49 replies to this topic

[Sjorpha]

Willard Phule, on 08 April 2016 - 09:22 AM, said:

Every match will have "bad players" in them...that's how PGI designed this game. Since day one, it's been all about "the better you are, the more you have to carry." Buffing LRMs.....the weapon of choice for those that can't aim...will allow the new players to stand a chance against the baby seal hunters that don't use LRMs to begin with.

That still has no relevance to my suggestion about FW win conditions, if you want to suggest weapons buffs you should start a thread with that suggestion.

Please keep discussion in this thread about how to create win conditions and a strategic layer for FW, thanks.

[LordNothing]

sycocys, on 01 April 2016 - 01:46 PM, said:

I'm not against any of these ideas at all - but no amount of "meta" game for CW matters so long as the playable portion of CW is boring as f.

have to agree here. if you ignore the map, ranking, factions and all that crap that is not the actual gameplay, what you have is 2 game modes, one being one of the better modes in the game, and the other being essentially skirmish with a confusing side objective where every pug game has no fewer than 10 minutes of people arguing over what the win conditions actually are.

and counter attack was kind of hacked in because pugs were wondering why they had to attack when they chose defense.

you can do all kinds of 'big war' features like have tactical planning, planets with different value, logistics, inter-faction politics, economy, etc. but what we really want is modes, modes that are much more well involved than simply killing eachother.

[DarklightCA]

Actually Community Warfare or Faction Warfare, whatever its being called now is exactly how World of Tanks does their version which is a far more popular game than this and theirs is by far their most popular gamemode.

The only difference between Community Warfare and the World of Tank's version besides population is that World of Tank's version are all players in Clan's competing against other Clan's for territory and rewards. It's the competition of it and the player driven strategy of it that makes it great and popular.

You can add all the variations to this gamemode as you want but so long as it's dominated by solo players thinking they can play it for easy rewards without having to put any effort into it or play/work with other people to win than it's always going to have no competition and very dull gameplay.

Edited by DarklightCA, 09 April 2016 - 07:58 AM.

[Mattbat]

Sjorpha, on 01 April 2016 - 07:49 AM, said:

In other words, implement what Chromehounds did.

[Albino Boo]

I agree that there needs to be win conditions on the strategic map but I don't think it should all be the clans holding Tera. Each faction should have its own win condition, i.e Jade Falcon Clans hold Tera and Clan Wolf doesn't own x number of planets. That way you get Clan V Clan and IS v IS drops

[Narcissistic Martyr]

It'd probably make more sense to reenact various historical wars/battles (think tukkayid but with different factions/planets, etc) and change wars after a time. Those in the faction that won get a shiny. Those who lost, uh... don't get a shiny I guess.

[Sjorpha]

Albino Boo, on 09 April 2016 - 11:47 AM, said:

I agree that there needs to be win conditions on the strategic map but I don't think it should all be the clans holding Tera. Each faction should have its own win condition, i.e Jade Falcon Clans hold Tera and Clan Wolf doesn't own x number of planets. That way you get Clan V Clan and IS v IS drops

I think the details are less important than the main point, which is that a game without a win condition isn't a real game and certainly not a competitive one.

To illustrate how silly it is to think various kinds of rewards could fill this need just imagine if you took checkmate out of chess (so it couldn't be won) and replaced it with "every time you capture a piece you get a cookie". Who would take chess seriously? No one.

Imagine a competitive tournament that you can't win, would your team sign up?

Having no way to win FW is actually no less ridiculous than it would be to have to way of winning quickplay matches.

Having a win condition is the most basic necessity of any competitive game, simple as that. FW is going to need it to make any other content it may have meaningful.

It's pretty amazing to me that there is so little concern about this, a game mode released more than a year ago that you still can't win!

[xX PUG Xx]

Here's a little something I quickly threw together. Each faction has two options for victory (IS vs IS or IS/Clan vs Clan) but requires their own Capital world to be held and a territorial component, perhaps likes this

House Steiner - Hold Tharkhad and 50%> of Regional Capitals, while capturing all Clan Jade Falcon planets OR all Kuritan regional capital worlds - On achievement of conditions special event mode will be triggered.

House Davion - Hold New Avalon and 50%> of Regional Capitals, while capturing all House Kurita OR House Liao regional capital worlds - On achievement of conditions special event mode will be triggered.

Clan Ghost Bear - Hold Richmond, while capturing all FRR regional capitals or all Smoke Jaguar planets - On achievement of conditions special event mode will be triggered.

The "special event mode" can be a battle for the capital planet of the affected faction, for example Ghost Bear captures all FRR regional capitals and initiates an invasion of Rasalhague. For the duration of the event every MWO player must choose FRR or Ghost Bear, the populations of each faction would need to be monitored and policed by PGI to ensure parity.

Now the tricky thing is how to tie this into the Lore aspect of the Clan Invasion; the ultimate goal of all Clan factions was the conquest of Terra. Should Rasalhague fall to Ghost Bear this would not stop the Clan from continuing onto their ultimate goal, how would that be tied into the map and raises the question of whether to allow factions to be wiped out.

As I said, quickly thrown together and not thought through fully but it does give the basis of a "win" condition.

[Sjorpha]

I would have nothing against faction specific win conditions, but the system still needs to be sufficiently simplistic, self contained and elegant.

I'm not sure an event based system requiring manual maintenance would be a good idea in PGIs case, just look at the comstar intercepts events that were supposed to be a thing...but then didn't happen beyond the first month. I'm not sure PGI can keep a system like that going.

A third thing that I think is very important is that losing the war needs to be fun, this is central because this is an MMO concept and you can't have everyone leaving as soon as the faction is losing.

Solving the above problem was the idea behind my rebellion mechanic suggested in the OP, rebelling against an occupying power is fun and culturally established in peoples minds as a heroic position, therefore it would not seem so depressing to lose a war when you know you will become "le resistance!" if you do.

[Pugger]

I hope you don't mind... but I want to try to rally the community behind this... so I made a petition of it. You've had a moment of clarity and genius as far as I'm concerned, and this idea needs support more than any other I've read on these forums.

[Sjorpha]

Pugger, on 11 April 2016 - 11:11 AM, said:

I hope you don't mind...

Of course not, and thank you.

My only suggestion would be moving the petition to general discussion, since two threads in the FW subforum seems a bit redundant.

[Ano]

Sjorpha, I think you have some excellent ideas here for a strategic layer to FW that is sorely lacking at the moment.

Regarding mercenaries in "resistance mode"
If (for the sake of argument) we're assuming that resistance mode is effectively the government/military-in-exile trying to take back their capital world from an occupying force, rather than cancelling all Merc contracts, would it not make sense to incentivise Merc contracts by increasing rewards temporarily?

The "fluff" for this would be a desperate government calling on all available mercenaries and allies to assist them in the liberation of {wherever}. The mechanics could be some kind of automatic escalating bonus rewards for players fighting to liberate {wherever} -- with the bonus rewards, whatever form they take, increasing by small increments with each passing day/ceasefire cycle. Only mercs who hadn't taken part in the occupations of {wherever} would be eligible for these rewards,

My concern with the cancelled contract situation is that it seems very possible for factions with relatively low loyalist populations to be near-permanently occupied.

...

In any case, I like the occupation/rebellion mechanic; with some non-currency rewards in place (title: "Liberator of Luthien"; title: "Conqueror of Tharkad; temporary/permanent faction pattern unlocks for used mechs, etc) it could make a pretty compelling chunk of gameplay, and generate some interesting ingame stories/fiction.

/chapeau

[Pugger]

Ano, on 11 April 2016 - 04:02 PM, said:

My concern with the cancelled contract situation is that it seems very possible for factions with relatively low loyalist populations to be near-permanently occupied.

Ano, I think this is a good example of balancing refinement. A simple mechanic of increasing loyalty and c-bill bonuses inversely related to the strength of said faction would do well to balance strength across factions, I believe. PGI could easily analyse the trends and employ a simple incentive algorithm.

[slide]

I like some of your suggestions, even if they are just used to give a strategic level to the game. That alone would make the game more appealing.

As for the idea of a specific "Win Condition" I am not so sure that it would be in the best long term interest of the game.

If Faction A achieves win condition X then you contend that the map should be reset and we all start over. This can be as much of a disincentive as not having a win condition. If the faction that won now has nothing but a few trinkets to show for their effort, why would they want to do it over again. We already have evidence of this happening from the 2 map resets we've already had. Additionally why would the losing sides want to line up and do it all over again if nothing has changed and the same out come is likely. We have already had complaint threads about a potential Tuk3 event saying that the same result will be achieved as the first 2 so why bother.

In a single player game the win or end is decided pretty much by how much the developer wants to put into the game or when a specific story is told.

A game like MWO is by it's nature open ended (as is the BT universe), there is no specific story and for it to have a long shelf life there is no particular end. Sure you can argue that if one faction holds all the planets then they have won (a possibility in the current system for sure), but the reality is that PGI would really want to make it so that doing that is all but impossible. If the "win" condition is therefore impossible then you get the why bother syndrome again.

Having a whole bunch of goals that factions/units/players can achieve (win) is a better option, as people can then choose what they want to achieve from the game with out the game ending and resetting every so often.

You don't win at life, you achieve your goals (or not) and move onto the next one. The larger game in MWO needs to be like this.

Sadly PGI hasn't put anything like this or your suggestion in the game, that I feel is the larger issue with MWO. Grind without purpose.

[xMEPHISTOx]

Mechwarrior6188, on 09 April 2016 - 10:41 AM, said:

In other words, implement what Chromehounds did.

meh, I personally would rather see them model it after the cw's in wot...but anyhow wont matter much either way as pgi will not do so much as all that to stray from the path theyre on presently.

[MechWarrior4023212]

Considering the size of the start areas for clans then losing home world is unfair!

[Sjorpha]

Ano, on 11 April 2016 - 04:02 PM, said:

Sjorpha, I think you have some excellent ideas here for a strategic layer to FW that is sorely lacking at the moment.

Thanks.

Quote

Regarding mercenaries in "resistance mode"


If (for the sake of argument) we're assuming that resistance mode is effectively the government/military-in-exile trying to take back their capital world from an occupying force, rather than cancelling all Merc contracts, would it not make sense to incentivise Merc contracts by increasing rewards temporarily?

The "fluff" for this would be a desperate government calling on all available mercenaries and allies to assist them in the liberation of {wherever}. The mechanics could be some kind of automatic escalating bonus rewards for players fighting to liberate {wherever} -- with the bonus rewards, whatever form they take, increasing by small increments with each passing day/ceasefire cycle. Only mercs who hadn't taken part in the occupations of {wherever} would be eligible for these rewards,

My concern with the cancelled contract situation is that it seems very possible for factions with relatively low loyalist populations to be near-permanently occupied.

I understand this concern, but in my opinion, the idea of increasing resources for losing/occupied factions is completely backwards.

It's superficially appealing to "balance" populations this way but the problem is that it punishes winning and rewards losing, a breach of competitive logic which is ultimately much more demoralizing than losing itself.

Instead of rewarding losing (in fact, losing should be punished with a decrease of resources!), you have to make the underdog position fun and interesting in itself. Not everyone has to like it, but enough people do, and those are the types that will sign loyalist contracts in the first place. (The FRR hub was founded on the backs of players with this kind of "resistance" mentality during CW phase 1 when the FRR was constantly defending it's last few planets, which should prove that being in such a position can be very rewarding and fun)

You also have to consider that a faction in resistance will use all of it's resources to fight for a single planet, the capital, while the occupying faction has to both keep fighting all of it's other fronts as well as trying to defend the occupied capital against the rebellion.

If the occupied faction kept all of the mercs it would be way to easy to take back the capital, it would destroy the concept because it would remove the underdog feel of being in resistance, removing the challenge and making it far less rewarding.

Quote

In any case, I like the occupation/rebellion mechanic; with some non-currency rewards in place (title: "Liberator of Luthien"; title: "Conqueror of Tharkad; temporary/permanent faction pattern unlocks for used mechs, etc) it could make a pretty compelling chunk of gameplay, and generate some interesting ingame stories/fiction.

Yup, lots of potential for roleplaying and fleshing out with dedicated gamemodes, maps and special rewards.

slide, on 11 April 2016 - 06:45 PM, said:

I like some of your suggestions, even if they are just used to give a strategic level to the game. That alone would make the game more appealing.

As for the idea of a specific "Win Condition" I am not so sure that it would be in the best long term interest of the game.

If Faction A achieves win condition X then you contend that the map should be reset and we all start over. This can be as much of a disincentive as not having a win condition. If the faction that won now has nothing but a few trinkets to show for their effort, why would they want to do it over again. We already have evidence of this happening from the 2 map resets we've already had. Additionally why would the losing sides want to line up and do it all over again if nothing has changed and the same out come is likely. We have already had complaint threads about a potential Tuk3 event saying that the same result will be achieved as the first 2 so why bother.

...

You don't win at life, you achieve your goals (or not) and move onto the next one. The larger game in MWO needs to be like this.

You and I have a different relation to gaming that I think might be incompatible. Life simulation type games are, in my opinion, not very interesting. They can be interesting conceptually, but I'm not inclined to play them in most cases.

I'm competitively minded when it comes to gaming, and to say "what is the point of winning in this game?" makes no sense from a competitive perspective. Winning is THE point, or more accurately competing is the point and the win condition is what enables competition in the first place.

The map resets up to this point have been meaningless and demoralizing precisely BECAUSE they didn't follow from a victory/loss conclusion.

What happened was that all the effort everyone put into the game was arbitrarily wiped out and then the score was "settled" in events completely unrelated to the war previously fought on the map. This is a good example of how to surgically remove all meaning from a game for competitively minded players. In fact it is as if a competitive tournament would ignore all the results up until the finals and then randomly assign two teams to fight for 1st place, the whole tournament up until then would be meaningless.

To reset a game after winning or losing it is a completely different thing, this happens in every game and it doesn't remove any of the meaning because you have had your competition+win or loss and are now ready to try again. Think of any game ever, play a game of magic the gathering or chess or settlers or CS:GO, you play, you try to win which leads to intense and fun competition, you win or lose, you get energy from the fun competition you had and are now ready to try again and improve. Obviously you reset the board between each game, and everyone is ok with that because the game was properly concluded in the minds of both winners and losers.

I want to stress that this logic holds true for most casual players as well, for most people the thrill of competition is central to the fun being had even while you are roleplaying or testing fun builds or what. You don't have to play in tryhard mode in order to enjoy copetitiove game design, whether you are aware of this reason behind you fun is another matter.

Ember Stormfield, on 12 April 2016 - 12:17 AM, said:

Considering the size of the start areas for clans then losing home world is unfair!

Yes, that discrepancy is why I deliberately designed the victory condition to be easier for the clans, they only have to temporarily occupy 2 IS factions to open up terra. The IS has to occupy 3 clan factions at once.

It's only a suggestion though, you could unbalance the VC a bit more if the planet advantage of the IS is still too big.

Edited by Sjorpha, 12 April 2016 - 01:14 AM.

[Ano]

Sjorpha, on 12 April 2016 - 01:00 AM, said:

I understand this concern, but in my opinion, the idea of increasing resources for losing/occupied factions is completely backwards.

It's superficially appealing to "balance" populations this way but the problem is that it punishes winning and rewards losing, a breach of competitive logic which is ultimately much more demoralizing than losing itself.

Instead of rewarding losing (in fact, losing should be punished with a decrease of resources!), you have to make the underdog position fun and interesting in itself. Not everyone has to like it, but enough people do, and those are the types that will sign loyalist contracts in the first place. (The FRR hub was founded on the backs of players with this kind of "resistance" mentality during CW phase 1 when the FRR was constantly defending it's last few planets, which should prove that being in such a position can be very rewarding and fun)

You also have to consider that a faction in resistance will use all of it's resources to fight for a single planet, the capital, while the occupying faction has to both keep fighting all of it's other fronts as well as trying to defend the occupied capital against the rebellion.

If the occupied faction kept all of the mercs it would be way to easy to take back the capital, it would destroy the concept because it would remove the underdog feel of being in resistance, removing the challenge and making it far less rewarding.

A fair point, but I still think there's a real danger that factions with little-to-no loyalist presence could become permanently occupied territories, which would ultimately be just as damaging as the 'no consequence' position we're in now. Perhaps a phased approach to the occupation/rebellion mechanic would still be relatively simple, and achieve both goals.

Immediately after capitol world is captured:
Merc contracts are cancelled, and the occupy/recapture rules come into effect. Loyalists have {period of time} to recapture their world. If they succeed within the time limit, their hiring abilities are restored and they get some kind of acknowledgement: this could be personal (monetary rewards; titles; decals; etc) and/or faction enhancing*.

*I'm not entirely sure how the mechanics of factions hiring merc units will work (does it cost money? Is it paid for by loyalist units, or our of a faction 'bank account'?), but perhaps some increased "ability" to hire mercs for a short period of time, whether via a reduction in cost to the unit/faction or a boost to merc rewards for units.

If the capitol world is not retaken within {period of time}
Then my original suggestion is activated (merc hiring privileges restored; bonuses for merc groups who aid in the liberation, etc) BUT with some negative consequence for the loyalists. It's tricky to know what these should be: Reducing earnings is easy, but not likely to be popular; restricting how/where faction-aligned players/units can fight (fluff: must retake these critical planets!) could be interesting or crippling; limited-time negative stigma (enforced title: 'The dishonoured of {faction}; defaced unit patch decals etc) might also irritate some, although I personally think it'd be quite fun.

[Sjorpha]

Ano, on 12 April 2016 - 03:46 AM, said:

A fair point, but I still think there's a real danger that factions with little-to-no loyalist presence could become permanently occupied territories, which would ultimately be just as damaging as the 'no consequence' position we're in now. Perhaps a phased approach to the occupation/rebellion mechanic would still be relatively simple, and achieve both goals.

Immediately after capitol world is captured:
Merc contracts are cancelled, and the occupy/recapture rules come into effect. Loyalists have {period of time} to recapture their world. If they succeed within the time limit, their hiring abilities are restored and they get some kind of acknowledgement: this could be personal (monetary rewards; titles; decals; etc) and/or faction enhancing*.

*I'm not entirely sure how the mechanics of factions hiring merc units will work (does it cost money? Is it paid for by loyalist units, or our of a faction 'bank account'?), but perhaps some increased "ability" to hire mercs for a short period of time, whether via a reduction in cost to the unit/faction or a boost to merc rewards for units.

If the capitol world is not retaken within {period of time}
Then my original suggestion is activated (merc hiring privileges restored; bonuses for merc groups who aid in the liberation, etc) BUT with some negative consequence for the loyalists. It's tricky to know what these should be: Reducing earnings is easy, but not likely to be popular; restricting how/where faction-aligned players/units can fight (fluff: must retake these critical planets!) could be interesting or crippling; limited-time negative stigma (enforced title: 'The dishonoured of {faction}; defaced unit patch decals etc) might also irritate some, although I personally think it'd be quite fun.

I thought about this for a bit, it seems to me we have two potential problems here.

The first is the one you point out follows from my initial suggestion, the risk of a faction being perpetually under occupation.

The second problem is the one I point out as a problem with allowing mercs in occupied factions, the risk of the occupied factions being overpopulated compared to their occupiers.

It seems to me that a pretty elegant solution would be to have resistance mode be without counter attacks and progress is not reset by ceasefires, but the number of territories would be quite high. That way the rebels would be either making progress or be halted, a strong occupying faction could keep them back longer, but sooner or later the rebellion would succeed in taking back the capital.

This solves both of the problems and allows us to keep resistance a loyalist specific thing (though obviously mercs would play the mode as defenders of occupied capitals), which I think is nice because we need gameplay distinction between mercs and loyalists.

Edited by Sjorpha, 12 April 2016 - 06:51 AM.

[Ano]

Sjorpha, on 12 April 2016 - 06:45 AM, said:

I thought about this for a bit, it seems to me we have two potential problems here.

The first is the one you point out follows from my initial suggestion, the risk of a faction being perpetually under occupation.

The second problem is the one I point out as a problem with allowing mercs in occupied factions, the risk of the occupied factions being overpopulated compared to their occupiers.

It seems to me that a pretty elegant solution would be to have resistance mode be without counter attacks and progress is not reset by ceasefires, but the number of territories would be quite high. That way the rebels would be either making progress or be halted, a strong occupying faction could keep them back longer, but sooner or later the rebellion would succeed in taking back the capital.

This solves both of the problems and allows us to keep resistance a loyalist specific thing (though obviously mercs would play the mode as defenders of occupied capitals), which I think is nice because we need gameplay distinction between mercs and loyalists.

Hm. That's quite clever, actually.

I hadn't really factored in fact that this is essentially a "reward" for loyalists: they get to play the "rebellion" side of the occupation mechanic, which you'd only be able to do as a loyalist. Which beats the crap out of "you get a few extra LPs and ... er ... {cough}".

I'm convinced.