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?