70 replies to this topic

[MischiefSC]

FP is designed for teams. That's not everyone. That's okay - most of us hate QP with a passion. The problem is when people try to play FP like it's QP. That's an invitation to failure. Bring good mechs, play with your team, play to the win not your own stats. It can be a lot of fun. A lot of tactical options you don't see anywhere else.

QP has neither strategy or tactics. While any amount of teamwork is powerful here but isn't that common or critical.

Comp has a ton of strategy and very on the fly tactics. Teamwork here is critical and 1 bad decision or lucky break makes the match.

FP has a little strategy and a lot of tactics. Teamwork here is a force multiplier - with 4 mechs per player it's far more forgiving of mistakes but requires good planning ahead and good coordination to adjust tactics and control the flow of combat.

Being good in QP isn't that hard. Play your mech well, you're okay.

Being good in comp is an accomplishment, it's a lot of work and requires some commitment. While it's not as easy to see spectator matches are won by on guy getting a good early hit on a key enemy player, setting him up to get picked, collapse enemy control of a lane and let one team roll in to win. Many of the most critical decisions are made before the match even drops.

Being good in FP is a social skill as much as anything else. FP matches can be won on wave 1 by the guy who pushes in first and eats a hail of fire and dies after soaking 300 damage and 30% of the enemy team heat while his teammates ro up an enemy side and destroy them in detail to set up an avalanche where the enemy second wave is badly chewed when it meets your teams fresh mechs. Theres a lot of tactical knowledge to learn and a lot of things to adjust to on the fly and playing to your teammates is critical, as is playing your role even when it's going to get you smashed.

They all have their own things to learn and do and enjoy. If you don't like teamwork, FP and comp won't enthuse you. If you enjoy teamwork but like the tactical in match stuff and the far less rigorous investment, FP may be your thing. If being the best excites you and you're all for the all-in and enjoy the strategy and precision stuff, comp is probably your thing.

Nothing says you can't like two or all three. However not liking one or two of those doesn't equate to any moral superiority or failing. It's just different flavors of game.

[DAYLEET]

Considering the population, can we agree that its a good thing that FP is widely unpopular? It should be locked unless you are part of a 12man too. Its always going to suck when you allow it to be played in sucky ways.

[Appogee]

I intend to only play FP from now on.

There are just too many impossible potato carry missions in QP these days.

Yes, that's challenging. But not in an enjoyable way.

Edited by Appogee, 05 October 2017 - 09:59 AM.

[Stinger554]

MischiefSC, on 05 October 2017 - 09:22 AM, said:

FP is designed for teams.

If FP is designed for teams then it needs to either separate teams from solos or just not allow solo's.

[Paigan]

MischiefSC, on 05 October 2017 - 09:22 AM, said:

[...]
The problem is when people try to play FP like it's QP. That's an invitation to failure. Bring good mechs, play with your team, play to the win not your own stats. It can be a lot of fun. A lot of tactical options you don't see anywhere else.
[...]

That's how I play QP, too.
So I'm doing it wrong?

[MischiefSC]

Stinger554, on 05 October 2017 - 09:57 AM, said:

If FP is designed for teams then it needs to either separate teams from solos or just not allow solo's.

That was the original design - you had to be grouped up to play. However we fought hard to be able to pug in FW. I pugged tons in FW and originally we all seemed to understand that pugging required you to put in more effort to bring good mechs and coordinate. Pugs were often decent team players, or at least tried to be.

That's gone now, pugs in FW seem to be dead set on making poor choices, like if they start making good choices in how they play in FW it's like 'giving in'.

At this point I'm open to requiring someone to group up to play in FW much like how group queue works.

[Shifty McSwift]

Appogee, on 05 October 2017 - 09:57 AM, said:

I intend to only play FP from now on.

There are just too many impossible potato carry missions in QP these days.

Yes, that's challenging. But not in an enjoyable way.

Sure, that's basically the opposite reaction to the one I had though, I've played so much QP the ridiculousness has come to just a be another part of that game in itself to me, and there was a time where I was like "Solo QP is the worst, it sucks, nothing can be worse than this disorganised chaos", some 50 solo FP games later I found I was actually missing aspects of solo QP.

It could be just a response from how I have come to play the game most recently personally too, and/or just a reflection of the fluctuating quality of solo queue games, but as chaotic and ridiculous as QP can be, those aspects are just magnified in FP.

Edited by Shifty McSwift, 05 October 2017 - 10:26 AM.

[Stinger554]

MischiefSC, on 05 October 2017 - 10:23 AM, said:

That was the original design - you had to be grouped up to play. However we fought hard to be able to pug in FW. I pugged tons in FW and originally we all seemed to understand that pugging required you to put in more effort to bring good mechs and coordinate. Pugs were often decent team players, or at least tried to be.

That's gone now, pugs in FW seem to be dead set on making poor choices, like if they start making good choices in how they play in FW it's like 'giving in'.

At this point I'm open to requiring someone to group up to play in FW much like how group queue works.

My games in FP have been fine when PUGs are actually fighting PUGs but when PUGs end up fighting even semi-large 6-8 grouped players it doesn't end well (for the PUGs anyways) and that's before considering any advantage Clan mechs might have.

They don't explicitly have to remove PUGs from CW/FP but they need to at least separate groups from solos.

Shifty McSwift, on 05 October 2017 - 10:25 AM, said:

.

It could be just a response from how I have come to play the game most recently personally too, and/or just a reflection of the fluctuating quality of solo queue games, but as chaotic and ridiculous as QP can be, those aspects are just magnified in FP.

Yep I'm never gonna solo queue in FP outside of scouting ever again.

[DAYLEET]

MischiefSC, on 05 October 2017 - 10:23 AM, said:

That was the original design - you had to be grouped up to play. However we fought hard to be able to pug in FW. I pugged tons in FW and originally we all seemed to understand that pugging required you to put in more effort to bring good mechs and coordinate. Pugs were often decent team players, or at least tried to be.

That's gone now, pugs in FW seem to be dead set on making poor choices, like if they start making good choices in how they play in FW it's like 'giving in'.

At this point I'm open to requiring someone to group up to play in FW much like how group queue works.

You mean before it was implemented? I dont remember it being closed to solo :/ But back then there was no way to communicate with other people unless they were in your friend list. Now, forcing grouping using faction chat would be a step into having someone to accepting and playing as part of a group rather than do their own things. You know, chances to have a leader this way would be much higher, people following oders would also be much higher. I didnt have as much as a bad time in fw when i lost but people communicated and tried, its the random bs that gets to you.

[MischiefSC]

DAYLEET, on 05 October 2017 - 10:55 AM, said:

You mean before it was implemented? I dont remember it being closed to solo :/ But back then there was no way to communicate with other people unless they were in your friend list. Now, forcing grouping using faction chat would be a step into having someone to accepting and playing as part of a group rather than do their own things. You know, chances to have a leader this way would be much higher, people following oders would also be much higher. I didnt have as much as a bad time in fw when i lost but people communicated and tried, its the random bs that gets to you.

The original design before release was groups only. We cried, begged, pleased and promised that we understood pugging in FW was going to be HARD MODE. That you had to work even harder to coordinate with your team as a pug, PGI relented and let people pug in FW. For the first 6 months to a year it was awesome - pugs usually learned to try to work with the teams and work together. I pugged almost every match and people tried to call and use teamwork in almost every match. Pugging almost exclusively as IS Loyalist (Davion even) I pulled just over a 1.0 W/L in FW 1.0, and that's when Clans were OP AF.

Then FW 2 hit, PGI quit paying any attention to FW, all the promises about more depth, purpose, value to planets, perks to being a loyalists, logistics, all that never showed up and it became clear it never would. So people started to fade, especially the loyalist units. Game balance IS vs Clan was also terrible and PGI has always been either frightened or flat out incompetent about fixing that. So the units bled out - most bled right out of MWO. Many went merc, which made populations less stable, which made it worse.

Then Long Tom showed up and voided FW population for over 6 months before PGI, despite having constant tweets and posts about it, realized that LT was a complete and utter disaster and they pulled it out. At that point it was too late, though they did manage to go 1 BUKKIT which drove out the bulk of remaining loyalists.

What we have left are mostly mercs (even if they're farming loyalist LP in new clan factions now), a handful of teams that are a shell of their prior population and some dedicatedly incompetent pugs who treat teamwork like an attempt to turn them into cannibals.

It was never 'seal clubbing', seal clubbing was almost non-existent originally because there were at least small teams in almost every drop and the pugs tried to play together as a team. While Clan tech was significantly better than IS Clans were full of bogglingly incompetent lorehounds running stock builds (like units of them) and you could still win as IS even against the tech imbalance. The 'seal clubbing' started when most the units left and then LT hit and 1 BUKKIT convinced even the dedicated hardcore loyalists that PGI was either incompetent or intentionally trying to get them to leave.

FW was always about teamwork though. That's what it does that the other modes really don't - with waves and dropdecks you've got a layer of teamwork and tactics that other modes don't have.

[Jman5]

Removing solo players from Faction Play would instantly kill Faction play forever. Not only do they likely outnumber the group players, but they help fill in the extra spaces so that different sized groups can match up into one team. Making it 12-man or nothing is an insane suggestion.

Just look at what happened with the competitive queue, which is a good example of how this would work, and you see they have a constant struggle to kick off games. And this is a mode with a monetary incentive to play.

On top of that, pug teams offer attainable wins for many of the more casual groups that would otherwise never win a match and rage quit back to quickplay. You're always going to have something at the bottom of the totem pole and if it's not random solos it will be the casual groups. Then without the casual groups it would be the next groups on the firing line who then rage quit.

Stop suggesting we remove solo players from faction play. PGI isn't going to try this little experiment again.

[MischiefSC]

Jman5, on 05 October 2017 - 11:53 AM, said:

Removing solo players from Faction Play would instantly kill Faction play forever. Not only do they likely outnumber the group players, but they help fill in the extra spaces so that different sized groups can match up into one team. Making it 12-man or nothing is an insane suggestion.

Just look at what happened with the competitive queue, which is a good example of how this would work, and you see they have a constant struggle to kick off games. And this is a mode with a monetary incentive to play.

On top of that, pug teams offer attainable wins for many of the more casual groups that would otherwise never win a match and rage quit back to quickplay. You're always going to have something at the bottom of the totem pole and if it's not random solos it will be the casual groups. Then without the casual groups it would be the next groups on the firing line who then rage quit.

Stop suggesting we remove solo players from faction play. PGI isn't going to try this little experiment again.

Just require them to make a 2man, or otherwise commit to a group. At this point you're not talking about 'killing faction play'. It's pretty dead. There's a ton of things that could be done to fix that - PGI has made it clear they're doing none of them.

Currently we've got dedicatedly terribad pugs showing up to get farmed, then complaining they're getting farmed. Nobody wants to play on their team and playing against them isn't a ton better. How do you recommend we get the teams back to FW? I'm game for anything at this point.

[DAYLEET]

MischiefSC, on 05 October 2017 - 11:34 AM, said:

The original design before release was groups only. We cried, begged, pleased and promised that we understood pugging in FW was going to be HARD MODE. That you had to work even harder to coordinate with your team as a pug, PGI relented and let people pug in FW. For the first 6 months to a year it was awesome - pugs usually learned to try to work with the teams and work together. I pugged almost every match and people tried to call and use teamwork in almost every match. Pugging almost exclusively as IS Loyalist (Davion even) I pulled just over a 1.0 W/L in FW 1.0, and that's when Clans were OP AF.

Then FW 2 hit, PGI quit paying any attention to FW, all the promises about more depth, purpose, value to planets, perks to being a loyalists, logistics, all that never showed up and it became clear it never would. So people started to fade, especially the loyalist units. Game balance IS vs Clan was also terrible and PGI has always been either frightened or flat out incompetent about fixing that. So the units bled out - most bled right out of MWO. Many went merc, which made populations less stable, which made it worse.

Almost all changes PGI ever did was make it more accessible and that in turn means that every things meant to make it hardcore serious were instead a hindrance and/or unfinished product. Assuming they wanted everyone, ie solo pugs, to play fw then those changes came way too late.

MischiefSC, on 05 October 2017 - 11:34 AM, said:

Then Long Tom showed up and voided FW population for over 6 months before PGI, despite having constant tweets and posts about it, realized that LT was a complete and utter disaster and they pulled it out. At that point it was too late, though they did manage to go 1 BUKKIT which drove out the bulk of remaining loyalists.

Russ said, when they finally decided ti fix it, that they didnt have a guy working on FW for that whole time. I think it meant THE guy wasnt even there, unemployed. But the long tom was very dumb, like, who tried it and thought it was a good idea. The FW event marking that patch release, i was in the FW chat making sure people wouldnt drop on LT planet. Even the side who had LT didnt want to play on those planets.

MischiefSC, on 05 October 2017 - 11:34 AM, said:

What we have left are mostly mercs (even if they're farming loyalist LP in new clan factions now), a handful of teams that are a shell of their prior population and some dedicatedly incompetent pugs who treat teamwork like an attempt to turn them into cannibals.

I blame the Merc status/change to how being part of a faction is fkin pointless and they made it worse with quiting like you want and such. "You get rewards for being in a faction" yeah and i did the first mechbay of every faction, how dumb is that. Why can anyone buy a faction camo and decals and such? It should be locked to your faction and unlocked. PGI never understood the attachement a player can have for his faction or mech, they just understand money so they gave us money as rewards(bays and mc). Its cool that it can lessen joining a game for a newbie with mechbays but the current model removes all purpose and importance to being part of a faction.

MischiefSC, on 05 October 2017 - 11:34 AM, said:

It was never 'seal clubbing', seal clubbing was almost non-existent originally because there were at least small teams in almost every drop and the pugs tried to play together as a team. While Clan tech was significantly better than IS Clans were full of bogglingly incompetent lorehounds running stock builds (like units of them) and you could still win as IS even against the tech imbalance. The 'seal clubbing' started when most the units left and then LT hit and 1 BUKKIT convinced even the dedicated hardcore loyalists that PGI was either incompetent or intentionally trying to get them to leave.

FW was always about teamwork though. That's what it does that the other modes really don't - with waves and dropdecks you've got a layer of teamwork and tactics that other modes don't have.

My first experience with FW was much better too because there was a leader in almost every game and people followed. And back then you never saw trial mech. What are the trials for IS to oppose Clans this time around? Last time i played it was PXH-2 and a Kintaro that could have been fine but was a lrmboat. You need to be some seriously dedicated badass to do well in a PXH and for the Kint well, Bravo, well played. PGI always do those things thats completly inconsiderate of what their game wants.

Edited by DAYLEET, 05 October 2017 - 12:24 PM.

[Davegt27]

I guess this is the last challenge debrief


ok this was the hardest challenge I ever played
not as hard as CW phase 1 and 2 but close

I did not complete the challenge but who cares
thanks to PGI they gave me 1 incursion win
and the domination win I found myself with guys from D5, 228, eon (some comp players basically)
so we won that one ha ha
but I still did not complete that challenge


we won most of the conquest matches I played (don't tell PGI)
I hope I never see another assault mech lol (just kidding)
could not get a assault kill for nothing until yesterday when all of a sudden
I started getting kills

so I got 300MC thanks PGI

[Vonbach]

MischiefSC, on 05 October 2017 - 12:09 PM, said:

Just require them to make a 2man, or otherwise commit to a group. At this point you're not talking about 'killing faction play'. It's pretty dead. There's a ton of things that could be done to fix that - PGI has made it clear they're doing none of them.

Currently we've got dedicatedly terribad pugs showing up to get farmed, then complaining they're getting farmed. Nobody wants to play on their team and playing against them isn't a ton better. How do you recommend we get the teams back to FW? I'm game for anything at this point.

Make it so IS and clans can fight each other again instead of being one giant faction. All the top merc guys want to go clans for the OP mechs?
Fine, have fun going against other clans. That'll switch things up. Things were nowhere near this bad before they
consolidated all the IS an Clans into two giant factions.

[Stinger554]

Vonbach, on 05 October 2017 - 01:41 PM, said:

Make it so IS and clans can fight each other again instead of being one giant faction. All the top merc guys want to go clans for the OP mechs?
Fine, have fun going against other clans. That'll switch things up. Things were nowhere near this bad before they
consolidated all the IS an Clans into two giant factions.

I know quite a few people who would play FP if they didn't have to fight against clans, but IMO fighting against clans is not the biggest problem with the mode it's the teams that are only solos getting matched against 6+ players in a group that's the issue. You know cause there is literally no Matchmaker for FP AFAIK.

[Marquis De Lafayette]

Just so everybody knows....Russ tweeted (in replying to a tweet about solo queue) a couple of days ago that no solo queue will be added (again) to FW...that (while he wanted it) there just isn't the population for it at this point. So, that isn't on the table....no matter what ones feelings are about it.

[Brain Cancer]

Eh. They should simply remove FP entry unless you're in a group, at least for non-Scouting matches. Heck, they could make it "unit groups only" and that'd probably be fine.

I know the last few FW games I saw, people were kamikazing/ejecting out of matches as fast as they could vs. units, simply because it meant the unit group was delayed and they had a better chance of finding a PUG instead on another game.

[Johnny Z]

Faction play has really improved since it was first added. ALOT. But its still tough mode. Still gets tolled heavily as well.

[Starwulfe]

Tiewolf, on 05 October 2017 - 07:59 AM, said:

..."hacking"...KCOM

Do you have proof? Was it submitted?
Did you inform the KCom leadership with a name?
If you did, great, If you didn't, stuff it and keep your slander off the forums.