Final Review, "2016 July, 'Operation: Frontline' Faction Play Event" ---
That's it, PGI, no punches are going to be pulled here! I just had to sacrifice my mental sanity, and take a lesson in masochism, to complete the event within your extended 11-day timeframe. If there hadn't been this extension, I certainly would never have finished, because Real Life ran me (
and I'm damn sure many others were affected) completely over during the First Weekend Of July Holidays. You're further getting my ire over the matter because this event should really have run at least 14 days at the minimum, possibly longer due to those holidays, in order to prevent people pushing themselves too hard. You've got a forum where people are now at each other's throats, which is something this community should NEVER be pushed into the primitive degradation point of. The 14-day-minimum should also have happened because due to the low population of your game from an awful contract system and (
as mentioned by many other community members, even though I lucked out and never saw it as a Smoke Jaguar) the bloody Long Tom, matches are hellishly hard to properly get and people's 'mileage' while playing varies far too widely. This creates a definite experience-based gap through time limits, one which actively shuts the door on any chance at completing much of the event before many people start playing, causing even more people to not be part of the event for any useful duration of time, cascading into causing additional problems including people having to harm themselves on Contract and/or Loyalty choices. I've said it before, and I can say it with a clear conscience again, removing a lot of positive incentives with 'FW, Phase 3', forcing people to over-commit their time to the game where they don't have it, and treating everyone like they now have to be in the 'French Foreign Legion' is something you should NEVER have done. If you want MWO to grow and survive a long time, you're literally doing too many things the opposite way and killing it instead, because newbies won't stick around in an uninviting atmosphere. As it stands, I feel personally (
and I wouldn't be surprised if other pilots feel the exact same way) that the 'Pressure Cooker' you threw us all into completely overshadowed any feelings of fun and/or success that this event would have given for completing the goals. I may personally have two new Mechs in my bays, but I've got severe mental (
and physical, oddly enough) wounds that I now have to go nurse. I am way beyond mentally drained, definitely beyond extremely disgruntled, physically worn out from having no choice but to no-life grind on my meager amount of experience in the MWO game, and have had to utterly mega-fail at performing beyond my limits for long enough that I now fail to find any fun in MWO anymore.
Whatever you do now, PGI, you had better AVOID starting the next event (
of ANY kind) until the 26th of July, one week after the next game client patch. Many people, myself included, are massively overdue for reasonable rest in this ugly Summer environment. Otherwise, you are likely to cause many to want to leave MWO in a mass exodus again, and reduce your game's population further, possibly beyond the critical point that would kill the game. Make sure you don't provide less than 14 days on future 'Faction Warfare'-based events ever again, and you likely won't get another bad review from me about those, provided you stick with the current requirement levels of what this event had for reaching the table of rewards. Which reminds me, there should have been some rather small (
about '30'-sized)
bits from each half of the event to compensate those who never stood a chance at getting it from controlling planets. I saw a few posts in regard to the matter, indicating a sizeable fraction of players were offended by the lack of this. Of course, you could just fail to listen and blow yourselves completely away. But, I'm being an 'eternal optimist' in my current lucid moment of 'smart while mentally insane', and hoping you finally have the 'common sense' to not do that?
And then there's all this massive catch-up I had to read through and reply to...
Coolmojo, on 10 July 2016 - 07:08 AM, said:
<<<snip>>>
I have the same problem, seems to be ongoing. None of my victories are counting for the last several days. The matches are listed as not being disqualified and it was only the victory part that didn't count. Seems xp, match score, cbills and such were counted...just not the fact it was a victory.
Are you disconnecting after dying, but before the match is actually over? If so, that would do it. Make sure to stick around until it provides the black "Exit Match" button to signal that it's all done.
Joker Smoker, on 10 July 2016 - 10:41 AM, said:
So... website now working not correctly and... how can I take my prize if there is no button?
Yeah, I was a bit bothered by the website going down as well. It was down a total of 9.5 hours, during which nobody could do anything website-related that they wanted/needed to do. Hopefully PGI doesn't allow this to happen again in the future? I can only imagine the bad PR this has left them with, because you just don't leave for the weekend and not make sure everything checks out and won't crash.
Dee Eight, on 10 July 2016 - 07:46 PM, said:
I think the people complaining about this event have memory issues if they were here for the first faction war event after the Phase 3 release.... with its EIGHTY match score scouting requirement, and 100 match score Invasion requirement... and much larger goal targets to be reached. This time around they cut the score #s and the totals needed to be reached. The original 1 week timeframe they set was reasonable and doable. They started it the day before Canada Day... I took a contract with the jaguars on the first thursday afternoon, but didn't play my first match for the event until nearly midnight canada day. and then got all the scouting done on the saturday and early sunday morning, then switched to invasion matches. I experienced a total of four ghost drops and 37 real invasion matches in the space of 3 days and finished with about 10 hours to spare on the original 1 week event duration of the event that I didn't play my first match for until about 38 hours into the event timeline.
In other words... I accomplished all the challenges and both grand prize unlocks in 5 days of a 7 day event.
Says the guy (
who I've actually been glad to see around the forums in other discussions) who's too powerful for the current Tier they're in... Dude, there are quite a few people out there who got siderailed by the First Weekend's Holidays in July and the Real Life Consequences from them. While you weren't, you have to think about all of them, not just yourself and your unaffected pool of time. Further, think about all the ones with FAR LESS EXPERIENCE AND PERFORMANCE CAPABILITY THAN YOU, which unfortunately there is a large pool of, and they're all NOT 'Quick Study'-type folks unlike how you are. Sure, PGI lowered the requirements to finish, but their launch with bad timing thoroughly offset that. I originally called a need of 14 days for an event like this, instead of just a mere six (
yeah, really, just count the actual 24-hour periods) days even with the adjusted differences. I hate being right (
even though, regretfully, I unfortunately am) here, as I personally know someone who's definitely less experienced and only got to complete a little over half of this event, simply because it isn't going to run for more than just these 11 days due to PGI's lack of consideration. For reference, they might have been able to finish if there had been three more measly days.
~Mr. D. V. "
You would self-destruct, if you saw the 'images of insanity' inside my mind now, as it would shred yours." Devnull
[
Edit by author for a missed thought.]
Edited by D V Devnull, 10 July 2016 - 11:38 PM.