57 replies to this topic

[Hobbles v]

Warning: Super Long Post Incoming

This is just a listing of my opinions on what needs to change in MWO in order to make the game more balanced, newbie friendly and just plain better.

Section 1: Stock Builds, how they cause imbalance and why they screw over new players
Section 2: The Failure of the skill tree, and how it screwed over new players
Section 3: How One Bucket FP killed the mode
Section 4: How the Mercenary system and loyalty trees are flawed
Section 5: Maps
Section 6: Conclusion and TLDR


Section 1: Stock builds

Stock builds are extremely bad. A typical stock mech (especially on the IS side) runs 4 different weapon systems, with multiple different ranges and weapon velocities, not enough ammo and armour that is half stripped. Unless a player is some kind of hardcore BattleTech fanatic, everyone quickly strips them and (hopefully) puts something better on. New players don’t have this choice, since they do not have the c-bills to do so and they do not have the knowledge to know how to build properly anyways, with the only examples to use as a guideline being the horrendously built stock mechs.

So how does this effect balance? One of the common things I hear is that inner sphere pugs are worse than Clan pugs. I feel that potatoes on both sides are equally bad and the stock mechs are the biggest factor making IS pugs weaker.

Simply put, the average crappy stock clan mech is “more complete” than the average stock inner sphere mech and there are more ways for a new Inner sphere pilot to screw up their mech. Most clan mechs already come with proper engines, double heat sinks and either Ferro Fibrous/Endo steel upgrades. Most Stock inner sphere mechs are missing the majority of these upgrades or allow a player to remove them.

So what needs to be done? Scrap the lore builds and create new stock loadouts for all the mechs in the game. They do not need to be meta, they just need to be builds that show some focus and good mech building practises, similar to the build level on the trial mechs. Stock mechs should introduce players to specific play styles instead of giving them 4 markedly different weapons, with different purposes to stumble around with.

The new stock builds should all fall into the following parameters.

1. Contain no more than 3 types of weapons, preferably 1 or 2, with no more than two different weapon velocities.

2. Show focused role, EG: All long range weapons, brawler builds, laser vomit, dakka etc. (No ER PPC + LRM5 + Flamer builds)

3. Have proper engines and double heat sinks, even FF and endosteel upgrades

Fixing stock builds to be at least at the level of trial builds would significantly narrow the gap between new pilots and experienced players while actually letting them experience what types of mechs they like to play and ways to improve them will become more obvious. Additionally properly built mechs across both Clan and IS have similar costs overall and would help even out the newbie population since cheap incomplete mechs attract more C-bill starved newbies.

It may also sell more mech packs/bundles since the mechs you get may be worth something for your $$$. I know I recently got my wife into the game. I dropped about $70.00 on mech packs to give her a head start, but even after that we could only barely equip 1 or 2 of her mechs even remotely close to a useful build due to lack of funds. Anyone who spends $70.00 on a game should expect to be able to at least field one or a couple competitive mechs.

Also a side note: Add clan mech Mastery packs for MC to the store alongside the IS ones.

Lastly a bone for the BattleTech fanatics, change “stock mode” in private lobbies to “Lore mode” and have the private lobby mode revert all mechs to their current stock builds instead of the improved ones.

Section 2: The failure of the skill tree

The Skill tree is unfortunately one of the worst things to happen to this game. It took an already steep learning curve, and made it even steeper. PGI learn to K.I.S.S., KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID. The old skill tree certainly had no depth but at least it was easy to understand and it’s lack of choice didn’t leave room for potatoes to do it wrong.

The new skill tree is a massively complex web to learn and new pilots have no clue where to start, heck, I know many experienced pilots who quit the game over not wanting to spend the time it takes to learn the tree or take the time to even physically skill out all their mechs since its introduction. People don’t want complex webs. They want to get into their robots and blow things up.

Additionally the skill tree harmed new player growth. The cbill costs incurred on spending experience simply screws over any newbie trying to buy more mechs or equipment to replace their craptacular stock builds.

Also from a balance point of view an unskilled mech vs a fully skilled mech is way more of a mismatch than it was under the old skill tree. Under the old tree a mastered mech would be more agile and heat efficient and capable of mounting one more module than an unskilled mech. Under the current system a mastered mech is likely to have the advantage in nearly every aspect, better agility, heat, durability, sensors and consumables. This system gets new pilots/mechs beat down on even more than the old system.

Now I know many people speculated that the costs of skilling up a mech is a c-bill sink because players have too many c-bills. I am a semi rich player in game, my c-bills rarely dip below 400 million and I have enough SP sitting around after skilling my used mechs to skill out over 180 more mechs for no cost. This C-bill sink does not effect me or the majority of other rich players.

However, It certainly handicaps the newbies who are struggling for c-bills however. Maybe this is by design, to try and get new players to buy mech packs so they can save their c-bills for skills. Problem is (as discussed in section 1) they also need those few c-bills they can scrounge up to fix the craptacular builds their payed for with real money mechs come with, and how are they expected to earn cbills? By dropping in crap builds with no skills and getting curb stomped.

So what can be done? Reverting to the old tree won’t happen because PGI put some much effort into the new system that could have been spent on maps and tech balance. Shrink the trees, less nodes = easier to learn and reduce the grind. Also make them more linear and remove the cbill cost, stop forcing us to unlock useless skills for our builds to get what we want and stop taxing poor players whom can barely afford to put better weapons on their mechs.


Section 3: One bucket is bad for Faction play

When PGI introdiced the “one bucket” queue system for faction play they effectively killed the mode. They removed all regional rivalries and multiple fronts that allowed the playerbase to make the mode more interesting. Back before one bucket a team could spend time defending a planet on the steiner/falcon front or on a whim switch to attacking a nearby Inner sphere neighbor or take a planet back from the falcons. I know back then I was in HHoD and the Mariks/Liaos on our border knew that "Wednesday night warfare" a Davion community run event would be happening and those nights they would actually show up to fight us Davions. The rest of the week we would mainly go back to trying to defend against the clans. One bucket killed that.

Also back before one bucket, because of multiple fronts you had planets changing hands on both sides, rather than one side purely steamrolling every phase. Strong communities like the Rasalhague faction hub were able to thrive because they could counter attack into clan space instead of just being swallowed up because the rest of the inner sphere was failing to defend them.

Teams knew what planet they were fighting over, who they were fighting and how it would effect the map, it was far more involving than the current “click a button for random opponents”

One bucket also worsened the situation for pugs. Under the old system some poor hapless pug learning the mode could get steamrolled by a top tier unit on planet X and have the option to play on planet Y instead if they wanted to try faction play again. With one bucket, that fresh pug can line up with that same super team for the entire night or quit playing.

Lastly 1 bucket killed IS v IS and Clan v Clan (a rare treat) fighting, very fun ways to play.

So what can be done? Revert to phase 2 (but we know that had too many buckets). Instead find a middle ground between every faction for themselves and one bucket.

One way is keep the IS vs Clan setup. BUT allow the population to queue up for each specific planet on the front (and see the number of players fighting on each planet again). This would allow units to focus their efforts on specific planets to drive progress, instead of being assigned a planet at random from the ones up for grabs. Also planets could change hands on both sides again. (eg the falcon side of the front could make progress while the Smoke jag side of the front loses ground.) It would make the map more dynamic and give the player base more control over what happening. Instead of the current setup of the IS just trying to slow down the clan invasion, there could be a lane of counterattack that has the IS racing towards the clan home worlds in an effort to get there before the clans have taken too many capitals.

Now currently 8 planets are up for grabs, this might be too many queues. Instead reduce it to 4 “contested systems” each with their own tug of war and scouting bar. Whomever wins each planet moves that front forward, planets outside capture thresholds remain un-tagged (or keep their previously applied tag from a previous phase) and are up for grabs again next phase. Keep loyalist voting in place to choose the next contested system on each front should they win the related planet.

The other, less likely way is to break the factions into four groups. Crusader Clans, Warden Clans, Fedcom+allies and the Concord of Kapteyn. With these four groupings use the phase two style of planet picking for a total of 12 planets max up for grabs (depending on the borders). This would see Clan v Clan, IS v IS and IS v Clan fighting as well. However, this may be too many buckets.

Section 4: The Mercenary system + Loyalty

Back when the mercenary tree was released it was a big **** you to all the loyalist players. It released shiny new rewards for the players who bounced around rather than stay in one place and develop communities.

Before the Merc tree there were distinct and active team speak hubs for nearly every faction; when the merc tree was released, many loyalist hubs broke down as people flocked to the new rewards as mercs. Effectively killing every faction hub except for Davion, Rasalhague and to a lesser extent Smoke Jaguar on Strana Mechty (now dead with new clan releases).

This fervor for new rewards was short lived. Several months later, the active mercs completed their new tree and suddenly even the merc population dropped as well since, they had reached the same problem loyalists have, running out of rewards…. (Farming the 10 loyalty trees via short term contracts took far longer than the single merc tree).

Meanwhile as usual through all this time Loyalists were given the finger.

Again recently with the introduction of three new clan factions, Long time loyalists were spit on again. Rather than do anything for the existing loyalist groups (or mercs for that matter) They added more factions to further divide the playerbase; ones with shiny new rewards, and ALL on the clan side, thus causeing a large populatiom shift by active units to clan side.

This effect was doubled by its effect on the mercenary contract rewards system. Suddenly clan side had 3 factions with 50% bonus payouts vs the 30-40% at best for 1-2 faction in IS. Many mercs with no more loyalty rewards to follow will just follow the cbills, flooding clan side with even more active units.

So what can be done?

The simplest solution (albeit a temporary stopgap at best) is to release Comstar as a playable faction for IS. This may curb some of the mass exodus to clan side rewards.

A more permanent solution would be to scrap the mercenary tree and payout system. As it does not reflect the active populations anyways. Mercenarys should sign up for merc contracts with each specific faction like they did in phase 1 and 2. And earn rewards with each specific faction they are curently working for (at a much slower rate than current loyalists).

Finally there should be no hard cap on loyalty earning. The end of each loyalty tree should have some kind of reward that can be unlocked repeatedly after earning a certain amount more LP, give players at least some reward for sticking with their current faction, and more importantly keep their respective community hubs active.


Section 5: Maps & mode design.

First is incursion, this mode simply does not work well on most maps. The bases need more health as rushing is too easy and playing this mode on maps like grim plexis and polar are too easy to sneak win by base rushing, or bum rush a win on small maps like caustic. Incursion is surprisingly okay on medium sized maps like Frozen city and Crimson straight. Add more base HP and take the mode off the FP rotation on the giant and small maps.

Alpine peaks on any mode. This map is bad in any FP mode, one side has clear cut advantage in every game type. Remove the map from Faction play entirely.

Invasion maps. The defenders have a significant advantage, the maps should be modified slightly to allow a more even fight at the gates by allowing the attackers more entry options or attack routes. Also increase objective health to conteract Gen rishing via the easier entries.

Grim Portico: A third gate should be added between the F5 and F6 area to allow attackers another way into the base away from the main chokes.

Boreal Vault: The hills in the F6 area should be higher in the middle closer to the gates so that mechs in the middle of the base cannot simultaneously fire upon both gates. Alternatly add another approach path or gate leading into E7 or G5.

Vitric Forge: Add a tunnel under the F5 building in between the gates leading between both gates and a side door leading out into F4. This would give attackers more options entering the base.

Sulfurous Rift: Move the pass between C6 and D6 up into D5 and add another pass over the mountains through F5 to G4. This would allow attackers to use multiple gates with less risk since access between them outside the base would be far easier.

Hellbor Springs: Move the defender drop zone to the other side of Omega in the E1/E2 Area, building it in a way that you cant snipe the gates from it. Turn the old drop zone area D4, E4, F4, E5 and F5 into more low ground base structures/canyons to give players more places to go when they enter the base to find cover. That or expand the areas immediately inside both gates to give attackers more room to spread out upon entry.

Emerald Taiga: This map I actually feel is the most balanced invasion map. However, The attackers should drop closer together and on higher ground since it is far to easy for defenders to isolate a lance on push out. Also the Defenders drop zone should be reduced in height.

Finally on the topic of maps. PGI has wasted the potential for FREE game development. Let community members build maps that can be used in private lobbies. Let popular community created maps be added to the official rotations. People will do this for FREE. Modding communities are pretty much always what keeps games kicking well past their prime, let the community help.


Section 6: Conclusion and TLDR

This post sadly is barely scratching the surface on issues with the game. But to me these are a lot of simple and practical solutions that can be done to move the game into the right direction.

Here is the TLDR

1.Make stock mechs useful, so new players can learn to play right from the get go and so Clan and IS mechs have similar price tags to even out the newbie populations.

2. Revert or simplify the skill tree. Adding more complexity to the already steep learning curve of this game drove away new and old players alike and widened the gap between the poor inexperienced players and the rich knowledgeable players.

3. Bring back multiple fronts in faction play so that planets can change hands on both sides of the conflict and the community can drive progress, and even if one side “Dominates” at least the other is capable of small victories that matter.

4. Scrap the mercenary tree and reward system since it kills each individual faction. Even out the number of IS vs Clan factions and throw a bone to long time loyalists, reward their loyalty.

5. Maps and modes: Kill Alpine. Adjust incursion to make base rushing harder. On invasion maps modify them to reduce the defenders tactical advantage while also making gen rushing harder. Let the community create content.

My god this is almost 3000 words….
Thanks for reading.

[Kaoba]

+ no planetary win for IS, i think whatever top 5-4 units win more matches should win a planet in the phase.

[Nightbird]

Section 1

Agree: Stock loadouts suck

Disagree: Take a LOT of effort to change, most mechs IS/Clan will not be effective even when optimized (for Clan with default omnipods), and pisses off lore folks who do stock private matches for no reason

Section 2

Agree: Too convoluted. The tree should just be linear for each unique bonus, and more valuable skills can require more nodes and/or have total bonus nerfed, and less valuable skills can be spread among fewer nodes and/or have total bonus buffed. Easy to re-adjust balance with each patch.

Section 3

Agree: One bucket is driving more stacking to tag planets

Disagree: Don't want to revert to prior structure - it sucked before as well. Perhaps you've forgotten everyone stacked JF or SJ in order to spread and create adjacency to each IS faction just so fights can happen. Unless you were in the know, it's easy to never find drops, whereas now it's much easier to get a match. There are better solutions.

Section 4

Agree: Current incentives suck at creating balance

Disagree: Ideas don't seem fleshed out enough to be implementable (beyond adding any new IS faction), perhaps see here for some starting points and improve upon them

Section 5

Agree: Defending is easier than attacking, but disagree on changing this. Just make the losing side in tug-of-war always get defense and as you said, increase gen health to reduce rushing.

Disagree: Incursion is good for FP, much better than in QP, because it requires communication. You can win the fight and lose the battle easily if you don't. There's also more to the fight than just skirmish, which many other modes are essentially, since you need to balance between attack, defense, and scouting. The only thing I would change is making air support better. I might even like it changed to Long Tom, so long as the usage is something like a 2 minute timer to a strike. Would make the energy extraction points more interesting for sure!

Edited by NlGHTBlRD, 04 October 2017 - 04:00 PM.

[naterist]

Agree with most of your points. P1 idk if your solution is the best, but ya, mostly sounds spot on.

[Soapy Squirrel]

hobbles i think you have some great solutions and address alot of issues in a pretty simple and economic way. PGI could do these things, it would be nice, but then again i still want my squirrel mech, so lets see what happens first.
but its a great post and well thought out, PGI should be taking well thought out player suggestions and seeing how to implement them, or at least looking into the cost benefit of implementing them.
yes changing maps does cost money, is it cost effective to refresh the game in that manner? yeah, we as the players like new maps, or even updating ones in play on. you map changes are good ideas, and would change the tactics used, in other words it would be fun again.
i think we have asked for player based maps for a long time now, with PGI staff being tied up with mech warrior 5, it would breath a new life into this game. i am sure alot of old players would return just to make maps and tinker, it would be a massive boon for the game. implementation of it and how to add them to the map rotation might be interesting, as it would present its own challenges, but its worth it.
ok my tail is tired from typing,,
but i agree with what youve had to say, and PGI should listen, not alot of players out there have put this much thought into simple solutions that would work.
great post,,

[r4zen]

I like these ideas, for the most part.

It seems to illustrate that there isn't anyone at PGI that regularly plays Faction Warfare, nor anyone there who seems invested in it's success.

The best change we could get? A game designer who's main function is to shape, guide, and improve the development of this game mode. Even a fresh out of college, $34k a year kid who spends 50% of their time working on this mode would be a massive improvement (and if there's already someone doing this, you're terrible at your job and should find something else to do, or your bosses are ignoring everything you want changed and you should move on).

I'm voting with my wallet. No more $ until faction warfare gets more attention. It's the only reason I play anymore, and the only reason I've made the bulk of my purchases.

[Commander A9]

WayTooSexy, on 04 October 2017 - 12:39 PM, said:

+ no planetary win for IS, i think whatever top 5-4 units win more matches should win a planet in the phase.

Isn't that pretty much how it works now, but only for the Faction that wins?

And that's how it used to work back in Phase 1 and 2...but when the planet got to above 50%, all matches stopped.

[justcallme A S H]

FFS man... Holy great wall of the brown sea

TL:DR

CLIFF NOTES PLZ SOMBODEH!

[Rick T Dangerous]

Very good ideas, Hobbles v.

Only thing I have to disagree on: Alpine Peaks. You are right that it is a bad map for most modes. But for conquest in FP it is great. So getting rid of it for all modes except for conquest would be fine with me.

On a sidenote: remember the bug a while back with 5 or 6 attacks by IS and one of them deep in clan territory? Before I checked the forums about it, I really thought it was CJF attacking us. Was a bit disappointed when I realized how wrong I was. CvC and ISvIS action would be fun indeed...

[Kaoba]

justcallme A S H, on 05 October 2017 - 05:24 PM, said:

FFS man... Holy great wall of the brown sea

TL:DR

CLIFF NOTES PLZ SOMBODEH!

READ YA LAZY ****

[justcallme A S H]

lol... Man, I been reading all day.

You can Cliff-note me in that sexy Jamaican voice over the weekend.

[xX PUG Xx]

justcallme A S H, on 05 October 2017 - 08:11 PM, said:

lol... Man, I been reading all day.

You can Cliff-note me in that sexy Jamaican voice over the weekend.

Mr. Men doesn't count as real reading ;-)

[justcallme A S H]

hahahaha

[Lovas]

justcallme A S H, on 05 October 2017 - 05:24 PM, said:

FFS man... Holy great wall of the brown sea

TL:DR

CLIFF NOTES PLZ SOMBODEH!

He put the cliff notes at the bottom noob.

Section 6: Conclusion and TLDR

This post sadly is barely scratching the surface on issues with the game. But to me these are a lot of simple and practical solutions that can be done to move the game into the right direction.

Here is the TLDR

1.Make stock mechs useful, so new players can learn to play right from the get go and so Clan and IS mechs have similar price tags to even out the newbie populations.

2. Revert or simplify the skill tree. Adding more complexity to the already steep learning curve of this game drove away new and old players alike and widened the gap between the poor inexperienced players and the rich knowledgeable players.

3. Bring back multiple fronts in faction play so that planets can change hands on both sides of the conflict and the community can drive progress, and even if one side “Dominates” at least the other is capable of small victories that matter.

4. Scrap the mercenary tree and reward system since it kills each individual faction. Even out the number of IS vs Clan factions and throw a bone to long time loyalists, reward their loyalty.

5. Maps and modes: Kill Alpine. Adjust incursion to make base rushing harder. On invasion maps modify them to reduce the defenders tactical advantage while also making gen rushing harder. Let the community create content.

[Alexandra Hekmatyar]

Lovas, on 06 October 2017 - 05:55 AM, said:

He put the cliff notes at the bottom noob.

Shhh it was a visible secret!

[justcallme A S H]

The TL;DR always goes at the top.

Learn to internet diatribe plz.

[Cloves]

I think it would be even better if they could use a combination of location based quirks and buffs to obsolete equipment to balance stock mechs. There is currently no reason to take single heat sinks, this is a newbie tax that artificially inflates the cost of most of the IS mechs, and worse, they only get 50% of the value of junk that comes with their mechs when they learn they have to fix it. If there was any sort of advantage to offset playing lore builds (similar to the set of 8 quirks) this would help make a new purchase viable enough to get enough CBills to improve it.

[LordNothing]

1.

my solution to the stock mech problem is freelancers only. make freelancer the noob/casual dumping ground.

you could take it a step further, find better games to slot freelancers into, let them play against themselves if they have population to do so. give them a ranking tree to earn prizes like mechs, bays, and gsp so they can buy build and level their decks. lock out career selection until a certain rank is achieved.

2.

not convinced this is a problem. skill trees are great. i feel that you are trying to use this topic as an excuse to kill a feature you dont like by passing it off as broken.

3.

also not convinced this is a problem right now. one bucket means i get drops in fp and at a playable rate, its a great little stop gap. perhaps if populations can be brought up we can move up to a 4 bucket system. but so long as its a niche end-of-life elite-players-only mode, it will never have the population to move forward. we need population.

but thats never going to happen, so many bad experiences with fp have permanently ruined its reputation with a lot of players and nothing short of a complete redesign and re-branding can fix it. even then many players will jump to the conclusion that its just whitewash and its the same fail mode and simply not show up. maybe as a second follow up phase to a successful re-design and pr campaign.

4.

ok yea you outline the problem and then suggest more factions? i have no problem with more factions in of itself. but i think the main issue comes from the implementation of ranking trees. if you get to max rank, there is no reason to stay. ive been debating with myself whether to stay merc now that im rank 8 or moving to farm country to get the first 3 bays in each of the new factions and in less time. the extremely long runs to get the higher ranks vs the lower ones makes players hop. if i can play fp for a week to win a sweet prize thats incentive, but when those prizes dry up, then what? if there was a sweet reward at the end of the tree or continuing rewards when its completed it might encourage people to stay put. like rank based pay or converting your surplus lp to mc.

i suggest doing a 2 tree system. the first is a rewards tree independant of faction, everyone gets the same tree. rewards are spaced out more linearly, and the tree is either infinite or has end of tree rewards. this one would never take a hit for switching factions, it becomes a primary incentive to play fp. you have faction ranks as a second tree. these can go up or down, switching faction always busts you down all the way to the bottom if you go to a hostile faction or a faction in a better standing, half way if you go to an allied faction, and in some cases no penalties at all if you switch to a faction in a lesser standing than your current faction. rank dictates pay, higher rank, more bonuses. get to max rank and get victory mc pay every time you win a match.

factions are just a badge and custom ranks at this point, but it keeps people put, you can play where you want rather than where the rewards are at. and i think thats what we needed from the getgo. also should get around to calculating merc bonuses correctly rather than rewarding people for playing the easy way. this also falls under redesign+rebranding kind of thing.

5.

any new maps or map redesigns are welcome. id like to see grim opened up a little more, more cover on boreal, and tunnels etc you mentioned elsewhere. all good ideas. this game needs new maps 2 years ago.

6. (or my version of 6)

fp is broken in a few places, but nowhere more so than its reputation with the bulk of the potential playerbase. maps are an ongoing issue with this game. so some of these are real problems. some are imaginary (like its marred reputation). but i think we need to focus on the obvious, wide open, glaring issues that complement this loathsom ratsnest. i want fp to be good and i want people to see how good it is. but with it turning off so many people its likely time to reconsider who this mode is for. make it for everyone and everyone will show.

[Hobbles v]

LordNothing, on 10 October 2017 - 05:39 PM, said:

1.

my solution to the stock mech problem is freelancers only. make freelancer the noob/casual dumping ground.

you could take it a step further, find better games to slot freelancers into, let them play against themselves if they have population to do so. give them a ranking tree to earn prizes like mechs, bays, and gsp so they can buy build and level their decks. lock out career selection until a certain rank is achieved.

2.

not convinced this is a problem. skill trees are great. i feel that you are trying to use this topic as an excuse to kill a feature you dont like by passing it off as broken.

3.

also not convinced this is a problem right now. one bucket means i get drops in fp and at a playable rate, its a great little stop gap. perhaps if populations can be brought up we can move up to a 4 bucket system. but so long as its a niche end-of-life elite-players-only mode, it will never have the population to move forward. we need population.

but thats never going to happen, so many bad experiences with fp have permanently ruined its reputation with a lot of players and nothing short of a complete redesign and re-branding can fix it. even then many players will jump to the conclusion that its just whitewash and its the same fail mode and simply not show up. maybe as a second follow up phase to a successful re-design and pr campaign.

4.

ok yea you outline the problem and then suggest more factions? i have no problem with more factions in of itself. but i think the main issue comes from the implementation of ranking trees. if you get to max rank, there is no reason to stay. ive been debating with myself whether to stay merc now that im rank 8 or moving to farm country to get the first 3 bays in each of the new factions and in less time. the extremely long runs to get the higher ranks vs the lower ones makes players hop. if i can play fp for a week to win a sweet prize thats incentive, but when those prizes dry up, then what? if there was a sweet reward at the end of the tree or continuing rewards when its completed it might encourage people to stay put. like rank based pay or converting your surplus lp to mc.

i suggest doing a 2 tree system. the first is a rewards tree independant of faction, everyone gets the same tree. rewards are spaced out more linearly, and the tree is either infinite or has end of tree rewards. this one would never take a hit for switching factions, it becomes a primary incentive to play fp. you have faction ranks as a second tree. these can go up or down, switching faction always busts you down all the way to the bottom if you go to a hostile faction or a faction in a better standing, half way if you go to an allied faction, and in some cases no penalties at all if you switch to a faction in a lesser standing than your current faction. rank dictates pay, higher rank, more bonuses. get to max rank and get victory mc pay every time you win a match.

factions are just a badge and custom ranks at this point, but it keeps people put, you can play where you want rather than where the rewards are at. and i think thats what we needed from the getgo. also should get around to calculating merc bonuses correctly rather than rewarding people for playing the easy way. this also falls under redesign+rebranding kind of thing.

5.

any new maps or map redesigns are welcome. id like to see grim opened up a little more, more cover on boreal, and tunnels etc you mentioned elsewhere. all good ideas. this game needs new maps 2 years ago.

6. (or my version of 6)

fp is broken in a few places, but nowhere more so than its reputation with the bulk of the potential playerbase. maps are an ongoing issue with this game. so some of these are real problems. some are imaginary (like its marred reputation). but i think we need to focus on the obvious, wide open, glaring issues that complement this loathsom ratsnest. i want fp to be good and i want people to see how good it is. but with it turning off so many people its likely time to reconsider who this mode is for. make it for everyone and everyone will show.

1. Separate queue was attempted, and was a dismal failure. Also it does nothing to teach new pilots about whats good in this game. So often I come across terrible builds from pugs, and even chat with pugs who love their garbage builds with 4 different weapon systems because the only basis of comparison they had was the stock build they replaced. If mechs came built with good practices in mind these pugs would be far more likely to realize how much their performance dips when they change their build to a bracket build with a weapon for every range.

2. I enjoy using the skill tree, because I am heavily into theory crafting and can happily spend hours tweaking that kind of stuff. The average player does not, and for a new player it's just too complex. I've seen a lot of pilots quit because they didn't want to learn it, seen others who have no idea what to do with their 4 types of currency involved and other new pilots struggle who have too steep a learning curve already without having to learn this mess.

3. one bucket is most certainly a problem right now. The IS side is giving up because there is no hope to tag planets anymore, previous iterations of FP had defense tags. Now tied phases result in no tags being given out. Since IS almost never wins a phase, no IS units gain tags anymore. When one side repeatedly loses all the time, that side will keep losing players. A small number of multiple queues actually gives hope that an IS team could stack one and pull off a victory somewhere. I use 4 planets as an example because 4 is the number of planets currently awarded each phase. If 4 buckets is too much 2 or 3 could work. we just need a system where both sides can make progress in some measurable way.

4. This post is about Practical solutions. Things that do not require a massive re-design of the mode to implement. Currently there is a faction imbalance, Clans have 1 more than IS. The simplest and most practical way to even this out is to add one to the IS.... Since PGI definitely wont remove any (unless we kill off smoke jag in a op bulldog event)

Actually just had another Idea that may be the simplest for PGI. Once someone maxes out their Loyalty tree, they start over. Loyalty is rewarded with repeated access to the easy to earn levels. instead of having to Desert for a week and move to a new faction.

Cloves, on 06 October 2017 - 02:17 PM, said:

I think it would be even better if they could use a combination of location based quirks and buffs to obsolete equipment to balance stock mechs. There is currently no reason to take single heat sinks, this is a newbie tax that artificially inflates the cost of most of the IS mechs, and worse, they only get 50% of the value of junk that comes with their mechs when they learn they have to fix it. If there was any sort of advantage to offset playing lore builds (similar to the set of 8 quirks) this would help make a new purchase viable enough to get enough CBills to improve it.

I would rather just have them pay the cost of a properly equipped mech up front when they buy it. This counters the imbalance of IS mechs being initially cheaper. And a properly equipped mech gives new players an example of what works. Quirking up a stock in specific ways to try and make it better teaches them nothing and tries to prop up garbage.

Edited by Hobbles v, 10 October 2017 - 08:43 PM.

[Kwea]

I think having stock IS builds be better is a HUGE deal, and probably causes a lot of the horribad new players on the IS side. Also, sometimes it is 5 mill to buy the mech, and 1 mill to fit it out.