58 replies to this topic

[DarklightCA]

vocifer, on 13 April 2016 - 06:29 AM, said:

I guess, we are not talking about the territory balance here, but the population balance.

I guess it's too much work to look at the post I was replying to and apply the context.

[KinLuu]

DarklightCA, on 13 April 2016 - 06:49 AM, said:

I guess it's too much work to look at the post I was replying to and apply the context.

You must be new to the internet.

[vocifer]

DarklightCA, on 13 April 2016 - 06:49 AM, said:

I guess it's too much work to look at the post I was replying to and apply the context.

Agree, I've got you wrong.

[QueenBlade]

Another thing you forget with Terrority balance is that ANY Inner Sphere player can drop to defend ANY Inner Sphere planet from a Clan attack. So technically if you want to try and go the route of territory imbalance with regards to FRR against multiple Clans...

IS population (Dec 2015): 8015 (54%)
Clan population (Dec 2015): 6759 (46%)

Players drop on Clan vs IS planets simple because the drops are faster. But if the population was balanced between the factions, there would be battles everywhere. Simple because the slots on a Planet's queue would be filled, as shown earlier on page 2.

[QueenBlade]

Now this means that 1 attacking Clan against IS can be defended against by 54% of the entire Community Warfare population, and 1 attacking IS against Clan can be defended by 46% of the other half of the CW population.
Or in other words, 1 attacking Clan faction and be defended against by 6 defending IS factions or 1 attacking IS faction can be defended by 4 Clan factions.

Honestly I wish this was also tweaked where only bordering factions could defense / assist in attacking when it came to IS vs Clan to even out the available forces.

[KinLuu]

QueenBlade, on 13 April 2016 - 02:42 PM, said:

Honestly I wish this was also tweaked where only bordering factions could defense / assist in attacking when it came to IS vs Clan to even out the available forces.

But then we might get at the point, where CW games do not happen at all.

/e: Especially during off-peak hours, or at unpopular faction borders.

Edited by KinLuu, 13 April 2016 - 10:18 PM.

[vocifer]

QueenBlade, on 13 April 2016 - 02:42 PM, said:

Now this means that 1 attacking Clan against IS can be defended against by 54% of the entire Community Warfare population, and 1 attacking IS against Clan can be defended by 46% of the other half of the CW population.
Or in other words, 1 attacking Clan faction and be defended against by 6 defending IS factions or 1 attacking IS faction can be defended by 4 Clan factions.

This is a band-aid against lower population issue. We can't remove it even partially as KinLuu points out, but we can go another way:
Make 3-4 alliances and allow both attack and defense queues to mix within those alliances. If I'm not wrong, this doesn't even contradict to the Lore as Davion/Steiner alliance was mixing pilots too.

QueenBlade, on 13 April 2016 - 02:42 PM, said:

Honestly I wish this was also tweaked where only bordering factions could defense / assist in attacking when it came to IS vs Clan to even out the available forces.

If I'm getting you right, that will be a gravestone for Liao.

[xX PUG Xx]

There is already a precedent for alliances between certain IS factions (Kurita/Liao/Marik and Steiner/Davion, sorry FRR yer on yer own ), however I would be against limiting where FW players can defend unless the population was much higher. It would put an artificial strain on an already underpopulated gamemode.

[Akillius]

Banditman, on 12 April 2016 - 01:46 PM, said:

That's not what is being suggested

Thanks for the allocution, but fair enough, I admit skipping over the preceding line "isn't denying anybody their favorite faction" and I've since edited my original post with correction.

UberStuka, on 12 April 2016 - 03:28 PM, said:

also PGI tried the increase rewards for low population factions..... all of the mercs would swap for 1-2 weeks and reap the rewards

Mercs still sign up for 1-2 weeks, so only give cbills and xp as rewards (cw only) to players that didn't permanently sign up with a low population faction. Loyalists also get the additional reward (cw only) for loyalty in low populations. Increase the cost and cool down time to break loyalty. After contract expiry Mercs that consecutively signup with same faction in 20hrs (or less) would get some small extra reward percentage including loyalty, maybe 1% bonus. Yet include a way to check populations daily.

If all factions get roughly equal populations ~+/-10% then all factions get the low population rewards with an extra 2.5% for all 3 reward types and that'd give us all something to aim for.
And player is not counted in population if not logged in, or perhaps if they haven't played cw in ~72 hours???

I'd imagine the rewards-incentive (cw only) alone could likely flatten out the populations without anything more complicated.

Edited by Akillius, 14 April 2016 - 09:28 AM.

[hybrid black]

There won't be balance when you people care more about garbage RP then the game

Edited by hybrid black, 14 April 2016 - 10:26 AM.

[Kin3ticX]

Yeah we bring this up all the time

In the form of

10 factions is too many factions and that there are too many fronts to self sustain enough hot spots on the map.

For other CW issues, PGI has been straight up ignoring them. (overpowered Dropships, MPB bad design, and more)

During the town hall, Russ said that any combat issues simply could not be worked on until after phase 3.



Here is what was given to PGI/NGNG for the town hall:

CW

• Progress on CW Phase 3
  
• Separation of solo and group players in CW
  
• Ability for play IS vs IS in CW with factions alliances (for example: Steiner+Davion, Marik+Liao, Kurita+FRR)
  
• Dropship firepower changes?
  
• Discouraging Spawn camping. Add more requirements to defenders in counter-attack. The defenders (of the MPB) should be obligated to fight if they hide and let the attackers destroy the MPB without contest.
  
• Turret drops protecting undefended planets are a waste of time
  
• There are too many factions for the current population. Unsustainable points of conflict. Population is spread too thin across the engagement borders.
  
• Thoughts of adding more depth to mech and dropdeck selection? Perhaps giving a team-wide tonnage limit and allowing players to use more/less tonnage for their dropdeck. For example a light pilot might want 4 light mechs and an assault pilot might want 4 assault mechs.
  
• Thoughts of discouraging spamming several of the same mechs in CW dropdecks.
  
• Any plans for faction specific items, modules, etc for faction loyalty progression rewards? Giving players a reason to play for a specific factions.
  
• Please add a lot more value to Faction Loyalists

Russ mostly talked about phase 3 but not other issues.



I also posted this or something like this a few times,


-Overpowered dropships and spawn hiding (and getting somehow shot by them while not even spawn killing ). Can dropships not shoot 12 ERLL or whatever the heck it is?

-MPB on counter attack mode doesn't in any way compel the defender to leave spawn which forces the attacker to eat 12 mechs+ 36 ERLLs

On a tie with the MPB destroyed the defender wins . If the defender allows the attacker to walk right in and blow the MPB due to spawn hiding, they should then be obligated to leave their spawn or lose the match.

-Turret Drops are protecting undefended planets by killing groups after 2-3 repeats. Also, the addition of killing dropship beacons makes matters much worse. Basically a waste. Not even Mercstar dares to regularly quarrel with turret drops (unless its a one-off thought to open an attack lane or something like that really important)

-Too many factions for the current population - lack of self sustaining hot spots in the south and other areas and this ties in with turret drops. Even if someone came up with an elaborate plot to have Laio take over the Galaxy, turret drops would stop it dead cold before it ever started.

-Tinkering with +tonnage really means more Heavys rather than +Assaults, Mediums, & Lights. People want to have dupes and many spent real $$$ doing it, but perhaps 3-4 of the same class level, 'mech level, or variant level could be debated and adjusted?

Edited by Kin3ticX, 14 April 2016 - 11:21 AM.

[QueenBlade]

I've seen your post, and I've been keeping up with your CW table talks. I however believe that 10 factions is okay still, especially since with your post of the population numbers of Dec 2015, you can (using my idea) nearly fill every active planet.

[mp00]

With some balancing on unit/population movement (i.e.. limiting big swings to clans or IS all at once), adding some incentives (have defending and attacking planets give different but desired rewards) and people checking out what is new for this phase (the new novelty) the population should increase.

This should help decrease SOME of the issues like turret drops and faction populations but more to the point will it be enough to maintain player interest and actually get down towards the warfare many want?

[DarklightCA]

I do like the sound of alliances as a means of combining populations, especially if Queenblades idea is also implemented. If that don't help people get faster games than I am not sure what would.

[Deathlike]

Some thought into "dropship balancing" here..

I'm thinking that depending on the score, the dropship's firepower needs to be lowered in certain limited circumstances...

1) If your team is ahead score-wise (your opponent has died more than you have), the firepower of the ERLL is dropped in favor of using Medium Lasers for that team's side. There may need to be some wiggle room (like maybe a 4 kill/death lead), but for the most part, this should mitigate the "camping" of your own dropzone when you have a lead.

I do see suicides to trigger the dropships and alter the score being a thing, but that would probably be better than what we have now..

2) The alternative is to actually not allow the dropships to fire in your dropzone unless fire is being traded from the opfor (it doesn't matter whether the shots hits or not - it's that it is being fired within the "dropship dropoff radius"). This means trigger discipline for the opfor is necessary for those near/close to the dropzones. Since we have "proof of concept" code for Domination (the timer stops when people are shooting each other). As long as the dropships hang out long enough so that a player in an Assault can turn in the proper direction, this allows the closest version "fair play" before fighting around the drop zone can occur.

Edit:
Just rethinking after the fact, the team that is in their dropship dropzone may also need not fire as well or get no support from the dropship. We know what focus fire can do... especially when the dropship is generally considered "the MVP" of CW.

Edited by Deathlike, 14 April 2016 - 04:15 PM.

[Kin3ticX]

QueenBlade, on 14 April 2016 - 11:40 AM, said:

I've seen your post, and I've been keeping up with your CW table talks. I however believe that 10 factions is okay still, especially since with your post of the population numbers of Dec 2015, you can (using my idea) nearly fill every active planet.

Forgive me for being skeptical about dynamic rewards, but PGI tried that stuff manually in early phase 2 and then gave up and it went static for months. Pretty sure our current faction rewards have been this way since October(despite Laio and Marik having like 600 players). The reward tables before that were in place since May. This also brings up another small issue and that is its not differentiating from active an inactive players. Maybe this is a phase 3 feature?

Just from PGI's behavior with rewards, I gather they discovered rewards don't seem to work very well at regulating population so they just straight up gave up. I don't know all the reasons for this, but a big one might be all the people that heavily RP for their faction and will never switch for any reason. I could be wrong about that, but I dont think I am wrong about CW players just being insensitive to past reward changes. I mean, big swings in rewards would probably work like a champ, but I don't think we ever got that did we?


If people are worried about eating turret drops more than rewards, the manual or even dynamic movement in rewards on the scale PGI has done in the past might not convince anyone to chase them.

Edited by Kin3ticX, 14 April 2016 - 03:01 PM.

[Adamski]

Kin3ticX, on 14 April 2016 - 02:59 PM, said:

Forgive me for being skeptical about dynamic rewards, but PGI tried that stuff manually in early phase 2 and then gave up and it went static for months. Pretty sure our current faction rewards have been this way since October(despite Laio and Marik having like 600 players). The reward tables before that were in place since May. This also brings up another small issue and that is its not differentiating from active an inactive players. Maybe this is a phase 3 feature?

Just from PGI's behavior with rewards, I gather they discovered rewards don't seem to work very well at regulating population so they just straight up gave up. I don't know all the reasons for this, but a big one might all the people that heavily RP for their faction and will never switch for any reason. I could be wrong about that, but I dont think I am wrong about CW players just being insensitive to changes in rewards on the scale. I mean, big swings in rewards would probably work like a champ, but I don't think we ever got that did we?


If people are worried about eating turret drops more than rewards, the manual or even dynamic movement in rewards on the scale PGI has done in the past might not convince anyone to chase them.

There are a couple of problems with using boosted rewards as incentive.

1.) Loyalists do not want to change
2.) Mercs may or may not want to follow the change to continue their mechbay tours
3.) Timing: The longer between reward bonus updates, the less effective at promoting moves. Contract cooldown / penalty discourages moving
4.) Players don't have access to the information that encourages the bonuses, so they cannot properly plan out their moves

Those are all fairly easy to solve:
1.) Provide players with a constantly updated chart & history of where the FW players are dropping, and who they are representing. This can be in absolute numbers (ie: 24 players from FWL, 36 from FRR, etc), or proportional (ie: 10% of players were FWL, 15% were FRR, etc). Provide a history of the last 7 days, so players know where they can find battles.

2.) Then update the bonuses each week depending on total faction participation in FW.

3.) Remove the current Loyalty Point rewards, and instead have the Achievements be for strictly the Rank / Title, then implement LP as a currency for a second store that has a limited inventory for each individual player. (ie: 10 mechbays for 200 LP, another 10 are available for 2,500 LP, etc)

4.) Remove the contract break cooldown, or reduce it from 72 hours down to 4.

Edited by Adamski, 14 April 2016 - 03:11 PM.

[Deathlike]

Kin3ticX, on 14 April 2016 - 02:59 PM, said:

Forgive me for being skeptical about dynamic rewards, but PGI tried that stuff manually in early phase 2 and then gave up and it went static for months. Pretty sure our current faction rewards have been this way since October(despite Laio and Marik having like 600 players). The reward tables before that were in place since May. This also brings up another small issue and that is its not differentiating from active an inactive players. Maybe this is a phase 3 feature?

Just from PGI's behavior with rewards, I gather they discovered rewards don't seem to work very well at regulating population so they just straight up gave up. I don't know all the reasons for this, but a big one might be all the people that heavily RP for their faction and will never switch for any reason. I could be wrong about that, but I dont think I am wrong about CW players just being insensitive to changes in rewards on the scale. I mean, big swings in rewards would probably work like a champ, but I don't think we ever got that did we?


If people are worried about eating turret drops more than rewards, the manual or even dynamic movement in rewards on the scale PGI has done in the past might not convince anyone to chase them.

There problem is two fold...

1) Contracts

I know people mock the contract system (and rightfully so), but part of the system that sucks the most (for Merc units) is the minimum duration is "too long".

For such contracts to work, having short one-day contracts would make the most sense as the only time you want an extended contract is the loyalty point bonus modifier... or a commitment to the faction (thru the faction hub TS).

Despite that, that isn't just it...

2) Rewards

The rewards IIRC were mostly complete garbage, and that's independent on being rather slow in adjusting faction reward bonuses. I mean, I bet some people did have to contemplate on Ghost Dropping. That in itself kills any sort of CW momentum.

If the rewards were for two factions to actually fight it out (like Smoke Jaguar needs to successfully win vs Kurita for X reward, and vice versa), then you could at least get something going. That was not how the contracts were laid out (I'm not even sure those forums are visible/available to give a damn about). Obviously it would have to be done over a 24 hour period (win 2 of 3 planets after 3 cease fires).

Even then....

3) Contracts - Yes, again. Then again, it's about location... so many it's "location, location, location".

One of the things that got people going is IS vs Clan - it's much less interesting to see IS vs IS or Clan vs Clan... and I suspect factions didn't get full variety (partly in due to population). So, if you were stuck in Liao, well - you're mostly going to experience IS vs IS, and the occasional defense vs Clan on some other faction's planet.

I probably still have a boatload of Smoke Jaguar XP long before I've been in Kurita and having experienced both sides of this coin - there's little incentive to attack your "neighbors" (IS vs IS, Clan vs Clan).

A modified map start (essentially, no reset - but rather a themed purpose for every faction to play vs one another) would help in this. I've vouched for the idea for having like "North vs South" or "East vs West" where two factions (usually of the same type - two Houses or two Clans - no mixing) would be allied and try to work together to dominate their side of the map.


I mean, as long as we keep resetting the map to where the Clans can get super-suppressed at the start (like in the early days of CW Phase 2), then we'll just get bored of the "same poop, different day" type of mentality... and that's what kills CW.

Edited by Deathlike, 14 April 2016 - 03:20 PM.

[slide]

I posted a solution to the faction issue a long time ago. HERE Combine that with QueenBlade's idea and the automated reward system that is coming with phase 3 and I think everyone will be happy.