215 replies to this topic

[MischiefSC]

Lukoi Banacek, on 07 September 2016 - 07:39 PM, said:

Planets have been irrelevant for a long time.

They have to put the mode on life support to get people into the queue, see if it generates enough interest for the MODE itself.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not happy with how this is going either. But if they keep the limited crowd that enjoys FP as fragmented as it current is, spread out among the ten factions, it will never get enough players playing it to stick it out and actually let them reintroduce real faction impact.

Right now the wait times are so long, or the competition so rare that people have simply abandoned the mode itself. It's not fun to wait forever and MAYBE get a game for most people.

So, they cut off the leg to keep the disease from spreading in the hopes they can get the mode itself healthy enough to re-attach the ****** later.

It's not an optimal solution, but at this point no amount of lore, polish etc will get people into the faction play queue in enough numbers to keep the mode off of life support on its own. They need to get people compressed into a small enough playing field (i.e. two sides, four planets) to get people excited about the dynamics of the mode itself. THEN they can start making the planets matter, make loyalists matter etc and then spread us between factions again.

I'm not holding my breath, but it's honestly better than what most people are suggesting and frankly, doesn't ignore the fact that the FP playerbase is too tiny at this point to be sustainable.

So the point is the close FP. I get it. PGI failed to make a gamemode that met even a moderate slice of the original promises and then followed it up with a myriad of bad design choices, chasing away those who were left.

What I don't get is why the make-believe it's still FP thing. Just turn it into new maps/modes for QP. Split pug/premade and put in the MM. That would draw more people in, right? Just make it another set of check-boxes.

[Iron Buccaneer]

I'm not in favor of this. Everyone is going to join the side that is winning. Or at least enough will. This solves nothing and only compounds the current problems.

[Lukoi Banacek]

MischiefSC, on 07 September 2016 - 07:42 PM, said:

So the point is the close FP. I get it. PGI failed to make a gamemode that met even a moderate slice of the original promises and then followed it up with a myriad of bad design choices, chasing away those who were left.

What I don't get is why the make-believe it's still FP thing. Just turn it into new maps/modes for QP. Split pug/premade and put in the MM. That would draw more people in, right? Just make it another set of check-boxes.

You are preaching to the choir.

But if they cannot get enough people to even play the mode, what do you propose?

Making the lore more relevant won't have an impact at this point. Planetary rewards would have to be so over the top as to be rampantly easy to exploit basically (just further driving people away as the haves lord it over the have nots etc, and further hurting PGI's limited profit stream).

There may indeed be tons of people interested in FP, but so many are driven off by the wait times that they play QP or other games in lieu of wasting the time on the wait. It hurts to see such a promising mode, hell promising game, go to **** like this, but being stubborn adherents to factions in the face of the actual numbers just continues to kill it off.

Get more people playing the mode....then make it relevant to the immersion experience we all want.

[Alteran]

IF the idea or change does not attract new/old players to MWO and/or entices current players to use FP, then the idea is not worth implementing.

What in all of the NGNG podcast does this?

(EDIT) Oh yeah and the unit that wins the planet gets rewards... so again, units that are extreme in size will be the go to units for players, if you want FP rewards.

Edited by Alteran, 07 September 2016 - 07:54 PM.

[Lukoi Banacek]

Iron Buccaneer, on 07 September 2016 - 07:44 PM, said:

I'm not in favor of this. Everyone is going to join the side that is winning. Or at least enough will. This solves nothing and only compounds the current problems.

Every MMO with a PVP aspect fears this and yet.....so many manage to survive the threat of it. PGI's balance is as close as its been in years. People wanna play the mechs they wanna play. And if you reduce the sides to two, with incentives to one or the other based on #'s, you'll address the casuals as well. It buffs out.

[MischiefSC]

Lukoi Banacek, on 07 September 2016 - 07:51 PM, said:

You are preaching to the choir.

But if they cannot get enough people to even play the mode, what do you propose?

Making the lore more relevant won't have an impact at this point. Planetary rewards would have to be so over the top as to be rampantly easy to exploit basically (just further driving people away as the haves lord it over the have nots etc, and further hurting PGI's limited profit stream).

There may indeed be tons of people interested in FP, but so many are driven off by the wait times that they play QP or other games in lieu of wasting the time on the wait. It hurts to see such a promising mode, hell promising game, go to **** like this, but being stubborn adherents to factions in the face of the actual numbers just continues to kill it off.

Get more people playing the mode....then make it relevant to the immersion experience we all want.

So the solution is to fix the fundamental issues that pushed people out originally but that's work.

Eliminating the point of factions, loyalist and merc facets eliminates the point of FW. I'm saying at this point why doesn't it have a MM, pug/premade split? That would draw in what's left of the QP population.

What you're missing is that the population is NOT growing in QP either. QP is not 'growing' or even sustaining MW:O. The game is failing. If your solution to that is to remove depth and content to compress your shrinking population all you're going to do is get more people to leave and accelerate the decline.

This is the same sort of failures they've been making for years. Take a bad idea that drives players out and.... keep it, just remove more stuff to deal with the people leaving. Which gets people to leave. Rinse and repeat.

It's like a text book example of how to fail at designing a game.

[Iron Buccaneer]

Lukoi Banacek, on 07 September 2016 - 07:53 PM, said:

Every MMO with a PVP aspect fears this and yet.....so many manage to survive the threat of it. PGI's balance is as close as its been in years. People wanna play the mechs they wanna play. And if you reduce the sides to two, with incentives to one or the other based on #'s, you'll address the casuals as well. It buffs out.

This is exactly how things are already running. This just legitimizes it and fixes nothing.

[MischiefSC]

Iron Buccaneer, on 07 September 2016 - 07:57 PM, said:

This is exactly how things are already running. This just legitimizes it and fixes nothing.

It is a codification of failure. It's making the failure the new 'normal' from which you will continue to decline. It cements in the certainty of further failure.

[Baulven]

AnTi90d, on 07 September 2016 - 07:23 PM, said:

Yeah.. but they're excluding mercenaries from the rare Special Event ISvsIS fights.. so, good luck filling those bukkits.

It's almost like things are being set up to fail.. "Look, no one wanted to fight ISvsIS.. we can just remove that, now.."






Steal away.. I didn't create the image. It's from an existing meme. (Google Image search for, "bukkit.")

PS: Sorry for tunneling your bear, the other day.. my team abandoned me and you were the only enemy unit anywhere near me. I guess that's what I get for shambling around at 58.3 KPH..

Nah its cool it was the second match after I bought the thing and I normally don't play assaults. Need to get the next one as soon as I have cbills and get the xp stored up on this one.

[Lukoi Banacek]

MischiefSC, on 07 September 2016 - 07:57 PM, said:

So the solution is to fix the fundamental issues that pushed people out originally but that's work.

And I agree. But so far neither the community nor the devs and demonstrated that they know what the FIX is for those fundamental issues. So, they are keeping the game on life-support until they figure it out or it dies. You act like I'm defending the Devs or something. I'm merely saying that the game is, in triage terms, nearly "expectant" here...you work on the bleeding and the airway, not putting in a new set of **** to keep it attractive.

Factions haven't been relevant almost since inception of the mode. Is the thin veneer of some decals and colors and a bit of roleplay trash talk on the forums what's been keeping us playing this game? For those that think so, you lost the point a loooong time ago on the faction warfare issue. Keeping it around now doesn't help the game.

Drastic situation requires drastic measures.

When someone comes up with an idea or gameplan that's going to attract players back to FP in droves and help keep them there, I'm all ears (hopefully PGI is too). But until then, making it at least a mode capable of being played is what they can do. Right now it's not even that.

[MischiefSC]

Lukoi Banacek, on 07 September 2016 - 08:21 PM, said:

And I agree. But so far neither the community nor the devs and demonstrated that they know what the FIX is for those fundamental issues. So, they are keeping the game on life-support until they figure it out or it dies. You act like I'm defending the Devs or something. I'm merely saying that the game is, in triage terms, nearly "expectant" here...you work on the bleeding and the airway, not putting in a new set of **** to keep it attractive.

Factions haven't been relevant almost since inception of the mode. Is the thin veneer of some decals and colors and a bit of roleplay trash talk on the forums what's been keeping us playing this game? For those that think so, you lost the point a loooong time ago on the faction warfare issue. Keeping it around now doesn't help the game.

Drastic situation requires drastic measures.

When someone comes up with an idea or gameplan that's going to attract players back to FP in droves and help keep them there, I'm all ears (hopefully PGI is too). But until then, making it at least a mode capable of being played is what they can do. Right now it's not even that.

I don't have the energy to go over the list of things that would fix FW. A lot of them were in the original powerpoint presentation on FW that it was sold on but never delivered.

At this point though what I don't get is the pretext of a FW. Just close it, maps/modes in QP, pug/premade split and a MM. Why not? It'll keep some QP players here longer.

[Cato Zilks]

The QP maps might be nice, but I am probably done with FP now.

[Kin3ticX]

im listening to this right now, so far looks very promising

[DarklightCA]

This game does not have the population to support 10 different factions and if the population is kept spread out as it is than nobody is going to get games. I'd rather have populated planets with what population still supports the gamemode than keep irrelevant factions and pretend they still matter. Borders still matter, it's IS competing against Clan for control of planets only people get more games.

[Stormie]

Well, that puts an end date on my time in MWO. If my faction no longer exists for all intents and purposes, then I don't see the point in playing. On the plus side hopefully we'll be close to playable betas of HBS battletech by the time they get around to implementing these changes.
Edit: Just noticed that most of the loyalists seem to be in agreement that this is a negative change, while most of the mercs seem to think its a good idea. Interesting how people want different things

Edited by Stormie, 07 September 2016 - 10:47 PM.

[Carl Vickers]

Stormie, on 07 September 2016 - 10:45 PM, said:

Well, that puts an end date on my time in MWO. If my faction no longer exists for all intents and purposes, then I don't see the point in playing. On the plus side hopefully we'll be close to playable betas of HBS battletech by the time they get around to implementing these changes.
Edit: Just noticed that most of the loyalists seem to be in agreement that this is a negative change, while most of the mercs seem to think its a good idea. Interesting how people want different things

Much like the mercs wanting actual matches and loyalists wanting to ghost drop to terra?

[Kin3ticX]

DarklightCA, on 07 September 2016 - 10:33 PM, said:

This game does not have the population to support 10 different factions and if the population is kept spread out as it is than nobody is going to get games. I'd rather have populated planets with what population still supports the gamemode than keep irrelevant factions and pretend they still matter. Borders still matter, it's IS competing against Clan for control of planets only people get more games.

10 factions has to go

1 effective bucket with special events making it possibly 2 buckets

you still get to be your special snowflake faction but effectively hard allied unless there is an event

[Stormie]

You must have been listening to those who hear what they want to hear. Ghost bear just wanted to make the place as unattractive to mercs as possible, and didn't like the ghost drops any more than the next person. Notice now that the mercs are mostly gone we are back to attacking rasalhague?

[Carl Vickers]

Stormie, on 07 September 2016 - 10:55 PM, said:

You must have been listening to those who hear what they want to hear. Ghost bear just wanted to make the place as unattractive to mercs as possible, and didn't like the ghost drops any more than the next person. Notice now that the mercs are mostly gone we are back to attacking rasalhague?

Poor is the person/faction that refuses free help from some of the best units the game has to offer. You guys could have swallowed up alot of falcon territory and be surrounding terra by now if you had worked with them and not used pride as your weapon.

Add to that, they could have helped train you guys, for free.

Edited by Carl Vickers, 07 September 2016 - 10:59 PM.

[Stormie]

And anything we achieved a long the way would be written off as being the work of the mercs. We prefer to attempt to stand on our own. This thread is about the buckets change by the way