137 replies to this topic

[MischiefSC]

At this point there's no benefit to being a loyalist.

What's critical to understand is that FW needs some big improvements but it needs to stay alive long enough to make them. Queue changes, alliances, LT fixes, these keep the heartbeat struggling along until bigger stuff gets done.

It's okay to do merc right now. What's important is keeping people playing while things get fixed.

[50 50]

Just listening to the round table at the moment and I'm really pleased that this discussion has been able to take place and it has been made available for us to all listen to and understand.

I wanted to make a couple of points that may help with the discussion.

The attack lane reduction when two factions are attacking each other is a nice idea. I think there are a couple of hurdles there and there's something niggling me about it that makes me think there is a problem we haven't yet seen.

Alliances.
I believe this is a really good idea.
The bit that is missing is being able to declare a cease fire or a truce.
If we can vote to attack/declare war, that is one part of negotiating.
Add the ability to vote on alliances with another faction so we can help attack/defend with each other.
But the last bit is being able to declare a truce with a faction.
This helps control the borders and will make the number of planets being contested (buckets) fluctuate.
If declaring hostilities opens a bucket, the truce closes one.
It becomes a natural player driven dynamic.

The red light idea
I get the idea, it's like a warning that goes out to say the planet is being assaulted by a full invasion team. It should probably be more of a function in the call to arms but also needs to be clear to the players what is going on.
But it doesn't solve the problem for smaller units and solos in terms of how they can participate.
The problem is that it still takes both sides in a conflict to fill two 12 player teams (grouped up, in a unit or not) before they can do anything.
This is directly tied in with the actual game play itself with the way the maps are setup and the single objective.
What we need to allow is the solo player to be able to drop into a battle zone and start doing something,.
It shouldn't be that a single lone player can win the whole battle, but they can begin setting it up for other players to join and ultimately the big groups to come in. That's where the whole continuous warfare concept makes this whole thing work but it needs the bigger concept and the big maps with multiple objectives.... but that's a discussion for a different round table.
This idea also does not stop a big group from taking the initiative straight away and mounting a surprise attack with large numbers straight off the bat.

The point is, the mode does not allow the battle to start on a small scale with the small units and solo players and then build up to the full invasion where the big groups can wade in and acknowledge/utilize the efforts of the players that have been in there fighting the good fight.

[Drunk Canuck]

MischiefSC, on 29 July 2016 - 04:05 PM, said:

At this point there's no benefit to being a loyalist.

What's critical to understand is that FW needs some big improvements but it needs to stay alive long enough to make them. Queue changes, alliances, LT fixes, these keep the heartbeat struggling along until bigger stuff gets done.

It's okay to do merc right now. What's important is keeping people playing while things get fixed.

I disagree entirely. There is no real reason to being a mercenary, particularly if you care about the MC generation from taking planets. As soon as the contract expires, you lose all the planets you captured, and the MC with it. As a loyalist, you can easily retain those planets so long as your faction is also pressing forwards and gaining new territories with each ceasefire phase, making the planets that you capture become protected from having your units tag removed.

Half the problem with Faction Play is not whether you are a mercenary or a loyalist, it's the actual gameplay itself. The map design, the objective types (not to mention how easy it is to rush objectives for a quick win), and the overall requirement that player numbers dictate your success and not actual wins/losses nor are statistics factored into who wins the planet for the faction.

50 50, on 29 July 2016 - 11:51 PM, said:

Just listening to the round table at the moment and I'm really pleased that this discussion has been able to take place and it has been made available for us to all listen to and understand.

I wanted to make a couple of points that may help with the discussion.

The attack lane reduction when two factions are attacking each other is a nice idea. I think there are a couple of hurdles there and there's something niggling me about it that makes me think there is a problem we haven't yet seen.

Alliances.
I believe this is a really good idea.
The bit that is missing is being able to declare a cease fire or a truce.
If we can vote to attack/declare war, that is one part of negotiating.
Add the ability to vote on alliances with another faction so we can help attack/defend with each other.
But the last bit is being able to declare a truce with a faction.
This helps control the borders and will make the number of planets being contested (buckets) fluctuate.
If declaring hostilities opens a bucket, the truce closes one.
It becomes a natural player driven dynamic.

Alliances are the reason why Faction Play is dead outside of Clan Jade Falcon. All you wimpy Bears and Wolves didn't even want to skirmish against the other Clans, meanwhile you all wound up getting steamrolled by the factions you were supposed to be attacking, and aside from FRR, both Kurita and Steiner have a lot of TERRIBLE players.

[Drunk Canuck]

AnTi90d, on 28 July 2016 - 09:57 PM, said:

The last roundtable was full of MerSenaries. This roundtable was full of MerSenaries. If you listen to MerSenaries more than anyone else, you come out with ideas that benefit MerSenaries.

So where are you loyalists in all of this? Oh, that's right, not playing Faction Play. What have you done to earn a voice in fixing this terribly designed game mode? Where has your participation been? Non existent. You can't be recognized when you aren't as a whole, doing anything to populate the game mode and anyone with a brain knows that there are more players in many loyalist units than there are players combined between the few true mercenary units in FP. Heck, Steiner has units with 200+ members, even 228th doesn't have more than 200, have players across all 3 regions, which means the ability to constantly participate in CW at all times of the day, but it doesn't guarantee wins all the time either. And ironically, Steiner hired a bunch of Davion units to help them repel CJF and they still can't do it. The fact is, numbers don't mean a whole lot when you keep on losing because your faction can't, as they say, "git gud". When Steiner has to hire units who can only generator rush in order to get wins because they can't even beat other units in a straight up fight when they are running 12 man's, is pretty laughable. Hard to take you loyalists seriously when you are doing that kind of trash tier, nubless garbage. Even MS doesn't sink that low.

[MischiefSC]

I was tempted for a minute to dissect point by point why you're wrong and how you're wrong but if you're goofy enough to have thought any of that in the first place it would have flown right past you.

So I'll just go with "You're wrong on pretty much every point".

That too belong to a unit that should know better are still seem to know own absolutely nothing about what's going on in FW actually just feeds the (generally incorrect) idea that you can't trust a narrow group of merc players to make good decisions about what would help FW.

Fortunately the group who went to the roundtable was a lot more cognizant of the situation than you so we've got some good, actionable ideas. The real question is can we get those ideas implemented.

You keep being wrong though. It seems pretty comforting to you.

[Novakaine]

My biggest deal is that Long Toms seemingly only hits at the beginning each wave.
Which in itself is problematic.
Might be my imagination.
However reduce the damage output and increase the timer seems reasonable to me.

[MischiefSC]

Any damage it does is damage stolen from me or whoever is on that team. If it's a decisive advantage, be it LT or whatever, it trumps invasion.

[Alistair Winter]

I actually really liked the Roundtable. I don't understand why there's so much negativity. Yes, they focused on buckets and Long Tom, and those things aren't the reasons I don't play FP at all. My sole concerns are the game modes and the maps. That being said, I understood Russ' reason for focusing on buckets and Long Tom first, so I get it.

Furthermore, I thought he was very forthcoming in terms of accepting ideas. It was a proper roundtable. It was good. Not all of the community representatives were as eloquent and sober as I would have wanted, but there you go.

I am disappointed that so many people want to see the Long Tom gone. For me, there are two issues with the Long Tom.

• It's too powerful, and you can't really nerf it too much because it's supposed to be a powerful weapon.
  
• It kills the queues because nobody wants to play at such a huge disadvantage.

For me, the solution would be this:

• You don't make it any less powerful, you just restrict when and how it's fired. For example, if there's green smoke 60 seconds before the Long Tom drops, then everyone has time to evacuate an area before the Long Tom shell arrives. In that case, the Long Tom becomes like real artillery. It's more about denying the enemy a position than actually winning the battle. So if you see the green smoke around one of the gates, then the defenders either have to push out past the Long Tom strike or pull back and let the enemy potentially charge through that position after the explosion. Or if the defenders have the Long Tom, then the green smoke near the attackers will force the attackers to either push in before they would otherwise prefer, or alternatively pull back and move to another gate or something, losing valuable time.
  
  In that case, the Long Tom wouldn't normally cause a lot of kills, it would just force both teams to move. And in Invasion mode, forced movement can be a good thing, because gameplay can be very static.
  
• The solution to making people play Invasion mode when the other side has the Long Tom is a bit harder to figure out. If the Long Tom isn't an advantage, then you kill the reason for people to play Scout mode. If it is an advantage, you kill the reason for people to fight an uphill battle.
  
  I would say that there needs to be a substantial reward for being able to turn the tide and win under those conditions. Think of it in terms of a desperate faction offering bigger promotions or higher rewards to the loyalists and mercenaries who are able to win against all odds in a time of crisis. So while I don't think they should negate the advantage of having the Long Tom, I do think they should increase the rewards for winning matches at a disadvantage. And this would really motivate 12-man units to rally behind a planet that is suffering.

To increase the rewards, you have to increase the cap for ranks. You can't just have 20 ranks per faction, the ceiling needs to be raised. There needs to be something like 30-50 ranks. And the rewards need to be more than C-bills and mechbays. They need to be items that are otherwise hard to obtain, such as decals, premium colours, supply keys, maybe even unique cosmetic items.


In other words... PGI has to pay up, put some interesting stuff on the table for the players to fight for. If the team with Long Tom wins 70% of the time, then the rewards for the defenders need to be proportionately bigger so that only winning 30% of the time gives you almost as high rewards over time. Otherwise, people will always avoid participating in losing battles.

Ideally, the incentive for playing should be individual rewards, capturing planets for your unit, and winning the overall FP endgame by conquering Terra.

Edited by Alistair Winter, 31 July 2016 - 12:43 PM.

[50 50]

I thought the idea about replacing the long tom with buffs for artillery/air strikes was fairly good.
I can understand that after putting in the effort to make the long tom that they would like to not see that effort wasted, but it does steel damage and kills from the players and takes the battle away from our own actions within the invasion.

One aspect I'd like to point out with this effect is that it is global in nature. So as soon as one faction has control of the long tom, all of that factions invasion teams gain the benefit. This is one example of the system trying to cross functionality between faction level, global, team and individual scale.

It may be possible to instead relate scouting missions directly to particular invasions so that the effects from the scouting effort only relate to that invasion mission. The two modes run side by side for the duration of the invasion. There are some good and bad points to doing this however and I don't believe it would be as good as integrating scouting directly into the same match.

[MischiefSC]

Alistair Winter, on 31 July 2016 - 12:42 PM, said:

I actually really liked the Roundtable. I don't understand why there's so much negativity. Yes, they focused on buckets and Long Tom, and those things aren't the reasons I don't play FP at all. My sole concerns are the game modes and the maps. That being said, I understood Russ' reason for focusing on buckets and Long Tom first, so I get it.

Furthermore, I thought he was very forthcoming in terms of accepting ideas. It was a proper roundtable. It was good. Not all of the community representatives were as eloquent and sober as I would have wanted, but there you go.

I am disappointed that so many people want to see the Long Tom gone. For me, there are two issues with the Long Tom.

• It's too powerful, and you can't really nerf it too much because it's supposed to be a powerful weapon.
  
• It kills the queues because nobody wants to play at such a huge disadvantage.

For me, the solution would be this:

• You don't make it any less powerful, you just restrict when and how it's fired. For example, if there's green smoke 60 seconds before the Long Tom drops, then everyone has time to evacuate an area before the Long Tom shell arrives. In that case, the Long Tom becomes like real artillery. It's more about denying the enemy a position than actually winning the battle. So if you see the green smoke around one of the gates, then the defenders either have to push out past the Long Tom strike or pull back and let the enemy potentially charge through that position after the explosion. Or if the defenders have the Long Tom, then the green smoke near the attackers will force the attackers to either push in before they would otherwise prefer, or alternatively pull back and move to another gate or something, losing valuable time.
  
  
  In that case, the Long Tom wouldn't normally cause a lot of kills, it would just force both teams to move. And in Invasion mode, forced movement can be a good thing, because gameplay can be very static.
  
• The solution to making people play Invasion mode when the other side has the Long Tom is a bit harder to figure out. If the Long Tom isn't an advantage, then you kill the reason for people to play Scout mode. If it is an advantage, you kill the reason for people to fight an uphill battle.
  
  
  I would say that there needs to be a substantial reward for being able to turn the tide and win under those conditions. Think of it in terms of a desperate faction offering bigger promotions or higher rewards to the loyalists and mercenaries who are able to win against all odds in a time of crisis. So while I don't think they should negate the advantage of having the Long Tom, I do think they should increase the rewards for winning matches at a disadvantage. And this would really motivate 12-man units to rally behind a planet that is suffering.

To increase the rewards, you have to increase the cap for ranks. You can't just have 20 ranks per faction, the ceiling needs to be raised. There needs to be something like 30-50 ranks. And the rewards need to be more than C-bills and mechbays. They need to be items that are otherwise hard to obtain, such as decals, premium colours, supply keys, maybe even unique cosmetic items.



In other words... PGI has to pay up, put some interesting stuff on the table for the players to fight for. If the team with Long Tom wins 70% of the time, then the rewards for the defenders need to be proportionately bigger so that only winning 30% of the time gives you almost as high rewards over time. Otherwise, people will always avoid participating in losing battles.

Ideally, the incentive for playing should be individual rewards, capturing planets for your unit, and winning the overall FP endgame by conquering Terra.

Except nobody would still play with LT active because the team with it gets way less pay and the team without it generally loses.

What I truly, absolutely don't get is this idea that if you're winning in scouting you should have a decisive advantage in invasion. As a game design that is, literally, a system that guarantees the 4man queue will functionally shut down the 12man queue.

Is that what we want? This idea that people will still play when they're pretty much screwed is disingenuous. We already know that scouting, being 4 v 4 with no respawns, can never and will never be as balanced as invasion queue with 12v12 and 3 respawns.

If the goal is to get less people to actively play FW, that's how you do it. If, however, the goal is to keep people in FW then what possible sane and rational reason would make you think a system that lets the 4man queue give one side of the 12man queue a decisive advantage is going to keep people playing?

There's no guesswork or judgement calls here. If scouting provides a definitive advantage then it closes down the invasion queue. If A, then B. It's not just self-evident but it's been demonstrated countless times. Why do we and PGI keep trying to argue in favor of this concept while simultaneously saying we don't want people to quit playing FW?

One absolutely and demonstratively causes the other.

[Alistair Winter]

MischiefSC, on 31 July 2016 - 08:12 PM, said:

Except nobody would still play with LT active because the team with it gets way less pay and the team without it generally loses.

This is an irrational argument. It depends on how you balance it.

MischiefSC, on 31 July 2016 - 08:12 PM, said:

Is that what we want? This idea that people will still play when they're pretty much screwed is disingenuous.

If they're pretty much screwed, then it's not properly balanced. The idea is to balance it rather than just abandon the feature, as mentioned above.

MischiefSC, on 31 July 2016 - 08:12 PM, said:

There's no guesswork or judgement calls here. If scouting provides a definitive advantage then it closes down the invasion queue. If A, then B. It's not just self-evident but it's been demonstrated countless times. Why do we and PGI keep trying to argue in favor of this concept while simultaneously saying we don't want people to quit playing FW?
One absolutely and demonstratively causes the other.

No, I disagree, and this is a mistake the MWO community keeps making, in my mind. The MWO community makes some really strong judgements based on very little evidence, in situations where there are a lot of variables. If you apply a scientific mindset, all we really know is that what we've seen already is bad. We don't know the outcome of an experiment where we change how the Long Tom functions. See my example above about the 60 second warning before the shell actually lands. It would completely change the dynamic of how the Long Tom functions and we don't know what kind of impact it would have.

The idea to balancing a game like this is to accept a certain level of humility and understand that some results are hard to predict.

The only thing we can agree on, is that a massive advantage for one side makes Invasion mode boring for most players, including the stronger side (because seal clubbing becomes even easier). So this means that Scout mode advantages cannot be massive. They need to be relatively small. But it's still possible to have a powerful Long Tom weapon that doesn't give a massive advantage. There are so many variables that PGI can use to balance this weapon, without reducing its power.

[Baulven]

I think it changes to area Daniel it needs to be controlled by the drop commander. Unfortunately how do you keep trolls and people who don't know what they are doing from either ignoring or dropping it on friendlies, I have no clue.

[Bud Crue]

Baulven, on 01 August 2016 - 04:39 AM, said:

I think it changes to area Daniel it needs to be controlled by the drop commander. Unfortunately how do you keep trolls and people who don't know what they are doing from either ignoring or dropping it on friendlies, I have no clue.

They say Spain is pretty, though I've never been.
Well Daniel says its the best place that he's ever seen...

[JayKay17]

Another point:
Stop doing challenges / events every second weekend that explicitely exclude faction play.

[Spider00x]

For the love of Jesus and all the saints; PUGS WILL NOT CUE UP FOR INVASION IF LONG TOM IS ACTIVE!!! Do all the nerfs you want they will not que up, you cant force people to play at a severe disadvantage, pugs are the life blood of FW. Once they get a taste of victory they stick around start forming units and add to the loyal player base
.

Right now two things are certain in phase 3

1. PUGS WILL NOT PLAY UNDER LONG TOM
2. IS PUGS CANNOT COMPETE WITH STREAKS AND HIGH ALPHAS FROM CLAN MECHS IN SCOUTING.

Talk about that in your precious round table forum warriors.

Edited by Spider00x, 01 August 2016 - 09:37 AM.

[JaxRiot]

Spider00x, on 01 August 2016 - 09:35 AM, said:

For the love of Jesus and all the saints; PUGS WILL NOT CUE UP FOR INVASION IF LONG TOM IS ACTIVE!!! Do all the nerfs you want they will not que up, you cant force people to play at a severe disadvantage, pugs are the life blood of FW. Once they get a taste of victory they stick around start forming units and add to the loyal player base
.

Right now two things are certain in phase 3

1. PUGS WILL NOT PLAY UNDER LONG TOM
2. IS PUGS CANNOT COMPETE WITH STREAKS AND HIGH ALPHAS FROM CLAN MECHS IN SCOUTING.

Talk about that in your precious round table forum warriors.

I shouldnt even be posting in this forum, but I like to lurk..

To be fair, Pugs didnt play CW even Before the Long Tom or Scouting.

Even if you take both of those away, there is still Pug Stomps that always happen.

[MischiefSC]

Alistair Winter, on 01 August 2016 - 01:37 AM, said:

This is an irrational argument. It depends on how you balance it.


If they're pretty much screwed, then it's not properly balanced. The idea is to balance it rather than just abandon the feature, as mentioned above.


No, I disagree, and this is a mistake the MWO community keeps making, in my mind. The MWO community makes some really strong judgements based on very little evidence, in situations where there are a lot of variables. If you apply a scientific mindset, all we really know is that what we've seen already is bad. We don't know the outcome of an experiment where we change how the Long Tom functions. See my example above about the 60 second warning before the shell actually lands. It would completely change the dynamic of how the Long Tom functions and we don't know what kind of impact it would have.

The idea to balancing a game like this is to accept a certain level of humility and understand that some results are hard to predict.

The only thing we can agree on, is that a massive advantage for one side makes Invasion mode boring for most players, including the stronger side (because seal clubbing becomes even easier). So this means that Scout mode advantages cannot be massive. They need to be relatively small. But it's still possible to have a powerful Long Tom weapon that doesn't give a massive advantage. There are so many variables that PGI can use to balance this weapon, without reducing its power.

It is simple. If the LT is 'powerful' then it is 'powerful' and the advantage it provides is 'powerful'. Saying you want it to be 'powerful' but relatively small is an inherent contradiction.

IF getting LT is a decisive factor because the side that gets it is significantly more likely to win then the result is exactly the same. It's like the last nerf to LT. Sure, now a fast medium can get out of the blast range but every 2 minutes it's auto-killing a few players.

IF LT is even moderately likely to end a round with more damage done and kills than an average player then it's decisive. As in over 1K damage and 4 kills. That's enough to swing a match pretty consistently; 1 player who would have done 400 damage and 1 kill who instead gets 1100 and 4 kills.

Beyond which everyone ****ing hates LT now. It wouldn't matter if it just rained flowers at this point, PGI having left an absolutely clownshoes pants on head stupid silly OP LT in the game and then driving events that literally just feed potential new FW players to LT to get rewards has very effectively taught players to hate it.

If you don't get rid of it you'll never even start to get back the people who were lost, not to mention create any real growth. Literally at this point we're just trying to find a way to get back all the players that it drove from the game. If this were any other product we wouldn't be having this conversation. If you were a cosmetic company and your new perfume gave people hives and attracted wasps who would attack anyone wearing it and the recommendation was 'well, what if it we just tone it down a bit so it just makes them a little itchy and doesn't actually attract wasps but just makes them a little angry'. The person in question would be fired.

No, you make an apology and you take it off the shelf. If there was anything positive in it you rework that for a new product.

[Kyrie]

I believe LT should simply be removed and replaced with Air Superiority as was suggested by someone else whose name escapes me. If I recall correctly, the A/S concept would enable or disable the use of air-strike/artillery to whoever won or lost the scouting war.

This would provide an advantage but not a foregone win.