522 replies to this topic

[sycocys]

Armando, on 06 January 2016 - 12:37 PM, said:

I would say in mercenary unit with at least 12 people is "too big" for the crybabies who post on the forums, but I honestly think that for those people:

If there is more than one player with the same unit tag, in the same drop together, and they WIN. That unit is "To Big" and needs to be nerf'ed.

You should really follow through on your repeated threats to uninstall.

[nehebkau]

Wonder if @russ_bullock will give us a FRR population as of yesterday ... population -- the new meta

[Armando]

sycocys, on 06 January 2016 - 12:39 PM, said:

You should really follow through on your repeated threats to uninstall.

I really SHOULD, and if PGI tells people they can't drop with their friends anymore $5K dropped on the game be damned I likely will.

Listen, if you have a hard time making friends I feel for you. If you can't find and work with 11 other people as a team using the tools PGI has provided, I understand (PGI tools for doing so are HORRIBLE).

That said, please don't come into the forums and BEG PGI to nerf teamwork. If you are sick about getting waxed playing the game, start with looking in the mirror. Ask yourself "What can I do to make things better for myself"? Answers to this question include but are not limited to...

...stop bringing trial mechs, buy your own mechs and give them viable load-outs.
...get on the forums and find a team to drop with (I will be the first to tell you that players should NOT have to leave the game to join a unit, but with the current state of the game, that is how the cookie crumbles).
...drill on movement and focus fire exercises with your 'new' teammates.

If you haven't done all of these, and choose to instead ask others to fix YOUR problems I have ZERO pity for you. In a case like this it is not on the mercenaries, nor is the blame on PGI, it is YOUR OWN DAMNED FAULT. (at least IMO anyway).

Edited by Armando, 06 January 2016 - 01:34 PM.

[MischiefSC]

Crockdaddy, on 06 January 2016 - 12:27 PM, said:

Kinda curious as to what the definition of "Big MERC unit" might be?

All the hyperbole aside, which is to say 99% of responses, 50 or 60 players active or more.

Any group who fills 5 drops on their own consistently is a big impact.

[Armando]

MischiefSC, on 06 January 2016 - 01:05 PM, said:

All the hyperbole aside, which is to say 99% of responses, 50 or 60 players active or more.

Any group who fills 5 drops on their own consistently is a big impact.

Thing is to get 50-60 players consistently on at the same time takes a unit population of 350+.

Outside of unit meetings I have NEVER see all the members on at the same time, and even then many, Many, MANY people are missing.

In fact I don't think everyone COULD be on at the same time because the TS3 server will not handle that many people.

Edited by Armando, 06 January 2016 - 01:28 PM.

[DarklightCA]

That's pretty much the case with all unit's, a bigger roster than what they currently have active and not many unit's have a 60+ active memberbase.

Edited by l)arklight, 06 January 2016 - 01:30 PM.

[MischiefSC]

Admittedly that's my point. I pug in CW a *lot*. If I do 10 drops I might see a 8+unit drop 1 time unless I'm dropping defense in an IS vs IS border and there's 1 12man trying to tag a world.

Big units of 300 plus are big enough to really change the population dynamic of the game. A team that fills maybe 5 drops a night and adds some pugs and 4 mans into their faction on another 10 or even 15 drops a day isn't truly "unbalanced the game".

However this whole stupid witch hunt is about trying to change CW to play like pug queue. Part of that is having threads saying "No Solo players in CW" and a tendency of a small number of players to really rip on bad pugs in CW matches, so you get people blaming units for trying to pick on them for not being in a unit.

I'll show atypical restraint and skip the pointless psychology screed and just say this is a predictable reaponse. You've got people feeling picked on by groups and like they're forced to join a group to avoid being picked on. That's not actually the case; the problem is they don't have the right habits and skills to compete and don't have consistent access to people to teach them. Without a MM curating their opponents to keep them in a bubble of people with the same limitations they're getting hammered and getting no direction.

We're about at saturation for elective unit membership in CW population. It's about 2 years, all the people who are going to elect in the current model have done so. We still have more pugs than units and the bulk of units are really casual and don't provide much more than pugging does.

So we need to change our approach to pugs to let them still be pugs but teach them the needed skillset anyway. Many will potentially gravitate to units because of that but regardless we need to shift from an integration model to an education model.

Given that we're a bunch of gamers and not a business that's probably not going to happen.

So you're going to have pugs/solo players hating on groups on gp, because they are a different peer group who is more successful than pugs are and feels non-inclusive.

Groups over 300 certainly have an impact on play. Smaller groups of even 100, not so much. Perception though will want to punish anything over 40 or 50.

Edited by MischiefSC, 06 January 2016 - 02:47 PM.

[sycocys]

Armando, on 06 January 2016 - 01:02 PM, said:

People who think they are more valuable than the 50+ players they run off the game by being d-bags just because they spent some money.

^Pretty much sums it up. People like you make the game worse and less successful regardless of the fact that you claim to have whaled $5k - you cost the company far more money than that driving away potential customers/players than any amount of investment you have or ever will make.

50 players spend $100 bucks over the course of their stay equals far more than 50 times the value of one idiot like you because they have spent as much and fill 50 times the queue slots providing far more matches for everyone to play - which in turn actually encourages far more spending from all the players they might interact with than anything you will ever be responsible for.

Edited by sycocys, 06 January 2016 - 03:37 PM.

[Jenovah]

sycocys, on 06 January 2016 - 10:54 AM, said:

Could also just go the lore route - mercs can't fight for clans.

You want to use your clan mechs in CW, you need to be a clan loyalist unit.

Then the question is - would you rather have your unit broken up and keep the ability to fight for either side? or keep your larger unit sizes and be locked into longer contracts?

Something needs to and is going to happen to help balance the mode out so it's accessible to more players, at the end of the day you need to decide if you are going to be a part of improving the game or part of making it worse for the players that aren't engaging in CW because of large unit pug trolling.

I'm really curious about this "large unit pug trolling;"

I'm curious about it because I drop with a large unit, and it's not an "every drop is a pure 12 man." Plenty of times there are pugs.

I even notice how the unit members always invite pugs into their TS for help, tips, or even to teach new players.

I've seen the groups get absurdly excited at fighting other organized groups- win or lose. While not all inclusive, the most effective units are what, 228th, MS, KCOM, BO? maybe a few more that I don't remember at the moment. Of those four, 2 are IS and 2 are clan (last I knew). They fight, but if you recall, you can't see who you're dropping against until you're locked in. I know that I hugely excited at the opportunity to fight KCOM because even though I've never seen them drop in a 12 man (all tagged) I only get better as I fight and learn from them and adapt my strategy.

Doom on you if your dropping SOLO in a mode the requires more TEAMWORK and COORDINATION than dropping in quick.

Kind of stupid if you're going to cry about dropping solo when you know there is a high probability of dropping against a 6/8/12 man drop who uses standardized drop decks, with a drop caller, who knows whats in your standardized deck so he knows how best to employ his forces. Knowing this, I guess it makes sense that you think its pug trolling because people organize to fight instead of hitting the solo drop in CW.

And don't get me wrong, I do occasionally drop solo in CW when no one is on- but I don't whine about getting roflstomped by an organized unit. I was beaten many, many, many times by -MS- dropping while I dropped solo and with another small 4 man drop. Guess I should have just come to the forums and berated them and units like them as well as cried about how PGI needs to limit them- not me, just big units like them.


But back to the main point, tell me, how are things like the above considered pug trolling when all these units do is drop and if they get a pug enemy they offer help?

[Moldur]

Pugs want to split big merc units as though it will make them enjoy CW more.

It doesn't matter if it's 500 or 50. It's all the same in the eyes of a pug. You'll be facing an impenetrable wall of 12 identical tags. What? You think if we smash the units apart, we won't have just as many premades?

We need to make an effort to separate these topics:
-Big merc units make CW less fun for smaller units and loyalist units.
-Premades stomp pugs because they are organized.


For some reason, people keep talking like they are one in the same.

[Armando]

sycocys, on 06 January 2016 - 03:35 PM, said:

^Pretty much sums it up. People like you make the game worse and less successful regardless of the fact that you claim to have whaled $5k - you cost the company far more money than that driving away potential customers/players than any amount of investment you have or ever will make.

50 players spend $100 bucks over the course of their stay equals far more than 50 times the value of one idiot like you because they have spent as much and fill 50 times the queue slots providing far more matches for everyone to play - which in turn actually encourages far more spending from all the players they might interact with than anything you will ever be responsible for.

Think that all you want, but the 'literally' HUNDREDS of people I have taken personal time to train over the years I have played this game know better.

Tell me, how many people have you taken personal time to train? (Me: hundreds, if not 1K+)
Tell me, how many drops have you lead to victory? (Me: Well over 10K)

Yes, by encouraging people to take non-trial mechs to CW, by encouraging people to find and join a unit, and by taking thousand of hours of my personal time to train any and all who are willing to listen both in and out of the game... I AM THE REASON PEOPLE QUIT PLAYING.

/rolls eyes.

Tell me, what have YOU done to make this game better for other people? (No: Trolling the forums doesn't count).
_________________________________________________________
All BS aside, you get in voice comms and drop with me and my friends I am SURE you will agree...We are 'good times'. You might 'think' that I'm giving you shi@t because am an A-Hole, but that is not true...I am giving you shi@t because I LIKE YOU, and want to see you succeed (both in game and in real life)....the fact that I'm an A-Hole is a completely separate issue.

The truest statement I will ever make: If I don't LIKE you, I will NOT talk to you, or write to you, or have any interaction with what so ever.

If you believe nothing else I say, believe this: If my goal was to see you FAIL....the BEST thing I could do to make it happen.....is say NOTHING and let you continue thinking / acting like you do now.

Edited by Armando, 06 January 2016 - 05:09 PM.

[Tesunie]

sycocys, on 06 January 2016 - 10:54 AM, said:

Could also just go the lore route - mercs can't fight for clans.

You want to use your clan mechs in CW, you need to be a clan loyalist unit.

This would limit player options, and as much as I have disagreed (and agreed) with Armando, I have to agree with him that limiting tech by faction, and then restricting the access to those factions would be a bad idea overall.

Overall, it isn't any issue with population disparities between clan and IS, or even units/groups of players being able to switch between the two factions/techs. The problem is how much influence some mercs (and I specify some, as it really are only a select few) seem to have in CW as a whole. When one of those influential merc groups changes a faction, you can tell within days, if not within that day.

Then again, I don't think it's any fault of those specific merc units. Let them remain influential on the map. Let them continue to change factions. Let them even continue to be large groups. However, they shouldn't dictate where they are going to fight within that faction. That power honestly should be held by the Loyalists, who are conducting their faction's war efforts. An employee doesn't walk up to their employer and tell their employer what they are going to do, regardless of what their employer tells them to do.

sycocys, on 06 January 2016 - 11:16 AM, said:

Another possible option - the larger your unit the longer your minimum contract time combined with much higher penalties for breaking contracts based on your size.

under 50 - 30 day minimum
50-100 - 45 day minimum
100-150 - 80 day minumum (starting to get big, start ramping up the length and penalties more from this point)
150-200 - 100 day
200-250 - 150 day
250-300 - 200 day
300+ - 300 day

Penalties start at what we have now 1 mil per and 3 days off, ramp it up to 25 mil per and 14+ days off for breaking early. During penalty time off without a faction they can only drop as solo lone wolves until their unit is able to accept a new contract.

Something like this would go a very long way towards stabilizing the CW population, combine that with some sort of large unit/combined unit numbers caps per faction to force some amount of spread and balance between the faction areas.

Larger units already pay a larger fine for breaking a contract, as they pay for a contract break for each member in their unit, as they all are breaking their contract.

However, longer break times (and for the record, during the break penalty of time you remain with the faction you were with. Consider it like a "two weeks notice") might be good for more people within a unit. This would slow down their transfer times.
On that note though, I think your minimum days for the penalty/contract times I think are a little... crazy... 1 Day per player in the unit is a bit much... don't you think? I mean, a unit of 300+ having to remain in a contract for 300 days (or if it's the penalty time for breaking a contract, remain (by your terminology) out of any faction for 300 days)? That seems a might bit long...

[Armando]

Tesunie, on 06 January 2016 - 05:57 PM, said:

This would limit player options, and as much as I have disagreed (and agreed) with Armando, I have to agree with him that limiting tech by faction, and then restricting the access to those factions would be a bad idea overall.

Overall, it isn't any issue with population disparities between clan and IS, or even units/groups of players being able to switch between the two factions/techs. The problem is how much influence some mercs (and I specify some, as it really are only a select few) seem to have in CW as a whole. When one of those influential merc groups changes a faction, you can tell within days, if not within that day.

Then again, I don't think it's any fault of those specific merc units. Let them remain influential on the map. Let them continue to change factions. Let them even continue to be large groups. However, they shouldn't dictate where they are going to fight within that faction. That power honestly should be held by the Loyalists, who are conducting their faction's war efforts. An employee doesn't walk up to their employer and tell their employer what they are going to do, regardless of what their employer tells them to do.



Larger units already pay a larger fine for breaking a contract, as they pay for a contract break for each member in their unit, as they all are breaking their contract.

The cost to break contract for a 'larger' unit can be upwards of 20,000,000 per day. 7 days left on contract...that will be 1,400,000,000 (that is 1.4 BILLION for those confused by the commas). Trust me when I tell you it is RARE that large units break contract.

Edited by Armando, 06 January 2016 - 06:34 PM.

[Ranger Dave]

Is several distinct issues:
Large units regularly moving factions. If this is such a terrible thing PGI, why not make sticking with a faction more rewarding? Currently there is an incentive for units to regularly switch so their new players can farm early rewards such as mech bays. Also worth looking at possible effects of increasing negative loyalty in enemy factions. I believe currently these only occur with kills and are quite small?

Large organised groups in CW queues. They can be demoralising to play against, especially for new players, but with current matchmaking system there is no easy way to predict encountering one and they can't predict when/if they will find a similar group to play against.
An easy partial fix with an existing tool - Faction chat. If you notice one group is slaughtering their way through a planet, let your faction know. That way, players are informed of the risks and can choose to drop elsewhere. Conversely this can help the organised groups in your own faction locate challenging matches. Still won't know exactly who you will face in each game, but such is the fog of war.

[Davegt27]

I don’t think Russ is going to do anything to big units

If you listen to the last town hall meeting Russ wants to enhance game play, that’s the context

Russ and others points out if you want to improve CW and enhance game play then if the larger units could
Help things along by breaking apart to form more units that fight each other




Apparently we are failing to talk any kind of common sense into some people

Edited by Davegt27, 07 January 2016 - 05:48 AM.

[NextGame]

maybe if you have mercstar or whoever in your faction and you know you are going to lose them, its up to you loyalists, or at least your pretendy faction commands, to go out and recruit sufficient mercenary forces to replace them post departure.

But no, that would involve actual effort on the part of the whiney loyalists.

Edited by NextGame, 07 January 2016 - 01:27 AM.

[N0MAD]

Armando, on 06 January 2016 - 01:02 PM, said:

I really SHOULD, and if PGI tells people they can't drop with their friends anymore $5K dropped on the game be damned I likely will.

Listen, if you have a hard time making friends I feel for you. If you can't find and work with 11 other people as a team using the tools PGI has provided, I understand (PGI tools for doing so are HORRIBLE).

That said, please don't come into the forums and BEG PGI to nerf teamwork. If you are sick about getting waxed playing the game, start with looking in the mirror. Ask yourself "What can I do to make things better for myself"? Answers to this question include but are not limited to...

...stop bringing trial mechs, buy your own mechs and give them viable load-outs.
...get on the forums and find a team to drop with (I will be the first to tell you that players should NOT have to leave the game to join a unit, but with the current state of the game, that is how the cookie crumbles).
...drill on movement and focus fire exercises with your 'new' teammates.

If you haven't done all of these, and choose to instead ask others to fix YOUR problems I have ZERO pity for you. In a case like this it is not on the mercenaries, nor is the blame on PGI, it is YOUR OWN DAMNED FAULT. (at least IMO anyway).

Pugs dont have problems, but you seem to, all you are saying here is..play this game the way i want it played, or you a bad noob.
As can be seen by the lack of groups compared to pug players people just dont want to play with groups, and by the attitude you show here who can blame them?.
Train for a game that to most of us is a passtime for a couple hours? buy this do that, associate with neckbeards that think a game is something i should take serious?, i know some of you think that playing games is real i mean it has to be right? you play 8-10 hours a day, 7 days a week, have 10s of thousands of games and well poop other people should take it equally seriously right... right?. No mate its a game i play for a bit of leisure, i pays my dues and play it as i see fit.
Listen why dont you hardcore unit players petition PGI to give you your place to play other organised teams in fair competition? ohh but you say CW is the place,, well its not, if PGI lets in solos and casual small teams its NOT hardcore mode, but wait PGI did give you the hard core Q it was the 12 man Q but guess what? no one turned up, nope had to be shut down, seems large groups didnt want to play big groups OR there just wasnt enough of you. You are a minority a small one at that.
Its a team game with not enough teams to make it viable, thats why PGI is forced to let pugs and solos play there.

[sycocys]

Tesunie, on 06 January 2016 - 05:57 PM, said:

However, longer break times (and for the record, during the break penalty of time you remain with the faction you were with. Consider it like a "two weeks notice") might be good for more people within a unit. This would slow down their transfer times.
On that note though, I think your minimum days for the penalty/contract times I think are a little... crazy... 1 Day per player in the unit is a bit much... don't you think? I mean, a unit of 300+ having to remain in a contract for 300 days (or if it's the penalty time for breaking a contract, remain (by your terminology) out of any faction for 300 days)? That seems a might bit long...

I stand by the contract length per play, that is the only way that huge units could logistically make it financially viable to make such power plays. Again injecting some lore and real-world like structure to things, if your mercenary units are 5 times larger than most of the loyalist/nation armed forces which should technically have vastly more funding there needs to be some drawbacks.

The contract break/days off is listed separately as that is a unit wide number - 300+ break and you have somewhere in the range of 14 days where you can only drop as lone wolves.

Thinks like restricted drop deck sizes based on contract length should also be in play, but I imagine people would really cry about that.

--
And Nomad is absolutely correct, when you push focus on teamplay/end game/unit combat while the majority of the units with 50+ active players go way out of their way to purposefully not have a competitive environment for team play -- that entire argument is bunk. CW could have been that place, but units would rather farm pugs and solos than even run the risk of fighting one another.

--
Armando - your credibility was shot with your repeated claims of "I spent well in excess of $5k" combined with trying to make yourself more valuable by threatening to ragequit if you had to adjust to a new way to play CW. Whether or not you actually trained anyone or even if you whaled that much away doesn't matter because you decided the most effective argument was to throw a fit like a 4 year old.

[Kjudoon]

Quote

MRBC rating would be completely determined by match score and W/L (sound familiar?) Ratings would be A+ down to F.

MRBC Ratings... marvelous. Make them for all units... including a social aspect where loyalists can vote on how well a unit is functioning within the goals of the faction.

Yes, I want social pressure to have game consequences after some of the bad behavior many units have had abusing the system. And if a unit has too low of a MRBC score, they can't take a contract with some houses.

[oldradagast]

Davegt27, on 29 December 2015 - 01:56 PM, said:

The last town hall Russ called out the big units saying they were not fighting each other and preferred seal clubbing (not exact words but they were not fighting 12 to 12)

Big shock there... the "elite" looking for the free kills to pad their K/D ratio. Then, they come on the forums and whine about how terrible PUG's are and (insanely) about how same PUG's won't join the units that enjoy seal-clubbing them. Top it off with cries against any match-making or limits to the seal-clubbing idiocy (because "skill") and you have CW in a nutshell. No wonder nobody plays it anymore.

I wish Russ and the rest luck, but the damage has been done at this point. Until CW is remade into a game mode that offers something more than a chance for huge mobs to inflate their ego at the expense of casuals, it will be ghost town.