99 replies to this topic

[xX PUG Xx]

Heres a question:

How does games such as Planetside handle this, I didn't play it very much and can't remember if there were in-game units/teams. I do remember the faction selection screen and it showing the population balance but can't remember if there were teams in there too.

I think the prority needs to be placed on enticing units to become loyalist and the easiest way to do that is to jack up the incentives. Game by game rewards should not be touched but the LP ladder rewards should either have extra rungs or higher individual rewards. Couple this to random rewrds generated for "missions from high command" such as the ComStar missions last year and you might actually get mercenary units spreading around and looking to even out the population.

I agree with someting Mischief said in another thread, without SOME communication between the unit leaders this kind of situation will crop up occasionally. It's good to talk

However the attack lane and defensive stance of factions is beyond the merc units control and IMO should be taken out of the hands of players all together. The simple fact is no player represents the leadership of any faction, this is something that requires either a member of PGI staff or an automated system to generate.

[Lyoto Machida]

Everyone blaming large merc units are funny. Last I heard, large merc units didn't design the game...PGI did. I don't even have a horse in this race as I don't play CW (or this game much at all anymore).

Well, I would like a CW worth playing but it doesn't sound like it right now. Maybe Phase 8 or something...

[Gerwig]

Contracts should be instant, mercs accept one which entails attacking or defending one planet, chosen by the game to place people in queues to make the queue super efficient.

[shakes]

xX PUG Xx, on 18 May 2016 - 08:13 PM, said:

How does games such as Planetside handle this, I didn't play it very much and can't remember if there were in-game units/teams. I do remember the faction selection screen and it showing the population balance but can't remember if there were teams in there too.

Planetside has 2 ways of handling it:

1) Hard cap on number of players per faction per continent. If your faction has hit its limit on that continent, you have to play on another or queue. When servers were full the balance was always within a few % of each other, as 3 factions would have say between 450 and 500 players on the ‘main’ continent.

2) XP boost relative to your factions % on the continent, as well as local pop %. So if you’re on a continent where your faction is low pop and in a particular area where its low pop, you’re netting 50% extra xp. XP is almost everything in PS2 (upgrades, guns etc).

1 doesn’t translate exactly to MWO because in PS2 you could just have a different faction char under the same account and switch to a lower popped faction. A lot harder in MWO to build up a whole new account just for this.

I see several ways of fixing the problem (in order of importance):

1) Pop threshold for Mercs taking contracts. Forget about the hard limit to group sizes. If MS joined Jade Falcon, no other unit would be able to join for the duration of that contract so they’d have to join others and fight MS instead. MS being such a large unit would only be able to join factions with the lowest pops to begin with. If they want more choice theyd have to shrink their size down. Putting a threshold on would help regulate ballooning unit sizes too.

2) Make loyalist better. Reward with unlocking faction only mech variants every 3 ranks (light, med, heavy assault). Those mechs can only be purchased/played while you are a member of that faction (or contracting for them). They’d need to be competitive variants worth sticking with a faction for...and could allow for some more faction flavour. Give the merc units a good reason to consider switching to loyalist. Imagine if they could only use those particular leet variants in comp play if they became loyalist. That’d make ‘em think at least a little.

3) Give more match payout to anyone fighting for underpopped factions – as with PS2 up to 50% extra, possibly more. This would again help with self regulation. If nothing else its a sweetener for a losing situation. Your faction may be losing but at least you're progressing your account a bit more in the meantime.

Edited by shakes, 18 May 2016 - 10:34 PM.

[DarklightCA]

Oh no, they discovered our evil plan of creating a super faction that can't get any drops due to all the competition being in the same faction. Our evil plan of ruining FP is going nicely.

[G SE7EN7]

Actually PS2 merged all players to fight only on one continent at a time. Plus has like 20x the pop of MWO

[shakes]

G SE7EN7, on 18 May 2016 - 10:38 PM, said:

Actually PS2 merged all players to fight only on one continent at a time. Plus has like 20x the pop of MWO

Well yeah…that measure was taken once the pops started shrinking. If it was getting full on one they’d unlock another though.

The same principles can still be applied though – the more balanced the factions are pop wise, the more games there’ll be for everyone. If merc units make up a large amount of the biomass, they have to be the primary point of pop balance. The current level of freedom is pretty much what has killed it with teamstacking on the macro level.

EDIT: and they do need to consider merging down to 4 factions or even 2 if the pop stays this bad.

Edited by shakes, 18 May 2016 - 11:02 PM.

[Sader325]

[iLLcapitan]

Lovely days in CW - decent matches on a more frequent basis, quick drops and all.
Thanks to Steiner & forum-friends for this opportunity.

Hats to MS for yesterdays' clash.

[LordNothing]

the solution is let the falcons ghost on the planet, and drop in the attack queue so you can fight other seals.

people see a lot of players on a planet and think that will speed up their wait time. thing is if everyone does this then there is no one attacking anywhere, and the result is no games. any games that are being played are pretty much units trying to take planets, and they end up becoming farms.

what the game should do is provide incentives to equalize the number of players in a faction attacking and defending. ideally it should be a 50/50 split. if the difference between number of attackers and number of defenders is high enough, start issuing bonuses and penalties to get people to switch over. if you have 6 dozen defenders and only 1 dozen attackers, then maybe its time to give the attackers a 25% score bonus, and give the defenders a 25% score penalty. players will start switching to attack just to not get the huge point nerf. the bonuses/penalties would adjusted every 30 minutes based on the difference in active players. you might even make them proportional to the attack/defend ratio.

Edited by LordNothing, 18 May 2016 - 11:53 PM.

[Joey Tankblaster]

Quote

the solution is to change to an already crowded faction knowing there is only seals left to club

FTFY

[Imigo Montoya]

The real problem is that the other Clan factions really suck. we had information from different units over the last 3 weeks that Clan Ghostbear and Smoke Jaguar really sucks to be beacuse the loylist units do nothing. Even the games against Clan Units and pugs suck, except for games with Jadefalcon Units and Pugs. That is the real reason to join the jadefalcons, because this is a faction that gets its **** together. They really can play Faction Warfare.

So if the other Clans get together and learn form Clan Jadefalcon and FRR then there will be more and better games for all players.

Even Davion gets together in one Forums and TS to coordinate attacks and defense. Steiner is doing mostly the same and the big european Steiner units communicate with each other and form their faction groups out of dfferent units.

Liao didn't need it because it is dominated by TCAF.

the problem is most of the time there is no real gain in coming 3-4 hours before Ceasefire and attack an empty planet, there is no chance to get this planet even if you coordinate 2 groups, so everyone is fighting on the planet that already has the most population and this is the planet the big units choose.

The big Merc units shift to clans because of the Kodiak and they all choose jadefalcon because this clan is the best opportunity for all the players in the big units to get Faction games even if there is no internal group already running and the jadefalcon Pugs are better then any other Clan Pug.

To MS: MS is already coordinating different units, they all change factions like MS does, but they are separated units. These units share the same TS with MS, they share the same forums and they communicate with each other. So MS is not only MS but many units, so there is no need for a member cap... MS already is not one Unit but many.

[LordNothing]

Joey Tankblaster, on 18 May 2016 - 11:29 PM, said:

FTFY

except that it doesnt. i can faction swap all i want (merc) and i still see the same problem everywhere.

let me make this clear, i place the blame entirely on pugs. for being too chicken to attack. pgi is also to blame, but pugs, unlike pgi, are capable of fixing the problem. and you fix it by going to the attack queue. the only thing pgi can do is incentivize this behavior.

Edited by LordNothing, 19 May 2016 - 12:17 AM.

[TWIAFU]

Davers, on 18 May 2016 - 07:56 PM, said:

If the best idea for fixing the game is to split up large units, and hope they have a falling out (which usually means players quitting the game entirely in disgust) then there PGI should just shut down CW to focus on their Esport dreams.

And to make a MINIMUM size to Units, 4 or 12.

No more solo Units.

[Flitzomat]

[CwStrife]

If PGI even cared they would have put more effort and development into CW and have it more well thought out.

The fact that they wasted a year to give us a more polished interface, which mind you, was still broken upon release is pathetic. The Long Tom was horribly thought out, which is probably why nobody bothers to scout now after the event too.

There is just not enough well thought out development. Whoever is making these decisions is just terrible and needs to leave it to someone else. I mean why not join MERC? You get a whole new reward system now for it, so you get all kinds of extra goodies. They should not give any rewards to being merc and only to loyalist... It's kind of silly because so many people went MERC because of it. Then you encounter this issue where everyone just joins with the big teams.

But I agree with Spider, should limit the unit size so that they are forced to split up a little this way maybe one group will go here, and another to another spot possibly.

[Davers]

CwStrife, on 19 May 2016 - 04:02 AM, said:

If PGI even cared they would have put more effort and development into CW and have it more well thought out.

The fact that they wasted a year to give us a more polished interface, which mind you, was still broken upon release is pathetic. The Long Tom was horribly thought out, which is probably why nobody bothers to scout now after the event too.

There is just not enough well thought out development. Whoever is making these decisions is just terrible and needs to leave it to someone else. I mean why not join MERC? You get a whole new reward system now for it, so you get all kinds of extra goodies. They should not give any rewards to being merc and only to loyalist... It's kind of silly because so many people went MERC because of it. Then you encounter this issue where everyone just joins with the big teams.

But I agree with Spider, should limit the unit size so that they are forced to split up a little this way maybe one group will go here, and another to another spot possibly.

But that's not how it works out in games that do have unit caps. In those games they just have massive alliances between related units. Remember, in many cases (MS for example) they are all sharing the same TS server. So it doesn't really matter what their unit tags say, the TS is their home base and where they organize.

[Koniving]

nehebkau, on 18 May 2016 - 09:08 AM, said:

welcome to the merc-effect and the no-rewards for loyalist effect. IMHO, PGI needs to rethink Mercs an Loyalists in terms of size and maintenance costs.

You could quit and join the FRR -- always able to find a group on the FRR hub.

If I may ask because I've been needing clarification...

Mercs: Do we earn the ranks/unlocks as in phase 2? Or is it just "If you own planets we pay you MC"? Or there a separate 'merc' system of earnings compared to loyalists?
Loyalists: These are earning ranks/unlocks as in phase 2, right?

[CwStrife]

Davers, on 19 May 2016 - 05:53 AM, said:

But that's not how it works out in games that do have unit caps. In those games they just have massive alliances between related units. Remember, in many cases (MS for example) they are all sharing the same TS server. So it doesn't really matter what their unit tags say, the TS is their home base and where they organize.

Sure Davers I understand that 100% I know how MS works, i've dropped with them plenty when they are steiner... which isn't often but still...

In any case if you have MS split up into 4 60 man units you may find that maybe one or two of the units will go another faction and they may swap around a little bit more. Or it may not happen, but at least the option is there ya know.

[Gigashot]

I really want to play exclusively FW, but my queues look even worse than OP screen shot. All 0/0's, maybe one with 6/11.

Some queue's you could sit in overnight and never get a match. Can PGI please look at this from the ground up, look at why it's not working, and then address it? Limit Unit sizes, abolish Mercenary's altogether, have nothing be off the table until you have it so that when a player wants to play FW, they can get into a appropriately matchmade game in a reasonable amount of time?

If any game out there has a queue that has literally 0/0 players in it, that would be a HUGE problem, an embarrassment and would get fixed immediately. Even ugly duck black sheep queues like Dominion in League of Legends still had players in it. You still got a matchmade game in under 2 minutes. Mechwarrior has ZERO / ZERO with no fixes in sight. Why PGI.