7 replies to this topic

[SideWinderBLN]

Hi everyone!

I am a new guy. One of those despicable Steam-Newbies. But apparently with those Steam Newbies acoording to Russ' tweet MWO has yesterday reached its highest player count ever. So maybe things aren't all bad and the game isn't dying as immediately as prophets have been proclaiming for years.

I have now had quite some time to play in the single queue, the group queue and even a number of games in faction play spread over those 75 hours I have played the game so far.

And I love it. All of it.

But of course, there is a but:

In Faction Play I have had some of the most enjoyable and some of the most despicable experiences in the game so far.

• I have been part of All-Solo Pick Up Groups, where everyone ran around like clueless headless chickens
  
• I have been part of All-Solo Pick Up Groups, where an experienced guy managed to coordinate everyone via VOIP and lead them to a win
  
• I have dropped along nearly full teams and they made the effort to place one of them in our lance to give us some guidance via VOIP and we handily won against the nearly full premade unit on the other side.
  
• I have faced Pick Up Groups and nearly full 12-man units
  
• I have been completely stomped while learning a lot and having fun
  
• I have been completely stomped while being spawncamped from the third drop on and having no fun at all (and being laughed at for our troubles)
  
• If I am facing a premade, I personally consider the game "won" if we made even one of the opponents use up all mechs or had most of them on their third.

Many of those games were a learning experience and many of them were fun. However some of them really did sour my view of some groups in the game.




It got me thinking. What would have made it better for me. So you know where I am coming from, some of the things I consider facts:

• Large and experienced units will nearly always win against Pick up Groups
  
• This is okay. They are just that much better due to coordination, experience and training and are absolutely playing the game mode to the win. They deserve the win and the benefits that come with it
  
• These wins will usually be nowhere near anything resembling "close"

And some of my assumptions:

• Large units have a vested interest in the player base for Faction Play growing
  
• Just stomping Pick Up Groups is tremendously boring and is a lot closer to grinding than to actually having fun in the game.
  
• The "I love to ROFLSTOMP/Farm" stance is something that only a minority of pro players actually has, no matter how anecdotal evidence and forum whining suggests the opposite.
  
• Even loosing a game can be fun and educational for new players if they feel they have a chance
  
• Most pro players like a challenge and like to actually have a fight on their hand

As some old Dude once said to some weird kid: "With great Power comes great responsibility" and large units are definitely the ones with large power of shaping the experience in faction play.




So, what is my actual suggestion that is very much open for discussion:

Make it "interesting"

If you are in a Drop that is mostly or exclusively made up from your unit and you see that you are facing a pick up group you could easily stomp to the other side of the Inner Sphere and back, then declare via "All" chat that you are willing to give them a head start.

This head start is a full wave of Mechs. Have your unit eject from your first drops when you hit the ground.

You are now down 0-12 (or 0-10 or whatever if you have some PUGs along) and the other team has a slight time advantage since you have to wait for your drop. Your opponents/victims/moving targets have the feeling that you are willing to give them a chance.

And let's face it, it just means that instead of winning 48-20something you will win 48-30something. But you have made it a more enjoyable experience for everyone involved.

Do I expect this to fix everything? Heck no!
Do I expect the majority of Units and drops to go for it? Heck no!
Will there still be whining and ROFLstomping in faction play? Heck yeah!

But if it starts somewhere and the new people see every once in a while that the established groups and units are reaching out to make the game mode interesting and fun for them, they will be so much more likely to stick around long enough to actually learn, get better and be more likely to get involved in groups and units themselves. And who knows ... maybe it ends up in a full blown and healthy population of players who blow each other up with giant stompy robots.

And I'd love to see that, because to me faction play is MWO as it should be (even if it's still lacking half the features).

So .. what do you think?

Edited by SideWinderBLN, 11 January 2016 - 02:25 AM.

[Sjorpha]

I think you make a lot of sense, and you seem to have a mindset that will allow you to become a good MWO player.

However I don't think suggestions amounting to strong teams spontaneously offering handicaps will amount to much as long as there are penalties to doing so, in terms of reducing your rewards per hour and taking planets slower. I also generally feel that it is a bit condescending to handicap yourself, it's a way of saying "you suck" after all, which is insulting even if it's true.

I believe the best pug experience in cw right now is when a small group of 4-8 good players from a unit is completed with pugs, so that there is a drop caller and a few friendly vets to lead the way. At least when my unit does that and the pugs actually listen, that is when I tend to see the most grattitude and and happiness expressed by pugs and newbies on our team. Contrary to self-handicaps this is also rewarding for the unit members, since they get to carry a bit and therefore reap higher scores and rewards than they would do in a 12man.

So creating stronger incentives for the strong units to split up a bit in smaller groups and leading pugs would go a long way towards improving the solo pug experience in CW, and I believe it's a much more plausible direction to achieve than trying to get units to adopt any kind of honour code that they have to pay time and cbills for.

But one of the things that reduces the inclination towards going out in smaller groups and lead pugs is the frustration over pugs that are so new that they cannot even play the game yet, much less manage to follow orders. A minor threshold, just to complete the cadet bonus and maybe grinding a mech to elite before cw unlocks would increase my willingness to go out and help carry newbies quite a lot. I know there would still be hopeless permanoobs forever refusing or unable to listen or improve, and I also know there are bright newbies like you who are a joy to help even when very fresh. That's ok, but what really needs to end is people in CW asking why their weapons don't do damage in the wrong range, how to get into 1st person view and how to fire a gauss rifle and so on, there just isn't time for those first clueless baby steps in CW, that is what tier 5 solo queue is for and it should be kept there.

Now how could you reward going out and leading pugs more? One way could be to take a cue from the group queue and give smaller groups a little more tonnage per player. For example you could have 1-4 groups get 260tons, 4-8 get 250 tons and 9-12 get 240 tons. Another way could be to award any group of 4+ on a team the full victory for the purpose of tagging the planet, which would make 2 groups of 6 tag a planet twice as effective as a single 12, assuming they win as much. Those are just ideas from the top of my head.

Whatever the solution is it can't involve penalizing units in any way (neither self imposed or forced) or splitting the queues, none of those kind of ideas would actually work.

Edited by Sjorpha, 11 January 2016 - 03:59 AM.

[DarklightCA]

As somebody who play's a lot of 12 man Community Warfare, stomping pugs is in no way fun or enjoyable. Not even the rare times we face another 12 man is it really enjoyable. Games are best when they are close or your down, really force you to concentrate on the game at hand and we haven't had many of those games.

For your suggestion though I don't think that will work and I say that from experience, would just make 12 man's look like cocky ********. We've tried a lot of things to help the experience of pug team's we face especially as defense. We let them take down the gens and sometimes allow them to fully push inside without trashing them.

Half the time the pug team won't even take down the gen's because not attacking and sitting in spawn is apparently a sign of protest against 12 man's. Other times when there first wave get's completely destroyed they refuse to keep attacking after that point and sit in there spawn forcing us to push there spawn and attack them, making us "spawn camping farmers".

We've tried giving them advice, response being "**** you" generally. Besides handing them the entire game you can never be the good guy 12 man because if you are playing as a 12 man like how Community Warfare should be played, you are automaticly the ******* and ruining everybody's fun. Just my opinion.

[O O P S I E]

Really pleased that you are enjoying the game! I belong to the same unit as Sjorpha and we have done something similar to your suggestion in the past. You are correct in your assumption that as a unit player, stomping over pugs is not really any fun and it also makes you play quite sloppily after a while.

In a recent challenge, players had to reach a certain match score to obtain a prize and there was no way that 98%+ of the players in pug groups that we came across could ever reach that match score when playing us (insta-dead).
So for a few drops I had the team push in, kill the first wave of the opposition team and then shut down to allow the other team to farm components and get their match score for the challenge (while telling the other team what we were doing over all chat.)
This was done as a friendly gesture as it really is unfair when you find yourself going up against a unit of very experienced players.

The reactions were quite surprising. Some were very grateful and thought we were one of the "coolest" units they had encountered while others found this quite insulting (it was certainly not meant to be). Only on one occasion did the pug team farm us correctly and all got their match scores but this took at least ten minutes out of our lives. On other occasions a more skilled player on the enemy team would take full advantage and start head-shotting our shut-down mechs - something that I considered very selfish. I think my point is that you cannot please all of the people all of the time.

As for ejecting an entire wave of mechs, I don't think it would really make much difference. On the average pug stomp it is usually the drop-ships that get any kills so ejecting a wave of mechs wouldn't really help, it would just delay the inevitable.

I see though that you have joined the vikings of the FRR (a fine choice of faction sir, we are FRR loyalist but currently on a faction tour for the mech bays etc). I strongly suggest that you install teamspeak and come over to the FRR hub. You'll find a lot of friendly people who will offer you good advice on playing CW and you can join one of the many CW groups running to experience what it is like to play in a proper group that coordinates/communicates.

The FRR hub details are frrts3.tk:9725 password is Dragon (with a capital D).

[Valdherre Tor]

CW phase three coming this spring

[Tom Sawyer]

May CW 3 bring new maps, new game modes, more objectives beyond get the big gun.

[SideWinderBLN]

Hi guys,

thanks a lot for these insights. I really appreciate them and I agree that the best games were those where larger units gave us the chance to tag along. So kudos, thanks and a huge "good on ya" for doing that and keeping it up even if it is sometimes annoying and frustrating to herd a bag of noobie cats.

As to handicapping yourself feeling condescending to some. I personally do not feel it that way but I can see how it could be understood so by some. On the one hand though you can never please everyone and on the other hand I think it is a lot in how you communicate the fact and reasons to the other team.

And just to be clear: I don't consider this the "one true solution" but just one of many options of making the place welcoming that people have while everyone struggles with the fact that we are too small a population for skill-matchmaking and that CW is very much still growing into its own as a product.

It is definitely nice to see that there are awesome people wanting to make it fun and engaging for everyone.

KernelOops, on 11 January 2016 - 04:12 AM, said:

I see though that you have joined the vikings of the FRR (a fine choice of faction sir, we are FRR loyalist but currently on a faction tour for the mech bays etc). I strongly suggest that you install teamspeak and come over to the FRR hub. You'll find a lot of friendly people who will offer you good advice on playing CW and you can join one of the many CW groups running to experience what it is like to play in a proper group that coordinates/communicates.

The FRR hub details are frrts3.tk:9725 password is Dragon (with a capital D).

Currently we are a fun little unit of two and doing a tour of all factions for the Level 2 Mechbays and I am kind of set on sooner or later ending up a Steiner Loyalist ;-). But thank you very much for the warm welcome and invitation. I'll have to check out TS again.

Edited by SideWinderBLN, 11 January 2016 - 05:55 AM.

[Sjorpha]

SideWinderBLN, on 11 January 2016 - 05:54 AM, said:

Currently we are a fun little unit of two and doing a tour of all factions for the Level 2 Mechbays and I am kind of set on sooner or later ending up a Steiner Loyalist ;-). But thank you very much for the warm welcome and invitation. I'll have to check out TS again.

The FRR hub (and I suppose other faction hubs too) is specifically set up to allow people to casually organize the faction WITHOUT small units and solos having to commit to a unit or other long term investment, you can just hop in and ask to join a group for the evening. You and your friend are more than welcome to hang out there whenever you pass by the FRR on your tours.

Great thread, let's all keep working to improve the game for everyone.