#121
Posted 11 July 2017 - 04:10 PM
boom, solos are still able to be apart of things, but we never see a 12 man vs 12 solos. also keeps ques flowing faster.
how to make it interesting? roleplay elements. more rewards, npc's, swag, a place for friendly trashtalking, alliances between factions, more money for the losing side, so that even a loss gets you about the same or more than what you would have earned in qp, and opening up the mc rewards a little.
#122
Posted 11 July 2017 - 04:18 PM
50 50, on 11 July 2017 - 03:08 AM, said:
A MechWarrior conspiracy!
Word of Blake working behind the scenes.
I know for a fact there was at least 1 secret player roundtable in the fall of 2015. Its not really that big of a deal but at the time I felt like leaving out Mercstar was pretty dumb. At that time Mercstar was the great satan of CW.
If you look at how phase 3 went down, everything PGI did to marginalize Mercstar sized units actually ruined CW entirely. Since we couldn't be at any of these Roundables, which there is a high chance there was more than 1, phase 3 features gives you a window into their discussions.
Its to complicated to explain it all without it being a long post but Phase 3 cleared out our teamspeak server.
Edited by Kin3ticX, 11 July 2017 - 04:24 PM.
#123
Posted 11 July 2017 - 07:06 PM
Personally, I felt that if MercStar and other similarly large units took it upon themselves to break down into smaller groups it may have had the effect of creating more activity around the galaxy and headed off some of the changes like unit taxes.
At that stage in the game we were able to pick the planet to drop on from the planet finder list so we were sync dropping anyway.
Should be a feature of the call to arms as well. Call in allied units etc.
Meh.
I've been trying to push along the idea that Faction Play needs a more open and less restrictive system. Open Warfare.
Had the thought last night, and in light of Koniving's comments earlier in this thread, that perhaps we should look at the battles and our groups at the lance level more.
At the moment the whole game is designed around 2 teams split into 3 lances each.
What if for faction warfare we looked at it more from the perspective of 6 teams but we can only deploy one lance at a time?
I am not suggesting we limit group size to a single lance.
I am suggesting that a group can still consist of 4, 8 or 12 players, the multiples of 4 are so we meet the lance requirement. The restriction is to only deploy into battle a lance (4 players) at a time so even if you have a 12 player group setup, only one lance can be active at a time if that is all that you are facing.
If we want to get matches started faster, then this would allow a larger group to participate against a smaller group as it keeps the battle as 4 v 4. What the bigger group gets is endurance, an ability to rotate players and mechs out and allow their next wave in.
A smaller group will feel that attrition faster, but will not be outnumbered in the field.
That may be a way to work around available players at any given time.
The change needed is allowing us to stack players in lance queues.
A second change is not to allow a second group to join until they have an opponent so we do not run into the situation of 12 players breaking up into 3 groups to turn a battle into 12 v 4 but we could allow a large stacked group to break out to another lance should more players form on the other side.
However, we may want to be able to merge groups so we could have 3 groups of 4 merge into one group of 12 to queue up as a specified lance which would then let more players join.
Note that this does nothing to address other problems and is only directed at a way to improve if not resolve wait times.
Should we be able to get this working we get an interesting situation where we can have 72 (6 teams of 12) players involved in a single battle setup in waves.
We are just counting and matching the groups according to number of lances which should allow some flexibility in getting a game.
Might work.
Be interesting to try at the very least, but I can see a few problems with it.
Edit: Changed my mind.
Was trying to preserve the ability to still form larger groups while getting matches faster, but it's just too awkward.
Could probably make it work by forcing groups to a multiple of 4 and then end up with 3 different types of matches based on those groups. 4 v 4, 8 v 8 and 12 v 12 but this would rely heavily on having enough players.. which is a problem in itself.
The other alternative is to limit groups to a lance, no more no less than 4 and then allow the system to match up 4 v 4 and let others join in as a second 4 v 4 or something. The problem with this is that if you are late to the match, you may not get much out of it.
I think the only way to ensure we get matches instantly is to create our own buckets as an attacker and let others join in or make their own.... which needs other changes to how the mode actually works and plays out.
Edited by 50 50, 12 July 2017 - 02:32 PM.
#124
Posted 11 July 2017 - 08:19 PM
Kin3ticX, on 11 July 2017 - 04:18 PM, said:
I know for a fact there was at least 1 secret player roundtable in the fall of 2015. Its not really that big of a deal but at the time I felt like leaving out Mercstar was pretty dumb. At that time Mercstar was the great satan of CW.
If you look at how phase 3 went down, everything PGI did to marginalize Mercstar sized units actually ruined CW entirely. Since we couldn't be at any of these Roundables, which there is a high chance there was more than 1, phase 3 features gives you a window into their discussions.
Its to complicated to explain it all without it being a long post but Phase 3 cleared out our teamspeak server.
Phase 3 was the end of active NS participation as well. A year later I purged 100 from the FP roster just to remove the recruitment penalty. At the start of FP we numbered 45 / 50 active players. Overtime we grew into a strong FP unit and later a solid MRBC Div B team. Phase 3 was such a waste ... we had our fun running long toms into the enemy but many of the changes were not much to speak of in a positive manner for Faction Play and the MWOC 88 match crap resulted in 1/2 our main stay players moving to other games. Every now and then I can get a temporary surge of NS guys online and active but unless I decide to get active myself and recruit fresh players we are likely to just stay in idle mode as a unit until the game folds, migrates to a new engine with fresh ideas. I don't know which will happen first but we've been around 15 years of Mechwarrior / BT games ... I expect we will in some form be around in the future ... but the present it's pretty low on roster turn out.
#125
Posted 11 July 2017 - 08:28 PM
Incredible write-ups are made, someone drags out the CW video that PGI sold us all on, we get worked up, another town hall is held and nothing....
I had my own write-up made again.... I deleted it. I just can't. Almost 3 years wasted and all those purchased Clan Packs for a shell of what it should have been.
I'm done. See you in QP.
#126
Posted 11 July 2017 - 08:48 PM
Crockdaddy, on 11 July 2017 - 08:19 PM, said:
Phase 3 was the end of active NS participation as well. A year later I purged 100 from the FP roster just to remove the recruitment penalty. At the start of FP we numbered 45 / 50 active players. Overtime we grew into a strong FP unit and later a solid MRBC Div B team. Phase 3 was such a waste ... we had our fun running long toms into the enemy but many of the changes were not much to speak of in a positive manner for Faction Play and the MWOC 88 match crap resulted in 1/2 our main stay players moving to other games. Every now and then I can get a temporary surge of NS guys online and active but unless I decide to get active myself and recruit fresh players we are likely to just stay in idle mode as a unit until the game folds, migrates to a new engine with fresh ideas. I don't know which will happen first but we've been around 15 years of Mechwarrior / BT games ... I expect we will in some form be around in the future ... but the present it's pretty low on roster turn out.
What would it take to get PGI to do a system restore on the CW servers back to like mid 2015?
Edited by Kin3ticX, 11 July 2017 - 08:49 PM.
#127
Posted 11 July 2017 - 09:10 PM
Kin3ticX, on 11 July 2017 - 08:48 PM, said:
What would it take to get PGI to do a system restore on the CW servers back to like mid 2015?
That's not the problem with CW/FW/FP, from the first iteration to present, the game mode has been hollow. It has always lacked content, real content that binds a community and faction together in which to fight for. The initial promises by PGI would have given us reason to fight and continue to fight. Hope was what kept this community going forward.
Hope wasted.
#128
Posted 11 July 2017 - 10:14 PM
Alteran, on 11 July 2017 - 09:10 PM, said:
That's not the problem with CW/FW/FP, from the first iteration to present, the game mode has been hollow. It has always lacked content, real content that binds a community and faction together in which to fight for. The initial promises by PGI would have given us reason to fight and continue to fight. Hope was what kept this community going forward.
Hope wasted.
All PGI needed to do was take phase 2 and piecemeal updates every couple months, little updates even. Not waste time with 4v4 when 12v12 needed additional polishing. Certainly not waste time with atomic artillery. They redid most of the CW UI but it had very little more in features and no features to help grow space nerd politics. Space nerd politics is the key to CW.
Some of us wanted a hard aliance system of ~4-5 factions but PGI had to gut the whole thing down to 1 bukkit. There is almost no point to the faction play map.
Putting quickplay maps into CW was only brilliant provided it wasn't dropdecks. But noooo, PGI has to arrange a shotgun marriage and just throw it together because "thats what the roundtable told us".
It was half smart in the sense that they used quickplay maps to marginalize the highly unpopular invasion mode, but then failed to realize 48v48 was bad for quickplay maps.
Edited by Kin3ticX, 11 July 2017 - 10:16 PM.
#129
Posted 12 July 2017 - 05:23 AM
Kin3ticX, on 11 July 2017 - 10:14 PM, said:
All PGI needed to do was take phase 2 and piecemeal updates every couple months, little updates even. Not waste time with 4v4 when 12v12 needed additional polishing. Certainly not waste time with atomic artillery. They redid most of the CW UI but it had very little more in features and no features to help grow space nerd politics. Space nerd politics is the key to CW.
Some of us wanted a hard aliance system of ~4-5 factions but PGI had to gut the whole thing down to 1 bukkit. There is almost no point to the faction play map.
Putting quickplay maps into CW was only brilliant provided it wasn't dropdecks. But noooo, PGI has to arrange a shotgun marriage and just throw it together because "thats what the roundtable told us".
It was half smart in the sense that they used quickplay maps to marginalize the highly unpopular invasion mode, but then failed to realize 48v48 was bad for quickplay maps.
Kin3ticX is right. The space nerd politics meant and was everything. Its why games like ARK work so well. Your Tribe against the world. Fight to the death. Crust your enemies and hear the lamentations of the Davion's ... the piteous cries of the Mariks ... tasting the salt of a twitch stream laden 228th / MS / (insert big MERC unit) losing to you. Watching your clan enemies run and hide (think BSK) in their dropzones. Space Nerd politics was amazing to start. But all PGI can do is make a 12 v 12 Solaris game. I love a chunk of that game but 5 years in now ... I need something more and deeper.
#130
Posted 12 July 2017 - 06:44 AM
Think we can all agree Phase 3 went nosediving and most people actually playing the mode predicted it.
Roundtables were a joke imho, seemed more like Russ just wanting to announce the buckits solution while some players were around. Way to go PGI, business as usual. Guess what, the folks who enjoyed the mode also enjoyed the 'chokepoint shooting gallery maps' we dont see anymore these days - most of the CW diehards left after it became QP with respawn 24/7... because surprise: chokepoints with a base behind actually requires teamplay, either to hold them or to get through. My saltlevel considering CW is at an all time high, I (and many others which I respect) spend a shitload of time here on the forums debating and trying to figure out modest changes to improve the experience, not to turn it upside down. Longtom was in for what, 5 months?, all the while the playerbase refused it and was pretty outspoken about it.
If you still think PGI listens to anything written here, better abandon all hope ye lost souls
Edited by iLLcapitan, 12 July 2017 - 06:46 AM.
#131
Posted 12 July 2017 - 12:51 PM
Crockdaddy, on 12 July 2017 - 05:23 AM, said:
Kin3ticX is right. The space nerd politics meant and was everything. Its why games like ARK work so well. Your Tribe against the world. Fight to the death. Crust your enemies and hear the lamentations of the Davion's ... the piteous cries of the Mariks ... tasting the salt of a twitch stream laden 228th / MS / (insert big MERC unit) losing to you. Watching your clan enemies run and hide (think BSK) in their dropzones. Space Nerd politics was amazing to start. But all PGI can do is make a 12 v 12 Solaris game. I love a chunk of that game but 5 years in now ... I need something more and deeper.
Its one of the reasons Antonius Rex folded Mercstar. Phase 3 and 4 were a one-two punch. Maybe phase 4 made it less bad after phase 3 but that isnt saying a whole lot. The delayed Phase 3 and phase 3 bombing itself for another 9 months with a cherry on top pretty much demolished our roster of core players. It took a huge toll on the mode in general. Those players didn't go off to form other CW units because phase 3 was so awesome, they just either quit MWO or played quickplay or something. After Phase 3 hit and Antonius went inactive in CW, Xavier kept fighting in a Mercstar lifepod of sorts until phase 4. There was nothing for Antonius Rex to do in phase 4. Phase 4 pretty much turned the mode into a 24/7 Tukayyid event which is not a good tradeoff just so a dying mode can kickoff matches.
If you listen to the roundtable in January with Xavier, Spider, and Dane back in Jan 17, they are just way off track trying to invent bandaids on the framework of phase 4. They are just way too nice about it. To me, phase 3 was a galactic catastrophe that continues to echo in the mode even now.
#132
Posted 12 July 2017 - 03:31 PM
Kin3ticX, on 12 July 2017 - 12:51 PM, said:
Its one of the reasons Antonius Rex folded Mercstar. Phase 3 and 4 were a one-two punch. Maybe phase 4 made it less bad after phase 3 but that isnt saying a whole lot. The delayed Phase 3 and phase 3 bombing itself for another 9 months with a cherry on top pretty much demolished our roster of core players. It took a huge toll on the mode in general. Those players didn't go off to form other CW units because phase 3 was so awesome, they just either quit MWO or played quickplay or something. After Phase 3 hit and Antonius went inactive in CW, Xavier kept fighting in a Mercstar lifepod of sorts until phase 4. There was nothing for Antonius Rex to do in phase 4. Phase 4 pretty much turned the mode into a 24/7 Tukayyid event which is not a good tradeoff just so a dying mode can kickoff matches.
If you listen to the roundtable in January with Xavier, Spider, and Dane back in Jan 17, they are just way off track trying to invent bandaids on the framework of phase 4. They are just way too nice about it. To me, phase 3 was a galactic catastrophe that continues to echo in the mode even now.
Players and myself included were searching for bandaids. To me it has been clear for sometime we were never going to get MMO elements once MWO pivoted into comp play. While I think this game could be great for Comp style play the greater part of the player base wants RPG nerd stuff to go along with their stompy robots. It is good to have enemies and hate and fight. I still RP a bit and go after Marik's / Davions ... and certain units ... not because I actually hate them but it's fun and spices things up a bit. The RP / RPG folks spend stupid amounts of money and are the true whales. Leaving them out was a mistake. I hate LRMs and I give a lot of crap to Davions and their ilk for running them ... but those guys always have the new mechs. They are supporting this game. FP should be a big deal and we should have actual Faction stuff going on. Space Nerd stuff. I've rambled enough. It won't matter either way.
#133
Posted 12 July 2017 - 03:47 PM
Full respect to them for trying to do it but in the end it came down to pie in the sky ideas that PGI were never in a million years going to implement.
By the time of that round table the damage was done due to nuke tom nuking the population down to a fraction of what it was before and once they got rid of it they recovered maybe 10% of what they lost only to lose them and more due to lack of development(again).
FP should be the flagship mode of this game but due to a lack of development for the overall game mode and just bandaid bucket fixes, MRBC appears to attract more teams than FP.
Id say what have PGI been doing with all the money from mech packs but we all know now that MW5 has been being developed in the background which is why FP is in such a sorry state and probably wont go anywhere anytime soon as PGI dont seem to care about it.
Edited by Carl Vickers, 12 July 2017 - 04:11 PM.
#134
Posted 12 July 2017 - 04:15 PM
Carl Vickers, on 12 July 2017 - 03:47 PM, said:
Full respect to them for trying to do it but in the end it came down to pie in the sky ideas that PGI were never in a million years going to implement.
By the time of that round table the damage was done due to nuke tom nuking the population down to a fraction of what it was before and once they got rid of it they recovered maybe 10% of what they lost only to lose them and more due to lack of development(again).
FP should be the flagship mode of this game but due to a lack of development for the overall game mode and just bandaid bucket fixes, MRBC appears to attract more teams than FP.
Id say what have PGI been doing with all the money from mech packs but we all know now that MW5 has been being developed in the background which is why FP is in such a sorry state and probably wont go anywhere anytime soon as PGI dont seem to care about it.
Lol yeah, all the effort for 12 hours of single player gameplay. Amazes me how people are exicted for a days worth of game.
#135
Posted 12 July 2017 - 06:44 PM
If you don't really want to fix the core problems, you're simply redressing that corpse. That corpse's name is CW/FP.
Edited by Deathlike, 12 July 2017 - 06:45 PM.
#136
Posted 12 July 2017 - 07:29 PM
The main game portion really is not the issue in CW/FW/FP, in fact IMO the improvements to maps, implementation of base elements and cosmetic improvements to the game from launch till now have all made the core game beautiful. That's where this ends though. CW/FW/FP is not and has never been about the main game. CW/FW/FP should have been the logistics of managing a unit (Mech stocks, rearm and refit), politics of the Inner Sphere and control of key resource planets.
PGI you have failed CW/FW/FP in every aspect of this.
A large Merc unit? The economics of running such a unit should have been staggering and having them running on the edge all the time, giving them incentives to running lean and mean. Population control would have been more along the lines of self-preservation, rather than putting all their eggs in one or two baskets and risk imploding the unit with one or two bad contracts.
Loyalist Units would have been the meat and potatoes of the entire system, rather than the frowned upon faction they are now.
Wake up and get with it. Maybe, just maybe you might gain back what you have lost. Right now, whatever you do with MWO, MW5 and MWO2 will be judged by where you take this.
#137
Posted 12 July 2017 - 07:51 PM
Particularly to loyalists.
The other view of the map is still there, it would be nice to be able to toggle back and forth from it.
However, because we no longer advance our own faction's goals it's more of a nice thing to be able to see but right at the moment it doesn't serve much purpose.
There is little point to capturing the planets either and we can probably do away with the idea.
I feel the mode can be resurrected and turned into something unique and exciting for MWO.
While I am wary of reaching too far I can also see that with what we have in all the different modes, we could take those elements and a bit of a side step to get it working.
Yes there would be a fair bit of work involved but I feel we need to do it and everyone needs to get behind an idea.
So on that note, I am going to try and put up a vid to go along with this one, but have written a wall of text here.
New structure for Faction Play.
I really don't want to see the mode die so I ask for your thoughts and feedback.
Edited by 50 50, 12 July 2017 - 07:51 PM.
#138
Posted 12 July 2017 - 08:14 PM
Hell, we just clashed with BCMC-it was a tough-fought match, and I think both sides loved the action.
If it was a corpse, then it would have zero players, right?
#139
Posted 12 July 2017 - 08:24 PM
50 50, on 12 July 2017 - 07:51 PM, said:
Particularly to loyalists.
The other view of the map is still there, it would be nice to be able to toggle back and forth from it.
However, because we no longer advance our own faction's goals it's more of a nice thing to be able to see but right at the moment it doesn't serve much purpose.
There is little point to capturing the planets either and we can probably do away with the idea.
I feel the mode can be resurrected and turned into something unique and exciting for MWO.
While I am wary of reaching too far I can also see that with what we have in all the different modes, we could take those elements and a bit of a side step to get it working.
Yes there would be a fair bit of work involved but I feel we need to do it and everyone needs to get behind an idea.
So on that note, I am going to try and put up a vid to go along with this one, but have written a wall of text here.
New structure for Faction Play.
I really don't want to see the mode die so I ask for your thoughts and feedback.
If you are Kurita and you are in a Dragon the game doesnt detect it and give you perhaps +LP +CB or even +XP, nothing. Even if the mech is bad every faction has 1 faction favorite(Steiner Atlas, Liao Vindicator etc etc). It would be super easy to throw the RP guys a bone like that.
It doesnt have to be that though. What about the faction cockpit items? Kurita items should give micro LP bonuses but they dont. What about the faction camos too?
Edited by Kin3ticX, 12 July 2017 - 08:33 PM.
#140
Posted 12 July 2017 - 08:40 PM
Commander A9, on 12 July 2017 - 08:14 PM, said:
Hell, we just clashed with BCMC-it was a tough-fought match, and I think both sides loved the action.
If it was a corpse, then it would have zero players, right?
Considering there is only 1 bukkit, ghost drops should be a minor problem but I gather its not very minor these days.
1 user(s) are reading this topic
0 members, 1 guests, 0 anonymous users