1
Have a read and see what you think.
PUG
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Faction Play: Reboot concept
In my opinion, one of the main flaws of the implementation of Community/Faction Warfare and subsequently Faction Play was the lack of immersion that the vast majority of the original player base was looking for. Now bear in mind these were the individuals that “bought in” blind to the pre-Alpha and Closed Beta, essentially the “Founders” of the game…. I’m one of them.
This may come across as a dig at PGI but it is not intended as such, the core of the game is not perfect but the ‘Mech combat is engaging enough to have me and many others still playing after five or more years. However the Meta-game of Faction Play and its grand scale may well have been a reach too far. The idea of the current “bucket” system has its merits in ensuring drops as quickly as the population can manage but the lack of immersion and information have proven to alienate those players that the game mode was originally intended for. Something as simple as choosing a target for your assembled forces to attack or defend and having that planet then mean something to you and your team is a sadly missed piece of the immersion pie.
So what is my idea?
Stage 1:
1. Reduce the number of planets each Faction is able to drop on to a simple corridor of conquest: each Faction has its own series of planets to a final, season winning goal. For example Clan Jade Falcon has a route to Terra (Earth) as its final goal, it must also take Coventry, Tharkhad and Hesperus II (among others) to achieve this. Each planet in the corridor is assigned manually by PGI staff or automatically by an algorithm. However PGI can tune the number and significance of the planets the Jade Falcons must capture before reaching Terra. This would allow anywhere from one up to ten planets to be in contention during any one conflict window and a huge variety of planets need by each Faction to achieve overall victory.
This creates a Lore based meaning for each of the planets for the player base, while reducing the number of planets that are used allows PGI to focus on them to “flesh out” their information screens. In turn this would add a little immersion to allow us to believe the combat we are participating in is actually a life or death struggle for that world. I would be far more excited about participating in the defence of Luthien if it actually felt like I was on that planet.
It may also be possible that the same idea of “release valves” used in QP to allow players from higher/lower Tiers to fill game lobbies could be used alongside the current Call-To-Arms function to allow players in off-peak times to fight on non-core conquest worlds. So during quiet times it would still be possible to get games in FP but they would perhaps not affect the main planet under contention until a certain criteria of population was met.
2. Slow down the conquest of planets: each Faction has a chance to attack and counterattack a planet and each stage lasts three days, Tuesday – Thursday / Friday to Sunday, allowing one day for PGI to collect stats, reset the window and fix/monitor any issues. So to capture a planet a Faction must meet the win conditions to first conquer and then repel the counterattack, making each planetary conquest last a total of 7 days. The conquest or defence should be based on the total number of wins, not the “apparent” last minute rush to push the bar past the post. It may even be beneficial to have the totals held from the players until the end of the conflict window.
3. Change the current career path choices and penalties.
Short term: Mercenaries are locked to 14 day contracts, their disposition throughout the Factions should be monitored during this initial stage and if necessary PGI should act to equalise population balance based on ACTIVE players in FP.
Long term: I firmly believe that the Mercenary career choice should become more difficult; I once proposed a MRBC style contract board that Merc units could select from. Long term these would provide reduced initial CBill earnings over Loyalist pay-outs but with MC and RP rewards “bonuses” paid on successful completion of the contract conditions. This would add the “sink or swim” immersion of running a Mercenary unit and ensure only those with the ability to survive as a Merc would gravitate towards this career path. The MRBC board would also act as a population balance check as only Factions that are underpopulated would offer contracts, the only risk with this would be “empty” populations becoming filled with highly skilled players and overwhelming the Loyalist population. This is something that would require tweaking by PGI but I feel it has merit and with enough effort could function as intended.
Loyalists are locked to their Faction for a full season, once any of the Factions achieves its objective a Loyalist is free to swap Faction at no penalty or to reaffirm their Loyalty. This will allow players that are unable to perform in the Mercenary career path or are simply more casual in their approach to FP to swap from IS to Clan technology periodically.
While this may seem harsh on the Mercenary population, I feel it would help to promote and inspire the more Competitive/Skilled players: if they are good enough they can pull in the MC and RP rewards that others cannot, further encouraging other players to improve their own skills if they wish to gain those rewards themselves. While also allowing some freedom of movement between seasons to let the more casual players gain experience and participate in the “deeper” part of the game.
Stage 2:
1. Create planetary attributes: with fewer planets to work on PGI can then look at map biomes to suit those planets and assign them accordingly, further increasing the immersion. Imagine dropping on Twycross and being presented with a desert map, complete with the whirling dust storm of the Diabolis on the horizon or the defence of Terra fighting through River City to reach New Tokyo. Perhaps the final assault on New Avalon Island during the FedCom Civil War, based on the green wooded coastline assets of Emerald Taiga?
This could create a chain of maps suited to each planets biome (environment) and complete the individuals immersion into the planetary campaign environment, the only thing I could imagine furthering this would be some form of rearm and refit in-game but let’s not reach too far (yet).
2. Create planetary objectives based on their significance: assign factories granting CBill, RP or LP rewards to the Faction holding them. In the interest of balance each Faction would have an equal (or perhaps offset if required) number of these planets, granting all Factions their benefits to start with. Hopefully this would further entice hard, focussed combat from the various Units (both Mercenary and Loyalist) to push for these potentially valuable commodities.
3. Tweak current or create new game modes to compliment Faction Play specifically: several of the current modes have the correct ingredients but they require “tuning” to make them meld properly with the feel and intent of FP. Alongside the new maps, these could be one of the final steps in creating a truly immersive, rewarding and long-lasting environments.
Stage 3:
1. Matchmaker: IF (and it’s a big if) this is successful and the player base expands due to popularity, then the inclusion of a balanced Matchmaker should be implemented. There will ALWAYS be imbalances in skill in an online multiplayer game and MWO has the added complexity of the Mechlab to further magnify this. So a MM will only be able to achieve so much, as is seen so often in the QP and GQ modes, however in the interests of longevity I feel it would be beneficial to have this as an end-goal for FP.
2. Economy: another end goal of FP development has to be the inclusion of some form of economy. Whether this is Repair and Rearm for individual players or a Faction wide monetary pool that is divided amongst the active player base at the end of a season based on the number of planets captured or conflict windows won.
Ideally I would like to see some form of player driven economy for creating contracts for Mercenaries and perhaps even a player driven “Bounty Hunter” contract system, I like the idea of someone offering a bounty for my Silly Scots Noggin. Obviously it would have to be carefully considered so as not to unbalance the games current CBill economy but as many have stated, the new Skill Tree system is a hard grind for new players and many would welcome the chance of the extra income: If they have the skill.
Edited by xX PUG Xx, 20 December 2017 - 03:03 PM.
