76 replies to this topic

[MischiefSC]

Kin3ticX, on 27 February 2016 - 01:11 PM, said:

whats the point of having 500 inactive players in your unit

if unit leaders are dying for some logistics then they should have to manage their rosters with more care than invite anyone and keep them forever

Depends on the group. All the 22AL folks are buds of mine. We've go ex-members who still swing by and we play together. Play games other than MWO too. Sometimes life stuff comes up and people are gone for a while.

Doesn't mean they're not friends anymore. I wouldn't be cool with booting them.

[Kin3ticX]

MischiefSC, on 27 February 2016 - 02:31 PM, said:

Depends on the group. All the 22AL folks are buds of mine. We've go ex-members who still swing by and we play together. Play games other than MWO too. Sometimes life stuff comes up and people are gone for a while.

Doesn't mean they're not friends anymore. I wouldn't be cool with booting them.

just invite them back when they come back

-MS- does this all the time without issue and no hard feelings that I am aware of



no team is immune to the constant drag of player turnover

Edited by Kin3ticX, 27 February 2016 - 02:47 PM.

[MischiefSC]

Kin3ticX, on 27 February 2016 - 02:46 PM, said:

just invite them back when they come back

-MS- does this all the time without issue and no hard feelings that I am aware of



no team is immune to the constant drag of player turnover

Admittedly we're about 35 players with maybe 12 active at a time. I get what you mean but.... why bother? Why does it matter how many inactive players have an MS tag? The only thing that should matter is active CW players, as in total drops.

[Kin3ticX]

MischiefSC, on 27 February 2016 - 02:59 PM, said:

Admittedly we're about 35 players with maybe 12 active at a time. I get what you mean but.... why bother? Why does it matter how many inactive players have an MS tag? The only thing that should matter is active CW players, as in total drops.

I don't know why the cap is 512 or when exactly PGI added it but it seems like one hell of an afterthought half *** number.

Can we agree that 512 is too high a number? I think its pretty much irrelevant to squabble over active vs inactive. This is a beta and dials are supposed to be adjusted and afaik the unit cap has never been changed while other things ahve at some point. We should consider 384 or 256 for starters but I could see it easily as low as 128.

We shouldnt want the mode to be a in state where one unit can hop borders and double the size of any given faction instantly (regardless of active or nominal). Hard alliances to consolidate pools and dynamic faction rewards can help. We should also want to rein in on power block potential incrementally. People can talk/RP and create power blocks, but just not under 1 tag like right now. Should there be unit/faction leaderboards in the future, we want to try to get rid of some of the stigma that X or Y unit will just autowin it so why bother.

Edited by Kin3ticX, 27 February 2016 - 03:23 PM.

[DarklightCA]

Kin3ticX, on 27 February 2016 - 01:11 PM, said:

whats the point of having 500 inactive players in your unit

if unit leaders are dying for some logistics then they should have to manage their rosters with more care than invite anyone and keep them forever

Perhaps because those players don't deserve to be ditched just because they went took a break from the game?

Edited by DarklightCA, 27 February 2016 - 03:50 PM.

[Gruinhardt]

Kin3ticX, on 27 February 2016 - 03:14 PM, said:

I don't know why the cap is 512 or when exactly PGI added it but it seems like one hell of an afterthought half *** number.
y
Can we agree that 512 is too high a number? I think its pretty much irrelevant to squabble over active vs inactive. This is a beta and dials are supposed to be adjusted and afaik the unit cap has never been changed while other things ahve at some point. We should consider 384 or 256 for starters but I could see it easily as low as 128.

We shouldnt want the mode to be a in state where one unit can hop borders and double the size of any given faction instantly (regardless of active or nominal). Hard alliances to consolidate pools and dynamic faction rewards can help. We should also want to rein in on power block potential incrementally. People can talk/RP and create power blocks, but just not under 1 tag like right now. Should there be unit/faction leaderboards in the future, we want to try to get rid of some of the stigma that X or Y unit will just autowin it so why bother.

I thought you were in MS, and if so, are you not part of your own problem? Don't take this the wrong way, I like MS. I am just trying to figure out what your looking for.
As for SWOL, I know we have problem with in-actives. It's what happens when you have a super casual unit and no restrictions for membership. Can't keep telling people "join a unit" and not have units willing to accept regardless of skill or participation level.

Edited by Gruinhardt, 27 February 2016 - 04:11 PM.

[Khereg]

Gruinhardt, on 27 February 2016 - 04:10 PM, said:

I thought you were in MS, and if so, are you not part of your own problem? Don't take this the wrong way, I like MS. I am just trying to figure out what your looking for.

He is, and it goes to show that -MS- does t operate as some monolithic block of influence in the game. Different folks have different ideas and that's all ok.

One thing that makes member management tough is figuring out who is active and who isn't. We need a few things in the UI to help:

*. A better sort to find specific members (alphabetical would be fine)
*. A member search function would be even better
*. Date of last login
*. Ability to select multiple members to take action, like set rank, or remove from unit

Basic data management stuff.

[Asaru]

The way I'm currently managing my in game unit list is, if a pilot has not played in two months strait then I remove them from the list. However they still maintain their member status and rank on our website and TS3. If they come back and start playing again I add them back to the in game unit list.

This way while my website has all pilots that are members of the unit, even the one's that are taking breaks or other real life issues. The in game roster has only the currently active pilots. This has been working well for me.

Edited by Asaru, 28 February 2016 - 12:09 PM.

[vocifer]

I think we should look at the origins of a problem here and not try to treat the symptomps. Get read of the cause and the symptoms will be gone by themselves.

512 looks high enough compared to 612 players in Liao, but it's ok when we look at the total number of ~14.5k ACTIVE players.

10 factions is too much for that kind of a game and in general, the more you spread the population, the more imbalance you'll get. Think of it: if we lower the unit size cap to 64 or even 32, will it give any incentives to play for Liao?

But when we look at Tukayyid event as a battle of two sides of conflict (not 10), it appears a lot more valid in terms of population spread. But still not perfect IMO.

The simple rule of physics says that a chair with 3 legs will stand still on any surface. Take one leg away and it will fall, add one leg instead and you'll need some paper to make it stand still, the more legs you add - the more trouble you get.
Make a gamplay with only 3 sides of conflict and it will balance itself and won't have that Tukayyid problem with IS queue waiting time. And then we can start a discussion about whether 512 is too large compared to 5k faction size.

[Sandpit]

Necromantion, on 26 February 2016 - 05:59 PM, said:

If they advanced the timeline

ok
can we PLEASE put the whole "timeline" talk to rest now? Russ even specifically stated at the townhall, there is no timeline.

[Kin3ticX]

vocifer, on 28 February 2016 - 06:52 AM, said:

I think we should look at the origins of a problem here and not try to treat the symptomps. Get read of the cause and the symptoms will be gone by themselves.

512 looks high enough compared to 612 players in Liao, but it's ok when we look at the total number of ~14.5k ACTIVE players.

10 factions is too much for that kind of a game and in general, the more you spread the population, the more imbalance you'll get. Think of it: if we lower the unit size cap to 64 or even 32, will it give any incentives to play for Liao?

But when we look at Tukayyid event as a battle of two sides of conflict (not 10), it appears a lot more valid in terms of population spread. But still not perfect IMO.

The simple rule of physics says that a chair with 3 legs will stand still on any surface. Take one leg away and it will fall, add one leg instead and you'll need some paper to make it stand still, the more legs you add - the more trouble you get.
Make a gamplay with only 3 sides of conflict and it will balance itself and won't have that Tukayyid problem with IS queue waiting time. And then we can start a discussion about whether 512 is too large compared to 5k faction size.

PGI seems unwilling to do anything to the factions

I tweeted Russ about it months ago and he gave me a snarky remark to the tune of "so who loses the faction first"

[Sandpit]

Kin3ticX, on 29 February 2016 - 06:47 PM, said:

PGI seems unwilling to do anything to the factions

I tweeted Russ about it months ago and he gave me a snarky remark to the tune of "so who loses the faction first"

Russ is great at that snarky attitude when you say something he doesn't like but expects others to treat him with the utmost respect. We got into it on Twitter here recently over that.

[vocifer]

Kin3ticX, on 29 February 2016 - 06:47 PM, said:

PGI seems unwilling to do anything to the factions

Well, they still might have some approach on balancing factions.
As far as I can see from this part of video, PGI are preparing some more complicated relationship mechanism. But this is the hard way they go, as usual. Can't say more untill live and tested in mass.

[MadcatX]

Isn't it a bit too late for a lower unit cap change? An existing unit over any newer cap # could simply split into two or more smaller units but still be coordinate to all be in the same faction, etc.

[NextGame]

faction cap what factions a player/unit can switch to based on # unique active players in last 30 days per faction (figure includes active cw players who have moved to that faction from another faction), with a minimum of 1 clan and 1 IS faction being possible for the player/unit to join.

The more active your unit is in CW, the more limited your options would be, as your unit movement would throw out the game balance more significantly for factions with higher population, meaning that the largest most CW active units would be spread around factions by the game to balance things out.

Bearing this in mind, its not clear how things will work for "mercenaries" and "lone wolves" in CW3, and it might not be appropriate to put any caps in place depending on the mechanics.

Edited by NextGame, 01 March 2016 - 07:50 AM.

[Sandpit]

MadcatX, on 01 March 2016 - 02:12 AM, said:

Isn't it a bit too late for a lower unit cap change? An existing unit over any newer cap # could simply split into two or more smaller units but still be coordinate to all be in the same faction, etc.

Well the other side to that

After 3-4 years a player who has donated to a website, unit, community, etc. should be expected to have to be ejected from that unit because they're now over their limit?

[MadcatX]

Sandpit, on 01 March 2016 - 10:03 AM, said:

Well the other side to that

After 3-4 years a player who has donated to a website, unit, community, etc. should be expected to have to be ejected from that unit because they're now over their limit?

What I was more getting at is more how a large unit (I'll us MS as an example), if forced to split, could split into MS1 & MS2, both still use the same website/TS as a workaround and if there's a faction cap, both land in the same low-population faction and there's not a darn thing PGI could do about it since in almost every other game I've played where a lower unit cap was implemented, the above scenario would happen and rarely would the devs step in and say "These two units arn't allowed to play on the same side!". A unit cap would ultimately solve nothing other then being a huge pain for the bigger units.

Basically I agree with you, splitting a unit will ultimately not accomplish the desired effect that PGI wants as well as it would anger the units forced to split.

[Sandpit]

MadcatX, on 01 March 2016 - 02:13 PM, said:

What I was more getting at is more how a large unit (I'll us MS as an example), if forced to split, could split into MS1 & MS2, both still use the same website/TS as a workaround and if there's a faction cap, both land in the same low-population faction and there's not a darn thing PGI could do about it since in almost every other game I've played where a lower unit cap was implemented, the above scenario would happen and rarely would the devs step in and say "These two units arn't allowed to play on the same side!". A unit cap would ultimately solve nothing other then being a huge pain for the bigger units.

Basically I agree with you, splitting a unit will ultimately not accomplish the desired effect that PGI wants as well as it would anger the units forced to split.

agreed, I've said the same thing

All they'll do is split into sub-units and stick with the same command echelon

[Kin3ticX]

Sandpit, on 01 March 2016 - 08:14 PM, said:

agreed, I've said the same thing

All they'll do is split into sub-units and stick with the same command echelon

Making megaunit A, B, C is not as simple as a workaround as people make it out to be..

..its a political headache for one

I don't want to stop people from collaborating to make movement happen on the map though.

However, for planet tagging, events, leaderboards, etc, removing the stigma that megaunit fill in the blank is just going to autowin is negated by forcing units which shadow each other to also compete in some fashion

Edited by Kin3ticX, 01 March 2016 - 09:18 PM.

[vocifer]

Kin3ticX, on 01 March 2016 - 09:18 PM, said:

Making megaunit A, B, C is not as simple as a workaround as people make it out to be..

..its a political headache for one

I don't want to stop people from collaborating to make movement happen on the map though.

However, for planet tagging, events, leaderboards, etc, removing the stigma that megaunit fill in the blank is just going to autowin is negated by forcing units which shadow each other to also compete in some fashion

I don't really like the way how planet tagging and events are currently designed. Both are won with having the most manhours that unit can give.
Currently we have autowin for big units. If we lower the unit cap - we'll shift the meta towards "nolifers" and "tryhards".

Here's an idea:
If you want any unit to have a chance for taging a planet, limit the ownage to one planet at a period of time. Let's say, unit A has tagged planet A234, and they are now settled there for X days and gain resources from it. The bigger the unit - the faster it will empty that resource bank.
While being settled, unit A can go flip another planet, but won't put a tag on it - the tag will go to unit B, which was the second most active unit. But unit A will still have a motivation to flip the next planet without tagging it - just for pushing the frontline and securing the one with their tag on it. Stuff like that...

As for events and leaderboards, why not make them skill based? It has been discussed hundreds of times already.

Edited by vocifer, 02 March 2016 - 12:03 AM.