3 replies to this topic

[Dan Nashe]

Community Warfare thoughts and questions.
1. Faction alliances.

It feels like there are too many factions for the number of players. Would it help to add historical alliances to help balance factions.

Wolf/Ghost bear (Warden Clans)
Jade Falcon/Smoke Jaguar (Crusader Clans)
Kurita/Marik/Liao
Davion/Steiner

And let people fight for allied houses. With no need for special circumstances.
Essentially reduce it to 4 factions for game balance. Do you think that would help? It would also give Marik and Liao a true clan border barring clan destruction.

Umm, I forgot FRR. They are a problem. They really shouldn't he able to attack Kurita or Steiner at this point in timeline.

Maybe we have to add a liberation mechanic? So if say Kurita takes an FRR planet from the clans, it returns to FRR control. And vice versa. Same with steiner/FRR. That also has FRR doubling as the costar faction. It's only war is with the clans. That also means Davion can help FRR by attacking via Steiner space to retake FRR worlds, and Marik/Liao can go through Kurita.

Make FRR the "fight clans only" faction. If you want to go to war with a house, play a house or clan.

Maybe allow IS/Clan Defense only outside of alliances.

2. Are mercs supposed to dominate the war, not loyalists? Or has that changed.
A year ago when I left, only mercs could hold planets and earn MC. Did they walk that back?

3. I think cyclical campaigns like WWIIONLINE may be the better model: 3-4 month campaigns.

Just a thought. This let's players mess up the inner sphere.

I don't know how this impacts future plans for mercs kingdoms/Mc.

4. I have no idea how to balance rewards.
I would rather see something like m/c per win (it has to be for a win because farming--m/c too valuable) based on opponents average w/l in community warfare than for owning planets. Changing the map should be reward enough.

Example: You get a base reward of X (capped per week or diminishing returns per add'l win?). But multiplied by opponents W/L average in c/w. So top end units have a reason to FIGHT and not avoid each other AND it doesn't become a contest of unit size/online presence.

That way if you crush some players with 1 in 5 win record, you get a lot less than if you beat someone with a 5:1 w/l. BUT, because it is based on opponents w/l there's no reason to tank your rating. (VERY important that there be 0 incentive to tank your own rating).

Obviously straight multiplication won't work, but a 50 percent to 200 percent range maybe? And you start with an assigned 1-1 history to avoid dividing by 0 problems.

5. Limiting contested planets is a good option. Makes queues faster/easier to find games. One planet per front may be enough and encourage diversity. E.G.

1-2 FRR/Warden
1-2 FRR/Crusader
1-2 Warden/Crusader
1-2 Clan (SJ/Crusader)/Kurita
1-2 Clan (Wolf/Warden)/Steiner
1-2 Marik/Steiner
1-2 Liao/Davion

At a time? You can also maybe alternate which fronts are the most active, sometimes only 1 attack, sometimes 1 defense, sometimes one of each, sometimes 2 attack or 2 Defense to vary it.

Encourage people to pick sides for fun. Declare winning and losing factions every 3 months. You don't always have to reset the map. Being in a winning faction shouldn't carry rewards though to avoid everyone joining winners.

You could also vary it up by season. Place more emphasis on clan or inner sphere fronts in different seasons.

In a civil war season, you focus on warden/Crusader and house on house action, with much less clan/IS.

6. Ideally you do something to lower FRR size so they are 1 /4 the size of all combined clans so there can be smaller clan/FRR scuffle during civil war seasons.

Honestly bonuses for less played factions/to encourage distribution.

So shifting loyalty bonuses for contracts based on population goals. If Liao contracts (or clan) pay 200 percent rasalhague, you'll see unit shifts.

This can vary by season type.

Have mercenaries follow the money!

7. Alliances don't have to be inviolate. Fed Com civil war could be fun one season. Have kurita go davion, marik and Liao "ally" steiner for those 3 months if needed. That reflects political leanings of the time.

My 2 cents. I feel that moving the map should be reward enough.

8. Allow unit challenges to affect planets.
So a premade of 12 can challenge another premade.
(Or 8 v 8, or whatever).

So Night Scorn challenges some elite davion unit. Directly.
The increased pay bonuses based on opponent w/l should help encourage it, plus pride.

Make 12 v 12s affect 2 zones on a planet. Normal group queue 1, and pugs 1/4.

Make a news feed of the 12 v 12 battles somewhere. Even a chat log. So the challenges get recorded. This adds both pride of winning, and gives you 10,100 eyes watching for win trading.

13. Allow open challenges. With the option to decline? Again newsfeed?
So Unit A says it is looking for a match.
Unit B can then offer battle.
If A refuses, that's fine, but maybe make a record?

something in game to help 12s find matches

Again increased rewards for fighting good teams may help.

Basically just a way for 12s to find matches.

Is 12 players throwing a match to farm c bills really that big of a risk especially if there's a feed to monitor possible win trading? Getting 24 people coordinated just to farm c bills almost deserves a bonus anyways for community building!

[Sandpit]

CW seasons (like you suggested with cyclical natured campaign) needs to be implemented first and foremost in my opinion. It gives players a definitive start, end, and goal. As much as players want to rail about "freedom of choice", the bottom line is an open sandbox environment like this will not work with the size of the IS map and number of players and current CW mechanics.

Then stop players from jumping sides during the season. IS or clan, no jumping back and forth period. Make joining a side of the war mean something in terms of the game universe.

Then gate CW from new players for the period of their cadet bonus. This prevents brand new players from dropping into a highly competitive CW environment before they've even had their first live match in quickplay.

Then instead of leaving attack and defense lanes to random code that still dictates to players (for anyone complaining about not wanting to be "controlled" by PGI in this regard) where they can attack and defend, manually adjust it as needed to prevent the IS map from just getting rolled up.

Run events just like Tuk periodically throughout the season with some rewards and leaderboards and such, then culminate with Tuk at the end of the season.

Rinse, repeat, prosper.

K.I.S.S.

All the complicated "solutions" and mechanics that PGI insists on implementing do nothing but continue to add to an already steep learning curve, make it more "work" and less "fun" (when you literally have to spend hours trying to organize a few players on the forums just so you can create an environment where the most common occurrence isn't a ghost drop there's something fundamentally flawed with the system)

[Davegt27]

These are good ideas but (there is always a but)

Given the time it takes to implement updates to CW/faction play I would rather have PGI work on a real in game economy

To have a game economy you need inputs and outputs or you need ways to generate money and ways to spend money

I originally suggested and introduction of new/separate money just for CW (that way it does not disrupt the current non CW monetary system)


This was a suggestion but does not have to be

The CW/faction play monetary system would a 3 tier system that is money is input to 1) Factions, 2) units, 3) players

What to spend money on is a lot more complicated

But could include

1) Jump ship travel expenses
2) Star lane access fee
3) hire/fire units and or players
4) Deep strike missions
And so on

[Sandpit]

Davegt27, on 09 February 2016 - 01:58 PM, said:

These are good ideas but (there is always a but)

Given the time it takes to implement updates to CW/faction play I would rather have PGI work on a real in game economy

To have a game economy you need inputs and outputs or you need ways to generate money and ways to spend money

I originally suggested and introduction of new/separate money just for CW (that way it does not disrupt the current non CW monetary system)


This was a suggestion but does not have to be

The CW/faction play monetary system would a 3 tier system that is money is input to 1) Factions, 2) units, 3) players

What to spend money on is a lot more complicated

But could include

1) Jump ship travel expenses
2) Star lane access fee
3) hire/fire units and or players
4) Deep strike missions
And so on

I'd love to see a real economy as well but that's just not going to happen. The community hears anything regarding "repair fees" and they immediately stop listening to anything being said and start complaining about losing cbills.