29 replies to this topic

[Grimview]

Okay, so, I played for a couple months in 2020, got busy with life, came back a couple weeks ago. Have been getting an hour or two of quickplay a night lately, finding my way and getting better as I go. Still a lot of learning to do with the game (I'm only at ~320 total matches played! with a 0.5 KDR so bear that in mind), but looking through guides and discussions on the forums, wiki, and from some of the community youtubers (Baradul, Sean Lang, etc.), I think I noticed one particular point of feedback I haven't seen put elsewhere on the forums.

Faction Warfare can reward mech bays for loyalty. That makes sense, and is a cool function - free mech bays for putting the time in is a good idea.

However, the Community Warfare mode presently available - and every guide available for it on this site - leans towards "drop with mostly assaults and heavies, maybe one light as your last mech to fill tonnage". I've seen on the MWO Wiki and this site that there used to be a Faction Warfare mode with a mech tonnage limit of 55 tons, so people had to use mediums and lights in that mode. I also saw that people complained that it became an objective rush rather than an actual mech battle.

Most of the new player guides from the community recommend starting (Quick Play and the game in general) in mediums, or maybe one or two specific heavies, so that new players aren't expected to be getting directly into the brawls in their first matches while they're figuring things out. New players also have very few mech bays available to them, and only so much experimenting they can do with them on a c-bills budget. Mediums and lights are cheaper, so new players (including myself!) are probably going to be more inclined to invest in those so they can try different things and have more variety. They're also the least likely people to put up money to buy more, as they aren't necessarily invested in the game yet and aren't sure they will stick around.

And now, my point: if Faction Warfare is a way to get free Mech Bays, incentivising new players to get into trying it would be a good thing! But having the only viable game mode in it "bring all your biggest, fully skilled-out assaults and heavies" is a barrier to those players (including me) participating. When you only have half a dozen mech bays from free events, the academy, and free event MC, you aren't likely to have either the c-bills or the flexibility to build a Community Warfare-ready dropdeck. But there's no mediums/lights-friendly Faction Warfare set up where new players could build up the experience and faction rep to get those rewards, without being a major burden on their brawl-ready matchmade teammates.

I understand why the Scouting missions got removed, or at least why some of the community thinks they were removed, but if the rewards for Faction Warfare include free mech bays and thus more flexibility for new players' options... there should probably be a mode within Faction Warfare that lines up with the sorts of "starter mech" suggestions the community is inclined to suggest? Otherwise the road to Faction Warfare is "spend months getting bays from free events, sell the mechs in them, and slowly build out a dropdeck" or "the only way in is to pay". If you want new players to put money in, making things accessible and available is a stronger incentive than locking off an entire mode of play (and the rewards within it) behind months of grind.

[Nightbird]

Just play QP until you've gotten good at it (Tier 1, 1.5WLR or above) and you'll have enough in game money and mechs for FP. FP is endgame content where you'll see more diverse strategies, mech chassis, and loadout choices than QP so it takes a substantial understanding of the game before you start having fun in it. Dropping into FP too early can easily drive people straight out of MWO altogether.

Edited by Nightbird, 28 June 2021 - 10:27 AM.

[Grimview]

I understand that, and I'm not planning to jump in any time soon. But having rewards in it that look like incentives for new players means it's worth discussing whether a new-ish player friendly component of it is worth having. Otherwise, for new players who aren't coming and checking the forums and looking around at things, it might be very easy to try and jump in unprepared and have exactly the "driven away" experience you're describing.

"Those rewards look tempting and useful, I should try that" and then getting curbstomped because the meta is very well-established and heavies-oriented when new players aren't often running those is exactly how you would end up with players dropping the game.

[justcallme A S H]

In short Faction Play needs to be gated. Not promoted for new players.

Maybe 200 quick play games or something, albeit that's a crude method and purely an example of what I mean.

As the warning screens suggest you need to be organised, have decent loadouts etc etc. Or you will absolutely be pummelled for it. There is no way to stop this from happening due to how Faction Play works.

As far as incentives there are weekly events for Quick Play that give anything from CBills, MC to Mechbays and even for Mechs so there is more incentive and it's faster to progress early on in just Quick Play.

[pbiggz]

justcallme A S H, on 28 June 2021 - 12:26 PM, said:

In short Faction Play needs to be gated. Not promoted for new players.

Maybe 200 quick play games or something, albeit that's a crude method and purely an example of what I mean.

As the warning screens suggest you need to be organised, have decent loadouts etc etc. Or you will absolutely be pummelled for it. There is no way to stop this from happening due to how Faction Play works.

As far as incentives there are weekly events for Quick Play that give anything from CBills, MC to Mechbays and even for Mechs so there is more incentive and it's faster to progress early on in just Quick Play.

I'd argue anything that hard gates content will be received poorly, because if you just want to play with your friends, having to do x number of matches turns into a chore.

However, some form of soft gating, where faction play is not recommended until a player hits a certain tier or plays a certain # of matches, or perhaps more likely, where bonus rewards become available once the player passes the "gate", might work just as well, the idea being that a new player wont accidentally end up in an FP match, but if a friend who is more familiar with the game wants them in FP, they wont be stopped. As much as possible, this game should never stop players from playing with their friends. It is one of the cardinal sins this game can commit.

Perhaps something like an FP cadet bonus, switched on for 10 FP matches, but only if you join a unit and enter a match with them, and have a certain number of QP matches played. Otherwise you don't get FP alerts.

This of course only applies so long as the division between the two game modes remains. I think we need to rethink quickplay, faction play, and everything around it so that there is one great MWO experience rather than a cool one you need people for, and a less cool one you can play on demand, but that's not on the road map, and I don't really have a concrete proposal for it either, so I won't discuss it further.

Edited by pbiggz, 28 June 2021 - 01:14 PM.

[justcallme A S H]

Hard gating is definitely not ideal and generally not good, agree there. Incentives around it like a game-completion bonus (before entry to FP) are a good idea for sure, it's still a gate so to speak - when I say gating there are definitely options which is a larger discussion that I kinda avoided starting in my first reply.


The issue is how else do you protect CADETs and brand new players walking into the shark tank? The warning screen clearly doesn't deter them despite, very clearly, explaining what's going to happen.

The issue is they don't understand what it means despite the explanation because of being totally new. If they are under 200-300 QP matches they are going to get absolutely stomped for hours, days even weeks. That can't be fun and because of that lacklustre experience they are unlikely to play it again.

It's not only fresh players either. You see guys that are 10,000 match Tier 5s. They whinge and complain about "stomps" and "groups" and "meta users" and yet all of those are again covered in the warnings. Honestly when a low skill user with his bracket builds, mechs that don't suit the maps, zero effort at being organised and then goes and complains about Faction Play being exactly as warned??? I pretty much eye roll and ignore it.


FP and new / casual (complainer) players has been a disaster for a long time.

[Grimview]

pbiggz, on 28 June 2021 - 01:12 PM, said:

I'd argue anything that hard gates content will be received poorly, because if you just want to play with your friends, having to do x number of matches turns into a chore.

Yeah, this is kind of why I phrased the topic around NPE. I read the warning and then went to google, checked the forums, etc. and realised I was not ready for the current meta. I'm improving (~300 QP matches played, as noted) and starting to consistently get pilot skill ratings up, so should start climbing the ranks soon.

But having the only way into FP be "have at least 8 heavy/assault/very strong mediums" is itself a barrier to newer players getting into it as they skill up. You can grind the free events to get bays and mechs and MC, yes, but that is a months-long path. Having a FP mode - or something in-between FP and QP, maybe - that doesn't require the super meta dropdeck of heavies that newish players won't have skilled up (or the mech bay space for) could be one solution. Not necessarily an easy one or one that's on the road map right now, but.

Quote

Perhaps something like an FP cadet bonus, switched on for 10 FP matches, but only if you join a unit and enter a match with them, and have a certain number of QP matches played. Otherwise you don't get FP alerts.

Yeah this might be a good idea too. I bet there's a lot of new players that see the alerts, click them, and just click past the warnings without reading them because they want the rewards. Gating the alerts somehow is probably good for improving new player experience?

justcallme A S H, on 28 June 2021 - 01:55 PM, said:

The issue is how else do you protect CADETs and brand new players walking into the shark tank? The warning screen clearly doesn't deter them despite, very clearly, explaining what's going to happen.

It's not only fresh players either. You see guys that are 10,000 match Tier 5s. They whinge and complain about "stomps" and "groups" and "meta users" and yet all of those are again covered in the warnings. Honestly when a low skill user with his bracket builds, mechs that don't suit the maps, zero effort at being organised and then goes and complains about Faction Play being exactly as warned??? I pretty much eye roll and ignore it.

FP and new / casual (complainer) players has been a disaster for a long time.

I mean, this partly plays into the dynamics of mech building and quick play in general. I see people build LRM-boat assault mechs with 4 LRM20s in rank 5 all the time. They get one or two good 1000 damage matches a night and think it's working, but then get wolfpacked in 5 other matches because they don't have a single short range weapon and don't go and adjust their build. Tutorialising the mechlab and having some kind of "you don't have any weapons that can do damage under 150 m, you should consider that" warning that jumps up on screen at people might be a solution, but... you're still going to get people who are committed to being bad and/or lazy.

I'm mostly approaching this discussion from the position of "new player, still learning the game, actively trying to improve but know I'm not ready for Faction Play as-it-currently-is, but can see an angle for how to make this slightly less hostile to new players and/or make it so there's a path that's not "grind Quick Play and free events for a year" to enter it". Which is hopefully a reasonable position?

[Leone]

So, I'm firmly against the hard gating idea. Always have been. So, to sum up my introduction to the game, my computer couldn't handle it during beta, so it wasn't until Faction warfare went live I got a machine that could run the game. I was on the fence on the game, looking at all my option afore putting it aside for something else when I tried out a faction drop and feel in love with it. I actually had to go back and do a quickplay drop to finish off my 25 cadet matches to post in the faction section of the forums.

Were faction play hard gated, I may never've stuck around to try it. And that'd've prevented me from introducing three other friends to the game and being as helpful as I've tried to be in game and on the forums. So, I know I'm an edge case. I also believe folks should be willing to buckle up and actually try to improve when met with adversity, which is apparently not a popular opinion.

But that's my thoughts on hard gating the mode.

~Leone, of Kell's Commandos

[Nightbird]

Gate it by not allowing Trial mechs. Then you need to have played long enough to get 4 or 8, not exactly a challenge.

[Khalcruth]

I'd note that, as originally played / designed, it wasn't so much a problem - there was a high enough population that you could and did, in fact, have a match with 12 skittles (i.e. random mix of people, all playing solo) vs 12 skittles.

Unfortunately, because of population size right now, that just doesn't happen very often. The rather large majority of games are group (plus filler) vs group (plus filler), or group vs skittles.

I think the solution is to get more people playing faction play matches, so that it's actually possible to have 12 skittles vs 12 skittles matches again. And I think the way you do that is to have faction play events and give substantial prizes for said events. Make the event a grind, but make it a worthwhile grind. For example, the next monthly mech giveaway, make it impossible to get the mech itself without a substantial number of faction games played. Maybe 32 games played, and 8 games won - the idea being you can't complete the task by just being afk. And a 1 in 4 win ratio shouldn't be especially onerous.

[The Basilisk]

The situation of the game since 2018 is basicaly maintenance mode due to its game engine beeing essentially losstech to the company running the game.
So any "development" appart from new maps and some equipment tweaks and maybe....just maybe new mechs is very very unlikely.
So any kind of suggestions requiring coding or more efford than some new skins, map ideas, or maybe cockpit and bolt on items are pretty much wasted due to the fact that there is nobody there that could put them in the game.

Sorry mate for suggestions you're about 6-7 years too late.

[pbiggz]

The Basilisk, on 29 June 2021 - 02:01 PM, said:

The situation of the game since 2018 is basicaly maintenance mode due to its game engine beeing essentially losstech to the company running the game.
So any "development" appart from new maps and some equipment tweaks and maybe....just maybe new mechs is very very unlikely.
So any kind of suggestions requiring coding or more efford than some new skins, map ideas, or maybe cockpit and bolt on items are pretty much wasted due to the fact that there is nobody there that could put them in the game.

Sorry mate for suggestions you're about 6-7 years too late.

I've seen you make this same post like 4 times now.

doomsaying is not helpful. We all know this game is on a precarious footing. But, the reality is, there is lots that can be done to make this game functional and fun with a smaller population, while keeping it versatile enough to handle a larger one should it ever achieve a wider appeal again. That is what we're talking about today.

If you just want to join every thread and talk about how bad this game is and how much it just needs to die, keep it to yourself.
Most of us played this game from 2012 almost straight through to 2018. We don't need you to give us lessons on how to be cynical.

[Yondu Udonta]

Ban cadets and trials minimally, maybe T5 and T4 at max IMO.

Thing about incentivizing FP is that the mechbay rewards are obtained in rank 2, and from what I heard there has been content creators advising people to drop into FP for ez mechbays even though they may not have the required competency. Incentives need to be there for sure, but at the right levels.

[justcallme A S H]

Yeah those content creators are doing the community a pretty big disservice by telling people to do it without providing the clear warning that is associated with the mode.

[LordNothing]

i don't think "endgame content" describes what fp actually is or what its denizens actually want it to be. because you can play the game to death and still not be fit for or wanted in fp. at least be honest and call it an "elites club". actively discouraging new players from playing fp is part of the reason its stagnant. you cannot grow the mode without new blood.

weird thing is when moderate level players play fp exclusively, the mode gets quite fun. and by virtue of numbers moderate players should be able to out-populate the elite players if they would just show up. then the match maker could work to make sure that farming is under control to enough of a degree to make the mode fun for everyone. this has happened a few times, such as when an event, especially a tukayyid, that is exclusive to fp draws in a large number of players from qp. its usually enough where the pugs can have a good time without hitting premade after premade, though you do hit them sometimes, not enough to stop you from playing though. when the split queue was tested for a couple days, the pug only games were really fun. even in regular games its possible for a moderate skill player to pug at a w/l >1, i used to be able to do that back in the day.

im a proponent of league night with unlimited groups, while having other nights with restricted groups (like one lance limit). then you can call fp endgame content as it would be playable by a wider number of players at a wider range of skill levels. the population doesn't really support separate queues simultaneously, but by time sharing it would work. and its not like there aren't certain nights when the remaining units have their get togethers, simply use the other nights for everyone else.

also at the end of the day what kills it for me isnt the skill disparities or the incessant farming, but the atrocious wait times (though the aforementioned play a role in that). the only way to do that is to draw more players. id love to play again.

Edited by LordNothing, 07 July 2021 - 07:45 PM.

[LordNothing]

Nightbird, on 29 June 2021 - 12:19 PM, said:

Gate it by not allowing Trial mechs. Then you need to have played long enough to get 4 or 8, not exactly a challenge.

im fine with no trials, no cadets. make the end of the cadet tree an unlock for access to fp. of course that's a pretty low bar for fp as it currently stands.

fp themed mech packs with a deck, appropriate meta mech builds and a gxp bundle should also be a thing. so you can get a head start into fp, without having to drop with a stable of unleveled noob mech builds. but fp would need to be more popular than it currently is for those to sell. but if you could solve that problem, it would be a good way to fund further upgrades to the mode (especially maps).

Edited by LordNothing, 07 July 2021 - 07:59 PM.

[The Basilisk]

pbiggz, on 30 June 2021 - 03:30 PM, said:

I've seen you make this same post like 4 times now.

doomsaying is not helpful. We all know this game is on a precarious footing. But, the reality is, there is lots that can be done to make this game functional and fun with a smaller population, while keeping it versatile enough to handle a larger one should it ever achieve a wider appeal again. That is what we're talking about today.

If you just want to join every thread and talk about how bad this game is and how much it just needs to die, keep it to yourself.
Most of us played this game from 2012 almost straight through to 2018. We don't need you to give us lessons on how to be cynical.

Uhm wow pretty aggressive stance there.
I'm not impressed.
Just advising a fellow gamer not to put time and efford (and maybe expectations, wich only can be disappointed) in things that realisticaly can not be done.
And if you would have read thoughtfully you would have noticed that I also gave advise wich kind of suggestions actually could have any chance of beeing worked on.

Beeing unrealistic and making up stuff that has no chance of ever comming into fruition is what pissed of most of the ppl who permanently left the train. I know this overexaggerated positivity is an northamerican thing and maybe an australian thing too but beeing honest with your customers hurts you much less than getting a track record of never living up to the expectations you caused yourself.

Back to topic:
Did nobody notice that the main argument of the posts creator for opening the FP up for new players is "free stuff"?
[...And now, my point: if Faction Warfare is a way to get free Mech Bays, incentivising new players to get into trying it would be a good thing! But having the only viable game mode in it "bring all your biggest, fully skilled-out assaults and heavies" is a barrier to those players (including me) participating. When you only have half a dozen mech bays from free events, the academy, and free event MC, you aren't likely to have either the c-bills or the flexibility to build a Community Warfare-ready dropdeck. But there's no mediums/lights-friendly Faction Warfare set up where new players could build up the experience and faction rep to get those rewards, without being a major burden on their brawl-ready matchmade teammates....]

If you now think about past discussions to that topic it boils down to accessability of MWOs main content.
Namely Mechs and Mechbays to put this straight and simple.
And here the answer must be: "Wait for events and play them to get them, or simply grind them, or even more simple shell out money."
Since this is the only real source of income for mwo...thats about it.

Edited by The Basilisk, 08 July 2021 - 04:33 AM.

[LordNothing]

problem is fp was supposed to be the game, for everyone. qp is and has always been the beta mode posing as the game actual. while loot i nice, i think the main reason to get more people into fp is that it offers better gameplay than nascar arena. if loot was the driving force id say let people grind lp/rp in quickplay matches. but giving a wider swath of the community viable access to the "endgame content" should be the priority. i dont see any harm in having a one lance rule 3 days a week, id even let the 12 mans have their preferred nights. this also lets people get actual experience in the mode without getting farmed match after match. as they get gud (in the correct mode, qp is a piss poor training area for fp), they can join units and do the proper 12 man drops.

Edited by LordNothing, 08 July 2021 - 02:34 PM.

[Yondu Udonta]

LordNothing, on 07 July 2021 - 07:42 PM, said:

i don't think "endgame content" describes what fp actually is or what its denizens actually want it to be. because you can play the game to death and still not be fit for or wanted in fp. at least be honest and call it an "elites club". actively discouraging new players from playing fp is part of the reason its stagnant. you cannot grow the mode without new blood.

How is it an 'elites club'? I wouldn't consider the majority of FP players 'elite'. Discouraging newbies, which I define as either cadets or running trials, from playing Faction Play is simply for their own good, because they will get roflstomped by players who know what they are doing and be left with a bad impression of the game mode (being unbalanced, one-sided match for 25/30mins blah-blah). And because of this negative experience they decide to stick to QP and not give Faction Play another shot, resulting in the population stagnating.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

That is the basic problem of the Fp, there are no jump routes, no logistics, no fought off attacked units, no losses or blockages, units are not tied to planets. Every elite unit can warp from A to B at full strength without planets remaining unguarded or only with slight residual forces that would also have to be fought by newcomers, because the main armed forces wonaders against other elite units, for example to defend an important ammunition factory, otherwise there would be no LRM ammunition for the loser for a week.My first wish as MWO started was a FP more like Empire at War and with strategical and tactical Componentes like the Clanwar modes and fights in MW4