1169 replies to this topic

[AdmLoken]

If you want to improve faction play, in my opinion, then i truly believe the following would give it a new attraction to both new players and old.

The nature of the beast is that a game mode requires a draw, something to bring a person back and give it intrinsic value to both new players and old. Therefore i feel that on top of the current earnings in terms of C-bills per match played, a battle should result in the victors gaining the rights to salvage.

In a similar way in which the games of old and battle tech more recently does, salvage rights should go to the victor, with the opportunity of choosing a combination of weapons and/ or mech parts.

Going off the existing system from battletech, a part system for a mech chassis could be used in order to extend the duration of play in order to gain a full mech chassis. Conversely existing players with a large mech hanger, can choose to sell these parts instead to increase the profits of their campaigns.

Thus you would give the player both new and old a reason to invest real time and game play on faction warfare.

Additionally their could be rarity in drops IE a common through to rare salvage. A rare salvage could include small things from the micro transactions store such as colours, decals, or in cases, parts of a currently inaccessible mech via c-bills (this would require tweaking and of course is a mere suggestion)

Thanks for your time and i do hope for the best for the faction play system

Kind Regards

Lokenplays

N.B - This opinion is mine alone and does not reflect any ideas, or opinions of the lokenplays broadcast as a whole.

[Captain Caveman DE]

okay, so here's just a few, more in a later post maybe.
I'll stick to the KISS-principle and only talk about things easily done.


-make scouting a real "alternative" to regular invasion.
-payout for scouting; atm, it's a joke if you play the mode (intels), and okay-to-good if you brawl and find a match quickly;
pay more for playing the mode, and make it harder to archive therefore (cause way too easy right now if 4men agree to play the objective).
-same goes for loyalty-points. I really like the mode, and I'd like to 'not get punished' for playing scouting.

at the same time adjust the method payout is calculated; atm, it's damage and damage only / mainly. which leads to superboring drops with skillscrows, skilltaros and skillwackers, cause those inflate the dmg-numbers (and therefore payout);
calculate on sth else than pure damage - same can be said for invasion btw, where meaningless damage pays better than doing something sensible.

more to follow, probably.

Edited by Captain Caveman DE, 05 August 2018 - 03:30 PM.

[justcallme A S H]

SilentScreamer, on 05 August 2018 - 09:56 AM, said:

I like the current feel of 48 mech Conquest at 1250. It encourages both teams to pay attention to caps rather than go into "Skirmish-mindset" and attempt to oblitertate the other team. Matches during the current Davion-Kurita conflict phase have been fun.

TBH I think 1500 would be a good balance. A little increase.

I say this as, rarely, are there more than scorelines of 30-20 in Conquest and games last ~15mins max of the full 25mins. What is the point of respawns/4 mech drop decks if you only use 2 type thing in most games.

I support a minor increase as MWO and it's economy is about cbills, which is about killing/destroying/damage and so on - Conquest gives out massively reduced payouts for time invested as a result with 1250 max tickets available.

2000 tickets would mean it's essentially skirmish and caps no longer matter. So there does need to be a bit of give/take there.

Edited by justcallme A S H, 05 August 2018 - 07:09 PM.

[GamerPro4000]

PGI should make 2 different pools for Faction play. People who group up will get thrown in the group que faction play and people who are not in groups will get qued in solo faction play. For those say the population to play is too small to implement this, I say the reason why the FP population is so small is because pgi did not implement what i suggested on this post in the first place since no one wants to be massacred by a 12 man stacked team. There are a lot more solo que players in the mwo community than group que players.

Edited by GamerPro4000, 05 August 2018 - 04:00 PM.

[Geewiz 27]

Just want to say thanks Paul for actively engaging the community, I've been impressed with the amount of feedback you've given, it's providing real insight for me. To everybody else keep up the great mostly positive posts. Hope this leads to a better more fulfilling FW game mode.

[Radkres]

Map size drop limits QP maps only get 2 drops vs 4
Large maps get 3 and the Huge maps get 4

Multiple hot drop locations that way if the drop point is occupied you are dropped at a different location on the map maybe if you give the player a warning and have the Dropship pilot drop you in a alternate drop point? o.O
Or remove the whole dropship thing and have the mech spawn without the whole drop and die thing going on with camping?

Key nodes and infrastructures idea You get one drop on 4 maps this will exclude the Huge maps as those need all 4 mechs.
What would happen is you basically play 4 QP games in one mission the outcome of of the number of wins determines the Rewards to both sides. So winning a Battle Vs winning the War.

Scouting mode Speed rewards For getting it done the quickest gives more rewards vs taking the whole time.

[slide]

On the issue of spawn camping.

There are 2 sides to this,
1. Camping in spawn undercover of the Dropship and never leaving.
2. Hiding in cover behind the walls to ambush the respawns.

Both styles are detrimental to game play, at least if you listen to the whining from both sides of the argument. None of the solutions I have seen thus far will improve either of these issues. As an improvement on one side makes the other more desirable.

There is however a solution (not that anyone will like it). LONG TOM

5 seconds before a drop ship is due randomly drop a Long Tom round (not the nuke everything with 500m version) on a random square around the drop zone.

This affects both sides as anyone waiting in ambush has an unacceptable risk of being killed, whilst simultaneously forcing people hiding in the DZ to get out before the next Dropship comes in. Times between Dropships may need to be lengthened slightly to allow slow mechs time to get out. However lengthening the time between drops also help the respawns to group up more.

[justcallme A S H]

slide, on 05 August 2018 - 04:26 PM, said:

There is however a solution (not that anyone will like it). LONG TOM

I am not sure we can be friends anymore

[slide]

@Ash

LOL.

Originally I thought a bunch of Air/arty strikes would work, but the idea of all the complaining about LT was to delicious to ignore

Edited by slide, 05 August 2018 - 04:41 PM.

[Cato Zilks]

Paul Inouye, on 02 August 2018 - 10:19 AM, said:

Here's my personal thoughts as to what we can do with what is currently in FP:
- A while ago, we removed all the penalties for switching factions. Personally I think this is a good thing. My main thought on this is to move forward with this notion where ANYONE wanting to play Faction Play can choose their path of participation on a per match level.
- Adding lore and decisions to your participation in any given conflict. For example, if the conflict is between Clan and IS, when I select a planet that is in contention, I will choose at that point whether I want to play as Clan or IS. If the conflict is between IS and IS, I can choose the faction I want to back. Even as a Kurita Loyalist, I can choose to fight in a conflict between Steiner and Merik and not have to be penalized for doing so. I also want a story or story arch to tell me WHY I'm going to be fighting.

Very much echoing Terrorsdawn (https://mwomercs.com...ost__p__6144149) here, I think this is absolutely the wrong way to go (or, I am very much misunderstanding and if so, my bad). If you are a Kuritan loyalist you should fight as Kurita not just as Paul Inouye wearing a red dragon sticker and fighting for whichever side you want that day. As Kurita you never fight as clan. You never fight as Marik. You and all Kuritan loyalists fight as a block and always use IS mechs.

Now what would make perfect sense is if you and the rest of our glorious overlords at PGI decided that during a Steiner/Marik conflict that Kurita would drop with Marik, or during a Jade Falcon/Steiner war that Kurita drops with Jade Falcon. That latter case does not mean that Kurita drops in Clan mechs, they just use IS tech while dropping alongside Clanner scum. If you don't want to have a PGI person just decide the alliances (which I would strongly prefer for balance reasons), we could always have some kind of voting for which way a faction's politics go. But please, don't make factions more meaningless. The forum seems quite unified in a desire for the game mode to go the other direction.

Edited by Cato Zilks, 05 August 2018 - 05:57 PM.

[Cato Zilks]

Captain Caveman DE, on 05 August 2018 - 03:28 PM, said:

-make scouting a real "alternative" to regular invasion.
-payout for scouting; atm, it's a joke if you play the mode (intels), and okay-to-good if you brawl and find a match quickly;
pay more for playing the mode, and make it harder to archive therefore (cause way too easy right now if 4men agree to play the objective).
-same goes for loyalty-points. I really like the mode, and I'd like to 'not get punished' for playing scouting.

at the same time adjust the method payout is calculated; atm, it's damage and damage only / mainly. which leads to superboring drops with skillscrows, skilltaros and skillwackers, cause those inflate the dmg-numbers (and therefore payout);
calculate on sth else than pure damage - same can be said for invasion btw, where meaningless damage pays better than doing something sensible.

I do agree that scouting rewards need to be reworked significantly if they want to incentivize players to actually focus on intel gathering. I think that scouting also needs to be the more pugging friendly of the two FW modes. Right now, if a competent three man plus an objective rusher in a Spider 5V (or an ER-LL Raven) go up against a competent 4 man, the match is over before it began. Matches are very heavily stacked in favor of 50-55 ton brawlers. The simplest solution is to have shrinking group weight caps like the QP group queue. So a 4-man gets an average weight of 40 tons, 3-man gets 45, 2-man gets 50, solos pick anything 20-55. It decreases the impact of a lone dingbat while also incentivizing more group diversity and being more new player friendly.

Edited by Cato Zilks, 05 August 2018 - 06:58 PM.

[Marius Evander]

slide, on 05 August 2018 - 04:26 PM, said:

Spoiler

On the issue of spawn camping.

There are 2 sides to this,
1. Camping in spawn undercover of the Dropship and never leaving.
2. Hiding in cover behind the walls to ambush the respawns.

Both styles are detrimental to game play, at least if you listen to the whining from both sides of the argument. None of the solutions I have seen thus far will improve either of these issues. As an improvement on one side makes the other more desirable.

There is however a solution (not that anyone will like it). LONG TOM

5 seconds before a drop ship is due randomly drop a Long Tom round (not the nuke everything with 500m version) on a random square around the drop zone.

This affects both sides as anyone waiting in ambush has an unacceptable risk of being killed, whilst simultaneously forcing people hiding in the DZ to get out before the next Dropship comes in. Times between Dropships may need to be lengthened slightly to allow slow mechs time to get out. However lengthening the time between drops also help the respawns to group up more.

Long tom idea is a worse version of my dropzone is an out of bounds 3 minute countdown idea, with turrets shooting attacking mechs anywhere near the walls.

Edited by Cadoazreal, 05 August 2018 - 06:32 PM.

[slide]

Cadoazreal, on 05 August 2018 - 06:31 PM, said:

Long tom idea is a worse version of my dropzone is an out of bounds 3 minute countdown idea, with turrets shooting attacking mechs anywhere near the walls.

Maybe.

Whatever is done though has to also stop people just hiding in the DZ which is going to happen if it is harder for people to wait at spawn and ambush them piecemeal.

Carpet bombing the DZ will make both groups move. And the mechanics are already in the game.

Maybe a better solution is to just have fewer Dropships come in. Hold the DS until a full 4 players are ready, At least as a lance you have more chance against ambushes anyway. In most modes you stand around waiting to group up anyway (or you should). Better still if the DS can drop 4 at an uncontested DZ.

[50 50]

Cato Zilks, on 05 August 2018 - 04:43 AM, said:

1) while this is a fine addition, it will just backlog the safe dz, causing players to have to wait around instead of playing. Russ actually talked about this ages ago.
2) While I am not opposed to this idea, it does not seem like something we need. Moreover, it only would be useful/relevant on maps that have spread out DZs.
3) So the system needs to monitor where the enemy is and not drop near them? That sounds like a lot of work and like something that provides free map intel.
4) Again this just creates more waiting less playing. Also, the ability to wait is totally going to be abused by people who want to delay a good team from ending a match quickly.

In short, no. I do not think these are good solutions. I still prefer some solution that makes the walls less useful for the attackers. I also think we should drop down to one large DZ like we have on Polar. It is much harder to push a DZ where three dropship-jesuses can target you. I find that more often than not people stay back a bit from the DZ on Polar and wait for people to come out. Compare that to Forrest colony where the L10 dz just gets slaughtered on a daily basis because it is so isolated. Or dropping in the F4 dz on tourmaline. Making one dz means that at least you will drop with everyone else.

1) I remember the earlier discussion on selectable drop zones and recall that there was concern about how to get the drop ships to go there and problems with flight paths. Just seemed like a weird argument against it really. All it needs is a holding pattern over the drop zone and the drop ships come in one after an other in the order they are triggered... which ties in with controlling the drop more and waiting till you have a full lance.
The drops happen every 30 seconds so I hardly see that as excessive when waiting to just get a game can take hours.

4) On that note, players that delay the drop till they have a full lance is sensible for a few reasons, first most being that you keep your lance together, it promotes team play at that level. I can understand there is a potential to use it as a griefing tactic to delay a match, but that's where the function to capture the drop zones works both ways.

2) Look at the way the conquest points can be contested and captured and extend that functionality a little with the drop zones.
If enemy mechs get into a position to capture the drop zones then it becomes contested and could prevent a drop ship from reinforcing that location. This prevents players from being thrown to the wolves aka the spawn camping issue and creates a mini mission/objective for the other lances to try and get that drop zone back or capture another one. In the mean time, the lance that has lost it's drop zone selects one of the other locations and off they go.
Now a team that is getting over-run and gets forced back to a single drop zone is a scenario that needs to be considered so lets look at that.
Three drop ships stacked over a single drop zone? That sounds pretty dangerous to try and assault and should give that team enough protection to get their mechs on the ground in numbers and they should be trying to get some fast mechs out to capture another location.
However, an attacking team that can then contest the drop zone preventing further drops can 'close the beachhead' as it were, forces the enemy off the map for the win.

3) No more than what it does for the conquest points at the moment. Surely it would be a Yes/No flag for allowing the drop ship to go to that location. Having the game produce a message that 'Drop Zone Alpha is under attack' would add a little feeling to the process.

[SoulRcannon]

Here's my input, which would be more systemic than in-game mechanic based.

There could possibly be the option for merc units to drop without contracts, maybe even "black-drop" to illicitly and covertly work outside of their contract for some side-cash. Employers looking to raise troops quickly would be desperate enough to fork over more for it; rewards would be designed to not outstrip but compete with contract/loyalty rewards, perhaps with a different flavour. Anyone designated to queue in such a manner would drop on either side dependent on which side needed it. This could speed up and possibly create better match drops.

I like the notion of regular FP events. Taking from this, events pitting one sub-faction against another could be set up so that no-one involved would necessarily have to switch loyalties. I mean, you could, but perhaps you could also choose which side you wanted to back without having to switch outside of the event - and in the matches for the event, perhaps your loyalty logo would only temporarily be changed to said faction, or a contracted mercenary with the corresponding faction. And for those that would just want to play, get rewards rather than being particularly invested in the outcome, there would be the same option mentioned above for mercs - to be queued to drop on either side based on what was needed, and with a competing but differently flavoured reward.

Finally, there could be seasons that correspond to brief time periods within the setting. They could be taken from the unit leader-boards for planetary conflicts during the season as well as accrued by in-game performance and to a much lesser extent participation. There could be 3 flavours - SLDF Accolades, Clan Honour, and MRBC Rating - that would perhaps have their own leader-boards as well as there being a Comstar leader-board bringing together all 3. At the end of each season rewards could be distributed based on points accrued.

Edited by BattleCannon, 05 August 2018 - 09:46 PM.

[creativeabyss]

Cato Zilks, on 05 August 2018 - 05:55 PM, said:

Very much echoing Terrorsdawn (https://mwomercs.com...ost__p__6144149) here, I think this is absolutely the wrong way to go (or, I am very much misunderstanding and if so, my bad). If you are a Kuritan loyalist you should fight as Kurita not just as Paul Inouye wearing a red dragon sticker and fighting for whichever side you want that day. As Kurita you never fight as clan. You never fight as Marik. You and all Kuritan loyalists fight as a block and always use IS mechs.

Now what would make perfect sense is if you and the rest of our glorious overlords at PGI decided that during a Steiner/Marik conflict that Kurita would drop with Marik, or during a Jade Falcon/Steiner war that Kurita drops with Jade Falcon. That latter case does not mean that Kurita drops in Clan mechs, they just use IS tech while dropping alongside Clanner scum. If you don't want to have a PGI person just decide the alliances (which I would strongly prefer for balance reasons), we could always have some kind of voting for which way a faction's politics go. But please, don't make factions more meaningless. The forum seems quite unified in a desire for the game mode to go the other direction.

i wanna second this. do not make what faction you choose any less meaningful than it already is.

[Joshua McEvedy]

GamerPro4000, on 05 August 2018 - 03:55 PM, said:

PGI should make 2 different pools for Faction play. People who group up will get thrown in the group que faction play and people who are not in groups will get qued in solo faction play. For those say the population to play is too small to implement this, I say the reason why the FP population is so small is because pgi did not implement what i suggested on this post in the first place since no one wants to be massacred by a 12 man stacked team. There are a lot more solo que players in the mwo community than group que players.

That's been tried a couple of years back and it failed miserably. The separation of queues lasted less than a week, resulting mostly in ghost drops in both queues.

[Joshua McEvedy]

Bishop Six, on 05 August 2018 - 12:45 AM, said:

- i rarely see DropLeader in Pug-Teams. Everyone have to take courage a bit more, everyone is happy about some talking! At least some Target calling and giving some intel about enemies sightings

That's not entirely true. I'm an old drop caller and have had clueless PUGs whine, complain, argue, or simply ignore the calls altogether. During the last PUG match I called last fall, an obviously drunk or high team member who got himself slaughtered actually berated me for his own failure. I don't need that kind of negativity in a game, so I refuse to call PUG matches any more.

[Ssamout]

Joshua McEvedy, on 06 August 2018 - 02:24 AM, said:

That's been tried a couple of years back and it failed miserably. The separation of queues lasted less than a week, resulting mostly in ghost drops in both queues.

[kinda offtopic sorry]

It was separation to unit queue and not in a unit queue, and unit queue was full at least during EU primetime. No ghost, no waiting.
Solos were making one man units so they could drop in the unit queue as the "solo" queue was not working, as a lot of solo droppers also belong to a unit.

[Rizzi Kell]

first sorry for my bad english, it is not my first language, an i did not read all answers so be fair if it was already printed here i might not have seen it:

i have seen so many FP-games with 12 Anihilator or Assins... nobody can solve such dropps, just allow max 3-5 Assaults, 4-5 medium ad heavy and 3-5 ligts same time at the battlefield of each fraction. If there are only 12 assaults left in the drop, 7 have to wait until an other one died.
Reduce the dropweight at same time to 230. that should be simple to bring in game, and help to balance it out.