386 replies to this topic

[Appogee]

Darwins Dog, on 19 April 2016 - 06:58 AM, said:

I'm having a really hard time getting excited for this patch. PGI, you really hurt casual units with the recruiting fees. The Golden Foxes have historically been open to anyone. We take brand new pilots, seasoned beta veterans, and everyone in between. We currently have around 180 members, meaning our next recruit will cost 9 million cbills. Over the years we've recruited many members who have turned out to be inactive. It's never been a problem before, it's just part of running a casual unit.

You've forced us into the position where we have to consider abandoning our core principles as a unit because we can't afford to be welcoming to everyone. That philosophy has created a fantastic unit with genuine friendships that has been around since closed beta. This change really hurts. We (and units like us) have been a positive force in this game for a long time. Now it feels like we got shafted without a second thought because you wanted to nerf MS.

Will it even nerf MS, though? They'll stay as big as they are. They can even just pass on the cost of new recruits to the recruits. (I could join them 12 times this week if I wanted to, just from my CBill reserves.)

Meantime, large units will be able to deploy multiple scouting teams on a planet, winning all the scouting bonuses, and make the jobs of their invasion teams even easier. As a result, smaller and Medium Units will have an even tougher time hanging onto any planets they win.

I dunno. I guess we will see how it plays out.

Edited by Appogee, 19 April 2016 - 07:08 AM.

[Luscious Dan]

Koshirou, on 19 April 2016 - 03:16 AM, said:

[/size][/font]
Okay... so let's say I'm at rank 20 with 1.2 million LP. I desert, take a break from FW for a week, then come back, immediately pledge loyalty again (all of this being okayed by my unit leaders, if any), and then I'm back at rank 19 with 900,000 LP and get to earn my rank 20 rewards again?
Is that how it works? Because if it is, I'd advise PGI to reconsider it.

That's what I was thinking as well, you could break loyalty (and suffer the trial period on return) in order to repeat the rank 19 and 20 rewards of 75 million c-bills, 80,000 GXP and 2,500 MC. That's not a small amount of loyalty points to earn back but being able to repeat the bonus would definitely provide incentive to keep playing after rank 20.

Just re-checked and I see you don't lose merc reputation points, so at least you can't farm that system ... which in a way is a shame since I <3 mercs and it sucks to cap out that system.

Edited by Luscious Dan, 19 April 2016 - 07:08 AM.

[100mile]

Commander A9, on 18 April 2016 - 08:38 PM, said:

Well, this is going to cost the big units alot of damn C-Bills just to continue operations. :/

yep...as a big unit I have no problem with that. Cost of doing business should always be in the game.

[100mile]

Kael 17, on 18 April 2016 - 09:25 PM, said:

Well, it looks good. And it certainly sounds nice.


There are a couple of points that have me going "wait, what?" but that may be because I stayed up past that point that all good little MechWarriors should be in bed dreaming dreams of glorious battles to be fought and...stuff.


I suppose what it'll really come down to is how well it actually works.

Oh, and did Mercs just get entirely new rewards to earn and loyalists get shafted?

Yes and no
yes mercs got new rewards to get but they can only go to level 10 and they don't have access to the loyalty rewards anymore.
No Loyal players didn't get shafted.

Edited by 100mile, 19 April 2016 - 07:13 AM.

[AdamBaines]

MischiefSC, on 19 April 2016 - 02:55 AM, said:

So much good stuff. Pleased to see scouting, pleased for the queue split.

Two big concerns though -

1. Solo loyalists. Open to exploiting with alts to control a factions attack lanes, plus solo loyalists are not in the same communication pipeline as unit loyalists so you've once again forced units to be 'against' their own solo players. Why? Have solo mercs and solo Freelancers. If someone wants to be a loyalist they need to join a loyalist unit. Then recruitment costs nip exploiting and it helps factions keep a better communication on war planning.

2. Solo queue flips planets. Are you kidding? So the best way to flip a planet is a couple wins as a unit then sync-drop in pug queue to flip the world? This is building in a system to avoid units playing units. This idea has been bad out of the gate and has been pointed out to PGI. It's doubling-down on the fundamental issue that units hated about CW and why many burned out on it; losing planets because bad pugs getting farmed. This is just making that easier and more certain.

On point one I generally agree and thought something similar as far as alt account exploits. Maybe thats why they made it random planets? So an attack lane agenda could not be dictated?

One Point two, I see the concern, but I want to see how it plays out first before passing too much judgement.

[100mile]

Agamemnon78, on 18 April 2016 - 10:07 PM, said:

Generally a very promising approach and sure a lot to tune in the future,

but:
If I´m right, there may be a core-principle with gamebraking effect:
The vote for the faction attack results in ONE randomly chosen planet free to attack for all units of that faction.
The only one unit which receives any benefits from participating is the unit with the most win-tokens.
Its most likely, that only the large units have a realistic chance to occupy a planet. Smaller units of 10-20 members wont have the manpower to accumulate enough tokens. They also cannot concentrate at less attractive targets along the border, because there is only one attack-target.
Smaller units can only help the largest unit to win but gains NOTHING.
Besides, the usual US/EU-problem in CW remains intact, isnt it? EU winning at the beginning of the attack phase, US winning during EU-night and getting the planet-win (?)

Instead, giving a certain percentage of the spoils of war to the 5 most contributing units (leaderboard?) depending on their contribution to the war effort for the faction would be both more realisitic and would ensure an incentive for smaller units.

There are advantages and disadvantages to being large unit or small unit now...There will still be planets to defend on not just the attack planet.

[paws2sky]

Quirk Notes Correction

LCT-1V notes are color coded incorrectly. These changes are green and should be red, as they are decreases to current values:

• Add Struc CT +12
  
• Add Struc L/R Torso +10

Pre-patch values:

• Add Struc CT +20
  
• Add Struc L/R Torso +15

Other than that, I'm pretty happy with what I see here.


I'm looking forward to trying out the new and improved Accel/Decel and Turn quirks... I already had one person say that speccing me while I was in my Locust was making him car sick.


EDIT: Oh, yeah, that Faction Play thing.

I thought CW was hard enough to get into before. These changes read like a mess of conflicting ideas within PGI's studio. Someone wants it to be competitive and someone else is trying to push the idea that it still needs to be casual friendly (which it does) or they'll exclude a large portion of the player base.

Maybe it's fine for an individual. But this is not at all Casual Unit friendly. As much as I would like to play more CW, my Unit consists of some IRL buddies who like to dabble, but are never going to get serious or organized enough to deploy as a force. So, yeah. I guess it'll be more Quick Play and Group queue for me.

Edited by paws2sky, 19 April 2016 - 08:30 AM.

[L A V A]

Commander A9, on 18 April 2016 - 08:38 PM, said:

Well, this is going to cost the big units alot of damn C-Bills just to continue operations. :/

Yep, thanks!

The BWC is not a MWO specific unit, we are a gaming group with 300 members belonging to the BWC MWO Merc Corps. At any one time, we are lucky to have 100 members who are active or are primary MWO players.

Our purpose in gaming is having fun. We run events where folks who play many different games can come together for a weekend and play.... say MWO.

The cost to invite a "secondary" player who doesn't play MWO on a steady basis just went to 14,850,00 CBills.

I think there will be unforeseen and unfortunate consequences to this, and exponential costs is a really crappy way to handle the problem.

PGI just took a sledgehammer to our group so yea... thanks a lot.

[WarHippy]

If you are trying to get people to play CW punishing people for playing in factions they want to play in that happen to be higher population is a non-starter. I typically would play Davion and Kurita with a splash of Clan as I have little interest in the other factions, but in your example Davion and Kurita are being punished for having their higher populations which just means I am not going to play. CW matches are a time investment that simply isn't worth it when half of whatever you earn is lost. Giving incentives to join other factions is fine as is having no bonuses for high pop factions, but the entire penalty system needs to be scrapped.

As for the rest of the patch a lot of stuff looks good and some I will have to test out, but I also question some of the thought process on some of these changes.

[L A V A]

Imagine from a gaming group perspective what exponential costs mean to bring into our unit (300 members) a new player with 4 mechs. We do this regularly and our gaming philosophy requires that we do so without restriction.

As if we didn't have enough pressure on us to keep our MWO gaming group active as it is...

We will be thrashing this out in our gaming group. My recommendation is that we disband our group altogether and move on.

[Sereglach]

Well, time will tell if this was worth the wait or not. Several comments:

1. I feel like I'm actively being mocked now over flamers. First you fail to properly fix them and implement horrid convoluted mechanics that utterly ruined the weapon . . . then you give Firestarters a 15% Flamer Range quirk. Seriously, please go back and actually fix the weapon by giving it fixed, flat values that don't require special timers, get rid of the horrid exponential scaling, don't "share stats" etc. The current implementation of the weapon is terrible. You're going to need to do it when you implement your heat scale changes, anyway. Please just do it, already! A Flamer that did a flat 1.0 DPS, 1.0 Heat DPS, and .5 HPS would be exponentially better then what we currently have and far more balanced; and it wouldn't require any of your convoluted mechanics.

2. I see the Spoils of War concept having the potential to horribly backfire in PGI's face. While it's nice and well-thought out in the prospect of favoring smaller and more competitive units, I see the basic implementation and the limitations on earnings causing huge issues in the long run (30 MC is only 6 planets in current implementation . . . either that better be really hard to earn/retain . . . or units will just stop participating once they earn those planets, unless they need to defend a holding).

3. Recruitment costs are perfect for maintaining a smaller and more competitive atmosphere. So . . . the question will be how will that affect the already massive units that don't need to pay those costs if they decide to cease recruitment?

4. You had me on Scouting mode all the way up UNTIL you said the dropship was fully equipped. Maybe cut the armaments down to medium lasers or something? A battery of ER Large Lasers is going to utterly shred 20-55 ton mechs with the unerring accuracy of the Dropship. I see the matches pretty much always going in favor of the attacker, under this premise.

5. You NERFED the structure quirks on the Locust, seriously?!? The poor little Locust, the only 20-tonner in the game just got structure nerfs on its weakest variants? I'm utterly baffled, here.

6. The LBX Changes seem nice . . . one will have to see them implemented in game. However, I think the PPC changes might be too weak, overall. If PPC-centric-in-lore mechs need massive quirks just to feel like that's the weapon they want to use, then the weapon needs more help then a half point (seriously just bump the stock PPC down to 9 and make them all a 1 point drop) of heat and a 10% velocity boost. This is particularly the case when the "usable" quirks go upwards of 25-50% velocity boosts.

7. I am horribly disappointed that we still only have one drop deck . . . let alone the fact that the drop deck will be shared between Scouting Mode and normal Faction Play. We don't even get different IS/Clan drop decks for freelancers? At the very least there should be 3 drop decks in play here: A single mech for Scouting Mode and either 2 drop decks to swap between for Loyalists/Mercs or 1 Clan and 1 IS drop deck for Freelancers. I was seriously expecting this for Phase 3 implementation. I think it's sorely lacking that they don't have it.

Do I think this was a great step in the right direction, overall? Sure. However, do I think it was worth the year wait? No . . . I think it was certainly lacking some points it should have had (namely the drop decks for phase 3). I think MWO is going to be desperately clinging to the next few patches to see what happens with equipment, balance, and game-mode tweaking.

[Domenoth]

L A V A, on 19 April 2016 - 07:21 AM, said:

Yep, thanks!

The BWC is not a MWO specific unit, we are a gaming group with 300 members belonging to the BWC MWO Merc Corps. At any one time, we are lucky to have 100 members who are active or are primary MWO players.

Our purpose in gaming is having fun. We run events where folks who play many different games can come together for a weekend and play.... say MWO.

The cost to invite a "secondary" player who doesn't play MWO on a steady basis just went to 14,850,00 CBills.

I think there will be unforeseen and unfortunate consequences to this, and exponential costs is a really crappy way to handle the problem.

PGI just took a sledgehammer to our group so yea... thanks a lot.

Or you could start a Black Widow Company 2 [BWC2] then if that one fills up, [BWC3] and so on. They're not saying you can't play together, just that you can't all share the same tag on any given planet. If you're truly the kind of unit you say you are, you probably don't care that much about planet tags...

EDIT:

Okay, I admit I forgot about the Unit chat tab/Unit friends list. You would lose that too with multiple units.

Edited by Domenoth, 19 April 2016 - 08:07 AM.

[Zeus X]

Back to the glue diet Paul?

Edited by Zeus X, 19 April 2016 - 08:01 AM.

[Darwins Dog]

L A V A, on 19 April 2016 - 07:54 AM, said:

Imagine from a gaming group perspective what exponential costs mean to bring into our unit (300 members) a new player with 4 mechs. We do this regularly and our gaming philosophy requires that we do so without restriction.

As if we didn't have enough pressure on us to keep our MWO gaming group active as it is...

We will be thrashing this out in our gaming group. My recommendation is that we disband our group altogether and move on.

I wanted to like the post to show my support, but I really don't "like" it. We are in the same boat of having to weigh the core ideal that made our unit great, vs. the unsustainable cost of maintaining it.

[L A V A]

Darwins Dog, on 19 April 2016 - 08:04 AM, said:

I wanted to like the post to show my support, but I really don't "like" it. We are in the same boat of having to weigh the core ideal that made our unit great, vs. the unsustainable cost of maintaining it.

I get where you are coming from.

Perhaps one way is to just abandon the Unit system, go Freelancer and have everyone just sync drop into the single queue.

Man, have they put our backs up against the wall.

[Aylek]

What happens to members of a loyalist unit who Choose to leave said unit? Will they get the "deserter" TAG as well, even if the reason for leaving might be something private / personally ?

[Mystere]

The separate solo queue is absolutely ridiculously lame. But then again what do you expect from all the crying of the participation trophy generation.

And that's coming from a solo-only player.

[Ibrandul Mike]

Aylek: leaving the unit means leaving the unit. You are still a loyalist to that faction

Volt Corsair: from the pictures you see, there seems to be a tab for Invasion/Defend and one for scouting. So mercenarys and loyalysts should be able to do scouting. If enough loyalist solo players are in the que perhaps even freelancer could help ... but I would have to reread the paragraph first and have to answer a few more

Grimlock Magnus, on 19 April 2016 - 12:20 AM, said:

"The current Faction Play map and territories will be reset". Ok I get that.
But what isn't clear to me (I read the wal of text but may have missed it):
- Do current loyalists keep their earned progress with the faction?
- Do current loyalists also have to play 10 games before they start earning bonuses again?
- Perhaps obvious, but: I assume if you are in a large unit you won't have to pay an entree fee (just checking)?

Earned progress? didn´t see anything for that
10 games? of course ... your faction affiliation will be reset and you will be mercenarys. So 10 games it is.
What is the entree fee?

[SteelHoves]

Quote

Votes can only be cast against Factions which currently share a border with your Faction. Once the voting period comes to an end a random Planet located along the border of the Faction with the highest percentage of votes will be selected for attack during the next Attack Cycle

My only concern before I get some seat time with all the changes is this.
So loyalists will be able to vote what faction they wish to attack but PGI will randomly assign the planet? So much for actually strategy. who’s to say the Computer wont select a random locations instead of say pushing in a line. Maybe instead it will pick one side and then a random other planet on the other side so there is no cohesive push. What happens if you have a planet surrounded? What is the chance of the RANDOM computer choosing that planet to attack?

Edited by SteelHoves, 19 April 2016 - 08:27 AM.

[Ibrandul Mike]

Der Hesse, on 19 April 2016 - 12:35 AM, said:

What happens to the already achieved ranks?
I just got rank 20 and wouldn´t want to grind for it again.

What happens when you desert a faction and then pledge loyalty again. Will you get the rewards for the ranks achieved with the lost 25% of loyalty points again? Easier said: Can you get the rank 20 reward of a single faction multiple times?

Achieved ranks: good question
You got the stuff from it ... they will not take that away even if they would reset the whole rank system
So why wouldn´t you grind again, if you could possibly get the things again?

And for the reward system: I don´t know if anyone here has seen that they use an achievement system. You get achievements but you don´t loose them. You may loose points and have to reearn them. But that´s it. Or do you really think you can have negative mech bays and mc? Wouldn´t make any sense at all. So if you get the achievement that faction can´t give you anything new at that moment. If you get another run at the 20 because of a possible resett? I don´t know, but I don´t think that most people would really complain. And I didin´t read anything about an achievement resett.