127 replies to this topic

[Davegt27]

in a word yes

[Chagatay]

Davegt27, on 25 August 2016 - 12:26 PM, said:

what needs to happen is CW/FP needs to be unit only

but that means 6 man units or greater

we just all need to suck it up an accept some tough love

this would put an end of the player base fighting over this small problem and PGI can work on bigger
problems

its sickening having the player base fighting each other over this crap

I agree just disallow solo drops/units and then it can be sunshine and rainbows for everyone. Probably need to mandate team sizes in nice even allotments of (2,4,6,8,12).

But probably what will happen is....absolutely nothing. I am sure solo people will probably still queue to be clubbed (for a time) to acquire the low hanging fruits of mechbays/MC at the bottom. Events, mythical as they maybe, will draw people in giving FP a brief but bright spark of life only to be snuffed out immediately after.

PGI's master plan of trying to milk some of that failed investment with dropdecks seems to have backfired for the moment. They were at least partially successful in holding off an immediate reversal but were unable to hold to their long term goal of fleecing what little money they could recoup. This clearly demonstrates that PGI is unwilling to stay firm on a decision bending a great deal to any form of scrutiny*.

* I may have not liked their price points but they just seem to cave-in too quickly.

[MischiefSC]

DarklightCA, on 25 August 2016 - 10:22 AM, said:

That could work as well but there is still the problem of having a limited population spread out between 10 different factions. Making it IS vs Clan would significantly decrease the wait times and control the population. It would just be about balancing the two sides, adding some cival war events to mix up the gameplay.

Besides the wait time which has always been this gamemodes problem, a lot of the other problems would be less significant with shorter wait times to matches. All those pug players who have to wait 10-15 minutes to get a match only to get matched up with a premade group might find it less of a problem if they only had to wait a couple minutes and knew they only had to wait another couple minutes to get a different matchup.

Eliminate faction identity and you eliminate faction warfare. A Clan vs IS queue is just the FW content in the QP queue. Just add a matchmaker and you've got a real winner!

Alliances are the fix for population. Let people vote to ally with someone like they vote to attack someone. You share their borders. This lets the population compress dynamically as hotspots change. The whole 'clan border everyone attacks/defends' thing was always a problem - nobody had a vested interest in succeeding on the Clan border except the actual factions involved. Everyone else just looks at it as a place to get throw-away matches.

[DivBy0]

Are you sure? Most of the active players in CW are Mercs and care nothing about faction, loyality and the lore. Mercs are never in any faction. They jump around towards new mechs and easy wins.
Phase 3, broken Scouting-Mode, ridicules LongTom, mega OP Kodiak, strange Rescale-Nerf decisions and the endless normal Nerfs broke the spirit of many IS Loyalists and leave many of their mechs in a bad spot. Many reduce playing CW or switch to Merc (what means most of the time Clan). And do the Clan Loyalists really benefit from all the Mercs? I doubt so.

No, I think there is not much "faction identity" left.
I would strongly recommend to shrink the factions (but of course leave the concept of Clan vs. IS untouched). But when your idea of Alliances work... fine. And you are right with the MatchMaker. And I would further recommend a Group- and Soloqueue (no... this was never tried. The complete broken tag- notag queue ******** doesn´t count) and unsplit Attack- and Defence Queue (in fact.. we need another mechanism). You can see in another thread the fear of the organised Mercs for a real solo-queue and the loss of cannonfodder and easy wins. It´s not only PGI who kill the gamemode... parts of the community seems to need the sealclubbing for their ego and many avoid a real fight whenever it is possible.

MischiefSC, on 25 August 2016 - 09:18 PM, said:

Eliminate faction identity and you eliminate faction warfare. A Clan vs IS queue is just the FW content in the QP queue. Just add a matchmaker and you've got a real winner!

[TWIAFU]

Khobai, on 24 August 2016 - 07:23 AM, said:

We tried CW that way. It didnt work.

Time to move onto something that will work.

It is not working due to people simply refusing to take part in it, "It" being Group/Unit play.

I agree, it IS time to try something new. It is time for some sort of stopgap to prevent players clearly not ready or not willing to become a part of CW to drop and then everyone on both sides has no fun.

We have a solo queue, must be solo to take part.
We have a group queue, must be in a group to take part.
We have CW, made for Group/Unit play. However, any fresh install can join right away and does not have to be in a group or unit.

Can you see what is wrong with one of these three things? You cannot take a group into the solo queue and you cannot go solo into the group queue. Separate playstyles with seperate queues to match.

So long as CW allows the mixture of these different playstels these problems will continue and will get worse.

[Wecx]

Davegt27, on 25 August 2016 - 07:08 PM, said:

in a word yes

Wouldn't that mean that you would find less matches? There is already a population problem, if you limited it to units there would be less people.

Why not just give more incentive to PUGs to play as a team.

As of now only units get MC from planets. All the work i have done to help take a planet and i get nothing.

Currently there is no reward for PUGs to play well at CW.

Infact there is hardly a reward for UNITs to play well at CW. It's all pretty meaningless right now.

Edited by Wecx, 26 August 2016 - 09:22 AM.

[B0oN]

What if my lousy, little PUG-ness wants to play FP but dun want to join a unit ?
I can keep up with about the best 25% of them, still wanna keep myself away from all the useless shenanigans that WILL be had when joining/creating a unit .

By the way, the last unit I founded with a friend was called 77th Grey Guards, first of Clan Wolf (Kappa and Delta Galaxies), then of MercStar MS, just so yer guys knoweth .

[Kael Posavatz]

We didn't have a solo and group queues in Phase III.

What we had were non-unit and unit queues. there were a lot of one- or two-person units playing.

The OP is suggesting a pug queue and a group queue like we have in QP.

The problem with that is that there aren't enough people playing FW to make this a realistic option.

[Chagatay]

Kael Posavatz, on 26 August 2016 - 10:20 AM, said:

We didn't have a solo and group queues in Phase III.
What we had were non-unit and unit queues. there were a lot of one- or two-person units playing.
The OP is suggesting a pug queue and a group queue like we have in QP.
The problem with that is that there aren't enough people playing FW to make this a realistic option.

What about it is unrealistic? You could easily accomplish this:

1. New button on launcher (no map for this mode).
2. Can only launch if not in a group.
3. Attack/Defend is randomly assigned.
4. All battles are Clan v IS (single lane)* .

I am sure that it would be far more successful than FP. You could make the argument that it is no longer FP but at least it is making use of the already poorly utilized assets in the game.

*if it gets popular enough you can expand lanes.

[Nick86]

I've just triple ejected from a match where I received a Call To Arms.
it was 420 as CJF against a mix of pugs and a couple of groups on my side. I went to scout as usual and saw the enemy team. All Kodiaks except for one or two Streak Boat Hunchback IICs.
I spotted the enemy, but they stormed straight through our lines and started hitting turrets and the gens all in one wave.
They were set up so they almost could not possibly lose... especially against Pugs.

Of course, the grouped players, even on my own team who like to trash talk will defend it, call me out, yada yada.. This actually happened in the game whilst they were experiencing, in MWO terms, what could be referred to as a forced sexual encounter.

Sticking to my guns on this one though. If PGI wants to punish me in some way for ejecting (which had absolutely ZERO influence on the game), then fine, but man.. FP has been dying slowly and is on life support as it is..

I just can't understand how we got to this and why there is only one queue. I understand the 'buckets' argument, but the bucket as it stands has one HELL of a hole in it.

Sad.. so sad..

[Nick86]

TWIAFU, on 24 August 2016 - 06:24 AM, said:

Yea, how horrible it must be for people to play CW as designed - PRIMARILY Group/Unit play instead of being a pugtard snowflake that refuses to take basic steps to play in CW and demand it change to suit themselves. Even after from the very start it was CLEARLY stated this is 'end-game' and designed for Group/Unit play and that solo players will have a much harder time of it. I cannot wait for your frothing at the mouth nerd rage when you find out that soloist and single player "Units" can never hold a planetary tag. You don't want to be clubbed in CW, then quit your double talk and crying like you yourself suggested and get a better "team". You do that by *gasp* making friends, joining a Faction TS for group members, join a Faction, use your Faction Chat, use VOIP, LFG, or even these very forums. All of those tools at your disposal to make your own gameplay better and yet, you won't use them but want PGI to do it all for you so you can have QP with respawn so you can farm rewards. Yea, you deserve to get clubbed by organized teams or have your CW drop over in less then 3-5mins left wondering why your peek a boo tactics didn't work.

Someone has missed a couple of important points here...

Customers want to be able to experience the full range of the game; they, supplying PGI with money so game can exist and PGI employees earn a living.. well, those customers should be catered for. To not do so is simply foolish, emphasis on the 'fool' part, for obvious reasons. There are many reasons why people won't play in FP as a group. You don't have to be too smart to figure it out, therefore it is reasonable, given that PGI already has the tools, to expect that they sort this out.
If you understand what the average or even range of what a MWO player is, it leads you to the conclusion that you either split the f*cking queues or FP dies or can only be sustained on life support (events, etc..). Those scenarios to anyone with half a brain are not acceptable for obvious reasons.

You and PGI can get mad at other MWO players like your rant all you want, but if you just accept the reality of what the general MWO playerbase wants.. well, it all makes a lot of sense. I'm talking, the decline of MWO, the issues we've had, the reactions to several actions.. yada yada.
When there is a problem, companies that survive and thrive are the ones who deal with the problem, learn, move on..

[TWIAFU]

Kael Posavatz, on 26 August 2016 - 10:20 AM, said:

We didn't have a solo and group queues in Phase III.

What we had were non-unit and unit queues. there were a lot of one- or two-person units playing.

The OP is suggesting a pug queue and a group queue like we have in QP.

The problem with that is that there aren't enough people playing FW to make this a realistic option.

Forget the little "gem" that he wants groups of two in the solo CW queue. You know, so he and his friend can "solo drop" in a group in the solo queue and club solo players.

So, a premade unit group of 12 just breaks into 6 groups of 2 and all drop on the same planet.

Problem solved!!!

[TWIAFU]

Nick86, on 26 August 2016 - 02:42 PM, said:

Someone has missed a couple of important points here...

Customers want to be able to experience the full range of the game; they, supplying PGI with money so game can exist and PGI employees earn a living.. well, those customers should be catered for. To not do so is simply foolish, emphasis on the 'fool' part, for obvious reasons. There are many reasons why people won't play in FP as a group. You don't have to be too smart to figure it out, therefore it is reasonable, given that PGI already has the tools, to expect that they sort this out.
If you understand what the average or even range of what a MWO player is, it leads you to the conclusion that you either split the f*cking queues or FP dies or can only be sustained on life support (events, etc..). Those scenarios to anyone with half a brain are not acceptable for obvious reasons.

You and PGI can get mad at other MWO players like your rant all you want, but if you just accept the reality of what the general MWO playerbase wants.. well, it all makes a lot of sense. I'm talking, the decline of MWO, the issues we've had, the reactions to several actions.. yada yada.
When there is a problem, companies that survive and thrive are the ones who deal with the problem, learn, move on..

And yet you ignore that these 'customers' in a FREE game we told upfront and in game that CW is hardmode. They were told that it is for experienced players with experienced drop decks.

Who's fault is it that they ignore that, drop anyways with a rambo mentality gained by QP, refuse to use any of the very tools they themselves asked for, and them complain they get rolled. The 'customer'. The very same 'customer' that must have warning lablels on peanut butter that it contains peanuts or that milk has lactose.

Hey, have yourself your snowflake queue. Complain about getting rolled then and you will have to accept the fact that "you" are part of the problem and the lack of teamwork. Complain then you still cannot hold planets.

[RaptorCWS]

Nick86, on 26 August 2016 - 02:42 PM, said:

Someone has missed a couple of important points here...

Customers want to be able to experience the full range of the game; they, supplying PGI with money so game can exist and PGI employees earn a living.. well, those customers should be catered for. To not do so is simply foolish, emphasis on the 'fool' part, for obvious reasons. There are many reasons why people won't play in FP as a group. You don't have to be too smart to figure it out, therefore it is reasonable, given that PGI already has the tools, to expect that they sort this out.
If you understand what the average or even range of what a MWO player is, it leads you to the conclusion that you either split the f*cking queues or FP dies or can only be sustained on life support (events, etc..). Those scenarios to anyone with half a brain are not acceptable for obvious reasons.

no one is preventing them from experiencing the full range of the game. they can join a unit if they like (if they do not want to they are denying themselves part of the experience), or they can go in a pug group. this game mode requires organization and teamwork. work as a team and you have a chance at winning. going lone wolf in this game mode will cost you the match and if 1-2 pilots in a pug do that its a guaranteed lost. same thing would happen to a 12 man if 1-2 decided to do their own thing. the difference is at the end of the round of doing that in a unit could cost you your spot dropping in the group. while a pug could just ignore and continue on to their next clubbing.

[Jon Gotham]

Vasili Kerensky, on 19 August 2016 - 04:55 AM, said:

Fact: 12-man premades will never get taken down by PUGs. The favourite argument of the well-to-do clanner premades is 'become part of a team' and 'get organized'. If you do that, everything will be fine.
Actually NOT a fact at all. I've been in pug teams and have beaten 12 mans. It does happen, not regularly but if you get 12 solos sans any bad attitude your chances increase a metric crapton

Nice argument but it's crap. Not all people have the time or the desire to invest time and effort into keeping regular gaming hours (here we go, this is the REAL reason. If time is an issue to that degree i.e you cannot spare one hour then seriously, do something else-online gaming just does not fit your lifestyle. the desire? If you don't want to play with other human beings, why are you playing an online game full of other human beings? the interaction is THE THING that makes online games more than offline games....)and become semi-professional players (so you think if someone can devote a couple of hours every so often log onto a ts server and talk to people is a semi pro??? People do the same time comittment down the pub or at a local sports centre.... are they semi professional drinkers or football players? no! so is a gamer who spends more than 20 mins gaming a semi pro all of a sudden?)That's why they're called casuals (your definition of casual is far from casual...I don't kow what I'd call it...but casuals seem like hardcore elitists to you...) and they probably are and will continue to be the majority of the population.

Fact: This game demands a huge investment in time and money ( not a fact at all. define HUGE? took em about a week playing casually to sort my first mechs out. the second you know what you are doing and engage your brain you are competitive. Plus, if you are a casual-why want to be competitive? Surely that's opposite to your playstyle?) for a player to become competitive. In order to build a proper drop deck you have to make informed decisions beforehand, acquire 12 'mechs, ( no you don't and you don't need to master them either to be effective)master them all, equip them properly, unlock all the proper modules for them and buy them(again, no you don't). That's the minimum of effort to enter the competitive scene with hopes of victory and that's if you already know the game before playing it (more flasehood, the bare minimum effort is having a good attitude and the willingness to communicate with your team mates).

Die-hard players will view the 6-month (6 months?? do you play 20 mins a week?) period for this to happen as a normal time investment. It isn't. It's a huge investment of time, effort and money and many people won't be able to do it or they simply won't want to give so much of their time in the game.

So, we have all these damn casuals running around, getting into drops with trial 'mechs, getting killed from 1 klik by professional clan pilots that pilot 'mechs that kill with ERLLs from 1 klik away and with 1 salvo and they rant and complain. (but that's a bare faced lie, these lasers don't do that. And why is it clan pilots? don't the Is have "professionals" as well?)

The solution is so easy, it's a wonder why it hasn't been done yet.

Split the goddamn FP into Solo and Group queues. ( it has, it failed miserably.)

Allow premades to duke it out with each other and let casuals(you keep saying casuals-the people you are describing ain't casuals, they are something entirely different. Casuals are non professionals-most players in units are non professionals honestly, even the likes of SJR/NS and the like. they are good at the game but they are not professional players. the only thing that makes them different is their attitudes to learning) have the experience they want to have - a proper Faction match against players at their own level of skill and equipment and a realistic chance of victory without going professional. (again, why do you keep misusing the word professional?)

I further recommend to allow up to 2-man groups to join the solo queue. Many casuals (99% of the players in the game are casuals) play with a friend and want the company.

Zero implementation time, zero cost for PGI and a damn win-win situation for all ( no it isn't) concerned. I'm going to pre-empt the argument of larger wait times for the queues. As far as solo queue is concerned, I don't think that there's going to be a wait time larger than normal.(yes there was, an almost infinite wait time as i remember) Once the casual realize that they can play a proper FP match, they'll jump in whenever the Call to Arms appears. As for the groups - you are organized. Get on a TS server, arrange the day and time and play your match.

Just do it and let's be done with this tragedy that is the current environment of FP.

the only tragedy is the poor attitude of the common player in this game. Online games are built on interaction.
The players ARE the content. This means in a game like this, you are supposed to communicate with others. the player is expected and rightly so to be abkle and willing to do the absoloute basics of communication, this makes for a better environment for all.
Games like this survive and thrive on their community. this is built via communication. they don't tend to do well with the players isolating themselves from each other. I see this in FP matches where at least 2/3 of your team refuse to type or speak whatsoever. the only FACTS are, it's people's own bad attitude and unwillingness to engage and be part of the MWO community that is hurting FP and the game.
Yes the evil premades do have an edge..one of them is co-ordination. But dear OP, do you kow what the really important edges are?
1:They lose their individual ego, they LISTEN to a drop caller.
2:They actively TRY TO LEARN.
3:They lose the solo me,myself and I mentality when playing.
4:They talk to each other and others in their own faction, forming friendships and comradeship.

As a result, they enjoy the game much more than you do. their "semi professional" practice of speaking, and trying to be part of the community and not looking at mwo as a solo experience is what lets them hammer you to a smear, not any l33t gaming skills.

Enough is enough now.

[Davegt27]

every day I type out a new answer

then remove it

I say solo players need to be removed from FW or boycott it

and Nick the call to arms is a suckers game
its generated when the opposing force has greater numbers
so you can answer a call to arms and be 1 player with 48 on the other side

if you do that your in for a long wait
look on your side numbers and wait for the numbers to get close to multiples of 12 then drop in
you get less wait times that way

when you do see a call to arms check it out if you see a multiple of 12 most likely you will run into a 12man team
if you see 8 (for example) then jump in
hope that makes sense

also it is a good idea to check out your own que look for any type of group, it might be a 3 man or a 6 man team
if you see that your chances are better for a good fight

Edited by Davegt27, 27 August 2016 - 10:46 AM.

[Djinnhammer]

But Dave. The one fact that is the root cause of nearly all of the problems keeps getting ignored by every pro pug/solo poster.....
Namely their unwillingness to engage with others in social/team play.
Why does that one simple, glaring fact get overlooked in every single post?

[DarklightCA]

MischiefSC, on 25 August 2016 - 09:18 PM, said:

Eliminate faction identity and you eliminate faction warfare. A Clan vs IS queue is just the FW content in the QP queue. Just add a matchmaker and you've got a real winner!

Alliances are the fix for population. Let people vote to ally with someone like they vote to attack someone. You share their borders. This lets the population compress dynamically as hotspots change. The whole 'clan border everyone attacks/defends' thing was always a problem - nobody had a vested interest in succeeding on the Clan border except the actual factions involved. Everyone else just looks at it as a place to get throw-away matches.

You don't eliminate faction identity. You apply and fight for the same factions you normally would, you represent the same factions you normally would, you gain LP and rewards for the faction you are representing like you currently do. The only difference being is that all the IS Factions are wrapped together in the same queue's fighting all the Clan's wrapped together in the same queue's just like they do when they are defending other factions planets.

This gamemode has always suffered from long wait times and population problems and that's only getting worse and will continue to do so. 10 factions are way too much, even alliances wouldn't make overall that much difference at this point. Making a straight IS vs Clan Faction Play is a lot more realistic for the population the gamemode has.

[4EVR]

MRBC has 5 divisions. Very sensible design. One of the core principles of game design is presenting players with an appropriate level of challenge. Too hard and players get frustrated and leave. Too easy and players get bored and leave. Exactly what's been happening to CW. (BTW, PVE in AW replicates the seal clubbing experience almost perfectly. Except the AI doesn't mind.)

And developing a game mode for only the top 1% of your player base just doesn't make a lot of business sense unless you have, say, millions of players or the game mode somehow attracts a bigger audience. Otherwise there's a very real risk that you'd be wasting your money and that's probably why PGI isn't really focusing hard on CW.

Edited by 4EVR, 27 August 2016 - 05:32 PM.

[MischiefSC]

DarklightCA, on 27 August 2016 - 03:02 PM, said:

You don't eliminate faction identity. You apply and fight for the same factions you normally would, you represent the same factions you normally would, you gain LP and rewards for the faction you are representing like you currently do. The only difference being is that all the IS Factions are wrapped together in the same queue's fighting all the Clan's wrapped together in the same queue's just like they do when they are defending other factions planets.

This gamemode has always suffered from long wait times and population problems and that's only getting worse and will continue to do so. 10 factions are way too much, even alliances wouldn't make overall that much difference at this point. Making a straight IS vs Clan Faction Play is a lot more realistic for the population the gamemode has.

So at that point I'm not doing anything for my faction that a leaderboard on the website would have and just have it tabulate my wins in pug/group queue. At that point the faction tag you have is as relevant in FW as it is in group queue. You're just taking the group queue mechanic and adding an extra bonus payout "XP bar" based on which icon you have next to your name.

As I said - if that's the case and anything that would actually fix FW isn't coming then just axe it. Add the maps/modes to group/pug queue, add in a 'faction leaderboard' like we had in events long past and accept the failure. At least the content itself (maps/modes) would see more use. Admittedly almost everyone I know and play with would quit but that's not a ton of people at this point. At least pick a direction. Either put the work into making FW work or scrap it and use the content. The current approach of 'leave it broken and just hope people play it anyway' isn't a fix. Largely ignoring it for years hasn't been a winning approach either.