57 replies to this topic

[John Archer]

I just got out of a FW, (Faction Warfare), match. I now play on the Clan side. I figured I purchased enough Clan mechs over the years that I should probably play them.

I digress.

I just got out of a FW match where I was the PUG in a 10 person unit. The IS team was pretty much all PUGS.

By the 2nd drop for most of the unit, it was stated over comms to push their spawn point.

That, to me is a piss-poor way to play a game. They literally yanked the fun of playing away from the other team as they swarmed them and killed them in rapid succession.

Something needs to be done about this. There are many casual gamers out ther, myself included, who play MWO for... fun. Getting swarmed as one spawns, and thus not getting the chance to play fully, is wrong and not very sporting.

I stated on comms that I was not going to participate in attacking their spawn point. That's about all I could do.

Oh and get this: The unit considers PUGS, 'Skittles'. Basically just cash cows I guess. The unit I dropped with stated, after I made my objection, that they just want to get the c-bills and quickly get on to the next match.

Seriously??? Is this what this game has come to???

[Bombast]

In before 'FW isn't for casuals.'

In all seriousness though, FW isn't for casuals or pugs. It's painful, and the mechanics often drag losses out for obscene amounts of time, long after the match was decided. The whole shebang should be gated off for premades only, but alas, the population can't support it, so the chum and the sharks gotta play together.

Edited by Bombast, 17 October 2017 - 05:37 PM.

[oldradagast]

FP is a joke.

The moment they decided back in the day to allow large, professional teams of high skill level to basically ROFL-stomp and farm "stooopid noobs" and small casual groups of vastly lower skill level, the game mode was doomed. Most matches are about as much "fun" as watching an NFL game between a pro-team and the local second-rate high school football team; there's no semblance of balance, and often a lack of sportsmanship or anything remotely fun. Top it off with the stupid game modes, the insane map designs - obvious kill-zone funneling and stupid generators that somehow keep doors closed?! - and the other mistakes made over the years - Long Tom, anyone? - and you have an utter joke of a game mode that is as close to dead as it can be while still, technically existing.

Edited by oldradagast, 17 October 2017 - 05:54 PM.

[The Lighthouse]

YOU CANNOT KILL WHAT'S ALREADY DEAD.


Seriously, I think it would be actually beneficial for PGI to just dismantle FW completely and pour all of its resources into QP only. Re-purpose these Invasion maps into small QP maps and I think we can have some decent city-like maps.

[LordNothing]

Bombast, on 17 October 2017 - 05:37 PM, said:

In before 'FW isn't for casuals.'

In all seriousness though, FW isn't for casuals or pugs. It's painful, and the mechanics often drag losses out for obscene amounts of time, long after the match was decided. The whole shebang should be gated off for premades only, but alas, the population can't support it, so the chum and the sharks gotta play together.

i do pretty well pugging in the mode, and i make more cbills than i do in qp and i have more fun than i have in qp. so there are ways to succeed in fp without really trying. you wont be beating kcom or 228 much but thats just pug life for you.

Edited by LordNothing, 17 October 2017 - 06:08 PM.

[El Bandito]

If you managed to push them enough for dropship farming, call out for 1v1 duels--but only after the enemy has a perma-dead. It is an honorable way to finish the match.

[John Archer]

LordNothing, on 17 October 2017 - 06:06 PM, said:

i do pretty well pugging in the mode, and i make more cbills than i do in qp and i have more fun than i have in qp. so there are ways to succeed in fp without really trying. you wont be beating kcom or 228 much but thats just pug life for you.

Going against a pre-made is expected. Going against a pre-made that has the attitude that PUGS are just there to be farmed and have the mindset of, 'get this over with quickly so we can get our cbills and move on to do the same to the next match', is the worst type of game playing I have ever seen.

Funny thing is: the attitude of the pre-made that I witnessed is the very same thing that will cause casual players to NOT want to play in FP. They will end up just sitting there, in the searching for a match screen, forever (or until another pre-made decides to gather up and drop).

Ah well. I said my peace.

PUGS unite!

[Kin3ticX]

I think CW is a product people thought they wanted but it turned out too hard for the typical player.

For example, making a dropdeck gives you 4 ways to fail. Four lives gives you 4 ways to fail. People wont organize up into units and units got tired of farming baby seals.

Yeah PGI made a substandard CW implementation but they probably also saw that players werent climbing the learning curve of CW itself.

Edited by Kin3ticX, 17 October 2017 - 06:37 PM.

[arcana75]

In b4 "IS needs to get organised".

Solo queue for FP will go some way to help the experience, not so much the balance, but certainly the experience.

[El Bandito]

arcana75, on 17 October 2017 - 06:47 PM, said:

In b4 "IS needs to get organised".

Solo queue for FP will go some way to help the experience, not so much the balance, but certainly the experience.

Yep, QP needs to have some influence over FP. That's the best way to get everyone involved.

[slide]

Kin3ticX, on 17 October 2017 - 06:36 PM, said:

I think CW is a product people thought they wanted but it turned out too hard for the typical player.

CW was the product PGI advertised this game to be, QP was the filler until it was developed. It is only too hard when people don't have the opportunity to learn. CW was pug stomp mode from day 1 with no match maker. It left only the truly hardy or the truly stupid.

Kin3ticX, on 17 October 2017 - 06:36 PM, said:

Yeah PGI made a substandard CW implementation but they probably also saw that players weren't climbing the learning curve of CW itself.

Agreed CW is sub standard, but PGI wouldn't recognize that learning curve if it was attached to the end of a ppc barrel and shot them in the face. You simply cannot understand what is good/bad about your game when you have no one employed by PGI that can play it at a high level. There is far more to this game than numbers on a spread sheet and code on a computer.

[SFC174]

El Bandito, on 17 October 2017 - 08:02 PM, said:

Yep, QP needs to have some influence over FP. That's the best way to get everyone involved.

That might be the only way I'd even try FP again. Still hate the time commitment, but I might be willing to try FP solo queue. Then again, with the wrong team its just 4 times the frustration of a bad solo QP drop.

[SeventhSL]

Ha ha yep I bet I could name that unit too.

[LordNothing]

John Archer, on 17 October 2017 - 06:14 PM, said:

Going against a pre-made is expected. Going against a pre-made that has the attitude that PUGS are just there to be farmed and have the mindset of, 'get this over with quickly so we can get our cbills and move on to do the same to the next match', is the worst type of game playing I have ever seen.

Funny thing is: the attitude of the pre-made that I witnessed is the very same thing that will cause casual players to NOT want to play in FP. They will end up just sitting there, in the searching for a match screen, forever (or until another pre-made decides to gather up and drop).

Ah well. I said my peace.

PUGS unite!

you have to realize that these units are playing to cap planets. totally at cross purposes to what pugs are trying to do (can be summed up as 'get mechbays'), but thats pgi's fault. often to get the drops needed to win before the end of the phase they have to speed things along. like when you come up against a team that is utterly lethargic. they wont leave their base and they dont want to do their part and take damage. if the superior team let them, they would let the clock run out and still loose. this is bad when you have to do a lot of runs in a finite period of time. good teams often only have one choice at that point, and thats to spawn camp them to death.

spawn camp is a product of inaction on the part of the campee. you got a team that wants to get things done and are going to do it, and another team that doesnt know what to do. some troll comes up on the mic and says, 'durr lets just hide in the base hurr' and 11 other morons think that is a good idea. as a tactic hiding in your base is usually suicide. how many times do potatoes have to suffer this fate before they try something else. fear is the mechkiller.

Edited by LordNothing, 17 October 2017 - 09:13 PM.

[TLBFestus]

Way back when everyone was screaming about the lack of faction play, especially the larger organized groups we were frustrated as hell that it took "over 90 days".

Well, PGI finally brought it out and It has some initial attraction to the casual players because it was new. However, the bottle neck design of the maps, and the constant and thorough beat-downs by the organized groups (in score AND in attitude by many) led the casual players to desert CW/FP.

Well, the belly-aching by the teams about not having enough players in that mode has pretty much continued non-stop since then. Now PGI puts on events to attract "targets" into CW/FP for their beloved competitive teams, cus, ....well...it's all about the eSports isn't it?

As far as I'm concerned it should be "walled off" from casual players. Let the comp teams play with themselves and quit wasting resources on it. That way RB can have his pet eSports arena and be happy. It's just too darn bad that they will have to sit in front of the screen and wait for matches only to play the same groups again and again and again. Fortunately the eleet can wipe their tears away with the money PGI puts into the tournament.

Unless of course PGI gets it's collective heads out of it's nether regions and implements a Single Player mode for CW/FP that only takes solo players no groups. Drop a randome 12 vs 12 into CW and the maps would at least get used by the player base.

At least that way the vast majority of the players in the game will actually get to play that mode of the game. Even then it's a waste of time as the battles are repetitive and the Inner sphere map and border changes have no depth, no meaning.

[Lances107]

Against pugs it is good order NOT to push the spawn point. Unit against unit, it depends how deep the hate goes, but for the most part the order is not to push the spawn point. My point, not to use the word point too much, is not everyone does. Is there a way to fix this? Truthfully I do not think there is. In the end this game is fictionally based on war, in war when your enemy is down, and backed up against the wall you crush them. As I said game wise good units have a code most of the time when it comes to not pushing spawn points.

[The Mysterious Fox]

FP and QP needs to be merged into the same queue, either that or push FP into 15 minute games with fast lobbies. the current 10 plus minute lobbies slows down the player cycles alot as well.

[MustrumRidcully]

Bombast, on 17 October 2017 - 05:37 PM, said:

In before 'FW isn't for casuals.'

In all seriousness though, FW isn't for casuals or pugs. It's painful, and the mechanics often drag losses out for obscene amounts of time, long after the match was decided. The whole shebang should be gated off for premades only, but alas, the population can't support it, so the chum and the sharks gotta play together.

But for the real competitive people, there is now actually a competitive queue.

Why not make faction warfare into something that actually has something to offer for everyone?

Step 1) Declare Civil War. Two or more factions, each containing IS and Clan Units.
Step 2) Replace the Quick Play and Faction Warfare queues with a single team and a solo queue.
Step 3) Players declare an allegiance or a mercenary contract to one of those factions, and picks wether he wishes to use the IS or the Clan tech base.
Step 4) Players have to provide a drop deck (if none is given, or the player lacks the mech, a default drop deck with faction appropriate trial mechs is generated) and a mech he wishes to fight with.
Step 5) Players declare a planet they are fighting for in the name of their faction.
Step 6) When queuing, a player selects which of the type of matches he wants to play: Skirmish (formerly Quick Play, no respawn), Invasion (any Faction War mode with drop deck respawn and all), and Scouting (Scouting from Faction Warfare, no respawn).
Step 7) After a match is completed, the match results are applied to the faction result for whatever planet the player was fighting for. (Yes, this means player one might have been fighting over Luthien and player two over Tykaid, despite being in the same match. This simplifies the queues that need to be managed greatly. Ideally the match-maker might consider trying to make all players in any given match being fighting for the same planet, but that is the first restriction it can loosen up)

Bonus: While the player is waiting for a match to pop, he can still play around in chat and even the mech lab (but the currently queued mechs are locked.), instead of looking at a big "waiting for stuff to happen" screen blocking everything.
Bonus 2: A Daily Bonus XP and C-Bill reward is applied for the first won match in each type of sub-queue (Skirmish, Faction War, Scouting), to encourage people playing them all.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 17 October 2017 - 10:31 PM.

[Bombast]

MustrumRidcully, on 17 October 2017 - 10:29 PM, said:

Step 2) Replace the Quick Play and Faction Warfare queues with a single team and a solo queue.
...
Step 4) Players have to provide a drop deck (if none is given, or the player lacks the mech, a default drop deck with faction appropriate trial mechs is generated) and a mech he wishes to fight with.

I think you'll find that people will not be receptive to Group QP being cannibalized for FP. Nor will they appreciate being forced to play with drop decks if they want to play with friends.

[Prof RJ Gumby]

This is the worst thing about FP, but it could easily be fixed.

Repeating myself for an Xth time:

Just introduce non-exploitable option to retreat/surrender. It could work like that:
- when one side lost over half of their mechs (24 deaths), and are loosing, they get the option to vote retreat (e.g. in the command menu). Other players from the loosing team get an info like "Prof RJ Gumby voted to retreat". Nothing changes at this point, the game goes on.
- if every not permadead/disco player votes to retreat, that side actually retreats - the match ends after the last living player votes to retreat. Other side wins and every living player from that side gets a little bonus xp and c-bills for every not killed enemy mech they "chased off".

Voila. Biggest frustration of FP just disappeared. No more need to drag the already won/lost matches on and on. No more need to look at your side getting stomped for 10 minutes. No more need to chase after every last enemy light running away or hiding in a corner.

Also, it would improve the 'feeling' and "war simulation" of the game - retreat is what military forces actually do to cut loses when the objective proves to be unachievable.

WIN/WIN in every aspect, as long as it's not exploitable, and I believe my solution largely isn't. It will even improve queue times, as players will not stay locked in matches that have actually ended, but still drag on because kill all is a must.

Only somehow PGI never thought of this and when I proposed it here it largely fell of deaf ears.

Edited by Prof RJ Gumby, 17 October 2017 - 11:17 PM.