Whatever method used to fix CW should be simple. I can think of a few simple ways to improve participation:
1. Increase the minimum reward for the loser of a game. Getting rolled 48-11 means you spend 15-20 minutes and make perhaps 60k CBills. That should be criminal. It's hideously insulting to the losing players and does a fantastic job of disincentivizing further play.
2. More maps. And I'm not talking about more "blow up generators to open a gate so you can blow up more generators" maps. I'm talking about something OTHER than more "blow up generators to open a gate so you can blow up more generators" maps. It's not fun. No new maps with gates or generators. Figure something else out.
3. Related to #2. We need more PUG-friendly modes. Modes like Conquest work fine for disorganized groups where everyone wants to do their own thing. Scale that up to CW-sized games. Introduce maps with a lot of micro objectives that are all meaningful.
4. Faction rewards for owning planets should be meaningful to all players. We don't need 5% discounts on faction-specific mechs because veteran players already have those mechs. We do need to develop the faction initiatives they're testing now into something that people will actually care about. For example, if you're a Clanner and your Clan takes an IS industrial planet that produces Thunderbolts, all members of your Clan gain the ability to field Thunderbolts in CW games as long as your Clan controls the planet. Further, get a big fat 90% CBill discount for purchasing that mech while you own the planet, but you only get the discount if you actually participated in a battle for the planet. Members of the opposing faction have an incentive to deny the enemy the ability to use their workhorse mechs in future battles. Lore nerds will hate this, I know, but I don't care; what's more important is we need meaningful rewards, rewards that give us strategic and financial incentives to actually give a damn about taking/losing planets.
Edited by Syncline, 05 September 2015 - 12:36 PM.