13 replies to this topic

[slide]

With Russ announcing at the last town hall that units will be able to earn MC for tagging a planet and unit leaders being able to distribute that MC to it's members then I contend that we need much better tools in the UI to allow Unit leaders to do this fairly.

At a bare minimum we need

-list members alphabetically (I think it is MWO member number now)
+the above by rank

-member activity
-last played (date) (this is a minimum)
+games played (over a period ie a week, option would be good))
+games won/lost
+planets contested ie defensive wins, offensive wins

-unit activity
-number of CW matches played (total CW drops by member
+unit win/loss ratio

-inter unit transfers
-transfer between units of MC/Cbills to hire mercs (mentioned in other town halls)

Other tools I would like to see.
-ability to create sub units, ie people who play CW and those that don't
-unit mech pool, where people can donate or loan mechs to other members
-ability for unit to earn Cbills as well as MC from planet Tags, perhaps an amount for every unit win, ie 100,000 for every tagged member win in CW goes to unit coffers (instead of donations)
-distrubute coffer Cbills to members as well as MC


Other suggestions:
by I)arklight - unit recruitment tab, so units and new players can find each other.


Anything else?

Edited by slide, 31 January 2016 - 02:58 PM.

[BSK]

this is actually what I wanted to be asked during the Town Hall meeting:

https://mwomercs.com...ost__p__4980013

BSK, on 27 January 2016 - 08:01 AM, said:

Why do my unit members have to be on my friendlist as well to invite them for CW?
After changing faction sometimes members even dont adapt the faction until a relog and thus cannot be invited to CW.
More functionality to the member management, like entry dates, tiers, last time online, member list sortable by rank and the above?

But sadly the questions couldn't be asked during the "presentation" ..

[slide]

I gave up asking questions in those threads a long time ago, frankly it is a waste of time as NGNG thoroughly vette all questions and they obviously have their favorite contributors or even if they don't they will change the format. All your questions were valid ones though.

I am not even sure why I even bother to post here either, but it is my hope that if this thread gets enough traction then maybe someone at PGI might take notice.

All I know is that managing a unit that is larger than about 20 people, some spread all over the world is going to become a clusterf!!k of infighting if it is not done fairly (however you want to define fairly). Then again that may be Russ' plan seeing as he wants to break large units up anyway.

[DarklightCA]

Honestly I just want a better method of unit recruitment like a in-game recruitment hub. All those other tool's after that are just icing on the cake. Player recruitment is just way too difficult as it is, you can really see a lot of small unit's struggling to maintain a active population.

[slide]

Recruitment is actually likely to get harder as well, as there will be no one who isn't tagged playing in the unit queue anymore to recruit. Unless you like poaching players from other units which I have generally regarded as a no no.

Will your add suggestion to the OP.

Edited by slide, 31 January 2016 - 02:59 PM.

[Jman5]

Oh, I was going to write up my own thread, but I'll just paste it into here without the intro.


Units Should have two Rosters: Active Players and Inactive Players

Players who have not logged on in 30 days will be removed from the active duty roster and placed in the inactive column. Once a player is considered inactive he no longer counts toward the unit's size.

Recruitment fees will only be based on your active player count.

What I want to see is a system that doesn't punish units for holding onto players who are currently inactive. I think it would be best for the game's future if these players have a home to return to should they decide to spin that old mechwarrior game up again and see how it's doing. I don't want them to log on, find out they have been given the cold shoulder by their old unit, then leave after a few matches because their social ties to the game has been severed.

Show when a player was Last Active

This would be an important feature for units that are bumping up against those max unit sizes, or who just like to keep their ranks tidy. It doesn't need to be down to the hour, but at least tell us how many days since they were on. This would also help players manage their friends list which for most of us have slowly ballooned over the years.

Edited by Jman5, 31 January 2016 - 03:11 PM.

[Star Wolves Admin Account]

Between my units I have around 650+ players. You have no idea how godawful this games tools are until you've tried to manage that many players.

No active lists, no sort options, names in random orders, promotional tools that randomly break.

This is by far the worst organization I've ever seen and all of the tickets we've submitted to fix it have been ignored.

[slide]

@Jman, agree 100%

@Blueduck, it's bad enough at around 100, at 650 I can only imagine it would take 20 mins or more just to find a name to action something.

Edited by slide, 31 January 2016 - 03:29 PM.

[CoffiNail]

OP summed up unit management tools needs quite well.

At minimum we NEED a sorting option even if just alphabetical. It should never have been left out and included from the start as it is a basic tool.

[BSK]

slide, on 31 January 2016 - 03:02 AM, said:

All I know is that managing a unit that is larger than about 20 people, some spread all over the world is going to become a clusterf!!k of infighting if it is not done fairly (however you want to define fairly). Then again that may be Russ' plan seeing as he wants to break large units up anyway.

It depends on the players as well. If only my members from the oceanic region would group up more often without me having to invite them, then we had at least 40 members more in that timezone. But as many avoid teamspeak when I'm not there because they think it would increase their pings even more, they tend to find the unit deserted and then leave. On top of that most events are not helpful for units.

[Dan Nashe]

Second a lot of things. Good ideas.
I just came back after a year - no idea if unit members ever log on - they could have been gone for a year or just for 3 days, no idea.

And trying to find a new unit to join . . . wow, the forums are a nightmare, and hard to tell which units are still active without joining a super unit - particularly if you're not 100% committed to a faction.

A little awkward because I get the impression community warfare revolves around mercenaries, so faction loyalty isn't really a thing?

Also, an in game "profile" the player could set - I'm talking like 200 characters or something small. (Wow has separate officer and self-comments in the guild listing).

I meant this as a guild management tool, but a "make public" checkbox (or a unit only/public profile" limited to a short number of characters would be useful for both recruitment and guild management.

Things like
-- "Light/Brawler-Hvy/Assault
-- 6-9 EST (10 A to 2 P Weekends)
-- very casual
-- tonight: Up for competitive drops [or "Levelling my hunchback"].


I.e., things like
Mech Preference
Usual Playtimes
Usual playstyle (super casual, somewhat serious, whatever)
Current preference/status\

And maybe even a "Make Public" feature/checkbox. So when you play with other pugs you can mouseover to see their SHORT profiles.
So you could do LFG comments in your profile.
"On til 10 EST, feeling like CW"
Or "Looking for an active unit, weeknights, weekend late morning/early afternoon EST. Experienced in and enjoy in 12s & structured battlefield cohesion, but not a T1 player."
or
"Let's Go Clubbing! (Baby Seals)"

That kind of thing.

Even mousing over someone in a random quick play game at say, 7 p.m. EST and seeing "Looking for a group, will be on until 9 EST. Have TS." is someone I would consider whispering in/after a match for a group. Something that makes it clear that the 15 minutes I spend getting a group coordinated aren't going to be a waste.

Or when you drop as a unit recruitment officer saying
"Ronin Legion. Recruiting. Grouping with anyone who's interested until 9 p.m. [Link to Unit recruitment post in the forums]. Would go a long way to making it easier to find people in game for your unit. [And someone could look at it after they die/after game, so you wouldn't have to spam it every match constantly and hope they wrote it down at the beginning of the match.]

Even if you restrict links to the official MWOMERCS site (for security/phishing reasons), that would help a lot.

Two hundred characters looks to be about:

1234567890123456789012345678901234567890
1234567890123456789012345678901234567890
1234567890123456789012345678901234567890
1234567890123456789012345678901234567890
1234567890123456789012345678901234567890

(Which seems about the max for an in-game pop-up window). But obviously I don't care about the specific number.

Edited by DanNashe, 01 February 2016 - 04:50 PM.

[slide]

I agree that some events, particularly the last 2 are definitely not helpful.

I have never noticed teamspeak to have any noticeable effect on pings, when you play at 280-300 anyway whats a couple more.

We used to run a roll call spreadsheet which we asked people to fill in when ever they played, it would take literally 30 seconds to find your name and check the box. Less than half the people did it on a regular basis. I have seen some other more complicated spread sheets here on the forums, which while very useful would be a complete pain for members to fill out all the time. People are basically lazy and turning game time into a job won't motivate them. If PGI want units to continue to grow their communities they are going to have to give us the tools to do it.

I'd be happy if they could make some of this data available through an API much the same as the planetary data is, I am sure some smart cookie on these forums could work up a wonderful interface. Not sure how you would confine that info to your unit only and I guess it would let the numbers actually playing the game out of the bag, so not going to happen I suppose.

In any event the tools have to come from PGI, nothing else will be 100% accurate and when people start arguing over MC (which equates to real money ultimately) numbers are what unit leaders are going to need to justify their position.

[soaq]

+1 on this, we would love to see filters. rank, alphabetic and last online at the very least.

[Tangent253]

Yeah, for a game that is so teambased, it's guild functionality suck pretty bad.
Need lots of help here.

Maybe a dispose leader option if say a guild leader has not logged on in 6 months? STO has an option for that, and it seems to do alright.