84 replies to this topic

[patataman]

i'd love the 'defend the dropship' missions. And like all the other ideas.

- when possible, match pugs v pugs and big premades v big premades. Many players don't care anymore because being stomped all day long isn't fun, and certainly not a good NPE.

- variable tonage depending on the planet. Cuz agticultural worlds are less important that capitals.

- make planets relevant by placing assets that help your faction:
battlemech assembly line -if your faction controls it, you can use the variants produced there.
If we ever have weapons facturers, same as battlemech assembly line
Recharge station- decrease the ghost drops wait time by half.
Etc, the lore can give us a lot of assets

- UI improvements, as an example galaxy map available in the pre drop screen

- (player bait) some cosmetics ONLY available after acomplishing certain things in CW (reaching a rank, play x matches...)

[Yokaiko]

IraqiWalker, on 06 September 2015 - 06:23 AM, said:

So add "Faction" to the social tab, much like we did with "Unit"

Question is why didn't they do that in the first place?

[Armando]

Imperius, on 29 August 2015 - 10:11 AM, said:

PVE > CW sorry CW had it's chance and never had a chance to start with. CW will only be good when the community is also good. I know why PGI did CW it was asked for, but PVE should have came first, now PGI has to work twice as hard to make CW appealing to the new users.

CW should be left as is until PVE is done. Once you have a place for new players to retreat to when pvp is getting to be too much, then you can focus on CW. Mind you PVE elements can be added to CW, it's just win/win.

The only redeeming quality about this game is that there is no PvE. The day PvE is implemented in the game is the day this game is done. If you want PvE I would recommend playing WoW.

[patataman]

Armando, on 06 September 2015 - 01:36 PM, said:

The only redeeming quality about this game is that there is no PvE. The day PvE is implemented in the game is the day this game is done. If you want PvE I would recommend playing WoW.

This. But... can't we take the best of both worlds? PvE will be great for training, and i wouldn't mind seing some a.i. units in the maps, as weaker enemies, or under the commander control.

But yes, the really fun thing is playing vs other humans. Btw i didn't play recently, but wow pvp in the open world was very funny (less in the battlegrounds imo).

[Armando]

patataman, on 06 September 2015 - 02:46 PM, said:

This. But... can't we take the best of both worlds? PvE will be great for training, and i wouldn't mind seing some a.i. units in the maps, as weaker enemies, or under the commander control.

But yes, the really fun thing is playing vs other humans. Btw i didn't play recently, but wow pvp in the open world was very funny (less in the battlegrounds imo).

A fair question, my response:

Because we already have a rash of players who complain about pilots who play this game as it was designed to be played (teams of players against teams of players...PvP only content....no 'solo' mode, no PvE) because taking 20 minutes to find a team to join is to much work.

Creating PvE content will draw out the PvE types...and if PvP players are already having issues dealing with the fact that this is a PvP build game....the outcry will get far, Far, FAR worse once the PvE'er inevitably stumble into PvP content.

[patataman]

The kind of player that you described isn't playing anyway, maybe they did during the first weeks of beta 1 to try the mode, but not anymore. Currently the population varies between 50-150ish players (or that's what i saw the last weeks), any improvement is welcome.

Mixed ai with players works well for other games (like lol, the ones making the game advance are the players, and the ai units act as support ). In fact, i can only think of good things coming from PvE:

- The guys playing a coop mode decide to try their skills in group queue... or CW.
- New guys get adicted to the game after playing a campaign. And see previous line.
- Ghost drops with ai units defending, they may not win, but the rewards for the players go up. Waiting 10 minutes deserve some c-bills.

[Biclor Moban]

KruczekIIV, on 06 September 2015 - 02:42 AM, said:

The main thing destroying CW are PUGs. You queue with random people, do not even try to coordinate with them, you don't use your ingame communicator or a faction teamspeak... hell, you do not even fight for your own faction. Even lots of units are not playing with their teammates, but queue alone to defend or attack a random planet which is currently full of another solo pilots. This needs to end.

PUG isn't showing how the real Community Warfare battle should look like, they are far less enjoyable then playing as a premade using microphones and trying to came up with a tactics to beat your enemy, regardless of a final result of the battle. Playing full premade or even a premade lance have always been better then playing a PUG. Also, almost every Inner Sphere faction lose it's planets due to random people from another IS factions queuing just to make 120 dmg with 4 mechs and disconnect.

How to prevent that? Quite easily:

-There should be a greater bonus for fighting for one particular faction you've picked for CW, to become more connected to it and to meet other pilots from this faction. It should stimulate your care for a success of your faction and push you to playing more CW matches to see how it captures more and more planets. It will make you want to be a part of this success, and to socialize more with fellow faction pilots, now when you have a thing in common with them.

-There should be also another big bonus for fighting AS a unit in premade, to encourage people to join some larger group, and take part in their events. The bigger is your premade for CW, the greater bonus you should get. This way, mercenary units will be encouraged to play CW as well, so it won't become faction centered. Also, it should persuade lots of people to be a part of one unit or another, If most players are divided between units, then the results of CW shall lay on your shoulders, you are not an anonymous pilot but a part of a unit fighting for your faction, so you don't want to feel excluded from that and should feel need to help your mates.
Also, a system like that should split players inside one faction into internally rivalizing groups, trying to be the best, biggest and most successful unit within the faction.

-Optionally, there could be a system of looking for an unit ingame, right now you join unit only by playing with their members and making your first move or being so exceptionally good to be invited by them or by sitting here, at forums. So if you could see a plain list of all units within the faction, showing number of planets they have, the number of members, possibly a short description what kind of unit is that you could apply to one of those and wait for leader's decision. Simple, effective and it shouldn't require lots of work from PGI, its just a small change in the interface, another tab allowing you to join something being equivalent of a guild.

I'm convinced it would work, if you agree with me, then please like this post, so these points get more attention.

I like these idea's

Let's simplfy this even more.

Here's the premise, unproven Mechwarriors are cheap. Proven Mechwarriors are not.

As an individual you would have an Individual Rank (IR) based on your tier + your CW wins. IR = a multiplier to your CW pay.
Factions and Merc units would get Faction Rank (FR) based on CW battle wins. FR = a multiplier to your CW pay

So if you play in CW as a Pug or a faction member playing with Pugs you would just get just IR pay.

If you play in CW with your faction/unit or at least 2 Lances are from your faction/unit you get FR + IR pay

As an individual if you drop with over 2 lances of one faction/unit you get IR + 1/2 FR pay.
This is aimed at people who want to play with friends from another faction, or use it for "tryouts"

Easy and good for encourgaing Pugs to join Factions or Merc units?

Anybody, anybody?

Edited by Biclor Moban, 08 September 2015 - 08:48 PM.

[DaFrog]

Do a better job at banning hacks. I come back to CW fir the first time in 7-8 weeks, and I fall into aplethora of pilots I have never hard of with uncanny aim. One Drop, one guy who I can't name here got 20 kills. Never ever saw that in 6 months of daily playing CW.

Gonna get my Marik MC and bail out again. CW is turning into a cesspool...

[Tuis Ryche]

I simply want to look at the population and not have my wait time determined by how close to a multiple of 12 I fall on the list. If I see nothing but numbers within 2 of a multiple of 12, then I'm going to PUG it up and at least get some drops in.

Unless I'm watching a movie and I really don't care about the wait time because I'm distracted while I wait.

[Armando]

DaFrog, on 07 September 2015 - 07:54 PM, said:

Do a better job at banning hacks. I come back to CW fir the first time in 7-8 weeks, and I fall into aplethora of pilots I have never hard of with uncanny aim. One Drop, one guy who I can't name here got 20 kills. Never ever saw that in 6 months of daily playing CW.

Gonna get my Marik MC and bail out again. CW is turning into a cesspool...

I have seen multiple 20+ kills matches, and multiple 4K+ damage matches (4986 being the all time CW high score....that I have personally seen). I am pretty sure those guys were not hacking (unless having a high level of situation awareness is now a hack). I say this because 1/2 the time I see those kind of kill numbers / scores is when the playing posting them is on a losing team filled with a bunch of no bodies.

All that said, PGI has been banning people for hacking so for those that are hackers it is only a matter of time before their numbers are punched, walking papers handed to them, and shown the door.

Edited by Armando, 08 September 2015 - 07:05 AM.

[IraqiWalker]

Yokaiko, on 06 September 2015 - 09:09 AM, said:

Question is why didn't they do that in the first place?

If I had a dollar for every time that question was asked, I'd probably have enough money to fly to Vegas, first class, during the season.

[Kyrie]

The tragedy of CW is the general one of, IMHO, failing to leverage the IP behind the game correctly. There is no depth to any of it -- no implementation of the Houses, no structures to create involvement in CW, and lastly no meaningful consequences for any part of CW.

1. CW should be "hardcore" mode, and for that we need logistics. Repair, rearm, supplies (parts, ammo, etc), supply lines. Every Unit should have to deal with this in order to wage war within their House.

2. Mechs, used in CW, need to have location and opportunity costs implemented via a lore-based system such as Lances within Companies within Units within .... Deploying your mech to one area of combat operations should restrict that mech via travel logistics from playing instantly in a front at the opposite end of the universe.

3. Fighting in the CW system should not only be about individual rewards and progression, but about progression within the CW to enhance your capacity to impact CW as a pilot as well as Unit. Ranks need to have meaningful privileges attached to them.

4. There needs to be a grand strategy element wherein the players control the war (where to attack, and what to attack with). An actual RTS system if you will.

5. Capturing territory needs to be meaningful. It is, at present, quite meaningless.

[MechWarrior3671771]

"Long wait times" is the biggest complaint and is what will kill CW off. People stop playing because of long wait times, resulting in less players to pool from, resulting in even longer wait times, resulting in more people leaving because of long wait times, etc ad naus.

I can put up with a lot of nonsense and still enjoy this game. I can ignore trash-talking little men, I can ignore static maps that don't make tactical sense, I can ignore whatever balance issue there is between Clan and IS this week.

What I can't do is stare at a loading screen for 15 minutes of my free time.

So really, "improving interest in CW" should not be your goal, "decreasing wait times" should be the focus. Because, while both issues have similar overlapping solutions, we need to correctly identify the problem before we can solve it.

So how do we decrease wait times?

1) up the CBill rewards dramatically. CW should be the cash cow. When new players ask how they can farm cbills, there should be 20 players explaining that CW is where its at because you can make 5-10x what you are making in the solo que. And by "dramatically increase" I mean to the extent that if a new player does the math, there is no doubt. I'm talking something on the order of 2 million cbills per CW match, not including faction rewards.

2) drop group size from 12 to 8.

3) give us a reason to care about the galaxy map. Faction-based perks depending on what planet you hold - like discounted modules or unique range/cooldown quirks tied to the planets resources. Or even a cbill revenue stream that's injected into your account daily, with a message reminding you where it came from.

[Col Jaime Wolf]

CW is total failsauce and as a whole should be chucked into the garbage bin.

really name even 1 thing that is cool or neat about CW, or even 1 thing that would actually make more players want to drop in CW

[IraqiWalker]

Mellifluer, on 10 September 2015 - 11:00 AM, said:

CW is total failsauce and as a whole should be chucked into the garbage bin.

really name even 1 thing that is cool or neat about CW, or even 1 thing that would actually make more players want to drop in CW

Better team work. Different mechanics, and secondary objectives being less useless.

[Col Jaime Wolf]

IraqiWalker, on 10 September 2015 - 11:09 AM, said:

Better team work. Different mechanics, and secondary objectives being less useless.

sry but that wouldnt entice me at all. the maps themselves are garbage DOTA maps in a FPS.

[IraqiWalker]

Mellifluer, on 10 September 2015 - 11:32 AM, said:

sry but that wouldnt entice me at all. the maps themselves are garbage DOTA maps in a FPS.

Fine, that's your personal opinion, and doesn't actually refute my statement. You didn't ask me to name something that would entice you. You issued a challenge, and I quote:

Mellifluer, on 10 September 2015 - 11:00 AM, said:

name even 1 thing that is cool or neat about CW, or even 1 thing that would actually make more players want to drop in CW

That was my objective answer. Whether those elements appeal to you is another issue altogether.

I don't necessarily disagree with you, but at the same time, that's not what you asked us.

[Col Jaime Wolf]

fair enough but im very much of the opinion that CW as a whole is a travesty that cannot be salvaged in its current form.

1 more teamwork, simply isnt gonna happen with pugs the way the maps are physically designed. every single time i drop i wonder to myself "what bat#$#$ crazy general decided that we all have to always attack the gates?" any half intelligent commander would drop his forces in the most advantageous positions to assault the base.

2 different mechanics. thats only gonna happen again if the maps themselves are heavily altered to get rid of the lanes and actually allow commanders to CHOOSE their angle of attack. there is no way in 3050 that you would attack any of those bases from that very same angle every single time. a smart commander would attack them from the cliffs or come in from the open #$#$$# ground (grim poritco) we have dropships there is no reason that you need to be dropped in a caldera at all you could be "hot dropped" right into the base and it would make more sense then trying to storm the gates every single time.

3 secondary objectives being more useful. a good idea but in reality again a light isnt allowed to actually flank. every single mech has to trudge through a freaking murder zone and face the enemy more or less head on.

4 none of the bases make any sense for the time frame. they should have extremely heavy AA and Anti Aerospace turrets literally everywhere because that is the most obvious and cost effective way to defeat the defenders not sending extremely expensive mechs head long through a freaking valley into the most defended side.

PGI needs to study the art of war. its never a good idea to attack from low ground, never a good idea to charge up hill, never a good idea to simply meet your enemy head on and see how it goes.

the maps ALL of them have to go. every single one of them is some DOTA garbage and secondary objectives wont change the fact that i dont want to go through those gates and no reasonable person would.

why are you not allowed to attack from the cliffsides? or the open ground? like any smart commander would. why are attackers put in the worst possible position to attack defenders? why are defenders hedging all their bets on a single side of their base?

I think its far past the point of "poorly done" and i dont want the money i have spent on this game (a sizable sum but let me say that it doesnt mean if someone spends $1000 vs $10 the big spenders opinion is more valid) to go to a game mode that by definition excludes 90%+ of the player base but is also surreptitiously named "community warfare".

PS think back to the wrath of khan, didn't matter that khan was way smarter and probably even had more guile then Kirk. because khan was evaluating the battlefield from his experience of fighting on land, sea and air he was doomed to be beaten by Kirk who knew how to change and manipulate the battlefield into his favor.

Edited by Mellifluer, 10 September 2015 - 12:31 PM.

[Dawnstealer]

I'd say implement AI base defenders in vehicles (not mechs - tanks, maybe a helicopter or two - something different).

If you don't have a drop within, say, five minutes, it drops you against AI.

[Jonathan Paine]

Kyrie, on 25 August 2015 - 10:46 AM, said:

I think this would fix CW right up: http://mwomercs.com/...1513#entry51513

Excellent link!

The tl:dr version is this (but holy bleep, that post has insane amounts of good info on how to put together CW!!!):
Focus on war between the Factions (Houses/Clans)
- Faction >> mercs
Let players slowly but surely earn control of each faction
- Reward players when they grind away for their faction

So how about we replace the current CW with the information in the linked post, then treat the non-cw matches as the training sim that it is (and get SOLARIS).