53 replies to this topic

[DarkMetalBlade]

Draughluin, on 02 August 2015 - 07:34 PM, said:

-A lot of good words to be had here-

Has it already begun?? I might not have realized it as aside from when it was first implemented, I only go inside CW if there's a CW-dedicated event going on, & even then, those rewards have to be over-the-top. The last one I was in was during the clan invasion event, & I didn't even think twice about going in the CW unit event, as all they had upp for grabs was a hula girl. Hardly worth if, if I say so myself. Outside from these events, I hoist my black flag of the Lone Wolves proudly in the Pub drops.

Like you, I PuG, but mainly for a different reason - I am an introvert, & thus dislike working in groups. But alas, this is the only Mechwarrior game available that is being actively maintained. If there was another Mechwarrior game that focused on single-player aspects rather than online multiplayer, I'd drop this game in a heartbeat & asked for a refund of all the packs that I've pre-ordered. But alas, we can't be so lucky...

Also, if things don't change soon, I'm more than happy to watch this thing die off, hopefully when all the units start complaining that they've got nobody to play with in CW. That's the price they pay for having a game mode suited specifically for the big units.

[Vlad Ward]

OP's question is nonsensical because it implies PUGs are capable of collective thought.

PUG is not a characteristic. It is a lack of other defining characteristics. It is the undefined - the underhive.

The assertion that this demographic is capable of doing ... well, anything as a group is silly.

Oh, also, it's not just groups that queue attack first - it's better players in general, because attacking is better, and that is somehow totally counter-intuitive to newer or weaker players who think walls and turrets will keep them safe.

Edit: Admittedly, Attacking is probably only better from an individual match standpoint because so many newer and weaker players flock to Defense for the l33t walls and MVP turrets - which really drag down the average skill level of the defense team.

Good players still rock Defense on occasion for those dolla dolla bills and e-peen match scores (since being the only decent guy on the team means you get all the kills/damage), but it always runs the risk of seeing a full lance do under 150 damage with all 4 mechs and watching 2 more of your guys ragequit 10 minutes into the game and that **** is just frustrating.

So, assuming a world where PUGs are really all just members of a big PUG Union and are capable of coordinating with one another, shifting weaker players to Attack will just shift strong players who don't want to deal with them to Defense and then you would have stronger players with walls and MVP turrets and the 48-0 will be even worse.

Edited by Vlad Ward, 03 August 2015 - 12:02 AM.

[Pat Kell]

CW is no more suited for Big groups than Public drops are. Only difference is that if you pull a big group in public group, you have ELO to help balance things and it will be over quick instead of spending 20-30mins fighting a lost cause. Lack of play in CW does suck but until PGI makes it worth playing, I think you will be right in that more and more solo players will just stop playing it. The rewards need to be considerably more, both in c-bills and having the planets mean something. I keep seeing all these patches that are fixing things that just really don't matter all that much. I wish PGI would listen to the multitude of posts asking them to make CW mean something. Such a shame.

[Speedy Plysitkos]

all pugs already left cw. nobody cares about 30 mins waiting time.

[Vlad Ward]

Okay that explanation didnt flow well so I will do you one better and explain this whole process from the beginning. Okay? Okay.

New player is new.

Bad player is bad.

New player knows they're new.

Bad player knows they're bad, though they will never admit this publicly because testosterone.

New player and bad player want to play CW. They look at their options: Attack and Defend.

Base rush got nerfed, so Attack is hard. Defense has turrets and walls and ****. "Fortified positions" for the armchair generals.

Bad player and new player click blue shield.

New player and bad player get **** kicked in.

If bad player and new player visit forums, they start a thoughtful, well written thread in the CW forums about their experiences.

lol.

If bad player and new player don't visit forums, like 99.88342454% of the game's population, they think to themselves: "Oh man, how much worse would that have been if I didn't have walls and MVP turrets?"

Cycle repeats ad infinitum.

Edit: This was meant as an addendum to my previous post. These other guys just posted while I was typing.

Edited by Vlad Ward, 03 August 2015 - 12:29 AM.

[Pat Kell]

30 min wait time is a result of pugs leaving, not the cause. The cause is either repeated stomps by 12 man groups over a planet that doesn't mean anything and lackluster rewards. If solo people wait 30 minutes in que, it's because they are not paying attention to where the games are, at least that's how it used to be until the mass exodus started. I really really want people to play CW but until PGI fixes some of the reward and planet conquering issues, I fear it will be a bit of a dead zone.

[Vlad Ward]

Post 3, because I really want to make sure I'm super duper clear here:

What I am trying to get at is that it actually isn't any better for weak players to switch to Attack mode en masse. Right now, weaker players switching from Defense to Attack queues only results in better games for them because they are part of a select few forum-readers (0.00015336% of the game population) who know that things are better down where it's wetter, under the sea take it from me etc.

If weak players (PUG or otherwise) started shifting from Defense to Attack queues en masse, you would just see a bunch of threads about how Defense is OP and groups using "tactics" (read: whiskey) are ruining the game.

The side where the bad players go ... has more bad players. This ... makes sense, right?

Edited by Vlad Ward, 03 August 2015 - 12:41 AM.

[Lily from animove]

The problem is, defending never gets you further it in best case keeps you a planet.

PGI needs to change the planet contesting mechanic. there should be ONE planet at a factions border beign contested- If that planet is won by a faction, the new contested planet will be one of the losing factions terrain.

This way, whoever wins the planet will be advancing, so even "defending" makes sense now.

irt would also help to get more action done by halfing the entire amount of contested planets of whcih we have too many now anyways.

Edited by Lily from animove, 03 August 2015 - 01:09 AM.

[Bongo TauKat]

I think we go back to the whole problem of wait times, rewards and fun. Most PUGs that I drop with regularly have those three concerns that do keep them out of the CW side far more than just defending/attacking issues. The 30 minute wait times, the pitiful amount of cash upon completion and just generally having a lackluster experience far overshadow ghost drops and the like.

[The Basilisk]

I would rephrase the question:

"When does PGI finaly ban PUGs from CW ?"

Lets be honest:
The reason for the lack of real incentives and the lack of big rewards for Units is there are PUGs in this game mode who would howl all over the forums how injust it is they are treated different from those who do the only viable thing in a team game and commit themselves to a team.

I see two ways to accomplish this.

1st. Force all PUGs to first build a team befor joining CW. Rewards are for the faction first then for the player, player gets his reward from his faction ( vouchers to buy something, unlocks to be able to buy something etc ) Units get spezial rewards, like chassis normaly not available for Merc units, like the Imp, Annihilator, Hatamoto-chi and other faction or unit specific Mechs.

2nd No single players in CW at all.
Organize CW eventlike or scenario like with adherence to certain story events.
Either you take the efford to organize for getting the big goodies or you don't.

Now there are your incentives to do CW.

[Vlad Ward]

Eh.

People aren't going through the Lose >> Rage >> Boycott >> Withdrawal >> Lose cycle because they don't have unit tags.

People lose because they're bad. Or, worse than the other team at least. There isn't any elo matching in CW after all, and the skill range among the player base is pretty massive. Throwing people on a teamspeak together (whiskey optional) won't change that.

Wait times should get better when we get 4-person scout mode or whatever it is they mentioned 6 months ago.

Edited by Vlad Ward, 03 August 2015 - 01:59 AM.

[TWIAFU]

DarkMetalBlade, on 02 August 2015 - 11:55 AM, said:

Then the guys in units will likely start complaining that they've either got nobody to play with, or that they're always losing against the stronger units (if the latter is the case, then I've no sympathy to you.)

Seriously though, why is nobody answering my question?

Because people have no sympathy for solorambos that play in the Group/Unit part of the game and want the Group/Unit centered part of the game to change to suit them.

DO you want 12mans to play in your solo queue?

Mr Bigglesworth, on 02 August 2015 - 03:40 PM, said:

Because we are tired of reading another whiny thread about where the evil premade touched them.

Or the evil PUG group. Or the full on 12 man solo group.

[TWIAFU]

Titannium, on 03 August 2015 - 12:12 AM, said:

all pugs already left cw. nobody cares about 30 mins waiting time.

Would help pugs if they could read, pay attention, join a group, use LFG, use VOIP, use Faction Chat, use TS, use forums.

But no, PUGs are ALWAYS waiting 30mins to get rolfstomped by a 12man Unit that ends up taunting them.

This is why PUGS in CW are ignored.

[Kin3ticX]

The pugs dont want to get lol stompt but they dont want to join units, form units, or deal with the CW learning curve, so this is just the end result. More players leaving than coming. On PGI's end they sort of need to piecemeal us improvements because CW limping along with glacial development wont work.

Edited by Kin3ticX, 03 August 2015 - 05:19 AM.

[Kin3ticX]

I also openly admit most of the playing I did in CW since the beginning has been clubbing seals unless I happened to run into SJR, Kcom, 228th, QQ, Night Scorn, etc.

With that said, I have also done what I can to share helpful information regarding CW. Realistically though, not a whole lot check the forums nor will they sift through that information if they can potentially benefit from it. Its like a snail pushing an elephant. So many fundamental problems with CW it didnt really matter.

Edited by Kin3ticX, 03 August 2015 - 05:50 AM.

[Bad Karma 989]

slide, on 02 August 2015 - 05:45 PM, said:

As Deathlike says there is a fundamental problem with the game mode itself that needs to be addressed. Pugstomping is a side effect of a few big teams farming CBills and rewards because they can, not necessarily because they want to. Since MWO began the pug v premade has been an issue, CW is just the latest incarnation.

Until there are numbers of people playing similar to the Tukayyid event the problem will remain. Units give up because there is no challenge or purpose and pugs give up because they get stomped a lot.

Honestly the best games I have played have usually been pug v pug because there is an element of unpredictability about it that you don't see against an organised unit (Units usually have several plans that work and they stick to them). But there is also a question of skill which undoubtedly has an impact on the game play.

I am totally against limiting how people play but I think trial mechs should not be allowed in CW. If you haven't played enough to field 4 of your own mechs then you shouldn't be playing CW. The demoralizing effect of being stomped that hard will likely put people off CW and MWO for ever.

An example of what I am talking about happened just the other day. A random group of pugs including myself were defending on Boreal against what was obviously a green as grass Wolf Strike team of pugs. Short answer is that they never even got the gates open, were some thing like 24-0 down before our team got bored and went over the gates to finish them off (try doing that in a Battlemaster, it not easy) I honestly felt sorry for the other team. I think it ended something like 48-6 and took about 20 minutes. Imagine what an organised team would have done to them.

I also think that units that have tagged worlds should be primarily responsible for defending them. If some one is attacking your world then you are unable to attack somewhere else until your world is successfully defended. Pugs can still help. But as it is Units can go around endlessly tagging planets with no thought of defense unless it is in the last crucial minutes of the TZ. It effectively gives units limitless players to protect their assets whilst their elite guys take the next planet. The real world nor Battletech works like that. If you can't hold what you own then you can't take more.

Fundamental changes are definitely needed.

Someone may have already gotten to it but:

I can tell you what would have happened against an organized team. It would have taken less than ten minutes.

I, being one of the weakest of Mercstar, had to grind my way into a proper dropdeck (minimum proper, by our terms) over literally weeks of using the bloody Trial 'Mechs. It's absolutely mindripping, watching your teammates drop 1000+ matches (a Mercstar requirement...gotta be able to do 1000 on a regular basis) like it's no big thing and you're struggling to the end of your (in my case limited) ability to pull just 500...with four Trials in your dropdeck.

Thing is, you LEARN. Trial Hellbringer = teaches "Heat Management" (like a boss it does, learn or die). You learn really quick where to position yourself, having to deal with no xp boosts. No Speed Tweak, the movement bennies, one less slot for a module...no modules at all (PPCs in the arms and no gunsight...mega suck).

It sucks for the guys who have to play the Trials to make their bones. We can sniff a Trial 'Mech from 2K out (and not just Mercstar, EVERYONE who's played long term and payed attention) and they become everyone's best friend...but there's no better way to learn than to get your ass kicked. The plans and tactics my Commanders use, they have fined tuned those over hours of trial and error. I know when I drop in, we have a good chance of winning because of three things:

1) Mercstar Drop Commanders are VERY well versed in running the drop.
2) Communications is ABSOLUTE KEY. We would not win nearly as much, we would not be nearly as successful, if we were not talking. As a matter of fact, without communications, voice communications, we wouldn't have Drop Commanders. They wouldn't be able to do anything.
3) Plan, test, plan, test, plan, test. If one thing doesn't work, identify the weaknesses, eliminate them.

These are the three things that the PUGs don't have...and it sucks...because voip is in game and no one uses it effectively.

You folks who play PUG drops, you want to see a reduction in PUGStomping? Best advice that anyone could give...

Slow down in the beginning of the match and START TALKING TO EACH OTHER.
Communication is key.

All that being said: I also agree with the idea that some fundamental changes need to occur. As has been said elsewhere, PGI, make those planets worth something. Give people a reason to invest in the game and the game mode. As it is, there's not a lot separating MWO from, say, Spider Solitaire. They're both casual games. All the wins in the world don't really matter much except to xp and C-Bills. Granted this isn't really an MMORPG but there needs to be more to it than just "arena combat" which is effectively what we do. We drop in, CW or open PUG, either one, we kill or die, then drop out...and then go eat a sandwich and watch a sit-com, and when we come back, the "world" is effectively the same. Yes the planets switch hands in CW and maybe your sandwich and "Modern Family" time should have been spent making sure that planet, which is now Steiner, stayed with your Wolf banner on it.

More depth is necessary to make CW truly viable. Something more than just back and forth across the map. Some lure. For inspiration, think of why nations go to war in this real world. Resources, land, retribution, religion, ideology, political gain, power...can we start seeing depth in this game based around the things that actually exist in the TT Lore? Build depth and then build CW and even the regular PUG drops around that, not just "We're day for day in real time."

If there was a way to make this the EverQuest of the Battletech/Mechwarrior Universe and still keep the big stompy bot combat front, center, and foremost, that would get people paying good money for good entertainment.

Edited by Bad Karma 989, 03 August 2015 - 06:21 AM.

[Cptn Goodvibes Pig of Steel]

Kind of agree with Kin3ticX in the last part of his post. There's nothing that will be achieved by the endless posting here. Yes something needs to be done and the ball is in PGI's court to sort out. I don't think its all bad though. I do appreciate the River City map improvements and am looking forward to the Singapore server. Hopefully some pings that are less than the usual 250 to 400 range for me. Am always happy to the occasional CW luminary in the solo queue and have found it be a very profitable C Bill experience.

[Khereg]

At the risk of sounding Pollyanna-ish, I will say that I've seen improvements in pugs over time in CW. The main improvement I've seen is a reduction in the arguing and backbiting when someone tries to lead a drop. Most people have figured out that any plan is better than no plan and even if defeat is inevitable, working together can make it more enjoyable and give a feeling of accomplishment. I still see struggles with proper mech selection and builds, but it's a start.

Just this last weekend, led a pug team against a -BO- 12 man attacking Taiga. Taiga is not the easiest attack map to start with, and I explained early that we likely wouldn't win. But, if we followed a plan, we could make the match harder for them than they anticipated and earn a few extra c-bills in the process. No one griped, everyone cooperated and did their best, which is all I can ask.

High point of the match (for me, at least) was the team responding to an abrupt tactic change when we realized our opponents were split inside the gate. We changed the original call, moved in the opposite direction to roll over a weaker defense group, and then reversed again to take out the remaining defenders chasing us down from behind. We actually won that trade.

Pretty basic stuff for an organized group, but it felt like a significant accomplishment with our team. -BO- was even gracious enough to acknowledge the effectiveness in team chat.

We lost, and it wasn't terribly close, but I'm hoping that the experience wasn't so bad for the pugs that they wanted to throw up their hands and quit.

\still pushing that rock up the hill...

Edited by Khereg, 03 August 2015 - 07:17 AM.

[Triordinant]

I'm so glad I never get a "Call to Arms".

[Crockdaddy]

Pat Kell, on 03 August 2015 - 12:11 AM, said:

CW is no more suited for Big groups than Public drops are. Only difference is that if you pull a big group in public group, you have ELO to help balance things and it will be over quick instead of spending 20-30mins fighting a lost cause. Lack of play in CW does suck but until PGI makes it worth playing, I think you will be right in that more and more solo players will just stop playing it. The rewards need to be considerably more, both in c-bills and having the planets mean something. I keep seeing all these patches that are fixing things that just really don't matter all that much. I wish PGI would listen to the multitude of posts asking them to make CW mean something. Such a shame.

We organized a few matches with NKVA Saturday night. They went Davion so we took the time to make it happen as we are in HK right now. My new guys got stomped the first match. We re-organized and made it a much closer second match. I'd love to do this regularly with the organized units out there. We run into pretty much only rainbow pugs ... switch to our derp mechs and then get floored by a real team like K-COM. I'd much rather have fewer attack / defend options which better allow actual fights to happen. Everyone would get better on the organized side and maybe the pugs wouldn't have to wait as long if the population wasn't so spread out.

Heck I might even be able to pull my competitive guys out of Ark or Space Engineers if we could get consistent matches.

Meh ... I am rambling. CW has me feeling MEH about MWO and that kinda pisses me off a bit right now as this was the game mode I've wanted since day one.