32 replies to this topic

[BuckshotSchell]

Well honestly I'm not the biggest fan of the bucket theory either.......but have yall looked at the FW queues the last week or so? Every night I log in about 8-8:30 Central US time, and what do I see? Basically one freaking bucket! There are over 100 people queued up on whatever planet Jade Falcon is attacking and maybe a couple teams on one or two other planets for about the time it takes for a couple drops. I get in the Queue and see mostly skittles and I think to myself; "Why don't all these random people try and gather their particular faction mates and drop on their own attack planet?" I even go into the faction chat of whichever group I'm currently mercing for and ask "Hey is there enough people to drop attack on (insert planet name)?" Usually all I get are crickets. I know some people have been on the forum advertising that they are looking for matches, but I don't see them or their faction attacking anywhere, maybe they are in a different time zone, but I've played with them before so I don't know. So the question is; Why do people on drop on the JF planet, and then complain about the one bucket? Of course I know about the 'lack of immersion' and all that so let's not rehash that.

[LordNothing]

a lot of people are worried that it will ruin the roleplay experience, to that i say what roleplay experience? i cant imagine the current feature set delivers much of this. planet info fields are not filled in with anything, you drop on a planet and just get the same 6 maps over and over again. you get a banner, but if thats all you want id just let players choose their banner from a menu. i for one welcome our bukkit stealin' overlords.

[FallingAce]

Buckits are band-aides on a corpse.

Problem never was buckits. Solution never was buckits. (Except to Russ)

Problem with faction Warfare is it has does nothing to draw players in and has done everything to drive players away.

The solution is not to fix the current version of faction warfare.

The solution is to make Faction Warfare that people want to play.

The Buckits will then take care of themselves.

Edited by FallingAce, 17 November 2016 - 12:13 PM.

[AnTi90d]

Also, remember that Russler is shoving QP maps and QP modes into FP.

That will be all you can play for the first few hours after the Ceasefire.

The last few hours will be Invasion modes, unless the losing team turns it around and starts winning, then it's back to QP.

This alienates the existing playerbase.. it will alienate the people that only like QP, because they still might have to play real Invasion.. the One-Bukkit-Solution alienates the loyalists.. it alienates the southern IS houses that want to play ISvsIS.. hell, it'll probably alienate the people that think QP-with-dropdecks is a good idea, once they get spawn camped in the QP maps and lose 12-48 and see that those maps don't have even the slightest spawn-camp-protection.

PGI's decision making is worse than a dart board.. at least you have a chance of being successful when you throw a dart. This FactionPlayV4 aka MercenaryPlayV4 (because PGI just spat in the loyalists' faces in nullifying our factions) is the absolute worst possible thing they could have done. In trying to please everybody, they're just going to end up pissing everyone off and killing the mode even further.

Faction-Alliances and new Invasion maps that aren't chokepoints was the correct answer, but Russler and his brilliant team were too busy eating pizza and planning MechCon to save FP.

[A Shoddy Rental Mech]

To paraphrase the quote

"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist"


The greatest trick Russ ever pulled was convincing the playerbase that buckets are the problem/solution.

[GI Journalist]

If buckets are the only thing PGI is willing to fix then buckets must be the problem.

[nehebkau]

Everyone knows that bukkits are not the solution -- they are the only thing that can be done to manage the critically low population. No on likes it -- you can be sure that PGI doesn't like it but there isn't much that can be done. If the playing field is too large for the number of players you have you need to shrink the size of the playing area.

I suspect that if money were no object, PGI would gut FW and start from scratch -- but that is a financial impossibility for them so they gotta make due with what they can.

[LordNothing]

buckets are 20% of the problem. its not the only problem. since the code for tukkayid exists its probibly one of the easiest ones to do. but 1 bucket might work for now, but what if the population swells or is disproportionate? it really should be dynamic. adding a 3rd or 4th bucket might be useful. also stop penalizing players for switching sides and adding unnecessary delays, that pretty much ruins any automatic population balancing features.

lack of new content is probibly worth a good 50% on its own, but thats not an overnight fix either. that requires new maps and features. you know, work, and funding. pgi could make a killing on paid content for units, like unit mechs, unit camo, custom dekkles, etc. there for typical fp players could actually fund fp content.

another 20% is the fairness aspects which alienate a lot of players and make them not want to play fp. the tug of war mechanic may fix that as there is less sorting of pugs and unit players into opposing sides of the battle, they both end up sitting in the same lobbies.

the 10% that is left are the lack of incentives. the grind post phase 3 is atrocious and the penalties for switching sides are insane. and these are likely just number tweaks.

so we need to draw players in with incentives and new content, we need to retain them by making it fair so that anyone can join in and have a good time (90% stomps is unacceptable, 50% is a better number), and we need to make sure there are an appropriate number of buckets for whatever the population situation should be.

Edited by LordNothing, 17 November 2016 - 11:41 PM.

[invernomuto]

FallingAce, on 17 November 2016 - 12:12 PM, said:

The solution is to make Faction Warfare that people want to play.

The Buckits will then take care of themselves.

While I agree with you that the reduction of buckets it's no more than a "band aid", it's the only short term option that they have.
"Make Faction Warfare that people want to play" is a solution that would require, in my opinion, redesigning FW almost from scratch. What is worrisome is that since April 2016 (PW phase 3) nothing has been done (apart some small tweaks to Long Tom), neither short term solutions nor long term ones.

[Kuaron]

So what would be the long-term solution that would make players want to play FW again?
"Make it gud" ist not quite precise.

[FallingAce]

This is what's coming.



If it turns out good, players will come back and buckets won't matter.

If it sucks, we'll be right back where we are now.

invernomuto, on 18 November 2016 - 12:26 AM, said:

What is worrisome is that since April 2016 (PW phase 3) nothing has been done (apart some small tweaks to Long Tom), neither short term solutions nor long term ones.

Phase 3 launched on Apr 19. It took till July 4th http://mwomercs.com/...e-your-opinion/ for Russ to even admit there was maybe a problem. That's a big disconnect between PGI and Faction Warfare and the community that supported it. A lot of players not only disconnected from Faction Warfare, but disconnected from the game itself.

A lot of the problems with phase 3 could have been mitigated by active management. Question is, does PGI understand all the reason why phase 3 failed and how to keep the revamp from suffering the same fate.

[Tavious Grimm]

Does Russ even know what's he's saying? Phil looks confused... Also thanks FallingAce for sharing the podcast.

[Jugger Grimrod]

If it isn't eSports, it isn't happening. RIP Faction Warfare. RIP Factions. Since Faction loyalty doesn't matter anymore, why pretend it does? It's a farce at this point. I seriously doubt anything Russ has to say at MechCon will bring back the hundreds that have left. I hope I'm wrong, but anything 'Faction'-related is over.... there's no point to it. Stop pretending. If there is only going to be two Factions, Clan and IS... then "Game Over."

Edited by Jugger Grimrod, 18 November 2016 - 06:41 PM.

[Tavious Grimm]

From what I heard, pretty much a big FU to the Loyalists. Just adding QP modes and maps doesn't fix the overall issues. The ONLY thing I heard that sounds interesting is the order of the modes.

[Roland09]

When I get a guy talking first of all about how much work time, time in meetings, time for the design of whatever he has put into a project, I become suspicious that the end product will turn out to be a rather shoddy, shallow, badly-thought-out piece of junk. The point on the agenda was "Take us away!", not "Explain and justify what took you so long! Did you do anything at all with your time?"

[Tavious Grimm]

Want to make Mechwarrior great again? Write to Microsoft and tell em to revoke the license lol. Then give it to a proper dev team who will actually think of innovative ideas..and more importantly engage with the community. I've heard and read enough horror stories that when it comes to the round table discussions it generally doesn't end well. Or if it does, we get the opposite.

[Rogue Jedi]

Tavious Grimm, on 19 November 2016 - 12:53 AM, said:

Want to make Mechwarrior great again? Write to Microsoft and tell em to revoke the license lol. Then give it to a proper dev team who will actually think of innovative ideas..and more importantly engage with the community. I've heard and read enough horror stories that when it comes to the round table discussions it generally doesn't end well. Or if it does, we get the opposite.

great idea, MWO will close as soon as the licence is revoked and we may get another Mechwarrior game (likely with no sim aspects at all) around 2025.

please do not do this

Edited by Rogue Jedi, 19 November 2016 - 02:12 AM.

[BLOOD WOLF]

Rogue Jedi, on 19 November 2016 - 02:12 AM, said:

great idea, MWO will close as soon as the licence is revoked and we may get another Mechwarrior game (likely with no sim aspects at all) around 2025.

please do not do this

he keeps forgetting microsoft and plenty of other big devs have had their chance, nothing was preventing anyone from negotiating rights and they didn't. As far as I am concerned PGI earned that license, and as a small studio they really took a change because nobody knew what they could do.

they haven't done such a bad job. if they did, nobody would be here, regardless if this was the only mechwarrior game.

[TWIAFU]

AnTi90d, on 17 November 2016 - 01:01 PM, said:

Also, remember that Russler is shoving QP maps and QP modes into FP.


This alienates the existing playerbase.. it will alienate the people that only like QP, because they still might have to play real Invasion.. the One-Bukkit-Solution alienates the loyalists.. it alienates the southern IS houses that want to play ISvsIS.. hell, it'll probably alienate the people that think QP-with-dropdecks is a good idea, once they get spawn camped in the QP maps and lose 12-48 and see that those maps don't have even the slightest spawn-camp-protection.

Quoted for TRUTH!

Solo-only rambos in CW brought this upon us. How many of those do you think will play now that they got what they wanted. I figure about the same that use what they asked for last time to even the playing field; VOIP, Faction Chat, and LFG. So in other words damn few.

This is the bed they made for everyone now is the time to force them to lie in it.

[BLOOD WOLF]

TWIAFU, on 19 November 2016 - 04:10 AM, said:

Quoted for TRUTH!

Solo-only rambos in CW brought this upon us. How many of those do you think will play now that they got what they wanted. I figure about the same that use what they asked for last time to even the playing field; VOIP, Faction Chat, and LFG. So in other words damn few.

This is the bed they made for everyone now is the time to force them to lie in it.

it's not final. you know that right? it was an idea that was introduced and has been circulated through the forums a while ago. Does nobody pay attention to what people say in threads anymore.........