24 replies to this topic

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

With half the forum rejoicing over nothing changing, I'd like to bring in the counterpoint.

Many people currently have stopped playing solely due to a lack of change going on in game. There have been no balance shakeups, no big sweeping changes that half the players dislike and the other half love, there's been nothing to change the actual gameplay.

New mechs, new maps, even new gamemodes do very little to actually change gameplay. Skill trees at the very least were able to change a bunch of fundamentals. It reduced grind heavily, it added an option to allow assaults to poptart if they pay into the jump jet section heavily, and it allowed for some heavier customization.

Adding it would shake up the game and let the full community realize the changes and let issues get fixed quickly in practice. More importantly it would actually be an abrupt change in the stats of gameplay and the economy without ruining gameplay in a way that lack of convergence or cone of fire would.

It would bring in more players simply because of that.

My unit and myself have been barely playing if at all for over a month now, occasionally going for a few matches when a new mech gets released to see if there's anything new to do. A unit mate reinstalled today just in preparation for the new skill tree, only complaints being that his Kodiak's torso twist was "unplayable" now. Everyone was waiting to celebrate on the 21st with a day of play and more to come, but we've gone back into a "meh" atmosphere planning to just hibernate until we get the new tech or they finally end up releasing the trees or at least something new.

Powercreep is another thing you guys fight against here, but its exactly what keeps some games fresh and exciting. You may always be just blowing up the other guy, but at least you're doing it differently with powercreep going on. Just look at Star Trek Online as an example of a game that lives off of powercreep, everyone racing to buy new packs when they come out, players constantly playing to level up and get better gear and never a dull moment because once they reach the top there is only a matter of time until the endgame gets further expanded. Meanwhile, here we constantly nerf any mech that performs well enough that the majority of people deem it fun to use. Removing flavor by getting rid of high quirks and wanting to keep skill tree bonuses low leads to boring mechs with very similar play across various chassis and reduce how long you can play the game before it gets stale. Its simple science that people like seeing bigger positive numbers rather than negative numbers.

The forum isn't the only voice of the community, its just the loudest. Many other players have lost care and left just due to there being nothing left to care about, many wait for new stuff just so they can freshen up a game that has some nice core gameplay but has been burnt out. These players often never visit the forums and never get involved in the politics or whine going on on any given day and rather would just like to play the game.

Its been awhile since I've played the live server, only really coming on to play the PTS just recently, but I see it will be a bit longer before I can enjoy the game again, my fingers are crossed for new tech release. I just hope they don't preemptively nerf everything into the ground, and rather have the new tech be better than the current tech, but give the old tech some more boosts to bring them up to par as interesting side grades.

Just looking at the topics of people wanting more Terra Therma and Forest Colony its easy to see that the forum is the minority base of the game when in game people loath to be on those very maps and always go for HPG, Crimson, and Canyon, which are often shown distaste here. Just look in the FW section and see that often times entire large groups only have 1% of their members, usually a leader or a couple players, actually use the forum while the rest never touch it. The forum has a very skewed view of what it is that the majority actually wants oftentimes, yet they still believe that the majority of players are in this game for the battletech lore, for the slow and overheated 3025 combat, for the battletech tabletop-esque random chances, for the simulator aspects, yet even looking so far as to the steam forum, most of the players don't even really know the lore other than looking at some wiki articles or playing MW4.

Basically if people want more players in MWO, stop making them ragequit by nerfing all their favoring mechs and just start handing out some buffs, add in more ability for the player to specialize into what they want, stop playing in the the vicious cycle with buckets and take a hit now to your queue times so you can have better matches so that people actually want to keep playing. 10 good matches is better than 100 bad matches, quality over quantity is what keeps people playing, and improvements to crowd favorites instead of minority catering is what keeps people happy. let the most picked maps have the option to be played even more so that people are happier often. Take a look at Valve's CSGO, they made the most popular map, Dust II, have its own queue since everyone loved it so much.

TL:DR: Forum has a huge disconnect with the majority population in MWO and much of what the forum wants often leads to a steady decline in the playerbase.

[FupDup]

Change by itself is not inherently positive or negative. The effect depends on the specific change in question.

I don't think that most people wanted the new skill tree completely blasted from orbit with an Ion Cannon.



It came down to PGI changing things in the wrong way, like making the tree grindier and using a very boring and uninspired structure for the trees (spiderweb with mandatory placeholder skills that don't benefit your loadout at all).

Most people were rallying against the specific way that PGI was trying to do it, rather than rioting against the general idea of changing the skill tree.

Edited by FupDup, 13 March 2017 - 08:14 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

I stopped playing because the equipment and 'Mechs in the game are a snooze to me. I'm content to just keep shooting 'Mechs in an arena deathmatch because the game I want MWO to be is beyond the scope of PGI's ability this late in development.

Tech announcement tomorrow might entice me to come back when it finally drops, pending specific implementation details. I'd also come back if they started adding interesting 'Mechs for me to play (Raptor, other IS Omnis pls).

[JC Daxion]

I appreciate your opinion on this. But much of it is hyperbole Kodiak unplayable? Power creep is just not good, making 100's of mechs unplayable is not good for business. I'd happily take some nerfs on occasion than deal with that.

As far as maps go, they need more hot maps, they need more mountain maps, they need more maps that don't play out like money making death match.. aka HPG, Crimson, Canyon, and the old Frozen. That is why people play those maps more. It's not cause they are better maps, it's cause it is a quick match. Ohh and people can run HOT mechs.

Sure, people are going to rage about a nerf.. they rage about nerfs in every game i've ever played.. But people don't quit about a nerf, unless they were going to quit anyway. Though maybe I'm wrong, and there aer people that will only play a game, that has a power advantage so they can feel like the best player ever.. and when they can't play it that way any more, they don't adapt, and find a new game to exploit.


IMO this game needs to move way from power creep/faster kills.. basically the COD/overwatch style.. and be it's own slower paced shooter. It can do many things to do that.. and IMO a big ol nerf is part of it.



as for dying? the steam numbers have been almost the same for a year now.. We don't know about the main launcher, but the leader boards also show pretty consistent numbers since about that same time.. (june 2016) when they came out. Some people leave, new people join.. Its that way in every game ever made. I can't tell you how many guilds of 100+ people that are on daily, and a year later not a soul because everyone left for something else. It happens in every game.

Edited by JC Daxion, 13 March 2017 - 08:09 PM.

[Dr Mlem]

You have content~!

For 70 dollars you can get the new full mech pack!

[Scout Derek]

FupDup, on 13 March 2017 - 08:04 PM, said:

Change by itself is not inherently positive or negative. The effect depends on the specific change in question.

I don't think that most people wanted the new skill tree completely blasted from orbit with an Ion Cannon. It came down to PGI changing things in the wrong way, like making the tree grindier and using a very boring and uninspired structure for the trees (spiderweb with mandatory placeholder skills that don't benefit your loadout at all).

Most people were rallying against the specific way that PGI was trying to do it, rather than rioting against the general idea of changing the skill tree.

Pretty much this. We, and by we I mean those who tested it and had suggestions, wanted a few things changed.

We liked the tree (or at least I do), but there were just a few noticeable problems with it, one for me being Cbill grinding costs....

If they had addressed that and adjusted accordingly, swell, I would have jumped out of my chair and said



... But they didn't, which kind of ticked me off....

And then the podcast... oh. That made me bewildered pretty badly.

[RestosIII]

Dakota1000, on 13 March 2017 - 07:56 PM, said:

It reduced grind heavily

No, it did not. If you ever sell a mech for any reason, boom, gotta regrind all that XP and C-Bills. Hope you've got the $$$ to buy mechbays every time you want to buy a new mech.

[Clanner Scum]

With the addition of new tech and 4 new mechs and the new skill tree and incursion game mode I think the stagnancy will subside. They do need to start pumping out new maps like crazy though.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

FupDup, on 13 March 2017 - 08:04 PM, said:

Change by itself is not inherently positive or negative. The effect depends on the specific change in question.

I don't think that most people wanted the new skill tree completely blasted from orbit with an Ion Cannon.

It came down to PGI changing things in the wrong way, like making the tree grindier and using a very boring and uninspired structure for the trees (spiderweb with mandatory placeholder skills that don't benefit your loadout at all).

Most people were rallying against the specific way that PGI was trying to do it, rather than rioting against the general idea of changing the skill tree.

We should have all known PGI well enough to know that if we wanted it in and changed, first we got to let them put it in then get to changing it on their own time. Just look at the Kodiak nerfs hitting all Kodiaks instead of the KDK-3, or just looking at the other two PTS sessions with ED and infowar, out of the two I liked infowar and even its laser ghost range really wasn't nearly as bad as everyone said it was, I tried out laserboat mechs the whole time and got consistently higher scores than in live with them because really most of the time you'd be inside that range anyway or you should be pressing R on the target as always anyway for the sake of the team, but whatever.

JC Daxion, on 13 March 2017 - 08:06 PM, said:

I appreciate your opinion on this. But much of it is hyperbole Kodiak unplayable? Power creep is just not good, making 100's of mechs unplayable is not good for business. I'd happily take some nerfs on occasion than deal with that.

As far as maps go, they need more hot maps, they need more mountain maps, they need more maps that don't play out like money making death match.. aka HPG, Crimson, Canyon, and the old Frozen. That is why people play those maps more. It's not cause they are better maps, it's cause it is a quick match. Ohh and people can run HOT mechs.

Sure, people are going to rage about a nerf.. they rage about nerfs in every game i've ever played.. But people don't quit about a nerf, unless they were going to quit anyway. Though maybe I'm wrong, and there aer people that will only play a game, that has a power advantage so they can feel like the best player ever.. and when they can't play it that way any more, they don't adapt, and find a new game to exploit.


IMO this game needs to move way from power creep/faster kills.. basically the COD/overwatch style.. and be it's own slower paced shooter. It can do many things to do that.. and IMO a big ol nerf is part of it.



as for dying? the steam numbers have been almost the same for a year now.. We don't know about the main launcher, but the leader boards also show pretty consistent numbers since about that same time.. (june 2016) when they came out. Some people leave, new people join.. Its that way in every game ever made. I can't tell you how many guilds of 100+ people that are on daily, and a year later not a soul because everyone left for something else. It happens in every game.

Not that I want what I'm about to advocate here, but a faster paced, lower TTK game is exactly what would help increase the playerbase. What does COD and Overwatch have in common? Fast TTK and huge playerbase. We have a slow game and a small population in comparison.

Kodiak, while definitely not unplayable, really has been kicked hard over and over and over again since its release, the players who don't get high scores in KDKs but instead get focused down quick because they are in one but don't have the skillset of the people like me and many others have that got them nerfed will find that the KDK is a rather bad mech to be in, much like a Dire Wolf, it is seen as high priority. The mech being nerfed hurt bad players much more than it did the good players who just work around it in the first place, especially when the bad players aren't even using the meta builds anyway, my friend prefers the quad LBX10 loadout best, for example.

Powercreep, when done right, doesn't make any mechs useless, the goal is to boost the unique features of each mech so that they become as powerful as the most powerful mech out there. This leads to a better state of balance and unique gameplay for each mech. For example, give the Hunchback an AC20 that is twice as good as a normal AC20 and suddenly its on par with the Hunchback IIC since the Hunchback with the double power AC20 basically gets a second gun for free and spare weight to make up for bringing a standard engine. We could also give the Atlas 50% more armor or better so it is able to wither a hailstorm of fire so it can close rank and brawl, making it equal to a KDK-3 who would be the offensive powerhouse. This is what I mean by this, not just making the best better, make the worst equal the best.

Also the reason people pick the maps above is because people want instant action, that's why the pick the small maps and ones that have quick fights. People like a quick down and dirty brutal brawl and they want to be able to go right on to the next if they die quickly. People hate having to wait around 2 minutes or more just to see an enemy, they dislike the slower pace on hot maps, and they want maps to be brawling focused so that there's no where for the last guy in that spider to run around to to prolong the game an extra 6 minutes while he fires a medium laser at half the enemy team. What we really need is 1v1 and 4v4 in the arena map that PGI made so that people can really get their quick fixes and maybe have a leaderboard so people can move up and down the ladder for duels won or something similar, that would get people playing as long as they don't do what scouting did and allow in groups and limit the tonnage, just have weight class vs weight class.

RestosIII, on 13 March 2017 - 08:13 PM, said:

No, it did not. If you ever sell a mech for any reason, boom, gotta regrind all that XP and C-Bills. Hope you've got the $$$ to buy mechbays every time you want to buy a new mech.

You *really* shouldn't be selling mechs that you intend to buy again in the first place, its always been a bad idea to do. PGI wants to sell more mechbays and they do give out a respectable amount of MC yearly so that you can earn at least 10 bays a year just from events or go into faction play to get some. You're a huge fringe case here, really you are, I like what you do, but no one else does it. Nobody else that I know just goes and buys a bunch of stock clan mechs to take them into battle, sells mechs every once in awhile, then goes and buys them again after you swap out another mech you get tired of.

I can say that I'll *never* have to reskill a mech that I've sold, because I only sell mechs that I absolutely end up hating and would never buy again even if it did get a huge buff. But even skill I'll do some math here.

Current game for mastery: One mech to master, one to elite, one to basic, approx 100k XP required, lets say the mech is a Clan heavy at 15 million cbills, so the cost would be 45 million cbills, you sell back two after you get them leveled for a total of 15 million cbills, you buy 6 million cbill seismic, 6 million cbill radar dep, 3 million wep cooldown, 3 million wep range.

Total is about 100k xp and 48 million cbills.

Original PTS was 135k XP (but you could get that xp back for cbills) and the cbill cost was 9.1 million plus the 15 mil mech cost, so 24.1 million cbills. Half of what it is now to get a mech mastered but you had a higher cost in XP originally and an added cbill cost each time you were to sell the mech so that you'd get all your xp back that would cost 2.275 milion cbills.

With the money you save from the original purchase you could buy and sell the mech 10 times over and still have money left over before you'd have been better off under the live situation

With PTS2 the XP cost was reduced to about 73k xp and cbill cost was reduced to 4.1 million, but you'd lose the XP each time you rebuy. This situation leads to the largest savings for someone who buys a mech and holds onto it, but ends up being bad for you since you wouldn't be getting your XP back each time, unless you happen to just play the mech often enough that you get 73k spare XP laying around before each time you sell the thing. If you aren't getting that much xp between buys and sells, you really should just look into getting some more mech bays so you don't have to decide so much.

But basically this part with you goes exactly into what I'm saying. You in particular are a part of a super small minority of people who sell and rebuy mechs very often and use stock builds. What is a benefit to the vast majority is a negative to you.

[Mystere]

FupDup, on 13 March 2017 - 08:04 PM, said:

Change by itself is not inherently positive or negative. The effect depends on the specific change in question.

I don't think that most people wanted the new skill tree completely blasted from orbit with an Ion Cannon.



It came down to PGI changing things in the wrong way, like making the tree grindier and using a very boring and uninspired structure for the trees (spiderweb with mandatory placeholder skills that don't benefit your loadout at all).

Most people were rallying against the specific way that PGI was trying to do it, rather than rioting against the general idea of changing the skill tree.

Can I temporarily have such a weapon? I promise I'll use it only once.

[Bishop Steiner]

RestosIII, on 13 March 2017 - 08:13 PM, said:

No, it did not. If you ever sell a mech for any reason, boom, gotta regrind all that XP and C-Bills. Hope you've got the $$$ to buy mechbays every time you want to buy a new mech.

Calling ******** on that. People re-bought missing mechs in the PTS and they had their full historic XP still on them.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Bishop Steiner, on 13 March 2017 - 09:00 PM, said:

Calling ******** on that. People re-bought missing mechs in the PTS and they had their full historic XP still on them.

I assume he meant after you have spent up the historic XP on nodes, then sold the mechs and buy it back that those nodes would not already be bought with the mech when rebought. Of course PGI could likely add in a system to save that progress on sold mechs, or at least if they had one mech at that level then sold it they would get another just like the last one they sold or something to that effect. That or just give an xp refund when you sell the mech, like you get half the xp back just like how you get half the cbills back. Little tweaks and all that.

[RestosIII]

Bishop Steiner, on 13 March 2017 - 09:00 PM, said:

Calling ******** on that. People re-bought missing mechs in the PTS and they had their full historic XP still on them.

HXP is linked to the variant. I meant just XP/converted HXP. If I spec my Adder, and then sell the Adder, I'm just out all that XP. That's a lot more grinding for me.

Dakota1000, on 13 March 2017 - 08:57 PM, said:

You *really* shouldn't be selling mechs that you intend to buy again in the first place, its always been a bad idea to do. PGI wants to sell more mechbays and they do give out a respectable amount of MC yearly so that you can earn at least 10 bays a year just from events or go into faction play to get some. You're a huge fringe case here, really you are, I like what you do, but no one else does it. Nobody else that I know just goes and buys a bunch of stock clan mechs to take them into battle, sells mechs every once in awhile, then goes and buys them again after you swap out another mech you get tired of.

I can say that I'll *never* have to reskill a mech that I've sold, because I only sell mechs that I absolutely end up hating and would never buy again even if it did get a huge buff. But even skill I'll do some math here.

Current game for mastery: One mech to master, one to elite, one to basic, approx 100k XP required, lets say the mech is a Clan heavy at 15 million cbills, so the cost would be 45 million cbills, you sell back two after you get them leveled for a total of 15 million cbills, you buy 6 million cbill seismic, 6 million cbill radar dep, 3 million wep cooldown, 3 million wep range.

Total is about 100k xp and 48 million cbills.

Original PTS was 135k XP (but you could get that xp back for cbills) and the cbill cost was 9.1 million plus the 15 mil mech cost, so 24.1 million cbills. Half of what it is now to get a mech mastered but you had a higher cost in XP originally and an added cbill cost each time you were to sell the mech so that you'd get all your xp back that would cost 2.275 milion cbills.

With the money you save from the original purchase you could buy and sell the mech 10 times over and still have money left over before you'd have been better off under the live situation

With PTS2 the XP cost was reduced to about 73k xp and cbill cost was reduced to 4.1 million, but you'd lose the XP each time you rebuy. This situation leads to the largest savings for someone who buys a mech and holds onto it, but ends up being bad for you since you wouldn't be getting your XP back each time, unless you happen to just play the mech often enough that you get 73k spare XP laying around before each time you sell the thing. If you aren't getting that much xp between buys and sells, you really should just look into getting some more mech bays so you don't have to decide so much.

But basically this part with you goes exactly into what I'm saying. You in particular are a part of a super small minority of people who sell and rebuy mechs very often and use stock builds. What is a benefit to the vast majority is a negative to you.

I get that you "shouldn't" sell mechs, in the same way that you "shouldn't" sell engines. But in the current, live environment, I've been allowed to master an entire chassis, then sell them off so I can buy a different chassis as a break, since I just ground out 3+ mechs. After enough of a break, I'll buy 1-2 of them again and keep them in my full roster, slowly buying mechbays with the event MC I get, and mechbays from purchasing mechpacks. Changing that so drastically by making it so that selling a mech makes it as if I never even owned the damn thing is just... it ruins me.

And when you state numbers for how it's much cheaper than if the live version where I have to buy 3 variants of a chassis, and when others do it as well, people overlook the fact that a lot of the time, if I like one variant of a chassis, I'm probably going to enjoy the other variants enough to keep using them occasionally. Especially with the set of 8 system being implemented for omnimechs, being able to master a variant, sell it, and rebuy it later is highly important.

I dunno, I get why someone with a lot of spare mechbays and/or time wouldn't really feel like this is bad, but it seriously messes me up.

And it makes it really hard to try to make a statement about this kind of stuff that isn't super salty in return when all people say is "You're the minority", or "You're just a whiner/meta pusher who wants the game to be stagnant", especially since I actually love how the skill tree feels outside of some specific node placements and the XP/C-Bill shenanigans.

Oh, and if within the next couple weeks we don't get any info on a new Skill Tree PTS, I'm going to actively post on Twitter to Russ asking for info, probably until I get blocked. I REALLY don't want it to die here.

Edited by RestosIII, 13 March 2017 - 09:42 PM.

[Moonlight Grimoire]

The dying playerbase and stagnation is a facet of many things. How many people here and on reddit and on twitter, on youtube were crying out about how they couldn't remaster all their mechs if PGI went ahead without some kind of better reimbursement system? Then imagine how much of a % of the playerbase they are and share their opinions. Like it was said, forums cry out for more dense urban maps, more terra therma, and forest colony but the game it is canyon, polar, HPG. I have to say burn out consumes many players, and general frustration with progression. Now while the new skill tree was deeper at 72,800 xp instead of 57,250ish XP the current one is for mastery, you got skills more often. Sure it costed cbills which if transitional costs weren't an issue could have been addressed with fixing the broken as hell in game economy.

Like, okay, I have stopped playing for months at a time because there is so little to do. FP is just a static fest of bathing in ERLL fire or PPC+GR which gets old fast. Solo Queue has some interest due to the chaos, but, the high frequency of seeing the same maps and skirmish existing drags down the fun QP is. Group Queue is an operation of frustration most nights.

I want FP to be something more than QP with 4 mechs. I want QP to host more variety and maybe something to weigh frequency of maps showing up that changes weekly (creating a sort of rotation) to make it so we don't constantly see the same map over and over. We need new maps and modes just for the sake of for a couple days it shakes things up a little bit learning how to manage the mode. Or with Escort forever because some players just refuse to actually move together to fire back into a enemy force more interested in killing the objective than you.

What we need is what I have suggested in the past. We need Loyalty Points to be faction specific currency that lets you buy things with loyalty points, mech bays most of all. Colors, decals, mechs historically used by said faction as well, and just chunks of cbills, GPX, and supply cache keys. Of course not losing rank when you use the loyalty points, but, it gives a reason to keep playing once you max out your LP for a given track or faction. FP also needs to change to planets are dedicated servers, maybe like 4-7 servers hosting up to 20v20, take your drop deck, play for as long as you want. Think MW:LL's theater of war, but, you are limited to your mechs that you bring on the drop deck. Leave when you want with your Cbills, XP, and LP. You gain more by staying until the match ends when tickets or time runs out. Because FP needs to be something different, what it is now is so foul tasting that my unit has all but abandoned it. The static nature, the low population, the horrible payouts just creates a feedback loop when there isn't a massive event going on to fill out queues for FP. Even then, you get the people who care to win at all costs running the most meta mechs they can that have the least draw backs which means going to clan techbase. This is why throughout CW it was the mercs not the loyalists that drove things. It was those who won at any costs because winning is more fun than fun itself. They would get bored of always running Clan or always running IS, but, mostly they would run Clan over IS to not handicap themselves.

This is why I think the Fed-Com Civil war gives FP a chance to at least deal with part of the techbase issues driving FP to be a static pool of frustration. Seperate it into ISvIS and ClanvClan. IS tearing itself apart, use the front system. Steiner, Liao, Kurita, FRR against Davion and FWL. Clans you have the invasion clans vs the homeworld clans who see them as tainted now by the IS. Want to mix things up? Once a week have a Clan vs IS in the Clan occupied zone in the IS of Wolf, Jade Falcon, Steel Vipers, and Hells horses vs Kurita, FRR, Ghost Bear, and Nova Cat. It will give an interesting test of pure clan vs Clan and IS, and do it just for 36 hours once a week.

We also need a third bucket for players that isn't group queue. We need a place for people to play without dealing with fighting other players. We need PvE content, we need at very least missions where 4 players drop together and fight maybe a lance of enemy mechs, but, more importantly combined arms not including mechs. Give us a mode that lets us go have derpy big stompy mech fun with some live fire and jolly cooperation. It will get people back who got tired of the solo queue or group queue, or faction play for that matter.

Lastly, FIX THE DANG ECONOMY. I keep saying this over and over, but, I make on average over 6 matches an hour in one mech an average of 660k with no boosts, no hero mechs, in an unbasiced Bushwacker running 1xGR, 2xML, 2xSRM4. I know I am out performing my peers in a good number of these matches as well given my match score which is decently reprisentive of cbills earned that match. Nobody will stay around in a game where it takes forever to get to the next thing they want to play with. They will play a game where it takes a while to fully skill out something, so long as it doesn't lock them out of getting new toys. To reuse this phrase: I do not mind a long grind to master something, I mind a long grind to get something new. For new players, players without a bunch of boosts, or players who are average skill it takes forever to get anywhere when you make maybe half a mil per hour, likely closer to a third of a mil per hour and DHS costs 1.5, let alone just any clan mech. Increasing earnings by 100% to 150% (data analysis shows 150% is far better) would go so far to helping reduce the time it takes for people to feel like they are getting somewhere. This is even without throwing the skill tree into the mix having a cbill cost, ignoring that we need a boost, a big one. Premium time needs to be a flat 100% bonus, cbill boosting mechs shouldn't be 30%, they should have always been 50%, we paid money for them and only can get them by paying money, respect that. At very least have real money only mechs give a 50% boost, if not also a 100% boost. You want people to spend money make it so spending money on some way to boost their earnings in a way that respects the amount of time a person plays on average or is just a flat buff. Like I understand if PGI doesn't want hero mechs to give a 100% boost due to you don't have to keep buying it, fine, cbill boosting mechs give a 50% boost, premium time a 100% boost, there, it is a difference. Bump up the player economy by 150% and 50% will still be huge. I would go from 111k average per match to 277.5k per match, throw on a hero and that is 416.25K cbills, premium instead? 555k, hero and premium? 693.75K per match with everything going. Holy cow that is a lot of money, and yet it still would take 3 matches to afford DHS, many matches to earn a new engine. It would be that people now spend a week or two to earn a new mech, instead of a month. That is if people only play on average an hour per day. That creates a feeling of real progress towards a goal which keeps new players in. They feel a timberwolf at 15.1mil isn't insanely grindy, or KDK-3, or Dire Wolf. It feels within reasonable grasp, they keep coming back. Throw in my changes to FP loyalty points and suddenly there is a way to earn mech bays reasonably and repeatedly. Sure FP still blows, but, it would have more of a draw for it's reward potential. There is a reason IS floods (or did last I really paid attention) the scouting side of FP, they can win there against clans, but, then clans take worlds due to nobody can fight and hold the line at very least. Hell FP economy is horrible. Repeatedly my group before the current phase of FP would drop and yeah in a single drop we would make more than we would in a single quickplay match, but, in the time it took we would make twice that. This is including contract bonuses. This is bad design even when modules and mechs were our cbill sinks.

Just, MWO has not changed since the Rescale. It really hasn't, and it is rather dull at this point. I want more maps, more modes. I want skirmish to be a private lobby mode and to be nowhere else in the game because it is a mode that promotes lazy gameplay. I want new ways to play which new gamemodes can bring, but, only in a dedicated server enviroment where you have the time and space to have emergant gameplay instead of "blow them all away then sit on the zone". Quickplay will never really be deeper than it is, and, maybe that is a good thing. Quick come in, blow up some mechs, derp off after a couple matches. But, there is no meat to this game. I can't drop on a server on some planet being invaded and spend a couple hours just playing. I have to queue up, then just watch horrible gameflow and moba inspired map design do it's work.

Like, what is going to draw people back in? Things to do, progress to get. New skill tree had a cookie every 800XP and 45k or less cbills, for me that is roughly 40.5% of my math earnings every other match (due to I sit around 750xp per match). That over all ends up eating around 34% of my hourly cbills earned as a half decent player running no boosts, but, I get a sense of progression on the mech due to I know if I see that magical number for the cost of a node show up I just got a little bit further down the path of mastering this mech. Like that little bit of joy is what keeps people in. Throw in bigger bursts of joy like buying a mech every 1-2 weeks if they play 1 hour a day and people feel they are constantly getting somewhere. Throw in the loyalty point thing again and now they work themselves to have 4 mechs for a drop deck, or a strong mech for scouting to go grind out LP for more mech bays which they know what that thresehold for another bay is. Sure they could also buy premium time, or just buy the mech, or MC for the bay or mech, or they could grind. But, people knowing they are getting plenty of time out of the game without it being a slog but they could do it faster, or cut out having to go do FP for a while might spend some money on the side on MWO since they already sunk so much time into it for something small like a mech bay, or maybe they really like this one chassis they have been playing on as of late and want the hero so they buy that. A good F2P is a good Skinner's box, hell, any good MMO or game is. PGI is trying to move to make it one, but, keeps tripping. I know this is a long read so a TL;DR to follow.

TL;DR: people burn out due to everything is the same and the grind is too hard. One thing can be fixed fast, bump economy up by 150%, premium to 100%, cbill boosting mechs to 50%. Hell sell cockpit items that make mechs give 30% more XP and another that gives 30% more cbills. These will be for a lot of players a one time buy, might buy more than one so they don't have to swap them around. The economy is bad and burns people out, grind to a new mech, and barriers to new mech bays make people flake out a lot. This is from polling friends who tried and stopped playing, once or repeatedly, and as someone who started out as F2P and doesn't use premium time and rarely uses heroes.

[ANOM O MECH]

Meh... Hope they get the skill tree to a livable and working level. It certainly doesn't make sense that this will be something to attract new players or unless there is a major change in its implementation, fundamentally shake up stale game play. The game needs more content. Even the new tech won't help if there aren't more new maps added or if the new game mode is as dreadful as escort. FW needs much more than quick play maps with respawns. This is not Team Fortress, it needs content to advance a rich narrative waiting idly in the background.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Moonlight Grimoire, on 13 March 2017 - 09:31 PM, said:

All you said

I'd love to see a lot of the stuff you said added in. PvE would be great, sometimes you just don't want to fight other players to get your mech action. I'd also absolutely love a drop in and drop out mode with some respawns. The game needs a casual mode like that so that on days when I don't feel like just carrying a team or days when I don't have a solid time schedule I can just drop in for a few minutes and leave when I want with no issue and without harming my team.

So many people kept saying respawns were too arcadey, but that's just what people want out of games sometimes is some arcade-like fun. Let people just join in and make money in real time, every bit of damage and every kill they get is a little bit more money for them. Just throw people onto one of the big maps with some random spawns, have a dropship fly to a location every 15 seconds and anyone who died in that time spawns at the next drop point if they share a team. Let a huge all over the map 20v20 battle just rage on forever in a Valhalla experience. I just wish PGI would do that rather than some new gamemode that just puts a team vs a team that's ended when you kill 12 people.

[Linkin]

Dakota1000, on 13 March 2017 - 09:45 PM, said:

I'd love to see a lot of the stuff you said added in. PvE would be great, sometimes you just don't want to fight other players to get your mech action. I'd also absolutely love a drop in and drop out mode with some respawns. The game needs a casual mode like that so that on days when I don't feel like just carrying a team or days when I don't have a solid time schedule I can just drop in for a few minutes and leave when I want with no issue and without harming my team.

So many people kept saying respawns were too arcadey, but that's just what people want out of games sometimes is some arcade-like fun. Let people just join in and make money in real time, every bit of damage and every kill they get is a little bit more money for them. Just throw people onto one of the big maps with some random spawns, have a dropship fly to a location every 15 seconds and anyone who died in that time spawns at the next drop point if they share a team. Let a huge all over the map 20v20 battle just rage on forever in a Valhalla experience. I just wish PGI would do that rather than some new gamemode that just puts a team vs a team that's ended when you kill 12 people.

I agree with you on the casual mode/pve. Pvp is great, I love it and play it in all the other games I play, but, at times that 'chill' mode would be nice . I also am ok with re-spawn in such a mode. That or what FW does with drop decks... basically re-spawns anyways, I mean really, does our pilot run back or get teleported ala Star Trek from where the mech is destroyed or he/she ejects ?

I also agree the game needs change, it's been basically the same for a long while. That said, I do think they made the right choice delaying the tree to tweak it a bit more. I want it very badly, but this way (I hope) they improve it and release a version that won't require a huge round of tweaks right away. Lastly, I also can't agree on your earlier comment about lower TTK**. I get where you're coming from and I like COD, and love Overwatch, but I don't play MWO to get that feel. (Digression, I do think pve would help, I lied a bit, as COD and OW have pve, so there I would like MWO to be like them, just not TTK). Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I like my MWO to be a slow burn blaze of glorious explosions and lasers, not just a quick boom.

Edit- ** it's late, I misread a bit. I see you also said you don't necessarily want lower TTK. I guess it boils down to the direction we (as a whole) want. Slower smaller game, or faster bigger game? Although I thought think there's more they could do to bring in more players. PVEeeeee (to stem inevitable replies, not MW5 MWO PVE ). Improving NPE, and such, but I digress, and should go before I ramble more...

Edited by Linkin, 13 March 2017 - 11:15 PM.

[Alistair Winter]

Dakota1000, on 13 March 2017 - 07:56 PM, said:

Basically if people want more players in MWO, stop making them ragequit by nerfing all their favoring mechs and just start handing out some buffs

I still have trouble understanding that a significant portion of people on the forum actually believe this is a viable approach to balancing a PVP game.

Dakota1000, on 13 March 2017 - 07:56 PM, said:

TL:DR: Forum has a huge disconnect with the majority population in MWO and much of what the forum wants often leads to a steady decline in the playerbase.

It's possible, but until PGI creates an in-game poll system (a la Star Conflict), which the players have requested for years, then the only evidence of the forum being a vocal minority is anecdotal. People who describe this disconnect often begin by saying "Me and my friends" or "People in my unit".

[Karl Marlow]

Uh oh. More predictions of doom and gloom. What is this like the 8th time MWO has "died"?

[LordNothing]

Bishop Steiner, on 13 March 2017 - 09:00 PM, said:

Calling ******** on that. People re-bought missing mechs in the PTS and they had their full historic XP still on them.

i think it has more to do with the death of master-sell-rebuy workaround that was used to let players run a lot of mechs without having a lot of mech bays. i dont think this was intended as a feature by pgi, its just something the player base was smart enough to figure out. i used it to master all the things (except my poor neglected linebackers). i understand what restos has to say about that. even with full historic xp for all sold mechs, it still costs xp to unlock the nodes. if you sell that mech and later go to rebuy it, you have to pay for those nodes again, all be it at a reduced rate, and it becomes a sink for what once was a conserved quantity. the point of the historic xp is to retrieve legacy progress, not as a system to perpetuate those skill nodes beyond that one instance of the chassis.

you could probibly do system where you can unlock a node with any kind of xp and once its unlocked it stays unlocked in perpetuity. but unlocking the node doesn't apply it to the mech, you also have to pay an activation cost and can activate the allowed 91 nodes. these are instance persistent, so you sell you loose. or perhaps they are partially refundable, 50k to activate with a 25k refund to deactivate. 4.5 million to master a chassis isnt that bad. when fully moded mechs have 15m worth of modules on board that is enough to re-master 3 mechs. people who have that many mechs clanging around have bought a module or two. you might also stick a previously mastered bonus on there if it still proves too unsatisfactory.

Edited by LordNothing, 14 March 2017 - 12:21 AM.