109 replies to this topic

[The Unstoppable Puggernaut]

It's time to push?

Er, we shouldn't have to push. They should be asking us for our opinions. They should be addressing the areas which are failing. If I was them I'd hire someone to at least go through the forums each day to get the feel of what's going on and what people want (even if it's not the full picture).

To throw modes like escort/dom into the wild and leaving it to die is stupid. It can made into gold if time is put into it. The same applies to faction warfare. Siege mode is the real FW and it's so lame/basic/boring. Old assault was fantastic and now it's absolute crap because they took a dynamic part of it away.

I remember playing various Battlefield games where those 15 minutes of gaming was great intense exciting action. I don't expect this to be the same with this genre but the excitement purely comes from the players and no ingame interaction like BF.

AI... this should have shown up by now in various formats e.g. planes/tanks/repair mechs?
22 years ago a game called Mechwarrior 2 achieved a lot. This game needs to catch up with it's features and then surpass it still IMO.

[Appuagab]

The only thing that can help FP is completely removing it and slowly redoing from scratch with careful integration into QP.
FP as it is now suffers from garbage game modes and maps, zero lore & immersion, awful performance and optimization, low population and broken balance.
PGI even makes FP worse intentionally sometimes: butchered faction rewards, Long Tom, Tukayyd retcon.

[Methanoid]

Mystere, on 27 July 2017 - 12:06 PM, said:

The whole point of "Domination" is precisely to dominate the enemy. So kick them out, or die trying!

1 side (usually starting with a pirate bane or other fast mech) can easily rush into cover without exposing themselves to fire and start capping with relative safety with the other side being largely exposed and having a much more difficult time of getting into position themselves, ive easily seen 1 side get to 1/2 way ish in capture before the other side even gets near the circle to stop the other side and they have been shot to hell in the process.

[Aim64C]

Savage Wolf, on 27 July 2017 - 11:03 AM, said:

Show me your receipt then. It's not on mine. It wasn't what was promised for the price tag either. So prove it.

http://www.pcgamer.c...tical-mech-sim/

You're going to tell me that the claims by the developers, stating that things such as customizable mercenary HQs are things "we have" - made back in 2011 - would not be 'expected' by those who bought the game back in 2011?

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Because you feel so entitled just from having bought the first mech-pack maybe you should be

Entitled? Hardly.

The thing is, however, that I am not going to forget that the developers of the game made statements which would lead players to believe that the game was far more advanced in its development than it actually was.

To not exert pressure on the developers to both meet the standard set forth by their initial claims and/or to develop the game to reflect advancements to the genres since 1995 seems more than a bit unreasonable, honestly.

To expect the developers to simply cow tow because I said so is being unreasonable - but embracing fatalistic defeatism is as equally unreasonable.

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You are correct. I am indeed due no respect and neither is any other founder. But I am not the one demanding it.

Then you should have no issue being included in the grievance.

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What contract? It was a simple purchase of a mech-pack.

Every purchase is a contract. Simply because it's not delineated in written form or signed under public notary doesn't change the fact that every transaction is a contractual agreement. Even more so for the founders - they were not simply purchasing a mech pack. They were providing investment capital with the promise of delivery. Their stance is, honestly, more unique than those who purchased the mech packs.

Those of us who bought into Operation Overlord could, perhaps, cry foul as well - as the proceeds from that were stated to go toward the development and deployment of faction warfare (which launched something like a year after the content dropped for the packs...).

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And it hasn't devolved into an arena shooter, it always was. It was what was presented to us. Even the community warfare part was just that. If you saw more than that then that's on you.

Beta.

Do you understand the term?

The closed beta access to the game was later opened into the Open Beta. If you, again, read the statements of the developers - the arena-shooter-ness of the betas was simply that... they were betas. The community warfare aspect was supposed to be the meat and potatoes of the experience and would make the game more of a tactical team shooter with objective based play.

This was actually what was being posted on the ads for the Founders and Operation Overlord packs.

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Now can we use some effort on making a good arena shooter instead of chasing some vapor dream of a lore heavy mmo with interesting global warfare. Only Eve Online has ever suceeded in creating anything remotely close to what you expect PGI of all developers to pull of. Many others have made what PGI promised and none of them worked. Any work on faction warfare is just wasted.

I just posted three games that have done just that. One of which is an entirely free fan based creation using the Unreal engine - Renegade X.

And, by the way - it's impossible to turn MechWarrior into a good competitive arena shooter. You have a game that allows a difference in mobility of over 300% and a difference of equipment tonnage of nearly 500% in the more extreme comparisons - and 200% on the average. You have an array of weapons designed for a tabletop Tactics RPG ported with many of their values directly from this game.

You want a competitive arena shooter for battletech? Play MechAssault. FASA under Microsoft, surprisingly, knew what they were doing with the mechanics in MechAssault. It is an effective, fun, and competitive arena shooter. It does this by completely ditching most of MechWarrior's mechanics and Battletech's values... because they are antithetical to the concept of competitive play.

You seem to think that the reason MWO is in the current state of lackluster that it is stems from the fact that some of its players are highly critical of what it has become and the development decisions made by PGI. As if our pointing out of the failures of the game design choices somehow makes those game design choices both our responsibility and for the failure to be experienced by players.

Frankly, I would -rather- play MechAssault within this community than to play the current MWO. That doesn't mean I don't want to play a MechWarrior game, either... but you have to gravitate away from an Arena shooter to make it work as a game. As it is - the player base is mostly those of us who have this as one of our only stompy robot games - or one of the few active MechWarrior games to choose from for those who won't be drawn away by other mecha.

I'm not saying to cry and throw a fit all the time over the expectations PGI hasn't met. That said - they did fuel those expectations for the sake of making a sale, and they should not be allowed to forget and the community should not consign itself to the trap of fatalism and defeatism.

[SuperFunkTron]

Clanner Scum, on 27 July 2017 - 11:35 AM, said:

Also an arena game mode with its own unique maps would be nice. I'd like a Solaris button at the top of my screen to jump into a solaris arena match. Maybe you could put some sort of unique prizes on that as well.

Solaris would be fun, and I'm hoping it comes out eventually. But bailing on FP doesn't really inspire confidence in a well executed Solaris for me. I want to see them take some of that enthusiasm a give us at least a reasonable pass of immersion i.e. Faction Specific Mechs, Alliances and Rivals, and planetary conquest objectives. We don't need to follow cannon story, but let's at least get the Battletech flavor added to the factions.

The Unstoppable Puggernaut, on 27 July 2017 - 12:07 PM, said:

It's time to push?

Er, we shouldn't have to push. They should be asking us for our opinions. They should be addressing the areas which are failing. If I was them I'd hire someone to at least go through the forums each day to get the feel of what's going on and what people want (even if it's not the full picture).

What should be and what is are two different things, and the fact that PGI has listened and provided many of the changes requested in previous town halls shows that they will work on items that are brought up. However, most of those items were focus on fixes and balance adjustments rather than grand scale features of FP. It would be great if they had someone who was actively digging through the forums or at the very least, keeping us informed on what the actual ideas of PGI are in regards to FP and the progress on those ideas.

The really short version is: PGI has listened to issues in previous town halls before. It's time for the community to make this a TOP PRIORITY issue.

[Mystere]

Methanoid, on 27 July 2017 - 12:25 PM, said:

1 side (usually starting with a pirate bane or other fast mech) can easily rush into cover without exposing themselves to fire and start capping with relative safety with the other side being largely exposed and having a much more difficult time of getting into position themselves, ive easily seen 1 side get to 1/2 way ish in capture before the other side even gets near the circle to stop the other side and they have been shot to hell in the process.

It takes only one mech on the other side to neutralize the timer, and it does not really matter how long that takes. But once that is done, job #1 is "domination".

I really think people exaggerate too much this so-called "imbalance".

But we're going way off topic with this exchange ...

Edited by Mystere, 27 July 2017 - 12:55 PM.

[sycocys]

Spheroid, on 27 July 2017 - 08:18 AM, said:

These topics are already discussed in depth in the FP sub-forum.

True story.

[Zergling]

How to improve Faction Play: get rid of Siege.

[SFC174]

On the topic of FW, my biggest concern is that there is not a large enough community to support a vibrant quick play and FW environment at this time.

I don't play FW and don't ever plan on playing it again (its so broken I just don't see a reasonable fix for it, and the time commitment per match along with the drop deck requirements just make it worse from my perspective). But since the current FW event started, I have noticed that quickplay pug wait times have gone up substantially. I'd estimate they are at least 2-3x longer than normal, and I've had wait times in the 4-5 minute range during the middle of the day (North America). Now, that's not a massive wait time compared to what FW has experienced in the past, but it is noticeable (especially when a QP game lasts 9-12 minutes).

Yes, I could add in the European server to help but I'm at 90-100ms ping in NA, and the Euro server is 250-300 which is too long IMO.

Point being, PGI may have to choose one or the other, because the community isn't big enough to support multiple modes like this.

[Mystere]

Clanner Scum, on 27 July 2017 - 11:26 AM, said:

Faction play is garbage and less than a quarter of the MWO population actually participate in it.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Clanner Scum, on 27 July 2017 - 11:35 AM, said:

For the competitive scene ...

**** the competitive scene!

[Bigbacon]

there is ZERO REASON to devote any time to faction play unless the population of the game explodes.

its been a absolute mess since it launched and there is not enough people to make it work.

[Twinkleblade]

Nice idea I had is to keep QP and FP from each other. Right now you can earn c-bills from QP and use for FP.
Let us create a FP Pilot that has to choose a path. Possible to unlock more pilots with MC. Daily missions for those pilots, and tutorials for different modes that can earn you 4 mechs with mechbays depending if the pilot was CLAN or IS (light , medium, heavy ,assault reward).

Important part is however you need to unlock your QP mechs with Loyalty points or cbills. Black market and salvage drops to find parts and mechs. You have a FP coffer and you cannot transfer your QP cbills to it for free, COMSTAR takes a fee of x amount (COMSTAR takes increasing taxes depending how much cbills are in that coffer, up to 60% maybe) and only a max of 300k cbills per day.
You can use everything you found in FP for QP but you cannot use QP stuff for FP. Mechs and items unlocked for FP are marked in the mechlab. FP mechs always use cbills from the FP coffer, and QP mechs use the current cbill system.

Also reintroduce repair&rearm for FP. But instead of a stright cbill sink make it timing based. Depending on how much damage your mech took and what was damaged it takes up to 20min to repair. Endo steel could be for example a 5min penatly when you loose a component, FF 2 minute to replace and standard armor 1 min. each component lost is more time added to total repair cost. Any type of omnimech reduces total repair time by 50% because they are easier to repair. You can spend cbills to reduce the repair time.

Other features could be like solo and merc units responsible for their own stuff. Loyalist however can create a dropdeck that anyone of that faction can use. Its the house funding you. However 50% of the cbill earning go to the house.

The pilot can level up using LP learning skills for FP only. Matches in QP dont use pilot abilities. Pilot skills range from reduced repair times to better earnings for cbills and loyalty points or black market discounts. Would be nice if pilot could learn a single pilot active skill (think HBS battletech pilots).

Thats it for now but would make FP more interesting.

[Methanoid]

Bigbacon, on 27 July 2017 - 04:52 PM, said:

there is ZERO REASON to devote any time to faction play unless the population of the game explodes.

its been a absolute mess since it launched and there is not enough people to make it work.

even if the population di dexplode, FP will just put them off anyways, FP is at its core confusing, theres confusion hwo it works, confusion as to why you should bother, confusion when in a map how the system even plays, this just leads to frustration and people either quiting or like me simply staying to quick play for years on end.

The same happens in many games, i think the last majorly hated one for myself was when Digital Extremes wasted tons of time and manpower implimenting their Archwing gamemode for Warframe which even today virtually nobody likes yet its still there and on the development planner to "fix"........sometime......maybe..

Plenty of other games do the same and only god knows why these abominations remain, i think simple stubborness is the only thing i can think of (we made it so you should all use it and think yourselves fortunate), i mean if the VAST majority of your playerbase literally doesnt bother or use it, WHY keep it as it is, why push for ppl to try it (im looking at you new event which i wont waste my time on), why leave it as it is knowing its just going to peeve players off or make them walk... oh i know why, because sheep keep buying all the latest mechs and forget about the bad stuff.

[Savage Wolf]

Aim64C, on 27 July 2017 - 12:26 PM, said:

http://www.pcgamer.c...tical-mech-sim/

You're going to tell me that the claims by the developers, stating that things such as customizable mercenary HQs are things "we have" - made back in 2011 - would not be 'expected' by those who bought the game back in 2011?

That is no receipt. So still no proof that you bought community warfare. Try again.

Aim64C, on 27 July 2017 - 12:26 PM, said:

Entitled? Hardly.

The thing is, however, that I am not going to forget that the developers of the game made statements which would lead players to believe that the game was far more advanced in its development than it actually was.

To not exert pressure on the developers to both meet the standard set forth by their initial claims and/or to develop the game to reflect advancements to the genres since 1995 seems more than a bit unreasonable, honestly.

To expect the developers to simply cow tow because I said so is being unreasonable - but embracing fatalistic defeatism is as equally unreasonable.

I'm not telling you to to stop making suggestions for what you want in the game. Do that all you want. But realise you have no more right to expect results than any other player both non-founders and free to play-players. It is you claims of priority that is entitlement, not what you suggest.

Aim64C, on 27 July 2017 - 12:26 PM, said:

Then you should have no issue being included in the grievance.

What!? Huh!? What are you talking about?
You didn't get the part about me not wanting to be included in the list of people demanding this simply because I'm a founder.

Aim64C, on 27 July 2017 - 12:26 PM, said:

Every purchase is a contract. Simply because it's not delineated in written form or signed under public notary doesn't change the fact that every transaction is a contractual agreement. Even more so for the founders - they were not simply purchasing a mech pack. They were providing investment capital with the promise of delivery. Their stance is, honestly, more unique than those who purchased the mech packs.

Those of us who bought into Operation Overlord could, perhaps, cry foul as well - as the proceeds from that were stated to go toward the development and deployment of faction warfare (which launched something like a year after the content dropped for the packs...).

Agreed. A purchase is a contract which is documented with a receipt. Now deliver that receipt with community warfare being included listed as part of the purchase or drop the entitlement.
And the Phoenix packs too? Even if you could actually make that claim then they delivered! It's here! What's the problem?

Aim64C, on 27 July 2017 - 12:26 PM, said:

Beta.

Do you understand the term?

The closed beta access to the game was later opened into the Open Beta. If you, again, read the statements of the developers - the arena-shooter-ness of the betas was simply that... they were betas. The community warfare aspect was supposed to be the meat and potatoes of the experience and would make the game more of a tactical team shooter with objective based play.

This was actually what was being posted on the ads for the Founders and Operation Overlord packs.

You certainly don't understand the term. You don't have arena shooter as the beta for an MMO. Not even an alpha. Why build an arena shooter if that wasn't what you were going for? Maybe PGI did fool you, but it certainly was hard if you believed what you just explained. That must have been the worst development plan I've ever heard.

Aim64C, on 27 July 2017 - 12:26 PM, said:

I just posted three games that have done just that. One of which is an entirely free fan based creation using the Unreal engine - Renegade X.

None of those games are even remotely close to what PGI has described. They are just arena shooters on a bigger scale. If that's what you wanted then community warfare is already pretty close.

Aim64C, on 27 July 2017 - 12:26 PM, said:

And, by the way - it's impossible to turn MechWarrior into a good competitive arena shooter. You have a game that allows a difference in mobility of over 300% and a difference of equipment tonnage of nearly 500% in the more extreme comparisons - and 200% on the average. You have an array of weapons designed for a tabletop Tactics RPG ported with many of their values directly from this game.

You want a competitive arena shooter for battletech? Play MechAssault. FASA under Microsoft, surprisingly, knew what they were doing with the mechanics in MechAssault. It is an effective, fun, and competitive arena shooter. It does this by completely ditching most of MechWarrior's mechanics and Battletech's values... because they are antithetical to the concept of competitive play.

I never said what I wanted except it's not the community warfare that was envisioned. MWO might never become a good arena shooter, to that I agree, but it has a hell of a lot more going for it in that direction than community warfare MMO.
It's the best it can get. The best use of battletech and lore was always single player. So I'm hoping for MW5.

Aim64C, on 27 July 2017 - 12:26 PM, said:

You seem to think that the reason MWO is in the current state of lackluster that it is stems from the fact that some of its players are highly critical of what it has become and the development decisions made by PGI. As if our pointing out of the failures of the game design choices somehow makes those game design choices both our responsibility and for the failure to be experienced by players.

The responsibilty is solely PG's. They made the game. They alone decide what to do with it. Sadly they just don't seem to be better game designers than most of the players. So in that respect, most players have also gotten what they asked for. It just happened to be bad. But it's PGI's fault for listening and not be more critical for their own game's sake.

Aim64C, on 27 July 2017 - 12:26 PM, said:

Frankly, I would -rather- play MechAssault within this community than to play the current MWO. That doesn't mean I don't want to play a MechWarrior game, either... but you have to gravitate away from an Arena shooter to make it work as a game. As it is - the player base is mostly those of us who have this as one of our only stompy robot games - or one of the few active MechWarrior games to choose from for those who won't be drawn away by other mecha.

Probably yeah. I really wished someone else would do a good mech game. One that was original and didn't have to live up to lore and rules from the 80s. One built as a shooter from the ground up with modern mechanics. But alas, this is what we got...

Aim64C, on 27 July 2017 - 12:26 PM, said:

I'm not saying to cry and throw a fit all the time over the expectations PGI hasn't met. That said - they did fuel those expectations for the sake of making a sale, and they should not be allowed to forget and the community should not consign itself to the trap of fatalism and defeatism.

Actually I just think they hadn't learned not to talk about their future ideas out loud before checking if they could actually pull them of or if they would actually work. That's why they are a lot more silent these days.

[Nameless King]

SuperFunkTron, on 27 July 2017 - 08:04 AM, said:

Faction Play is the main thing the original backers of this game were sold on and it has been long promised that it would be an immersive and interesting mode to play in. Currently, we are playing "capture the dot" with a series of battles to decide the who will control said dot. This was fine as a stand in system to get people accustomed to the system in the beginning, but these bare ones have been exposed for way too long.

I want to start collecting the ideas people have to make Faction Play more interesting. I want to hear concepts that will affect both in game play as well as factors that can be decided on the IS map. Concepts that address logistics, rewards for planetary conquer, Missions of the Week, Alternate drop weight conditions (forcing lighter or heavier battles), on going political alliances and shifts that alter based on decisions made by factions, anything that could add depth to Faction Play!

I will start cataloging these ideas in the original post so they can be easily found. It's high time for us to get an improved Faction Play and I hope you guys are ready to raise your voices so PGI understands that they need to start delivering on it now!

Kill FW and focus on QP.

[SuperFunkTron]

King Alen, on 28 July 2017 - 01:17 PM, said:

Kill FW and focus on QP.

Man, I wish I had thought of such an stream lined way to improve FP. (sarcastic in case it was missed).

What would you suggest they focus on in QP exactly?

[Khobai]

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What would you suggest they focus on in QP exactly?

making it better

[Mar-X-maN]

this event is a great improvement of FW already. first time its actually enjoyable as solo potatoe

[Mechwarrior1441491]

It's dead. Best to leave it as it is, reduce the scale of it and concentrate on Solaris. A full fleshed out Solaris feature.

CW is dead. They took so long to introduce even basic features and seemed incapable to deliver even the most simple of visions to engage people.

-Rank means nothing
-No supply or reason to really attack planets. No reason to really play.
-Players can't place their own missions, refer to rank meaning nothing.

Pretty sure they didn't want to include supply because they wanted people to play whatever they had in their stable and not be restricted by how the map was going regarding your factions industry output etc.

Well that didn't work did it. The people that are usually the core of any game regarding supply and detailed player control of production are always the most loyal and hardcore players. They rally everyone else and act as a foundation. Those people are getting their kicks in other games.

I believe FP would be alive and kicking if they went down that road.

Right now and perhaps forever it will be lackluster and not worth the wait times. We wanted more. We didn't get it. People went to play other games.

Edited by Mechwarrior1441491, 29 July 2017 - 10:49 AM.

[Archer Magnus]

All I would want is a Quickplay option with dropdecks.