43 replies to this topic

[Shad0wsFury]

Would anyone like to answer for designing this atrocious event?

First of all, it was an exercise in futility since the "winners" were pretty much pre-determined by the size and activity level of the unit. More 12 man CW groups running means more points. Why not just reward the biggest, most active units and be done with it?

Second, and I'm going to go ahead and be a stereotypical self-centered American here, and I'm going to call you out for doing a "hardcore" event over a holiday weekend. Seriously, I talked to A LOT of people who said they put in 40 hour MWO sessions JUST OVER THE WEEKEND when they probably should have been drinking, blowing stuff up and spending time with their FAMILIES.

Third, planetary conquest should only be part of "events" when the game mechanics of said conquest are COMPLETE. Right now there are too many things about planetary conquest that aren't working right, or create too much of an imbalance. Not to mention counting planetary conquests gave a distinct disadvantage to any unit who currently held any planets. My unit, for example, had something like 4 or 5 planets getting attacked at the same time, often by units who generally did not hold planets before the event. The result? We get NEGATIVE planetary captures and have no chance to catch up.

Please PGI, put some real thought into the events you plan. Maybe to you it's just something you do to keep us happy or interested. But when you get it this wrong it's pretty insulting, and makes me reconsider whether or not I want to continue to sick around playing MWO.

May the flames commence.

[Appogee]

1. The event was probably designed by Russ specifically to demonstrate why large groups have to be capped ... as he foreshadowed at the Town Hall.

2. Murica isn't the world. Its holiday schedules shouldn't warrant special consideration, especially for a Canadian games manufacturer.

3. It makes sense for online game publishers to create incentives for people to play their game instead of pursuing other forms of entertainment.

4. It's always your choice whether you take up the incentives to play the game, or spend your weekend setting off fireworks on top of your head.


As the member of a smaller unit, I'd have preferred the success criteria to be normalised to represent units' relative success (eg. unit win/loss percentage). However, see point #1 above.

Edited by Appogee, 08 July 2015 - 04:09 AM.

[Anunknownlurker]

@Apogee - 2. Murica isn't the world. Deal with it.

What a tremendously unpleasant way to put it! I am not from the US and have no allegiance to it but, really? Was it necessary to be so unpleasant when Shad0wsFury had made a reasonable point about an event being held over a Holiday weekend which is focussed on family? Just try to be kind.

[Shad0wsFury]

Appogee, on 08 July 2015 - 04:01 AM, said:

stuff

Capping units won't fix the larger issue, those units will still exist as a multitude of smaller units and engage in similar activities with more hoops to jump through. While America isn't the center of the world, it is the home of the majority of MWO players, it seems. While it makes sense for publishers to incentivize the game, those same incentives to get people playing more shouldn't punish those who were already playing to begin with. Also, I quite enjoyed spending time with my family this weekend, but my unit probably would have had first place if me (or one other person in my unit) had been from Europe instead of the US and had been able to rack up points all day on the 4th.

None of this addresses the terrible design of the event.

Edited by Shad0wsFury, 08 July 2015 - 04:16 AM.

[Dracol]

1. Each event caters to different pilots. Not every pilot was a founder and yet they ran a founder event.... the winner was predetermined to be a founder, so why didn't they just give all founders a reward and be done with it?

2. Not all Americans go out for the fourth. Some of us would rather stay off the roads and avoid the drinkers. Holidays people have time off and are able to spend more time participating in their hobbies, which for some of us that is MWO.

3. OP, sounds like CW not being complete is not your issue, but instead of the event rules themselves. I will grant you that the planet ownership rules were not clearly spelled out at the start of the event.

Edited by Dracol, 08 July 2015 - 04:18 AM.

[Appogee]

Jimmy DiGriz, on 08 July 2015 - 04:09 AM, said:

What a tremendously unpleasant way to put it! I am not from the US and have no allegiance to it but, really? Was it necessary to be so unpleasant when Shad0wsFury had made a reasonable point about an event being held over a Holiday weekend which is focussed on family? Just try to be kind.

Setting aside that I did immediately remove the 'deal with it' comment because I felt it was a bit rude...

I don't see posts from other countries requiring that online games not run events during their holidays. The OP clearly thinks American holidays warrant special treatment. I simply don't agree with the idea that the rest of the world should suffer the tedium of eventless weekends, just because the US has a holiday.

I also don't expect the US to have any downtime when the rest of us are having holidays, either.

Each of us, every day, prioritises how much time we spend on recreation vs our family. I applaud the OP's decision to eschew playing in an online event he didn't like, in order to spend time with his family last weekend.

Edited by Appogee, 08 July 2015 - 04:30 AM.

[TWIAFU]

Appogee, on 08 July 2015 - 04:01 AM, said:

1. The event was probably designed by Russ specifically to demonstrate why large groups have to be capped ... as he foreshadowed at the Town Hall.

If that was his goal, then the numbers show how badly he failed.

[Appogee]

Shad0wsFury, on 08 July 2015 - 04:16 AM, said:

While it makes sense for publishers to incentivize the game, those same incentives to get people playing more shouldn't punish those who were already playing to begin with.

Who was 'punished'? You chose not to pay in the event. I chose to go on a home visit with my family.

These were choices we made ... and the right family-centric ones, too. I don't feel 'punished' for making a choice. My unit doesn't feel 'punished' that I made that choice, either.

Other players in other parts of the world chose to keep playing MWO. They chose to play in an event wheich seemed destined to favour larger units. Good on them, that's how they chose to spend their weekend.

Edited by Appogee, 08 July 2015 - 04:28 AM.

[Anunknownlurker]

It's been said before and I am sure it will be said many more times; CW does not encourage the solo player or small group players; as these probably make up the vast majority of "playing hours" in MWO that is always going to be an issue for this game mode.

As this most recent event was labelled "Hardcore Unit Challenge" even fewer solo players, some of whom are actually pretty damn good at shooting stompy robots, would have been encouraged to join in; this leaves the game open to huge unit drops.

I didn't participate in this CW event as, until there is some more point to it than a few cockpit vanity items, I don't find it more enjoyable than the PUG Q.

[Shad0wsFury]

Appogee, on 08 July 2015 - 04:26 AM, said:

Who was 'punished'? You chose not to pay in the event. I chose to go on a home visit with my family.

These were choices we made ... and the right family-centric ones, too. I don't feel 'punished' for making a choice. My unit doesn't feel 'punished' that I made that choice, either.

Other players in other parts of the world chose to keep playing MWO. They chose to play in an event wheich seemed destined to favour larger units. Good on them, that's how they chose to spend their weekend.

My statement in this instance has less to do with the timing of the event than the choice by PGI to partially base the tournament around planetary conquest. Units that already had 10 planets were at a disadvantage when 5 of those planets were attacked simultaneously (for example), by units that held 0 planets at the beginning. The unit with 10 planets might lose 2, and then be listed as a -2 score for planetary conquest in the tournament. Units that had 0 planets couldn't lose planets from the beginning, only gain them, giving them a distinct advantage.

[Koniving]

I absolutely refuse to play during events.

Since they are perpetual, I am not playing.

[Appogee]

Shad0wsFury, on 08 July 2015 - 05:00 AM, said:

My statement in this instance has less to do with the timing of the event than the choice by PGI to partially base the tournament around planetary conquest. Units that already had 10 planets were at a disadvantage when 5 of those planets were attacked simultaneously (for example), by units that held 0 planets at the beginning. (etc)

I see what you mean. Very fair point. I agree that many aspects of the tournament were poorly designed from a 'fairness' point of view with respect to different units.

Koniving, on 08 July 2015 - 05:01 AM, said:

I absolutely refuse to play during events.

They certainly create some 'interesting' game play. I don't think it's all bad though.

For example, I enjoy sometimes coming up against PUG CW teams instead of the usual endless parade of 12-mans PUGstomping.

[Necromantion]

Shad0wsFury, on 08 July 2015 - 03:52 AM, said:

Would anyone like to answer for designing this atrocious event?

First of all, it was an exercise in futility since the "winners" were pretty much pre-determined by the size and activity level of the unit. More 12 man CW groups running means more points. Why not just reward the biggest, most active units and be done with it?

Second, and I'm going to go ahead and be a stereotypical self-centered American here, and I'm going to call you out for doing a "hardcore" event over a holiday weekend. Seriously, I talked to A LOT of people who said they put in 40 hour MWO sessions JUST OVER THE WEEKEND when they probably should have been drinking, blowing stuff up and spending time with their FAMILIES.

Third, planetary conquest should only be part of "events" when the game mechanics of said conquest are COMPLETE. Right now there are too many things about planetary conquest that aren't working right, or create too much of an imbalance. Not to mention counting planetary conquests gave a distinct disadvantage to any unit who currently held any planets. My unit, for example, had something like 4 or 5 planets getting attacked at the same time, often by units who generally did not hold planets before the event. The result? We get NEGATIVE planetary captures and have no chance to catch up.

Please PGI, put some real thought into the events you plan. Maybe to you it's just something you do to keep us happy or interested. But when you get it this wrong it's pretty insulting, and makes me reconsider whether or not I want to continue to sick around playing MWO.

May the flames commence.

You know biggest is not synonymous with most active. For example being the boogyman that -MS- is we are still not the largest unit but we are the most active. In the name of competitiveness should the most active, organized and skilled units not win?

The planetary conquest part actually screwed a lot of units over as planets taken before the event were affecting score when they were captured during the event which impacted larger units than smaller ones more.

They are indeed clueless but your disgruntlement does come across in the form of "Participation award" I dont agree with your first statement at all, thats like saying every single person in the event should get all rewards just for participating, so no.

Dracol, on 08 July 2015 - 04:16 AM, said:

1. Each event caters to different pilots. Not every pilot was a founder and yet they ran a founder event.... the winner was predetermined to be a founder, so why didn't they just give all founders a reward and be done with it?

2. Not all Americans go out for the fourth. Some of us would rather stay off the roads and avoid the drinkers. Holidays people have time off and are able to spend more time participating in their hobbies, which for some of us that is MWO.

3. OP, sounds like CW not being complete is not your issue, but instead of the event rules themselves. I will grant you that the planet ownership rules were not clearly spelled out at the start of the event.

Indeed. Well said.

The planetary wording did not coincide with how it actually ended up working then they had their little muppet post on twitter saying "working as intended" as a quick cop-out.

TWIAFU, on 08 July 2015 - 04:24 AM, said:

If that was his goal, then the numbers show how badly he failed.

I lol'd

[Rattazustra]

The entire math of this "tournament" was nonsense, right off the start. It was not a tournament to begin with, since both skill and member activity were not the true decisive factor. There was a critical mass point for both to have an effect, but most of all it was a "who's got the most warm bodies" thing. That is not a tournament, though. Such things are simply called a census.

Unlike with the battle of Tukayyid event, there was absolutely no true incentive for the individual players. The prices that were offered on unit level were lousy, except for the topmost two units. Everyone else got a mug at best and a bobblehead.

A multi-stage reward system would have been really nice, like with Tukayyid. They could have put a big 40-50 point gap in it to make sure that only those who really tried hard got more than the bobblechick, but even then it would have been a motivation. Most of us were not fighting for place #1, because we knew we couldn't make it numerically no matter how hard we tried. When you know you simply can't make it and there is nothing else to give you a reason, you simply don't put all your effort into it.

Tournaments need warm bodies. Always. They need losers, as sad as it sounds. But those losers should be HAPPY losers, who are glad they took part. This was not the case here. The longer it dragged on, the harder it was to get a match, simply because the losing side was not rewarded at all. I can't blame them. My unit had something to fight for and a fighting chance to make it, but most units especially IS units started this event knowing they'd get jack nothing. No surprise they did not make much of an effort.

Even someone I know RL, who is a lousy player and a whiny quitter, pushed himself through the Battle of Tukayyid, because there was a carrot dangling on a stick. We need players like that to shoot at, or the game is empty. There can't be winners without losers, but the losers need to get at least something in return for trying.

When an event is boring and pointless, it is not Mercstar, 228, KCOM, or SWOL that are to blame. Quite the contrary. They do what is logical to do and they succeed with it. Numbers make it easy, but it is not their fault they got the numbers. Honour to the victors.
If an event is boring and pointless, the only one to blame is PGI. There are so many possible ways to score such an event. Almost every single alternative is better than the one that was chosen.

And the bobblehead was just a bad joke. Especially since they got dumped all over the place with recent events. If I could use cockpit bobbleheads as ammunition consumables, I would.

[nehebkau]

Jimmy DiGriz, on 08 July 2015 - 04:09 AM, said:

@Apogee - 2. Murica isn't the world. Deal with it.

What a tremendously unpleasant way to put it! I am not from the US and have no allegiance to it but, really? Was it necessary to be so unpleasant when Shad0wsFury had made a reasonable point about an event being held over a Holiday weekend which is focussed on family? Just try to be kind.

I was going to blast you with a bunch of examples about how 'muricans do things that roll over others family holidays but it's just not worth it. Truth is that we are all a bunch of self-centered <G.W. BUSH> and our lives of relative plenty lead us to complain about the stupidest things.

Any of these events, regardless of when they are hosted, favour those who can put in 40 hour marathons of game-play and there is nothing that can really be done about it. You can choose to not play the events -- like I have been doing since Feb -- and the problem is solved.

[Appogee]

TWIAFU, on 08 July 2015 - 04:24 AM, said:

If that was his goal, then the numbers show how badly he failed.

Yeah, it was great how those tiny niche units - the 228th, the 12th Donnegals and MercStar - overcame the disadvantages of having such small memberships in order to win the event. Who could have foreseen such an outcome?!

[QueenBlade]

How QueenBlade won the Hardcore CW challenge...

It all started with what appeared as an issue with PGI's algorithm on determining planetary conquest score. Wednesday, we lost control of a planet called Nox. KCom came to its defense and was rewarded with the tag and a point, but we lost a point.
Nox was taken prior to the event.

I surfed quickly to the tournaments page and looked it up and down but could not find any indication that planets tagged prior to the event would be included. Off to mwomercs to post up what I thought was, a bug. I also submitted a ticket over to support. Then to my disappointing eyes, it only took four words. "This is as designed..." -Tina

Confused with such a response I was then over joyed and rushed over to the IS map because thanks to this "design" I would finally be able to strategize and make things happen in-game from outside of the game. Looking around for ways to manipulate the leaderboard. Taking things into consideration like attack lanes, possible points, man power, and active units/factions. I formulated a plan to keep any Clan unit not CJF from running away with the planetary conquest leaderboard.

Contacting other factions and units, setting up battles to change planet tags, negating much of anyone's gains as they completely ignored attacking and slowing down the units ahead of them.
The event points leaderboard is a joke, as it was obvious that the unit that played the most would take it regardless of if they were winning or not. You only needed a match score of 80 to get 1 of 2 possible points.

There were many things wrong with the design of this event, and it all starts from PGI. The Attack Algorithm is flawed. The available attacks were not even between all factions allowing/giving other factions an advantage over others (ex: Liao - 3 IS, 0 Clan / CW - 5 IS, 3 Clan; Liao units could only get a max of 3 points while CW units could get 8 points). PGI can not deny that Ghost Drops affected the outcome of this event. As 228 captured 5 planets with nothing but Ghost Drops (2 Wolf, 2 Smoke Jaguar, 1 Ghost Bear). To put it into perspective, it takes 13 Ghost Drops to put a planet into a capture state. That is 65 drops. 65 drops if contested would of landed our unit anywhere from 780 - 1560 event points. Ghost Drops is the Clanner's first line of defense. No one really wants to sit in queue for 10 minutes and get nothing for their time. But this event was about planetary conquest. Our faction was set up to lose because of limited attack lanes versus other factions.

Take notes PGI:
65 drops
780 - 1560 event points lost
5 planets
10 minute waits (not including time in drop to complete the ghost drop)
650 wasted minutes of 1 person's time
7800 wasted minutes of a 12man time

It takes 13 drops to flip a planet. Thats 130 minutes of waiting, doing nothing. Just over two hours PGI, to be completely ignored because a faction does not want to play against you. And 228 did this five times. I am grateful to my unit mates for their patience in maintaining discipline and holding out until the planet was in a capture state. In the words of the B33f, "****'s broke, yo". Your new fancy planetary attack algorithm thats supposed to be 50/50? Right... its a damn toggle switch. You really disappoint me with such a lack of logistics in this game. I want to use my brain PGI, I want to strategize. I WANT TO PLAY THE GAME OUTSIDE OF THE GAME!

Remember when you played battletech and it lasted days? Do you stop thinking about it? No, you come up with ideas, future actions for when you come back to play it the next day. You claim you are all battletech fans through and through, yet you forgot something. Your ability to play the game outside of the game.

228 took this approach because instead of working as one unit, a merc. We worked with the other faction loyalist of Clan Jade Falcon so they could capture planets as well. You will see that KCom was able to secure 2nd place, thanks to efforts of communication with the faction and other factions to keep non-CJF Clan units lower on the leaderboard.

At the end of the day, the fault lays at PGI's feet.

[Prophetic]

PGI could always just put units into size brackets for future tournaments.
Any unit above 30 or so players listed on their roster would compete vs one another.
Any units under 30 goes in the lower bracket.

Only reward 1st and 2nd. If they feel generous they can add a third.

I'm not sure why larger sized units need to be capped and punished for encouraging their own group to play. Maybe they have a larger membership because people like being there?

[Wild_Alaskan]

Shad0wsFury, on 08 July 2015 - 03:52 AM, said:

First of all, it was an exercise in futility since the "winners" were pretty much pre-determined by the size and activity level of the unit. More 12 man CW groups running means more points. Why not just reward the biggest, most active units and be done with it?

[snip]

May the flames commence.

Sounds like you should've joined a better unit.
[/flame]

[Thumper3]

Appogee, on 08 July 2015 - 04:22 AM, said:

I don't see posts from other countries requiring that online games not run events during their holidays. The OP clearly thinks American holidays warrant special treatment. I simply don't agree with the idea that the rest of the world should suffer the tedium of eventless weekends, just because the US has a holiday.


I also don't expect the US to have any downtime when the rest of us are having holidays, either.

Hhhmmmm, I approached the stupidity of holding the event on a US Holiday weekend differently.

Obviously, as the developer they are free to hold their events whenever they please, I do not find it offensive in anyway that they chose the 4th of July weekend, I do not feel "cheated" by their choice either.

Rather, I find it stupid on their part. As was pointed out the majority of MWO players ARE in the USA. And if we consider that the reason for most events is to prop up the player base to either test something or just get more players online, doing so at a time when a large segment of your player base may be unable to play is counterintuitive.

It's also counterintuitive based on the average age and demographic of MWO players to expect to be able to ANNOUNCE an event such as this a mere 4 days before it starts (again, on a holiday for most of the player base) and exepct to have a good turn out.

Appogee, on 08 July 2015 - 04:22 AM, said:

Each of us, every day, prioritises how much time we spend on recreation vs our family. I applaud the OP's decision to eschew playing in an online event he didn't like, in order to spend time with his family last weekend.

Well said. I host a big BBQ for my friends every year that goes nearly all day Saturday, from 12-12 with massive quanities of meat occupying my grills, smokers, and time. Friday night is speant preparing the meats and sauces and getting set up. I was in no way going to cancel that for a video game event, a poorly designed one at that. It was well within my choices to cancel, I chose not to and I know I made the right choice. We all make those choices.