47 replies to this topic

[50 50]

Reading through the post here from Terrastras Rex:
https://mwomercs.com...age-suggestion/

The post discusses the option of Supply Lines affecting drop deck tonnages depending distance from home worlds and also the significance of those worlds. ie. Capital Planets being much harder to capture as a defending side by giving the defending faction a significant tonnage boost for their drop decks.

It does make me wonder if there is this sort of provision in the event system due this month... hopefully we will see some information about that soon.

These are the sort of features that would add some extra depth to Faction Play which would generate some interest and also create variations in the battles.

It made me think a little more about the automatic triggering of events as I have described in this post and some of the variations that could come into play.
For example:
Should Kurita succeed in getting 4 weeks of Siege victories in a row against Davion and that triggered a specific Kurita vs Davion event, adjusting drop deck tonnages is a value that can be tinkered with.
Think of it like this.......

"After a month of battle along the Kurita/Davion border, Kurita forces have begun to make significant inroads into Davion territory and the Duke has ordered reinforcements to the area to halt the advance and make a counter attack."

For Kurita it might be:

"Our forces have pushed into Davion territory but our supply lines are stretched and vulnerable. Win the battle to secure a foothold and bring glory to the dragon."

(Remember those Comstar announcement events we had a while back? We just need a way to trigger that sort of thing and add a bit of immersion tied in to our actions.)

For the duration of the event:
Davion loyalist forces get a drop deck tonnage increase.
Mercenary contracts for Davion get increased.
Kurita forces get double play.
etc.

If these events can be triggered automatically based on our actions in the game, the galaxy will come to life and we get a dynamic and evolving system.

Edited by 50 50, 14 September 2017 - 07:34 PM.

[50 50]

EDIT 15/09/2017.
Bit of blurb in the Militia section of the OP.
Given the existing state of the game, number of players and the additional modes. Starting to wonder about solo/freelancer participation as it doesn't offer as much and is harder to manage with mixed teams.

Also, with regards to the missions. Should the quick play modes (missions) be changed to only have the single drop, there pops up the question about Siege mode and how it is designed with the drop decks.
In line with the suggestions in this thread I am going to ask this question:

• Should Siege be modified to only be a single drop?

It would be nice to leave it as is given that with this proposal we select the mission we want. The mode just needs to be weighted accordingly for the Victory Points due to dropping multiple lances in waves.
A more interesting question might be:

• Should we get another mode/mission added to Faction Play that is designed to use the drop decks?

I asked some questions in another thread about do just that with Assault mode, adding more bases and selecting our spawn points.
Perhaps we can look into that a bit further.

[Commander A9]

Some new life into Faction Warfare would be nice.

I'd love to see planets actually have an impact across the entire game, like adjusting prices for weapons and mechs, or giving out cockpit items, decals, and skins for achieving certain milestones.

And if the unit coffers or even unit MC could actually be used to improve the unit or the Faction...

[50 50]

Could certainly add more depth to the planets.

I feel the best answer is to allow players and units to invest in them by adding bases.
This doesn't need to be overly complex and could be like adding modules to the planets at both a player and unit level.... though you want to restrict how many can be placed on any one planet and how many an individual or unit could own.
That would create an incentive to defend your territory and would create natural targets for opposing units and players.
Could be a long list of benefits to them as well, but we need to steer clear of directly affecting mech/equipment performance.
Additional features such as repairs and logistics would make good features for something like bases to have an impact on.

You would think that it would then be possible to have planets of strategic importance capable of holding more bases making them more significant.

In the end, adding some more depth to the planets is a layer that would help to improve Faction Play.
By making it a bit more personal to the players, we become more invested in it.

[50 50]

Step 1.
Change the setup of groups.
-Groups must be no more, no less than 4 players. A single lance.
-Groups must consist of players from a single House or Clan only. (no skittles)

The reason for doing this.
-Drastic improvement of wait times by allowing battles to vary in size based on available lances. ie. 4 v 4, 8 v 8, 12 v 12.
This caters for variations in the population at any given time.
We have the functionality in the Private Lobby to start matches without a full team. We can re-use the functionality here and enforce the structure around the lances.
-By restricting the make up of a group to a single House or Clan we can bring back some of the individual identity for them. This becomes relevant when we look at the Tug of War and different conflicts and also down the track for adding more depth to each House and Clan.

Other areas that would be impacted and therefore need some adjusting.
-Bringing back the vote for who we attack.
In an earlier iteration of Faction Play, each faction could vote for who they wanted to attack in the next phase. If we want to enable the inter house conflicts and the inter clan 'trials' then we need access to this functionality again as a method to determine where to apply the effect of our victories for our House or Clan. We need more visibility on the map to show who has decided to attack who and perhaps announcements for members of each House and Clan that tells us who has declared war against us. This is to create awareness and interest.
-Breaking down The Tug of War.
At the moment our victories are pooled at the Faction level.
We could visually break this down to an individual House and Clan level as well as tally the victories by the modes. This gives us a closer and more personal picture into how any particular House or Clan is going as well as setup for future changes for different types of conflicts. (ie. Not just capturing the planet).
-The Stages of the Tug of War.
As the stages of the tug of war were meant to represent how far into the invasion a particular side. There is a bit of randomness to which mode we might see now so there is less of a strict adherance to the actual stages. If we look at the individual success of each House or Clan then effectively this becomes the weighted value we apply against the enemy force we get matched up with. ie. It doesn't change it that much other than to give more recognitition of the current success/progress of the individual Houses and Clans.
-Including Scouting as part of Invasion.
By changing the group structure to focus on a lance, we can bring Scouting in as one of the modes that we encounter in the invasion. If we look at the stages, then it would logically be the first stage. The question then becomes what to do with the intel. Can it be a value that only applies to our House or Clan? Could it also provide a more personal bonus that only applies to our Lance? I feel that all the modes need some impact or reward at a faction level and a personal level to build in more depth and create new dynamics so this is an aspect to look at further on.
-Determining success
As in, did your House or Clan win that attack phase. With using a tally system you don't lose points, you only ever add to the total when you win. The proposed setup also suggests that you never actually defend.... not technically attacking either.

Why this could work.
This approach does not require any splitting of the buckets which might impacting player availability.
The match maker boils down to pitting your lance from your House or Clan against a lance from any other House or Clan. The more we fight, the more we win, the more we promote the agenda and glory of our individual House or Clan. It does not actually matter who we fight against to earn these victories.
This creates a variety in the battles which will also allow us to then explore some differences (quirks) for the individual Houses and Clans to further build on those identities.
Even with the overarching Clan vs Inner Sphere concept, the 'fight anyone' approach would give players games regardless of where the population might actually be stacked. It creates the possibility for rivalries and competition between the individual Clans and Houses.

Sync Dropping.
It's been used as a threat before, but in my mind, it's a feature.
So as an addition to breaking the groups down to lances, if we can still fill the other lances it would be nice to see that in the group screen and just click the drop button to launch all the lances (not individuals) that have readied up at the same time. Unless there are hundreds of players grouped for your House or Clan and provided there is enough players on an opposing side, there is a pretty good chance of retaining the full company for a battle anyway.

Solos.
In this setup we are only requesting that anyone who wants to participate in Faction Play forms a group of 4 (a single lance) of players from their own faction. No more solo dropping. Use the LFG and hook up with 3 other players from your faction and form a lance for the drops.

[50 50]

Using the Victories to generate events

This is actually a really interesting topic to discuss but I see two parts to it.

Dynamic Events
The events that actually have an in game effect such as increased rewards need to be manually generated by someone at PGI at the moment. It's something that requires time and manual effort and for the majority of the events they don't tie in with what is happening 'on the map'. There is the capital world major event that was proposed, but even that is a manual effort.
To increase player investment in Faction Play, it needs to be more dynamic - triggered automatically by our actions, but tied in with what is happening 'on the map'.
That's where I have suggested in my Campaign post that should a particular faction achieve X type of victories over a period of time, then there is an automatically generated 'event' based on what is happening.

For example:

• Clan Smoke Jaguar has voted to attack House Kurita 4 weeks in a row.
  
• They have succeeded in getting more Siege victories than House Kurita each week and each week have taken a planet from them.
  
• After the 4th successive victory, a 'Counter Attack' event is triggered where by the players aligned with those two factions fight under slightly different conditions and with different incentives.
  
• At the end of that event we can apply a result that can impact the two factions and the successive victory tally is reset and off we go again.

The different conditions (without adding any new features right at the moment) would be:
Smoke Jag forces have a reduction in maximum drop deck tonnage to simulate that their supply lines have become extended and need to be consolidated before they can push further into enemy territory.
Kurita gets an increase in drop deck tonnage to simulate that they are redirecting greater forces to that battle front in an effort to halt the advance.
Both sides might get increased payouts for the duration.
Mercenary contracts might become more lucrative for Kurita for the duration.

If we really wanted to simulate supply lines a bit more, we could have a small function in there to reduce the drop deck tonnage of the side making the advance each successive week until the event is triggered.
IE: Week 1 - Smoke Jag wins. For the next week their drop deck tonnage is -5 tons if they attack Kurita again to 235 tons. Week 2 - They win again and attack Kurita again, it drops -5 again to 230 tons. Week 3, same thing, down to 225. Week 4, 220 tons. Trigger the event and boom.
Should Kurita win the counter attack, then it could be that Smoke Jag would not be able to vote to attack them for a period of time.
Should Smoke Jag win then they consolidate their supply lines and their drop deck tonnage returns to normal.

We could have different types of events based on the number of victories a faction achieves in the particular mode.
Siege here represents taking the planets as that was what it was about 'traditionally' in earlier phases. But there is nothing stopping the system incorporating a bit more variety by using the different modes we have in Faction Play to trigger differently styled events with different outcomes. However, it would benefit Faction Play to have some additional features outside of the combat that these successive victories could influence.

Player contributions
Our actions would speak for themselves in a dynamic system as proposed above and having some little pre-generated text to go along with those events in game would give visibility to the player base as we are playing and help build on that immersion and investment in the game mode.
Where the player contributions can be made is in these forums by promoting conflicts and faction agendas.
For something in game, there could be room to expand on the Faction chat and make some form of announcement but given the level of access everyone has to these systems, it may not be practical.

This would leave PGI to concentrate on the weekend events with prizes and so forth and major events such as the Tukayyids.

[50 50]

To elaborate on the queue, population and wait times a little...

As there is only one border to contest now, it's pretty easy to tip the population to one side, particularly when there is the introduction of new Clans as we have been seeing recently.
The option to move to the new clans to take advantage of a fresh set of rewards shows us two problems inherent in the current system:

1. The loyalist career path is simply not good enough to stop players from swapping loyalties. You can expect some people to move when their 'favourite' faction is introduced, but there is no incentive or should I say benefit to stay with your existing faction that might prevent people from moving.
2. Because there is only one border, we see the impact on the actual queues and wait times when the population is uneven. Even if there were no new factions being added, at any given point of time if there are more players active on one side of the fence than the other, wait times blow out.

Where we need to take a different approach that will have an immediate impact on the wait times in the queues is to make it more of a free for all. That is:

• Enforce groups/teams to only consist of a single faction. (No skittles)
  
  This allows us to get matches against any other faction that has enough players queuing.
  So if you were in a Clan faction, one match you might play against an IS faction but the next it could be against a competing Clan faction. Same for IS where you might fight against another IS faction. The only rule needs to be, you can't fight against yourself.
  
  By allowing more of a free for all we get:
  - Greater variety in the games as it expands from the limited Clan vs IS single border.
  - Improved Faction Identity.
  - Improved wait times in queues because it is a free for all.
  - This may remove ghost drops.
  
• Reduce group minimum and maximum to 4 = a lance.
  
  This is to cater for the strict single faction per team as in point one as well as cater for varying levels in the population at any given time.
  
  Note that this does not stop a full 12 player team from a single unit or faction from forming! I will acknowledge that Faction Play is the team game and where we can get large scale battles happening. However, the system is inflexible and does not cater for varying levels of population active in Faction Play at any given time. What reducing the group maximum will do is allow for matches of varying scales to occur. You might be able to get 12 players from your faction together and form 3 lances to drop. If there happens to be 12 players in another faction then you will all drop against that faction and it is still a 12 v 12. However, should there be 4 in one faction and 8 in another and you have 12 players in a third faction, you all still get to drop and battle it out because the lances can split up.
  
  Not only would this go a long way to improving wait times, but it also creates variety in the battles as a 4 v 4 battle feels very different to a 12 v 12. This flexibility may also allow smaller groups/units to participate more freely as well as potentially help the mixed pug/unit groups which can cause some frustration.
  
  At this point in the game, I really don't think it will hurt to play any of the modes with varying levels of players on each team.
  
  As a last point, by restricting the groups to a lance, scout mode could be incorporated as another mode in the cycle.

So how would that work with the existing tug of war?
It really doesn't change it.
Right at the moment, whenever we have a victory it adds to either the Clan or IS side of the tug of war and shifts the bar a little.
The individual victory we achieve for our faction is a sub total of the greater Clan vs IS conflict.
All that would happen under this suggestion is we might have an internal conflict of Clan vs Clan or IS vs IS which still adds to that grand total. It creates that internal competition vying for power and glory without needing to change the greater conflict and fits in rather nicely with that aspect from the lore as it has the effect of hampering the overall progress somewhat.

Where it would then be nice to see a change is in how that tug of war is actually displayed and break it down to the individual factions so we can get a bit of pride (And bragging rights) in our achievements.

If there is to be another change, then perhaps it is in how long the attack phases go for and how many planets are contested.

The only suggestion I've really got for making the loyalist career more appealing is to turn those loyalty points into a currency.
If we can spend the points to get different benefits, then we create a reason to earn them back.
Would take a bit of work and ideally does need some new features added to the mode that we can then spend the points on. As it is, using them as an MC replacement might be a starting point.
Being able to adjust drop deck tonnages would be another and that creates a nice discussion point for creating differences in the individual factions.

Edited by 50 50, 09 October 2017 - 06:02 PM.

[50 50]

EDIT 09/12/2017 Evolving the idea