41 replies to this topic

[adamts01]

You can't fix bad game design by adjusting buckets.

[TercieI]

One bucket CW you say? Here you go:

[Hunka Junk]

Baulven, on 17 November 2016 - 08:49 AM, said:

In reality what we need is an immersive experience. This is why people still say that want the idea of Planetside 2 but with mechs. If you get three locations on a map that could be assaulted at any time, and each gave a bonus (One combat IS for when you lock a target immediately, 2 for set sweep and 3 for tom) and could be taken away at any time that would create a want to play. Instead of drop decks your mech gets out on a cool down timer that increases every death (minor reduction for premium time) and count that as repair and rearm. If you need to a repair depot you can get your ammo and armor fixed at 1% every 30 seconds as you wait.

Ok I went full dream mode. Sorry.

I never played Planetside 2 until a couple of weeks ago.

My guess is that it was what the devs were trying to emulate in FP.

To me, the key difference is that you can't do that in an instanced game. What I mean by that is Planetside has tight units and outfits that work alongside lone wolves. Where the army goes, anybody can tag along. That doesn't and won't exist here, and that's why they should not have tried to emulate PS2.

If it were doable, that would be amazing, and giant robots wouldn't be niche.

Back to where we are: seal clubbing will be amplified in a single bucket.

[Lostdragon]

Hunka Junk, on 17 November 2016 - 07:20 AM, said:

In an effort to focus on what might work, I wasn't around for the Battle of TurkeyYouDid or some such.

It seems to be remembered as a high point in this game, but i have no idea what it was in terms of design.

Will 1 Bucket relate to that in any meaningful way?

It was just a FW event, there was nothing soecial about it except FW was still new and while we knew there were issues we hoped they would be addressed in subsequent development phases. A lot of people participated in the event but ultimately the feedback was never taken seriously and as a result FW is now a ghost town and an example of what not to do when developing end game content for this type of game.

Edit: To clarify, there was nothing soecial about the gameplay. The event did have a special component in that Tuk was the only planet to drop on so it did kind of simulate having only one bucket. It still suffered from the same horrible maps and modes we still have along with not really leading to anything meaningful. I think there was a title and some special cockpit items along with other rewards but it had no long term impact on FW like the real battle had on the invasion of the IS.

Edited by Lostdragon, 17 November 2016 - 10:32 AM.

[Nemesis Duck]

FP is not

MadBadger, on 17 November 2016 - 07:37 AM, said:

... an alternative to QP that appeals to/rewards a large percentage of the current player base.

And that is the crux of their problem, I think.

[LordNothing]

pgi was overconfident in the uptake of fp. they planed for a system they could not possibly fill up. a little bit of cocktail napkin math could have foreseen these issues with the promises they made. thats before they created a system that alienated a bulk of the player base in favor of an elite minority that ended up causing horrible player retention. and before phase 3 where they made the mode an order of magnitude more grindy for the masochists that remain, and put up hefty penalties for moving to other factions (making it impossible for players to level the playing field on their own). so i welcome our bucket stealing overlords.

they could keep roleplay to a degree by letting players and units choose a banner under their chosen side. you can even add a lot of other banners that would have been impossible to back with more bukkits. more clans, merc banners, pirates, comstar, periphery, etc. holders of these banners can participate in friendly competition. i imagine prizes every month for best is/clan faction.

[TLBFestus]

Hunka Junk, on 17 November 2016 - 06:28 AM, said:

If I were running this game, I'd be bombarding the players with surveys and questions about how to do this right instead of leaving them angered that this was the ultimate product of a 44-page thread, 6-hour pre-discussion, and 3-hour "roundtable".

Me too. Surveys, questions, all that. Of course you'd have to do some work filtering out all the static, all the cr@p, but you could glean some good info.

Unfortunately Russ has told us what he thinks about the communities input. Don't need it, Don't want it, all that is good flows from his brainpan to his mouth and it's glorious.

Personally I think they only made CW because they were getting sh@t upon so vigorously back in the day that they had no choice but to come up with something, even if it was half-baked and poorly done, just to stop the rioting.

I don't think they really give a darn about it as virtually all the money they make comes from skirmish mode anyhow. You know it's true. If CW/FW was the cash cow of this game they'd be all over it trying to make it better.


As long as the unwashed masses keep dolling out money for mech packs it's simply a money pit and a wasted diversion of resources. They will keep talking about how important it is, but it's not.

Edited by TLBFestus, 17 November 2016 - 11:16 AM.

[AnTi90d]

Bud Crue, on 17 November 2016 - 06:47 AM, said:

I don't see what the new 1(2) bucket CW as proposed by Russ is going to offer me that QP group queue doesn't already provide. Dots? Four planet tug of war? Nope. Sorry. That isn't enough to give me a pretense of the mode having a point that is in any way different than the arena of QP.

Also, remember that Russler is shoving QP maps and QP modes into FP.

That will be all you can play for the first few hours after the Ceasefire.

The last few hours will be Invasion modes, unless the losing team turns it around and starts winning, then it's back to QP.

This alienates the existing playerbase.. it will alienate the people that only like QP, because they still might have to play real Invasion.. the One-Bukkit-Solution alienates the loyalists.. it alienates the southern IS houses that want to play ISvsIS.. hell, it'll probably alienate the people that think QP-with-dropdecks is a good idea, once they get spawn camped in the QP maps and lose 12-48 and see that those maps don't have even the slightest spawn-camp-protection.

PGI's decision making is worse than a dart board.. at least you have a chance of being successful when you throw a dart. This FactionPlayV4 aka MercenaryPlayV4 (because PGI just spat in the loyalists' faces in nullifying our factions) is the absolute worst possible thing they could have done. In trying to please everybody, they're just going to end up pissing everyone off and killing the mode even further.

Faction-Alliances and new Invasion maps that aren't chokepoints was the correct answer, but Russler and his brilliant team were too busy eating pizza and planning MechCon to save FP.

Edited by AnTi90d, 17 November 2016 - 11:31 AM.

[C E Dwyer]

One bucket warfare, doesn't disguise the fact, the maps and victory conditions are poorly designed.

Scouting by far the best mode, because it's run on standard maps, where you can go within reason, where you want to has an appalling ending to it, running into a little box.

It's like reading a great novel with plot twists, then at the end you discover that the writer ran out of idea's and finished the book with a lame, they all lived happily ever after.

Invasion is just lets all walk down this constricting avenue, and get shot.

F.W needs a whole new design before it's worth wasting the time for matches to form, it needs exclusive rewards for playing it, that's how you get people back playing.

Want a special camo that's going to stroke people ego's grind to level 18..want an elite units badge grind to 20.

That would have got a lot of people that are holding back, playing, but that all went on the decal market that only a few fools splashed out money for.

Make good maps, change the victory conditions, have different victory conditions, that actually make the match feel like you achieved something.

One bucket system was just PGI pandering to the Merc units, screwing over the loyalists, and admitting, without actually saying it, that they can't make it, because they haven't the ability.

I will not support one bucket, door killing mode.

[Johnny Z]

What ever makes queues work.

Some wont like faction play in any form and want to just troll group queue. Ignore them.

[Sjorpha]

If the community can't shape the politics and strategy then it isn't "Community Warfare".

If the factions can't make strategically relevant decisions on the map, and there aren't a way for a faction to win a war or have other long term goals then it isn't "Faction Warfare".

And if joining different factions doesn't actually have a gameplay impact, then it isn't even "Faction Play".

IS vs Clan quickplay queue with two game modes, well ok that might be fun to do sometimes but...

...If they do this it is an admission and decision that the idea of having a player driven warfare simulation in the game is completely abandoned.

That idea was the main interest I had in this game's future, I'm not sure how to be constructive and positive about PGI deciding to give it up. They're giving up the one thing that interested me the most about MWO, what am I supposed to say to that that is nice?

All I have to say is still this:

No, don't give up, go back and actually do community warfare like you promised, not "faction play", not "Clan vs IS queue" but "COMMUNITY WARFARE". Do both the community driven part, and the strategic warfare part. Do it. You said you would do it, SO DO IT!

Edited by Sjorpha, 17 November 2016 - 11:54 AM.

[Davegt27]

well I will try to support the 1 bucket system even if I don't like it

all it will do is funnel targets to the meat grinder called the 12 man team

[DiabetesOverlord Wilford Brimley]

AI bots will be the only thing that can save CW

[nehebkau]

TercieI, on 17 November 2016 - 09:22 AM, said:

One bucket CW you say? Here you go:

Thats a mighty fine bukkit!

[Novakaine]

One easy thing they could have done was simply enlarging the bases.
Thereby preventing choke point tactics.
Which seem to be one of the bigger problems in CW.
Multiple objectives and a dozen other things.
I seen dozen off well thought out and sound idea's posted here.
That oh so sadly will never see the light of day because PGI "MVP" mentality.
But the only thing they could come up with are buckets?
Seriously PGI you should be embarrassed.

[Mystere]

DiabetesOverlord Wilford Brimley, on 17 November 2016 - 12:56 PM, said:

AI bots will be the only thing that can save CW

A more competent developer will do much better.

[Prof RJ Gumby]

There is a way to make those "buckets" without actually throwing all the houses and clans into two... well, buckets. Just provide a mechanic allowing attacking a faction in the name of other faction under certain conditioins, e.g. after making an alliance (decision of loyalists, can't voting to attack an ally breaks alliance) or make such alliances being concluded automatically if border factions don't fight among themselves for a predefined period of time (e.g. if Davions and Kurita don't choose each other as targets of attack for X attack phases, they become allies, allowing davion players to queue up on planets attacked by Kurita and vide versa.

It's simple, it does not sacrifice lore fluff to tackle gameplay/population issues and will make people not being penalised that much for choosing lesser factions.

[Lyoto Machida]

Cathy, on 17 November 2016 - 11:46 AM, said:

One bucket warfare, doesn't disguise the fact, the maps and victory conditions are poorly designed.

Scouting by far the best mode, because it's run on standard maps, where you can go within reason, where you want to has an appalling ending to it, running into a little box.

It's like reading a great novel with plot twists, then at the end you discover that the writer ran out of idea's and finished the book with a lame, they all lived happily ever after.

Invasion is just lets all walk down this constricting avenue, and get shot.

F.W needs a whole new design before it's worth wasting the time for matches to form, it needs exclusive rewards for playing it, that's how you get people back playing.

Want a special camo that's going to stroke people ego's grind to level 18..want an elite units badge grind to 20.

That would have got a lot of people that are holding back, playing, but that all went on the decal market that only a few fools splashed out money for.

Make good maps, change the victory conditions, have different victory conditions, that actually make the match feel like you achieved something.

One bucket system was just PGI pandering to the Merc units, screwing over the loyalists, and admitting, without actually saying it, that they can't make it, because they haven't the ability.

I will not support one bucket, door killing mode.

Well, in PGI's defense (lol), the name of this site is www.mwomercs.com.

Not that I agree with them shafting loyalists but it is what it is...

[Johnny Z]

Someone said faction play didn't work from day 1. That is because lobbies were used. Bad way to go for various reasons. Then the regular maps were not added and group queue was left running taking all the groups out of faction play and solo queue took 85% of the players out of faction play.

The entire thing has been in beta so maybe that's the way it was supposed to go. Missing maps and modes and a lot of other things.

On top of this half the complaints about faction play on these forums are irrelevant. Not all, but half are misdirection. There are complaints about single aspect of faction play which isn't even possible.

Like I said is all been in beta this entire time so have to wait and see where it goes.

[Lyoto Machida]

Johnny Z, on 17 November 2016 - 05:00 PM, said:

Someone said faction play didn't work from day 1. That is because lobbies were used. Bad way to go for various reasons. Then the regular maps were not added and group queue was left running taking all the groups out of faction play and solo queue took 85% of the players out of faction play.

The entire thing has been in beta so maybe that's the way it was supposed to go. Missing maps and modes and a lot of other things.

On top of this half the complaints about faction play on these forums are irrelevant. Not all, but half are misdirection. There are complaints about single aspect of faction play which isn't even possible.

Like I said is all been in beta this entire time so have to wait and see where it goes.

What are the irrelevant complaints?

Bottleneck maps?
Lack of depth to the mode?
Lower c-bill earnings for average players?
Long queue times?
Unimaginative CW game types?
Long Tom?