497 replies to this topic

[Jon Gotham]

Louis Brofist, on 08 July 2015 - 09:51 AM, said:

I believe the majority plays PUG and will play PUG. CW is for a small percentage of competitive players. Honestly the game would do as well or even better if the huge amount of resources that was put into CW was put into improving PUG and adding content to the game.

A huge amount of assets was invested into something that maybe 5-10% of the playerbase use. The problem with "competitive" mwo players is they believe they form the core of this games population and that they are the driving engine of this game. What they fail to notice is that they are the most vocal populus, but not at all the most vital. The lifeblood of this game is the pugs and the casuals.

Clearly its a game mode not favored by the majority and Steam will only confirm this.

Quite an arrogant view there matey. I thought the most vital people were the ones that PAY? I'd assume some of them are puggers and some groupers. Do you honestly want to just play alone in team solomatch forever?
This game could be more than that-it SHOULD BE MORE than just johnny solo wantz to shootz robotz....shouldn't it?
I'd had enough of solomatch by the end of my 25th game, I hated it and would have left if a chap from a unit had not invited me.
The vital lifeblood of online games is the communities and they don't form alone, 10 minutes at a time.
Much like WoT,WT and their ilk..this game is utterly horrid when played alone that is if you want more than a 30 minute throwaway f2p robotz shooter.
A lot of us, many more than you think want more than that. I'd rather this game die than turn into WoT or WT. I want more than team solomatch....don't you really?

[Euphoric1RW]

Maybe they should go to an 8 v 8 for CW. Unless you are in an organized group of close to 12 it is hard to get a game. I spent hours before to just get in one good game, and at times you get a ghost drop just makes you face palm, so boring but fun when you are with a good group. It just needs to be fixed, they will figure it out in the next 5 years hopefully!

[Sir Wulfrick]

CW could be the centrepiece of the entire game: a long-term strategic war where taking and holding planets matters, where various house units, merc units and clan units fight for objectives in varying missions. In short, CW could potentially be everything that a simulation of Batteltech large-scale warfare could offer. Instead we have variations on a theme of capture-the-objective.

Add to that rewards that are far below what PuG matches offer, long waiting times for matches, and eventually most players will wonder what the point is.

Some of the CW maps are really nice to play on and produce some engaging game play. The fact that one team is channelled in to narrow choke points is however lazy design, and the closer together the gates are the worse it becomes. I'm looking at you, grim portico.

CW as a game type needs to mean something. Make an actual war simulator, with macro all the way to micro battlefield tactics, with decent rewards, and people will play.

[RockmachinE]

kamiko kross, on 08 July 2015 - 10:18 AM, said:

Quite an arrogant view there matey.

Well that was quite the arrogant response as well friend. It assumes there is a "better" way of playing the game. No matter what your perspective, the fact remains that most people are casuals. To argue who brings in more revenue is futile unless we have solid numbers, but the fact remains that the main body of players are the pugs, the simpletons and the casuals.

The hardcore might dictate the pace and meta, but the masses hold up the game. This is an observation I keep making, and while I was "the hardcore" in quite a few MMOs in the past and I understand your perspective and frustrations, the realistic situation is that the masses hold up this game and all they want is a f2p robotz arena shooter.

If you don't have a large body of players the game simply dies out.

Edited by Louis Brofist, 08 July 2015 - 10:33 AM.

[EvilCow]

Quote

Some of the CW maps are really nice to play on and produce some engaging game play. The fact that one team is channelled in to narrow choke points is however lazy design, and the closer together the gates are the worse it becomes. I'm looking at you, grim portico.

Without choke points players would have to rotate torso and look in all directions, even worse, some would have to explore and report the enemy mechs, imagine the complaints.

Edited by EvilCow, 08 July 2015 - 10:34 AM.

[White Panther]

Well, people said "stay the F out of CW noobs!", and so they did. You got it boss... enjoy CW.

Anyways though, I dont think many would be playing it anyways even if they didnt tell the Pugs to get lost. Its no fun, bad rewards, bad maps, all kinds of reasons its no good. We should all be demanding CW be taken down and re-done, since its one of the core pillars. How could PGI give us a CW this bad and be okay with it?

[DjPush]

Because uber comp teams want it that way.

[RockmachinE]

To add one more thing, the problem lies within CW itself. PGI failed to deliver a CW that would interest, but most importantly involve most players. By the precedent we have, the speed of PGI development is extremely lackluster, a major overhaul of the game mode is not realistic, so its pretty much here to stay as is. It might get better, but I doubt they can change it enough in due time to make it appealing to the masses again.

Steam release will make or brake this game and PGI will never manage to make CW attractive in the short amount of time they plan to release there.

Edited by Louis Brofist, 08 July 2015 - 10:37 AM.

[WrathOfDeadguy]

CW is a waiting simulator with the occasional gameplay interlude. That is not what I consider fun. If it took me less time, on average, to find a game than it took to play one... no, it still wouldn't be acceptable. A CW match that runs all the way out lasts half an hour, and frankly even a sixth of that is entirely too bloody long to wait for a game to start. It usually takes upwards of twenty minutes, frequently more than thirty, and the matches themselves are often over in fifteen.

Compounding the problem is the way a few mistakes can rapidly snowball into a one-sided stomp in this game... with a normal pug match, you shake it off and jump back in because you only lost a few minutes. In CW, you watch it happen in slow motion; one lance gets itself killed, now the enemy is four 'Mechs up, and it keeps going downhill from there for ten or fifteen more minutes before they finally finish you off. When all's said and done, you've spent 45 minutes getting your ass handed to you despite giving it your best effort, have almost nothing to show for it, and you're facing another horrendously long wait time before you can even try again.

It's just not a worthwhile return on investment.

[totgeboren]

I sometimes play CW if there are a lot of people in the queue for a planet.
If I get PUG-vs-PUG games it's fun. You win some you lose some.
But when a PUG faces a 10+ man, you might as well just quit. I often try one more game after that, but most of the time when you get matched up against an organised team, you will keep getting matched up against them, meaning there is no point playing.
So I play in puglandia instead.

Edited by totgeboren, 08 July 2015 - 10:42 AM.

[Gierling]

No thanks, I don't like getting facerolled by 12-mans.

[carnivorouswinds]

My last memory of CW was dropping with an almost full premade as a solo (#1 IS unit, they claimed) and being berated for refusing their gate stacking defense orders. I explained my strategy, ordered around their unit, and after it was clear we'd won by following my strategy, I was TKed and spammed in chat ("HOW MY BALLS TASTE NEWB").

I've turned off voice and all text chat because **** this community. Even if PGI gives an actual incentive to playing CW, the "community" part of the equation is still garbage.

Edited by carnivorouswinds, 08 July 2015 - 10:49 AM.

[White Panther]

Why couldnt they make CW a hardcore mode in a different sense rather than requiring full meta?

Say for example, the mechs and cnills you own are completey seperate from normal cue. You begin CW, start with a certain amount of mechs and cbills. Use all maps for different kinds of fights, from large scale 12v12 down to 4v4, 2v2, 1v1 maybe. Choose your fights carefully, win to get more mechs and resources. Losing results in permanent loss of mechs. If your cbills go below a certain level that you cannot buy a mech if all are destroyed, you start again at the base level. Basically make every fight actually important, for real.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

Mister D, on 08 July 2015 - 09:24 AM, said:

Unless there is an event that draws people to it, I really don't feel like waiting an hour just to play 1 game that often enough ends up as a ghost drop.

Other than free mechbays, and MC that is far out of reach, I'm not earning enough to need those mechbays anyway, and Cbill rewards are also pretty poor every time I tried to play it.

There just isn't enough reason to make me want to play it.

Taking planets over and over which don't mean anything tactically.. just doesn't do it for me.

There are no objectives, no rewards, and no value from planet to planet, its just the same thing over and over.

Balance between IS & Clan tech still has huge gaps too, why subject myself to that when I can just play pub and get the same thing quicker.

I'd like to offer suggestions, but honestly don't know where to start..

You know... the hour waittime thing... is kinda a myth.

It's not hard to queue for a match in CW, everything works in multiples of 12, do the calculation and figure out what your best chance is for a match in your planetary selection.

From there, when people see an area being populated, they tend to join it. I rarely wait more than 5-10 minutes between logging into CW, and getting a match, and that's as a solo pug.

[EvilCow]

Wild idea for CW (wasted time, I know).

Remove the time limit, the mission is over when the planet is taken or invaders are pushed out.

Once a team finishes its mechs another one enters, super teams would be able to resist multiple waves, pugs could still try to kill some mechs and still accomplish something useful.

Lost mechs would not be available again (for CW) for 2 hours, a reason to use all mechs not just the best ones.

[Gamuray]

I might consider playing if every map wasn't visually different but functionally the same. Every one has 2-3 funneling paths that go to a gate. Perhaps they should have designed it so that you had a base at the centerish, and a large area surrounding it that the attackers would spawn at the edge of. As they moved in they would eliminate/capture base defenses and be able to spawn closer and the defenders would be pushed back towards the gate and finally into the base if they were losing. Opposite effect if they were winning. But be able to come in from any angle you want without the limiting pathways. Think of a big city built around a capitol building. Many roads and elevations, plenty of options.

Then I might play, because you would have choices. Right now theres only two ways to win, and they involve either camping or funneling into a corridor and hoping the opponent dies faster.

[Kristov Kerensky]

CW has a low population because it's pointless, there is literally no incentive to do CW. Taking and holding planets means nothing, gives no rewards, no bonuses, nada, zilch, and you spend way too much time and get paid too little for that. NO INCENTIVES!

Non-CW drops are quicker and pay better for the time, without the long wait times, and serve EXACTLY the same purpose as CW combat, which is absolutely nothing but killing time by killing Mechs. Non-CW matches at least let you kill more Mechs in the same time frame, and that means you gain more XP/GXP and CBills for the time.

And that's why CW is so empty, it has nothing to do with the bs reasons tossed out by some of the people here, 12 man stomps, PUGs being told not to do CW by the tryhards, and so on, pure bs. People using THAT as their excuse simply don't like to deal with coordinated opponents, because the odds of facing an actual 12 man in CW are no better than outside of CW, it's 1% of the group total after all. Outside of the Events, I've seen 12 mans maybe 1 in 10 drops, if that often, in CW, and I drop solo PUG in CW when there isn't an Event almost exclusively. As for people saying stay out of CW if you aren't a top comp, bs, people, INCLUDING MYSELF, have stated time and again, don't drop CW unless you want serious competition, because there is a lot more coordination going on in CW, even with solo PUGs, it has nothing to do with being a top comp or in a big unit, it has to do with wanting to actually play as a TEAM, not jack around as a Rambo like so many non-CW solo players do.

If you have 30 minutes to kill, CW is not the place to do it, the matches are 30 minutes long, and wait times are generally 5-10 minutes, so you literally don't have time for a single drop.

If you want to level up your Mechs, do it in non-CW drops, CW is TOO slow and too low paying for that, that's why you shouldn't do it, not because it screws the team over, but because you are screwing YOURSELF over. You'll make a lot more xp in the same time frame dropping in standard que solo drops, with under 1 minute wait times and matches that last 10 mins or less, simple math folks.

And meta, please, you'll see LOTS of non-meta Mechs in CW on both sides of the field, and they do every bit as well as the meta, if not better. It's a bs excuse for not doing CW, same as the rest of the excuses that don't actually hit on the real reason not to do CW, lack of incentive!

carnivorouswinds, you should probably just uninstall the game totally, since you refuse to actually play as a part of a team and refuse to use the tools given us to communicate. I've muted 3 people total now since VOIP was added, and I've seen a handful of total ******* in the chat that I wanted to slap through the monitor. I can see that many people in 1 ROUND playing Battlefield, Planetside 2 or CoD. The MWO community is actually one of the most adult and best around ingame, fact.

Edited by Kristov Kerensky, 08 July 2015 - 11:06 AM.

[Tycon]

If you look at the forums and in game messaging from groups you do pug into, they will tell you find a premade or get out of CW, either get a functional organized premade for yourself or don't bother playing the game mode isn't for you. With no match making queue or solo support causing long queues, losing to organized premades, time inefficient rewards and being scrutinized by the elite, people are taking that advise whole heartedly and leaving. Unfortunately this seams to be hurting the game as a whole .

Unless PGI makes specific solo queue friendly changes to CW such as shorter ques, better match making, better rewards per time spent and continuity of game play to the world, people will continue to do as instructed and stop playing CW. It's sort of a shame though that support for this mode is so limited, people should be begging pubs to queue for CW.

Edited by Tycon, 08 July 2015 - 11:10 AM.

[DaZur]

My situation is not atypical or unique... I have roughly three to four hours a night to play.

I can choose to PUG drop and net approximately 10 matches or I can play the waiting game in CW and if lucky get 3 value-based matches.

The logic and reasoning is clear...

[RockmachinE]

EvilCow, on 08 July 2015 - 10:52 AM, said:

Wild idea for CW (wasted time, I know).

Remove the time limit, the mission is over when the planet is taken or invaders are pushed out.

Once a team finishes its mechs another one enters, super teams would be able to resist multiple waves, pugs could still try to kill some mechs and still accomplish something useful.

Lost mechs would not be available again (for CW) for 2 hours, a reason to use all mechs not just the best ones.

You know what that's a simple but brilliant idea.