215 replies to this topic

[Chameleon257]

fbj, on 08 September 2016 - 10:14 AM, said:

I just want fights. I am tired of this lore talk and how this faction in the books did this.

If I wanted to relive the books, I'd read the books.

I just want to shoot robots in the face.

theres alway titan fall

[Penrose Willoughby]

I totally agree with just 2 buckets, when you've barely got enough players to scrape together a 12v12 how exactly do you think it's going to work when they're spread across any number of different queues?

As fbj said, we're here to shoot robots. If they can mix shooting robots with lore and immersion and all that good stuff, all the better. But I'd rather have some shooty time with no story than a deep story while I sit in a queue for 30 minutes.

[BuckshotSchell]

It seems some of the community still does not understand what a mercenary is, or why they should be able to fight for a faction on week and against it the next. Still dont really get the Merc hate, but whatever. I'll just leave this here.

http://www.dictionar...e/mercenary?s=t

[Danjo San]

BuckshotSchell, on 03 November 2016 - 10:15 AM, said:

It seems some of the community still does not understand what a mercenary is, or why they should be able to fight for a faction on week and against it the next. Still dont really get the Merc hate, but whatever. I'll just leave this here.

http://www.dictionar...e/mercenary?s=t

It's not a problem to be mercenary. The problem is that unlimited contracts are available, which led to imbalance in the first place. imbalance leads to frustration, frustration makes players quit.
Bottom line, PGI missed the opportunity to "control" that fluctuation, when they let mercs roam freely and have unlimited unit size. limited size makes distribution easier. now the only way left to "balance" is to reduce everything to 2 buckets.
Just think back to the issues there were in the first phases... unit size, total freedom for mercs, its what led to serious problems.
And as per definition "hired to work" nobody hired them. There are unlimited choices...
To have a "realistic" system, there should be limited amount of contracts per faction available to balance population and thus ensure there is a equal distribution. Mercs then accept a contract, and if there are no more contracts left for faction A they must choose a contract for a different faction.
Whats happening now is that players choose to take the contract with the highest negative modifier because they know that that is where the action is even though they earn merely the same amount they do in a good quickplay match.
Balance is off. And that is a problem caused by Mercs under the system PGI provided.

[C E Dwyer]

BuckshotSchell, on 03 November 2016 - 10:15 AM, said:

It seems some of the community still does not understand what a mercenary is, or why they should be able to fight for a faction on week and against it the next. Still dont really get the Merc hate, but whatever. I'll just leave this here.

http://www.dictionar...e/mercenary?s=t

Everyone should know what a Merc is, however if merc's changed contracts as frequently as the Merc do here, they would soon become unemployed, or worse, as a powerful leader finally lost patience with them.

None here I hope are of the opinion that merc's shouldn't be a thing, but they certainly should be made to stay contracted to one house longer than they currently are now

[MischiefSC]

Size was never the issue - the limits on unit size that uave shown up did absolutely nothing but reduce total players. The idea that players are a fungible resouce like crude oil that will just flow to wherever theres an opening is ridiculous. Big units are big because they're better at attracting and retaining players.

Best tool was always having mercs play with no bonuses anywhere they want but be hired by loyalists for bonuses.

There always were numerous good options. It failed because PGI elected to go with *nothing* for a couple years then a bad idea.

[Davegt27]

the lack of player numbers from the start of CW has been the biggest problem

PGI could see the numbers but we players could not

so PGI opened CW with max amount of options for players

this in the long run was not a good idea

but we need to put the past in the past

I saw something on the leader board that is a good idea

that is seasons
players need to be locked in for seasons
so in other words you cant jump around

lets find things we can agree on and push forward from there

the thing that finally killed CW for me was lack of pay-outs
I made so little c-bills for the brutal beatings I took I finally said forget it

I do hope the next CW round table we get better player representation

[BuckshotSchell]

Ya'll are still making nonsensical arguments as far as the Mercs go. Some will go to the action (more games=more fun/C-bill) this is the majority. We want matches, lore be damned! (Mercs very important in BT lore though) Others will go to highest pay out faction (maybe fewer matches but higher payout per match). The length of the contract is irrelevant to mist of us. We go we fight and we either stay because; 1- we like the people in the faction, 2-we get tons of matches (Mercs like that.), or 3-the pay per match makes it worth it. This isn't real life people. We can't turn on you mid match because the opponent made a better offer, and obviously this would be bad for business anyway. You want longer contracts? Fine go back to the days when we could chose between 1 day to 30 day. We got house loyalty then and it was half as much as the current merc loyalty tree! We really had a reason to switch factions then. Hell, we could get free crap from every faction, and then roam around as we pleased.

You people are all looking for someone to blame, Mercs, PGI, whoever. I'm not saying that we are without some blame, but the biggest problem is you all not getting into a queue to play. If everyone would quit crying about getting farmed, or this is OP or that is UP or whatever and just play we would all have matches. I've been with Marik a few days now and have never seen more than a few purple birds grouped together, it's always skittles on drops. We get stomped, last night the skittles stomped Ghost Bear units, it was glorious! Maybe **** is not perfect, but nothing is, so if you want to "fix FW" stop crying about Mercs and stuff and start voting for and queuing up for freaking matches!

Rant over, I'm done. Yall will either play or whine, I can't do anything else to try and convince you one way or the other. Hate Mercs or not, most of us are still looking for matches.

[Danjo San]

MischiefSC, on 03 November 2016 - 11:58 AM, said:

Size was never the issue

I strongly disagree, and you and I both know we have discussed this more than once. However wouldn't you agree that if a unit has 300 members of which 50 play FP and 250 give a flying F balance is off at this current state and in altenate scenarios? Assume we have "limited population balancing contracts". the unit takes a contract and sucks up 300 slots... leaving less available slots for others that actually care about FP. in theory 250 slots would be wasted for that.
Basically the same thing is happening right now. The difference are the "contract modifiers" The modifier speaks for nothing rather than what faction has the most people assigned to it at that given time. And this is not the actual amount of players who actually are intrested in FP. So lets say 2 large groups go to one and the same place but only 1/8th of their entire playerbase is actually active in FP... contract modifiers go down, it draws in other people etc. etc.
UNIT and COMMUNITY are two different entities. limiting the size of a single unit or call it company if you like, helps balancing the actual population of players who are interested in FP. You don't need to fly the same tag or colors if you want to drop in QP together. it looks good, yeah... get that.
And as you said large groups are better at attracting and retaining... but that is a communitiy issue and that goes beyond Unit-Tag...
Anyway... I've seen this coming and the two bucket solution won't really help either. Population balance can still be set off, and most likely it will. I predict "major league mercs" moving to Clan together and then to IS together, saying that this happens by chance... Peeps will be frustrated saying they are deliberatly avoiding each other, (with only two buckets it is even easier) and the playerbase of FP will decline further.

[MischiefSC]

Danjo San, on 03 November 2016 - 03:56 PM, said:

I strongly disagree, and you and I both know we have discussed this more than once. However wouldn't you agree that if a unit has 300 members of which 50 play FP and 250 give a flying F balance is off at this current state and in altenate scenarios? Assume we have "limited population balancing contracts". the unit takes a contract and sucks up 300 slots... leaving less available slots for others that actually care about FP. in theory 250 slots would be wasted for that.
Basically the same thing is happening right now. The difference are the "contract modifiers" The modifier speaks for nothing rather than what faction has the most people assigned to it at that given time. And this is not the actual amount of players who actually are intrested in FP. So lets say 2 large groups go to one and the same place but only 1/8th of their entire playerbase is actually active in FP... contract modifiers go down, it draws in other people etc. etc.
UNIT and COMMUNITY are two different entities. limiting the size of a single unit or call it company if you like, helps balancing the actual population of players who are interested in FP. You don't need to fly the same tag or colors if you want to drop in QP together. it looks good, yeah... get that.
And as you said large groups are better at attracting and retaining... but that is a communitiy issue and that goes beyond Unit-Tag...
Anyway... I've seen this coming and the two bucket solution won't really help either. Population balance can still be set off, and most likely it will. I predict "major league mercs" moving to Clan together and then to IS together, saying that this happens by chance... Peeps will be frustrated saying they are deliberatly avoiding each other, (with only two buckets it is even easier) and the playerbase of FP will decline further.

I would agree completely about the illusionary population issues but it applies to mercs and loyalists, big and small units.

Faction population should be based on total individual accounts logged in and playing FW over the last rolling 7 days.

[Danjo San]

MischiefSC, on 03 November 2016 - 04:39 PM, said:

I would agree completely about the illusionary population issues but it applies to mercs and loyalists, big and small units.

Faction population should be based on total individual accounts logged in and playing FW over the last rolling 7 days.

agreed

[justcallme A S H]

BuckshotSchell, on 03 November 2016 - 07:48 AM, said:

So in the last two days have had 6 drops against Ghost Bear units. All basicly skittle pugs, on defense all they do is Gen rush, and on defense they try and seal club, PUG stomp, whatever you want to call it. Guess what on the the drops I was in they only won two of six. The point being for a bunch of people talking about being so honorable that they hate the Mercs for gaming the system and PUG stomping etc.... They sure seem to try and game the system when they get the chance.

Hypocrites suck.

But it's OK.

If you are a loyalist, you're not a seal-clubber. You're automatically exempt apparently.

[MazeRunner]

MischiefSC, on 03 November 2016 - 04:39 PM, said:

Faction population should be based on total individual accounts logged in and playing FW over the last rolling 7 days.

That sound you hear is all the Lore-addicts who only play QP, qq'ing about losing their special snowflake status icon. What hard-core Lore addicts are doing in a game with the word Merc's in the title still confuses me after all these years. But aside from that, I do like the idea, but maybe add in a match count requirement to keep people from alt-voting. Make `em earn the joy of pushing the little vote button

[MischiefSC]

MazeRunner, on 04 November 2016 - 03:08 AM, said:

That sound you hear is all the Lore-addicts who only play QP, qq'ing about losing their special snowflake status icon. What hard-core Lore addicts are doing in a game with the word Merc's in the title still confuses me after all these years. But aside from that, I do like the idea, but maybe add in a match count requirement to keep people from alt-voting. Make `em earn the joy of pushing the little vote button

That *special snowflake icon* is identity, like your countries flag. It's what directly or indirectly provides at least some shadow of purpose and identity.

Those people fill matches. Or are you saying losing a few more players wobt be an issue for FW?

[Roland09]

MazeRunner, on 04 November 2016 - 03:08 AM, said:

What hard-core Lore addicts are doing in a game with the word Merc's in the title still confuses me after all these years.

MWO got 'merc' in the title? Tell me more. Maybe you have been playing a different game all those years?

[FallingAce]

Roland09, on 04 November 2016 - 11:50 AM, said:

MWO got 'merc' in the title? Tell me more. Maybe you have been playing a different game all those years?

They want to take the MECHWARRIOR out of MWO( mechwarrior online) just like they want to take the factions out of Faction Warfare.

I'm not sure what game these people are playing or even what game they want to play, but its not the game I'm playing or the game I want to play.