71 replies to this topic

[TLBFestus]

Sometimes you have regrets for doing things, you shouldn't have done.

I for one, waited forever for Community Warfare, foolishly expecting everything to one day arrive, fully fleshed out and providing all the things Russ and Paul promised. What a maroon I was!

Sure, I can be cut some slack because it was early on in the development cycle of forgotten promises but looking back, seeing how it was finally implemented, does anyone else ever wish that PGI had just not bothered?

Of all the things they've never addressed, this is probably the biggest thing that in hindsight I wish they'd filed under the "Sorry but it can't be done due to limitations of the engine" or some such other weak excuse.

If they hadn't done CW to attempt to satisfy our screams for well over 90 days, I wonder what they would have done with the core of the game?

More maps?

Maybe they would have addressed other issues within the game such as saved loadouts, etc.?

All that wasted time and money. I can't believe I'm saying this but can you imagine what PGI could have done with that (Real answer...:probably not much")?

What do you think could have been done?

[Bud Crue]

TLBFestus, on 13 December 2017 - 04:10 PM, said:

What do you think could have been done?

Well for starters:

Not imposing a unit tax to piss off a chunk of the competitive population, could have been done.
Not imposing Phase 3 and the utter stupidity of long tom to drive away everyone else, could have been done.
Not limited rewards paths, could have been done.
Not creating an artificial encouragement for teams to flood specific factions via lopsided contract bonuses, could have been done.
Putting a few hours of work into typing in the planetary descriptions...geesus throw a bone to the lorenerds, even if it that minimal for gods sake, that could have been done.

Say what you will of the shortcomings of CW game play, but at least during phase 2 people still played it fairly consistently. Not ruining even that minimally viable experience, that right there, is what they could have done.

[N0ni]

Is this a trick question? Hadn't they already not invest in community warfare?

But yeah, for that time investment we could've gotten far more content. Hell, maybe we'd have Solaris sooner for starters.

[Suko]

I am constantly annoyed that FW is still in this game. I realize some people live for this mode, but it took SO MANY resources away from the core game that it's depressing it never became anything worth playing.

I was one of those who kept holding PGI's feet to the fire to get CW released. I remember the good ol' days of MPBT 3025 and how fun that whole Inner Sphere war thing was. I kept thinking that PGI would do something similar for MWO. I mean, why not? It obviously worked well enough in MPBT 3025, so why not do something similar for MWO?

Then Comm Warfare finally came out and oh boy, what disappointing roflstomp. The "Big Teams" of the day used their clout to get what they wanted (a mode made for them). It was a mode so hostile to anyone NOT in a large team that people like myself were so scarred by the experience that I've never gone back. Those teams said "Give us something or we will leave", and then they got what they wanted, then got bored and left anyways. They proceeded to scare every pug away by roflstomping them over and over. Then, once the mode had dwindled to just a few big teams going at each other they realized they preferred pug stomping to an actual challenge and came back to group play and pug stomped there. Then they complained whenever players tried to add group limits to make matchmaker work better. They ruined CW and now they want to ruin group play. It's like the fat kid who keeps breaking chairs and doesn't know when to stop and just stand or else no one's going to have a place left to sit.

In short: I blame the large groups for the current sorry state of MWO and FW. They might (had) been a good chunk of the player base, but I think many can now see that what is good for large teams and clans is NOT always best for the average player and the overall health of the game. PGI can cater to the 1%, but that elite group is super fickle and it's not like they stuck around long anyways. Meanwhile, here I am since 2011. Still waiting for an engaging experience that I can enjoy with a friend or two and not just be cannon fodder to some try-hard 12 mans.

<rant over>

[Jackal Noble]

18th time's the charm

[Trenchbird]

I feel they should not have invested in it as a 'lore friendly' sort of thing, but instead something similar to how I remember Mechassault 2's 'faction' system worked.

For the uninformed/irrevocably hostile to the game, MA2 was at least advertised as having what looked like a faction-play system that was pretty much just the Successor states beating the piss out of eachother. Even with the introduction of Clan Mechs, I feel MWO should have done the same thing, and focused more on the meat or gameplay of FP (Factions beating the **** out of eachother with mixed tech dropdecks or even limited respawns) rather than the fluff.

Of course, Loretards would've thrown a ******* fit unless there was a big lumpy dagger at the top that just said 'Clan Territory', at the very least, but whatever.

Edited by Catten Hart, 13 December 2017 - 04:42 PM.

[knight-of-ni]

You've said as much... your argument has the benefit of hindsight.

Had PGI chosen not to implement FW, then we would instead be debating whether that was the right decision.

While I personally would describe FW as very disappointing, I don't regret they went down that path. Even in failure, knowledge is still gained. Moving forward, let's hope PGI learns from this experience.

[sycocys]

I wish they had invested in making FW a playable mode instead of spending who knows how long making some ridiculous galaxy map system with no interesting content below it.

And for me at least, if it wouldn't have been for the notion of FW from the very start I'd have never invested a penny into the game.

[Kin3ticX]

I had a lot of fun in CW with Mercstar (the real one).

Something happened to PGI between phase 2 and 3 because phase 3 was straight up sabotage. Phase 4 was partly wasted as a retreat, regroup, and consolidation phase.

Ultimately, CW was a cool idea on paper but its just not something that was commercially successful. Its a combination of PGI being in way over their head (too ambitious) and also partly just a community that rejected CW for xyz fill in the blank reason. We didn't organize up enough to give PGI that signal to keep CW at the front of the list (but things were botched. incomplete, or left to squalor for long periods of time and prevented that).

If a player approached CW the right way with the right thinking there was some fun to be had. I had fun in CWs prime of 2015 but PGI really jacked it up after phase 3. Not only did they delay phase 3 for several months but it was just a disaster that cleared everyone out.

Also, lots of players just couldnt grasp the basics given how likely you got to fight against almost PvE skill level targets.

Who knows

Edited by Kin3ticX, 13 December 2017 - 05:21 PM.

[Wolfways]

Nope. I just wish they'd employ someone who knows how to do FW without it being a complete mess.

[sycocys]

To me CW was only fun when (and almost only when) one 12 man matched up against another 12 man.

The maps themselves weren't much fun, it was the matchups when you could get reasonably good teams facing off against other reasonably good teams intentionally.

Occasionally when you pulled a miracle pug team that actually could work as a team it had moments against the lower skill 12 mans - but lucky draws don't make a mode replayable.

I do think it could be more or less saved by making it a grouped queue, with multiple matches rather than drops - so it contains "scenarios" between 2 teams, and matches up at least roughly based solely on having matched group size.

[MechaBattler]

I feel like they could have captured the idea of fighting for your faction without buckets and wonky game modes that just never got better. Though given their UI design skills. Uhhh, maybe not? Honestly I feel like they could have done more with creative use of good UI design. Than all of what programming they poured into CW.

[slide]

I wish they had never even come up with the concept.

If they had, I wouldn't have:
-cared about this game, and written it off as generic stompy robot shooter #27
-spent $1200+ on this game (likely none because of above)
-invested 6 years worth of hope that it would come to fruition or be better than it is
-believed that they actually had the competency to pull of what they described

But if they hadn't blatantly lied about having an actual framework to create CW then I doubt the Founders program would have been even half as successful as it was and we wouldn't even be having this conversation. In this case lies and constant broken promises actually succeeded in producing a somewhat enjoyable but ultimately disappointing game.

[Ace Selin]

Kin3ticX, on 13 December 2017 - 05:12 PM, said:

I had a lot of fun in CW with Mercstar (the real one).

Something happened to PGI between phase 2 and 3 because phase 3 was straight up sabotage. Phase 4 was partly wasted as a retreat, regroup, and consolidation phase.

Ultimately, CW was a cool idea on paper but its just not something that was commercially successful. Its a combination of PGI being in way over their head (too ambitious) and also partly just a community that rejected CW for xyz fill in the blank reason. We didn't organize up enough to give PGI that signal to keep CW at the front of the list (but things were botched. incomplete, or left to squalor for long periods of time and prevented that).

If a player approached CW the right way with the right thinking there was some fun to be had. I had fun in CWs prime of 2015 but PGI really jacked it up after phase 3. Not only did they delay phase 3 for several months but it was just a disaster that cleared everyone out.

Also, lots of players just couldnt grasp the basics given how likely you got to fight against almost PvE skill level targets.

Who knows

Had some of the most fun and seriously close, nail biting matches in FW back in the day. So many great units and people used to play it. It was then ruined by phase 3, instead of improved and tweaked upon.

[Anjian]

I would say CW1 and CW2 was the peak phase of my player experience in MWO. By the time CW3, the handwriting was on the wall, and so I stopped just as the majority of my CW friends list has gone AWOL.

CW was something they had to try, otherwise you would be debating whether they should have tried or not, even if it ended in failure. I already had foreshadowing that CW would end up in failure as other companies have tried it before and they have far greater creative and development talent than PGI. Most especially FromSoft, legendary for their Dark Souls series, who tried this experiment on Chromehounds, which was purely faction warfare (team deathmatch is merely a side match for practice), and in the Armored Core V and VD games. Other companies have tried it too, like World of Tanks in their Clan warfare, and War Thunder which will be introducing some world mode. But it only caters to a small audience, far from the majority of their playerbase.

And yes, the resources could also have been used in developing more QP maps and modes, but without respawns, any new QP game mode is a re-themed TDM, and every new QP map will only have people fight in the same area all the time, wasting 80% of the rest of the maps. At least, with Siege Mode and maps, PGI succeeded in making people fight in more areas of the map.

One other failure in PGI's concepts is they attempted to make CW a sort of a MOBA in the way the maps are made, and yet the gameplay lacks any of the attributes that makes MOBAs so successful.

Another failure of PGI is a cardinal sin when it comes to PvP gaming design --- you need to turn over your waiting queues as fast as possible, because waiting in queues is a cancer to any game. The success of World of Tanks lies partly in their attention in getting matches as fast as possible.

I would have made matches takes place much faster, like 15 minutes.
Remove time delay animations like dropships.
Reduce the size of the maps and shorten the travel.
Create maps that I could capitalize on both QP and FP.
Rely more of a Conquest game mode and allow teams to win in points when the time is up.

This will not fix the issue of small player queues that prevent effective matchmaking processes and allow domination of premade player teams. The latter is a problem that all games have, unless you severely limit the ratio of premades per team.

Still, when teams are fairly even and won't give up a fight, CW Siege mode provided me with by far a superior game experience than QP ever had. I would sometimes wish for a similar QP siege mode allowing for mixed factions and with the matchmaker working to provide more even teams.

[Khobai]

Quote

Do You Ever Wish Pgi Had Just Not Invested In Community Warfare?

i wish they didnt repeat the same mistake with solaris

[Trenchbird]

Khobai, on 13 December 2017 - 06:25 PM, said:

i wish they didnt repeat the same mistake with solaris

It hasn't even come out yet. Stop that.

[Khobai]

Quote

It hasn't even come out yet. Stop that.

neither has CW

[Kin3ticX]

Catten Hart, on 13 December 2017 - 06:33 PM, said:

It hasn't even come out yet. Stop that.

Its pretty much a guarantee that Solaris will be way more streamable than CW. A lot of the streamers didnt stream CW because people lamented or just went to a streamer that wasnt playing CW. Being streamable is a good starting place and thats something where CW has been very weak. Its not the be all end all but its a start.

When PGI released phase 3 and 4 the population didnt even so much as burp where at least people showed up for Civil War (and then left).

[Dunning Kruger Effect]

Quote

Meanwhile, here I am since 2011. Still waiting for an engaging experience that I can enjoy with a friend or two and not just be cannon fodder to some try-hard 12 mans.

This is what caused me to play the game only sporadically. I want to play the game with a few friends, but I found the group queue quite hostile for learning to play. In games like WoT, you could learn with a friend in randoms; having 2-3 guys on comms was a benefit to your random team - as everyone else was either solo or in groups of 2-3. In MWO, I felt group queue playing with 1-2 friends meant dooming them to play 8 or 12 man organised groups.

The last few times I've played solo for a few dozen games, until I get bored of the repetitious map selection and want to play with mates. So I have to go play a different game. Keep coming back to it: there's nothing quite like MWO - but man, it's unappealing to play with a few friends.