38 replies to this topic

[Iron Buccaneer]

Well I was going to make one last post about Phase 4 of faction warfare and why it isn't working with suggestions as to things that would improve it but it's just not worth my time.

One bucket is not faction warfare. It's just another version of death match just with 4 re-spawns and pure tech drop decks. There is no strategy at all and the map is nothing more than a useless representation of what faction play should be. Other than that is serves no purpose.

Factions mean nothing at all especially for loyalist. Inner Sphere and Clan are not factions. They are a loose coalitions of various factions that fall into separate tech levels and roughly similar cultural beliefs. Factions in game are little more than icons next to your name which should represent different national and cultural groups that make up one of the deepest and most complex science fiction settings in the history of the genre but instead are just a little pretty icon. Pathetic.

I will not be picking up MW5 unless PGI can prove to me that they can make this game function. For years I have spent money on this game and supported and played this game only to see the devs pretty much throw in the towel on the one part of the game I enjoyed during phase 2 of Faction Warfare. Yes it had it's faults and I do think Phase 3 was an attempt to fix them but it also threw the baby out with the bath water. Phase 4 however seems more like a punitive punishment for the community not embracing Phase 3 as the pure genius the devs apparently thought it was. So I have no reason to believe MW5 will be half as good at immersing me in the Battletech Universe as the HBS Battletech game is. I have seen nothing from PGI that makes me believe they understand the setting well enough or that they understand how to go from designing a mech shooter game to creating an immersive experience. The pity is that while I enjoy the HBS Battletech game I would really like to have that immersive experience as a mechwarrior as well and I would like to have that experience in an online community. That is what was promised in MWO and never delivered so I have no reason to believe your hype about MW5.

[Pain G0D]

Explain phase 2 .what made it cooler than phase 4 you say ?

This is a fast paced FPS mechwarrior game that can shoot 12 lasers at one section of an enemy mech .
You cannot have the same rules that work on tabletop and battletech .

You cannot have clan mechs 5 times more powerful . You cannot force a player who chose clan to roleplay as strict as the lore would have it .
And if you play good lil soldier , in theory you dont pay for a mech , you are given one and its a stock build .
What about the lore ? So and so clan was killed , so and so world was invaded or destroyed ? Must one faction lose on purpose because lore said so ?

I bet you like buying your favorite mech and cheesing it up like the rest of us . That should not happen in a true FP mode unless you are a mercenary .

I dont speak japanese , I dont larp , I dont know really anything much of the Dracs or lore beyond the computer games but i wanted to join em before even playing MWO.


What you are looking for works best on single player games . PGI,s idea of a faction game set in a multiplayer environment is good enough to convince me that i am doing something more than just a QP .

Edited by Pain G0D, 07 May 2018 - 02:45 AM.

[Grus]

the biggest change i that could relatively be easy is better CW maps. instead of the DOTA esk kind we have right now. id like to see something inspired by MWLL kind of maps. same 4 drops no other re spawns. Or, could be one big base in the middle and you can attack from different sides/ angles to force communication and tactics.

[El Bandito]

Phase 3 was the worst, due to Long Tom. There is no comparison.

[Alexandra Hekmatyar]

El Bandito, on 10 May 2018 - 03:03 AM, said:

Phase 3 was the worst, due to Long Tom. There is no comparison.

It would be interesting to have them back for a little bit.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

El Bandito, on 10 May 2018 - 03:03 AM, said:

Phase 3 was the worst, due to Long Tom. There is no comparison.

I kinda liked Long Tom, gave a real sense of purpose to scouting matches, without running waves and waves of scouts to keep intel up teams would just be demolished by artillery fire. Felt right, you could see your efforts in one mode go directly to the benefit of your faction in winning a world. Now scouting is litterally pointless as the little benefits you gain are of little use.

That and the long tom suicide squads attempting to use it against the enemy finally offered some tactical depth where bringing a few fast movers every wave and using high levels of positioning and coordination was very valid rather than everyone being the same purpose mech and coordinating to focus fire.

By the time PGI was done nerfing it to nothing it wasn't even the ultrapowerful nuke that people left over. Honestly it should have just been automated arty strikes that dropped on enemy positions with higher frequency, though you could tell from that one video they used to promo it that they really just wanted to use the mushroom cloud effect for something and had to make some stats to match the effect.

[McGoat]

A larger radius artillery (2x consumable radius) that could only be used by the company commander, every 5 min, would have been better and easier for many to accept.

Alas what was delivered was PGI purposefully trying to rid themselves of a mode they had no desire to develop, as proven by how long it was in the mode and what they've done with the mode since.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

McGoat, on 10 May 2018 - 04:57 AM, said:

A larger radius artillery (2x consumable radius) that could only be used by the company commander, every 5 min, would have been better and easier for many to accept.

Alas what was delivered was PGI purposefully trying to rid themselves of a mode they had no desire to develop, as proven by how long it was in the mode and what they've done with the mode since.

Even without a tinfoil hat on, PGI really did look like they were purposely trying to see FP fail. I remember when they tried to separate solo and group queues mid week *during a solo queue only event* to "see if it works" only to remove it after like 2 days and go back because apparently solos couldn't find matches in FP queue.

Because it FP solo being empty couldn't have had anything to do with a huge event going on in the opposite gamemode instead of them offering an event for FP right at that time to get more players to try out the new changes and see if they like it.

Though with PGI I think they may actually be *that* oblivious when it comes to timing of events, as seen with Solaris coming out during a quickplay event followed by even more quickplay events while not even having event support itself until June.

[El Bandito]

Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood, on 10 May 2018 - 04:45 AM, said:

I kinda liked Long Tom, gave a real sense of purpose to scouting matches, without running waves and waves of scouts to keep intel up teams would just be demolished by artillery fire. Felt right, you could see your efforts in one mode go directly to the benefit of your faction in winning a world. Now scouting is litterally pointless as the little benefits you gain are of little use.

That and the long tom suicide squads attempting to use it against the enemy finally offered some tactical depth where bringing a few fast movers every wave and using high levels of positioning and coordination was very valid rather than everyone being the same purpose mech and coordinating to focus fire.

Long Tom was BAD for the game. It snowballed the already stronger side--which royally screwed over the pugs. Sure, average pugs can try to swing Long Tom to their side by dropping with randos in Scouting, but if the other side had better groups doing Scouting, they were boned. Sure, you could do suicide rushing if the opponent has Long Tom, but only good premade groups could reliably use it against the enemy, while pugs were simply blown apart without ever seeing the enemy team.

It was no coincidence that during Phase 3 FP became a real Ghost Town, as pugs abandoned it en-masse. Long Tom's implementation was one of the worst decision that came out of Russ, in regards to FP.

Edited by El Bandito, 10 May 2018 - 05:51 AM.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

El Bandito, on 10 May 2018 - 05:49 AM, said:

Long Tom was BAD for the game. It snowballed the already stronger side--which royally screwed over the pugs. Sure, average pugs can try to swing Long Tom to their side by dropping with randos in Scouting, but if the other side had better groups doing Scouting, they were boned. Sure, you could do suicide rushing if the opponent has Long Tom, but only good premade groups could reliably use it against the enemy, while pugs were simply blown apart without ever seeing the enemy team.

It was no coincidence that during Phase 3 FP became a real Ghost Town, as pugs abandoned it en-masse. Long Tom's implementation was one of the worst decision that came out of Russ, in regards to FP.

That's kinda one of the main issues of FP is its duality. Its focused towards team play but there is a lot of care given to pugs. From a teamplay aspect Long Toms offer a strategic depth that was not present before. Yet for pugs that are incapable of grasping the concept of strategy or working together as one it just runs them off, as they didn't sign up for the challenge.

Of course the best option when the enemy gets long tom is also to stop dropping in invasion and focus your forces onto scouting more, which lets the enemy rack up ghost drops in invasion as you overwhelm the enemy in scouting, pushing through some ghost drops of your own, though of course that's not really *fun*, just strategic and immersive. Alternatives being to go out there and suicide squad the long tom.

Oh well, I just liked the idea of fighting over something that actually had any sort of tangible effect on the game.

[Iron Buccaneer]

I didn't mind the Long Tom. It gave scouting a purpose but it was really bad for the game. Too many people didn't know how to manage it and it just hit way too hard. NPC damage that one shots Assaults is just excessive. Should have dialed it back to an artillery strike and called it artillery support.

I still preferred phase 2 as a foundation to build on but phase 3 would have probably been more successful it the Long Tom had been less devastating or left out completely.

[ANOM O MECH]

Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood, on 10 May 2018 - 04:45 AM, said:

I kinda liked Long Tom, gave a real sense of purpose to scouting matches, without running waves and waves of scouts to keep intel up teams would just be demolished by artillery fire. Felt right, you could see your efforts in one mode go directly to the benefit of your faction in winning a world. Now scouting is litterally pointless as the little benefits you gain are of little use.

That and the long tom suicide squads attempting to use it against the enemy finally offered some tactical depth where bringing a few fast movers every wave and using high levels of positioning and coordination was very valid rather than everyone being the same purpose mech and coordinating to focus fire.

By the time PGI was done nerfing it to nothing it wasn't even the ultrapowerful nuke that people left over. Honestly it should have just been automated arty strikes that dropped on enemy positions with higher frequency, though you could tell from that one video they used to promo it that they really just wanted to use the mushroom cloud effect for something and had to make some stats to match the effect.

Good lord no.

Problem is there are a great number of us that hate scouting. The objectives can't really be leveraged to any degree save for the one alt strat of dive bombing drop zone. So they are useless unlike conquest or assault.

Also I really like fast lights. They drop the tonnage to 40 or 45 tops and even in it's current iteration, I would be all in. Those fast and furious fights would be fun...and the mode it named scouting ffs.

What we have is four on four medium, no skill run face into each other brawling. Why on earth do we really need a mode for mediums to brawl? No strat, no thinking just push w, twist a bit and the team with better focus wins.

Also at the time Clan had a clear advantage. Balance was much worse than it is now, and it sucked to be IS during that nonsense.

So to have such a shallow mode that is the least played in the entire game have meaning doesn't make too much sense to me. No one wants to be forced to scout, which during that time we basically were forced to if we were IS and wanted to do some CW.

While strolling down memory lane lets also consider how @#$%ed up the population was. MS and Jade Falcon could throw a metric butt ton of folks to scout which meant they almost always had the thing.

In fact there was just so much wrong with it I am angry with you now for this stroll down memory lane which has caused my eye to start palsy like twitching.....

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

tker 669, on 12 May 2018 - 09:20 PM, said:

Good lord no.

Problem is there are a great number of us that hate scouting. The objectives can't really be leveraged to any degree save for the one alt strat of dive bombing drop zone. So they are useless unlike conquest or assault.

Also I really like fast lights. They drop the tonnage to 40 or 45 tops and even in it's current iteration, I would be all in. Those fast and furious fights would be fun...and the mode it named scouting ffs.

What we have is four on four medium, no skill run face into each other brawling. Why on earth do we really need a mode for mediums to brawl? No strat, no thinking just push w, twist a bit and the team with better focus wins.

Also at the time Clan had a clear advantage. Balance was much worse than it is now, and it sucked to be IS during that nonsense.

So to have such a shallow mode that is the least played in the entire game have meaning doesn't make too much sense to me. No one wants to be forced to scout, which during that time we basically were forced to if we were IS and wanted to do some CW.

While strolling down memory lane lets also consider how @#$%ed up the population was. MS and Jade Falcon could throw a metric butt ton of folks to scout which meant they almost always had the thing.

In fact there was just so much wrong with it I am angry with you now for this stroll down memory lane which has caused my eye to start palsy like twitching.....

Oh man I remember the old days of trying to fight MS off of a planet in scouting, just wave after wave after wave of quad Griffin 2N. I found it pretty fun, though I can see it being unpopular yeah.

[BROARL]

Long Tom was ok, i mean to say it royally screwed me over (game after game after game day after day) because i am loyalist IS but i didn't so much blame the nuke as the unbalanced scouting at the time. in typical form the scouting was balanced after the nuke was removed and IS never got to use it...
what i personally miss is the ability to select planets and target (or avoid) specific units though i suspect the player base is so low now that it'd be irrelevent.
what i suspect may encourage some groups to perhaps play more (or at least some) faction would be the ability to win planets by defending again, as it once was...?
or to fight house vs house and clan vs clan...?
basically i think perhaps phase2 was better but perhaps more complained about due to the imbalances at the time.

[NimoStar]

Well, there's another solution for using lights on Scout: Allow two 'mechs

Then it's either on 55' tonner or one 20 tonner and a 35 tonner (with important logistical disadvantage due to drop, but otherwise much stronger to use two)

[Bishop Six]

Yeah i remember Long Tom:

At this time Clanner were overwhelming strong, they dominated everything: Better tech (poptarting Night Gyrs), better units, better scout decks (StreakCrows), better everything.

I know that, i was in that phase and if we won 2-3 matches per week (!) it was a good week for us.

Then came Long Tom and who could come to the conclusion that the good premades would ALWAYS have control over Long Tom? WHAT A ************* SURPRISE RUSS!!!!

And this lead not to seal clubbing, it was more like going into match, watch Long Tom for 10-15 minutes and then get my cbills. There was no play or game left.

The saddest point of this story: A burning drunken ape could have known better.

Edited by Bishop Six, 14 May 2018 - 01:41 AM.

[Appogee]

Well I thought Long Tom was at core a good idea, because:

1. It provided a really solid reason for a faction to win at Scouting.
2. It added to the tactical challenge of assaulting/defending Siege matches.
3. It invited exciting "let's land a Long Tom on the enemy" shenanigans.

And as we can see, the removal of Long Tom didn't actually fix anything. Well, except perhaps for those who should have heeded the FP warning notice in the first place, instead of trying to make FP their own special safe space.

#FixLongTomDontRemoveIt

Edited by Appogee, 22 May 2018 - 06:44 PM.

[Sjorpha]

I agree that not being able to make player driven strategy on the map completely defeats the purpose of CW.

Although even in phase 2, which was definitely the best time for CW so far, there was still no strategic purpose to taking planets. Capturing all the planets didn't put your faction any closer to winning a war or to any other strategic goal. There was no resource advantage to gain from capturing planets. There was no strategic difference between one planet and the other and so forth.

So it already lacked the strategic goals that would make the planet capturing meaningful (though you could at least pretend it was there), but instead of introducing a purpose to the wars PGI wen't the opposite way and just removed player driven warfare altogether. Then they took one step further and removed the distinction between different IS and Clan factions as well.

It's mind boggling how backwards that design philosophy is really.

It should be up to the players who fights who and why, bring back nerd politics and create a system where winning battles provides strategic and resource advantages towards the goal of actually winning wars so we can, as PGI so proudly promised when marketing CW from the beginning, "Change history".

[ANOM O MECH]

Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood, on 12 May 2018 - 11:39 PM, said:

Oh man I remember the old days of trying to fight MS off of a planet in scouting, just wave after wave after wave of quad Griffin 2N. I found it pretty fun, though I can see it being unpopular yeah.

Yup I remember that as well. I also remember my buddy Kwea and his boys running uac 20 and a 10 on Hunchie IIC's when on Clan side focusing legs hard. At the time they were very hard to beat. Strong tactics and a very strong build (at the time), in a good deathball with strong focus. Those were great matches...

They got boring though, and worse it was clear very quickly that the side I was on could win every match and not make a difference. Add to that few of us were actually drawn to the mode and felt like being there under duress so that we could drop without being completely gimped by long tom.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I am defriending you now

[Ade the Rare]

El Bandito, on 10 May 2018 - 03:03 AM, said:

Phase 3 was the worst, due to Long Tom. There is no comparison.

Made me lol

I remember doing some challenge event that required IS wins, which IS never could at the time due to various balance issues (which thankfully have been rectified to some degree). We all got into position to rush into a base entrance, and then a long tom landed that blew my cockpit up and took out another three of us.

It was amazing