869 replies to this topic

[MovinTarget]

Oooo KingKobra reminded me, if we can't get private lobby FP, can we at least get the MAPS in private lobby? Small thing, BIG HELP when trying to walk people through maneuvers and trying to acclimate friends to FP...

[KingCobra]

[Daidachi]

- Alliance concept works for attacks. Not just from a player engagement policy of units trying to woo others to their cause, but it also effectively reduces the number of factions without major coding changes, and still allows lore heads to keep their faction tags.

Restrict it to clans allying with clans of course, and IS with IS.

- Population calculations. I would suggest that to register as an active player for the purposes of calculating FP population per faction, it should be measuring only those who have taken part in a match within x days (could be 7, but arguments for 14 days or 30 days could also be made). This would alleviate the issues with lore based units taking on wolf contracts, but not playing FW (and therefore artifically boosting the population despite a complete lack of activity).

- Comstar intercepts. These were great incentives, and made players feel like their efforts were both noticed and relevant. You will find no shortage of talented writers willing to write them up for you if that's a concern. Hell, I'll do it for free.

Edit: Echoing the request to add FP maps to private lobbies. A tutorial would be nice, but just adding the maps would be a great stopgap to introduce newer players to the game mode gently.

Edited by Daidachi, 24 July 2016 - 11:40 AM.

[Bombadil]

AngelusDD, on 24 July 2016 - 10:21 AM, said:

I hope Bombadil keeps track of the proposals and sorts them into categories!

This is exactly what I'm doing, and I'll use this info to help guide the topics of discussion and/or inform those involved. So even though you won't all be able to be there, your thoughts will be. So far lots of good input from many different players, thank you!

[Cato Zilks]

Pat Kell, on 24 July 2016 - 11:06 AM, said:

4. Stop nerfing mechs the moment I buy them . I may be paranoid but I swear that every time I buy a mech because I see people doing well with it, it gets nerfed within 1 to 2 patches.

I started playing last December, and this has been the single most frustrating piece of the game. I am getting my behind kicked by Black Knights, I buy them, my Faction pushes for everyone to get them to standardize our decks . . . then the nerf bat hits. I get that PGI want balance, but as a newer player, each mech was a MAJOR investment of time (earning cbills is tough when you suck). Nerfing mechs hurts the newer players that lack the cbills and mechbays.

[Malcolm Vordermark]

- Long Tom, needs to be drastically changed or removed. Slight damage and range reductions aren't going to cut it. Make it a catch up mechanic that only kicks in against teams that are far ahead on kills and turns off once evened up. Or make it take so long to hit that even the slowest mech can get out, thus making it almost exclusively disruption / area of denial. Or get rid of it.

- Need to reduce the number of lanes. Select a small theater where everyone will join 2-3 factions and all FP action will take place between those factions. Then rotate to a new area after a set amount of time. For example, one week it could be Wolf vs Falcon, next week it could be Marik & Liao vs Davion, the week after FRR vs Ghost Bear, and so on.

- Maps need adjustments, currently they are too choke point focused. At minimum, maps should take after Vitric, where the distance between gates is shorter for attackers as that map has less of teams getting chewed up just trying to get through the gate.

- Need more game modes.

[Lorne Malvo]

In my opinion this would help fp/cw a lot:

Enable the is to do joint attacks on clan planets (not the homeworld planets but captured is planets).

[Honiara]

There has been some suggestion that PGI may look to remove some of the queues on FW to improve drop times, you should really be looking at getting people in to FW rather than combining the people already in FW. All you are going by combining queues is to move the low population issue further down the time line, you need to make radical game modifications to make people want to play this mode.

Below are some suggestions that would improve the game mode, and bring something more than a longer version of quick play (you can spin FW any way you like, it's just a 4 mech drop deck version of QP with bad maps)

1. The basic (not even game play) elements of this mode are badly done. For instance the audio of "all of our blast doors are open", well this just sounds stupid on a map with 2 blast doors, the audio should be "both of our blast doors are open", this infuriates me every time I hear it and gives the impression of poor workmanship, there is no reason for this.

2. Why are we destroying generators to OPEN a door? the entire mechanic of this is just wrong!

3. For members on the defending team, why does it take several minutes from being destroyed to getting a heavy/assault mech back to Omega? the drop zone is so far away for defense that you cannot effectively re-enforce. This turns FW in to a 12v12 game mode with 4 waves. Why do the attackers have to run 15000+m to get the the gates? and 1800+m to get to Omega, this entire mechanic stops re-enforcement, again making this a 12v12 mode with 4 drop decks. If you want to keep the asymmetric assault mode, allow the attackers to get additional drop zones closer to Omega, that can be contested by the defenders. Perhaps make the game 3 Lances, vs 2 Stars or 8v12 and increase the base's defenses, do something to make this game mode fun and different to QP

4. Mercenary's they cost money, who's paying them? the Loyalists for a House/Clan should have an input on who they hire, therefore mercenaries go where they are paid not where they want to go, after all they are mercenaries and that's what they do. The payment for these mercenaries can come from the house/clan home-world so no player unit pays the costs. The further back a house/clan gets pushed towards its home-world the more money the home-would would invest in mercenary hires and the more it is willing to pay out for a win, and visa-versa the more planets a clan/house owns the less investment the home-would would be willing to make . Mercenary contracts would not be time based by money based, therefore if Jade Falcon offered 500 million C-bills for a contract the money per game is handed out to the wining Merc unit, once the money has ran dry then the contract expires.

Each house/clan would have a maximum it can spend on mercenaries, and if too many mercenaries are hired then the unpaid mercenaries loose their contract and are back on the free market. Each mercenary unit should have a MRBC rating (based on win/loss and KDR) and the higher the rating the more they cost, Merc units should also cost more for each active FW (therefore units that have 50 members and only 5 active FW members do not get punished) member they have. e.g -MS- would cost the most as its the biggest Merc unit. In the current IS map Jade Falcon would have to let -MS- go due to the range/sprawl of their territory and the amount of money willing to be spend on Mercs. This would force -MS- to move and they could be hired by Ghost Bear who would pay them allot more, -MS- should only be able to choose where they go based on the offers from houses/clans available to them, they are Mercenaries after all. If -MS- don't like it, they they can become Loyalists. If no house/clan could afford -MS- then the unit would have to split up into smaller units, again because mercenaries are only loyal to money.

5. Non Dynamic Drop Decks. Why is every drop deck 250 tonnes? This lets everyone set up a deck of 4 'Mechs they can use for every game going forward. Each planet should have a different drop tonnage, This would make for masses of variation on all drops, encourages the purchase of more modules and quite probably additional Premium 'Mechs to fill holes on weight classes.

6. Every planet is the same; have the individual planets effect the game play map. The planets have Population, Gravity, Temperature and Water Percentage already assigned to them (mostly), If a planet has a 1.2G modifier this should have an effect on jump jets, fall speed and damage. Currently the temperature of the planet has no relevance on the game map. If the Planet is set to 30deg then each game map that is played on that planet should have a temperature set to 30deg.

7. Why do we care for a planet? do we care if Jade Falcon takes Terra? No we don't because Terra does not mean anything. Make the planets meaningful, denote planets that have factories, e.g these 5 planets have factories for Atlas's therefore if your faction controls any of these planets then the cost for repair per planet is reduced by 50% (e.g 2 planets with Atlas factories, means that your repair costs are 0). Hell you could go even further and dictate what chassis are available as base chassis for a House or Clan, and that the only way a House or Clan gets to field more mech types is to take a planet that has that mech factory. Why not have Jade Falcon or Clan Wolf be able to field Atlas's if they have planets with Atlas factories.

8. bring back R+R to FW, this is not 'quick play' give the mode some proper depth. Do not do R+R like last time, with 75% free as that system can be game'd, make R+R a total of 10% (or less) of the cost to buy the item, none of this 3,000,000 to repair an engine. have worlds that manufacture these engines like chassis to reduce the cost of repair. This could help make you mech choices for FW based on how you repair your items. Some planets could be your major AreoSpace fighter repair facilities or staging area, holding this reduces a house/clan Air Strike Cost by 20% if captured they lose this.

9. Remove trial 'Mechs from Faction Warfare, if you don't have a drop deck, then you are not experienced enough to play, trial 'Mechs are very badly optimized (read, not optimized at all), alternatively rebuild the trial 'Mechs with meta builds.

10, Remove Long Tom, its so bad, watch what happens to the queues when a planet has Long Tom enabled. no one fights there because of this very badly designed mechanic, take a look at Russ's twitter feed when he discussed it, a huge percentage of people just said remove it.

11. C-Bills, Playing a 7 min game in Quick Play earns about 200,000 C-Bills (Accounting for Premium Account and Premium 'Mech) A FW game takes 15 mins in Queue and 30 mins in game, the rewards for losing need to be dramatically increased to they are above that of the QP queue, 1.5 million seems more like a figure we should be seeing.

12. You should look at removing groups larger than 4 (a full lance) from the quick play queue, if people want to play in larger groups then they should be in the FW game mode (see point below about larger groups).
eg. Solo Queue and Lance Queue, thats it, anything over that tips the balance of power some matches are won just by being in a big team.

13. the new Assault mode you have mentioned that is coming in September, should be an asymmetrical assault mode into the QP game, then take all of the QP maps and take them into FW, this way new FW players actually have a clue on how to play the game mode, you do not need different maps between QP and FW, you are simply doubling up your work, the game does not have enough maps as it stands why do double the work to get 1 new map into each game mode. This way you can remove the horrible bottle neck game mode that is invasion.

[Cato Zilks]

Rouken Vordermark, on 24 July 2016 - 11:53 AM, said:

- Need to reduce the number of lanes.

Not looking to pick on you, but everyone says this. It seems completely backwards.

, I am not suffering from an excess of attack/defense lanes. I currently have no incentive to help Steiner, Kurita, or the FRR. In fact, I am "at war" with Fedcom so I should have an incentive to let Steiner burn. I don't want to fight for the IS. I don't always want to be in the same que as the top merc units dropping on the clan front. I loved going up against HHoD match after match. I got to know those guys and how they played.

Furthermore, merging the ques actually makes things way tougher on newbies. We need more attack lanes that don't have the top teams in them. I led a 7 man group (4 pugs) the other day. My faction is a bit dead atm, so we could not use the Marik attack lane. I dropped us in a defense against CJF (EVIL in this case). It went as expected (we failed our goal of 20 kills). My group disbanded after that match in large part because there were no other viable lanes.

If we switched to sharing allied lanes we could have joined a Laio attack on Davion or Kurita attack on CJF (if EVIL is in the attack que the probably arent also in the defense que.) Importantly, this is not a reduction of ques, nor is it an elimination of my faction. It expands my options in choosing lanes while expanding the player base per lane and preserves the integrity of the factions in the game. Going this route would need better rewards for helping allies (tags, etc).

[Lostdragon]

How did we go from "We don't need your opinion" to "Let's have a round table discussion" in like three weeks?

[Col Skaza]

Some of my thoughts on the subject:

Force Tokens
First thing, and I think easiest, to do is getting rid of those stupid territories on planets. Battles are not won by side that have more territory. Battles are won by side that have more strength. As so, instead of „map tiles” forces contesting planet have „Force strength”, value similar to „Intel gathered” in scouting, but independed for each force.
Force Strength Tokens: each side have a number of tokens at the beginning of attack phase and when losing battle, token is lost. Once tokens are depleted, this side cannot fight anymore, therefore losing contest over a planet.
Unit controlling planet can buy addittional tokens with c-bills from coffers. Going step further: unit controlling the planet can buy additional tokens, every 24 hrs (for example), each time increasing their Strength on that planet, by (lets say) 10% of basic value.

Game, set, match.
Back in the day, we had 1 attack phase every 24 hours. What we had, was 24 hours of fighting over a planet, that was decided anyway during US prime time (remeber? „Last 7 battles count”). Now we have 3 attack phases, it means, that EU unit, can loose a tag over a planet, because it was contested in time least populated by that unit. Or faction can loose a planet, because its mainly populated by people from one time zone (I dont have data on that though).

What I would like to propose here is kind of a mix of those two systems:
3 attack phases a day, each one gives 1 control point to attack phase winner. Planet is taken/secured if, at the end of attack phase one side have 3 points advantage over the other, so 3:0, 4:1, 5:2, and so on.
With Force Tokens, side that looses previous attack phase have only 70-75% basic amout of Force Tokens, it stacks, so loosing 2 attack phases is not good.

Gamemode itself.
It is crap.
Invasion/counter attack is crap. Seriously. It was terrible on release, and its barely playable now.
Throw it away. I know it throwing away money and workhours, but do it anyway.
Replace it with regular queue maps and gamemodes (Skirmish and Assault I think), 12v12, no respawns, limited tonnage per team, like in Group queue. Attacker have to win to take away map tile (make more of those in that case, we gonna need them), or, with Force Strength: to take away 1 defender token. No draws, if attacker is not winning, defender is.


Raid Gamemode (8v8)
8v8 with tonnage limit per team/per pilot and limit up to heavies, affecting both invasion and scouting with things like:
"recon in force", +5 intel gathered for scouting
"disrupted supply lanes", +1 force token loss per battle (so 1 point loss on attack, 2 pts loss on defense)
and so on


Factions and Units and Planets and more:
Lets start with vanila IS map, day 1 of Faction Warfare. No one took any planets yet, no invasions yet.
We have a Loyalist Unit, lets…. Lets call them… Skye Rangers... of Terra (for reasons unknown).
We have this Commander of this Unit, or Officer autorized. He looks at the IS map, he finds Skye, he clicks on it, and have option: „claim”. Here we go, Skye Rangers have put claim to Skye, if claim is not contested (no other Steiner unit put a claim to Skye). From now on SRoT can put claims only to planets directly connected to Skye (I think each planet should be connected to 1-4 others, like in „30 LY radius, or something like that). Skye puts MC into SRoT coffers. First claim is for free. Second costs c-bills, 3rd costs twice as much c-bills, and 4th twice as much as 3rd, and so on.
If claim is contested, for example, Some Other Skye Rangers, decided to put a claim to Skye also, there will be Battle of Skye. Between Some Other Skye Rangers and SRoT. Thats right, two Steiner units fighting over Steiner planet. Whoever wins, Skye remains Steiner, just its „owned” by different unit. And no one else plays that, thats just between those two units.

So then we have that Green Pige… I meant Jade Falcon unit, lets call them… yeah… Generic Jade Falcon Unit. Their Commander was late, he had a wedding, or funeral or something. He comes online and all planets withing JF border are claimed. And he promised his people a planet. So he looks at Steiner worlds bordering JF space, and he puts a claim to one of them, just in this case, that claim is automatically „contested”, by whole force of LCAF, on the other hand that poor, probably still hangover, Commander of Generic Jade Falcon Unit has whole Touman of JF to help him out, yet, he was the one to put the claim there, so if JF wins, GJFU gets the planet. Do not despair, other Units of JF. When (or if?) You help with that invasion, and its succesfull, You get paid extra for Your participation in reclaiming Inner Sphere, directly to Unit Coffers, with Mcs and C-Bills, and Caches (yeah, putting those into Unit Coffers, might be good idea).

Then we have that Merc Unit. They cannot claim planets. No. Way. Dont bring GDL-case, they were not really mercs, they took one contract outside of Steiner. One. Once. They were Loyalists.
So, about those mercs, and what are they doing here: Remember how other JF Units got paid for participation in that invasion, started by Commander of Generic Jade Falcon Unit? Well, Mercs get paid. And better than loyalists, more c-bills, more Mcs, more Caches.


Planetary Raid,
Do not mix it with „Raid” gamemode.
Units, loyalist and mercs alike, can start Raids against planets owned by enemy factions, bordering their own faction, but not necessary bordering with Units own planets. Planetary Raid plays exactly like Invasion, but, if won, planet is not changing hands, winners are awarded spoils of war (C-bills, Mcs, Caches).


UI improvement
Info regarding scouting and invasion (and raid) should be available at every point of matchmaking, both queue and score.



Sorry for being chaotic with this one, be I didnt have chance to finish this write-up properly.

[EDIT]
Formatting

Edited by Col Skaza, 24 July 2016 - 12:39 PM.

[Bombadil]

Lostdragon, on 24 July 2016 - 12:31 PM, said:

How did we go from "We don't need your opinion" to "Let's have a round table discussion" in like three weeks?

Source for "We don't need your opinion."?

[Starwulfe]

Bring some politics and logistics into FW.

-Get rid of the algorithm that chooses what planet gets attacked when the loyalists vote and let the loyalists pick the planet. Any planet that is on their border. They might choose to attack all planets around then and create a large sphere, or they could bee-line for Terra creating a think line of planets. For example, if CJF wanted to dive right over to FRR and cut wolf off, let them. It's their choice if they want to risk a conflict with each other.

-Allow planets to be flipped faster. If it gets to 100% and stays there for X amount of time, don't wait for a cease fire. Consider it as the enemy forces have been routed, flip it and let the attackers move on.

-Allow multiple attack lanes. If a faction decides to split their forces on multiple planets, let them.

-Bring some form of repair and re-arm back. An atlas should cost more than a locust to run. Ammo should have a cost.

-Supply lines. If you're attacking a planet and it gets cut off by another faction taking planets between you and your home world, then mechs on that planet get a penalty of some kind. An example If repair and rearm is re-implemented, you can't fully repair armor, internals and/or ammo.

-Make planets have effects on the universe. Some planets, like lore mech factories, could act as supply planets even if a supply line back to a homeworld gets cut off.

-Bonus cbills for everyone who participated in an attack/defense based on a percentage of work done.

-Bonus MC at planet victory for the top X units. The unit with the most points still gets their name on the planet and continues to get the ongoing income from it. This could also be similar to cbills in that all who participate share in the bonus.

-Some have mentioned getting rid of or not allowing trial mechs. If that were to happen, allow us to loan mechs out to each other. Units could help new players using this. Heck, even if trials stay allow us to loan mechs.

-Some form of contract tweaking for mercs controlled by loyalists. Give loyalists the ability to boost or ****** merc unit contract % by something like 20%. Could be based on the current contract/pop control with a like/unlike system, or a complete redo where loyalists actually hire mercs.

Edited by Starwulfe, 24 July 2016 - 02:33 PM.

[NAMEUNKOWN]

salvage we must have salvage in cw

[Cato Zilks]

MovinTarget, on 24 July 2016 - 02:20 AM, said:

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.

I get that you want to use both mechs, I love my Kodiaks. As a loyalist I get over this. But what is bothering me is this: 228 has 198 members and you want to forbid 182 of them from doing faction play. That is so incredibly counterproductive. I want all 198 of those people in this game mode.

Plant the the less-faction-active core of 228 in some faction as loyalists. Since their focus is QP, it does not matter at all which faction they are in. For those of you in FP that want to bounce around, form a separate sub unit that returns to base.

The massive imbalances in skill and population cripple this game mode. Again, what MS did with CSJ in phase 2 was both amazing and horrible. How much would it suck to have been a CSJ loyalist once MS left. Everyone had an attack lane on you and the FP population for CSJ dropped by more than 50%. Mercs should not have that much sway over the map, we need more people stably spread out across more factions. This is also why I think PGI should double the payment penalties for taking a contract with a populous faction (-40% might be rough, but -80% . . . HA!).

Harsh dropoffs in FP populations snowball. Smoke Jags had this happen in phase 2, Marik had this happen in phase 3. The week after 228 left Marik, things were dead here because we seemed so empty. When people see the empty ques, they leave to either QP or a different game entirely.

[Malcolm Vordermark]

Cato Zilks, on 24 July 2016 - 12:30 PM, said:

Not looking to pick on you, but everyone says this. It seems completely backwards.

Cato Zilks, on 24 July 2016 - 12:30 PM, said:

My faction is a bit dead atm, so we could not use the Marik attack lane.

That is the point. We don't have the population to support 10 factions right now.

[ExoForce]

Lostdragon, on 24 July 2016 - 12:31 PM, said:

How did we go from "We don't need your opinion" to "Let's have a round table discussion" in like three weeks?

Bombadil, on 24 July 2016 - 12:36 PM, said:

Source for "We don't need your opinion."?

"Noone is gonna tell me how to do my game, if You know better You can make Your own?"

That was... unseen on the same day IIRC.

Edited by ExoForce, 24 July 2016 - 01:44 PM.

[Bud Crue]

Bombadil, on 24 July 2016 - 12:36 PM, said:

Source for "We don't need your opinion."?

The actual quote was something along the lines of:
That the player base needs to forget the notion that they know better than PGI. April 29th Town Hall part 2 at about the 8:30 mark. Right after the part where Russ said we should be thanking him for making the game.

I'm not certain any more but that is close. Funny I'd finally gotten over my butt hurt regarding this, and now my mutual disdain has come flooding back. Great. Think I will go play my OP quickdraw before it gets nerfed again. Maybe if I am lucky I can get insta killed by a long tom coming out of a drop ship. Good thing PGI knows better.

-deep breath-

Edited by Bud Crue, 24 July 2016 - 01:45 PM.

[Johnny Z]

The troll brigade keeps saying the very few maps in faction play are bad.

Those maps are a PART of planetary siege gameplay. A half done part.

Defenders using choke points is not only good gameplay for planetary siege defense, its a must. I think the troll brigade knows this and keeps trashing it for that reason. If it were not a part of planetary siege defense game play the same troll brigade would be complaining about it.



Don't like being called the troll brigade? Then quit spamming the forums with 100's if not 1000's of replies saying a must have part of planetary defense gameplay is bad.

Edited by Johnny Z, 24 July 2016 - 03:23 PM.

[DaFrog]

Pat Kell, on 24 July 2016 - 10:47 AM, said:

Seriously...you want people to be able to run and hide in a corner...I know it sucks to fight good teams sometimes but that is how you get better and at the very least learn a bit of humility. No no, you want to play CW, you need to go into it knowing that there are great big giant sharks out there that may strike at any moment. For me, that's part of the thrill and allowing people to be all safe and warm and comfy is not right at all. Take your lumps and move on to the next match. Maybe bring a team next time and if you are a solo player, maybe learn where the sharks tend to wander at a higher frequency and avoid those areas if you want but allowing people to see their enemy or even the general skill level of there next opponent and then allowing them to drop out of that match is just wrong.

Hey Kell, how's your fun these days ? if you're happy playing the same 200 people over and over with a few seal clubbings, then don't do a dam thing and leave it as is. Must suit you and your bunch of cronies just fine right ?

It's not a question of being afraid, it is a question of more balanced matches. Even in your vaunted Pro tourneys you have A league, B league, C league and so on. So basically what you want is your own little theater to show how badass your unit is ?

Fine, have it and keep it !