16 replies to this topic

[Big Tin Man]

Listened to most of last nights meeting. Good discussion, civil, and kept it to the topic of reducing buckets, with a brief touching on Long Tom. To further the discussion, I'd offer the following things:

1. Tug of war/Double attack queue. Good in concept, but by itself it doesn't reduce enough buckets every time to make Russ happy. Therefore it should be combined with...

2. Alliances. Add a tab to the war planning screen to vote on an alliance, but make layers of an alliance. Layer 1 is the simple sharing of buckets (i.e. Steiner and Davion can play in each other's buckets). Once an alliance is forged, the alliance screen goes to layer 2 of alliances, where the faction can vote to focus their attack on one border (reducing buckets), stay the same and share buckets, or break alliance. If the ally votes to concentrate on one border, maybe offer an incentive for the faction fighting on their allies border (i.e. Davion agrees to fight only on Steiners Jade Falcon border would receive 75% Davion LP and 75% Steiner LP). Let the player politics dictate where alliances lead (boosting immersion and controlling where larger merc units can fight). This would also allow those level 20 loyalists that are trying to role play to see some of those LP bonuses that mercs get by faction hopping, as Alyward was alluding to.

3. Turn on the red light (ROXANNNNNNNNE). I like the idea, but expand it to just a 'hard mode' light. Allow solos (tier 1 or 2 only), and groups of 8 or more to turn it on. Plenty of times an 8 man can carry through a group of unorganized pugs and dominate, so why not allow them to pick up some solos that have raised their hand and said I'll join your big group and fight a 12. I've also been solo and hoped and prayed for a decent size group to be on when my unit isn't running. I know I'd be more willing to drop solo if I could turn this light on, and hope to get on a team that was willing to fight a big fight. This would also help with unit recruitment, as a big unit could run with 10 and find those hardcore pugs that are out there.

All 3 ideas together could be quite good at reducing buckets and improving queues in terms of wait and quality of matches.

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As for the long tom discussion, the community heard you Russ, you like long tom, you like the effect and you like that it gives a big incentive to push for it in scouting. Most of us don't because IT KILLS QUEUES. We have a gentleman's agreement specifically NOT to push to LT because IT KILLS QUEUES. The concept of LT is currently toxic to the community, it needs to go away for a while. You sound pretty married to seeing the effect, so how about this:

Air Superiority--A straight out BUFF to all airborne consumables, and the side that doesn't have it can still have their normal things. So this would do the following:

--Arty's become actual long toms (not mini nukes), and use LORE values (single blast, 60 points of damage at epicenter, reduces to zero as it goes outward, maybe slightly larger than current AOE for arty). Keep the effect, reduce it in size a bit, and makes the LT lore folks happy. Add a bit of time to the cooldown. #WINNING all around

--Airstrikes become a dropship strafing run. Dropship flies along the same path as an airstrike and blasts mechs with lasers. Aim for the DS to hit for 30-40 damage per mech in the path. Increase cooldown a bit as well. And the effect and sounds of a Leopard buzzing the battle blasting mechs with lasers would quite frankly be, AWESOME.

--UAV receives a significant boost to range, duration and health. Maybe make it a small drone that circles around a 100m circle making it even harder to shoot down. And the lurms shall RAIN.

Still quite a meaningful boost to reach the highest level of scouting reward, players control the damage instead of being the middle finger of god squishing mechs every 2 minutes.

Edited by Big Tin Man, 29 July 2016 - 08:52 AM.

[Ano]

Great suggestions re: long tom replacement. Fits with what makes sense to me:

1) 100% scouting reward should be meaningful without being overwhelming. I think your suggestions should be fine, but if in practice they're not, it would be easy to tweak certain aspects to make it weaker/stronger with a degree of nuance beyond more damage/less damage

2) It's all player-directed. So it doesn't matter how well your faction scouted, if you personally can't aim an airstrike in the right place then the game doesn't do it for you.

[SmokeGuar]

LRMs on balance wise have one little problem, most viable Clan builds don't have AMS installed. Making LRM more potent would result Clan side to sacrifice firepower to protection, on IS side adding AMS is much lesser problem.

[Big Tin Man]

The lurm comment was tounge in cheek. Nobody brings lurms to CW, especially vs. clans and all their ECM.

[Telemachus -Salt Wife Salt Life-]

Just push long tom activation to 99%

[SmokeGuar]

Units may not normally bring LRMs, rarely used on special plays.
Puglings on both sides on the other hand, bring lots and lots of LRMS.

[LordNothing]

the tug of war could work if it was just one per hostile faction pair. instead of a list of planets, you just have a list of fronts, and each front is its own lobby. there are no more attack or defense lobbies. you join one queue and get what you get.

you could bring the buckets down further with fixed alliances. fedcom (steiner, ffr, davion), wardens (wolfs, bears), crusaders (falcons, smoke jags), and everyone else (liao, kurita, marik), all at war with each other. everyone would only have 3 fronts to choose from. you keep your faction banner and the factions might be in friendly competition within their alliance (for scores, bonuses). mercs would sign contracts with the alliances directly, and would fly the alliance banner for the duration of the contract (i know fedcom has an offitial logo in lore but not sure about the others). you get 4 buckets where any bucket can fight any other bucket all the time. none of the buckets are permanently isolated from each other because they are not at war.

if that works, and i think it will, then you could really start looking for pug funnel solutions. for example the thing that came up at the round table: unit vs unit fights advance the front at twice the rate, and so units would opt in to seek eachother out more often. you could also use the match groups by type idea that ive knocked around lately.

make enough people happy and maybe we can start getting new maps and modes in fp.

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

[Danjo San]

One accusation that keeps circulating multiple threads again and again and again, is that hardcore + large Merc-Units deliberatly avoid facing each other and migrate to the same front again and again, yet claiming they are only looking for good fights and not seals to club.
The suggested alliance system would make it easier for them to avoid each other while being able to claim they are not following each other, they did split over other factions, that just coincidentaly are allied.
Not saying they are intentionally doing so.... it does happen though.

Anyway for a reduction of buckets this system might work. However it will not adress the core problem, players leaving. And new players are discouraged by multiple factors. So the population in FW will continue to decline unless you create an enviroment that allows room, for casuals, solo players, new players.... "Wait, did he say new players?"
I know you all hate those scrubs that join FW clueless and you comlplain about them, no beginners should join, this is endgame content made for units, teamplay etc.
Well let me ask you if no new players are "capable" of playing and should stay away, and old players are bored of the ever same chokeslam how is population ever gonna grow.
New Players, Casuals, Solo Players... all of them are future unit players. If the system chokes out the fun straight from the start the decline will continue and continue.
Ask yourself will reducing buckets, by shaping alliances and a tug of war system for planets, create an enviroment where new customers see a point of investing their time and money in?

So far the solutions, the bandaids, are trying to get previous players back interested in the product FW. Look at it from this perspective. A company puts out a product, the customer is unsatisfied, the company delivers revisions and updates a couple of times and the customer is still unsatisfied and leaves. How likely is it that this customer actually regains trust in the product and comes back? From an economic point of view it makes much more sense and is more realistic that you recreate, rework the product so that new customers come in, enjoy what they get and decide to stay.
So for the product Faction Warfare, even though considered "end game content", new customers are essential to fill the queues up again.
Having all highly competitive and effective units cluster in one faction does the exact opposite. It discourages and drives away customers.
Having recruitment costs for small and new units, makes it harder to compete, thus it discourages new customers
When new units compete with established units that triple or quadruple the size and the impression is created that size is a factor that grants you a higher advantage. Less numbers = Less effective Impression, discourages new customers
No need to speak about the effect of Long Tom on new customers

New customers here for Faction Play do not mean a player that just created his first account an hour ago and has no clue how to play... new customers can be players that have played, understood the mechanics, built a deck, know their way around ...
They are also "new" in the sense that they then begin to invest their time and money into FW. just to clarify the terminology
Again trying to bring back disgruntled players is the far harder and uneconomical approach to save FW.

[Noxcuse]

all ideas from the round tabel are only benefits for big units to get more enemys to kill and always on the winning side...nothing more....without big time development from pgi....russ hate big dev times..he has no money to make this...so...the result is....nothing..the same dead FW as before

[Vincent Quatermain]

Noxcuse, on 31 July 2016 - 03:56 AM, said:

all ideas from the round tabel are only benefits for big units to get more enemys to kill and always on the winning side...nothing more....without big time development from pgi....russ hate big dev times..he has no money to make this...so...the result is....nothing..the same dead FW as before

I'm not clear how more dev time is going to make you less of a scrub. How does that work?

In the meantime it is organized units that made the roundtable happen in the first place, and are the only people capable of (occasionally) getting through to PGI and obtaining progress.

[Drunk Canuck]

Alliances can go die in a fire. That sort of thing already caused a boat load of drama and units (aka mercs), shouldn't have to abide by the will of other units, not to mention what it some loyalists don't want to have alliances? Bad idea that needs to be pitched pronto.

[Drunk Canuck]

Danjo San, on 31 July 2016 - 03:34 AM, said:

One accusation that keeps circulating multiple threads again and again and again, is that hardcore + large Merc-Units deliberatly avoid facing each other and migrate to the same front again and again, yet claiming they are only looking for good fights and not seals to club.
The suggested alliance system would make it easier for them to avoid each other while being able to claim they are not following each other, they did split over other factions, that just coincidentaly are allied.
Not saying they are intentionally doing so.... it does happen though.

Anyway for a reduction of buckets this system might work. However it will not adress the core problem, players leaving. And new players are discouraged by multiple factors. So the population in FW will continue to decline unless you create an enviroment that allows room, for casuals, solo players, new players.... "Wait, did he say new players?"
I know you all hate those scrubs that join FW clueless and you comlplain about them, no beginners should join, this is endgame content made for units, teamplay etc.
Well let me ask you if no new players are "capable" of playing and should stay away, and old players are bored of the ever same chokeslam how is population ever gonna grow.
New Players, Casuals, Solo Players... all of them are future unit players. If the system chokes out the fun straight from the start the decline will continue and continue.
Ask yourself will reducing buckets, by shaping alliances and a tug of war system for planets, create an enviroment where new customers see a point of investing their time and money in?

So far the solutions, the bandaids, are trying to get previous players back interested in the product FW. Look at it from this perspective. A company puts out a product, the customer is unsatisfied, the company delivers revisions and updates a couple of times and the customer is still unsatisfied and leaves. How likely is it that this customer actually regains trust in the product and comes back? From an economic point of view it makes much more sense and is more realistic that you recreate, rework the product so that new customers come in, enjoy what they get and decide to stay.
So for the product Faction Warfare, even though considered "end game content", new customers are essential to fill the queues up again.
Having all highly competitive and effective units cluster in one faction does the exact opposite. It discourages and drives away customers.
Having recruitment costs for small and new units, makes it harder to compete, thus it discourages new customers
When new units compete with established units that triple or quadruple the size and the impression is created that size is a factor that grants you a higher advantage. Less numbers = Less effective Impression, discourages new customers
No need to speak about the effect of Long Tom on new customers

New customers here for Faction Play do not mean a player that just created his first account an hour ago and has no clue how to play... new customers can be players that have played, understood the mechanics, built a deck, know their way around ...
They are also "new" in the sense that they then begin to invest their time and money into FW. just to clarify the terminology
Again trying to bring back disgruntled players is the far harder and uneconomical approach to save FW.

To be honest, I don't know how much truth there is to all of that. MS has been opposite us in 228 for a few weeks and we have been getting drops against them with more frequency. We have been seeing more unit drops as well as of late just in general.

[Omaha]

I wanted to chime in here, I know something that could help just get ppl in there in general too. I think performance on the maps isnt up to par as it is in quickplay maps. If they could tune performance on those maps a bit more. It might make it a little more enjoyable. I know with my pc anyways. There may or may nor be anything that could be done. But for me there is a performance hit, esp. late game.

[Danjo San]

Drunk Canuck, on 31 July 2016 - 10:41 AM, said:

To be honest, I don't know how much truth there is to all of that. MS has been opposite us in 228 for a few weeks and we have been getting drops against them with more frequency. We have been seeing more unit drops as well as of late just in general.

It does not matter how much truth lies in that accusation that is made by different peeps in different threads, the fact that, maybe coincidentaly, all heavy hitters keep landing in the same faction over and over again leaves little room to think otherwise.

[Czarr]

who was on the roundtable, I heard it was russ and the leaders of the big units

Edited by Czarr, 31 July 2016 - 03:14 PM.

[LordNothing]

Danjo San, on 31 July 2016 - 03:34 AM, said:

-salt-

i dont think it was that bad. i got the impression not only from the round table but (especially) the pre round table meeting that these unit leaders were not out to undermine pugs as much as i thought they were. in fact they even suggested some things that will help the situation.

there are enough pugs in fp where you should in theory run into a pug group every 2nd or 3rd game. there are mechanisms in place that work against it though, and its not the units that wrote that code. call to arms, separate attack and defense queues the fact that units can capture planets, and the complexity of the queue system (pugs dont know where to go for a fair fight) all are responsible for the pug funnel. its a perfect storm of small design flaws that add up to a big failure.

if you take away the distinction between attack and defense, you eliminate one of those issues. there is no easy way out, you take what the game gives you. you also reduce the fronts and reduce some of the complexity while focusing the populations. alliances focus populations more and further reduce complexity. everyone has only 3 fronts to choose from, there is no choice between attack or defence, no vote for who you are allied with (votes might instead be used to select what planets you wish to take so you can kind of steer your front). most importantly all players who fight on a front go into the same queues on either side. if both sides have units they can be matched up first (mandatory). the 3 lobbies might also have a difficulty rating based on the current queue compositions (lots of unit groups = hard, lots of pug groups = easy). you also get a huge bonus for going to the harder games.

and thats still not going to be your deus ex machina that solves all your problems. you still have long tom, you still have the same aweful modes and maps, no training for new players, etc. sometimes bandaids are the right answer. especially when you got a dev team that takes forever to do basic stuff.

Edited by LordNothing, 31 July 2016 - 03:24 PM.

[50 50]

If the alliance system is taken, it should be looked at both at a faction level which is very general, but also at a unit level.
The idea that alliances is building towards is expanding the diplomacy/negotiation aspects at the high level.
We should have those options take on functionality at the unit level as well.
If we treat the high level voting option as who we are at war with, who we might have an alliance with and potentially who we have a truce with, then at the unit level having the option to work closer with other units by asking each other for alliances would fit in nicely.
If we think about the looking for group feature which helps build a team, it is an extension of that functionality and could incorporate call to arms messages to the allied units to help bring the players together.
"Looking for Allies"
Could do the same with Mercenaries and have a "Looking for Mercenaries" filter.
If we want to build up the communications between players and units, then these areas could be where the increase in functionality needs to start.