20 replies to this topic

[Xiphias]

Given that population imbalances are a big problem in FW there needs to be a way to quickly autobalance the sides to avoid large swings that drive players away. You could solve this by making FW the same as QP, but then the point of map control and faction allegiance is lost.

To remedy this, I think it's worth considering using mercs to fill the gaps. Set this system up like this:

Loyalists:

Can choose a faction
Can vote for the faction's choices
Can earn MC from tagging planets
Have contract times and bonuses related to those times as well as faction population bonuses (current system)
Can place a contract on a planet using unit coffers (Future feature)

Mercs:

Are placed in a matchmaking queue
Depending on the population mercs may play matches either for Clans or for the IS (put on side needing players)
If the population is close, mercs may end up playing other merc groups
Merc wins don't count towards planet tags
Mercs can earn additional bounties placed on a planet by accepting a loyalist's contract (future)

With this system there are still benefits and distinctions for players that choose to play for a certain faction. Players that just care about finding matches easily or want to play both sides can choose to be mercs that get slotted in to fill spots.

The extra rewards should still draw people to faction allegiances, but even if the majority of units went merc the loyalists would still be able to find matches just as easily.

Eventually, faction players could have the ability to place contracts to influence mercs to fight for them. Basically, if the merc wins the points that would have counted towards the tag are given to the unit that payed the contract from the coffers (perhaps on a cbills per ticket system until the contract funds have been exhausted). That allows loyalists a chance to spend their greater rewards to influence tags and for mercs to gain extra bonus since they wouldn't be getting cbill modifiers like the loyalists. There might need to be a limit on how much a unit could spend on contracts in a cycle to prevent rich units from exploiting the system for tags.

Obviously, this would require merc players to have both a Clan and IS dropdeck ready before they could drop. While perhaps not completely lore friendly, it isn't really much different from what we have now with the ability to switch factions.

It doesn't fix some of the core issues with FW, but I think it's a fairly straightforward way to modify what we have to address the issue of at least getting players into matches.

Thoughts?

[Positive Mental Attitude]

I actually like this idea. I dont care which side im on and i dont care about planets. Give the mercs a new leaderboard goal too.

[Codpond]

I agree. The current system does not give enough incentives to mercenaries. I mean losing 3 out of 4 games are the current odds. A 40% boost when you win does not equal the time investment if you look at it in raw math. Man we need a torso twist academy lesson. Give everyone a centurion and force them to play it in the academy for a few rounds lol. Obviously a joke, but the last game I played I got a kill on a timber wolf while getting focused by 4 other mechs because of better piloting (not positioning). Of course when your with a pug group getting rolled, positioning in a brawler is just near impossible.

Edited by Philocrates, 15 December 2016 - 01:11 AM.

[Freeman 52]

I really, really like this. But some people will hate you for even suggesting it. They want all the goodies, not tradeoffs.

A corollary to your proposal: Give mercs 4 drop decks instead of 2, so that they have a couple tailor-made for each faction for free. This sweetens the deal and compensates for the lack of choice about faction.

Edited by Freeman 52, 15 December 2016 - 01:30 AM.

[B L O O D W I T C H]

What about folks who joined a merc unit but only have a certain and limited selection of mechs?
Not everyone has clan and is mechs.
Not entirely against this idea but it will punch certain players, especially new players in the face pretty hard.

Freeman 52, on 15 December 2016 - 01:29 AM, said:

A corollary to your proposal: Give mercs 4 drop decks instead of 2, so that they have a couple tailor-made for each faction for free.

You meant to say 8 decks, since i am merc and i do have 4 decks.

Edited by Toha Heavy Industries, 15 December 2016 - 03:48 AM.

[naterist]

maybe mercs need to be split into a clan merc and is mer. clan mercs can only fight clan is only is, and loyalists are representative of their faction, meaning only free lancers can jump sides through call to arms a gap fillers, as they were intended. in exchange, loyalists can only participate in the special event que if its their specific faction, but mercs can pick a side if its in their tech tree. the loyalists would be the only ones eligible for the more valulable rewards earned through the special event function, like they all get an in lore faction specific mech (steiner gets zues'.... etc) if theyre loyalist and win and have x amount done, they get the mech... something like that.

and for the lore-warriors, we can rename the clan mercs bandit caste so it makes sense a little bit.

this would stop faction jumping and give both loyalists and freelancers a reason to exist.

[SilentScreamer]

I posted a similar topic in September.
https://mwomercs.com...06#entry5408106

If the majority of active units are mercs under clan contracts, ideas like these would work. Unfortunately it also means that if those large mercs units were interested in balancing queues and challenging matches they would take IS contracts instead of Clan contracts and balance the queues themselves. Some have, most stayed Clan.

[Codpond]

I do not get. Is winning against inferior pug coordination fun? My unit will not join clan until IS can actually put up a resistance. IS mechs are great fun, I love them. Why be a little ***** and go clan 70% of the time when you know darn well you are choking out the competition and draining the games longevity. Shame on those units.

[TWIAFU]

Get rid of mercs.

There is no use for them under a one bucket system.

CW is now just IS vs Clan, not IS vs Clan and Merc.

Get rid of mercs.

[Xiphias]

Toha Heavy Industries, on 15 December 2016 - 03:47 AM, said:

What about folks who joined a merc unit but only have a certain and limited selection of mechs?
Not everyone has clan and is mechs.
Not entirely against this idea but it will punch certain players, especially new players in the face pretty hard.

I agree that this has the potential to make it harder on new players. Players with only mechs from one side could still take loyalist contracts without a problem. Most merc units that I'm familiar with, for example -MS- when it was active, already jump between Clans and IS. Units that tend to have more mechs on one side or the other take loyalist contracts and gain the added rewards.

While this might hurt some new players in a few units, I think overall the benefits outweigh the potential harm.

naterist, on 15 December 2016 - 04:04 AM, said:

maybe mercs need to be split into a clan merc and is mer. clan mercs can only fight clan is only is, and loyalists are representative of their faction, meaning only free lancers can jump sides through call to arms a gap fillers, as they were intended. in exchange, loyalists can only participate in the special event que if its their specific faction, but mercs can pick a side if its in their tech tree. the loyalists would be the only ones eligible for the more valulable rewards earned through the special event function, like they all get an in lore faction specific mech (steiner gets zues'.... etc) if theyre loyalist and win and have x amount done, they get the mech... something like that.

and for the lore-warriors, we can rename the clan mercs bandit caste so it makes sense a little bit.

this would stop faction jumping and give both loyalists and freelancers a reason to exist.

The idea is to auto-balance the population by letting players who select the merc role have no choice in which side they drop on and only be matched up based on population.

They key point here is that mercs cannot choose what side they are dropping with. To let them do so completely defeats the purpose of auto-balancing population with the current two bucket system. If you let them choose to be IS or Clan, it's functionally identical to what we currently have going on.

The inability to quickly change factions is what contributes to population imbalance because once you've switched factions you're locked in for a week whether you want to change to balance things or not.

SilentScreamer, on 15 December 2016 - 04:27 AM, said:

I posted a similar topic in September.
https://mwomercs.com...06#entry5408106

If the majority of active units are mercs under clan contracts, ideas like these would work. Unfortunately it also means that if those large mercs units were interested in balancing queues and challenging matches they would take IS contracts instead of Clan contracts and balance the queues themselves. Some have, most stayed Clan.

Having players balance the queues themselves is a poor way or trying to achieve balance, particularly with the contract restrictions.

What you're also forgetting is that we had the Marauder IIC drop in the same patch as 4.1. Say I had bought the pack and decided that I wanted to try it out in FW. On Tuesday I select a clan faction for this reason. By the time I realize the population is imbalanced I'm already locked in for a week and it's too late to change. Units have to predict where other players are going to go and that's a difficult task some times.

Yes, some units want to avoid challenges, but the current system makes it difficult even for those that don't. I can pretty much guarantee that if you set up a merc queue that makes it easy to find games you'll get plenty of units who are interested in it. One of the big problems for -MS- for an example was maxing the attack queues and then running out of matches to be able to play. No unit wants that, so if they can avoid it by going merc they will.

[SilentScreamer]

SilentScreamer, on 15 December 2016 - 04:27 AM, said:

I posted a similar topic in September.
https://mwomercs.com...06#entry5408106

If the majority of active units are mercs under clan contracts, ideas like these would work. Unfortunately it also means that if those large mercs units were interested in balancing queues and challenging matches they would take IS contracts instead of Clan contracts and balance the queues themselves. Some have, most stayed Clan.

Xiphias, on 15 December 2016 - 08:34 AM, said:

Having players balance the queues themselves is a poor way or trying to achieve balance, particularly with the contract restrictions.

What you're also forgetting is that we had the Marauder IIC drop in the same patch as 4.1. Say I had bought the pack and decided that I wanted to try it out in FW. On Tuesday I select a clan faction for this reason. By the time I realize the population is imbalanced I'm already locked in for a week and it's too late to change. Units have to predict where other players are going to go and that's a difficult task some times.

Yes, some units want to avoid challenges, but the current system makes it difficult even for those that don't. I can pretty much guarantee that if you set up a merc queue that makes it easy to find games you'll get plenty of units who are interested in it. One of the big problems for -MS- for an example was maxing the attack queues and then running out of matches to be able to play. No unit wants that, so if they can avoid it by going merc they will.

The Marauder IIC has nothing to do with this problem. This has been a problem since Phase 3 came out. PGI announced the plan to merge buckets months ago, just after the first roundtable. I agree with you that players cannot be trusted to balance the populations themselves, too many will always move to the "winning" team if given that chance.

What the Marauder IIC does is show who PGIs paying customers are. Every MAD-IIC you see in Faction Play is a recently paying customer of PGI. Although the number of players involved in Faction Play is much smaller than those in quick play, I'd say a significant number of players that purchased the MAD-IIC are in units and currently playing on the Clan side as either mercs or loyalists. If PGI sells more Clan mechs because those players want new mechs to stomp PUGs with, then this problem will continue through Phase 4.1, as it has throughout Phase 3

If I'm wrong and you are correct that the MAD-IIC is responsible for the current queue and population imbalance in Faction play, then after the novelty of the new mech wears off then this problem is only temporary and why even bother posting a proposal to make significant changes to the Mercenaries Faction?

Edited by SilentScreamer, 15 December 2016 - 01:28 PM.

[Xiphias]

SilentScreamer, on 15 December 2016 - 09:44 AM, said:

The Marauder IIC has nothing to do with this problem. This has been a problem since Phase 3 came out. PGI announced the plan to merge buckets months ago, just after the first roundtable. I agree with you that players cannot be trusted to balance the populations themselves, too many will always move to the "winning" team if given that chance.

The Marauder isn't the underlying cause in this situation, but it's an example of a factor that contributes to faction imbalance. I agree that there are issues such as tech imbalance (more specifically the effectiveness of stock Clan vs stock IS mechs). Certainly, players are going to try and go where they think they are more likely to win.

Decent units like 228th, -MS-, etc, care about finding matches though. -MS- did once try to switch factions to balance an event (-MS- couldn't find matches basically) so they asked Russ to reset the contract so that they could help balance the population (actually find matches). The forums threw a huge fit about it.

Part of the problem that -MS- had in phase three is that it would have a single attack lane and after that was maxed out there literally weren't any matches for players in that faction to play. The current system that locks players into a faction for a week reinforces the population imbalance rather than preventing them from occurring.

There are other problems that need to be address for FW to be viable and this isn't intended to address all of those problems. It would however add some slack into the system that would help quickly correct for imbalances that occur. That's something the current system can't do.

[QueenBlade]

https://mwomercs.com...ulation-balance

I tried bringing this to the table back when we had 10 individual factions, but my idea for the UI was implemented.




Current numbers:
Davion: 13%
FRR: 9%
Kurita: 10%
Liao: 7%
Marik: 7%
Steiner: 11%

CGB: 9%
CJF: 12%
CSJ: 9%
CW: 12%

Inner Sphere: 57%
Clan: 43%

But you'll say, "see the IS have most of the players"

Sadly this population is based on the total playerbase, and not the population that is playing in FP.

In a perfect scenario, every faction would be 10%. 10 * 10 = 100. Or perhaps now, 50/50 split would be considered balanced since its just 2 queuing factions.



Also what would happen to the FreeLancers? Isn't your idea of using the Mercenaries to fill in gaps basically removing the FreeLancers from play? (Call To Arms).

[SuperFunkTron]

Philocrates, on 15 December 2016 - 01:09 AM, said:

I agree. The current system does not give enough incentives to mercenaries. I mean losing 3 out of 4 games are the current odds. A 40% boost when you win does not equal the time investment if you look at it in raw math. Man we need a torso twist academy lesson. Give everyone a centurion and force them to play it in the academy for a few rounds lol.

I think that a torso twisting lesson is absolutely needed and it should even be considered as a requirement to pass before entering FW. I was very resistant to torso twisting to spread damage for the first few months I played just because it made it so much harder to aim accurately, but once I started I noticed my survival time increase dramatically. Even now, I'll notice my playing is getting lazy or overly zealous when i see I'm CT cored and the rest of my torso armor is only lightly scratched.

[Positive Mental Attitude]

TWIAFU, on 15 December 2016 - 05:41 AM, said:

Get rid of mercs.

There is no use for them under a one bucket system.

CW is now just IS vs Clan, not IS vs Clan and Merc.

Get rid of mercs.

I see misery wants company

[Xiphias]

Your proposal has some solid points and I agree with adjusting rewards based on population. The challenge I see is that players don't like hard caps (lore reason) and it still relies on units switching contracts which is rather cumbersome with the current restrictions.

QueenBlade, on 15 December 2016 - 12:00 PM, said:

Also what would happen to the FreeLancers? Isn't your idea of using the Mercenaries to fill in gaps basically removing the FreeLancers from play? (Call To Arms).

Basically, yes. Freelancer are currently the solo version of this. The problem is that it leads to solo players getting filled in against population imbalances aggravating the pug vs group issue. What I'm suggesting effectively makes merc units all freelancers with the exception that it doesn't require an explicit call to arms.

The current Freelancer system is pretty terrible for the player. You get no loyalty rewards and you get stuck filling gaps (skittles vs groups) just to try and get matches. This would combine Freelancers and Mercs into the same role (Freelancers simply not having a unit, still earning LPs though). The restrictions on loyalists could be reduced a bit to make them more similar to current mercs (or old CW play style).

Effectively, it would allow for holes to be filled with units instead of just solo unit-less pugs. I would like for the functionality to be expanded to be more in depth at some point, but for an easy to implement short term fix I think it's a decent way to help.

[QueenBlade]

What hard caps?

[Xiphias]

QueenBlade, on 15 December 2016 - 12:26 PM, said:

What hard caps?

QueenBlade, on 12 April 2016 - 11:29 AM, said:

*snip*
Now with a population cap due to being 10% higher than the smallest faction, Davion contracts would be turned off to units that hold a contract with anyone other than Davion. Current loyalist Davion units could stay, and mercs that are currently contracted with Davion would get first dibs when their contract ended for x amount of hours. After which their % would open to any unit.

Chemistrius, on 12 April 2016 - 11:46 AM, said:

While I do agree that pops should be evened out a lot, I feel like a hard cap would be immediately shot down.

Conflated your post with the first comment on it. My bad.

From my experience rewards don't end up being enough to move players around significantly. Wining is still going to pay more than losing, even with bonus. With the move to two buckets the only way to really enforce a population balance is to restrict the side that a team can join. With two sides that's not much of a choice. Further it relies on the population in the faction, not the playing portion of that population.

Using Mercs as Freelancers is an attempt to resolve instantaneous population imbalances, where you're system is more aimed at smoothing populations out over a longer time span. I don't see why you couldn't implement some combination of the two.

[QueenBlade]

Yeah, but I still see an issue where the side with a lower population would still be flooded with soloist instead of groups.

Instead of FreeLancers, you would be opening up a new path where they just make 1 man units and go merc.

[Kin3ticX]

the thread for breaking contracts is locked for some reason

http://mwomercs.com/...break-requests/


People dont know what the queues would be like. If we are able to move to make corrections then things will improve.