575 replies to this topic

[Parthonius Bloodstone]

How was this a clan victory nearly every day the counter showed a inner sphere win, both on scouting and the invasion bar?

[Tropico_Thunder]

Hello Matt. Thank you for the exceptional detail and honesty in your response. I really appreciate it when you take the time to inform the players, invested in this game, the outcome of these events.
For the most part I like the events that PGI has done. This particular one I was not so invested in. The mech in question as a prize was one that I was not really interested in so I didn't put my try hard pants on. Subsequently I found that the 250 match score was to much of a grind when I was getting 225 match score on average. I'm just trying to point out what kept me from participating more in this event. I can't tell you what the happy medium is but I hope this information gives you insite into one players view of the event. Thank you for the work you have done so far.

[D V Devnull]

Hi again, everyone. Thanksgiving ripped me away, so I didn't get to really take part in this Event. I barely got the Scouting Win, and only had time for just the one match, but then had to call it quits. I hope you're all enjoying the (C-Bills) and Mechs that you earned, based on whatever performance that you managed during the Event.


That said, I've been reading from the shadows, when I could get a free moment to do so. Sorry to see that everyone's been left in confusion again. However, I'm glad to see Matt Newman acknowledge that something went horribly wrong, as well that they have tried to put it right. Unfortunately, it seems a lot of you just want to hang the poor guy anyway. So I'm going to say this as the "Pre-Loyalist, Mercenary Me" that I was before I went Ghost Bear Loyalist...

GET OVER YOURSELVES. NOBODY SHOULD BE FEELING A SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT HERE. STOP TRYING TO RIP ON MATT NEWMAN.

...because in the end, what all do we really have here? If PGI goes out of business, we have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING left in our hands! Further, we can NOT get any return cash value out of the game, because NONE of it can actually come back to our hands as money we can use on something else. Oh sure, you can put real cash in, and get something to use In-Game for it, but it all ultimately has no real cash value. All we'll have after this is the memories of our time here, the knowledge that part of our lives was lost to this, the drain of energy wasted because it all went away or we left it behind, and whatever freaking Health Issues that occurred while having been trying to do our best on MWO. (I've even suffered Sleep Deprivation to the point that I've missed 3 damned matches due to my body collapsing that I was trying to launch into in these past two years out of more than 10,000 matches played, and normally MWO helps me stay awake when I don't need to be sleeping! That last one on Nov. 2, 2017 unfortunately resulted in the loss of someone living that I considered a friend to me, and they won't even pay attention to my sincere apology that I sent to them even when I was initially freaking out! Sure, they're still alive, but they're hate for me is unnecessary.) Heck, some of us may even feel 'burnout' about BattleTech/MechWarrior in general, and I already know I'm one of THOSE people! Worse, some of us may have died (or are yet to die) IRL while playing MWO or any of the other BattleTech/MechWarrior games, and I'm still wondering if I'll end up far enough 'out of my mind' to cause that to happen to me. Heck, who else out there might self-destruct? Have any of you thought of that?

So, everyone, think about all of that and stop chewing at each other. I've just aired a 'skeleton in my closet' here, and I'm frankly feeling 'burnout' again from MWO's Community even before I can jump back into the game. Frankly, I have the feeling I've just alienated the entire MWO Community with this post, but I would never say that I was not sorry for doing so because I very much hate alienating everyone in a single post. Heck, I'm trying to figure out how MWO's Community can get me ragingly angry within 3.5 hours of waking up?


~Mr. D. V. "If I hadn't woke up recently, I would likely want to go sleep right now. What to do, instead of MWO, now?" Devnull




[Edit by Post Author for a missed clarity of thought in the minor text.]

Edited by D V Devnull, 28 November 2017 - 10:50 AM.

[Questar]

Matt Newman, on 28 November 2017 - 10:06 AM, said:

Luthien Faction Battle played out as it was designed (however poorly) and the end result will not be altered
Lesson learned I attempted to make it impossible to have a tie.
By attempting to make it impossible for it to tie I set the Win threshold to 0.
By setting it to Zero the code interpreted it as "set to Default Values".
The event played out but not as it was designed so it has been corrected after the fact.

Here are all the Faction Play events we have had since the events system was added in the game and the results of each event.



Interesting side note.The reason people were unable to claim the victory prize is I didn't create a defeat prize.
Yet another lesson learned.

I just wanted to point out that I am making changes to these events and trying to right by you guys.

Some positives from this event as I see it:

• Mechs were not behind the victory conditions.
  
• Time investment was challenging but very achievable.
  
• Ended event during peak hours on Sunday.
  
• 250 min match score did get more people in the Invasion Que except those that wanted to try and get 250 in scouting (you know who you are.)

Listen, I am as frustrated as you guys but I'm going to get up and dust myself off and make the best events I can with what I have. We will have a bunch of really cool events coming in December and armed with the knowledge of what happened with these 2 events I am more confident than ever.


Finally, you can count on one thing if something is ****** up I will own up to it and tell you the truth of what and why.

I'll look into the progress of the rewards.
Matt.

@Matt Newman,

Thank you for owning your mistake. That's not an easy thing to do. Changing the outcome should not have been done however just to cover your mistake. If the event started with certain conditions, right or wrong, they need to stay with those conditions throughout the event.

[Unholy Jackson]

Ed Steele, on 28 November 2017 - 08:25 AM, said:

No more buffs / nerfs, it is not that Clan Mechs are overly OP anymore, like I have said many times before, it is that most players are MERCS and the best MERC units just switch to whichever side is winning at the moment. I have posted many ideas on how to improve this situation, but FW will never change unless there are far greater rewards for being a loyalist rather than a MERC and tthere needs to be more restrictions on MERC contracts.

You may want to take a quick look at the leaderboards. Several of the "best merc units" including evil, ms, and bcmc are now on loyalist contracts, and have been since before the event started. They're farming mechbays with new factions.

[Cato Zilks]

@Commander A9, @DV Devnull, and the many others I are sticking up for Matt.

I understand that Matt is trying to make it right. I even have kind of wished that clanners would just take these planets so it is a fresh season when I get my computer here so I can play again. I stood to gain nothing no matter how the battle of Tharkad went again because my computer is on a boat in the Pacific. I would never keep pursuing this as I have if it was merely an issue of injustice in pixel land. It really feels like I am hitting my head against a wall in this forum. I don't want Matt to be in trouble and I am not trying to give him a hard time. This is not about raking him over the coals in any way shape or form and is not about personal gain or Inner Sphere pride, or any other such thing.

I want to help Matt. The concern here is a legal one: I am very concerned that "doing the right thing" which would be helping out customers when the mistake was yours, in this case will open PGI up to a class action law suit for violation of the Canadian Competition Act. This event is a promotional contest that gives out a prize that has a monetary value via MC. I do not want PGI to have any legal troubles over something as stupid this. A small business could just make it right at the register and everything would be OK. But PGI is handling this online and as have already noted it is easy to create a paper trail of what expected win conditions were for this event.

Whether you think Clanners should have Tharkad or not seems less important to me than encouraging the company to run this by a lawyer before distributing any prizes.

Here is an outdated overview of the law, but they really need to ask a lawyer about this.

http://www.competiti.../eng/03126.html

I want PGI to do well and keep making this game better. I love that Matt Newman does put in so much effort to making FP events work well. I just want to try to prevent needless legal hassle for the company that makes this game that I like.

[McGoat]

What a bunch of babies.

[Javin]

PGI is working to make fun challenging events that give you free mechs and C-bills. Why complain? Matt even publicly stated what he felt went wrong and is trying to fix those perceived issues.

If you are going to complain add in some constructive criticisms.

[Cato Zilks]

Javin, on 28 November 2017 - 12:17 PM, said:

PGI is working to make fun challenging events that give you free mechs and C-bills. Why complain? Matt even publicly stated what he felt went wrong and is trying to fix those perceived issues.

If you are going to complain add in some constructive criticisms.

I swear to god, you guys are not reading.

[Matt Newman]

Additional prizes are up there for the taking now folks and everything should redeem correctly.
If anyone has any remaining issues please let Customer Support know and we will do our best to make it right!
Again I apologize for the way this played out and in future events, we will be able to avoid these pitfalls.

[naterist]

Matt Newman, on 28 November 2017 - 10:06 AM, said:

Luthien Faction Battle played out as it was designed (however poorly) and the end result will not be altered
Lesson learned I attempted to make it impossible to have a tie.
By attempting to make it impossible for it to tie I set the Win threshold to 0.
By setting it to Zero the code interpreted it as "set to Default Values".
The event played out but not as it was designed so it has been corrected after the fact.

Here are all the Faction Play events we have had since the events system was added in the game and the results of each event.



Interesting side note.The reason people were unable to claim the victory prize is I didn't create a defeat prize.
Yet another lesson learned.

I just wanted to point out that I am making changes to these events and trying to right by you guys.

Some positives from this event as I see it:

• Mechs were not behind the victory conditions.
  
• Time investment was challenging but very achievable.
  
• Ended event during peak hours on Sunday.
  
• 250 min match score did get more people in the Invasion Que except those that wanted to try and get 250 in scouting (you know who you are.)

Listen, I am as frustrated as you guys but I'm going to get up and dust myself off and make the best events I can with what I have. We will have a bunch of really cool events coming in December and armed with the knowledge of what happened with these 2 events I am more confident than ever.



Finally, you can count on one thing if something is ****** up I will own up to it and tell you the truth of what and why.

I'll look into the progress of the rewards.
Matt.

i appreciate and notice your efforts mr newman, however i think its all worthless if your looking from the outside in. fw is a pretty small community, we all pretty much know or know of, each other. thats why the players can ID what will happen every event, and they get mad you cant. if you want to be able to make the events as amazing as your trying to make them currently, you gotta go talk and play with the fw units on all the time to ask what makes them tick. since one bukkit, the planets taken and lost dont really matter to most, to some, its all they care about anymore. unless you play on the community and individual units teamspeak servers, i dont think youll be able to get the fw events right.


someones going to be pissed regardless of what you do in the end though, so theres that to consider.

my 2 cents though, hide the prizes behind a wall. you gotta be in a group to be eligible for your score to go into getting prizes. then spam the event screen with links too the different houses teamspeaks. force those fools to join a group, or not play fw, becqause these solos come in every event and have a pretty rough time because they think soloing fw is a good idea. thats how i started fw, and its freakin brutal, like, demoralizing and makes you leave brutal. p[lus, what would constitute "proper behavior" in fw would be joining a group and going for the win as a group, so that kind of thing can be rewarded, encouraged, and made easier to do with these events.
what the rewards are dont matter as much, as at this point, everyones got the stuff they want unless its still preordered, but giving solo players and pugs that kick in the rear to join a group if their going to do fw is a thing to think about. helps them have a good time, and helps the fw side grow, instead of leaving countless pugs with bad memories of the mode.

Edited by naterist, 28 November 2017 - 01:39 PM.

[Tavious Grimm]

Well yes he owned up to it and props for that, it's a rare thing these days. That being said changing conditions after the event is still wrong, and yes for the next event please be specific to what the threshold is, more importantly perhaps another method of keeping score, I like the Win/Loss percentage it's simple and the proof is right there for all to see as opposed to a bar with an arrow saying must be beyond this point. Granted I am not a programmer and know nothing of what would be required to change such things. Just a thought though one that would be easier to interpret and deal with. Again just my 2 C-Bills worth.

[MovinTarget]

naterist, on 28 November 2017 - 01:04 PM, said:

someones going to be pissed regardless of what you do in the end though, so theres that to consider.

Pretty much this. No matter how much they try to attract players (back) to FP, someone is gonna get pissed. No matter how much they try to balance tech, someone is gonna get pissed. No matter what leg Russ pulls through his trousers in the morning, somebody is gonna get pissed.


I dunno about the legality that Cato is concerned about since the rewards have no actual value outside of the game. Perhaps I'm wrong, but space bucks cannot be converted to legal tender in any country (not even Canada) so I think the legality is not as severe as it could be if this were the Worlds and PGI changed the winnings just before the last match.

People screamed for transparency... Well crap if that's not transparency I dunno what is.

This game cannot be all things to all people at all times and be F2P.

Did they change the conditions? Did it invariable change who won or is it based on peoples eyeballs and screenshots just before the time ended? I dunno, I really don't care tbh... If they changed the win conditions in a way that didn't affect the outcome, then yeah they need to be more careful for when it *would* change the outcome...

Now, if it can be unequivocally shown that at the expiration of the event, without Matt's corrective efforts, that the IS would have won (since ties would be unlikely) then yeah there is an issue. As far as I can tell there were missteps and Matt tried to fix it the best he could. But I didn't see the bar at the precise moment the event expired (assuming it updates accurately in realtime).

And if he did "throw the match" to the clans, I would have to ask, why? knowing that it would invoke a veritable sh!tstorm from the IS players, that would be a rather dangerous and alienating move unless he could back up the logic.

The problem with that is, again, PGI has all the stats... We only have what they give us to see, so you have to trust that what you see is accurate... coming from the same people that are telling you what you perceived is not what happened.

Edited by MovinTarget, 28 November 2017 - 02:29 PM.

[Cato Zilks]

MovinTarget, on 28 November 2017 - 02:06 PM, said:

I dunno about the legality that Cato is concerned about since the rewards have no actual value outside of the game. Perhaps I'm wrong, but space bucks cannot be converted to legal tender in any country (not even Canada) so I think the legality is not as severe as it could be if this were the Worlds and PGI changed the winnings 10 just before the last match.

C-Bills can't be sold for dollars, but dollars can be sold for MC, and MC for Cbills. So, C-bills are worth a certain number of real dollars.

[MovinTarget]

Cato Zilks, on 28 November 2017 - 02:20 PM, said:

C-Bills can't be sold for dollars, but dollars can be sold for MC, and MC for Cbills. So, C-bills are worth a certain number of real dollars.

Only to those foolish/desperate enough to dillute their MC as such.

Besides that, they are not worth a dang cent IRL.

If they were, I could cash in half a billion cbills I got in the skill tree refund and maybe buy a stick of gum.

Hey, I'll tell you what, why don't I just give you that half billion cbills!

..oh wait, I don't have the ability to transfer them... oh well never mind.

The economy in MWO is one direction: $->MC->CBILL... It never flows the other way, otherwise we'd have gold farmers like the heyday of WoW.

It also means, just like that McDonalds I digested earlier, is not easily reverted back to legal tender...

...even if it was, if you want it, you'll have to wait until tomorrow....


So there, I figured out how to rebut this (finally):
CBills are not a tradeable commodity on any sort of an open market and therefore cannot be construed as valuable to anyone other than the owner of said cbills. As they cannot be traded not bartered or even donated (except for Unit fees), they have no inherent value.

Edited by MovinTarget, 28 November 2017 - 02:42 PM.

[James Argent]

'Cash value' is not what you get for your cash...it's what cash you can get from it. It's why some coupons for 'fifty cents off' will have in small print 'actual cash value 1/20th of one cent.' Its value is a discount of 50 cents if you end up using it, but it's only worth 1/20th of a single penny if you try to get cash from it.

Like other kinds of coupons, CBills have no cash value whatsoever. Every cent paid to PGI is for an addendum to a free online experience. What you do with your 'PGI coupons' is, within the confines of MWO's economy, entirely up to you...but to you they will NEVER be money again.

[MT Slayer]

hahahahahahah ahhaha ahhaha ha ha ha ha

[naterist]

Ed Steele, on 28 November 2017 - 08:25 AM, said:

No more buffs / nerfs, it is not that Clan Mechs are overly OP anymore, like I have said many times before, it is that most players are MERCS and the best MERC units just switch to whichever side is winning at the moment. I have posted many ideas on how to improve this situation, but FW will never change unless there are far greater rewards for being a loyalist rather than a MERC and tthere needs to be more restrictions on MERC contracts.

i put this down for another arguement, but it works here against you too.

naterist, on 28 November 2017 - 12:06 PM, said:

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...1801d6ba931c22a

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...53a83327e6baccf

look at these 2 mechs. same weapons loadout, different numbers in the dps and cooling categories. tell me again how IS op?


btw, you can easily move the small pulses to medium pulses on the clanmech. much higher damage than the innersphere mech.

oh, and lets look at the 100 tonners with the quad lbx10 builds.
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...9b9aa33055def75
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...52446b76c743162

wow, look hopw much ammo is on each mech. same numbers on the top left, different ammo count. amazing isnt it?

clans are OP as ****, fact of life.

[Tarl Cabot]

Matt Newman, on 28 November 2017 - 10:06 AM, said:

Luthien Faction Battle played out as it was designed (however poorly) and the end result will not be altered
Lesson learned I attempted to make it impossible to have a tie.
By attempting to make it impossible for it to tie I set the Win threshold to 0. By setting it to Zero the code interpreted it as "set to Default Values". The event played out but not as it was designed so it has been corrected after the fact.

Here are all the Faction Play events we have had since the events system was added in the game and the results of each event.

snip..

Listen, I am as frustrated as you guys but I'm going to get up and dust myself off and make the best events I can with what I have. We will have a bunch of really cool events coming in December and armed with the knowledge of what happened with these 2 events I am more confident than ever.


Finally, you can count on one thing if something is ****** up I will own up to it and tell you the truth of what and why.

I'll look into the progress of the rewards.
Matt.

Constructive criticism. Having a Capitol planet winning default set at +1 from where the event begins, imho is wrong. There should be 3 possible outcomes, Clan Win or IS Win, with a tie being the possibility where nothing changes hands as per normal FP setup but it should not be made into an ultra rare event.

Use the Luthien scaling - 1% per drop / set criteria at 80 internals (80% from the starting line). Leaving drops at 3.3% for these type of battles is not the correct thing to do.

If it had been set at 1% with the default value, IS would have still lose Tharkad if using the Luthien setup. So the Clans winning this time is not my issue, it is the new expectations being set on how the next CAPITOL battle will go that is extreme when not only when compared to Battle for Luthien but also the normal FP battles. Again, CAPITOL planets should not be something that one could ***#*#* through the fence to take out.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 28 November 2017 - 03:23 PM.

[Zangief79]

Yes naterist, clan mechs are a little more efficient when it comes to heat management and speed, but guess what, there's a reason IS gets an additional 25 tons in faction play. That more than offsets the clan mech advantages. You just need to learn to pilot better to take advantage of that. And look more into teamwork, because that can be another advantage in faction play.