425 replies to this topic

[Leggin Ho]

MadBadger, on 05 June 2017 - 02:58 AM, said:

There is a difference between fixing a known, demonstrable problem that has a record of complaints stretching back to the creation of CW, and worrying about a potential but unlikely problem that only seems to be possible if you postulate an extreme player imbalance of some sort.

Do you really feel that teams of newbies, tier 4's, and 'better player alts' are going to start sweeping planets and claiming rewards? Are the current FP rewards even really worth worrying about? Are the FP units and teams unable to take planets from newbies?

I'd say that if you had a team of true Tier 4 player vs a team with 4 or more "alt" tier 4 accounts in it that would be exactly what will happen. I have seen a 4 or 5 man group destroy a 10 or 12 man team, heck I've been part of that 5 man group and I'm only tier 3.

[Scyther]

Right, so, waves of FP players will create new accounts so they can win a couple battles at tier 4 before they get bumped to tier 3, where they can win a dozen more battles before getting bumped to tier 2. And these waves of newbies and alts will sweep the rewards that rightfully belong to 'true' FP players (who half of these are alts of anyway).

Yeah, that one keeps me up at night, too.

[James Argent]

Isn't Tier only affected by QP results? If so, new alt accounts can simply never touch QP and remain in the FW T5 queue for as long as they wish. Likewise, those wishing to play in the big league FW queues would have to leave FW to grind tier in QP. Both of which would make splitting by tier a dumb idea.

Make it a solo/group queue split (NOT unit tagged/untagged) just like what works perfectly well in QP. Since as we read here all the time that teamwork is why the best teams always win in such an overwhelming manner, one or two big bads dropping solo is not going to drive people away even if they do club all the seals on which they can get their mechs' hands.

[naterist]

ok, ive got the best idea of all.

you only let small groups into the sametech events, and when you average 1000 damage, calculated from your most recent 10 sametech battles, you unlock access to the clan vs IS conflict.

seems really simple.


edit: for you realists, think of it this way, no average joe off the streets just joins a mercenary unit. they tend to take people already trained because they dont wanna drop money training you. thats why they recruit ex-military (duh), so having new players have to start as loyalists to do the sametech que if their unitless, then maybe finding a merc unit in clan/is que, is like when someone joins the military then gets hired right after getting discharged.

and by making it limited to groups of 3, you can have 1 or 2 experienced players take out a new guy for some expoerience in the sametech que.

Edited by naterist, 05 June 2017 - 10:42 AM.

[MischiefSC]

Pat Kell, on 05 June 2017 - 02:50 AM, said:

Just to be clear, I don't want to fight against people who are new to the game or who aren't very good. It gets boring. My concern is the same as it was with long tom. A separate game mode would essentially determine the winner of another game mode if one side could completely dominant the other. If you are going to split the ques, you have to have separate maps for each que that you create imo. I was simply pointing out an issue with splitting it into tiers (as one possible example). If you think that I want to farm pugs and utterly crush them, you are wrong. Not sure how else to put it. I just don't want to fix one "unfair" situation by creating another one. I have said it before, I don't know the answer to this issue or if there even is one, I just think that you have to be careful not to create additional problems when trying to fix the one that is being claimed here.

That's why I'm against a 'split queue'.

Put the content in pug queue. Let people who just want to derp it go do so in pug queue. It should be unrelated to FW.

The lack of depth and purpose to taking worlds in FW is a big part of the core issue. Splitting queues just exacerbates that. If someone wants to compete for the rewards in FW (be that LP or MC or something bigger/better in FWs future) they do so against everyone else in FW. That's the crux of the mode; you're swimming in the deep end. Nobody gets to win the world cup but only play junior league teams.

[Pat Kell]

MadBadger, on 05 June 2017 - 02:58 AM, said:

There is a difference between fixing a known, demonstrable problem that has a record of complaints stretching back to the creation of CW, and worrying about a potential but unlikely problem that only seems to be possible if you postulate an extreme player imbalance of some sort.

Do you really feel that teams of newbies, tier 4's, and 'better player alts' are going to start sweeping planets and claiming rewards? Are the current FP rewards even really worth worrying about? Are the FP units and teams unable to take planets from newbies?

No, what I am saying is that whether it happens or doesn't happen is irrelevant. The fact that a whole group of players are unable to participate in matches that can determine whether or not a planet is taken is just flat out BS. You could do absolutely great all night long but if the lower or higher tiers on your side don't also do great, you can't take the planet and because I can't play in a certain segment of those matches to try and improve the odds of taking a planet then it's not right. Granted, I can't play in every single match that is played but that's not the point. It's the ability to play in those matches that is the point, especially if they are matches that are going to help determine whether or not my efforts and the efforts of my unit and the efforts of my faction are going to be rewarded with taking a planet or not.

[Leggin Ho]

MadBadger, on 05 June 2017 - 06:53 AM, said:

Right, so, waves of FP players will create new accounts so they can win a couple battles at tier 4 before they get bumped to tier 3, where they can win a dozen more battles before getting bumped to tier 2. And these waves of newbies and alts will sweep the rewards that rightfully belong to 'true' FP players (who half of these are alts of anyway).

Yeah, that one keeps me up at night, too.

Most folks already have Alt accounts, and if you did not know only QP matches affect your Tier, I don't play QP often which is why I'm sitting at Tier 3 where I have been since day one of them putting it into place in QP. Once FW came out I pretty much stopped playing QP unless there was an even that was worth fooling with the QP players.

[50 50]

Even as it is right now, the scouting mode has created a split of player base.
The more we split the player base in any sort of queue system, be it solo/group or by tier we still have to meet a really hefty minimum requirement of 12 clan players vs 12 IS players.
It can even be difficult to get the necessary 4 v 4 for scouting.
This of course will vary wildly depending on the timezone you play in but it is the wait time issue.

Creating 'fair' match ups requires not only a decent match maker but also a large and stable base of players at all times of the day/night participating in the Faction Warfare. Even if there was a match maker, there would still be complaints. It happens in quick play now and we've had it there for years.

So, why continually trudge blindly on in the same direction?
Why not say bugger it, let's create more visibility to the queues and who is dropped on the planets so we can make our own choice.
Consider how it was prior to the bucket merge when we had the list of contested planets and see how many people were queued up.
If we had more flexibility in the system and better visibility to who was queued we get to decide if we are going to drop onto that planet or pick another one.

However, we do need to add to the mode the ability for solo players and small groups to actually participate in Faction Play.
We can set up the mode so that they can still achieve something and contribute to their faction's war effort.
We just need to have it setup so that the 'end game content'..... if you could really call it that, but I guess that is what capturing the planet equates to... is something that can only be achieved by a team.
That way we allow players on both sides of the spectrum to participate.

We might be able to argue that this is what Scout mode is for.
Let's think about that for a moment though.
1. It's disconnected from Invasion matches. That is, it's not a dynamic effort within a single Invasion scenario.
2. Scouting lets 4 players change the mode and game experience for 12 players. The invasion effort does nothing to scouting.
3. At least in the invasion mode with the inclusion of the other maps and objectives there is some variety and a sense of having different levels of battle. But scouting is a very limited scope and in terms of doing the same thing over and over again, because of the speed at which the mode is played, it's probably worse than it was when we only had Siege for Invasion.

There are lots of ways to change the mode to not only allow it to be more inclusive, less restrictive but to also retain that high end game for teams. The question is, can it be done under the current structures or should we think outside the box?

[Pat Kell]

That is very well put 50 50. I agree that something needs to be done and maybe thinking of non-traditional ways to fix it could work. Again, I don't know what could be done to fix it or make it better. All of the ideas I have seen so far have the potential for doing some good but also have the potential for making it worse. I am willing to try anything out to be honest with ya but if an idea is presented that I think will cause problems, I am not going to sit silently and just let it happen without at least making people aware of the possible consequences. It doesn't mean I won't still play, I just want to give people as access to as many viewpoints as possible.

[Insanity09]

I'll give it one more shot.

A change to split the FW queues, using the (flawed) tier method, would not cause the problem you seem to fear, Kell.

Why not?
One. Players from all tiers would be present on both sides of the fight, so your side would still have people actively fighting.
Two. Ghost drops. While boring as all heck, a ghost drop takes 10 minutes (shorter than most FW matches), and racks up a win for your side. So, even if by some twist there were no enemies in your tier bracket, you'd still be having an impact on that capture bar.
And, if those are not enough...
Three. Desperate matchmaking. Assuming that PGI did decide on a tier based matchmaker, it seems reasonable they'd rely heavily on the existing tier based MM code used in QP. That MM does start throwing high tiers in with low when population is sufficiently low. Which means that ghost drops would likely be no more common than they are now.
PGI has shown a glimmering of both wisdom and idiocy in that. They seem to be aware that getting no drops sucks, and took some code based steps to lessen wait times. Of course, that results in some newbie crushing even in QP, and that is one of the big things we're trying to avoid here, but anyhow...

Now, as far as you personally getting into each and every fight... give up the idea, it doesn't happen now, and it won't happen if the queue gets split in some fashion.

I won't go into every reason that a tier based queue for FW would be flawed, some of it has been done above. I'll just reiterate that there would be better ways to handle a queue split (also pointed to above).

[Pat Kell]

Not getting what I am saying at all are you. It's not about being in every match and it's not about any possible imbalance it's about not having the ability to do it if you split the ques. If you are going to allow for desperate matchmaking then you don't really have split ques because you allow low tiers into a match with higher tiers. I would be all for that too though but again, that's not what I am talking about. It's about being banned from playing in a match that I don't want to be a part of.

[AssaultPig]

what they should do is just add drop decks to QP; it'd easy things up for the QP matchmaker, and those of us who like the four mech format can just play QP and leave capturing imaginary planets to the folks who think no-matchmaking is a good time

[Cato Zilks]

@Insanity09, as Leggin Ho points outs tiers do not reflect FP skill. I am only marginally better than I was when I was tier 4, because I spent most of my tier 4-5 time playing FP. If you put Pat, Mischief, and Leggin on a team, their tier would be 2 (assuming Pat is 1). I can make a 12 man of QP-only-tier one players in my faction that would lose brutally to a 6 man of tier-2-avg FP-vets (like the Pat, Mischief, and Leggin group) + 6 tier-three pugs. The tier rankings are not useful for measuring how well people work together. You are not proposing a system that will properly sort talent.

What you want is for the "good" FP players to play each other. Pat Kell, one such player, wants to play other good players. I think his attitude is representative of many "good" players. Instead of creating a clunky system to isolate and sort talent, lets just give Pat Kell and other good players like him the ability to get matches against each other.

Give groups an option to check a hard mode box, that adds no more than 30 seconds to their wait but increases the chances of getting paired with other competent groups. It increases that chances both of getting better players on your own team in addition to facing better players. It isolates nobody and decreases the odds that puggles will face better teams. It also avoids all the problems of PSR and PSR's complete uselessness in FP.

https://mwomercs.com...ost__p__5768996

Edited by Cato Zilks, 06 June 2017 - 10:51 AM.

[Scyther]

I would totally support a 'hard mode' tickbox. Call it 'Seek Glory in Battle?' I would think it should be incentivized with either better rewards or some special currency that can be used for special rewards. (I would extend it to a minute longer wait though)

I wouldn't say it would 'solve' the issue of training/introducing/welcoming players new to FP, but if it was used by a lot of the better players it would make a big difference.

And if it wasn't used by many FP players, well that would tell us something too.

[Pat Kell]

I would absolutely support a "hard mode button" and something like this was proposed during the first round table meeting if I remember correctly. It was definitely something that was discussed during the pre-meetings (can't remember for sure if it got brought up so PGI could hear it though to be honest).

[McHoshi]

naterist, on 27 May 2017 - 07:29 PM, said:

Oh look, clans win polar highlands again. Im shocked.

Bring your OP Battlemaster and not your LURM **** - then maybe then also you could win a Match on Polar!

[Mycroft000]

The "Hard Mode" idea was discussed, but PGI has yet to attempt to use it in any way.

[naterist]

i feel like if all the units who want fw to be hard mode just went and played a lot of comp, a lot of problems would be fixed.

[Pat Kell]

naterist, on 06 June 2017 - 04:22 PM, said:

i feel like if all the units who want fw to be hard mode just went and played a lot of comp, a lot of problems would be fixed.

No it wouldn't...someone else would just take their place. Lower the bar doesn't fix problems, it just allows a different set of people to rise to the top...

[justcallme A S H]

Crockdaddy, on 02 June 2017 - 08:02 PM, said:

I know this is heresy ... but maybe we don't allow groups bigger than say 6 in FP matches. If pugging is as big as it supposedly is then it shouldn't be a big deal to the all important 99% of the voting (paying) population right? I'd be fine with it but then again my unit has not fielded multi-12 man groups in a very long time so I do have some self interest here.

Or go the other way.

Don't let anyone with LESS than 4 people into FP?

Either way after PGI mandated 7 day break for calling a spade a spade... I can't believe this topic is still going!

Crockdaddy, on 03 June 2017 - 05:13 AM, said:

Its a dumb idea but I like the fun of a chunk of guys working together with a bigger group of solos. I often enjoy drop calling when not farming for damage and ePeen.

Glad you do.

I've gone the other way, PUGs have become so bad and so often refuse to work together/wanna argue - it's become a chore now so I don't bother. Just run on comms with our 4-6 man and just do what we do.

naterist, on 06 June 2017 - 04:22 PM, said:

i feel like if all the units who want fw to be hard mode just went and played a lot of comp, a lot of problems would be fixed.

Lots already do play comp?

We had 2 teams entered this MRBC season among many teams both Clan, IS and Merc. Most teams improved over last season's efforts too across the board. Maybe you guys should enter as well, it will improve your play.

Edited by justcallme A S H, 06 June 2017 - 07:02 PM.