87 replies to this topic

[Nightbird]

Jman5, on 16 November 2017 - 10:01 AM, said:

As someone who has picked nothing but Inner Sphere contracts for the last several months, it's really blatant that a lot of units actively avoid real competition. In the last week I think the only semi-large Clan premade I've seen is Kcom. The rest either switch sides themselves, or start playing a lot more quickplay, or they just don't log on as much. I'm still dropping solo and even my terrible WLR is creeping up because I'm mostly just facing small groups and pugs.

I dunno, I find the whole thing mildly infuriating because how many tier 1 teams out there have been insisting over the years that all they want are hard fights. Yet as soon as they get those hard fights, they rage quit. Like clockwork.

Clanners hate to lose, never seen so many quitters, ejecters, suciders, mass DCers backwhen we were on Clan side playing IS.

Edited by Nightbird, 16 November 2017 - 12:04 PM.

[naterist]

Nightbird, on 16 November 2017 - 12:04 PM, said:

Clanners hate to lose, never seen so many quitters, ejecters, suciders, mass DCers backwhen we were on Clan side playing IS.

Its almost like ive been right this whole time.

[Y E O N N E]

Nightbird, on 16 November 2017 - 12:04 PM, said:

Clanners hate to lose, never seen so many quitters, ejecters, suciders, mass DCers backwhen we were on Clan side playing IS.

Something something defeatist IS potatoes.

[Tarl Cabot]

One thing PGI keeps missing the boat on is the...depth.. no.. hmm. frak someone will provide the right term. It took them over two years to add in-game VOIP and the chat lobby is a shell of what it could be.

The game should have a running billboard, so when a FP drop ends (units of 6+ would have their name included) that type of info is constantly being refreshed, as well as being part of the details of a specific drop on the History tab.. example FRR+DCMS militia/co-op/forces (military arm for the Draconis Combine ruled by House Kurita) holds against/barely beats back CSV KCom and allies, or CVS KCom & Allies demolishes HHOD & Allies...

[naterist]

Theres always been 2 types of fw player. Guys who just wanna play to play and have fun, and units looking to be units and competetive.

Difference now is the second group is IS (I think, idk, havent really done the fw grind since the event went **** up). Unless you can get the second group to split up, youll always have this dumb drama ****, no matter which side is getting stomped. We dont have the people to fix it, and pgi seems to have given up on it so it can be replaced with solaris. Also, its pretty clear that they view it as qp without a matchmaker. So, theres that. Just curious, how dead is fw, or has pop made a come back since ive been gone?

[MischiefSC]

Jman5, on 16 November 2017 - 11:47 AM, said:

So you would expect IS to follow similar patterns, but when I look at the last 14 games, I see Inner Sphere had large premades on my side 6 out of 14 times (versus 1 out of 14 on Clan side).

The fact of the matter is that the only way any of us could know with reasonable certainty a unit or player is dodging competition is if you had some way of tracking their contract selection, and tracking their players' activity over a long period of time. You'd probably even need to do something like look at average time to re-queue after losing to see if they purposefully dodge teams they just lost to. I imagine some people aren't even connecting the dots for why they suddenly "don't feel like playing FP right now." And for some units it really is just a coincidence.

I can't point to a single unit or player and say: THIS PERSON IS DODGING. I don't want people to interpret what I said as an accusation against everyone who switched to IS or everyone who is playing more quickplay. It absolutely is not my intention. All I can see is the larger impact and pattern that always seems to follow when IS gets 1 or 2 high profile teams for an extended period.

Statistically odds are good that some units on the Clan side are trying to dodge units on the IS side. Too much of a shift.

Some of it though is population density cutoff. Nobody likes to drop in a 6man, so we would all get together on 1 TS and drop together to make a 12man, because playing with pugs on your team can be really frustrating. You're fighting your team as much as the other guys. So if there's not enough people who normally play together on the same side, you end up with a few isolated 3-6man groups who don't know each other and so don't group up and as such they fall apart or go group queue.

As the group population continues to decline the issue will continue to get worse. Right now we literally don't have 4 total units fielding 12 people on NA primetime. Prior every unit we could be thinking of consistently fielded 1-4 12mans at a time on NA primetime and at least a 6man every other cycle, if not a full 12 going 24x7, plus extras waiting to fill in.

It is not and never was about the pugs. They're just filler, even when we were all playing as pugs. We knew we were filler for units. The problem is that the things that get units to play are gone, or people acknowledge were never there and will never come, and so leave.

Right now though, are there Clan teams dodging? Almost certainly. They always did though. As I've said elsewhere, at one point KCom went CGB to try and drive some Clan v Clan action and the CGB loyalists threw a fit and flat out said all they wanted to play against was IS pugs. Those sorts of players are there and have always been there. They were never important though, never meant anything to the game. The units who showed up to play and win matches, who are happiest playing units?

Pretty much gone. That's who FW needs. Not pugs, not terribads who hope to play against pugs, those people are all at best filler. We need the units and team players bad. That's who FW was made for and failed to entertain.

[McGoat]

The only way to address teams grouping up is to prevent people outside of your unit from joining your group prior to launch. This then would ensure that you don't just sit and wait for a 12 man from various units/factions and you do end up dropping with 6 teammates if that's what you have on - this would make it so that more folks are inclined to help pugs etc. I don't particularly like the idea but I don't see another way around it if the big problem is "Merc stacking".

We don't shy away from dropping solo or with just 2, and I know other teams feel the same *shrug*

[Ignatius Audene]

Nope. This would stop small units and prevent me from playing cw. Worst idea ever

[Syso69]

With majority of random & even unit premade Clan teams bringing all LRM/ATM/holdyalocks drop decks & camping in their DZ, I really wonder why someone is surprised by recent IS Faction Warfare victories & considers IS OP.

Edited by Syso88, 20 November 2017 - 04:56 PM.

[Billy Ray Jr]

Played a few faction battles and I can tell you that the experience is pretty miserable and I'd say that clans are being very overpowered, so much overpowered that it's not fun to play against them at all.

[naterist]

Billy Ray Jr, on 22 November 2017 - 01:54 PM, said:

Played a few faction battles and I can tell you that the experience is pretty miserable and I'd say that clans are being very overpowered, so much overpowered that it's not fun to play against them at all.

go to a ts with a unit and ask if you can drop with them. be sure to try and match what they are dropping to the best of your ability. i reccomend either comstar, or the frrhub. davion and steiner also have teams and are open to solos joining them. they will show you the ropes. it is much better in a team environment.

[Reza Malin]

Marquis De Lafayette, on 04 November 2017 - 11:04 AM, said:

Booo...You guys (all these units) need to apologize for all the emotional distress you have done to so many IS and Clan pilots by switching to IS. Some Clanners are finding out they aren't as good at this game as they thought they were. Facing only IS Pug groups was good for the self-esteem you know...shame on you for hurting the self-esteem of some Clanners. At the same time, you totally messed up the "victimization of the IS" narrative that some IS pilots were clinging to. Showing that the IS can win games (and planets even!) consistently with organization and talent will also hurt the feelings of some IS pilots. As they had been banking on the tech base as being solely responsible for their losing....now they are forced to face that it's also them and how they choose to play.
In a world full of safe-spaces and participation trophies you should have known the damage these truths would do to player's feelings. So, shame on you doing this...shame on you!

Funny how i made pretty much this point in another thread and got shouted down by a couple of deluded people that think the majority of units in FP are the top tier ones, and that everyone in FP is up for a challenge and likes "gg close" matches against top tier teams.

Only top teams can really enjoy playing top teams. Personally i dont care, losing doesn't bother me. However a lot of good pilots who aren't in top teams do not like playing good teams in less than ideal circumstances. E.g. They have say, 4 out of 12 pilots who can realistically compete, the rest are making up numbers and pack killing pug composites.

Edited by Reza Malin, 24 November 2017 - 12:07 AM.

[Bishop Six]

Reza Malin, on 24 November 2017 - 12:04 AM, said:

Only top teams can really enjoy playing top teams. Personally i dont care, losing doesn't bother me. However a lot of good pilots who aren't in top teams do not like playing good teams in less than ideal circumstances.

I can't agree. We are definetly not a top team but are (mostly) enjoying playing against top teams. We always try to give our best that the top team also have a challenge to beat us. Most of the times we lose against them, but sometimes, yes sometimes we win and these matches are the best wins.

Some days ago we had 2 really exciting matches behind each other against PHL. We won both, it was close, it was fun. We made plans before the match, really tried to focus on the ideas we had for the matches and it worked.

But recently we saw many PUG-Teams on Clan side and some of them really didnt play well. There were many big mistakes done and a huge lack of coordination...its funny that in these matches Clan Pugs spammed the chat with "IS OP". But they were just bad, thats it.

[Marquis De Lafayette]

Reza Malin, on 24 November 2017 - 12:04 AM, said:

Funny how i made pretty much this point in another thread and got shouted down by a couple of deluded people that think the majority of units in FP are the top tier ones, and that everyone in FP is up for a challenge and likes "gg close" matches against top tier teams.

Only top teams can really enjoy playing top teams. Personally i dont care, losing doesn't bother me. However a lot of good pilots who aren't in top teams do not like playing good teams in less than ideal circumstances. E.g. They have say, 4 out of 12 pilots who can realistically compete, the rest are making up numbers and pack killing pug composites.

I have read many of your posts recently and I don't think you and I are on the same page at all. Unless, you hoped to have your posts generate a laugh....as my post was satirical.

My post was mostly meant to show that some who are crying "Clan OP" will now be quiet about that (due to the IS doing well) and that some Clanners who have been saying "get gud", will now be the ones crying on the forums. My point is that unit alignments trump other "balance" factors.

Edited by Marquis De Lafayette, 24 November 2017 - 06:04 AM.

[Damnedtroll]

Looking like the big clan unit are not playing right now. It's all about unit and piloting. Balance is in the population.

[MischiefSC]

Marquis De Lafayette, on 24 November 2017 - 06:03 AM, said:

I have read many of your posts recently and I don't think you and I are on the same page at all. Unless, you hoped to have your posts generate a laugh....as my post was satirical.

My post was mostly meant to show that some who are crying "Clan OP" will now be quiet about that (due to the IS doing well) and that some Clanners who have been saying "get gud", will now be the ones crying on the forums. My point is that unit alignments trump other "balance" factors.

If it as just population, the IS would be rolling the Clans back as fast as the Clans had been rolling the IS.

They haven't. Right now almost every active 'merc' unit is in IS, most the Clan units are either inactive or switched. However IS is taking maybe 1 phase a week.

That there are players who are so incredibly, mind numbingly bad at this game saying 'IS OP' because of that is beyond a facepalm.

There are terribads on both sides. The fact is that even terribad Clan pugs can beat terribad IS pugs, which skews balance badly.

[naterist]

Marquis De Lafayette, on 24 November 2017 - 06:03 AM, said:

I have read many of your posts recently and I don't think you and I are on the same page at all. Unless, you hoped to have your posts generate a laugh....as my post was satirical.

My post was mostly meant to show that some who are crying "Clan OP" will now be quiet about that (due to the IS doing well) and that some Clanners who have been saying "get gud", will now be the ones crying on the forums. My point is that unit alignments trump other "balance" factors.

i mean, i can build an OP AF hll, erml hellbringer, but the guys who are currently clans choose not too for some reason.

[Marquis De Lafayette]

MischiefSC, on 24 November 2017 - 12:09 PM, said:

If it as just population, the IS would be rolling the Clans back as fast as the Clans had been rolling the IS.

They haven't. Right now almost every active 'merc' unit is in IS, most the Clan units are either inactive or switched. However IS is taking maybe 1 phase a week.

That there are players who are so incredibly, mind numbingly bad at this game saying 'IS OP' because of that is beyond a facepalm.

There are terribads on both sides. The fact is that even terribad Clan pugs can beat terribad IS pugs, which skews balance badly.

There are "special snowflakes" on both sides and always have been...the difference being (with PUGs) that as Clan it's hard to make a build that isn't at least theoretically a bit dangerous to the enemy....while on the IS side it's easy for PUG's to build a mech that is nearly harmless.

[Ruslan Savelyev]

Statistics show the influence of "Merc stacking" is pretty significant for planetary changes when you look at the losses in planets for the FWL and CC, the two factions that award high contracts, and have only lost 95 planets out of the 613 total lost by the IS. The pace of planetary loss for predominantly loyalist IS factions is 2-4x that of predominantly merc IS factions.

That said, the still significant loss of planets for the IS would appear to mean that the active units either take more Clan contracts, play more actively while under contract to Clan, or see more success per hour of time invested while under contact to Clan. Tens of thousands of games worth of data over several months, the trend is clear, I'm just not informed enough to speculate further on the cause.

This is a tangent, but FW could be significantly better if PGI was sh*t at marketing. Every game people are whining that the other faction is OP or that the only way to win is to follow one strat(like a gen rush). And every week PGI spends an hour promoting the Master's Challenge, which IMO is the MWO equivalent of reading the cover of People magazine. Personal feelings about it aside, FW is a free product which should, in theory, serve to promote the purchase of cash products. Effective marketing sometimes means educating the consumer so they can get the most out of the product, but PGI seems content to let FW remain a morass of misinformation and negativity.

Hundreds of people who won't likely ever get involved enough to play comp watch MRBC and MWOWC, the audience is there to cast something like a best of 3(siege attack, siege defense, conquest?) with a couple of units and show players, who would otherwise just b*tch in comms, effective builds and strats for their faction. Tag a planet to the winners for the effort or something. In any case, everyone involved would be better off if PGI decided to spend their time supporting/promoting an actual product rather than fluff 1v1s. It might also help with merc balance, if they accepted 1 IS and 1 Clan 12 man per cast.

[MischiefSC]

What astounds me is that even with the bulk of active units in IS the IS still can't win phases consistently. The IS is edging ahead in most cycles in the event buy a big part of that is just low overall unit population playing on Clan side.

Could this be the first FW event the IS have ever won since FW started? Possible, given how many Clan units have apparently given up because there is a handful of units on IS side. That's its own sort of sad.