Not sure if that includes me, but this isn't quite the same. This is lamenting the sad reality of missed opportunities that PGI could have used to really make their game thrive.
The bucket issue isn't really a big issue... it was a necessity because people weren't playing the mode.
That was the answer to "How can we reduce the wait for matches since there isn't enough people playing the mode?"
But
why weren't people playing? That is the real question to answer.
For me... it is because the mode has absolutely no depth and no point. It gets reset periodically, meaning its the same thing over and over again. There's no urgency to it as a result. Faction pride goes out the window too because 'oh noes the faction is in trouble" "Just wait for the reset." "Oh. Ok."
Its a constantly resetting arena shooter. That's pretty much it. Take classic doom, slap a hitbox system on it, allow multiple weapons at once, boom you got mechwarrior online.
The down times in faction play weren't helping anyone either, hour long cease fires at PRIME TIMEs to play after finally getting a group together to play?
PGI overhyped it, true, but even the basic and doable rules weren't even adhered to. "Best of 100 battles" wins the planet. Not true. Just whomever has the current majority by ghost dropping en masse right before the cease fire, regardless of how the battle was tilted is how you got a planet. That was the only real chance a small group had at getting their name on a planet, too. Two teams, ghost drop, rush base, destroy cannon, repeat as frequently as possible, win planet. Unless a bigger group started dropping from your side, then it was theirs despite all the work you put into it... or all the work other players put into actually fighting for it.
All in all... when I want a faction play experience, I go play the unofficial digital tabletop version, MekWars. Combined arms experience, persistent universe, the 7 great houses, personal assets, economy and asymmetric game balance, and hundreds of really good maps. An unfair comparison by far, but PGI kept saying they'd get us something similar and have clearly given up on it if Solaris is any indication (in fact Solaris is getting more work put into it than CW/FW EVER did and Solaris isn't even out yet. Work on CW/Fw could have been used to prototype and enhance their MW5 project but hey... or use their work on MW5 to figure out how they could get some depth into faction play.. but nope, that ship's sailed.)
MWO could have served as an alternate persistent universe in which the players determined the fate of the Inner Sphere through their play. That would have had some strong appeal to gamers and easily could have pulled in a lot of new faces that would in turn become long lasting customers as there would be an on going investment into the game and the future of the factions within it.
The old fluff things PGI used to put out weekly and sometimes daily in closed beta could have added a lot to it, too, such as covering the latest news on the front lines, the latest violations of player made treaties (as Liao and Marik had a lot of these peace agreements between the biggest player groups in the factions, and some group kept starting fights along the border, so player emissaries went over and said it was okay for Marik to retaliate against these groups, to treat it as an 'exercise' and both sides agreed to return any borders that had changed hands.) That stuff was gold, it was deep, and it enriched the game... but then it all ended because... the depth that kept being told would come never came and even stopped not only being put into the roadmap, but now ignored altogether.
Its a tearful shame, really.
Imagine what it could have been.
I did once, based entirely in the confines of what we were told.
131 likes over there as of the time of this writing.
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Sunstruck, on 02 February 2018 - 06:28 AM, said:
