869 replies to this topic

[Bombadil]

R31Nismoid, on 23 July 2016 - 09:21 PM, said:

I fully appreciate that it's just chatting, shooting the breeze etc. We all do it, no worries at all

You also guys just need to appreciate you have a larger/influencing voice via the PGI tournament so just chit-chatting or not, such ideas can potentially gain quite a bit of traction even if it's not what the greater FP thinks will work.

Anyway kinda detracting a little here. I'm certainly not having a go at anyone's roles here or otherwise. Round Table is good/needed and hopefully some quick wins/good can come of it initially and longer term things looked into.

I totally hear what you're saying about our influence, and I appreciate the concern. My only agenda is that the Roundtable is successful and influences change for positive, improving the Faction Play experience for everyone. My personal experience and opinion is just mine, and as you pointed out, it's been heard before. I look forward to the community having a voice.

[Pat Kell]

Here's is my two cents on this.

1. Remove long tom.

2.Increase generator and omega health so that gen rushes are much more difficult to do and people are able to respond in time. It still seems too easy to walk in, destroy the gens and kill omega.

3.Make C-bill pay outs much larger or at least increase it some to entice people to play CW. People can currently grind out more C-bills in QP.

4. Give out a one time c-bill pay out to everyone who participated in a win that helped take a planet or successfully defend a planet (defense is optional as it can be abused), maybe even some sort of MC bonus (although I know this will be a hard sell).

5. Select two planets along each border. Those two planets are fought on as if they are the same que, when you que up into that sector, you will be slotted into either attack, defense, couter attack or hold territory. This will prevent 12 man teams from intentionally or accidently avoiding each other. At the end of the phase, which ever side has the most wins saves their planet and takes the enemy planet.

6. Give top 3 or 5 teams attacking a planet a portion of the MC. For example, with the 3 top teams attacking and taking a planet, the one who wins the most gets 8, 2nd gets 5MC and 3rd gets 2MC. This should help get more team participation as some people are just feeling like they have no chance of taking a planet

7. Give all mechs dropping from their dropship 5 or 10 seconds of invulnerability to discourage spawn camping. I know it will still happen but at least you get a chance to head for cover or shoot back for a time. D/C's do not get this benefit if possible.

8. Increase cap on tagged planets to 10 or higher so that units getting third place on several planets doesn't cap them at little to no MC.

9. Make the planets mean something more than just MC. Assign a random benefit to each planet that is faction wide such as 1% extra c-bill reward while holding that planet, 1% decrease in mech purchases or weapon or module purchases (can be tweaked to balance things). Any thing you can think of that would make attacking and defending planets mean something for you while playing.

10. Last but not least, for the love of all that is holy and good in the world, remove long tom and replace it with something that is inherent to scouting. Global seismic always sounded good to me but whatever it is needs to be a mechanic that doesn't kill mechs for you. We play so we can shoot stuff, we don't want to have the computer do it for us (well, most of us anyways).

EDIT: removed repetitive mention of removing long tom as after I read it, it was sounding snarky....just want to get the point across that long tom really does need to be removed.

Edited by Pat Kell, 24 July 2016 - 10:49 AM.

[Bombadil]

mgto, on 23 July 2016 - 09:23 PM, said:

@Bombadil: I have to say this sounds bit stuck-up. It's not like we need the round table but PGI does. Bc otherwise people just leave and play something else what 99% of the people in my friend list already did (of course of various reasons). And it's not a 'privilege' to talk to the devs but cheap brainstorming. So I don't understand why they don't do it in their working time? Isn't MWO (including round tables) their work? On the other hand it's most likely they're already working on other project(s) but anyhow pointing this out is not really working from the (paying) players perspective.

In the end we are the customers and PGI wants to sell us something.


And I know your post was a reaction to a corresponding post but still.. it leaves bit of a strange aftertaste.

I'm sorry if my response came across as stuck-up to you or anyone else, but I'm just being as clear and concise as I can be, to him and to others who wish to post similar comments. This isn't a venting session. There are plenty of other venues for that. This thread, and the upcoming Roundtable are all about affecting positive change to Faction Play, and giving players that have questions and suggestions a platform with which to deliver their thoughts directly to the decision makers, and avoiding the comments that aren't contributing to that goal in any way. Thank you for your feedback, I respect your opinions, but I don't necessarily agree with all of them.

[p4r4g0n]

Bombadil, on 23 July 2016 - 09:51 PM, said:

I totally hear what you're saying about our influence, and I appreciate the concern. My only agenda is that the Roundtable is successful and influences change for positive, improving the Faction Play experience for everyone. My personal experience and opinion is just mine, and as you pointed out, it's been heard before. I look forward to the community having a voice.

Based on what I am seeing in this thread, I have to honestly say that I am not seeing anything that would make me play FP more. Most of the suggestions are about making the FP matches better (in the opinion of the proponents), not about giving players a reason to actually care what happens on the Inner Sphere map.

This leads to joining a faction that will give players the best chance to get a match when and if they want to play FP.

Leading us by default to IS vs Clan or some other single queue/bucket result.

With respect to non-NA play times, the biggest issue is getting enough people to get attacks initiated. Once that happens and more people pile on, then you start seeing people joining in. A suggestion posted by slide in the past about being able to initiate an attack with less than 12 people with reinforcements coming in for both teams at timed intervals until both teams have 12 should be reviewed. It may help with low population times to keep FP matches going.

[Johnny Z]

mgto, on 23 July 2016 - 09:23 PM, said:

@Bombadil: I have to say this sounds bit stuck-up. It's not like we need the round table but PGI does. Bc otherwise people just leave and play something else what 99% of the people in my friend list already did (of course of various reasons). And it's not a 'privilege' to talk to the devs but cheap brainstorming. So I don't understand why they don't do it in their working time? Isn't MWO (including round tables) their work? On the other hand it's most likely they're already working on other project(s) but anyhow pointing this out is not really working from the (paying) players perspective.

In the end we are the customers and PGI wants to sell us something.


And I know your post was a reaction to a corresponding post but still.. it leaves bit of a strange aftertaste.

Bad spin on this. If it was about sales they would dump money into adds. From day 1 they would have done that.

They got this license until 2017 and up till 2020 or something.

They are trying to build a game and basically giving players a chance to help do that....

100 topics and replies about listening to players. Now that they are going to do that the subject is turned into sales? Seriously??????

The podcast may not change anything, or even this topic and replies. But it will shed light on the subject from multiple angles.

Help or not who cares. If some players want a good game to play and be constructive and helpful awesome.

Personally I am trying not to spam this topic since I have given my opinions lots since closed beta. I have read the whole thing though, and theres many great replies.

Edited by Johnny Z, 23 July 2016 - 10:30 PM.

[Asaru]

Bombadil, on 23 July 2016 - 10:04 PM, said:

I'm sorry if my response came across as stuck-up to you or anyone else, but I'm just being as clear and concise as I can be, to him and to others who wish to post similar comments. This isn't a venting session. There are plenty of other venues for that. This thread, and the upcoming Roundtable are all about affecting positive change to Faction Play, and giving players that have questions and suggestions a platform with which to deliver their thoughts directly to the decision makers, and avoiding the comments that aren't contributing to that goal in any way. Thank you for your feedback, I respect your opinions, but I don't necessarily agree with all of them.

This is a little off topic but, let me just say that this Round Table is something I as well as many other people have been pushing to make happen for a while now. It just needs to be said that no matter how you feel about PGI or the state of the game(past or present) we should all recognize what a great opportunity having this kind of one on one interaction is with the developers. It's my sincere hope that both PGI and the community find this a positive and useful enough experience that more of these will follow. Special thanks to Bomb and Tina for help make this a reality.

[Kin3ticX]

Pat Kell, on 23 July 2016 - 10:04 PM, said:

Here's is my two cents on this.

1. Remove long tom.

2.Increase generator and omega health so that gen rushes are much more difficult to do and people are able to respond in time. It still seems too easy to walk in, destroy the gens and kill omega.

3.Remove long tom.

4.Make C-bill pay outs much larger or at least increase it some to entice people to play CW. People can currently grind out more C-bills in QP.

5. Remove long tom.

6. Give out a one time c-bill pay out to everyone who participated in a win that helped take a planet or successfully defend a planet (defense is optional as it can be abused), maybe even some sort of MC bonus (although I know this will be a hard sell).

7. Remove long tom.

8. Select two planets along each border. Those two planets are fought on as if they are the same que, when you que up into that sector, you will be slotted into either attack, defense, couter attack or hold territory. This will prevent 12 man teams from intentionally or accidently avoiding each other. At the end of the phase, which ever side has the most wins saves their planet and takes the enemy planet.

9. Remove long tom.

10. Give top 3 or 5 teams attacking a planet a portion of the MC. For example, with the 3 top teams attacking and taking a planet, the one who wins the most gets 8, 2nd gets 5MC and 3rd gets 2MC. This should help get more team participation as some people are just feeling like they have no chance of taking a planet.

11. Remove Long Tom.

12. Give all mechs dropping from their dropship 5 or 10 seconds of invulnerability to discourage spawn camping. I know it will still happen but at least you get a chance to head for cover or shoot back for a time. D/C's do not get this benefit if possible.

13. Remove Long Tom.

14. Increase cap on tagged planets to 10 or higher so that units getting third place on several planets doesn't cap them at little to no MC.

15. REMOVE LONG TOM.

16. Make the planets mean something more than just MC. Assign a random benefit to each planet that is faction wide such as 1% extra c-bill reward while holding that planet, 1% decrease in mech purchases or weapon or module purchases (can be tweaked to balance things). Any thing you can think of that would make attacking and defending planets mean something for you while playing.

17. Last but not least, for the love of all that is holy and good in the world, remove long tom and replace it with something that is inherent to scouting. Global seismic always sounded good to me but whatever it is needs to be a mechanic that doesn't kill mechs for you. We play so we can shoot stuff, we don't want to have the computer do it for us (well, most of us anyways).

OMG YES ALL THAT AND THE PLANET QUIRKS. NOT JUST FOR MECHS ANYMORE
I assume the reason they havent gotten around to it is just the sheer number of planets. Its like 1500+ I think.

Your Faction needs to matter too. I kinda feel bad for loyalists. I'd like to see huge rewards tied into the cockpit items and even decals if they match your faction. Throw a bone to the lore guys. Factions have favorite mechs too like Catapult for Liao or Dragon for kurita. Loyalists should be getting shitloads of LP for knowing that stuff even if its not the absolute best mech to fight with at full tryhard.

PGI just has to add that little bit, those little details, and the players will take it the rest of the way.

People keep saying factions and planets dont matter. Well, you gotta have dat space nerd politics to have things matter. Hire mercs. Wire money. Conspire. Deals. Betrayal. Throw in some a dat Larping from Mech the Dane.

Another doggy bone for the lore guys..... Establish a special planet shortlist.

Planets like Somerset, Tukayid, Wolcot, Terra, Pacifica would have extra fluff added to them. (such as big quirk rewards, their own splash screen text on loading, a lot of lore fluff text.)

Then maybe find 25 other planets that are lore significant but not as widely known as the usual ones (like pleasure planet, mech factory planet, etc.) and throw in a small fluffy blurb about it.


Maybe that wouldnt fix CW, but its easier than me saying scrap combat and completely redo it or something like that.

Edited by Kin3ticX, 23 July 2016 - 11:12 PM.

[Nameless King]

Cato Zilks, on 23 July 2016 - 09:48 PM, said:

So, there is a problem between FW and QP, they feel like different games with different strategies. Decent QP players can suck in FW, because the maps are different and hard pushes are more common. I am not trying to break QP, I am just trying to better integrate the two. Ideally most players would play both versions. I think making the two modes have specific functions in the game would aid in making them feel better integrated into the game.

One way to achieve that is to make QP more like the training it seems to already be. If I need to work on leading targets with a gauss, I do it in QP. If I need to level up a mech, I go to QP. If I want to try a build that is possibly dumb, I go to QP. It is less serious and thus seems to be the place where you focus on getting better.

FW is team oriented. Battles here also "makes a difference" on our little fictional map. It is the serious part of the game: the thing you train for. I don't want to make QP a place where you don't get money, but I want to drive the regular players into Faction Warfare. Skewing the C-bill rewards towards FW should provide incentive.

On the flip side, offering free MC for every drop eats into PGI's money. Right now you mostly pay for MC, that money allows them to improve the game. Giving it away all the time undermines the business model.

If you makes less cbills in QP you will make it even harder for new people to make a quality drop deck, which will in turn drive people to leave.

They need to make FW fun if they want people to play it.

[XX Sulla XX]

Some thoughts.....

1. Improve basic play in CW. If the basic play is not fun whats the point. Having scouting where you can just get super fast mechs and never engage killed it for most people. Regular CW matches have problems like choke points etc.

2. Create long term goals that will work for small units. You need something like dropships and or planets or something along those lines that is a goal. Now you probably do not want to make it something that changes game balance to have these so it needs to be something that can be shown off or used in other ways.

3.

[Dawnstealer]

AI tanks and infantry for ghost drops when?

Clans dropping, say, an Elemental point instead of artillery?

Gamemodes that are more flavorful than team deathmatch? Even destroying the big gun is much easier if you kill the entire opposing team first. Why not missions like "stop the dropships from taking off," where there's three dropships across the map and the attackers have to blow up two of them? "Destroy the base," where the buildings are destructible? Etc.

More wide open maps in FP that require scouts to scout, and so on.

[ConquerorClass]

make LT a handicap.
OBVS you've got tabs on players and their performance....

if people are not in groups / or solos with unit tags x12....
and poor players,
then they MAY get a few LT to soften up the TOP UNITS

top units should see this as a challenge.

PLUS make scouting, SCOUTING, not a reward to pound crap out of your opponent, and hence KILL THE QUEUES with a tact nuke.

give it target info, advance sensor.
planetary DROP TONNAGE increase
opponent TON decrease...


SO MANY OPTIONS... Get this right, you'll make this more in depth and less, INSTAWIN.

[Kin3ticX]

The best idea i have seen for the



is to remove it but replace it with "Air Superiority"

When your scouts hit that 90% the opponents are denied use of their Air and Arty strikes. Sure its not as atomic as the longtom but dont forget each side potentially get 48 strikes and that damage adds up (or doesnt if you cant have it).

Edited by Kin3ticX, 23 July 2016 - 11:26 PM.

[A Man In A Can]

Instead of having two super queues splitting the population and competing with the players for playing time and resources (QP and FW), consider porting QP directly into FW minus the map voting and plus the players sorted by factions as a collection of 12v12 modes that impact planetary turnovers in the same or similar way as Scouting mode but aren't Invasion or Counter-Attack.

This would establish the FW star map as the only stage for MWO, similar to BT:3025, but with all the modes of MWO as possible choices for spending time affecting the planet lobby. The only way there would be no one playing FW in such a scenario is if no one wanted to play any of the modes MWO had to offer.

This is by no means a complete solution capable of solving all issues with FW modes. It is simply a suggested piece to address certain issues with QP/FW:

• Low population in FW (make FW the only super queue encompassing 100% of the active player base)
• A means to add more meaning to QP matches (by making QP modes individual modes in FW, modeled after the Scouting mode so they maintain faction integrity and affect the planetary turnover)
• Lack of rewards/no reason to play (if the QP modes become modes like Scouting mode, then the absorbed QP modes simply become the base rewards/reason to play with the existing FW modes getting further adjustments based on existing suggestions in this thread to make Scouting/Invasion/Counter-Attack more appealing/epic to play.)

That's all I can think of at this late hour. Hope this suggestion gets mentioned.

[AssaultPig]

Long tom is a bad mechanic. You cannot make it good by tuning its damage/radius/frequency/whatever. Random, input free damage to one team was and is an awful idea. Get rid of it; replace it with something better if you want, or just leave combat ID and radar sweep to be the scouting rewards.

[Alistair Winter]

mgto, on 23 July 2016 - 09:23 PM, said:

@Bombadil: I have to say this sounds bit stuck-up. It's not like we need the round table but PGI does. Bc otherwise people just leave and play something else what 99% of the people in my friend list already did (of course of various reasons). And it's not a 'privilege' to talk to the devs but cheap brainstorming. So I don't understand why they don't do it in their working time? Isn't MWO (including round tables) their work? On the other hand it's most likely they're already working on other project(s) but anyhow pointing this out is not really working from the (paying) players perspective.

In the end we are the customers and PGI wants to sell us something.


And I know your post was a reaction to a corresponding post but still.. it leaves bit of a strange aftertaste.

I agree 100% with this, although I can't comment on Bombadil's post because I haven't read through this thread yet.

But the whole "players should be so grateful" angle is just absurdly unprofessional. We're the customers. They're selling a product. They are using their spare time and so are we. It's not like we're getting paid to help PGI develop their product. A round table should be based on mutual respect and appreciation.

[Avenger 1337]

Another thing:

Why dont you give new players 8 fully equipped mechs (meta builds, modules, skills etc..) of each class and side?
or even 16?

• starting an mwo account is so painful you have no idea. trail mechs !!!
  
• you could remove trail mechs completely
  
• "jump start" new players
  
• players have a fair chance to participate with equal equipment (not bad equpment and no experiance)
  
• give them something of what they can buy more of. make some moneys yay

I'm almost 100% certain you lost like 50% of the new players to that trail mech ****.

Edited by Avenger 1337, 24 July 2016 - 02:13 AM.

[MovinTarget]

Cato Zilks, on 23 July 2016 - 06:55 PM, said:

If most of you dont play CW, why not just join a faction and be loyalists? Why be added weight changing faction pop every week?

Because we have both clan and IS mechs and want to be able to play both. Is that such a terrible thing? I suspect this is one of the reasons why there are so many mercs. We've invested a lot in this game and we'd like to be able to play all teh mechs we bought.

Honestly I'm surprised that Loyalist aren't complaining about this; If I were you, I'd be lobbying for the right to play "recovered" enemy tech once you get a certain level in your faction or something.

Besides, you are asking that a group of individuals that helped build this unit get kicked to the curb b/c they don't play a game mode? Just have it monitor how many from your unit are dropping in CW and limit it to 16 or so. No overwhelming numbers, no broken units, problem solved.

[MovinTarget]

MechPorn, on 23 July 2016 - 06:45 PM, said:

It is faction play, not swarm our unit with 500+ players to dominate faction play and force PGI to do what we want because we have X number to players to bully PGI with.

Also, you can limit the number available slots for a faction depending on what the rest of the factions have for population.

No faction can have more than 5 Units than any other faction. If you really want to be Jade Falcon and their are no more spaces left, you have to wait or join another faction.

Then there needs to be a mechanic to ensure that merc units can't stay in one faction for more than X weeks in a row or Y weeks in a multi-month period.

[MovinTarget]

Avenger 1337, on 24 July 2016 - 02:12 AM, said:

Another thing:

Why dont you give new players 8 fully equipped mechs (meta builds, modules, skills etc..) of each class and side?
or even 16?

• starting an mwo account is so painful you have no idea. trail mechs !!!
  
• you could remove trail mechs completely
  
• "jump start" new players
  
• players have a fair chance to participate with equal equipment (not bad equpment and no experiance)
  
• give them something of what they can buy more of. make some moneys yay

I'm almost 100% certain you lost like 50% of the new players to that trail mech ****.

This begs the question:

Is FP just another game mode or is this *THE END GAME MODE"

If its "just another mode" then the post above makes sense (though I can hear someone at pgi not being happy about missed sales).

If it is to be an EndGame Mode then we should not be worrying about new players other than how to get them stoked to join the FP fray once they've met some minimum criteria.

Maybe if queue times were shorter I wouldn't feel this way, but waiting 15 minutes to play a 30 minute game that ends up being 15 minutes because 2-3 players on your team are not ready to play FP is frustrating. There are people that really want FP games to matter, to mean something, left to watch some pilot run into the enemy firing line 4 times in 8 minutes.

If FP is the EndGame, there needs to be an "attunement" phase like in WoW or any other game. Whether this is merely hitting certain benchmarks before getting into the FP bucket or a new mode that eases players into FP I don't know.

Edited by MovinTarget, 24 July 2016 - 02:51 AM.

[TWIAFU]

What in known space ever happened to benefits to owning planets?

Next to population, the next biggest thing CW is lacking is immersion/lore. Use that lore to propel population and activity.

With some some effort, and access to source books, anyone can have any number of major and minor battles that could be represented within CW. PGI, if you show interest in this idea, I will do all the source book research for you for a simple 'thank you'.

We have many lore based Units in CW, put them to work based on lore with lore based objectives and spoils of war.

At it's heart, to me, CW, Inner Sphere, Clans and the Invasion, is all Lore and Cannon. I play CW for that and to take part in the grand defense of the inner sphere. It is more then just shooting robots with lazorz.