215 replies to this topic

[Cato Zilks]

The longer I play, the more obvious it seems that the Merc/Loyalist problem is and has been the biggest for this game mode. The groups pull in opposite directions. PGI tried to saddle both together and it has torn this game mode asunder.

Mercs inevitably want more battle as soon as possible, in some respects making this more like QP. Loyalists want to campaign with their friends, against an enemy of their choosing, and tend to dislike a horde of mercs come down and either take over the attack or defense lanes they had been focused on.

Oh, and Mercs want to use all their mechs, so they hop back and forth from clan to IS, while Loyalists are hopelessly tied to 80's sci-fi novella and hate the idea of owning mechs of both types. Did I miss any important generalizations?

Joking aside, the two groups do not want the same game and will never get along. PGI is drifting further towards mercs and they will loose people to HBS.

Edited by Cato Zilks, 07 September 2016 - 11:13 PM.

[MischiefSC]

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.

So the key to fixing Faction Warfare was removing Factions and just have it be IS v Clan with a leaderboard?

Because that's what this is. There are no 'populated planets'. Just a single QP queue that instead of being split pug/premade with a matchmaker is split IS v Clan. The 'planets' are not less relevant than they were before.

No 'mercs', no 'loyalists'. Just line up for QP matches with FW maps/modes and have a graphical leaderboard for which two sides is winning!

Yeah, that's going to draw people back to MW:O. That'll grow the player base!

No. Not at all. It'll certainly empty FW of the bulk of the people still in it. I get that for people who only ever wanted QP with FW maps/modes and the whole '10 factions' thing was irrelevant this is perfect. That's cool - honestly, what I don't get is why have it be split. Just merge it into QP, put in the matchmaker and pug/premade split that regular QP has and you'll have faster matches.

That's the goal, right? Faster matches.

You're accomplishing that by steadily reducing the population and removing facets of the game to compress the steadily shrinking population. That's a heartfelt embrace of failure right there.

There will never be a growth in population to fill FW out again because there's no intention to introduce anything that would do so. Some time down the road LT is being replaced with an ECM system. Awesome! I bet we see that some time after the skill tree revamp.

So you make taking planets less relevant than it is now, remove any point to faction membership aside from IS/Clan and this is... going to increase the population?

The only thing at all this will do is remove from FW (and likely MW:O) everyone who was still playing for the sense of loyalty and nostalgia and still liked the bits of 'my faction did X' stuff that can come up. Be that everyone in CJF who wanted Terra, everyone in Davion who, well, stayed Davion, everyone in FRR who fought to 'push back the Clans'. They're all getting the main reason they played FW still removed.

But you're keeping Ghost Drops and such? Just toss all that. Make it a QP queue, put in the pug/premade split and a MM. That'll get more of the QP population in which is the only people at all who would be drawn over by the switch to IS v Clan.

There is absolutely nobody who's left MW:O who's going to come back over this. No new players who'll come and stay. There's nothing, at all, to increase the games population from it and several things that absolutely will reduce it.

So yet another decision that a handful of people like but that will ultimately reduce the population.

Cato Zilks, on 07 September 2016 - 11:05 PM, said:

The longer I play, the more obvious it seems that the Merc/Loyalist problem is and has been the biggest for this game mode. The groups pull in opposite directions. PGI tried to saddle both together and it has torn this game mode asunder.

Mercs inevitably want more battle as soon as possible, in some respects making this more like QP. Loyalists want to campaign with their friends, against an enemy of their choosing, and tend to dislike a horde of mercs come down and either take over the attack or defense lanes they had been focused on.

Oh, and Mercs want to use all their mechs, so they hop back and forth from clan to IS, while Loyalists are hopelessly tied to 80's sci-fi novella and hate the idea of owning mechs of both types. Did I miss any important generalizations?

Joking aside, the two groups do not want the same game and will never get along. PGI is drifting further towards mercs and they will loose people to HBS.

There are no mercs/loyalists in the new system.

You'll drop either Clan or IS. The border is irrelevant save as a leaderboard for which of the 2 sections is winning. Your faction choice is irrelevant, loyalist/merc irrelevant. Maybe it'll have some bonus to your payout if you go loyalist but the ability to flip back and forth if you go merc but nothing actually relevant to, well, anything.

It's making both merc and loyalist irrelevant. It's QP with FW maps/modes and a leaderboard. So, equality?

[xX PUG Xx]

Have the Loyalists missed the part where they and only they get to fight in their own events based on important Lore sourced battles? Since I was actually drawn to MWO by my experiences of reading ALL of the novels, this appeals to me and depending on how often and the method used to run these events it may actually entice me to ask my guys THAT question....

As for consolodating the "buckets" during what I would call "standard" operations? It makes sense with the limited population, it will make building groups and most importantly getting into matches much easier. However it does leave scope to increase the number of planets under contention if population numbers warrant it. Since I play FP every day that I am online, I can say i'm quietly optimistic about the changes if perhaps a little saddened that the distinction between the Factions has been diluted.

I can see the potential here, let's see how it plays out.

[AnTi90d]

MischiefSC, on 07 September 2016 - 11:33 PM, said:

So yet another decision that a handful of people like but that will ultimately reduce the population.

Russ has demonstrated that he values Mercenary opinions more than Loyalists.. Mercenaries who care nothing about lore and just want to grind pugs for easy Cbills with their 12 man premades.

This is another Mercenary solution.. brought to us by the same man that assembled the last sales pitch Town Hall consisting of nearly all Mercenaries, meant to represent the entire community.

The nearly 50 page thread asking us for ideas on how to save FP was entirely ignored during the last Town Hall. What wasn't ignored?.. "I have x-hundred people (who have mostly quit) in my Mercenary unit and the rest of us will quit MWO unless you give us faster drops and prevent Loyalists from boycotting our FP Attack queue because they lost so badly in the first four battles they decided to drop on another planet and left us to ghost drop. Also, we demand the pugs of other factions because we get bored when we drop several 12 mans on one planet and take it in two hours and still have six hours until the next ceasefire."

First they gave the Mercenaries their own reward tree to grind and now they're handing them over all the pugs left in FP, all in one bucket. Rare Special Battles wont' mean squat because more Loyalists will quit from not having any faction identity. In the end, this change will just mean FP turns into Mercenaries versus pugs, 24/7.

All the Loyalists wanted was an alliance system to band together while keeping their faction identity.. but that was too much effort for Russ to bother with.

RIP:FP
GG:PGI
GG:Mercenaries.

[MischiefSC]

xX PUG Xx, on 07 September 2016 - 11:41 PM, said:

Have the Loyalists missed the part where they and only they get to fight in their own events based on important Lore sourced battles? Since I was actually drawn to MWO by my experiences of reading ALL of the novels, this appeals to me and depending on how often and the method used to run these events it may actually entice me to ask my guys THAT question....

As for consolodating the "buckets" during what I would call "standard" operations? It makes sense with the limited population, it will make building groups and most importantly getting into matches much easier. However it does leave scope to increase the number of planets under contention if population numbers warrant it. Since I play FP every day that I am online, I can say i'm quietly optimistic about the changes if perhaps a little saddened that the distinction between the Factions has been diluted.

I can see the potential here, let's see how it plays out.

So help me understand then. Maybe I'm missing something.

What's the relevance of your faction? You're just dropping in a single big queue, IS v Clans. The worlds in question are irrelevant - your faction gains and loses nothing on any given day. Not even a real border change or a sense of 'beating Clan X'. Your matches are no more relevant than QP matches save in how they impact leaderboard stats.

So if once every couple of months you get a 'FRR battle event', that makes up for it? That'll draw people back to MW and FW? Lore-sourced events? Do you understand that means that one 'event' may just be a weekend where you'll have IS v IS and people can choose to be either Kurita or FRR for that weekend as they're playing 'the Ronin War'? It'll be irrelevant as any QP event has ever been. Or do you think they'll just cut every single FW player out of the event who's not already a FRR or Kurita loyalist? So you'll have 1 weekend in 10 where it's your factions turn and so other than the 340 days a year your faction is irrelevant?

So eliminating faction relevance overall for the promise of occasionally having a 'faction event' is going to draw back all the people who left?

There's absolutely nothing here at all to draw back the people who left. Nothing. Just stuff to get people playing to leave. There's nothing in it to increase the population to the point where we're back to even the point we're at now. The best you'll get is some people from QP coming to play it like QP maps/modes because that's functionally what it'll be. It's adding absolutely no depth, none of the missing content that people left over.

This is settling for total failure as the new 'normal'. There is nowhere to go from this system but down. It'll have pug/premade queue split and MM before long to draw in QP population, because that'll be faster matches. Again, nothing to get people into the game just trying to get the existing, shrinking population to play together more often.

[Nomex 99]

[A Shoddy Rental Mech]

The buckets won.
The mercs won.
The loyalist are irrelevant.
The factions are irrelevant.
Small units? Maybe next February we'll figure out a way to throw you a bone.

Take all the things wrong with Phase 3 and double down.

PGI taking the Faction out of Faction Warfare.

[MischiefSC]

The Nerf Bat, on 08 September 2016 - 12:54 AM, said:

The buckets won.
The mercs won.
The loyalist are irrelevant.
The factions are irrelevant.
Small units? Maybe next February we'll figure out a way to throw you a bone.

Take all the things wrong with Phase 3 and double down.

PGI taking the Faction out of Faction Warfare.

Mercs didn't win.

People who never wanted FW and just wanted the maps/modes in QP won. That's not 'mercs'. There were plenty of mercs who wanted factions to exist and wanted the depth of content that FW was promised to have and never delivered.

[A Shoddy Rental Mech]

Factions meaningless
Loyalty meaningless.
Reason to go loyalist?
Voting? NOPE
Special events? NOPE.
Probationary Period? NOPE
7 Day desertion penalty ? NOPE.

So everybody just go merc an get it over with.

I'd call that a win.

[dervishx5]

So few play FW, but you're not even willing to try a new approach to fix it. Instead just the typical unoriginal snarkiness.

Yeah maybe your ideas are better than what PGI can come up with, but FW is already dead. Let them experiment on the corpse for now.

You people are making me defend PGI? **** you.

[Pat Kell]

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?

So you purposely sabotaged your own factions chance at success just to snub the mercs....now that's leadership.

[TWIAFU]

Livestick, on 07 September 2016 - 06:43 PM, said:

It's like they're trying to drive players away...

They just do not want a community in community warfare. It is to hard for special snowflakes and their community of one.

[TWIAFU]

MischiefSC, on 07 September 2016 - 07:30 PM, said:

That's no fix.

It's just making FW another side of QP.

Yea for solo rambos unable or unwilling to take part of something bigger then themselves. PGI will give them what they want and like every single thing they wanted it will go unused.

[Kin3ticX]

I will try to push for a compromise (save 4 factions) but I suspect PGI already shot this down in meetings.

https://twitter.com/...838403091599360


https://twitter.com/...835879160754177


Podcast went pretty well otherwise. I completely understand why people are not happy with that 1 thing.

Edited by Kin3ticX, 08 September 2016 - 03:15 AM.

[Bud Crue]

The Nerf Bat, on 08 September 2016 - 12:54 AM, said:

The buckets won.
The mercs won.
The loyalist are irrelevant.
The factions are irrelevant.
Small units? Maybe next February we'll figure out a way to throw you a bone.

Take all the things wrong with Phase 3 and double down.

PGI taking the Faction out of Faction Warfare.

I know Phase 2 wasn't the greatest, but that was all I played for a my first year of this game. A little something called "Community Warfare". I played most nights 2 or three drops. On weekends dozens. I watched the FRR go from 1 planet to many, and near back again. It was fun. Then phase 3. Then nearly everyone (including me left) because they felt like the factions had become meaningless. Now they want to "fix" phase 3 by essentially eliminating not the factions, but the whole reason for having factions. Wow.

Here's idea: fix phase 3 by resetting back to phase 2 and building your new "ground work" on a version of the mode people used to enjoy playing before you f-ed it up. Would that maybe be a better idea than simply eliminating the "factions" in your "faction play" mode?

What a frigin waste.

Edited by Bud Crue, 08 September 2016 - 03:25 AM.

[TWIAFU]

MischiefSC, on 08 September 2016 - 12:07 AM, said:

So help me understand then. Maybe I'm missing something.

What's the relevance of your faction? You're just dropping in a single big queue, IS v Clans. The worlds in question are irrelevant - your faction gains and loses nothing on any given day. Not even a real border change or a sense of 'beating Clan X'. Your matches are no more relevant than QP matches save in how they impact leaderboard stats.

Well, since CW will now just be Red vs Blue and that will be the full extent of it's "depth", the only real "identity" a pilot will have is the 'Mech they drive, and lemmings do what lemmings do, where do you think they will gravitate? The location where they have a natural advantage, Clans.

Large bucket vs small bucket. Large bucket will complain that they have to wait so the next step will be to balance Clan/IS so there is no distinction between the two other then HUD and laser colors.

Anyone want to play some MegaMek?

[Terrastras Rex]

Things that make me log back into games:

1. Competition.
2. Completion.

Lots of times I will install F2P games and try them out. Very rarely do I ever play them beyond a week.

If you have competition -> games are fun, games are 'close' (nail biters), the losing team has a swing mechanism to 'catch up', eSports grow here, etc.

If you have completion -> there is a list of things unchecked. achievements to find, skills to unlock. Every MMO uses this, and I suspect some of the success of Battlefield2/Call of Duty came from these elements. I put 300+ hours into BF2 just to unlock all the medals/ribbons, and how many times did you 'Prestige' in CallOfDuty?

Mechwarrior Online has sOME of each of these elements.
Competition -> Unit bragging rights, planet tags, "leaderboard" etc.
Completion -> GXP "skills", Mastering mechs, Faction/Merc Reputation

Both can be fleshed out even more.

Imagine Pilot 'skill trees' similar to an MMO. As you level up, you can choose which path to follow, further customizing your pilot.
e.g. - "Kneecapper": +5% dmg to legs, -5% dmg to arms
or alternately
"Tennis Elbow": +5% dmg to arms, -5% dmg to legs
those options would be mutually exclusive. one or the other.

Achievements that the new telemetry would allow
- 500 Assault kills while playing a light. (eg)
- 500 Arms blown off
- 500 Legs blown off

rewards for those achievements could be decals..

EFFORT = REWARD .. Thats what this game needs more of. =D


I play the events because of the "completion" aspect. There is a goal, I want to fulfill the requirements to achieve it. When there are no events running and we own 10+ planets, there's literally no reason for me to login that day. =X

edit: reading chat on the twitch stream. 420 is 60 members.. prolly 30 active. are we a "huge" unit? no.

Edited by Terrastras Rex, 08 September 2016 - 04:08 AM.

[nagdamnit]

As the man said above. The game is dead so let them experiment on the corpse.

I reckin this will limit the impact of the larger merc units, lead to more balanced matches (more skittle vs skittle battles) effectively rolling back on the "FW is meant to be hard" aspect of the game. That could well be very appealing to those players that don't like getting stomped by a pre-made all the time.

As someone who's never given a sh*te about the planets and just likes the four-drop format, I think it sounds alright. Each Tukiyiid event effectively did the same thing.

[ice trey]

Iron Buccaneer, on 07 September 2016 - 07:13 PM, said:

This is no longer Battletech.

Then kill it for tainting it's name.

Edited by ice trey, 08 September 2016 - 04:13 AM.

[Peter2k]

Kin3ticX, on 08 September 2016 - 03:13 AM, said:

I will try to push for a compromise (save 4 factions) but I suspect PGI already shot this down in meetings.

https://twitter.com/...838403091599360


https://twitter.com/...835879160754177


Podcast went pretty well otherwise. I completely understand why people are not happy with that 1 thing.

I think for now I rather take getting actual matches instead of a wait fest

that being said
its a bandaid for sure

-------------------------


still
I think people are too stuck up into factions and what they mean
I get why

but MWO was a niche game to begin with
PGI could always split the "buckets" again if people are actually playing

as an aside
I don't get why people are so up in arms over Mercs
MS is practically on ice, and it was the one of the biggest Merc Unit
isn't FP kinda dead?

people don't want others to play the only way to get some free Mech Bays?
or being able to play the toys people bought from both sides?

why not nag PGI in making Mercs and Loyalists way more distinct

also you know where to nag for that, certainly not here on the forums


I like the idea of a "global ecm blanket" instead of LT otherwise
gives a good advantage, but you still have to do something to score

Edited by Peter2k, 08 September 2016 - 04:16 AM.