The game is meta/boating to the core, you can break that somewhat but not by much. This in turn can causes it to stagnate. I used to do invasions when ever a chance arose, but when they added quick play I sort of lost my interest in faction play. I found what they call now "siege mode" a difficult nut to crack in this game. Which kept me coming back for more pain as it were.
The other problem in this game is the devs getting involved in this clan vrs IS tech bickering. Make the invasion drop decks the same tonage wise for both factions already. There is plenty of IS tech coming the IS way, along with new weapons. The gimp against the clan is not needed.
The PSR is broken. I am not the only one who thinks so. I have had people tell me why it isnt but the fact remains it does not change. I believe now, unless I see something different, if you do not move past tier 5 during the cadet bonus you are there for life. Yes yes I know consistency in damage and numbers. I had that three matchs a average of 400 damage with three wins. Then I got a knucklehead LRM team in plexus and there went my streak. I loged off and shrugged. There is no point to even trying to get out of tier five. During the cadet bonus time I was doing something strange, instead of working on the psr, I was trying to figure out the game. A odd thing to do. Essentially my point is I am not alone in having no hope of ever getting out of tier five. The player base uses this as an excuse to harass other players, as if weapons in tier five do not hurt other mechs as much, and as if all the players in tier five are idiots. The PSR has created a mess and is a mess. If I could at least see the bar inch forward, and know that a knuckled head LRM team wont ruin my psr, then I could get behind it. I got no problems working for something, but I got big problems when the deck is stacked against me every which way possible. Then the group mechanic rightfully so is designed for unit/group combat. No easy fights there, and even winning in those my psr never moves.
With this game it is fun, but it is something done sparingly. There is just no reason to play just this game. Now if they ever fix one, two, and three that could change things. Now to the ultimate point, the skill tree I believe was an attempt to change the boating/meta is god. From what I am hearing that was not the case. So they want to take more time with it? By all means so long as the final product is done right.
It is only my opinion no biggie like I said sparingly is the term.
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Stagnancy And Dying Playerbases
Started by Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood, Mar 13 2017 07:56 PM
24 replies to this topic
#22
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- Shredder
- 4,806 posts
Member
Posted 14 March 2017 - 12:49 PM
New tech is announced, now for everyone to forget about skill trees entirely... 
#23
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- The Moon
- 941 posts
Member
- LocationPortland, Oregon
Posted 14 March 2017 - 03:14 PM
Pretty much. Russ says months is the timeline for the skill tree so could be with civil war tech (so taking into considerating a bit more feedback and how new tech factors into it, since mostly PGI considered the cbill salt the problem).
#24
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- The Altruist
- 183 posts
Member
Posted 14 March 2017 - 07:29 PM
Moonlight Grimoire, on 13 March 2017 - 09:31 PM, said:
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.
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.
The hope of a new skill tree brought me back, now i dont know if i will keep playing as much.
Having said that, thank you for writing this, i hope someone in charge gets to read this. In my mind very insightful and a well written piece.
#25
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- FP Veteran - Beta 2
- 3,735 posts
Member
Posted 14 March 2017 - 07:42 PM
Its true the game has been stagnant for awhile, and it has reached a point it needs to somehow internally disrupt things to bring something fresh and new. All games evolve in time or need to evolve if they didn't fail early. This is like breaking your storm barricaded windows to let the fresh air and light in.
And yes new maps. But most of all, removal of the map voting system.
And yes new maps. But most of all, removal of the map voting system.
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