103 replies to this topic

[DGTLDaemon]

Khobai, on 10 July 2017 - 02:16 AM, said:

The rewards are actually pretty nice for free players. Its one of the only ways they can get more mech bays.

Its very important to have those kinds of rewards for free players in order to attract new free players and keep them playing the game.

One of the biggest problems with MWO is how inaccessible those rewards are for free players. They need to make CW more accessible to pugs and free players so they can earn those rewards more easily. Which means getting rid of groups sealclubbing pugs.

Doesn't it bother you when a mode presumably designed to provide an enhanced roleplaying experience is exploited to get free stuff? Don't get me wrong, I did a "mechbay tour" myself back in the day, and I'm grateful for the free mechbays, but switching between factions every week just to grind mechbays did leave a sour taste in my mouth. I'd rather have those rewards moved elswhere (like "play X matches in QP with a minimum score of Y and get a free mechbay"). I like thinking of CW as an "advanced" game mode designed for organized teams and more dedicated players, rather than a place to farm mechbays.

And when I mentioned "meaningless" rewards, I meant those that come after the first couple of mechbays. Right now there's very little incentive to be a loyalist in this game. It's just an endless grind to get another loyalist title and the occasional GXP/C-Bills that go with it.

Edited by DGTLDaemon, 10 July 2017 - 02:33 AM.

[Khobai]

Quote

I am totally disagree about mixing QP with CW, the last one is for group

No CW is for both pugs and groups. Thats why both are allowed to play it.

However the experience for pugs is less than optimal and that needs to change.

Quote

Doesn't it bother you when a mode presumably designed to provide an enhanced roleplaying experience is exploited to get free stuff?

They changed it so you cant really exploit it anymore. You lose like half your faction points when you leave a faction now.

Quote

I like thinking of CW as an "advanced" game mode designed for organized teams and more dedicated players, rather than a place to farm mechbays.

And youd still have that. That would still be the invasion gamemode which would still exist. Quickplay would simply be the entry level bucket into faction warfare. While Invasion gamemode would be for more advanced//dedicated players. And there would still be the requirement that you have to play X quickmode games before you can do an invasion game.

Really nothing would change other than the fact faction points would be awarded for quickplay games. And quickplay games would contribute in some lesser amount to capturing planets. And thatd be specifically so free players have better access to the faction rewards, because thats necessary for the game to grow its player base, if thats even still possible.

Edited by Khobai, 10 July 2017 - 02:44 AM.

[justcallme A S H]

Sunstruck, on 10 July 2017 - 12:43 AM, said:

There is only 1, que for faction warfare, yet its STILL takes, 15+ mins to get a game, where you wait another 15 mins for a G H O S T D R O P ? ! ? !

And end up getting 100, loyalty points for waiting a half hour ! ? !

Seriously this game mode is so over, so broken at the core. The feature needs to be completely redone if you STILL can't get a game when theres only 1 que.

Its such a big waste of time.

It's quiet simple.

QP Event is on. 10 games per day = everyone in QP queue.

Absolutely normal, happens every time. Particularly during loot bag events.

[Baron Zen]

@Khobai
Yep i know pugs can partecipate in FQ and it is fault of pugs 99% of times when a group lose, so i invite ppl to join FW only with a full group or go in QP, for their and our sanity, otherwise only solution, as i said, is to make an exclusive solo queue (no mini groups vs pugs, solo vs solo).

[Khobai]

Quote

@Khobai
Yep i know pugs can partecipate in FQ and it is fault of pugs 99% of times when a group lose, so i invite ppl to join FW only with a full group or go in QP, for their and our sanity, otherwise only solution, as i said, is to make an exclusive solo queue (no mini groups vs pugs, solo vs solo).

If thats how you feel then you should welcome the seperation of pugs and groups into two seperate buckets in CW. Because it means pugs would no longer find their way into the group queue.

But the only way to make seperate group/pug queues work in CW would be to integrate quickplay into CW. You wont have enough players otherwise. The wait times would be too long if you didnt do that.

Edited by Khobai, 10 July 2017 - 02:48 AM.

[justcallme A S H]

Sunstruck, on 10 July 2017 - 12:43 AM, said:

There is only 1, que for faction warfare, yet its STILL takes, 15+ mins to get a game, where you wait another 15 mins for a G H O S T D R O P ? ! ? !

And end up getting 100, loyalty points for waiting a half hour ! ? !

Seriously this game mode is so over, so broken at the core. The feature needs to be completely redone if you STILL can't get a game when theres only 1 que.

Its such a big waste of time.

It's quiet simple.

QP Event is on. 10 games per day = everyone in QP queue.

Absolutely normal, happens every time. Particularly during loot bag events.

[Baron Zen]

Khobai, on 10 July 2017 - 02:46 AM, said:

If thats how you feel then you should welcome the seperation of pugs and groups into two seperate buckets in CW. Because it means pugs would no longer find their way into the group queue

Yep would be good! I would like mysef to play pug style in FW sometime, more relaxed than finding the usual big lame groups (not mentioning group hacks).

[stoogah]

CW was always closed for pugs. Iirc noone wanted uncordinated random players in CW. CW was made for serious groups. I play since open beta and with almost 6000 games on my counter I didn't drop in CW even once. Never wanted to spoil the day for real CW players with my lack of skill and no desire to coordinate and communicate. They also never wanted me/us/players like me there so it was all good. So.. who cares, my games still runs. I would play CW or other, more complex game mode (I still miss R&R) but no in conditions like we have now. I don't want to be stomped by groups but I don't and to stomp others (its just boring and not fun for both sides most of the time) also. Integrating QP queue into the CW seems like a good idea if there is not enough players there but it can't mix pugs with groups. I would play CW if it wouldn't mix pugs with groups. Groups wouldn't be bothered by unskilled and uncoordinated pug and pugs woudn't be stomped by groups = everyone happy.

Edited by stoogah, 10 July 2017 - 02:54 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

stoogah, on 10 July 2017 - 02:52 AM, said:

CW was always closed for pugs. Iirc noone wanted uncordinated random players in CW. CW was made for serious groups.

And maybe that's a misguided objective, to treat CW as an exclusive game mode only the competitive minded teams should join?

1) It doesn't help your wait times at all.

2) CW offers rewards that are desirable for casual players, as the give you access to free mech bays.



Also, if it was really only intended for competitive teams:
1) You wouldn be able to queue for it solo, and "Freelancer" would not exist as a choice.
2) We wouldn't have gotten Competitive Mode.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 10 July 2017 - 03:03 AM.

[Vellron2005]

Sunstruck, on 10 July 2017 - 12:43 AM, said:

There is only 1, que for faction warfare, yet its STILL takes, 15+ mins to get a game, where you wait another 15 mins for a G H O S T D R O P ? ! ? !

And end up getting 100, loyalty points for waiting a half hour ! ? !

Seriously this game mode is so over, so broken at the core. The feature needs to be completely redone if you STILL can't get a game when theres only 1 que.

Its such a big waste of time.

Of course the mode is dead when everybody's playing QP for quick rewards.. its because of the event.. before the event, the wait times to get a match were very short, sometimes basically instant..

The fact that there's no matchmaking is a bit of an issue, but it's not that bad.. it's still playable on most drops, unless you get a 12-man of comp oriented unit against pugs..

I LOVE they added the QP maps and switched it up a bit, but I would not merge it with QP..

[LordNothing]

since i have to do this every time here we go. skip this post if you have ever read one of my "fix fp" post before, because you've probibly already read it. its simple facts.

match maker cannot work without a population increase.

split queue cannot work without a population increase.

population cannot increase without making the mode fun for everyone.

everyone = seals, skittles, seal clubbers, plannet cappers (aka base rushers), units, tryhards, cryhards, pgi apologists, pgi haters, white knites, hackuzers, terribads, salty *** pug lords, pugs that are actually good, competitive players, the extroverted denizens of teamspeak servers, players who just use the ingame chat/voip, actual team players, selfish idiots who hide in the back and die last, introverts that dont suck, whiners, winers, stoners, loretards, tt grognards, and any other demographics i missed.

if you make the game fun for some of these people it will ruin the game for others you cannot please everyone.

everyone (demographic wise, not literally) buys mech packs. giving one of them the short end of the stick is bad for buisness. (in before someone takes 'everyone' literally).

if you target a specific demographic and make a mode "just for them", but you dont give the mode for the other people the same stuff, there will and has been salt.

if the mechanics of the mode only reward certain niche groups, then everyone else will hold a grudge.

if you hammer more walls between player types all you are doing is encourageing them to fight amongst them selves. this will fracture the community more and pretty soon it will take a half hour to play a qp match. whether this is intentional or not is up for debate.

"nobody ever wants to hear the truth, its too much like taking blame"

everyone is to blame. even you moderator looking to bury this post because sense is somehow evil.

whatever the fix is, pgi doesnt want to put the work in. whether this is intentional or not is up for debate.

if you do fix it, its reputation is already too trashed for the general population (the less polarized portions of the population at least) to approve. see long tom. its probibly going to require a re-branding to work.

im not going to delude myself into thinking i know what form the answer would take or even if its a solveable problem. i have my ideas, some good some bad, and nobody likes the good ones (they will probibly like this post though because its full of salt). the best solution will be an all inclusive compromise that nobody is really happy with, but everyone should be able to live with it without walking away in disgust, and if they do we would be better off without them.

if you want to know what those ideas are, read my other posts, i decided not to repeat myself again and again. its been repeated ad nauseum on the fp board. every argument for and against everything.

Edited by LordNothing, 10 July 2017 - 03:34 AM.

[Kin3ticX]

DGTLDaemon, on 10 July 2017 - 02:12 AM, said:

The only thing wrong with it was the lack of players which caused long wait times and frequent ghost drops.

Phase 3 was a disaster

[Kin3ticX]

Bud Crue, on 10 July 2017 - 01:49 AM, said:

Yet, regardless of all of our totally contradictory views about the mode, the best part?
Russ said 2017 was going to be a refocus of PGI's efforts onto CW. They hired a new CW guru. CW was going to have frequent weekend faction specific events!

My guess would be that CW is very poorly populated and cant support the side quests Russ talked about when he sold the 1 bucket plan. I sort of figured those side quests would never happen only because PGI tried them before and nobody cared. It was called comstar intercepts and they quietly stopped doing them.

[ScoutMaster]

It's usually easy to get a game, it's just really slow right now because of the event.

[The Basilisk]

Khobai, on 10 July 2017 - 01:40 AM, said:

But if FW still feels incomplete what makes you think Solaris will ever feel complete? I would rather PGI learn the valuable lesson that they need to complete things and fix FW rather than scrap it entirely for another project theyll never complete.

Plus Solaris has zero chance of saving this game so its pretty much a waste of resources anyway. The number of people that want to play competitive leagues is very small, probably less than 5% of the players. It makes no sense to cater to them while ignoring the other 95% that just want to play casually. Its the casual game experience that needs to be improved the most in order to save the game.



Well youd still have to have some kindve matchmaker for the two pug buckets. The other three buckets wouldnt need MM though.

It is simpler.
There is no need for big story no "wrong" feeling with idiotic choke point maps no need to invest ressources in some kind of overarching half assed systems map or tukayyid and stuff.
Just a matchmaker and some options to klick.
Only place you can drop single is 1vs1 and for all other options you need a premade team to be able to drop at all. (4v4, 12v12)

And I am not talking about those secluded MRBC comp players and stuff.
Just a leaderbord mode for everyone.

Further those thoughts about "wht would be nessessary to safe the game"
Good god MWO is 5yrs old and ALWAYS was dieing.
MWO lives because its the only big stompy bots game that doesn't TOTALLY suck and also is the only FTP Battletech game out there where you can pilot a mech.
Those are the only reasons why all ppl that play this game did play it and still continue to.
There are the occassional guys and girls that where introduced by friends and stay for the company, that by the way is far more decent than it is at other shooters, but those are the minority.

PPL play MWO because they like either MW or the Battletech Universe.
Exceptions prove the rule.

[Karl Streiger]

MustrumRidcully, on 10 July 2017 - 03:02 AM, said:

Also, if it was really only intended for competitive teams:
1) You wouldn be able to queue for it solo, and "Freelancer" would not exist as a choice.
2) We wouldn't have gotten Competitive Mode.

This
The problem is - at one point it did seem simpler for the Developer to say - CW is endgame content you need those all those fancy toys to play with it. But he missed to mention that CW should not be played by solo players at all. (SunZu - know yourself (aka your team))

When you read Faction Play in terms of BattleTech you might think there must be some lore aspect - that you are part of a living universe - not that you are part of a ultra competitive game mode (not to mention that PvP is competition in its very nature)

Now with another holed bucket called competitive game mode you might reduce the number of high competitive players in cw. But the casuals are already gone for good.

[LordNothing]

Vellron2005, on 10 July 2017 - 03:25 AM, said:

Of course the mode is dead when everybody's playing QP for quick rewards.. its because of the event.. before the event, the wait times to get a match were very short, sometimes basically instant..

The fact that there's no matchmaking is a bit of an issue, but it's not that bad.. it's still playable on most drops, unless you get a 12-man of comp oriented unit against pugs..

I LOVE they added the QP maps and switched it up a bit, but I would not merge it with QP..

seal clubbing is easier to stop than people think it is. units will hate it and seals will still claim they are being clubbed. you dont even have to split the queue. the idea sort of comes from the first fp roundtable and was suggested by unit players and i gave it a pug spin (this is one of those compromises that everyone hates). they said opt in for 12v12 only. this has issues, as im sure many units still love the income from seal clubbing, simply wouldn't use it, and teams that do use it would have very long wait times. also the explicit 12v12 excludes a huge demographic, small units and casual groups. its as if there was in fact a split queue, which should be avoided at all costs.

the idea is that the opt in is intrinsic to group size, 6 or more and you agree to a comulsory opt in. whatever team you fight must have a group of 6 or more players. if you want to club seals, if you are casual group, or a couple buddies dropping together, simply drop with less than 6 players and you can have all the skittles you can eat. you will of course have to work for them and you will have to put up with those that fill out your team. maybe you can teach them something.

Edited by LordNothing, 10 July 2017 - 04:19 AM.

[Kin3ticX]

The Basilisk, on 10 July 2017 - 04:06 AM, said:

It is simpler.
There is no need for big story no "wrong" feeling with idiotic choke point maps no need to invest ressources in some kind of overarching half assed systems map or tukayyid and stuff.
Just a matchmaker and some options to klick.
Only place you can drop single is 1vs1 and for all other options you need a premade team to be able to drop at all. (4v4, 12v12)

And I am not talking about those secluded MRBC comp players and stuff.
Just a leaderbord mode for everyone.

Further those thoughts about "wht would be nessessary to safe the game"
Good god MWO is 5yrs old and ALWAYS was dieing.
MWO lives because its the only big stompy bots game that doesn't TOTALLY suck and also is the only FTP Battletech game out there where you can pilot a mech.
Those are the only reasons why all ppl that play this game did play it and still continue to.
There are the occassional guys and girls that where introduced by friends and stay for the company, that by the way is far more decent than it is at other shooters, but those are the minority.

PPL play MWO because they like either MW or the Battletech Universe.
Exceptions prove the rule.

From what I heard in the townhall Solaris is going to be DLC or a Gamemode Pack.

Its getting kind of thinned out in the bucket department.

Solo queue, Group Queue, Comp Queue, Cw Queue, Solaris DLC Queue

Not all of these can have healthy queue numbers.


Though I will say if Solaris is a hit with the twitch streamers it will have something that CW queue never had in terms of community support.

[Bud Crue]

Kin3ticX, on 10 July 2017 - 03:58 AM, said:

My guess would be that CW is very poorly populated and cant support the side quests Russ talked about when he sold the 1 bucket plan. I sort of figured those side quests would never happen only because PGI tried them before and nobody cared. It was called comstar intercepts and they quietly stopped doing them.

Perhaps you are right. Who knows? But whatever the real state of CW is, is not the issue to me, rather the fact that PGI after two round tables, a couple of discussions during town halls and all of Russ's various statements of intent about how this isn't merely phase 4, but 4 point 1, because that decimal point shows that this is the dawn of a new era of constant attention and change; and yet here we are more than half way through 2017 and yet nothing has changed, nothing's been added. Still 4.0, and only the vaguest whiff of PGI even being aware of CW as a mode is in need of...something...is a line in the roadmap. That's it. That's it.

If doing nothing and not interacting with their community about this stuff is how they refocus their attention to improving something, then I fear that, well, nothing much is going to change and you all should stop holding your breath for any substantive improvements. The state of CW is as you currently experience it, and that is what is shall be for a good long time, because that is how PGI apparently focuses on improving it: by doing nothing.

[Kin3ticX]

Bud Crue, on 10 July 2017 - 04:18 AM, said:

Perhaps you are right. Who knows? But whatever the real state of CW is, is not the issue to me, rather the fact that PGI after two round tables, a couple of discussions during town halls and all of Russ's various statements of intent about how this isn't merely phase 4, but 4 point 1, because that decimal point shows that this is the dawn of a new era of constant attention and change; and yet here we are more than half way through 2017 and yet nothing has changed, nothing's been added. Still 4.0, and only the vaguest whiff of PGI even being aware of CW as a mode is in need of...something...is a line in the roadmap. That's it. That's it.

If doing nothing and not interacting with their community about this stuff is how they refocus their attention to improving something, then I fear that, well, nothing much is going to change and you all should stop holding your breath for any substantive improvements. The state of CW is as you currently experience it, and that is what is shall be for a good long time, because that is how PGI apparently focuses on improving it: by doing nothing.

was the last roundtable the one like a year ago? I bet most of the players in that roundtable dont play much CW anymore.

Edited by Kin3ticX, 10 July 2017 - 04:22 AM.