2 replies to this topic

[Ninjamoose]

I've been mulling over FW for a while, and it's pretty safe to say that it's not great in its current iteration.

The queues are dead, the matches are stale, the maps suck, and the game types (while interesting) just end up flopping because of all of the above.

My idea:

It's kind of radical, but I say they just scrap the current iteration of FW altogether. It's clear that it just fell short and that the GALACTIC CONQUEST portion of it is just a fancy skin that lets players arbitrarily pick "where" they want to fight out of a rotation of maps. It's essentially a version of QP that lets you respawn on maps you don't see elsewhere.

Instead of the FW system we have now, we integrate it into the Mechlab UI and into Quickplay matches.

You can still provide the option to pledge yourself to a certain faction for the current time spans we have now, letting you take any mech you'd like in their name, OR you take any mech out of the garage you like, and whoever that mech aligns with politically (Atlas > Steiner, Rifleman > Davion, etc.) you earn brownie points with, but in turn damaging your relationship with their political adversaries (Fighting in a Rifleman would hurt your relationship with Kurita/Draconis, fighting in an Crab would hurt your relationship with Steiner/Kurita, etc.). You could go so far as to incorporate that with the Contract system, where instead of every match you play in a Davion mech hurting your relationship with Kurita/Steiner, it's one slightly larger hit to that relationship just one time.

My perfect world would also include a change to the way rewards work, in order to really punish people who do the Ring-around-the-inner sphere trick. Say you want to fight for the Davions; to incentivise you to fight for them at the start, they gave you a lump sum of cbills and a mechbay (this translates to the first couple levels playing for them). If you continue to fight in their name, they'll hook you up with gradually higher cbill/exp multipliers per-match (nothing too ridiculous, just a nice little bonus), since you've made it clear that you're in for the long haul. If you decide to go test the waters with Steiner (ie go for their lump sum of cbills that's availble + that mechbay), you can always come back, it's just that you'll have to get those multipliers back with Davion (depending on how much you hurt your relationship). Another little fluff thing you could do is add discounts for that factions mechs once you hit a certain level with them. Kurita will offer a small discount (5%?) on things like Battlemasters, Firestarters, etc.

This would provide a little more depth to QP for those who want it, forcing people to make a decision on who they want to run with, instead of just doing a ring-around-the-inner sphere, pledging themselves to a different faction once a month and grinding out rewards. Alternatively, for people who don't mind not having that little bonus, they won't be forced to make any decisions, and just running the mechs they like normally will still net them the same beginning bonuses.

We can assume that just for economy balance that you can only recieve the cbill/mechbays once.

We can just let the FW maps get sent to the farm for now, seeing as they're not very well designed. They could probably make a return for the asymmetric Assault game mode that's coming soon™, of course with a redesign because moba-style maps are bad.

****, you could even tie leaderboards into it for a more competitive aspect. Give out small rewards to particularly "hard working representatives" for a faction, like faction cockpit items/warhorns for the most dedicated, and smaller things like cbill bonuses and maybe even mechbays for the guys below them.

Altogether, though it's a radical change, it could really give QP a meaning that outdoes FW in its current state, a good form of progression for your everyday player, and would provide a good launching ground for future things like daily objectives and overarching progression goals.

[fatalist]

My only gripe about this suggestion is that "ring around the Inner Sphere" is something that the most famous Merc unit in the lore did, and that PGI originally said (before CW even launched) that maxxing all the IS Loyalties would maybe get you a Dragoons skin.

It'd be nice to acknowledge that old design idea, even if it means playing through penalties for a while or something.

[Ninjamoose]

fatalist, on 17 August 2016 - 05:32 PM, said:

My only gripe about this suggestion is that "ring around the Inner Sphere" is something that the most famous Merc unit in the lore did,

I mean that's fair, but MWO is pretty far removed from the lore as it stands. I think that we can overlook the Wolfs Dragoons in favor of more balanced gameplay mechanic that actually gives you choices and meaning behind them.

Like, it'd be really cool to have my own Wolf's Dragoons, but what's the point if it's as easy as it is right now? There's just not enough politics behind FW to really make it as hard as it should be.
I mean that's fair, but MWO is pretty far removed from the lore as it stands. I think that we can overlook the Wolfs Dragoons in favor of more balanced gameplay mechanic