56 replies to this topic

[Tavious Grimm]

Commander A9, on 26 May 2017 - 10:30 PM, said:

Oh, we know... :/

PGI makes their money off mech packs, not the currently existing content.

So, CW means nothing to them other than an event to have an excuse to nerf something in the aftermath...

Yeah, usually IS Mechs lol.

[TWIAFU]

meteorol, on 26 May 2017 - 05:26 AM, said:

It really isn't at this point.

PGI has largely abandoned it, just like the playerbase. I tried to get some games on my alt for free CW mechbays, while i was at home yesterday (feast day)... i was reading a book while waiting for matches. During a 5 hours timeframe, i was able to get a single Invasion drop (which was a ghostdrop) and 3 scouting matches.

CW is done, sadly.

Dont be a lemming and join the less populated bucket.

And tyvm for the example of why bays should be moved up higher in rewards in CW.

[meteorol]

TWIAFU, on 27 May 2017 - 03:06 AM, said:

Dont be a lemming and join the less populated bucket.

And tyvm for the example of why bays should be moved up higher in rewards in CW.

I'm joining every bucket, because i need all low lvl mechbays. It doesn't matter. Even after all factions were merged to one queue, CW is pretty much deserted. I would have been able to play like 30 QP matches in the time i waited for CW matches. That's how bad it is. That's not a "oh well, CW doesn't do so well right now".

As for moving up bays up higher... take away incetives to play CW, and people will simply stop playing it. Exactly what an almost dead gamemode needs. I wouldn't touch CW nowadays if it wasn't for the bays. I'm outscoring like 85% of CWs population with trial mechs on my alt. If you don't want players like me in CW, fine. But cutting down its population even further won't help it right now.

Edited by meteorol, 27 May 2017 - 05:54 AM.

[SuperFunkTron]

TWIAFU, on 26 May 2017 - 02:41 AM, said:

Supporting inclusion of new players into CW is only supporting leading seals to my club. Yes, think about the new player and how to stop them from being able to make a horrible decision until they are ready.

I came up with an idea a few months ago in which new players/accounts could only access FP once they purchase a mech from each weight class and perform a minimum number of upgrades. A UI would be needed to remind and guide them about what they have to do to finally unlock access to dropping in FP, but the idea is that by the time a new player has purchased a mech of each weight class performed at least minimal (read basic) upgrades, they will likely have at least some amount of battlefield awareness and the slaughter will be less cruel than it is now.

During that time, there could also be a set of challenges for them to complete (just like we have during weekly events) such as get X number of KMDD, supported medium, group formation, etc... related to each weight class to help teach and encourage behaviors that are successful in FP.

This would provide an interesting and engaging way for players to know that they are training toward the more competitive nature of FP while keeping them from it just long enough for them to get some experience and figuring out how to better handle the game.

[Grus]

SuperFunkTron, on 27 May 2017 - 06:49 AM, said:

I came up with an idea a few months ago in which new players/accounts could only access FP once they purchase a mech from each weight class and perform a minimum number of upgrades. A UI would be needed to remind and guide them about what they have to do to finally unlock access to dropping in FP, but the idea is that by the time a new player has purchased a mech of each weight class performed at least minimal (read basic) upgrades, they will likely have at least some amount of battlefield awareness and the slaughter will be less cruel than it is now.

During that time, there could also be a set of challenges for them to complete (just like we have during weekly events) such as get X number of KMDD, supported medium, group formation, etc... related to each weight class to help teach and encourage behaviors that are successful in FP.

This would provide an interesting and engaging way for players to know that they are training toward the more competitive nature of FP while keeping them from it just long enough for them to get some experience and figuring out how to better handle the game.

one does not simply go into 0.0 (some of you will get it)

[Commander A9]

I get it Grus. Although I prefer 1.0-0.5...I did mostly incursions, and I miss it either way (it's an EVE Online joke).

Meanwhile, I've been thinking about this lately.

By "grow" of course, I think you mean increase the regular participation and increase interest in the mode.

At this point, I see PGI doing this by:
-hosting more Community Warfare-specific events with prizes such as the Federated Commonwealth Civil War of Steiner versus Davion, the Clan Refusal War of Clan Jade Falcon versus Clan Wolf, and Operation: Bulldog of Clan Smoke Jaguar versus Kurita
-offer a use for unit coffers that is directly related to Community Warfare: it used to be that units holding tags over planets could 'buy' reinforcements in the form of additional blocks/buckets that had to be claimed in the attackers' favor, but with the advent of the tug-of-war, this system is gone
-develop new and interesting maps and modes, such as 8-on-8 battles or objective-based play that is sensible for both sides to participate in
-give people a reason to play, incentive, rewards for playing

Although the issue is that by doing all of this, PGI takes developers off-track from producing new mech packs, which is what makes PGI the most money. PGI's number-one goal is to make money, as they are a for-profit corporation. Profit powers your servers as much as it pays the developers to make new content.

So...we're really stuck...

Edited by Commander A9, 27 May 2017 - 01:02 PM.

[TWIAFU]

meteorol, on 27 May 2017 - 05:52 AM, said:

I'm joining every bucket, because i need all low lvl mechbays. It doesn't matter. Even after all factions were merged to one queue, CW is pretty much deserted. I would have been able to play like 30 QP matches in the time i waited for CW matches. That's how bad it is. That's not a "oh well, CW doesn't do so well right now".

As for moving up bays up higher... take away incetives to play CW, and people will simply stop playing it. Exactly what an almost dead gamemode needs. I wouldn't touch CW nowadays if it wasn't for the bays. I'm outscoring like 85% of CWs population with trial mechs on my alt. If you don't want players like me in CW, fine. But cutting down its population even further won't help it right now.

Man, sounds like it sucks to play solo in CW, glad I don't. Not like your there to actually participate, so I guess you get out of it what you put in.

[Fake News]

i think it grows from hate. hate and salt. forum salt. and then more hate.

[Insanity09]

Apologies for a wall of text, but I would actually like FW to thrive.

Balance the factions.
The coming "new tech" may help with that. Any game that tries to makes sides different but equal is in for a world of hurt, case in point.
The job isn't easy, but it absolutely must be done.
Serious data mining, and perhaps some specifically designed testing scenarios might be needed to do the job right, which might mean <gasp> PGI would need to work with the community in an organized fashion.
(Note: many folks will say there is no need to balance the factions, since it is teamwork that will dominate. That is true to a point. However, a much larger population playing FW would almost certainly mean a much larger PUG vs PUG population, and in pugland, a faction imbalance would weigh heavily. That assumes, of course, that the new FW pop pugs are not simply driven back to QP by getting totally owned by the units.
And, in case it isn't clear, we want a much larger population playing FW. Yes?)

FW training wheels?
I have absolutely no idea how it would work, but some sort of tutorial or quick scenario based thing to give you some idea of how to actually work together as a team would go a long way to helping ease people into FW. A faction voice yelling at you in the turtorial to stay with the group of AI mechs, a big failure alert when you don't do it. Calls for pushes, calls to attack a particular enemy, etc., etc. All basic teamwork skills that are part of minimally acceptable FW team play, with perhaps some faction reputation for a successful completion of this tutorial? (enough to get you the first rank?)

Limited team/group size?
Again, I hate suggesting it, but since it is patently obvious that big units and teams dominate FW, perhaps limiting the group size to 6 (or whatever) in FW would mitigate that? Then each side would be comprised of at least 2 different units, which would hopefully make things a little less one-sided? (you have no idea how much I hate this idea, but if it helps the game mode survive...)

Events, often
Events do offer a great way to get people to pay the mode. Why? They give clear objectives with rewards for doing so. That is something people understand. I think every event should have a couple (optional) FW objectives that give high value rewards.
Once people are accustomed to playing in the mode, they are more likely to be willing to do it again.

Make the mode mean something.
Right now, honestly, nobody really seems to care about who owns what on the FW map. And why should they? The only people who might care a little are those big units who claim ownership of the conquered planets. They get a little mc to share around. Yay for them, but the vast majority of the people who fought for that conquest get diddly squat.
What if the planets actually had meaning? A known manufacturing world would result the owning faction getting a minor price break on some items (weapons, mechs, whatever?). A training center might mean better xp out of each match. A banking world might result in a minor boost to your faction's cbill rewards from every match. And so on.
Now, suppose that had an impact on those not just those folks in FW, but even those in QP (based on declared faction)? If people knew that a little help in faction warfare might mean they got some sort of extra benefit, more folks might be encouraged to play the mode. Maybe?
Much work would be needed to make the concept functional, but I think it has promise.

Offer better incentives.
Let's face it, for numerous reasons, FW feels like a more difficult mode. It is certainly more complicated, and truly highlights teamwork, so it IS more difficult for many people. More difficulty should mean more reward.
The rewards need to be more attainable and clearly superior for people to be encouraged to play it.
I hate to even suggest it (another currency? please), but some sort of loyalty points need to be put in place. This is in addition to the existing faction reputation system (which might need some adjusting to make it a bit more achievable for the less hardcore players?).
These loyalty points would allow you to buy things, consumables, weapons, etc, and some items specific to your faction, including cockpit items and mechs (variants associated with a particular faction). Prices... well, those could be determined later, and how fast you could earn these points would be another wonderful balancing act.

[meteorol]

TWIAFU, on 27 May 2017 - 02:03 PM, said:

Man, sounds like it sucks to play solo in CW, glad I don't. Not like your there to actually participate, so I guess you get out of it what you put in.

Playing solo in CW is fine. I have averaged a w/l above 2 and a k/d above 3.5 dropping solo all the time. It's just that CW itself is bad. Which is the reason it is empty.

I got JF loyalty to 18, most others (Clan and IS) to 10+. Playing solo was never an issue for me. I played twice as much CW as QP for most parts of the time after CW was released. What got me salty is not dropping solo, but the fact that PGI never improved the sh*tshow CW was from the beginning. I kept playing, hoping things would improve (especially mapdesign of Siege maps), but they didn't.

The addition of QP maps is really the only thing that makes me even click on the "faction play" button nowadays. If it wasn't for that, i would simply buy MC for mechbays on my alt.

Edited by meteorol, 28 May 2017 - 12:37 AM.

[LordNothing]

the thing thats missing is missions. every mech game had missions. youd have to do it like assault mode from unreal where every map has a different mission. or even a number of missions for each map. mode/map paradigmn is more for arena shooters. oh wait, i forgot pgi tried to turn a mech sim into a shooter. i always forget about that. meh. let it burn.

[SuperFunkTron]

LordNothing, on 02 June 2017 - 03:49 AM, said:

the thing thats missing is missions. every mech game had missions. youd have to do it like assault mode from unreal where every map has a different mission. or even a number of missions for each map. mode/map paradigmn is more for arena shooters. oh wait, i forgot pgi tried to turn a mech sim into a shooter. i always forget about that. meh. let it burn.

I'm not trying to be asinine here but isn't a mech sim really just a shooter slowed down? I'm just trying to understand what the different expectations are beyond making sure fast a la CoD are not a thing.

[Insanity09]

It seems to me that missions are not really suited to an MMO shooter, and MWO does fall into that broad category.
Missions, in the way that I recall from my play time in parts of the MW single player franchise, were based on very specific scenarios that would be very difficult, if not impossible to contrive in MWO.

However, it strikes me that events, which typically do show a population boost, kind of serve the mission function, in a liberal sense.

[Grus]

Insanity09, on 27 May 2017 - 11:26 PM, said:

Apologies for a wall of text, but I would actually like FW to thrive.

Balance the factions.
The coming &quot;new tech&quot; may help with that. Any game that tries to makes sides different but equal is in for a world of hurt, case in point.
The job isn't easy, but it absolutely must be done.
Serious data mining, and perhaps some specifically designed testing scenarios might be needed to do the job right, which might mean &lt;gasp&gt; PGI would need to work with the community in an organized fashion.
(Note: many folks will say there is no need to balance the factions, since it is teamwork that will dominate. That is true to a point. However, a much larger population playing FW would almost certainly mean a much larger PUG vs PUG population, and in pugland, a faction imbalance would weigh heavily. That assumes, of course, that the new FW pop pugs are not simply driven back to QP by getting totally owned by the units.
And, in case it isn't clear, we want a much larger population playing FW. Yes?)

FW training wheels?
I have absolutely no idea how it would work, but some sort of tutorial or quick scenario based thing to give you some idea of how to actually work together as a team would go a long way to helping ease people into FW. A faction voice yelling at you in the turtorial to stay with the group of AI mechs, a big failure alert when you don't do it. Calls for pushes, calls to attack a particular enemy, etc., etc. All basic teamwork skills that are part of minimally acceptable FW team play, with perhaps some faction reputation for a successful completion of this tutorial? (enough to get you the first rank?)

Limited team/group size?
Again, I hate suggesting it, but since it is patently obvious that big units and teams dominate FW, perhaps limiting the group size to 6 (or whatever) in FW would mitigate that? Then each side would be comprised of at least 2 different units, which would hopefully make things a little less one-sided? (you have no idea how much I hate this idea, but if it helps the game mode survive...)

Events, often
Events do offer a great way to get people to pay the mode. Why? They give clear objectives with rewards for doing so. That is something people understand. I think every event should have a couple (optional) FW objectives that give high value rewards.
Once people are accustomed to playing in the mode, they are more likely to be willing to do it again.

Make the mode mean something.
Right now, honestly, nobody really seems to care about who owns what on the FW map. And why should they? The only people who might care a little are those big units who claim ownership of the conquered planets. They get a little mc to share around. Yay for them, but the vast majority of the people who fought for that conquest get diddly squat.
What if the planets actually had meaning? A known manufacturing world would result the owning faction getting a minor price break on some items (weapons, mechs, whatever?). A training center might mean better xp out of each match. A banking world might result in a minor boost to your faction's cbill rewards from every match. And so on.
Now, suppose that had an impact on those not just those folks in FW, but even those in QP (based on declared faction)? If people knew that a little help in faction warfare might mean they got some sort of extra benefit, more folks might be encouraged to play the mode. Maybe?
Much work would be needed to make the concept functional, but I think it has promise.

Offer better incentives.
Let's face it, for numerous reasons, FW feels like a more difficult mode. It is certainly more complicated, and truly highlights teamwork, so it IS more difficult for many people. More difficulty should mean more reward.
The rewards need to be more attainable and clearly superior for people to be encouraged to play it.
I hate to even suggest it (another currency? please), but some sort of loyalty points need to be put in place. This is in addition to the existing faction reputation system (which might need some adjusting to make it a bit more achievable for the less hardcore players?).
These loyalty points would allow you to buy things, consumables, weapons, etc, and some items specific to your faction, including cockpit items and mechs (variants associated with a particular faction). Prices... well, those could be determined later, and how fast you could earn these points would be another wonderful balancing act.

quite sensible really.

[Commander A9]

Limiting the teams to a certain-sized group will do nothing to improve Faction Play.

If anything, it will turn teams off to playing.

The whole point is to play as a team. Why punish that?

[LordNothing]

SuperFunkTron, on 02 June 2017 - 08:16 AM, said:

I'm not trying to be asinine here but isn't a mech sim really just a shooter slowed down? I'm just trying to understand what the different expectations are beyond making sure fast a la CoD are not a thing.

"shooter" is not a very good description for a game genre. ive heard the term used on everything from asteroids, top down scrollers, platformers, fps games, 6dof games, various vehicular combat games, etc. its a terrible name for a genre because its so broad that it looses all meaning. you can literally apply it to any game where you shoot things.

compare this to "sim" which is a more detailed approach, where you put a lot of thought into how things work to try to model complex mechanics to make things as realistic as possible. it makes no claim about the actual pace of gameplay. by that definition a mech sim would go to extreme detail in simulating mech combat. this game completely lacks the extreme detail aspect of what makes a sim a sim. even compared to the previous mechwarrior games, which themselves were only moderately sim-ish.

the two genres do blend fairly well with eachother, previous mechwarrior games did this very well. living legends pushed the sim features to the max with the way it handles electronic warfare. mwo just dumbed things down to an absurd level compared to its predecessors and then ticked up the pace of the game considerably, threw in some shoddy weapon mechanics that no real military would tolerate in their arsenal, weak environmental diversity (all planets in the is seem amazingly earth like). this was likely done especially to draw in the cod crowd instead of marketing to the niche, and frankly had they done that we wouldn't have a fraction of the player base we have today despite the game being better for it.

i can live without properly simulated actuators and sensors that can be blasted away, or having your pilot pass out if life support is hit while on hpg manifold. those would actually be great low cost sim features to have mind you. russ has brought up the complexity vs depth argument when questioned about these things. mind you things like quirks and even the new skill tree fall into the complexity category imho. even if they do also bring in additional depth, id even argue that the two concepts are connected and cant be put into opposition.

[Willard Phule]

Gerwig, on 25 May 2017 - 06:44 PM, said:

Logged on and instead of trying to find a group, I just decided to drop solo and see where it takes me. That was about 20 mins ago and it is still searching. Imagine being a new player... I hope with this next update or future update they one day tear this apart. CW has had it's ups and downs but wait times and pugs vs. groups has and will always kill this game mode, no matter how balanced you make it. Always still hoping for the best.

Actually, if a new player is trying to drop into FW, I'd prefer it if he had to wait 20+ minutes for a match. HOPEFULLY he'll get discouraged and go back to QP where he belongs.

[Insanity09]

That sentiment, @Willard Phule, is a part of why FW is in trouble, population-wise.

The path of wisdom, oh scaramouche, might be to be more welcoming and less hypercritical of people who want to join FW.

The purpose of this thread (and others) is to brainstorm how that might be done. Not to kill the ideas and the mode.

[Zolaz]

If we want FW to thrive, PGI should just hire HBS to fix it.

[AssaultPig]

increasing the incentive to play FP is the wrong approach; as we've seen with tukkayyid and other events you can get people into the mode with strong incentives, but 1) they leave after the incentive is gone and 2) it creates a general negative environment, since people are doing something they don't enjoy only for the rewards.

"making it mean something" is kind of a similar issue: if the core gameplay isn't engaging most people won't care whether there is any metagame to speak of. By contrast if the basic gameplay is fun, people will play whether there's an interesting meta or not.

so the question is, how do you make FP something that people actively want to log in and play? If you have a large-ish regular group it's fun to log in and play with them ofc, but as we've seen large groups are not enough to sustain the mode on their own.