation until phase 3? Are they coming back?

To the point:

Are we assuming even though 300-400 sized units can't form 12 regularly today, all the sudden everyone will magically turn into KComs in phase 3? Singling you guys out because you are the benchmark of the perfect small CW unit .

On the typical night, Mercstar has at least one 12-man going. If that 12-man overflows, the remainders get another group going. MS doesn't have more than 1-2 groups unless there is an event to draw in the less actives.

I just have doubts 50-100 can form their own 12-mans after that initial "wow phase 3 is here". QQ Mercs is about at that 100-125 player threshold but most of them don't play CW regularly.

So, if PGI punishes units that grow beyond 100, will the typical unit even be able to form their own 12-mans?

Discuss

Edited by Kin3ticX, 29 June 2015 - 05:43 AM.

[Soulstrom]

Yes. The typical unit will be able to form a 12 man group. Out unit is 48 strong right now and we consistently have 12 pilots on at a time. However we hardly play CW because there is hardly ever anyone on. We just finished a 14 day contract with Ghost Bear. Very few matches were played because their were never any players on for the attack que. Overall I think that larger units do have an advantage because if they wanted too they could put a call out and steamroll a planet, assuming they have a large enough player active player base to do so.

I think that the 100 player cap and then penalties are incurred is an interesting twist. The larger the army the more potential there is for catastrophe to their supply lines or pilots deserting before a battle. So it would make sense that larger units may have problems that lead to penalties in the game, potentially. Who knows? But if there will be a penalty for having more than 100 players then this will make larger units and smaller units really think about their recruitment tactics and ejection of pilots from their units for inactivity.

As it stands the larger units have to much power to be able to augment the CW map as it stands and it does break the game a bit. When you have a full 12 man drop against a 12 man pug it still isn't a fair fight, even if the pug team is exceptionally great.

[Monkey Lover]

I don't see how breaking units up even matters .It will end up being ms1 ms2 ms3 and they will all attack the same planet anyway.

[CyclonerM]

Monkey Lover, on 27 June 2015 - 07:13 AM, said:

I don't see how breaking units up even matters .It will end up being ms1 ms2 ms3 and they will all attack the same planet anyway.

This.
Subdiving our unit in Galaxies or Clusters would just mean it would be more annoying inviting people into groups.

So what about no?

Edited by CyclonerM, 27 June 2015 - 07:22 AM.

[Crixus316]

Will a 100 player cap help CW? Large units take a lot of new, inexperienced pilots. Take SWOL for example. They currently have over 450 members now. During NA primetime they can only field 1 or 2 12 mans in CW. A lot of those players are new, still running trial mechs. Creating a unit cap will result in many underperforming members to get kicked. Where do they go then?

I guess what I am trying to say is this. Hypothetical. I have 99 members in my unit. Do I take in a new player, or do I hold that spot in hopes of getting a veteran some day.

[Moku]

This is one of those things you want to facepalm yourself. He should of just said they want to encourage more smaller units to build into 50-100 player sized units and left it at that. Larger units either are run well, crappy, or are blobs of players and those folks choose to be there. Public opinion can hate them for being good, but the developers shouldn't be saying it's a good or bad thing.

Edited by Moku, 27 June 2015 - 08:06 AM.

[Kira Onime]

Only reason I see why this was suggested was to help solve the problem of low numbers in CW.
I'm guessing he's hoping that by splitting up those 450 member units, some of said players would go into an other faction.

[Dracol]

Large units have been able to utilize their numbers to fairly easily achieve their goals across the Inner Sphere. Post Tukayyid, the Kuritian border was shut down. Breaking large units up would, in theory, make it a little bit more difficult to initiate sweeping, large scale initiatives.

Then again, these all occurred during a period were there are no true "loyalists". If Ghost Bear members had no option to leave their Clan, maybe they would have fought harder to maintain viable attack lanes.

[Summon3r]

Monkey Lover, on 27 June 2015 - 07:13 AM, said:

I don't see how breaking units up even matters .It will end up being ms1 ms2 ms3 and they will all attack the same planet anyway.

this exactly..... not to mention that the on paper unit size means nothing, for example the unit im in is 200+ but maybe at very best 20-30 active and when i mean active like 1-2 times a week for most maybe 10-15 that play more then that.

the numbers of real actives in game is in the basement, same people play against each other every night over and over.

[Malcolm Vordermark]

It seems to me that the voting system will be doing this. Bringing the number of contested planets down to 10 from 40ish would mean factions with disproportionately large populations would end up doing a lot of sitting around.

[Celtic Warrior]

Monkey Lover, on 27 June 2015 - 07:13 AM, said:

I don't see how breaking units up even matters .It will end up being ms1 ms2 ms3 and they will all attack the same planet anyway.

This right here x1000. We'll still be on the same TS and will still coordinate attacks on the same planet to achieve our goals. Braking up units doesn't make sense and it could potentially drive away players.

[Ductus Hase]

Big units are already penalized for breaking contracts.
Changing factions might be connected to a traveling fee per member - that way it would be harder to influence politics and splitting up wouldn´t be a way to circumvent this.

The suggested changes:
If they break up big units its easier for other units to gain a planettag.
That is all they can achieve by doing this - alongside of making it more annoying to group up for a match.

I think it´s the wrong vector... they should change the system Planets are tagged in order to achieve a fairer game for small units - drop the current system.
The current system favors big units, if possible international ones.

I don´t know how many tags my unit took in beta1... Next morning someone else had defended the planet, gained the tag and the border got moved. Thus we rarely had a tag for long and quite a few of us got really annoyed by this.


Allow everyone to get gains by fighting for a planet (as soon as they get included) - depending on the % of wins for example.
Make an expandable "Spoiler" honoring those units who fought for it, listing the number of wins/scored points (points like in the upcoming challenge maybe).

This would be way better than forcing communities in Community Warfare to split up.



While we are at it - if you stick to the current system:
Plz change the algorithm in a way that every timezone can fight for their own gains at least once before the planet gets reopened for battle... thus allowing us to defend our own tags / pushing the border to protect them.

[Kin3ticX]

Mr Bigglesworth, on 27 June 2015 - 07:27 AM, said:

Will a 100 player cap help CW? Large units take a lot of new, inexperienced pilots. Take SWOL for example. They currently have over 450 members now. During NA primetime they can only field 1 or 2 12 mans in CW. A lot of those players are new, still running trial mechs. Creating a unit cap will result in many underperforming members to get kicked. Where do they go then?

I guess what I am trying to say is this. Hypothetical. I have 99 members in my unit. Do I take in a new player, or do I hold that spot in hopes of getting a veteran some day.

Thank you for this input. I hadn't considered how maxed out units would deal with recruits. Perhaps units tighten their belts, perhaps units recruit fewer new players, perhaps more units are created.

Considering some units with large numbers have trouble forming 1 or 2 12-mans, the 100 players you have will have to be 4 times as active to replace the old 400.

[Kin3ticX]

Moku, on 27 June 2015 - 08:01 AM, said:

This is one of those things you want to facepalm yourself. He should of just said they want to encourage more smaller units to build into 50-100 player sized units and left it at that. Larger units either are run well, crappy, or are blobs of players and those folks choose to be there. Public opinion can hate them for being good, but the developers shouldn't be saying it's a good or bad thing.

Just need to consider how many of these players are inactive. If breaking up units is what PGI wants to go with, I will go with it, but it may not produce any jolt at all. Like you said, they could just be blobs of players that haven't played and are just padding their roster.

[Khereg]

Monkey Lover, on 27 June 2015 - 07:13 AM, said:

I don't see how breaking units up even matters .It will end up being ms1 ms2 ms3 and they will all attack the same planet anyway.

We've already discussed this. For -MS- specifically, the organization is a cooperative effort among several individual units, inclding: SwK, SiG, SLR, GEMC, -OU-, INTR, and a few others. When you fight -MS-, you're usually fighting people from a mix of those units.

We wear the -MS- tag b/c it facilitates changing contracts w/o having to coordinate a bunch of simultaneous faction changes and presents a unified image when we drop. However, it would be trivial for us to revert to wearing our individual unit tags and continuing to coordinate efforts via common teamspeak. The only painful part will be the faction switches I mentioned. Even then, we can coordinate a simultaneous switch and contract duration, it's just a little more work.

I can see how Russ feels groups like -MS- have an outsized influence on CW, but this idea to address it won't accomplish anything unless there are other measures put in place to prevent cooperation between units. Right now, no such mechanism exists.

Alternatively, -MS- has been encouraging other units to grow in both size and skill so that we have a balance of power and, from our point of view, a real community at war. Groups like SWOL, CWI, SRoT, and some others are taking the message to heart. Others are not. And, from my point of the view, the ones that aren't adapting to the new reality are trying to maintain the old ways via fiat with PGI now possibly placing restrictions on the evolution of the community. I don't think that's right, but I understand why some people are feeling like they need to approach it that way.

[TWIAFU]

KiraOnime, on 27 June 2015 - 08:11 AM, said:

Only reason I see why this was suggested was to help solve the problem of low numbers in CW.
I'm guessing he's hoping that by splitting up those 450 member units, some of said players would go into an other faction.

As a member of a large Unit I know that if ours had to split into a smaller Units to make someone else happy and NOT our members, That would be it. Lage Unit would have to face breaking up friendships if forced to split in half or more. My large group of friends to pull from to drop with is an ASSET to me.

If members are told from a large unit they are too large and have to make a second Unit to keep playing, well, screw that.

Why are you, PGI, even THINKING about telling me who I can or cannot have in our Unit. Why do you want to limit who I can have in a Unit? Why even consider limiting who I can play with? This is a MMO. One of those M's means massive and the other means Multiplayer. It does NOT mean large until we tell you and capped multiplayer.

Why would you want to restrict the community to make a community?

This is one of the dumbest idea's I have seen.

NO!

[TWIAFU]

Celtic Warrior, on 27 June 2015 - 08:50 AM, said:

This right here x1000. We'll still be on the same TS and will still coordinate attacks on the same planet to achieve our goals. Braking up units doesn't make sense and it could potentially drive away players.

And just think, you will have the added benefit of managing 3 or more Units instead of one to accomplish the same goal.

PGI is telling large Units, Hey, you have to many friends! You have to give some up to others that don't have any.

[Tywren]

Khereg, on 27 June 2015 - 09:59 AM, said:

And, from my point of the view, the ones that aren't adapting to the new reality are trying to maintain the old ways via fiat with PGI now possibly placing restrictions on the evolution of the community. I don't think that's right, but I understand why some people are feeling like they need to approach it that way.

No, what they are trying to restrict is the formation of mega units like GoonSquad from EVE, who can crush anything you throw at them with pure weight of numbers, and do incredibly douchy things because "We're board". That "We're board" crap is something i'm seeing a lot of from the big units like -MS- in this game as well; if you're that board, then maybe the best solution is to break up the unit, go into different factions, and start facing each other.

Quote

We wear the -MS- tag b/c it facilitates changing contracts w/o having to coordinate a bunch of simultaneous faction changes and presents a unified image when we drop. However, it would be trivial for us to revert to wearing our individual unit tags and continuing to coordinate efforts via common teamspeak. The only painful part will be the faction switches I mentioned. Even then, we can coordinate a simultaneous switch and contract duration, it's just a little more work.

Then maybe it's also time for faction switching to go the way of the dodo. If PGI where to force people to stick with one faction, they'd see some breakup of the large units from that alone.

And before anyone starts, yes, i know this causes an issue with having both clan, and IS mechs. This could be solved by simply implementing more than one pilot on the same account. Look at how Star Trek Online handles having multiple captions as an example; in the same way, you could have one IS pilot, and one Clan pilot, and let the account owner split the mechs, equipment, and other assets between their pilots.

[Crixus316]

Kin3ticX, on 27 June 2015 - 09:10 AM, said:

Thank you for this input. I hadn't considered how maxed out units would deal with recruits. Perhaps units tighten their belts, perhaps units recruit fewer new players, perhaps more units are created.

Considering some units with large numbers have trouble forming 1 or 2 12-mans, the 100 players you have will have to be 4 times as active to replace the old 400.

This is something PGI should have considered from the beginning. Now it's to late. Players getting cut may say **** it, I quit. New players will find it harder to get into a unit.

[Khereg]

Tywren, on 27 June 2015 - 01:41 PM, said:

No, what they are trying to restrict is the formation of mega units like GoonSquad from EVE, who can crush anything you throw at them with pure weight of numbers, and do incredibly douchy things because "We're board". That "We're board" crap is something i'm seeing a lot of from the big units like -MS- in this game as well; if you're that board, then maybe the best solution is to break up the unit, go into different factions, and start facing each other.

I know you're referencing a number of large units and not just -MS-, but for us, this is something we do not advocate. Instead, we are trying to build more and better units in the game that can fight at similar skill levels.

One example: we have a very cooperative relationship with a number of wolf units. Their members routinely drop with -MS- groups and vice versa whenever we're in wolf. During that time, they learn our tactics and builds and we see theirs. Both groups learn from each other and get stronger players as a result. When we go to a different faction, we come back and fight those same groups. It stays friendly, we get better fights out of it than pug stomps, and I think the community as a whole benefits.

If you see a -MS- member behaving like the GoonSquad, we'd want to know about that. That isn't something we endorse. Even if we *are* bored, we'll find more constructive ways to deal with that than making other players miserable. Lately, we've been having a number of members go solo pugging in CW and trying to teach tactics and builds to improve the average player's performance, for example.

Quote

Then maybe it's also time for faction switching to go the way of the dodo. If PGI where to force people to stick with one faction, they'd see some breakup of the large units from that alone.

If there were a more developed mercenary system in place that superseded the current faction loyalty arrangement, I'd be all for it. Until that happens, however, this is what we have and we're making the best of it.

Edited by Khereg, 27 June 2015 - 02:29 PM.