522 replies to this topic

[C E Dwyer]

Commander A9, on 29 December 2015 - 03:02 PM, said:

Influence...

You mean because...

They're "good" at the game?

Again, PGI potentially punishing player skill? Come on.

This "doing something about the mercs," is it going to be some kind of obnoxious handicap that punishes the better-skilled players? Because that wouldn't surprise me in the least.

Actually if you look at all the team events P.G.I have put together, skill is punished by sheer numbers.

Further more CW is won by sheer numbers.

[C E Dwyer]

crustydog, on 29 December 2015 - 08:55 PM, said:

On another note - one of the main reasons why the big units tend not to fight each other is, for the most part, big units tend to attack in CW and seldom defend. This is not because they are unwilling to defend - defense, in many respects, is easier than attacking. This is because of the queue mechanics of CW - if you take a chance on defending planets, you risk potentially sitting around doing nothing for a very long time. The bigger units know this, because they have more CW experience.

The primary factor in choosing a mode is where you can get a game, or if you are going after a specific planet. This usually involves attacking. PGI should be more accommodating of the bigger units, the units who actually attack planets, for without the 12 mans, there is no coordinating attacking in CW ( except mostly FRR, a faction that operates similar to a single large unit.)

Large units cannot be scapegoated for choosing to concentrate on attack, when the mechanics of CW, programmed by PGI, support attacking as the most efficient form of game play. If the larger units are not going at each other, perhaps the fault lies in PGI's CW queue design, and not the fighting will of larger units.

partly true

Other reasons are if you attack, because most 12 mans attack, you avoid them, but the main one is you only get your units name on a shiny new dot (planet) if you attack

[Tesunie]

Cathy, on 30 December 2015 - 01:37 PM, said:

partly true

Other reasons are if you attack, because most 12 mans attack, you avoid them, but the main one is you only get your units name on a shiny new dot (planet) if you attack

You can get it on defense too.

However, most units have a theology: It's better to trade worlds (attack and take a world and lose one in exchange), than to defend and lose a world and gain nothing.

Plus, 12 mans often times go on the attack, and get confronted (by no one's fault) by mainly PUGs. I'm not saying it's intentional PUG stomping, but it's often more rewarding to go where the fighting is easier. Combine this with "It's better to trade worlds than to just lose one", and it becomes a compound problem.

I suspect, even if 12 mans were more challenged on an attack and rewarded more on defense, that units probably would still go on the attack for the above theology.


There also has to be considered the moral victory of seeing a faction expand. You don't see a faction expand if it remains on defense. Once a faction starts to gain momentum, they often keep it. You gain that momentum by attacking, not defending.

[LeeNTien]

Joe Decker, on 30 December 2015 - 07:07 AM, said:

Look at how EVE online is doing it with a much larger and much less predictable Starmap. There are Alliances and they got the Power - but there is not one big Alliance, there is a Bunch of them. There are War Declarations, there is Economics, there are Transition Times you need - so you cannot hop from A to B to C. Faction hopping is also more unlikely as you set up your Ships for a Faction in there - playing Gallente Warships with Drones don't help you much when switching over to Caldari Faction.

I think you hadn't played EvE for a while... It's Goonsland now, with some much smaller and weaker coalitions being left alone for the sake of some cheap entertainment to the only big and strong alliance left in the game.
Oh, and flying ships according to their origin - is just... made up, mate.
There a plenty of Gallente pilots fighting in Caldari militia etc. And in 0.0 (where the actual player politics and suchlike happen) anyone flies anything - the only factor is the tactics in use by the said corp/alliance/coalition.

But EvE is a perfect example, that limiting numbers wouldn't change anything. Limiting Units to, say, 50 members total would give some advantage to super-active small units like KCom (and well deserved in their case) during Tyk-3 (4-5-6...).
But the general CW wouldn't see any difference.
A 12 team of people with [-MS-] tag all being on the same TeamSpeak, despite being from different units within that TS, would just turn into a 12 man of, for example, 3 [MS-1], 4 [MS-2] and 5 [MS-3] being on the same TS, all together, despite being from different units within that TS and different "regiments" of the same unit ingame.
Which is pretty much how alliances and coalitions work in EvE.
Or pretty much anywhere else with limits to membership or just people holding onto their "ingame independence" or whatever one could call that.

Also, had a good laugh at the first post... really? People actually believe that?! XD
People do know, that MS fought 228, right? The last "duel" (a 2-2 draw) wasn't even that long ago.
Both units went Wolf for the Tyk-2 simply because IS waiting times during Tyk-1 were appalling, and no one really wanted to make those active multiple 12-s wait for their drops longer that absolutely necessary. A lot of players came back to the game for the event, and making them wait for longer would just turn them away once again.
And then both units switched to IS simply because both are mercs, and being Clans for some time - they just had to switch. That's what mercs do.
Switched to different factions, though. Which even exchanged planets in combat. Which is probably a huge surprise for some people =]

With the same amount of realism one could say, that TCAF stayed Liao because they don't wanna fight Clans without turret support, and therefore can avoid OP clan mechs. Them being a Liao loyalist unit has totally nothing to do with it.
Duh-duh-duuuuuuh!
(obvious sarcasm)

P.S. nope, the tag on a planet is just meaningless bragging right, an empty shinie. Sadly, having one's tag on a planet really doen't give anything to the unit, apart from a bit of "notch on the blade" or a "cross on the side".
While facing other 12 is actually one of the few entertainments a 12-men can get - because stomps are not fun. Really close games, with either team being almost there - are the best games one can get, regardless if it's a win or a loss. While stomps - just c-bills farming, nothing more. Easy, almost thoughtless money farm.
I do not actually know why people prefer attacking, but I guess it's to do with the fact, that on defense all you need is to build a static defense and just wait, while attacking may seem like a more entertaining option, without all the turrets and such helping you out. And although most games are fights to the last enemy, there is an extra option of "getting there a bit faster" by dunking the Omega - or even saving a loss by doing that, and still getting the extra c-bills together with the moral victory.

P.P.S. all this is an opinion of a grunt.

Edited by LeeNTien, 30 December 2015 - 02:40 PM.

[NextGame]

Cathy, on 30 December 2015 - 01:37 PM, said:

partly true

Other reasons are if you attack, because most 12 mans attack, you avoid them, but the main one is you only get your units name on a shiny new dot (planet) if you attack

True; the unit I'm in [AS] has been hired a few times by players for specific factions for a bunch of millions into the (pointless) unit coffers with more bunches of millions as bonus for taking planets. It can pay to get your unit's tag on a planet.

[Mystere]

Tesunie, on 30 December 2015 - 01:46 PM, said:

However, most units have a theology: It's better to trade worlds (attack and take a world and lose one in exchange), than to defend and lose a world and gain nothing.

"Nobody ever defended anything successfully, there is only attack and attack and attack some more."

- George S. Patton

[Hotthedd]

Tesunie, on 30 December 2015 - 12:35 PM, said:

There was a reason I specified Houses.

The combined defense on the Clan and IS front is to help facilitate Clan vs IS combat, as well as to hasten match drop frequency. Without that combined option, I think CW would be in an even more difficult position. My opinion of course.

Well the obvious simple fix to that is to have fewer active planets at a given time.

[Ace Selin]

El Bandito, on 29 December 2015 - 01:30 PM, said:

Maybe Russ can reduce the maximum size of merc units, compared to House units. Or make the Merc life as tough as it should be, like in MW2. Right now there is no risk of going Merc and hopping factions--on the contrary, there are only benefits, such as easy low tier rewards.

Mercs have to pay for R&R and earn lesser rewards from CW in Phase 3 ?!

[Tesunie]

Hotthedd, on 30 December 2015 - 03:46 PM, said:

Well the obvious simple fix to that is to have fewer active planets at a given time.

I understand that fewer contested planets would consolidate the queues, but how would you go about exactly doing that?

Attack vector voting may very well be that solution. Instead of having every faction that can attack a nearby faction, it would instead be a vote on attacking 1 or 2 of those nearby factions. I believe this has already been announced as a proposed change for CW phase 3?

Of course, this does depend upon how they implement the attack voting changes too. If it's on what planets your faction wishes to attack, it could reduce those attack lanes. If it's what exact planets to attack for each faction... then it will do little to help.

[Doomerang]

Being part of a 500 person unit means we may have enough members on ready and willing to play CW to keep 1 group going during primetime hours. During tournaments, maybe we have 2 groups of 12 going. If 'big units' get split up and the structure isn't in place for us all to still play together as easily as we can now, I'm just going to stop playing CW. I'm part of a unit to play with a group, and at present, it takes a 500 person unit to be reasonably certain that I will be able to find a single 8-12 man group running CW.

Also, fix the ridiculously OP Inner Sphere.

[pwnface]

Doomerang, on 30 December 2015 - 04:03 PM, said:

Being part of a 500 person unit means we may have enough members on ready and willing to play CW to keep 1 group going during primetime hours. During tournaments, maybe we have 2 groups of 12 going. If 'big units' get split up and the structure isn't in place for us all to still play together as easily as we can now, I'm just going to stop playing CW. I'm part of a unit to play with a group, and at present, it takes a 500 person unit to be reasonably certain that I will be able to find a single 8-12 man group running CW.

Also, fix the ridiculously OP Inner Sphere.

Having 500 inactive players doesn't really anything.

Night's Scorn has maybe 40-50 active players and runs CW 12 man groups pretty much every night.

Also, please don't fix the ridiculously OP Inner Sphere mechs. I'm enjoying all the complaining and QQing from bad clan players.

[RoboGerbil]

New player here. Ive been reading about many grievences over the last few days, and it seems the too many buckets thing comes up a lot. Right now we have 3 buckets. Quickplay teams, quickplay pugs, and cw. What if we knocked that down to 2 buckets? Teams and pugs (will also take groups of 2). Then have everyone make a dropdeck. Depending on your current contract (no contract can mix, they are a merc afterall) you will be limited to IS or clan. Then make the payouts on the contracts based on how many people are in each faction. This will autobalance the factions by paying people more for the factions who need more people. The pregame vote will decide the mode and you can even lock certain modes to premade teams if you wish. Then when everyones in the readying phase you can select from your dropdeck which mech to use if its a 1 mech mode.

[HeavyEcho]

I've only been playing since MWO came to steam so this may sound like me talking like an ill-informed scrub.

I think the idea of large and well renown units controlling the flow of CW to being a huge flaw, lore wise and gameplay wise, because I don't think the Inner Sphere or Clans would tolerate mercs with what seems to be a fighting force stronger than there own just jumping to the enemy factions at the drop of a pin or shiny mech. I mean I would either make sure they are dissolved before they are a threat or give them a offer that doesn't make them change factions.

And gameplay wise having these units jump factions breaks balance by moving more skill and communication over to the other side of the scale. Not to mention solo players who will jump ship if they find out the faction there in is going to get stomped by units or out numbered. All while those loyal get annoyed and vent on forums and newer players get turned off from the game because they didn't know any better and were unlucky enough to pick the wrong faction. (I myself fall into the making a mistake because I did not know any better I just play with the hand I chose tho.)

Anyway these things happen so its probably best to tough it out till the dev's figure some form of fix to it like better rewards for those who stay loyal and harsher punishment for those who jump factions, Maybe force bigger units to be loyal to a faction in exchange for perks and only small units and solo players can be mercs.

[RoboGerbil]

Have any of you actually tried cw on a pug? Pug vs pug is amazingly fun and the payouts for the newer players are great. I just wish the pug vs pug cw was way more common to hit.

Also we are just hired help (mercenary). So why are we deciding where and whom the houses fight? We get contracts then we get paid to do it.

Edited by RoboGerbil, 30 December 2015 - 04:55 PM.

[fbj]

Tacos

[Metus regem]

RoboGerbil, on 30 December 2015 - 04:51 PM, said:

Have any of you actually tried cw on a pug? Pug vs pug is amazingly fun and the payouts for the newer players are great. I just wish the pug vs pug cw was way more common to hit.

Also we are just hired help (mercenary). So why are we deciding where and whom the houses fight? We get contracts then we get paid to do it.

Having done the big organization in CW phase 1 ( was part of CGBI), and PUGLife, getting PUG on PUG action is way more fun.

[DarklightCA]

There is no match making in Community Warfare, Mercs don't dictate who they go up against. I'd much rather go against a bunch of 12 man's every time but Community Warfare consists of majority solo que players and not enough units playing with each other. Only Merc units are really forming tryhard Community Warfare groups that stomp everything that they come up against including the rarity of another 12 man.

Reducing big merc units is not going to solve any problems, they are still going to be going around in 12 man groups or even 4 man groups kicking all the pug's asses. As for switching sides that is PGI's fault for making a terrible Community Warfare. There is no incentives to be loyal to anything, you don't get anything for taking a planet and you don't get anything for holding planets. You don't get anything but LP rewards which is the only real thing worth farming in CW and you get a lot more rewards by hopping around and earning those quick mechbays every faction gives you. That's the design of the current Community Warfare.

As for faction swapping and what PGI could actually do to prevent it is give a bigger LP penalty to Merc's for killing mechs of a said faction that they once contracted with. As a example, Merc unit contracts with FRR for a few weeks then switches contract to CJF. For a X amount of time that Merc unit will get like 3x more negative LP for every FRR Mech they kill untill the cooldown expires.

As for Merc's killing pugs, don't destroy what actual functional units this game has and instead inspire players of the non-merc variety to join Units, group up more with said unit and play Community Warfare as if playing with teammates and mech builds that actually made sense actually gave you some sort of advantage (crazy). You can do this by incorporating elements that make Community Warfare a little more Unit vs Unit competitive and rewarding. As a example, finally adding rewards to Units for actually taking planets and holding them. Rewards that would inspire units to actually form up and play CW and inspire solo players to actually join units and play with them to get in on those rewards. Making Community Warfare what it should be. A place where Units struggle to defeat other Units to take and hold territory in epic matches where both teams are trying there hardest to win and solo puggers are off doing there own thing most likely facing other solo puggers because hopefully there would be a **** ton of actual 12 man's forming up in CW where 12 man's only got to face 12 man's most of the time.

Edited by l)arklight, 30 December 2015 - 07:35 PM.

[Alienized]

it doesnt matter what PGI does to stop merc unit hopping.
the guys that do it now will find the next thing to use against PGI and then blame them again for letting one path open.
just because its there you dont have to do it (character, ya know?) if it hurts the actual game because everyone knows you never know how stuff works out when its implemented for a few weeks.


i would wish that the players play less selfish again and stop harming the game they play as it was done years ago.

[nehebkau]

Tom Sawyer, on 30 December 2015 - 06:53 AM, said:

I have read that twitter between Russ and Galaxy. So MS and K-COM are hopping around to avoid each other??? REALLY?? I

Actually the BEST (as in as much fun as a naked mud fight with the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders) was being the 11th wheel with Kcom against 228 yesterday. Was deeply saddened that I DCd on my first mech in the middle of the gate -- from how close the match was that mech could have made the difference. Didn't seem like they were trying to avoid each other

Edited by nehebkau, 30 December 2015 - 07:51 PM.

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

El Bandito, on 29 December 2015 - 01:15 PM, said:

On CW phase three. Doesn't know what yet, but he confirmed it on Twitter. Oh, and he accused the big merc units such as -MS- and 228 for intentionally hopping over the fence together so they would not fight each other.

IMO, the amount of influence the Mercs wield is pretty detrimental to CW's development. House units really need to be made more attractive. Hope the phase three will include new faction specific rewards and meaningful penalty for changing factions.

Make Seasons for CW that last say... 2 months. Prior to participating in a season, you pick a tech base: IS or Clan, and you're locked in for the duration of the season. You can freely swap from House to House or Clan to Clan, but never House to Clan and vice versa.

It records each Tech Base's stats, faction's stats, unit's stats, and personal stats: planets lost, planets held, # of victories, # of defeats, # of mechs lost, # of mechs killed. And then throws in a Tukayyid-like event at the end and all the stats are held and awards are given to the top tech base and faction.


Boom.

The whole faction hopping problem solved.