DarkFhoenix, on 27 November 2017 - 02:42 AM, said:
Just because MWO has huge amount of lore to fall back on , it is still a game . Why can a clan not take a home world , especially when a homeworld is added to the loot . Are the DEVs trying to avoid a LOREsuite ?
If this is about keeping lore intact why not have the events , but without winners or losers , let the lore stay intact . Let the players get their grinding pay outs . I won't take too much offense taking part in historic famous battles and having what really happened story time afterwards.
If you gonna offer up a carrot as a prize , let us have our carrot assuming we earned it.
This game has zero to do with Battletech Lore and is not a valid point in this argument. PGI said a long time ago that Lore will be completely ignored, especially in FP. If Lore was being followed... it would have been Jade Falc attacking Tharkad, it would have been The Word of Blake as 3067 (our current tech era) is when the WoB Jihad started and they bombarded the crap out of Tharkad.. it wasn't even a mech action! In fact, in complete irony, a Nova of Jade Falcon would be part of a joint force to liberate Tharkad from Blakist control in 3072... http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Tharkad ... but I have digressed.
As for win/loss conditions. I'm finding myself increasingly disgusted by this. The first Tie with Kurita vs SmokeJag was a joke, but to allow it to happen again is negligent.
Many of you may not agree with my opinion, but that's fine you are allowed to however I feel its simple logic.
If the 'Invading' force fails to capture the planet within the allotted window, It is simply a victory for the defender.. is it not? I don't care how much time and effort was put into the fight. It doesn't matter because the end result is that the defenders flag still flies over the planet. Clans failed to capture Tharkad, therefore, the planet was successfully defended. Same rules would apply to any engagement IS vs IS or Clan vs IS. As clear cut as that simple logic is, I can not understand how the current system is built to allow a "tie". Yes a "true" battlefield can drag into a stalemate, but a failed objective is still a failed objective.
So where is the problem? As most have already voiced and agree upon, its in the FP system itself. Its not about "victory conditions" in this sort of event. In Tic-Tac-Toe three like symbols is a victory condition. Calling Heads on a coin toss and it landing on heads is a victory condition. Well, in this event the victory condition should have been very obvious, Capture Tharkad for Clan and Defend Tharkad for IS. The problem is the "Capture Conditions". What dos it TAKE to capture an objective. It shouldn't matter what faction you play because capturing an objective is the same across the board.
Perhaps the capture thresholds are too far apart? Just like a regular tug of war with a rope, the further away from the center those capture thresholds are, the larger chance of a tie and the more work has to be put into the campaign. Maybe the capture condition could include different sets of metrics. For starters, maybe those capture thresholds should be closer together. Maybe win/loss ratios should have some weight to the overall campaign.
I regards to rewards, I enjoyed the Loyalist reward challenges. Straight forward, if not on the easy side, they were clear and easy to understand. The DDC reward wasn't inspiring to me, but that's because I've had one forever and I have a bankroll to buy many more. It was a decent end reward though and the 250 matchscore thing wasn't horrible. I found myself more driven to earn the Steiner pattern unlock for the Atlas because that to me translates into a real money item then the DDC.
The 4 Mill for total victory is laughable however. I felt zero motivation to even try.
Plenty of folks using free accounts and fight the CBill grind, but even then I don't feel 4mill is significant enough to motivate players properly to invest themselves in the event. It made more sense to have the mech reward attached to the overall victory, but we all saw how that turned out last time.
I feel that PGI is really stumbling around blind at this point with what to do with FP. I feel more then ever that this was just attempt to distract us from how lackluster and broken FP is, but inadvertently shined the spotlight on themselves and all the issues, mechanically speaking (I'm not getting into the balance quagmire) , FP truly has. The game was designed with Faction Based PVP in mind, yet it barely accomplishes this in a satisfactory manner, even during a moderate event such as this where it should have been cut and dry.
I figure when the next event like this pops I'll participate in the same manner; focus on personal/loyalist rewards and let the rest go has its been going, yet another tie.