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So over the last few months there has been a significant amount of whining about larger units being "too stronk" in CW the way that things are structured. Now that in the last townhall Russ, being the infallible genius that he is (sarcasm) has said that he wants to break down large units into smaller ones or at least give incentive for that.
A note to Russ:
This is just another quick fix Russ, just like the moving of dropships and forcing players to filter out of their new dropzones through chokepoints/making dropships stronger.
I predicted that that route would do nothing other than increase the problem and drag out matches and lo and behold look what has happened!
So Russ/PGI heres what you fail to see:
1)The SOLE actual advantage in CW afforded larger units:
The game is not broken because of larger units. While yes in terms of fielding teams to take a planet and get your tag on it sure there is but that is the only ONLY big advantage afforded to you. Yet guess what people? There is no current incentive in the regular game beyond things like the current event that makes any unit benefit from having your tag on a planet.
Being a larger unit does not increase a 12 mans win rate. Also the more successful units are not even the largest groups, some are mid to upper size sure but the largest are not the ones seeing the most success in CW.
2)No gating/Player development though in game features:
So why all the whining? What is one of the major problems? It is pretty simple, this game has no gating system. You may say to yourself "well thats stupid this is basically an fps/sim" so why cant I just hop in and play? THAT is the mentality that a lot of new players jump into this game with who've never played a mechwarrior game before have and then get frustrated and flip their computer desk when they cant faceroll like they do in COD.
Tutorials should be mandatory in my opinion before ANY player can jump into public/group queue for non CW games. Force them to learn the basics, make the tutorials more engaging and emphasize on things like HUD awareness and so forth rather than solely targeting and movement but hey that would be a start for some players.
After that I believe that CW should be gated as well. Perhaps something like making it so that a player has to master 2-4 different chassis to at least full elite? Make sure that players have some idea of what is going on before they just dive head first into the CW meatgrider with more experienced players perhaps? Maybe some more tutorials explaining the basics about CW as well.
Also maybe a tutorial about mechs, especially highlighting quirks as so many IS pilots seem to be clueless at the great advantages of finding mechs that cater to their own or their units play styles with the right quirks these days still.
3)CW matches lack variability in game mode:
People get bored of the same "take the fortress/defend the fortress" game modes. Even when retaking or holding territory it feels the same. No change in terrain, same choke points/terrain features are utilized to advantage/disadvantage.
We need more game modes that vary or map locations and setups that vary, basically every CW map is the same 48 mechs on the same confined spaces. Maybe limit some maps to 24 mechs per side and make the maps larger or something, make maps that are even larger for those matches and have different locations where bases can reside.
There have been tons of suggestions for game modes over the months and the fact that whining about large units has overshadowed this is sad.
4)Randomized attack lanes:
This has been brought up time and time again and while the algorithm thankfully doesnt seem to break like it used to in phase 1 of CW it still has flaws.
Why not let loyalist units for factions vote on 1 or 2 planets during ceasefire to force more attack lanes towards more desirable fight lanes? Why is forcing IS units to have 1-3 other IS attack lanes against allies smart at all?
This would throw a bone to loyalist units and give them some more feeling of autonomy from the merc units they like to complain about so much and facilitate more active attack/defend lanes at times. Also this would encourage more communication between units in the same faction.
5)Lack of incentive for units in the same faction to communicate:
This is a huge issue in some factions that I have seen after playing mercs in every single faction over the last few months. Some factions do NOT communicate at all between units. Attacks are not coordinated on targets, there is no communication when one planet is getting overrun and so forth.
This is a bit more complex to address. A huge advantage that a lot of the more organized units have is large TS hubs for each faction. Coordination is success. VOIP in game had it been implemented well from the get go when the game first started with nearly a TS or the like sort of interface in game perhaps we would see more cohesion (yes I know that could cause even more problems).
Theres also the option of at the beginning of ceasefire having loyalist units "mark" or "Tag" specific planets to be more desirable targets and thus increase c-bill or loyalty points for games played on those planets.
Some incentive needs to be put in place to encourage more cohesion because a lot of players and even units cannot understand that this kind of gameplay in CW is not set up to allow you to have a free for all and be successful.
6) Lack of in game "policing" by community or PGI:
So its clear that PGI has no interest right now or at least cannot allocate the resources to monitor the on goings in matches where players may be doing things against the TOS (Like refusing to play) or just repeatedly disconnecting.
Simple solution, remove these players from the field by encouraging a community based policing program like LoL has. Allow an in game report feather that will log the chat log for the game as well as provide a screenshot of the score. If someone has raged in team chat at people then disconnected allow players in the community to review and vote on whether a player should be penalized.
This would streamline the reports that PGI gets and also you could give a player an incentive of a few MC each time they do X amount of these reviews perhaps.
7) Merc unit movement:
People should be able to play how and where they want. If that was impeded then you would see even more players leaving CW than there already has been. But that being said Merc units should have some in game bidding made possible through an interface that would allow factions with lower player activity or win rates to give merc units more incentive to fight for them. This is not something easy to balance though by any means. Make the rewards too little mercs wont want to help, make them too great and more people will go Merc than there already are in game currently.
In closing:
Disbanding a lot of the larger and more cohesive units will do nothing other than make them use different tags and result in more difficulty in them tagging planets. They will still work together, still communicate on TS and still be successful.
The units that are the most successful right now are the most organized and most skilled. They are not the largest.
***I will add to this as conversation in this thread starts up and more things come to mind.
Edited by Necromantion, 02 July 2015 - 07:49 AM.
