54 replies to this topic

[Sader325]

https://www.twitch.t...ngtv/v/88166396

So, I like everything they said in this podcast and agree with everything but one thing.

I personally don't think factions need to be collapsed, the rest of the proposed ideas are enough to revive FP for a good 7-10 months.

It would be a great first step while working on later content.

[MischiefSC]

Good luck with that.

I wouldn't call it 7-10 months though. More like 3-4. Think about changes with Scouting et al. The bulk of the FW population has left because of a lack of depth, a lack of purpose to taking planets or belonging to factions or anything else. None of this really fixes any of that nor is there even a plan to include that. Just a plan to remove what little remains.

That being the solution PGI is gravitating to has made it very clear where PGI stands on FW. Time to wrap it up. They were unable to deliver on the bulk of it and are looking at just making it all like QP, which is about where they tap out.

Lower your standards, take what you're given and please buy a mech pack.

[CwStrife]

Heard this before.... Promises that won't be delivered, and if they are it will be in 3 years.

The truth is they don't think they have done anything wrong, and they never ever listen to the community as a whole thinking they know better. Sure maybe they have a good art dept. or... well... thats probably about it. The coding is just horrendous with the issues everyone has had for the longest time, CW has been broken for the longest time. Phase 3 was in development how long and all they did was add the Long Dong, some pretty colors, and scouting which nobody cares for.

And they are still nerfing the long tom as if anyone wants the damn thing. It's just a complete failure, and instead of admitting hey we messed up now lets get things right... they continue to be thick headed and try to improve on a failed design.

I mean did Ford try to improve the Pinto? It was a failure right? No... They cut the cords and moved on to something better. PGI apparently thinks they can make their Pinto into a Corvette. It just cannot happen.

Edited by CwStrife, 08 September 2016 - 01:40 AM.

[dervishx5]

Given the number of players in FW right now, yes, they do in fact need to be collapsed.

It might ruffle feathers (or fur), but gameplay wise it's the best choice given the situation. If FW ever comes back :pause for laughter: then maybe they can bring back factions.

But right now supply has way overshot demand.

[Zolaz]

How does it feel to care more about Community Warfare than the guy running the show? You at least read the Forums and interact more with the community than anyone at PGI. Russ doesnt plan on giving the Community Warfare he first pitched to us 4 years ago when he told us we could trust him. It has been the same cycle over and over, promise much, deliver little, put out a mech pack. At least we now know it wasnt IGP.

[Kin3ticX]

We need 24 active players in EVERY faction just to have every faction kick off 1 attack match per attack lane. That means to support 10 factions with 1 game each we need 240 players consistently. I doubt we even have that. That doesnt even make the 10 factions healthy because you need extra people on top of that.

I dont see how we can begin to get back to numbers like that unless wait times are nuked first. I know for Mercstar we ran into serious wait time problems with phase 3 right away with less ways to reach fights.

Now, rather than some algorithm picking a planet we will fight over fronts and pick planets to tag outselves. No more of the maddening 1 attack lane getting to 100% in just 1 hour and then having nothing to do if no other queues have anything to offer.

PGI just turned CW into 24/7 Tukayiid+.

I would prefer PGI zoomed into the Jade-Wolf-Steiner-FRR corner of the map but that would also be more than 1 bucket. Atleast though they could return to 10 factions if populations ever warranted it. You can still have some opportunity for space nerd politics there. I think we could support 4 factions if all these other improvements actually made it in. I dont ever see us supporting 10 factions. 4 factions would work and going super tukayidd is just the nuclear option for no more wait times. However, PGI is ALL or Nothing on factions because loyalists will have brain aneurysms over which stay and which go temporarily.

The pro of having 24/7 Tukayiid+ is that you still can have your special snowflake faction icon even though it doesnt mean much.

Im for zooming into a corner and only having 4 factions but either way I think it will work how Russ described.

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

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

Edited by Kin3ticX, 08 September 2016 - 03:22 AM.

[vocifer]

I love the QP gamemode utilization in CW. It would be fun. DZ farming and stuff: Phase 1, I missed you so much!

It's also a last joker, that PGI is throwing into CW until they start creating new maps and gamamodes again.

Edited by vocifer, 08 September 2016 - 02:38 AM.

[Wolf Ender]

i was blown away that they think they can get away with putting rewards revamp on the back burners. don't they think people are going to care about that ?

it's not something that I'm personally really big on, but i feel like the player base wants C-Bills man.

I think people are going to crap all over anything they throw at us if they don't show people how it's going to make them rich rich rich like space trump!

[justcallme A S H]

Kin3ticX, on 08 September 2016 - 02:29 AM, said:

I dont see how we can begin to get back to numbers like that unless wait times are nuked first. I know for Mercstar we ran into serious wait time problems with phase 3 right away with less ways to reach fights.

So much this. The population before Phase 3 was actually quite decent.

This point right here is the single biggest thing people are over looking. Whilst it's not as important as the failure of Long Tom, It's the major precursor to the population issues.

After 2hrs planets were at 100% and then for the next 4hrs, what do you do? There is literally nothing left to do. A single planet for 7hrs was just plain dumb. Larger units suffered majorly and there is no doubt a simple fix to stop large units "controlling the galaxy" of taking planets. Maybe a unit member number divided by how many players dropped etc.

So within no less than 4 weeks, after sitting there doing nothing for so many people. The population had dropped off noticeably. What is left is generally a majority pre-made vs a PUG team because that's all there is left.


All this crap is still a big fat band-aid rather than fixing the cause.

[Hobbles v]

Overall I liked the ideas that were put forth I think I need to listen again so I can be more critical.

The two things that stuck out to me as pretty flawed were the reduction to purely I.S vs clan and the idea of cycling through the various quick play modes before finally doing invasion.

I know during the cast Russ stated that an alliance system was not feasable. What I don't get about that is why not just change to four faction's 2 clan 2 is? The code already exists for 10 factions what the problem with lumping the populace into 4 groups?
Fed com+ frr
Liao/marik/kurita alliance
Warden clans
Crusader clans.

All the individual house/clan stuff could be simply cosmetic.

With regards to the idea of cycling through the quick play maps and modes early in the attack phase before moving on to invasion/ht late in the phase. I dislike it that way, it means if I can't be online at the end of the phase I'll never be able to play invasion/ht and vice versa if I can only be on late.

If they are hard set on adding qp maps and modes to faction play have it alternate modes throughout. Perhaps tie it to the scouting bar. Even scouting percentages at time of drop in 12 man turn match to invasion/ht an odd percentage triggers a skirmish or other qpmode with respawns. AddS more reason to use scouting modes and doesn't lock people out of certain modes based on the time of day they can log in.

Another option is to put all the qp stuff into the scouting queue. Have it every 10% break out into a full on skirmish 12v12. Would also make their fp video with dires killing scouts more accurate.

Edited by Hobbles v, 08 September 2016 - 01:08 PM.

[Terrorsdawn]

To start, I was never a fan of the idea of giving up on what we had as far as factions and current buckets.

The damage is done though and we don't have enough people left in Faction Play to support it any longer.

I also fear that even if by some chance if we once more see an active and growing player population we may never recover what we are about to lose.

Now as far as what PGI is doing now with rolling Quick Play Maps and modes into Faction Play, all I can say is that it's about dam time they did something as far a content. Lack of content is what has killed Faction Play and what content carried was a big gun called Long Tom which it used to double tap Faction Play in the head. PGI should have been pumping out something as far as content long ago to support FP and now with the ideas put forward in the last town hall I can see something that may break up the constant choke point maps and modes we had. To be honest I am looking forward to some intense all out brawls of 48 vs 48 on some of the QP maps. All out attack, cap and defend on conquest where light mechs can play a major role.

Yeah it mat be blind hope, that this may be enough to get things rolling again but after listening to the town hall I do feel a little bit of hope. Hope is something I didn't see till I heard Russ was actually going to implement some changes put forward by the community and if Russ can change maybe there is a little bit of reason to hope.

Edited by Terrorsdawn, 08 September 2016 - 07:26 AM.

[Husker Dude]

I think the only thing that I heard that I wasn't super crazy about was the idea of putting limited drop deck respawns into quick play; as much as I'd like the ability to choose what mech to play once I know the map, we have enough of a problem with having to repeatedly tell players in FW to not reinforce every match, I'd not be interested in having to do something similar in every QP match as well, even though the game modes will be very different.

[Cy Mitchell]

They need to leave QP alone and make FP the more desirable place to play. Adding all the QP modes along with Invasion and Scouting is a bunch of steps in the right direction IMO. Revamping the rewards will be another positive step. Removing Long Tom and replacing it with info/sensor effects yet another one. If that brings enough of a population increase then maybe the factions can get some of their "buckets" back.

The FP lore events sound good too.

[Dolph Hoskins]

I thought it mostly sounded good. I have my doubts about not allowing open infighting amongst rival clans or the houses. I used to try and stick to a clan Wolf purist mindset when I did CW...around the 1st Tukayyid. The idea of cooperating with the Falcons in the majority of matches is a rp blunder, but I suppose that is better than nonexistant gameplay. It is not like timeline, faction relevance, or rp details have had any significant representation in MWO ever. At least hold up the gameplay side of it. Then there may be enough players to create all of the rp nerdyness.

[Alteran]

I'll come back to something that I've posted a few times...

How do these changes/features draw in new players, entice old players to come back and retain current/new/old players in MWO? Do any of these changes accomplish any of the three, particularly 1 and 2?

Contrary to the negative opinions that I've had about many of PGI's decisions over the last couple of years, my POV has always been for the betterment of the overall product and community, as many of you have. What PGI has promised and not delivered is really what many of us still here remembers. It's what many of our friends who have come and gone remember.

CW/FP/FW - whatever you want to call it needs depth for it to mean something. We as a community playing MWO in the Battletech 'universe' need the depth and rewards to make it a game mode that we are willing to spend 3-4 hours a night playing, worth playing.

The promises got PGI only so far and now two full years later CW/FP/FW is just a fraction of what it was 'supposed' to be. Now we have 40-50 people a night in NA playing it... What a waste.

[Zolaz]

Shovelware company puts out shovelware. Everything is too hard for them to implement and code. Well, except for mech packs and the mode that was suppose to hold us over till Faction Warfare could be implemented.

Everything the bittervets say about PGI is true.

[QueenBlade]

7 - 10 months? Hmm, that puts us right around the time for the Battletech release.

[Marquis De Lafayette]

After watching the broadcast a couple of thoughts:

1. The changes are somewhat better than I thought they would be. I hate the reduction to Clan vs. IS in principal, but population is so low I think they need to try it. I hate myself for saying that. I love the fact that they will hold events to allow for folks to fight within the larger "family" some. That makes the bucket reduction thing go down a bit better. While I am currently a Merc I was concerned my loyalist friends were going to totally get shafted on everything here.

2. Winners in the implementation of these initial changes seem to be: larger units and then later on (to a degree) loyalists. Larger units especially early on as they are the only ones who can reap planetary rewards. Smaller units had a small chance to get some tags in the current system(at least I got some), not in the revised system. So, I guess I will need to find myself a big unit to join for at least a good while.

Loyalists having access to the IS vs. IS and Clan vs. Clan events should have a good time with those, without (apparently dreaded) Merc interference. Does it make sense that mercs can't be paid to help in an IS vs. IS battle? No. It does however give the power to determine those battles to the loyalists of those factions. This may well make loyalists a bit more happy, especially when giving up some day-to-day control over the front.

3. A lot of the other ideas are either solid or at least worth trying.

With all this changing...maybe I need to say goodbye to my modestly successful solo Merc unit (on the leaderboard anyway) ways and go with a big, loyalist unit in the next generation of FW. Looks that way today at least...well until they change things yet again anyway.

[CwStrife]

7-10 months from now the population will be so low nobody will even care anymore. They need to cancel that idiotic championship and invest that $130,000 with some serious developers who can quickly fix the game and get it where it needs to be. Otherwise PGI is done. Obviously their team now can only do 2 things.... add new maps, and more mechs. Both of which are useless except for the idiots who give PGI there money expecting something different. I must have given PGI $500 of my money, and obviously they spent it on nothing worthwhile

[AnTi90d]

CwStrife, on 08 September 2016 - 02:40 PM, said:

I must have given PGI $500 of my money, and obviously they spent it on nothing worthwhile

Russ bought pizza with that money.. and made us wait, listening to elevator music, while he ate it.