Well, lost some time I needed for responding rapidly yesterday, and I'm only catching up with this now... Due to the amount below, I'm also skipping emotes, which is a rarity for me.
naterist, on 28 November 2017 - 01:04 PM, said:
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.
Have you forgotten that everyone's set up in a group, just by the Match Setup Systems? It sounds to me like you don't make use of the Pre-Match Chat enough. In order to make the situation welcoming for Solo players, you have to start there in making things inviting. Further, you have to make use of the In-Game VoIP during matches, and you can further see below why this is needed.
As noted, and worse, due to MWO's lack of In-Game VoIP when between matches, there becomes an extra requirement to load another program on the computer. Many people are rather naturally (
and well justified too, thanks to all those 'Black Hat' Hackers and their damned ransomware) suspicious of anything extra like that going on. Trying to force it down their throats is a literal impossibility, as many will actively reject and raise hell over this. TeamSpeak might be a reputable program, but its' attempts to shove updates down people's throats simply don't go over well. The constant harassment by the "Update Now" dialogue will cause people new to the program to Uninstall instead, as they don't want to be constantly harassed. The same issues can be chocked up to other things like Discord/Ventrilo/etc., and the Web Interface for Discord is junk (
sadly enough) that causes people to reject picking up the local client program.
To deck this all off, you sound to me,
naterist, like you think you have some kind of deity-given right to tell people how to use their time,
and you simply do not. Many people come home tired and worn out from their job(s), or come home from school with so much homework that they end up with their time wasted out from under them. They don't have the time to dedicate to being in a group for an extended period, barely having the time to get into maybe one or two drops before they have to stop for dinner/sleep. Not everyone feels physical (
and/or even mental) recovery from MWO, so they have a limited pool of energy and/or resources that they can put into it before they have to put it back down.
So, to attempt to put everything behind such a high access wall is worse than criminal, and will actively drive people away from CW/FW/FP without any regard to what you intended. PGI might be able to get away with making ONE Challenge require Pre-Building your Group. But, anything beyond that will result in an uproar from the rather large segment of the player base that I'm speaking of.
Further, you have to keep in mind that while some people may understand English, they can't speak it at all, which causes them to not use (
or install) their microphones. There are even some that flatly can't understand English, and have disabled their In-Game VoIP, as well as actively refused to use any other forms of voice chat. Language is a deadly barrier, and only rarely can be overcome, due to still existing lack of perfect translation in this world. Those "Universal Translators" from Star Trek just don't exist yet.
Long and short, have consideration for more than just yourself and those like you, and find a way to make that "Signaling Wheel" work as well, along with the In-Client, Non-Voice Chat Features. The rest of MWO's Community will thank you for working with them and their setups, which include those who are physically deaf (
I've had the odd luck of running into at least two of these type of people.), and those who have disabled their In-Game VoIP because their minds can't handle the extra tasking of listening for voice alerts directly from other players. Neither of those groups of people can ever find extra clients with voice capabilities of any kind of use to them.
~Mr. D. V. "
Your way is not the only way. Learn this, and you'll function better with others." Devnull
(
p.s.: I've already had to learn this myself. Many more will have to.)
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