137 replies to this topic

[Kin3ticX]

Asaru, on 28 July 2016 - 02:28 PM, said:

Welcome to the team. We have cookies, pie, and punch. I even have candy and pokemon if your willing to step into our van.

Should say "RARE CRATE FIND INSIDE"

FTFY

[Starwulfe]

There were several in the TS that were watching Twitch chat and either relayed it into TS chat or spoke it.
Multiple times the question was asked how can this be done to benefit solo, or small units.
I'm not going to cover any specifics, that will be done tonight.
Most of the bullet points benefit everyone.
Several are aimed specifically at helping loyalists.
Another benefits everyone because its proportional based on participation.

[AnTi90d]

..just remember the state of the game and the state of some factions when you're making all these suggestions.

Here: Housekurita.tserverhq.com

Go have a look.

Count how many people we have. Go head.. all zero of them. Oh, there is that one AFK guy, but he's always there.

[Daidachi]

I listened in from work for most of it. There was also plenty of discussion of tutorials for new players, straight after they finish the cadet one that teaches mech basics, making sure loadouts are viable to play in scouting and FW on trials, whether it's possible tos et up a persistent battleground that can be used for newer players to learn the ropes - a world that is in constant combat, effectively.

Then there was discussion about the importance of the social UI - making chat accessible, improving the LFG system so that it's more widely used as a tool by players to form groups for what they want..

These were good ideas, and all of them directly benefit solo players as well as those who want to form groups on the fly that don't have huge friends lists.

Hell, I'd really like to see the ability to sort your friends list into categories, but that's some pie in the sky woohah there.

Edited by Daidachi, 28 July 2016 - 03:16 PM.

[MischiefSC]

Anyone who came to TS was in. The unit leaders criteria for the roundtable was PGI's criteria. If you came to TS , they pulled you in.

Queue combo was literally just to compress population and not have it be pugs vs premades all the time.

Faction trials would just be suggested by the faction. So you have a deck of trials just for FW that is made for FW and, as such, doesn't suck like current trials generally do. Unit trials was suggested as a drain for unit coffers to help new players.

A solo player only speaks for themselves. A unit leader speaks for many. That's not unfair, it's a byproduct of belonging to a group. That doesn't belittle the value of anyones contribution but it recognizes how many people you speak for.

However good ideas are good ideas. Doesn't matter who recommends them. What is your suggestion for better pug experience?

[Deathlike]

The thing is... maybe my unaffiliated list of players is short (I don't know of too many) that are in the community, unitless, and participate in the forums (or whatever form they choose to use, including Reddit)... which also happen to be willing to step up.

Most players that are active in this field are usually in a unit, and have some understanding of what goes on in their units... whether it is their star/elite player or the casuals (social or otherwise) that hang out together. It's this that is usually more than enough to understand where everyone is coming from... even if they are not always in agreement. They are on the same page for the most part.


It is very difficult to have a "PUG lord" represent PUGs... as everyone's individual experience is just that... individual. Some people play a certain way.. others are more team oriented even if less than skilled. Some are just plain vocal. It's these things if you give a damn about the process or the system, you have to find a way to express yourself... otherwise you are your own silent critic, and noone wasn't hear that.

[Danjo San]

MischiefSC, on 28 July 2016 - 03:20 PM, said:

A solo player only speaks for themselves. A unit leader speaks for many. That's not unfair, it's a byproduct of belonging to a group. That doesn't belittle the value of anyones contribution but it recognizes how many people you speak for.

Just because solo players don't have a union does not mean a solo player would not speak out for other solo players and adress issues that players from within units do not see or want to see.

[AnTi90d]

MischiefSC, on 28 July 2016 - 03:20 PM, said:

Anyone who came to TS was in. The unit leaders criteria for the roundtable was PGI's criteria. If you came to TS , they pulled you in.

This was at the start of last night's stream. People that are already in units are the only voices they care about. If your faction doesn't have any viable units, no one cares.

• SoaqMWO : if you are a unit leader or a unit rep and want to have your voice heard. come to the MS TS now and join in.

SoaqMWO : if

SoaqMWO : if you are a unit leader or a unit rep

MischiefSC, on 28 July 2016 - 03:20 PM, said:

Faction trials would just be suggested by the faction.

A solo player only speaks for themselves. A unit leader speaks for many. That's not unfair, it's a byproduct of belonging to a group. That doesn't belittle the value of anyones contribution but it recognizes how many people you speak for.

Housekurita.tserverhq.com

WE HAVE NO FACTION. THERE ARE ZERO PEOPLE THERE. IT DOESN'T EXIST. NO ONE THINKS ABOUT **** LIKE THIS BECAUSE THE ONLY VOICES HEARD ARE FROM PREEXISTING UNITS FROM FACTIONS THAT ARE STILL ALIVE.

MischiefSC, on 28 July 2016 - 03:20 PM, said:

What is your suggestion for better pug experience?

At this point, it doesn't matter what my opinion is. All the important people will decide my future because I am entirely disenfranchised and have no voice in this.

All I can do is email a suggestion to PGI and be told:

Quote

the Community and Support staff will sort and compile your feedback into a consolidated monthly report before distributing it to the relevant department.

[B L O O D W I T C H]

MischiefSC, on 28 July 2016 - 02:51 PM, said:

Also a soloist can not, by definition, really be representative.

I beg to differ, soloist does not necessary means "solo warrior goes full singleplayer in a trial'mech".
There are an aweful lot of players who simply queue for pick up groups, it has nothing to do with unwillingness to coordinate or not being able to deliver some sort of teamplay.

I've been a part of MS for the longest time, so i simply know that you guys do not try to push your own agenda. well, that's a lie, MS is the devil.

Tho, the pick up group faction which is currently "still" playing fp is a huge part of the community. The unitless part of the mwo community is very likely the biggest part overall.

That "unifying trait is NOT belonging to a group" you are talking about is the one trait which the majority of the community shares. This goes vice versa.
They are also the part who's truely playing the "endgame content" in hardmode.
You think playing as a 12 man premade is endgame? Try win with a bunch of skittles against kcom,evil and the likes.
Queue pushback is a major thing for pug players.
The lack of communication methods provided by pgi is another major thing.
Groupfinder is underused and the reason for that should be investigated.
I still have to ask about the loadouts of my teammates.
The 1 minute preparation is a joke for pick up groups (that's what we actually do, cracking jokes, not syncing mechs or tactics)
The needs of one solo fp player are very likely the needs of the next solo player as well.
Unit players also have the same needs while every single one of them has his/her own reasons for joining a group or unit, much like every soloist has his/her own reasons for going pick up group.

Dismiss that, the needs of the biggest playerbase, and fp will still bleed out, regardless what you do for units.

Edited by Toha Heavy Industries, 28 July 2016 - 03:53 PM.

[Danjo San]

Toha Heavy Industries, on 28 July 2016 - 03:42 PM, said:

I beg to differ, soloist does not necessary means "solo warrior goes full singleplayer in a trial'mech".
There are an aweful lot of players who simply queue for pick up groups, it has nothing to do with unwillingness to coordinate or not being able to deliver some sort of teamplay.

I've been a part of MS for the longest time, so i simply know that you guys do not try to push your own agenda. well, that's a lie, MS is the devil.

Tho, the pick up group faction which is currently "still" playing fp is a huge part of the community. The unitless part of the mwo community is very likely the biggest part overall.

That "unifying trait is NOT belonging to a group" you are talking about is the one trait which the majority of the community shares. This goes vice versa.
They are also the part who's truely playing the "endgame content" in hardmode.
You think playing as a 12 man premade is endgame? Try win with a bunch of skittles against kcom,evil and the likes.
Queue pushback is a major thing for pug players.
The lack of communication methods provided by pgi is another major thing.
Groupfinder is underused and the reason for that should be investigated.
I still have to ask about the loadouts of my teammates.
The 1 minute preparation is a joke for pick up groups (that's what we actually do, cracking jokes, not syncing mechs or tactics)

Dismiss that, the needs of the biggest playerbase, and fp will still bleed out, regardless what you do for units.

word

[T I N M A N]

MischiefSC, on 28 July 2016 - 02:15 AM, said:

If you just combine factions into a couple of groups you eliminate the point of FW - just make it a QP map/mode that splits you on Clan/IS lines, uses the MM and away you go.

Which will also eliminate all the people who play FW since you don't really have FW at that point, do you?

I'm all for FW content in QP so people can get used to it.

So I get it, but I'm still for fewer buckets than you suggest.

Making the game fun is the most important part, but I think we all agree consolidation is necessary so that people can actually play the game should PGI bring in a new gameplay patch.

I think consilidation to four buckets is the best.

It works with lore, in a way. Liao/Kurita/Marik vs Steiner/Dav/(+FRR) vs two pairs of clans (either wardens/crusader or JF/WF and GB/SJ).

That way, we don't lose ISvIS and ClanvClan battles. But also we have few enough groups so that people can get matches.

And I agree, we should not rename these groups or make new factions or anything like that. I think we should still maintain the individual factions. There's a reason many of us chose the loyalty we did.
PGi needs to be aware that immediately after consolidation (or with it) they need to bring in faction differences.

I just don't think keeping it player controlled, at least for the first month or so (or before the first patch for game play and fun), would be worth it at all. What if factions chose not to ally? Then the bucket problem would not be fixed. Even with alliances, if each faction can only have one alliance, we would still have 5 factions, which leaves us with more buckets than before.
Likely the alliances would line up as I suggested anyway, With Liao and Marik allying. Allying them with Kurita gives them a clan border too. Steiner and Dav would likely ally as well. If we're talking strictly pairs, that would leave FRR and Kurita, which still leaves Liao/Marik w/o a clan border. (Also we all know FRR/Kurita would not be great friends, but that's beside the point.

Also, with the alliance system that I propose, the southern IS factions could choose to fight clans now for a reason, instead of because there are no other matches to be had.

I just think, with the community size we have, we need as few buckets as we can while maintaining factions differences. Helps the next steps and makes future growth much easier.

Edited by NightStalker97, 28 July 2016 - 04:07 PM.

[MischiefSC]

So, again. I pug most the time. Most the people in that discussion pug in FW a lot. All that is tied in to what was suggested. Seeing your teams loadout in pre-match screen and way better tools to find people, some kind of faction lobby. Also faction chat even while in match for that matter.

All that benefits everyone.

More time before a drop is a double edged sword as it makes everyone wait longer every match, which is another problem. Have a deck ready, someone call it fast. I saw the comment that Kurita TS is empty - all the times I play the Davion TS is empty too. Everyone has the same story. So I use faction chat to find merc units and go join them in TS, or I just pug. If I'm pugging on FRR I'll try to find some FRR peeps I know, get in their TS and sync drop with them.

Pugging is hard but that's a self-generated challenge. Get on TS, group with people. I rarely drop in FW with 22AL. Like 1 in 50 drops, my work schedule changed and I'm on later. So I drop with the odd Davion mixed group or Steiner and mercs or whoever is on.

So other than feeling like you're not represented because the roundtable is full of people with unit tags what actual suggestions to changes do we have that were not in there already? Better communication tools is high on the list.

What else? What actual ideas do we want put forward that were not covered? Time is short, what else?

[MischiefSC]

NightStalker97, on 28 July 2016 - 03:57 PM, said:

So I get it, but I'm still for fewer buckets than you suggest.

Making the game fun is the most important part, but I think we all agree consolidation is necessary so that people can actually play the game should PGI bring in a new gameplay patch.

I think consilidation to four buckets is the best.

It works with lore, in a way. Liao/Kurita/Marik vs Steiner/Dav/(+FRR) vs two pairs of clans (either wardens/crusader or JF/WF and GB/SJ).

That way, we don't lose ISvIS and ClanvClan battles. But also we have few enough groups so that people can get matches.

And I agree, we should not rename these groups or make new factions or anything like that. I think we should still maintain the individual factions. There's a reason many of us chose the loyalty we did.
PGi needs to be aware that immediately after consolidation (or with it) they need to bring in faction differences.

I just don't think keeping it player controlled, at least for the first month or so (or before the first patch for game play and fun), would be worth it at all. What if factions chose not to ally? Then the bucket problem would not be fixed. Even with alliances, if each faction can only have one alliance, we would still have 5 factions, which leaves us with more buckets than before.
Likely the alliances would line up as I suggested anyway, With Liao and Marik allying. Allying them with Kurita gives them a clan border too. Steiner and Dav would likely ally as well. If we're talking strictly pairs, that would leave FRR and Kurita, which still leaves Liao/Marik w/o a clan border. (Also we all know FRR/Kurita would not be great friends, but that's beside the point.

Also, with the alliance system that I propose, the southern IS factions could choose to fight clans now for a reason, instead of because there are no other matches to be had.

I just think, with the community size we have, we need as few buckets as we can while maintaining factions differences. Helps the next steps and makes future growth much easier.

So put the FW content in QP as new maps/modes that splits via Clan/IS for people who just want to queue and drop and don't care about the actual "Faction" part of FW. I've said that from the beginning.

Doing what you're proposing eliminates any point to factions, or a map all together. Just make it a leaderboard. Having the map in the environment you propose is irrelevant since it's effectively just a Clan v IS, IS v IS environment.

Which eliminates the point of having Factions.

At one point thousands of people and hundreds of units played FW. However the map/mode design was bad, the queue system and waits were insane, ghost drops suck and there's no point to it - taking a world means nothing. No reason to be a loyalist when mercs make more and travel at will. So they left.

Turning FW into QP so people who just want QP will play FW token is not a solution. Adding depth, complexity, ownership and purpose is what people wanted who wanted FP instead of QP.

The goal is to make FP better as FP, not turn it more like QP.

[AnTi90d]

Get on TS and group up with mercs?.. Hah.. that's so rare it isn't worthy of a mention.

Faction chat is useless if no one is sitting in the FP menu, waiting for the rare occurrence of someone typing something.

Mercs either come with 12 mans and totally ignore the loyalists or, like 228, sign up with the faction but never play FP. (I'm not slighting 228, they're decent guys, they just aren't active in FP.)

LFG doesn't work. I've literally sat in LFG for over ten hours before, from NA primetime, through the ceasefire and on into Oceanic primetime. No one uses LFG.

I put my suggestions into Bombadil's thread (page#2,) sent them to PGI in a support email, posted them as their own threads in every relevant forum section and voiced them in chat. Whether or not they were good or bad suggestions doesn't matter. PGI will listen to the big unit leaders and the big unit leaders will try to shape FP based on their big-unit-perspective.

..and what did we get from last year's meeting?.. FP MC thrown only to big units. Scouting to favor factions with the largest population. Long Tom blasts to clear the field of PUG skittles so units can blast through a planet in even less time.

[MischiefSC]

So everyone hates the MC, LT and Scouting setup. Idea is ditch the MC system and instead make it participation based, so if you did 10 drops on planet X that won and some guy in MS did 10 drops that won you'd both get comparable rewards. At least make it a "reward pot" that divides up by contribution.

LT needs removed, replaced with airstrikes. Scouting rebalanced. It should be a fun gamemode but you can't have it functionally closing invasion queue.

A lot of the posts and most of the suggestions in the stream from twitch got addressed.

Again, everyone pugs, everyone sees those issues. They were front and center.

[B L O O D W I T C H]

MischiefSC, on 28 July 2016 - 04:19 PM, said:

What else? What actual ideas do we want put forward that were not covered? Time is short, what else?

Loyality as a currency for faction related bling bling camo decal whatever stuff to draw in players.

MischiefSC, on 28 July 2016 - 04:58 PM, said:

LT needs removed, replaced with airstrikes. Scouting rebalanced. It should be a fun gamemode but you can't have it functionally closing invasion queue.

LT is visually impressive, would be nice to still have it in the game. Just not as a "i **** errybody" every 2 minute. I would totally be down with it every 10 minutes as long as scouting maintains 100%.

AnTi90d, on 28 July 2016 - 04:34 PM, said:

Mercs either come with 12 mans and totally ignore the loyalists or, like 228, sign up with the faction but never play FP. (I'm not slighting 228, they're decent guys, they just aren't active in FP.)

That is not true, i've been playing with and against 228 a lot, even today.

AnTi90d, on 28 July 2016 - 04:34 PM, said:

PGI will listen to the big unit leaders and the big unit leaders will try to shape FP based on their big-unit-perspective.

You can tell your thoughts and opinions to said big unit leaders right now, they will relay it if it makes sense.
I would advice you do that now, since pgi has no open ear for a single persons concerns.

Edited by Toha Heavy Industries, 28 July 2016 - 05:21 PM.

[Carl Vickers]

AnTi90d, on 28 July 2016 - 03:36 PM, said:

At this point, it doesn't matter what my opinion is. All the important people will decide my future because I am entirely disenfranchised and have no voice in this.

Form a 1 man unit with you as the leader, gratz, you are now a unit leader and can contribute.

[WANTED]

I was at work today and listened to the first hour posted in this thread. Good points brought up
So Far. I do think that One as they said , events are huge and best way to get influx of players for special personal rewards. I might even play if for extra personal rewards cause the main gameplay is crap at moment. Then Two, do redesign of key systems as suggested to make it worthwhile. PGI really needs to research WWIIONLINE aka Battleground Europe. They don't have the graphics but the persistent WWII universe has been around since 2001 and they have an end game

[50 50]

@Sader
One thing to be careful of with 'quick fixes' is putting in something to drawn back players that we will all later regret.
That said, the loyalist ranks were mentioned as something that had been overlooked.
Perhaps a short term incentive can be provided through there with not a lot of work.
Perhaps it could be easily changed to a currency system where we can trade in points for various benefits... which would be better in the long term as it encourages players to build those points up again.
Some benefits could have a duration, others may be more permanent.

Some small examples:
What if we could purchase a temporary tonnage buff for the drop deck?
Or, if we consider attaching logistics costs to the drop decks (see earlier post), a cost reduction?
What if it was a boost to XP and c-bills for the battle?

If we look at a long term extension of this suggestion, it could evolve into a type of 'Faction Skill Tree' that we spend loyalty points on.

[Stormbringer13]

50 50, on 28 July 2016 - 08:36 PM, said:

What if we could purchase a temporary tonnage buff for the drop deck?
Or, if we consider attaching logistics costs to the drop decks (see earlier post), a cost reduction?
What if it was a boost to XP and c-bills for the battle?

If we look at a long term extension of this suggestion, it could evolve into a type of 'Faction Skill Tree' that we spend loyalty points on.

How are any of these going to attract new players to the format? all this does is pay off the few that have remained. Or are we just trying to make ourselves happy while the game slowly circles the drain?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for new stuff , especially for Loyalty-based incentives- I'd like camo/color schemes that are house related instead of cockpit stuff in the Loyalty Rewards. My favorite item was the Liao Banner, but that was my only House item.