67 replies to this topic

[Bishop Steiner]

Just a curiosity question, mostly aimed at those teams and Units that participated in the World Championship.

Throughout the Year, FW became increasingly a graveyard, and I know the much overhyped "Phase 3" thing didn't help, but I also wonder... FW was always more a playground for unit play, etc. Did the constant Grind of the Championship (Odd tourney times, massive amount of practice matches, scrimmages, etc, in private drops) leave these teams unable to maintain and support normal FW play? Or even too burned out to want to do so?

Likewise, throughout the year, the quality of matches, and level of game play seems to have gotten worse, pretty much every month. I finally gave up tryign to level my Night Gyrs and Huntsman because the average match play quality in QP has been so vomitous.

Now I'm wondering if in part it's because of all an overall burnout and such among the Comp Guys, Tryhards, and even just "Good" players whose teams were involved in this fiasco.

Obviously, we've had our steady stream of people getting bored with the game, upset over the usual blunders, (KDK Nerf attempts, ED, Light Mechs rescale, etc)... but I'm wondering if the precipitous nature of the decline is tied into the Champìonship, too.

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 23 October 2016 - 08:14 AM.

[El Bandito]

Obviously the championship had contributed to the decline of units participating in FP, but a lot of pugs also left FP cause of Russ' brilliant idea of implementing Long Tom into that mode.

[Bishop Steiner]

El Bandito, on 22 October 2016 - 06:58 PM, said:

Obviously the championship had contributed to the decline of units participating in FP, but a lot of pugs also left FP cause of Russ' brilliant idea of implementing Long Tom into that mode.

True, forgot about that, TBH, because I bailed on FW long ago.... the whole... 1 match an hour thing.... just not cutting it. Though the ol LT of course has no impact on the QP side, or Scouting Mode (which is what I was playing..until those queues got as long as normal FW)

[VorpalAnvil]

LT single handedly killed CW for many vets, and it successfully inoculated any new players against who tried it during that time. As usual this games worst enemy is PGI itself.

[Bishop Steiner]

VorpalAnvil, on 22 October 2016 - 07:04 PM, said:

LT single handedly killed CW for many vets, and it successfully inoculated any new players against who tried it during that time. As usual this games worst enemy is PGI itself.

So what killed Scouting? Lack of units doing normal FW to benefit from it?

[Ghogiel]

Most of the units who are CW focused are still doing CW. Maybe to a much lesser extent but I don't think that has to do with MWOWC because those that participated in the MWOWC aren't typically CW units. I can think of a handful. And then you have large units whose comp team/s basically never really played much CW to begin with yet still have some presense in CW, such as 228th.

Edited by Ghogiel, 22 October 2016 - 07:06 PM.

[Imperius]

No WAYYYYYYYYYYY Units only represented like 4% of the user base *sarcasm*

E-Sports for a year did nothing but damage this game period!

Edited by Imperius, 22 October 2016 - 07:19 PM.

[VorpalAnvil]

Bishop Steiner, on 22 October 2016 - 07:05 PM, said:

So what killed Scouting? Lack of units doing normal FW to benefit from it?

What killed scouting is potatoes who are unwilling to bring mechs that can you know, kill other mechs. How dare other players refuse to immerrsively stand in a box or at a point to complete the "objective". Bads are terrible at getting kills, and 4v4 means all brawl all the time if you want to win. GGClose

[Ghogiel]

Oh and I forgot about steam release. It's not really that CW is dead now, it was dead before, it's just that Steam happened and the player injection into CW was palpable. It's just that the queues have now returned to what it was prior to Steam if you remember.

[Simbacca]

Bishop Steiner, on 22 October 2016 - 07:05 PM, said:

So what killed Scouting? Lack of units doing normal FW to benefit from it?

That surprises me as well. During events I force myself to play invasion mode (due to a less than 15% win rate), but I do, when possible play Scout mode as it tends to be the fairest mode - even against 4 man-organized. And unlike invasion mode - it requires only 8 players vs 24 - so the mode should have been generally busy...

[Chuck Jager]

We should move group play into FW or kill FW.

I would assume that the comp would have meant fewer big groups hitting the pugs, but it appears to be the opposite.

We now have 12 mans who would actually like to play other 12 mans, but the faction balance and numbers of groups is less so PUGz have more of a chance of going against them.

The group play Q is where units used to go play hard, but I have seen folks team up in light and rob their team of a b#ttload of tonnage. There is also a lack of competitive matches to motivate players to evaluate their abilities and look past the damage and kills when they get on a loosing streak. (or to let newer players see that nobody is invincible).

I think there are too many expectation of FW and PGI and the player base as a whole will find that no matter how good a change is made. The effect will still have negative effects not just with the players perception, but also with game play.

[El Bandito]

Bishop Steiner, on 22 October 2016 - 07:05 PM, said:

So what killed Scouting? Lack of units doing normal FW to benefit from it?

Simbacca, on 22 October 2016 - 07:59 PM, said:

That surprises me as well. During events I force myself to play invasion mode (due to a less than 15% win rate), but I do, when possible play Scout mode as it tends to be the fairest mode - even against 4 man-organized. And unlike invasion mode - it requires only 8 players vs 24 - so the mode should have been generally busy...

Several things killed the Scouting mode.

1. No 12-man drop to take advantage of scouting points. Pugs beating up organized 4-man in Scouting is one thing, but pugs beating up organized 12-man in Invasion is totally another. As a Marik, I know that all too well.

2. Payout is low. And I don't just mean C-Bills/XP. The LP gained from Scouting is pitifully small as well. Not to mention intel capping, while being the most reliable way to get as many scouting bonus in the shortest amount of time, pays even less. Thus less reason for an average pugger to play Scouting, compared to solo-q for C-Bills or Invasion for LPs.

3. Streakcrows. Not very threatening to IS pilots who knows what they are doing and bring mechs that can deal with them, but absolute nightmare to pugs that are less capable. And those Streaks have such a low skill floor, even the lowest of the low Clan pugger can do decent matches with them. Can't say the same for IS puggers, cause IS doesn't have SSRM4/6. And whenever one side tilts too much, the queue tends to shrink.

Edited by El Bandito, 22 October 2016 - 11:26 PM.

[BLOOD WOLF]

there is no casual link between the tourney and FW. This is by all means a disjunctive thread, that will breed rumors and false claims.

Edited by BLOOD WOLF, 22 October 2016 - 10:22 PM.

[Lukoi Banacek]

FP killed FP for the many known reasons.

We'd largely abandoned it before the WC and frankly the changes since that time frame did nothing to improve the situation.

We held a dedicated FP night just recently. Got TWO matches out of the night. Entire night of gaming, for two matches of FP. At this point the death spiral is largely self-fulfilling. Even if you wanted to pardon the sins and play, so few people are around that it's virtually impossible.

Rebluing that mode and re-achieving critical mass will be tough. GL with that PGI.

Edited by Lukoi Banacek, 22 October 2016 - 11:00 PM.

[Bishop Steiner]

BLOOD WOLF, on 22 October 2016 - 10:20 PM, said:

there is no casual link between the tourney and FW. This is by all means a disjunctive thread, that will breed rumors and false claims.

got proof?

Oh wait, it's you. Of course not.

[FallingAce]

El Bandito, on 22 October 2016 - 10:18 PM, said:

Several things killed the Scouting mode.

1. No 12-man drop to take advantage of scouting points. Pugs beating up organized 4-man in Scouting is one thing, but pugs beating up organized 12-man in Invasion is totally another. As a Marik, I know that all too well.

2. Payout is low. And I don't just mean C-Bills/XP. The LP gained from Scouting is pitifully small as well. Not to mention intel capping, while being the most reliable way to get as many scouting bonus in the shortest amount of time, pays even less. Thus less reason for an average pugger to play Scouting, compared to solo-q for C-Bills or Invasion for LPs.

3. Streakcrows. Not very threatening to IS pilots who knows what they are doing and bring mechs that can deal with them, but absolute nightmare to pugs that are less capable. And those Streaks have such a low skill floor, even the lowest of the low Clan pugger can do decent matches with them. Can't say the same for IS puggers, cause IS doesn't have SSRM4/6. And whenever one side tilts too much, the queue tends to shrink.

10 minute wait for a 5 min match doesn't help either.

Scouting is the one thing PGI has coming closest to getting right. It still needs tweaking, but PGI hasn't touched scouting or FW other than the long tom sice phase 3 launched.

[BLOOD WOLF]

Bishop Steiner, on 22 October 2016 - 11:03 PM, said:

got proof?

Oh wait, it's you. Of course not.

nice troll reply. you are the one that asserted this and provided nothing but conjecture in your post. If you look at post from FW gameplay from last year to about march this year. The FW participation has been in decline. IT has been in decline for a while now, and It has nothing to do with the tournament.

Match times, units in proportion to factions, gameplay. All those are factors to why FW has not been doing good.

next time you make a remark asking for proof and then make a snide comment. Be sure to include some evidence yourself.

Keep trolling, its all some people can do now.

Edited by BLOOD WOLF, 22 October 2016 - 11:47 PM.

[Kaptain]

El Bandito, on 22 October 2016 - 06:58 PM, said:

Obviously the championship had contributed to the decline of units participating in FP, but a lot of pugs also left FP cause of Russ' brilliant idea of implementing Long Tom into that mode.

And then his arrogance in refusing to remove/fix it.

[LORD ORION]

Bishop Steiner, on 22 October 2016 - 06:55 PM, said:

Did the constant Grind of the Championship (Odd tourney times, massive amount of practice matches, scrimmages, etc, in private drops) leave these teams unable to maintain and support normal FW play? Or even too burned out to want to do so?

I can say that for the World Championship MS team I was on, we preferred FP, and never really went to our world championship games.

The problem is ultimately phase 3, it drove away most everyone I know from the game, not just FP. Basically I do not see these people in queue game because they prefer FP and dislike queue games... they simply left MWO or come back to play infrequently.

Edited by LORD ORION, 22 October 2016 - 11:52 PM.

[Dogstar]

In my opinion FP has failed because it is boring.

My experience of it was meaningless faction choices that screw you if you get it 'wrong', confusing interface, very long waits (is it working?), followed by huge brawls of identical meta mechs using no tactics other than rush the base.

Not fun and tedious with it.

FP should either be scrapped or totally reworked so that it is the only mode because splitting players between QP and FP is a total fail too.

and just in case PGI are listening - yes I can develop it for you