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Faction Play currently and has been, since the Long Tom bombardments, a nearly dead gametype. The unified front hurt the mode, losing all identity that there was to a faction as well as to who they were fighting. To solve this two things need to change. First is the meta game of Faction Play, the second thing that needs to change is how players engage with one another on the ground as how players engage one another has been the biggest gatekeeper of Faction Play since it has come out.
Currently faction play's most fun modes for players tend to be conquest and scouting. This is due to the objective mattering more than kill them all in conquest, and scouting being fast furious gameplay where the maps are so big compared to the teams deployed that combat is done in phases and not instant blender like quick play.
A New Meta(Game):
So adjusting the Meta Game would be changing how factions interact with one another. Sure the star league can still exist, it is cool to see without selecting our faction on the side where the lines of IS and Clan are, then click on a faction and it shows where the individual faction lines are and planets under attack. During the down period between phases loyalist units would select planets to attack, and mercenaries would get notified of what planets are going to be attacked by who and how many loyalists, other mercenaries. Now from here PGI would borrow from NBT's rules for costs of moving troops. Larger the force being moved the more cbills it costs, loyalists with an offset cost as a bonus for being loyalists.
Graphic 1: Possible Attack Lanes around Tukayyid
Once a planet has been selected for an attack by a unit leader they 'bid' how many players they are taking with them. The tickets are tonnage independent. This is how many players from their unit they believe will show up from their unit, these are single use tickets per account. Throw in a non-linear cost increase it means more smaller units is better than larger fewer units. Allied factions can attack the same planet, faction that it shares the border with takes the planet (it is considered reconquered for them, even if the other faction did majority of the work) and the unit that did the most work, even if of the other faction, gets their name on it and can defend it. If say Ueda is attacked by CGB by people in CGB selecting to attack it first before FRR selects to attack it from Tukayyid then they can not join as CGB is not allied with them in this era. This would allow for CBG and Clan Wolf to Lock down Ueda, Dehgolan, Altenmarkt, and Ramsau, but, can’t lock down Lothan through ‘attacking’ each other.
Once an attack is declared mercenaries can do the same as loyalists with bidding players. This is tonnage independent.
Unitless players pay a minimal cost to transit between warzones as they are on their own.
What planet is being attacked is Unknown to the defenders until players are in queue against it. This is to relay the factor of not knowing enemy plans (though you can metagame to find out, but, hey, that is fun to).
Defenders come from unaligned players at no cost. Players who took this planet and have not selected to attack another planet can defend at no cost, players who have a faction and have not played a match ever can deploy for no cost as well.
From here other defenders (of the defending faction) can transit to a planet (as well as attackers from all units within an attacking faction) to continue the fight. To transit it is a cost based on distance with a time based on a max of 45 minutes for 1 light year which allows for picking a planet to attack, bidding for forces to attack it with, payment for jumpships and dropships in the 1 hour down time between phases. Alternatively units may travel between planets without attacking at the same cost to allow for pushing from a novel front, such as FRR units having lost most of their territory floating around to push from an unexpected location in Steiner territory into Wolf territory.
From drops the unit members earn cbills for their unit's coffers to pay for all this activity, and from capturing zones, and planets as well as defending them. More unit members in your drop the larger multiplier to your unit's contract pay out, win or lose (losing side though gets far less than a winning contract).
So this covers how the meta game works now, for the ground game we need to talk about how we interact with planets then how we fight on maps and maps themselves.
Season Unending:
Planets used to have zones we fought over, but, we were randomly dumped into one which always had a map assigned to a slot. With a removal of unified fronts and changing planets to a new format we must define two new things. First is warzone, this is where 12v12 or larger battles are occurring, then incursions which is scouting.
Graphic 2: Rasalhague, Green Warzones, Blue Scouting Opportunities.
Warzones are various maps that support a new game mode, 200+ ticket 24v24 battles where players can drop in and out of the match at any time and get their rewards for what they have done playing or the match is over. On top of this, the match ending doesn't boot the players out, it just cleans the battlefield with reloading the map as it is a dedicated server. So the server returns players to hangers/dropships/overlord/applicable spawn method with their ability to choose their first mech once again. Players are still limited to their drop deck, but, they can respawn from any of the four or possibly any three minus the one that was just destroyed, rules to be debated. There would be 3-7 objectives on a massive map with large areas of dense cover, canyons, and other LOS breaking terrain to force players to break into groups to take and hold objectives, greatly like MechWarrior: Living Legends mainstay game mode.
Scouting would work more or less as it currently does, throw in some larger maps with search and destroy objectives, sometimes it is find and destroy the enemy players who are going and deploying objects, sometimes it is enemy players coming in and blowing up targets and don't need to hit all the targets, just majority of them. Also not all exfiltration must be done via dropship, have it via a grid location.
I mentioned in Warzone's explanations being drop in gameplay and able to leave whenever. This means when you pull up a planet you are given a map which gives you the active warzones going on and how populated each is as well as an option to switch to queue up for scouting missions.
Now scouting would have a new function as there is a time delay and unknown number of players coming in for both sides, so as scouting is done data can be acquired that gives meta game data of "oh Clan Ghost Bear has a wave of 20 players coming in in 5 minutes!" or "The FRR spent 200 of its 300 tickets for invading New Oslo". This is in addition to summoning AI strikes, bonus tickets to random warzones (never taking them away from a team, always giving, think of it the scouts allowed leaders to take advantage of the other factions' deployment to reinforce that warzone). Flights of fighters to shoot down strikes, refills on strikes, knocking out enemy artillery strike abilities in a random warzone, AI Helicopters reinforcements that cost no tickets but will go and try to cap an undefended point (failing that hide and wait to jump on one). Things that can throw a small wrench into plans and have a visual impact in the game.
Economy:
How will units and players pay for all this? Well I mentioned unit contract pay, this goes straight to the unit coffers, no need for players to donate n% of their income to the coffers to keep the unit light's on (not the mech). On top of this is rewards for capturing a planet, defending a planet, being in the top 3 units for contributing to the capture or defense of a world (maybe less if there are less units present, have it scale or something). Basically the unit gets rewarded for doing well, showing up and participating, and gets rewarded in a nonlinear fashion, more players there, bigger the pay out. This makes it so you want to bid close to the max of what you can muster, maybe a bit more in case you can scrounge up a few more people so you can max out those sweet rewards and keep those engines of war going. Beyond this worlds that are held (without need to be defended) generate an income per phase which will be substantial. The reason for this is a unit that manages to capture and hold a world in this system likely is pretty large thus needing a decent cash flow to keep itself moving.
On top of this PGI would get another Cbill sink in players having a mode that has basically a cbill cost to pay to move around (individuals in a unit can pay to move on their own, not just the leaders, it is just slower and therefore less efficient). If a world becomes an all out drag out slug fest PGI can possibly create a dynamic system to open up more warzones as more players migrate to it, thus creating a massive sink of cbills as everyone runs to the biggest fight in the galaxy to try to cash in on it.
This system would also become far more fun when it comes to events like Tukayyid (though that is over, so more like the conclusion of Task Force Serpent on Huntress).
Rewards:
Rewards for Faction Play ranks were nice, but, a number of people, well a lot of people who cared about faction play maxed out their faction loyalties and then started hopping around to get more rewards. This is a problem and makes it worse off to stay a loyalist for one faction, or a mercenary for your entire time. What is needed is ranks exist, and then from there you get some rewards, but, also specific points to be used in a faction play store to buy rewards currently available as rewards. So by just playing enough you can save up enough FP Points to buy a mech bay, a few decals, a faction's camo patterns, and colors. Merc's have access to faction stuff of whoever they are working for at a markup, loyalists have access to their faction stuff at a decent price and for a huge mark up for other factions, consider it 'loot' and 'salvage'. This means one does not have to hop factions to get everything offered in Faction Play, one just has to play for long enough. And as it is a store that doesn't run out, it means rewards repeat forever, so you don't run out of a reason to keep fighting for your favorite faction as a loyalist or dedicated mercenary.
Conclusion:
With a change to the meta game that gives a hopefully slower movement to the game with a degree of logistics that scales and isn't designed to be overly punishing to lower skill or solo players while making Faction Play into a unique experience different from Quick Play with Respawns via unique game modes, maps, and mechanics, and moving away from the Arena shooter motif. This also allows for a lower entry level of skill where if you find yourself in a warzone that is too tough you can move to another one, or stick with it as more people show up and stay there through rounds and people coordinate.
The only gate to entry to playing Faction Play is owning one 20-55 ton mech for scouting, and 4 mechs that add up to the tonnage limits of one tech base to make a tech base for dropping into a warzone. For those who find the faction they joined is in too hard of a pinch they can change factions, when you do that the first call to arms as a unitless player you do you get put there as your new start world (again this is to help the unitless players not get too squished) and move to a less hostile area. This does have the downside of units having to pay out the nose to move from one faction to another, but, this does lean to showing that it pays to switch between two warring factions, and not hop around the galaxy on tour.
Edited by Moonlight Grimoire, 19 February 2018 - 06:45 PM.
