348 replies to this topic

[naterist]

https://mwomercs.com...and-lore-to-fw/

im not quite done brainstorming the stock mech idea. this is a discussion thread for it, if you want to keep fleshing it out so we can pitch it better later, hop in here.

[naterist]

one final thought though for pgi. i really dont want to have to play this game and study it like its a career in order to be able to enjoy the lore part of the game. im only here for the lore. to be honost, thats the only thing really keeping me and most other players ive met on teamspeak playing. making faction warfare into a thing that i have to be in the top 5 percent of skill level to enjoy without brutal stomps every game is going to make me quit the game, because quick play has no meaning for me. i could play titan fall if i just wanted a mech shooter. believe me, it has much better... everything. im here and not there because i want the lore, and i dont want to have to work everyday for months with a group of people i may or may not be able to rely on, to get access to it as a small bonus to keep me interested after i reach teir 1. thats the thing that drove me to get out of teir 4, and its why i still buy mechs and play games here. any direction that eliminates casual players from getting access to the lore section (fw) is going to make me quit, and itll do that for a lot of others as well. we dont want to play xbox live style games. we want a game that puts you in the cockpit of a mech from the battletech board game, instead of the commanders chair. not 5 flavors of deathmatch on endless repeat in something that is aesthetically linked to battletech and named after battle tech, but feels like halo multiplayer with health meters for every body part. thats what seperates fw from quickplay, and that i can go in and get a small sample of that lore on a daily basis is what keeps me playing.

tl;dr version: if i need to spend 3 hours with a calculator and a spreadsheet for every aspect of the game mode to enjoy the lore oriented version of the game, then im just gonna log out to read a battletech novel, and not even bother logging in anymore, quickplays for the twitch shooters. faction warfare should be for the lore.

[Edward Hazen]

naterist, on 04 February 2017 - 02:23 AM, said:

one final thought though for pgi. i really dont want to have to play this game and study it like its a career in order to be able to enjoy the lore part of the game. im only here for the lore. to be honost, thats the only thing really keeping me and most other players ive met on teamspeak playing. making faction warfare into a thing that i have to be in the top 5 percent of skill level to enjoy without brutal stomps every game is going to make me quit the game, because quick play has no meaning for me. i could play titan fall if i just wanted a mech shooter. believe me, it has much better... everything. im here and not there because i want the lore, and i dont want to have to work everyday for months with a group of people i may or may not be able to rely on, to get access to it as a small bonus to keep me interested after i reach teir 1. thats the thing that drove me to get out of teir 4, and its why i still buy mechs and play games here. any direction that eliminates casual players from getting access to the lore section (fw) is going to make me quit, and itll do that for a lot of others as well. we dont want to play xbox live style games. we want a game that puts you in the cockpit of a mech from the battletech board game, instead of the commanders chair. not 5 flavors of deathmatch on endless repeat in something that is aesthetically linked to battletech and named after battle tech, but feels like halo multiplayer with health meters for every body part. thats what seperates fw from quickplay, and that i can go in and get a small sample of that lore on a daily basis is what keeps me playing.

tl;dr version: if i need to spend 3 hours with a calculator and a spreadsheet for every aspect of the game mode to enjoy the lore oriented version of the game, then im just gonna log out to read a battletech novel, and not even bother logging in anymore, quickplays for the twitch shooters. faction warfare should be for the lore.

I don't want to read a wall of text; paragraphs,please! But BattleTech is lore. Lore is what Makes BattleTech what it is. Read up on http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Main_Page .

FYI, 3rd company likes to fight for the FRR because FRR = space vikings.

Edited by S0ulReapr, 04 February 2017 - 02:54 AM.

[naterist]

S0ulReapr, on 04 February 2017 - 02:52 AM, said:

I don't want to read a wall of text; paragraphs,please! But BattleTech is lore. Lore is what Makes BattleTech what it is. Read up on http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Main_Page .

FYI, 3rd company likes to fight for the FRR because FRR = space vikings.

but.... but..... theres a tl;dr version (actually that tl;dr version is a better way to express my point then the wall above it) so thank you for not even trying to understand my point.

plus this is more of a rant triggered by people using the "its only for people who are in units and who do meta all the time" line as a reason to disregard any ideas that try and make fw more inclusive, while also complaining we dont have enough people. we need to pick comp like fw, qp with lore style fw, or a mix that keeps the 2 seperate, because this eliteism is driving me nuts. its a game, i dont even care if my actions even contribute to taking a palnet or you just have planets switch randomely to based on some logarithm pgi has. i just want my lore and i want to be able to access it without having to do hours of crap before hand just to stand a chance. i dont have that patience. i want to play the game and i want to be able to have a chance when i play it,

i dont want to get told that my getting stomped is all apart of the plan and is supposed to happen, because i didnt devote half a day to learning a particular counter strategy for their specific strategy. thats boring to me, and its why i dont go to comp. so comp, please stop coming to my fw.

in many ways, it feels like the mlb came to a little league game and started mocking the kids for not practicing 13 hours a day. no normal person has time for continuous practice except for those diehgard zealots who love it. there arent enough diehard zealots to populate a whole game, so dont continue to try and build the game only for them. take down the warning, keep up the no matchmaker part of the warning, but remove the note that says its only for the best. that is no were near true, and it needs to be something we throw by the wayside as its not a workable model for developing faction warfare, unless you want to do scheduled matches like phil from ngng wants to do, and that on its own sounds like comp with a faction flag next to your name, which doesnt add anything really to the comp scene we currently have, except that the comp teams will be split so theres isen v everyone else.

instead, work on it from the perspective of being the lore aspect, the thing that really makes it earn the use of an atlas image on the front page. this is the bit were we go, "oh ya, thats a battletech product" and then let the battletech fans play it.

it should not be (as it seems to be now) a new place to go for comp guys between matches, with pugs lining up to get slaughtered so the units dont get bored waiting on the comp game next week.

basically, stop thinking of it as the endgame location for tryhards, and start thinking of it as the battletech portion of the game, because the tryhards and the lore fans dont overlap as much as you think, in fact id say its actually quite rare for a massive lore fan to be a super comp meta player. most of us whove been here for fw just want to play a battletech game from the realtime, cockpit perspective.

Edited by naterist, 04 February 2017 - 03:30 AM.

[MovinTarget]

S0ulReapr, on 04 February 2017 - 02:52 AM, said:

I don't want to read a wall of text; paragraphs,please! But BattleTech is lore. Lore is what Makes BattleTech what it is. Read up on http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Main_Page .

FYI, 3rd company likes to fight for the FRR because FRR = space vikings.

You are right for a lot of people... its the lore.

For many of us its not though... i was a kid in the 80's reading the TROs like books, not resources.... I did the same with monster manual and fiend folio for DnD...

I never actually played TT... I just had an affinity for big stompy robots.

What I am getting at is that MWO has the unenviable task of trying to make a lot of people happy with disparate tastes and expectations in the modern gaming era where there are so many choices. "Sticking to Lore" is a noble aspiration up until it hits a snag, or 50... choices have to be made and someone with a vision of how the game "should" be with be unhappy.

Like you said, so much of what makes game attractive is the rich wealth of lore and back story... it can also be its achilles heel due to the divergent interpretations of how to implement it.

Just remember, even the creative forces at Fasa expressed regrets over coming out with clans being op and trying balance TT after the fact...

Edited by MovinTarget, 04 February 2017 - 03:17 AM.

[naterist]

MovinTarget, on 04 February 2017 - 03:16 AM, said:

You are right for a lot of people... its the lore.

For many of us its not though... i was a kid in the 80's reading the TROs like books, not resources.... I did the same with monster manual and fiend folio for DnD...

I never actually played TT... I just had an affinity for big stompy robots.

What I am getting at is that MWO has the unenviable task of trying to make a lot of people happy with disparate tastes and expectations in the modern gaming era where there are so many choices. "Sticking to Lore" is a noble aspiration up until it hits a snag, or 50... choices have to be made and someone with a vision of how the game "should" be with be unhappy.

Like you said, so much of what makes game attractive is the rich wealth of lore and back story... it can also be its achilles heel due to the divergent interpretations of how to implement it.

Just remember, even the creative forces at Fasa expressed regrets over coming out with clans being op and trying balance TT after the fact...

this is all true, im just trying to say that making fw a place for units to fight each other is dumb. we already have comp and group que for them, how much more do they need? and solo qp has the same amount of lore as the other two. so why give the only place that touches lore to the big units, then try and make it about them fighting other units, which is exactly what comp is. why not dedicate one of the many sections to this game to lore. im not even touching on how they implement it, but having implementation of lore be a focus over "comp scene 2.0 with all the frills on" seems way more logical to me. it isnt even a thought about implementation, its just a thought on the framework we're thinking in.

[MovinTarget]

What part of lore existed where there weren't units?

Individuals that happen to own a mech were typically military, merc, or rich.

If you stumbled across an abandoned mech, who would train you to pilot it? How would you survive forces that would try to steal that mech from you?

Units are part of lore, thats why so many people are excited when their favorites are released for decals.

I get what you are saying but you have to understand that there is at least a bit of a hitch in your logic for a game typically played in lances/stars to cater more lore to solo players other than lone wolves...

Apart from the bounty hunter, I can't think of any other notable lore figures that were solo acts.

Maybe I am wrong, feel free to point out more solo acts in lore... i bet their numbers still pale in comparison to the # of notable persons in units or teams...

[James Argent]

I don't think he's saying so much that units shouldn't matter at all, but that at least in lore the randomly flung-together planetary militias sometimes had a chance to pull off a victory against those units because the difference between Gunnery 3 and Gunnery 4 is not such a huge leap. The big meta units right now are playing more of a Solaris competition for world ownerships than a standard game of Battletech. (Really, PGI? Your website doesn't recognize the word 'Battletech?')

[Cy Mitchell]

After watching a lot of the Dis Campaign organized by Mech the Dane yesterday, I come away disappointed and confused about the goals of FP. Here was an organized attempt by community members to make Faction Play fun and meaningful. To a great extent, it worked. Yet, most walked away disappointed by the experience because after all the effort, nothing changed.

Where in the world do you have a tug of war game where the winner is only decided if one side manages to totally drag the other team away? Most Tug of War have a time limit (as does FP) and the team that moves the flag in the center of the rope closest to their side is declared the winner.

Last night, there were a few units that came in just to thwart the efforts of Dane and the IS. Overall their side lost 90%+ of the engagements yet they are claiming victory because they managed to stave off losing a planet in the last 3 minutes of the phase.

I do not care which side wins but IMO the victory at the end of the phase should go to the Faction that has won the most matches and moved the flag (progress bar) towards their side. It should not take a 100% movement to one side to secure a victory and flip planets.

The inability to make progress in has been one of the big complaints of FP and the event yesterday was a great illustration of why it is a problem and why it is so frustrating to the players involved. 8 hours invested and you get a tie? No tie breaker? What is the saying about kissing your sister? Only losers are happy settling for a tie.

[James Argent]

On the other hand, where in the world do you have a tug of war game where the game continues for the entire predetermined amount of time after the flag on the rope is pulled across the line? I'd rather see it go in the opposite direction. Screw the phase times. Why, if the slider is at any time pushed past the 'win the planets' point, aren't the planets won right then and there? Start over with a new attack phase right then. There should be no way to 'run out the clock' on an invasion. It's not as if there's some mystical police force that drops in after 8 hours and breaks up the fighting. And if there was, why weren't they already fighting on one side or the other?

[Tarogato]

Rampage, on 04 February 2017 - 12:06 PM, said:

After watching a lot of the Dis Campaign organized by Mech the Dane yesterday, I come away disappointed and confused about the goals of FP. Here was an organized attempt by community members to make Faction Play fun and meaningful. To a great extent, it worked. Yet, most walked away disappointed by the experience because after all the effort, nothing changed.

Where in the world do you have a tug of war game where the winner is only decided if one side manages to totally drag the other team away? Most Tug of War have a time limit (as does FP) and the team that moves the flag in the center of the rope closest to their side is declared the winner.

Last night, there were a few units that came in just to thwart the efforts of Dane and the IS. Overall their side lost 90%+ of the engagements yet they are claiming victory because they managed to stave off losing a planet in the last 3 minutes of the phase.

I do not care which side wins but IMO the victory at the end of the phase should go to the Faction that has won the most matches and moved the flag (progress bar) towards their side. It should not take a 100% movement to one side to secure a victory and flip planets.

This should be an incredibly easy "fix". Just erase Skirmish mode from CW.





So instead of a 60-match width, the bar is now 48 matches wide. The bar would be 4.2% for each win instead of 3.3%. Has the benefit of making planets more likely to change hands, and also remove the most boring mode from the game, while making Invasion mode more frequently encountered for those that enjoy it. It's a win-win-win scenario.

Edited by Tarogato, 04 February 2017 - 02:26 PM.

[MovinTarget]

Gotta agree with Tarogato on this... without a win condition, skirmish often devolves to trade fests at extreme range for 22 minutes and a mad scramble over the last 3... maybe...



*Now* if you were to say, bring a modified LT back for skirmish only, where both sides get shelled periodically with a 15 second warning... it *might* mix things up as you couldn't sit and trade from the same places the entire game... the only purpose is to make people move...


Yeah, I can't believe I suggested that either. O.o

[BLOOD WOLF]

Don't remove skirmish PGI. Won't solve anything.

Play around with different options and attempt to find a solution instead of chucking the mode entirely

Edited by BLOOD WOLF, 04 February 2017 - 02:34 PM.

[Tarogato]

MovinTarget, on 04 February 2017 - 02:32 PM, said:

...without a win condition, skirmish often devolves to trade fests at extreme range for 22 minutes and a mad scramble over the last 3... maybe...

It's not that. I'd love to have a match that is trading at extreme range for 22 minutes. But in reality Skirmish doesn't have any objectives other than win until you're under the enemy's dropship and farming them every time they hit the ground. I have yet to have an interesting Skirmish match yet. It should just be removed.

[James Argent]

If it's decided that Skirmish is enough of a problem to remove it wholesale from FW, then in FW Domination and Assault need to be changed so that they can't be won exactly the same way as Skirmish. Make abandoning/ignoring the objective a losing proposition for a team that's far enough ahead in the kill count.

Edited by James Argent, 04 February 2017 - 02:50 PM.

[BWS2K]

If Skirmish mode is too static, consider introducing something that forces gameplay - like a temperature that slowly creeps up over time, or an 'arena' where 'walls' are closing in over time - or destructible terrain that will drop pilots into lava or something.

[MovinTarget]

BWS2K, on 04 February 2017 - 03:07 PM, said:

If Skirmish mode is too static, consider introducing something that forces gameplay - like a temperature that slowly creeps up over time, or an 'arena' where 'walls' are closing in over time - or destructible terrain that will drop pilots into lava or something.

Or make it the testbed for dynamic drop zones... way harder to farm DZs if they keep dropping in different places... And I know that if you keep changing their lance now they drop in one of the three set DZs for the team, that's not what I mean...

[naterist]

well if you want the planet to change hands and make invasion more accessable how bout this. remove invasion from the main slider, along with skirmish so that its a smaller bar (add in more maps and make the sections longer too please).

if you get the bar all the way to the end you take the planet. for the rest of that phase, it is resistance mode, and it is exclusively invasion, and its presented as the survivors of the planetary invasion are attempting to open up a landing zone for reinforcements.

if they can move the new slider all the way across before the phase ends (less likely, but doable) the resistance retakes their planet and the qp slider starts all over again from the middle.

if the invaders can move their slider all the way across on the resistance bar (the one with invasion only) then theyve"crushed all resistance" and they get to start the next phase earlier, and keeping their planet they just got.

if the phase ends before the resistance cycle, no one gets a planet. if it ends in the resistance cycle with no winner of that tug of war, the invaders get to keep the planets that the resistance was fought on..

thisll add to shifting phase times on different days, which is another item that was requested in the roundtable. it also gives large operations a chance to really get something done in one night, with enough in the way that it doesnt become a daily occurance. it also gives invasion its own thing and unique relevance to the planet taking phase.

if you want to give it names use resistance and stuff for IS and use clanner words for the different aspects on their side. that would be an example of the kind of nods to lore i would like to see sprinkled into faction play. other bigger changes to incorporate lore are great and needed, but its nothing without the little things keeping that lore feel.

Edited by naterist, 04 February 2017 - 08:54 PM.

[Will9761]

I wish that IS and Clan factions could have better rewards and their own unique identity.
https://mwomercs.com...82#entry5602182

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

Regarding CW improvements:

Some kind of permanent, indestructible, powerful defense for spawns would solve all the problems of spawn camping and would be easier to implement than spawn selection. Unfortunately it would also open things up to reverse camping, by which I mean camping under the protection envelope of your spawn defenses. This is only an issue with Skirmish, of course, but for that mode it could be game breaking.

Changing drops in general to be formed of two queues might work if you make them specific enough. If you had a 12-man only queue and a 1-to-4-man queue it would let small groups and solos still participate without having them be matched up against full-on unit premades. It would put the onus on the large groups to drop as full teams or to subdivide into lances if they want to access the other queue. There would still be potential for sync dropping, but that could be mitigated by having a hard limit on the number of players/groups from the same unit that the MM will put on a single team.

If they decide that they can do drop selection, then I think that the best way to do it is to have each zone drop in waves of 4. If too many players pick the same LZ all at once, then they'd be prioritized by choice order and delivered four at a time. Players should have the ability to change their LZ selection at any point up until they load into the dropship, at which point they are locked in (just like with choosing their next mech).

For mode selection, I say give players 2 choices. The first is determined by the state of the invasion, much like the current setup. The second is randomly selected from all available alternatives. So if it's early in the invasion you'll always see Skirmish but you'll also always get the chance to vote for whichever other mode is on offer. If it's end-game, you'll always see Invasion but will also always get a shot at voting for whichever other mode pops up. This retains the feel of the current setup with a sense of progression to the game modes while also giving that extra element of freedom for those who don't want to play a particular mode.

Edit: For Loyalists, offering a way to spend LP (without it detracting from their earned LP total for titles and unlocks) to get faction-specific rewards would be amazing. It could be paint unlocks (I'd love to spend Davion LP to get Davion patterns for pretty much all of my mechs), colors, decals (give me a Davion Sunburst with a winged dagger on it and I'll be ecstatic), faction-preferred mechs (Javelins and Enforcers for Davion, 1:1 LP to MC for buying one; probably would only be available for buying standard variants), warhorns, Loyalty medallions (that work like the Bronzes from the Phoenix pack), and so on. Doing something like a special consumable seems a bit dicey, as does anything that would involve an ongoing cost to maintain. I'd rather see it as an alternative currency for specific kinds of items rather than a grind-to-win mechanic.

For Clan v IS balance, there are a lot of things that put the Clans on top, but it mostly can be mitigated except for the cXL. I only see one real fix, which a whole lot of people will not like but which I think would do the job: Remove ST death for all XL types and compensate STD engines with significant Internal Structure buffs. Make it a choice between speed/firepower and durability. The survival advantages of the STD engines must be huge to compensate for lost damage output. Alternatively, make both XLs and cXLs do death with both STs and then give STD engines a hefty (but not as significant as with no ST death) IS hitpoint buff and give LFE (when they arrive) a moderate IS hitpoint buff (again, trading speed/firepower for durability).

Edited by Levi Porphyrogenitus, 04 February 2017 - 10:08 PM.