222 replies to this topic

[Morggo]

Livewyr, on 26 April 2016 - 09:32 AM, said:

I'd be okay with that.

Just leave the real rewards (LP, MC, etc..) to the teams.


(Although given that the solos number didn't warrant keeping it- not sure how much of a loss it would be. )

Ummm, leaving out the real rewards is precisely the root of the last 5 pages of arguments... the root cause (and clearly intentional) for the empty and failed solo queue... Just sayin


(also, just to be clear as I feel the last few exchanges appear to be on the harsh side... No hatin' on you Livewyr and no ill will meant! We have oddly overlapping and very similar desires and view points... just out of sync on a couple areas. I do admire your passion and protection for your unit games. )

Edited by Morggo, 26 April 2016 - 09:41 AM.

[Livewyr]

Taffer, on 26 April 2016 - 09:39 AM, said:

They should just remove all solo queues and those antisocial solo players can either git gud and join a unit with LFG or the forums or they can just giiiiiiiiiiiiiiit out!

It's clear I'm not making any soloist friends here. (And this whole exercise is pointless)

But at least I'm making a point...

[Livewyr]

Morggo, on 26 April 2016 - 09:40 AM, said:

Ummm, leaving out the real rewards is precisely the root of the last 5 pages of arguments... the root cause (and clearly intentional) for the empty and failed solo queue... Just sayin


(also, just to be clear as I feel the last few exchanges appear to be on the harsh side... No hatin' on you Livewyr and no ill will meant! We have oddly overlapping and very similar desires and view points... just out of sync on a couple areas. I do admire your passion and protection for your unit games. )

No ill will here either. (My passion is part troll, to be honest. I haven't played community warfare more than maybe 3-5 matches that I can recall in 2016, partly because of what we are discussing here, partly because taking planets meant nothing, and still means little, and mostly because the gameplay has become dreadfully boring. I do like the concept of gates for end-game content, which I believe was PGI's intention with Faction Warfare.)

We will have to agree to disagree on rewards. (Admittedly, I'm a fan of having to work with others in an organized manner to achieve the highest rewards, adding organization outside match to the list of skills necessary to earn them.)

Kinda like how the best gear in MMOs come from multiperson raids requiring intense team work.

Edited by Livewyr, 26 April 2016 - 09:49 AM.

[Fastwind]

Fobhopper, on 26 April 2016 - 09:27 AM, said:

PGI, I am really disappointed to read the merging of queues. I have been here since closed beta. Bought most of your mech packages and supported you in forums in other places. I remember the disappointment of Clan Warfare 1. Dismayed at the disappointment of 'seal clubbing' that Clan Warfare 2 became. And finally Faction Warfare 3 arrives after almost a year of us complaining about the pug vs unit stomping, and you want to revert the changes barely after a week of patching.

DONT!

This is (mostly) what your playerbase wanted. The only problem is that free-lancers literally have no incentive to play because the rewards are utter dogshit. And freelancers can only join if requests are made, which already limits the playerbase to those who are already invested in playing FW either as a solo loyalist, a unit doing drops, or solo merc units and actual merc units.

^^THIS
I played this game since closed beta
I rarely played it over the last month's,because PGI keeps ******* it up
It's sad it had so much potential
Bad decisions over bad decisions
Maybe they rly want to kill their game and company,it sure looks like it

[MonkeyCheese]

Ed Steele, on 26 April 2016 - 12:20 AM, said:

Join a unit. JFP is a damned good unit, they would take you if you can pass the trials.

Trials? Im sorry but hahahaahahh. I tried playing with serious units before most people are really great but there are too many hardcore serious people that enjoy just pugstomping and are no fun and the fact that i would have to pass a trial is an instant pass for me.

I will stick to the ingame chat if i can even be bothered with CW anymore unless there is a teamspeak lobby for the casuals, i really wish that the quick play and faction play tabs were merged together. The entire essence of mwo should be around that MAP just like how it is EVERYTHING in a game like planetside even tho that game has gone nowhere after sony left.

[Felicitatem Parco]

My last Faction Play match resulted in me inflicting 2800 damage and 11 kills.

Sorry for dragging you all down and ruining your Unit games with my incompetence as a Solo PUG player.

[Randy Poffo]

Livewyr, on 26 April 2016 - 08:55 AM, said:

I fail to see why joining a unit is such a travesty.
Apparently, Solos think joining a unit is some massive commitment requiring you to be there all the time, do some stupid paperwork for some "Sergeant Star Commander Useless III" and while there are units that are like that- there are also units that are just chilled out people who show up and play, organize teams and go do things.



From my perspective over here- it looks like the the solos just want to play their FW match however they want, even though they get roflstomped and ***** about it, and at the same time, screw over the people organizing and making an earnest attempt to change the map.
It's the MWO equivalent of that random ****brick the coach foists on your team who just does their own thing, costs you the game, and then *****es about how they lose all the time.

There is a reason they don't allow some random kid off the street to jump into a college football or basketball game.

Let me try to explain the basic problem because you have a productive way of approaching the problem but are just missing a few key assumptions.

Suppose we take your analogy with sports seriously. The reason we *have* college football is that there are transitional points between "random kid on street" and the end goal. Without something to bridge that gap you won't actually get enough college players to play a college game - can you imagine college football existing in its current state without the existence of high school football programs?

I think you'd like to see units involved more from the beginning, which could make the transition less extreme, but this game really lacks any kind of social infrastructure that would facilitate that sort of thing. The only time you interact with unit members is in game, and much of that time they're either silent (communicating only with their own friends on their unit/faction teamspeak server) or actively being ****bags to everyone else.

So there isn't any natural mechanism that causes new players in quick play to want to gravitate into units, aside from the idiots who spam blind unit invites at you (which only give one reason to be *more* wary about joining a unit). The primary thing one might want to join a unit for is to play CW. And in order for that to happen players need to be exposed to CW and say to themselves "that's kind of neat, I want to do that. maybe I can find a unit." But what the solo player *sees* of CW is terrible, and what the solo player *hears* about CW from unit members and posts on message boards is that it's just bad and a failure - ooh, that sounds great, sign me up for THAT.

So "why can't everyone just join a unit" isn't any kind of a solution at all unless you do one of those two things - create more social interaction in-game outside of CW that encourages players to interact with units in a positive way, or make CW appealing enough that people are eager to seek out units to play it - and preferably both.

[D V Devnull]

Solo player here, just posted 3 pages ago, and with the possible solution, but I don't know how many of you actually spent time reading my 3.5 pages of information. Personally, I don't mind being mixed with everyone. But, even without being in a Unit myself, and knowing I'm not ready for THAT level of commitment, I'm usually still trying to help however I can as the Second-Line Support/Sniper that I do best as. Sometimes, I go so far as to be rather intense about winning the match and keeping everyone coordinated and working together, even so much that the teams I've been with have asked me to cool down a bit. This has happened to me whether or not I'm fighting alongside a Unit, which actually makes it even funnier in retrospect. I can tell you PGI completely sabotaged themselves, and the player base, by not providing proper entry and reward options for the Solo folks. Then they made more mistakes by not organizing the queues properly. If they had just done that right in the first place, which my previous post on this thread outlines quite a bit of detail on at least a fair part of how to do it, they could have easily seen players flocking in to fight on opposing sides towards various goals on the map. But we all know PGI, messing it up first and mostly failing to do it right later.

~D. V. "Just one of the oddballs who actually tries, caught in the backwash of the Queue Debate..." Devnull




[Edit by Author for a missed wording...]

Edited by D V Devnull, 26 April 2016 - 11:07 AM.

[Malleus011]

I was in a big unit for a long time and enjoyed it. For various personal reasons you don't care about, I really can't manage to be in a unit these days. So joining a unit isn't an option.

The solo queue (really the non-unit queue) was the only way I was likely to play CW. I've been spawn-camped and otherwise smashed flat trying to PUG in CW during Phase 1 & 2 events, and had enough - I haven't played CW for months before Phase 3 - and never would again without the queue split.

The split was the only thing that got me trying CW again. If you pull it, I don't see that I have any choice but to abandon CW again. Getting stomped as a PUG 12 man isn't fun for anybody.

Maybe - just maybe - the Scout queue would remain play-able with joined queues. I'd be willing to test that for a week as well, if PGI would let us try it (as a test). But if the Scout queue is also PUG stomping, then no dice.

Rewards need to be raised. An event needs to be held to draw interest. Solo Mercenaries need to be a thing (eliminate 'freelancers' entirely). CW needs to be made FUN, because so far, it never has been.

See, the result of rejoining the queues won't necessarily force people to join units and play CW the way the big unit advocates desire. Most players will just quit CW again, because the wait times are long, the rewards are low, and the games aren't fun.

There are people who play the game differently than you. Instead of telling them that they are having fun wrong, why not try to expand the game to accommodate as many players as possible? If they are 'ruining' your map, then why not restrict them only to a Scouting or Skirmish mode, and weight the Invasion games more heavily? There are many potential solutions that include the maximum number of players. We should work towards those, not push people out.

Edited by Malleus011, 26 April 2016 - 11:25 AM.

[Randy Poffo]

Fobhopper, on 26 April 2016 - 09:27 AM, said:

PGI, I am really disappointed to read the merging of queues. I have been here since closed beta. Bought most of your mech packages and supported you in forums in other places. I remember the disappointment of Clan Warfare 1. Dismayed at the disappointment of 'seal clubbing' that Clan Warfare 2 became. And finally Faction Warfare 3 arrives after almost a year of us complaining about the pug vs unit stomping, and you want to revert the changes barely after a week of patching.

DONT!

This is (mostly) what your playerbase wanted. The only problem is that free-lancers literally have no incentive to play because the rewards are utter dogshit. And freelancers can only join if requests are made, which already limits the playerbase to those who are already invested in playing FW either as a solo loyalist, a unit doing drops, or solo merc units and actual merc units.

First off; You want to fix the queues, remove freelancer option entirely, and just have Mercenary and Loyalist careers. Have people be solo mercenary's from the get-go, and then if they want, they can become UNIT mercenaries. Then you have solo loyalist players, and then Unit loyalist players. That will help fix queue times, because if you actually want to play faction warfare, you literally have to go merc and create a unit tag (just for yourself) in order to actually look at the battles going on and choose the battlefield YOU want to fight on. Just remove the Freelance career, and allow merc players to play without making a unit and you will have a lot more people jumping into FW. If you read the forums (particularly new player section) a lot of people refuse to even jump into FW because they have to create a unit before they can even get into match making, and because of that they refuse. You can been a freelance merc, who can drop with anyone, OR you can be a contracted merc (like it is right now) for extra rewards for fighting for a faction.

Simply making the careers either Mercenary solo or Loyalist solo, Merc unit and Loyalist unit will appease most of the people.

This post needs more attention, it says a lot of things I agree with wholeheartedly.

The one thing I disagree with here (and in a lot of the other posts) is the bit about rewards. The difference in rewards made little to no difference to me this week. And I do not think the difference in rewards is ultimately the problem. I stayed freelancer because I do not want to be a loyalist, and because you cannot actually play solo q as a mercenary. I ended up not playing a lot of solo q anyway, though, because freelancers cannot initiate a q and if a CTA did pop (which was rare) you had to be right on top of it to catch it before it went away. There is basically no conceivable change to the reward structure that would have made a difference for me there.

[KrocodockleTheBooBoxLoader-GetIn]

After reading through these posts it's becoming painfully obvious that mwo started behind and is falling even further back. Quick play is basically the only working part of the game and it's hyper one dimensional. 12 v 12 is basically what you get with mwo. Everything else is in Beta. Long Tom artillery is the newest thing? Are you serious???? Even living legends had helicopters tanks and infantry? Where's the good stuff pgi? Given up trying to impress us? Have you settled on collecting on a mech release once a month?

PGI is focused on what they sell not on what they make.

[PFC Carsten]

MrKvola, on 26 April 2016 - 09:03 AM, said:

A lot of "solo player" salt.

What I do not understand is:
Why do you push solo play in a team based game. In a game mode with team objectives. That is driven by community decisions.

Maybe it helps when you think of "ad hoc teams" instead of "solos".

[Malleus011]

I think when a lot of people say 'increase rewards' what they mean is 'increase rewards to be competitive with the same time spent playing non-CW matches'. Waiting 15 minutes to play a CW match for thirty minutes should be about as rewarding - or more rewarding - than playing 45 minutes of non-CW.

Edited by Malleus011, 26 April 2016 - 11:28 AM.

[Axeface]

Taffer, on 26 April 2016 - 09:39 AM, said:

They should just remove all solo queues and those antisocial solo players can either git gud and join a unit with LFG or the forums or they can just giiiiiiiiiiiiiiit out!

You know what, you are right. I'm trying to play the wrong game. I just cant be bothered with this anymore, i'll play a few quickplay games a month when I'm bored out of my mind and let the game slide. PGI should listen to you, they really should. At least we'll get this over with faster.

[Randy Poffo]

Malleus011, on 26 April 2016 - 11:07 AM, said:

There are people who play the game differently than you. Instead of telling them that they are having fun wrong, why not try to expand the game to accommodate as many players as possible? If they are 'ruining' your map, then why not restrict them only to a Scouting or Skirmish mode, and weight the Invasion games more heavily? There are many potential solutions that include the maximum number of players. We should work towards those, not push people out.

And these additional ways of playing the game could serve as transitional stages, as well, perhaps bringing more solo players to get involved and eventually think about joining units.

The way I always envisioned this working before FW even started was that there would be high-value and low-value planets. Lorewise there were always backwater worlds that no house would invest more than a lance of mechs at a time in defending. And there were big worlds that no house in their right mind would entrust the defense of to a rabble of underequipped or undertrained freelance mechwarriors. I imagined big units fighting to build the sort of prestige needed to be allowed the chance to fight over big high-value planets against other prestigious units, while up-and-comers or more casual players fought over the scraps and (occasionally) proved themselves able to move on to bigger and better things or be recruited by a bigger unit.

On a teamplay level it is vastly easier to cobble together some kind of teamwork with strangers in a 4v4 match. It's also more personal, you pay more attention to the people you play with, and if somebody impresses you with their play you're more likely to friend them or remember them whereas with 11 other people you might not even notice that guy. That in turn would lead to more small units forming, and small units give you your transition to larger units.

[xe N on]

MrKvola, on 26 April 2016 - 09:03 AM, said:

A lot of "solo player" salt.

What I do not understand is:
Why do you push solo play in a team based game. In a game mode with team objectives. That is driven by community decisions.

What I don't understand is, what does a single unit in a game mode that should be driven by community decisions? Community is much more than playing in a group or team. Community or faction is something far greater.

Let me try to explain.

I played Q3 Arena in a Clan in several leagues back before the year 2000. That was 4 vs 4. I also played Tribes 2, dropping in team size of 32 clan members (so I can only smile about 12 man in MWO). Both games have something in common. They are competitive group vs. group FPS. You fight for the success of your group. But there is no greater goal than improve your group. In a competitive group vs group FPS there is no "faction".

The most "faction" I ever experienced was in the PvP MMORPG DAoC. There you go for community objectives, e.g. within a coordinated 200 man battle group recruiting from any kind of players: solo, PUGS, competitive groups ... they all work together ... for a greater goal. This goal do not concern only your group, but your whole faction. That is something you can call community or faction warfare. And that was late 2001.

People that state community warfare is all about groups ... really don't know what community warfare can be after all. Currently, CW or FW is all about improving your own group. If your faction owns 1 or 1000 planet is irrelevant. Planets in MWO are nothing than farming spots. In addition, you have no relationship to your faction members outside your group. And this is even showing here in the forums where group player want to exile their own faction members only because they prefer to drop solo. There is no solidarity. Only personal/group profit and interest.

If MWO want to be a competitive group FPS game ... well, there are already plenty. MWO will be a niche. If it can survive at all. I would still prefer Tribes over MWO in that case.

However, because of BT lore, MWO has the potential to become much more than a simple group vs group FPS.

Edited by xe N on, 26 April 2016 - 12:00 PM.

[WarHippy]

I am almost entirely a solo player and I welcome this change. As a solo player I am well aware my contribution is going to be limited at best and that I will have little if any impact on the map. I'm not going to complain about that because that is exactly how it should be. As a solo player I'm just happy to fill an empty spot and provide what support I can to the people actually dedicating time and effort into organizing a unit. A separate solo queue has never made sense to me for any of the CW game play. CW should be focused on organized end game group play.

That being said PGI needs to do a much better job of incentivizing people to join units and making it easier for them to join units. CW also needs to be something much more interesting than it currently is.

[AngrySpartan]

Never expected so much "anti-solo" thoughts and opinions on these forums.Thing is, there always will be PUGs and always will be unit players. There always will be people who are not willing to join units, whether it is "antisocial" guys or it is something related to RL stuff or whatever. There always will be some solo players and they are a significant part of PGI's customer base. Face it.

For the past 18 months one of the strongest desire from this chunk of customer base was "let us play CW without being stomped by organized 12 man. We want play our own game, against our kind of players, let us do it!". And when it happened, no matter how bad it was executed, we got this: merging the queues again. After a week of testing and no further steps to fix its poor execution.

So if someone from PGI actually read this topic: make the queue separation proper way first! Fix it, there are many good and brilliant ideas in this topic and others. If that wouldn't work? Fine, you'll do you "sign up in the units" thing again. But throwing player's desires out of the window because of current flawed queue concept and going back 18 months is not a way to satisfy your customers.

Edited by AngrySpartan, 26 April 2016 - 12:16 PM.

[Livewyr]

I'm curious, I see things like "Joining a unit is too much of a commitment" and "Joining a unit just isn't an option."

How? Why?

[xe N on]

Livewyr, on 26 April 2016 - 12:19 PM, said:

I'm curious, I see things like "Joining a unit is too much of a commitment" and "Joining a unit just isn't an option."

How? Why?

For players that are not playing competitive-oriented and play not on regular basis. What would the advantages? I would limiting me playing with a narrow number of people?

In nearly all massive online games, group forming outside clans/teams/units is quite common, even for end game content.

Edited by xe N on, 26 April 2016 - 12:25 PM.