55 replies to this topic

[Deathlike]

I'm as excited as Ben Stein.

[MaxFool]

Commander A9, on 18 April 2016 - 02:16 PM, said:

God help us all.

This is probably going to be fun for about a week, then people will begin the whine-fest.

That's not very realistic approach. If the whine-fest doesn't begin inside on hour after servers are back up, the patch is good. If the whines doesn't start inside a day, patch is huge success.

[justcallme A S H]

ShiftySWP and the Pleated Pants, on 18 April 2016 - 02:24 PM, said:

You will not be able to join tagged players in CW without a unit tag. At least that is how I understand it. We will know for sure tomorrow.

Yep, already confirmed.

Unit-less players will go into their own queue and only play unit-less players.
Unit affiliated players will go into their own queue also, and only play Unit affiliated players - be that vs 12 man groups or not.

It's going to affect the wait times dramatically IMO, and they are bad enough as it is due to the way CEASEFIRE works. For a tagged player you're hardly going to find a game outside of the "2hr pre-ceasefire push" after about week 3/4 once the main excitement dies off - given outside that 2hr window it's generally a bunch of random players tagged or untagged in those times.

Edited by R31Nismoid, 18 April 2016 - 04:17 PM.

[Davers]

Sjorpha, on 18 April 2016 - 06:56 AM, said:

I asked Russ on twitter if phase 3 will include win conditions and strategic gameplay layer rather than just reward systems and leaderboards

This is what many Founders expected when MWO was first announced with CW. After all, there are many campaigns (both TT and Megamek) that had detailed rules for campaign style play- even Catalyst just came out with rules for large scale intergalactic conquests. That MWO would have none of that (at least in any meaningful fashion), well, just like Vizzini we thought that was inconceivable.

[DarklightCA]

After reading the patch notes I lost all excitement, a cap for planetary rewards really? At max you get 90 MC a day for the whole unit which you can only distribute between 10 players not 12 so screw the other 2 guys that helped conquer the planet apparently. After 6 planets conquered you are done, no reason to conquer anything more because you have a cap and that reward is ****.

Honestly I had hopes for planetary rewards, if anything was going to create a bit more competition in this gamemode it was that but no unit is going to care about defending their planets over that, especially when other units attack it which leaves it back to solo queue players defending planets against units. Back to units dodging fights against other units. PGI still creating no incentive for units to attack other units or give a crap about conquering planets. Still units destroying solo player teams, still zero competition, nothings going to change.

[feeWAIVER]

DarklightCA, on 19 April 2016 - 12:15 AM, said:

After reading the patch notes I lost all excitement, a cap for planetary rewards really? At max you get 90 MC a day for the whole unit which you can only distribute between 10 players not 12 so screw the other 2 guys that helped conquer the planet apparently. After 6 planets conquered you are done, no reason to conquer anything more because you have a cap and that reward is ****.

Honestly I had hopes for planetary rewards, if anything was going to create a bit more competition in this gamemode it was that but no unit is going to care about defending their planets over that, especially when other units attack it which leaves it back to solo queue players defending planets against units. Back to units dodging fights against other units. PGI still creating no incentive for units to attack other units or give a crap about conquering planets. Still units destroying solo player teams, still zero competition, nothings going to change.

After reading this post I think you need to read the patch notes again.

[VanguardMk1]

feeWAIVER, on 19 April 2016 - 12:35 AM, said:

After reading this post I think you need to read the patch notes again.

Why exactly? The only thing he might be wrong about is leaving your own planets to be captured. Since it's faster to capture another planet instead of defending the ones you have, you can just leave them. If you have a good win/loss ratio, you wn't lose much. MC rewards are that low, so that limit might need to be upped so you can actually receive more than 1 consumable's amount of MC.

[Shin Ken]

Can I try the new CW as a casual player or is it better to leave it to the hardcore guys (like in previous CW phases)?

Edited by Shin Ken, 19 April 2016 - 02:15 AM.

[MischiefSC]

DarklightCA, on 19 April 2016 - 12:15 AM, said:

After reading the patch notes I lost all excitement, a cap for planetary rewards really? At max you get 90 MC a day for the whole unit which you can only distribute between 10 players not 12 so screw the other 2 guys that helped conquer the planet apparently. After 6 planets conquered you are done, no reason to conquer anything more because you have a cap and that reward is ****.

Honestly I had hopes for planetary rewards, if anything was going to create a bit more competition in this gamemode it was that but no unit is going to care about defending their planets over that, especially when other units attack it which leaves it back to solo queue players defending planets against units. Back to units dodging fights against other units. PGI still creating no incentive for units to attack other units or give a crap about conquering planets. Still units destroying solo player teams, still zero competition, nothings going to change.

Sorta.

As I understand it you'll max at 90 pts per day but worlds will stop providing MC after about a month (except district capitals which go longer) up to a max of 6 tagged worlds at a time. So ideally you'll taking 2 new worlds a week for 3 weeks, then camp for 2 weeks.

You can also split up MC between as many people as you want - just you can only split it up between 10 people at a time. As in the interface that lets you give away MC can only do 10 people at a time. So you can split 100 MC up among 100 players by giving 1 MC each to 10 players, then another set of 10, etc.

The problem though is that solo players can and will flip worlds - it'll just be tagged by whatever unit won the most drops on it. Which means people can (and absolutely will) run alts to pugstomp and win drops and flip a world against units they absolutely can't beat. They have created an incredibly efficient system for avoiding units you don't want to play against; you just need to win a couple of total matches on a planet and then flip it in solo queue.

Given that it's pretty much impossible to NOT sync-drop they've left very little to chance there.

Also, solo loyalists vote for attack lanes. Who *isn't* going to exploit that? Davion could absolutely control the Kurita attack lanes. Make alts, go play 10 matches as 'Kurtia loyalists'. Then everyone vote to attack FRR. Every day, just for giggles. So Davion attacks Kurita, Kurita can only defend against Davion but can only attack FRR.

It also makes functionally controlling your borders with any sort of unified strategy or purpose almost impossible as every soloist will just vote for whoever. As they're not in a unit they're not in the loop on any faction strategy.

PGI managed to design a system to be easily exploited and provide maximum motivation to sync drop and farm pugs.

It's really simple -

No solo loyalists. Solo mercenaries? Sure. Freelancers? Absolutely. Recruitment costs will kill any attempt to control another factions lanes via alts.

Solo queue doesn't flip worlds. They get rewards, they get payout, have their matches affect Unit matches like scouting missions do. However they don't flip planets. If you want to flip a planet and contribute to winning you have to play in Unit queue.

Do that and you've got a solid system that can't be gamed.

[DarklightCA]

feeWAIVER, on 19 April 2016 - 12:35 AM, said:

After reading this post I think you need to read the patch notes again.

I read the patch notes, nothing I said was incorrect.

MischiefSC, on 19 April 2016 - 02:31 AM, said:

Sorta.

As I understand it you'll max at 90 pts per day but worlds will stop providing MC after about a month (except district capitals which go longer) up to a max of 6 tagged worlds at a time. So ideally you'll taking 2 new worlds a week for 3 weeks, then camp for 2 weeks.

You can also split up MC between as many people as you want - just you can only split it up between 10 people at a time. As in the interface that lets you give away MC can only do 10 people at a time. So you can split 100 MC up among 100 players by giving 1 MC each to 10 players, then another set of 10, etc.

The whole point of planetary rewards is to give units incentives to conquer planets and to care about defending their own planets, with this limitation and cap they are giving no incentives at all to care about that and in a gamemode about planetary conquest that is a huge problem.

As it stood in CW2 units with no incentives to do anything made for a very dull gamemode, attacking was the best action they had as it granted them easier games and with no ability to care about defending planets they left that job to the solo queue players who got stomped by the units attacking those planets.

As planetary rewards still gives no incentives to care about that, units will continue to attack over defend and solo queue players still continue to be stomped by units and units will continue to avoid fights with other units. This is going to be CW2 with a new UI and a 4 vs 4 mode pretty much.

I know you can split the MC more after you split it with the other 10 people, that is common sense. My point was that giving it away 10 at a time made no sense when people are conquering planets 12 a time.

Edited by DarklightCA, 19 April 2016 - 10:19 AM.

[Sjorpha]

MischiefSC, on 19 April 2016 - 02:31 AM, said:

Given that it's pretty much impossible to NOT sync-drop they've left very little to chance there.

You've said this before and I have to wonder what you mean by this.

IMO sync-dropping is a deliberate act that involved being a group (supposedly on TS comms) deciding that hey, let's all drop on the same planet to try and get in the same team.

If you're not making a coordinated attempt and playing together it isn't sync dropping, just happening to know people and playing on the same team often because you are all solo dropping for the same faction is not sync dropping, so in my mind it seems very possible indeed to not sync drop.

Do you consider just repeatedly dropping together because of small queues and being in the same faction sync-dropping? Because that's the only way it could be "impossible not to...". Well that kind of "sync-dropping" isn't a problem anyways, in fact it's a good thing.

The only form of problematic sync dropping is the one where a group are on comms and coordinating deliberately as if they were a unit, and using the solo queue to get easy matches.

That requires some setting up though, and I'm going to assume it'll be common until i see it. It's not like many unit's would accept it as an open practice for starters, so people in large units will have to be shady about it. I'm also not convinced the incentive is really there, the rewards are lower in solo queue, and if you're a good enough team to reliably stomp pugs you can probably stomp rather well in unit queue also with more pay, since there is going to be small groups and solo players with unit tags there still.

[MischiefSC]

I'm saying that anyone who wants to sync drop a 12man absolutely can and will. Especially as time goes on people will group up, sync drop to stomp pugs and don'tcares and flip worlds while being certain to never play units.

[xX PUG Xx]

At this stage I'm going to wait and play around before I make any judgement, the patch notes had some interesting points in there but theres much that has been left short of potential.

I do agree that the planetary award system leaves much to be desired but Russ Bullock stated on Twitter that the values can be adjusted and were setup with that in mind. So lets see how it plays out, they be testing the water to begin with and will modify it as they get hard data to make educated decisions with.

I still feel they should have went with a CBill "pot" that is based on the number of planets held by the faction, paying a bonus dividend to units holding planets that increases depending on the importance of the planet. But hey-ho, let's see how this goes for now...... (I just need to get through another 11 hours at work, get some sleep, download the patch, setup my 'Mechs if we changed faction and THEN I can play around and see what's what )

*edit*

<- oh look Kurita, yup I'll need to setup my decks again. There goes another 30 minutes.

Edited by xX PUG Xx, 19 April 2016 - 01:01 PM.

[Sjorpha]

MischiefSC, on 19 April 2016 - 12:49 PM, said:

I'm saying that anyone who wants to sync drop a 12man absolutely can and will. Especially as time goes on people will group up, sync drop to stomp pugs and don'tcares and flip worlds while being certain to never play units.

So when you say it's "impossible not to" sync drop what you really meant is that it's just easy to do if you want to?

I wouldn't use the term "impossible not to" that way, it implies that something is hard or impossible to avoid doing.

[xX PUG Xx]

Well.......what can I say?

I am not impressed with the LongTom, it has been said in many other threads but since this one was started by me I'll post this here.

The LongTom is a game breaker, plain and simple; it skews the battlefield so far that it pretty much makes the game unplayable. I can see the direction the dev's wished to go with the battlefield multiplier but as a first iteration it is far from being good. The scan and intel. are not as influential because the maps are and 7/10 it is the same chassis that are used, which will not change unless the maps are changed.....

The scouting missions have been good so far, playing solo is a little frustrating and as usual dependant on the skill level of random players but as Unit vs Unit it is a nice change of pace. However, since standard FP mode (Invasion) has been skewed so savagely to make it unplayable and therefore not fun, I have to say this patch has put a big dampener on my enjoyment of the game.

So not happy at the moment to be honest but I will wait and see what adjustments are made to the game play side.

[DevlinCognito]

Cant agree more, taking 3 steps from the Dropship only to be instakilled, twice, by the Russ-Hammer is not my idea of balanced. Would rather see it changed to something like an area denial weapon, something that bombards a designated grid every 4-5 minutes for a minute or so. Slower flight times would be a big help too.

The Satellite Scan I'm undecided on still.

Scouting Missions I agree with Pug, but I think thats purely that its something different.