1169 replies to this topic

[justcallme A S H]

Why not trial 75s or 90s first? I think a 100% increase is a bit much.

My main thought here is, outside of an event, you're just slamming the wait time through the roof for the majority of the time to suit the exception. That isn't how you make good change.

Now - if PGI run weekly events then that will change things. If the population rises, that will change things etc etc. That would be something Paul needs to actively be aware of / take feedback on as we go.

[Panthros]

Eisenhorne, on 09 August 2018 - 09:17 PM, said:

On the topic of removing quick play maps.... there aren't enough FP-only maps to make the mode interesting without QP maps. I'd actually be in favor of them adding the rest of the QP maps in, actually.... FP on Mining Colony, Solaris City, and Viridian Bog would all be a lot of fun and add some much-needed new variety to the mode!

God I hope not. You want Quick Play maps, play Quick Play. I agree Faction Play needs more maps but using Quick Play maps are not the answer.

[creativeabyss]

in regards to super groups, people dont really dodge the super groups who arent *** holes. never dodged a kcom group, since their classy, yet they smash me all the time. i have dodged evil teams, since when im trying to get new players interested in the unit and fw simultaneously, getting stomped and told your **** after isnt very conducive to a unit growing atmosphere. dont stop super groups, but if they wanna be bad sports after beating someone like 8-48, then maybe revoke their allchat privileges or something similar.

on time before a drop, if we have voice comms, it may be nice to have a 1-1:30 to get everyone on the same page. if we are stuck with snail slow typing, then wed need 2 minutes most likely.

it might also be useful if it was impossible for your team to reque against the same team you'd just fought.

also, please dot put a hard cap on units. instead make it harder to change factions. i mean, you could get rid of mercenaries AND faction switching, and id be ok with it.

Edited by creativeabyss, 10 August 2018 - 02:47 PM.

[Panthros]

Paul Inouye, on 10 August 2018 - 01:24 PM, said:

Prior to a match. How much time would you want to have to talk tactics?

Eg. you queue up as group or pug... right now the system backs everyone up into their perspective queues and at the end of launch timer, it quickly assembles teams and kicks off the match to the dedicated servers. IF (no promises) we could add a pause between team building and match kick off, to give you the chance to talk (limited to text chat) strats, how long should that be. Remember, this adds to the overall time you're not IN the actual match.

60 seconds? 90 seconds? 2 mins?

I love this idea and perhaps 2 minutes is a good place to start. It still does not answer the questions of the skill variances in Faction Play. At some point, something needs to get implemented to put somewhat like skill players together. Why should I spend 20 minutes in Faction Play if it is a stomp. Competitive makes for a fun match and worth the time investment. I think everyone's goal is how we can improve Faction Play so more people play more.

Edited by Panthros, 10 August 2018 - 02:42 PM.

[TWIAFU]

Paul Inouye, on 10 August 2018 - 10:00 AM, said:

I have another question I need to look into here...

Unit Size Restriction. Here's the issue that has proven itself over and over. Multiple massive units not picking opposite factions to align to. Even with contract locks in place, when it came time to switch, they all switched to the same faction. IS/Clan... didn't matter... Russ mentioned this casually in a roundtable a long time ago and this situation hasn't changed.

Don't get me wrong here. I was guild leader for a 250 member WoW raid guild. I know the benefits and fun of being in this type of social gathering place. However, WoW didn't allow your typical faction change (Horde/Alliance) at all. That was the population balancer there. We made the guild based on the players already locked into our faction.

With MWO, we've allowed the massive faction changing ability (Clan/IS) to allow players to participate and use the 'Mechs they've purchased.

Now sometimes this behavior was a coincidence and other times it was intentional. But it's this behavior that makes it very difficult to population balance and to make sure the large units out there are fighting each other.

A unit size cap will not stop the behavior of creating multiple sub-units of a super unit. But it does breakdown the overall influence of a singular entity above a certain size.

What am I getting at? Can the community get behind a unit size cap of X size? And I'm guessing that X would be less than 100.

Can and ONLY should do that as a last resort.

Should, IMO, find a way to remove or set an 'inactive' timer for pilots.

For example;

A 100 man Unit may only have 40 active pilots. Those inactive 60 should not be counted.

If you want to stop such population swings and have balance, remove the ability to change factions on a whim. Can further limit this with making Faction Loyalty mean something and incentivizing Units to STAY loyal. Can also use mercs to balance out population by only allowing contracts to factions that are low.

[justcallme A S H]

Paul Inouye, on 10 August 2018 - 10:47 AM, said:

Finnnnne.

Let's put the issue directly on the BBQ. Faction swapping so units avoid fighting each other.

Adjusting rewards/incentives does nothing in this scenario due to people swapping to the winning side or just mass joining one faction to ensure it's the winning side. And this is the direct problem I need to hammer down.

Hey Paul - This kinda comes back to my suggestion HERE. There is a secondary stage you guys can take if you want. ie, harsher panalties for stacking.

Firstly - this hinges on calculating, correctly, the active population I pointed out above though. I can't see why it cannot be a real-time adjustment either.

Secondly - Give better rewards for sides with a lower population and much harser penalties (cbill payouts and Loyalty Point earnings) for those stacked. Essentially increasing the delta between the two.

Right now it does not really feel like the bonuses or penalties are really discouraging stacking at all. If you go further and increase/descrease the Loyalty Point earnings based on population that will also help. It will especially help if you end up working out some way of making Loyality Points into some typeof currency I saw you touch on earlier.

r0b0tc0rpse, on 10 August 2018 - 11:00 AM, said:

I don't think any units are specifically changing faction to avoid each other and prey on groups of random solo players.

Seems like you haven't played a lot of FP. It's not so much to prey-on solo's, more to avoid teams.

Teams avoiding teams is a real thing, I assure you of this. I've seen people on my friends list wait 10mins until we are out of a lobby (ghost drop) to re-queue just to avoid us. And it's often people that say 'we don't do that' that do it. They also switch sides as well.

Granted this doesn't happen commonly but it definately happens.

There is one EASY way to fix this... Friends List.

Allow people to put themselves 'invisible' 'active' 'away' etc. Similar to any type of chat application/platform. If people can't see a team, they cannot avoid a team.

Edited by justcallme A S H, 10 August 2018 - 02:47 PM.

[Angm4r]

Vellron2005, on 08 August 2018 - 04:54 AM, said:

If Kurita Vs Davion, Tukayyid, and similar events have shown us anything, it's that it doesn't matter how bad the maps are, doesn't matter how OP that mech is or how many times you get stuck attacking vs. defending..

If you give people a purpose, a story, a reason to do something - they will que up in troves to do it.

I'm in the process of writing some new scenarios on existing maps (for our own internal HHOD mini-event), to give the old maps a new "lens" if you will. Changing up the story can add some spice. Also, I'm thinking more along the lines of single-wave matches. You screw up? Fine, You're dead. Dust off and go again. Don't wait for the other 36 mechs to get killed.

We'll share with the devs when we're done if there's any interest.

[Angm4r]

Paul Inouye, on 09 August 2018 - 10:34 AM, said:

The flight paths that the dropships take when dropping 'Mechs is not a dynamic flight path. It's a hard locked animation. Essentially, it's not a pretty system in the first place but re-engineering them to follow a spline based flight path is not something I can fight for at the moment.

Related to the "give the team getting waxed the option to surrender" and the dropship animation above. Give the attacking team the option/ability to SHOOT DOWN THE DROPSHIP. If a team can't defend their dropzone being able to shoot down the dropship gives everyone an easier out.

[Iron Buccaneer]

I think that part of the Faction stacking can be attributed to when new tech drops. PGI mostly alternates new tech monthly with the release of new mech pacs. So if clan tech drops one month the most active units, mercs, are going to want to play with their new toys. I know some units probably are dodging other units but mech packs are a factor as well.

[Angm4r]

Paul Inouye, on 10 August 2018 - 10:00 AM, said:

What am I getting at? Can the community get behind a unit size cap of X size? And I'm guessing that X would be less than 100.

Bias (I'm the leader of the HHOD) and we tend to run in the 105 - 115 headcount range. (Do people think that's big?) As a general rule I'm not a fan of a cap < 100. But I will say we have decided to cap membership ourselves internally at ~120 to accommodate our mix of casual and FW players.

If it was capped at 100? We could probably adjust.

The downside would be that there would be less bandwidth for us to train newer pilots. We've stepped into the breech where game-based training does not exist with a 16 course curriculum. We've spent man-months creating this and running pilots through it. A lot of times people get trained up and leave us... it is what it is, but that loss feeds the overall community.

Do smaller units spend this much time bringing newer pilots up to speed on the teamwork required to be successful at FW? (Genuinely asking - because I don't know - I suspect the answer is "no").

It would seem like a cut too deep would negatively impact the bringing the newer player base up to speed on what it takes to be successful in FW.

[Angm4r]

Time question:

Paul, if you dropped the matchmaker time, I would be good with doubling the countdown timer to 120 seconds. It wouldn't matter to us because we already know maps/mechs/strategies we're going to use when we hit the ground. But if some random groups wanted an extra minute to "get their mind right", I would support that.

[MischiefSC]

Paul Inouye, on 10 August 2018 - 10:00 AM, said:

I have another question I need to look into here...

Unit Size Restriction. Here's the issue that has proven itself over and over. Multiple massive units not picking opposite factions to align to. Even with contract locks in place, when it came time to switch, they all switched to the same faction. IS/Clan... didn't matter... Russ mentioned this casually in a roundtable a long time ago and this situation hasn't changed.

Don't get me wrong here. I was guild leader for a 250 member WoW raid guild. I know the benefits and fun of being in this type of social gathering place. However, WoW didn't allow your typical faction change (Horde/Alliance) at all. That was the population balancer there. We made the guild based on the players already locked into our faction.

With MWO, we've allowed the massive faction changing ability (Clan/IS) to allow players to participate and use the 'Mechs they've purchased.

Now sometimes this behavior was a coincidence and other times it was intentional. But it's this behavior that makes it very difficult to population balance and to make sure the large units out there are fighting each other.

A unit size cap will not stop the behavior of creating multiple sub-units of a super unit. But it does breakdown the overall influence of a singular entity above a certain size.

What am I getting at? Can the community get behind a unit size cap of X size? And I'm guessing that X would be less than 100.

Unit size cap is terrible. You're saying people can't play with their friends.

You're way, way better off just incentivizing the behaviors you want. Pay groups more for playing vs other groups - significantly more.

Big groups happen for a reason. The attempts to punish or limit big groups before only had one impact - it reduced the number of new players brought into MWO. Recruiting, training and onboarding new players to FW is a specific skill set and it's not one everyone has. Some people do, some don't, some are better at it than others. If you punish them for being better at it than others all you do is make them recruit less. That doesn't make everyone else recruit more.

The elimination of independent factions killed the loyalist populations, which in turn purged the bulk of players who were good at this. That's a bad thing and you want to eliminate that as much as possible.

I say this as someone who's always been in a unit with sub-100 players. Trying to arbitrarily limit units, recruitment and anything at all that helps get more people in and playing is bad. The only effect, at all, it will have is reducing population totals.

Pay units more to play vs other units. Pay them the most to play vs other units as good as they are. Make it more profitable to play vs each other instead of alongside each other. Currently units switch together just to try and get 12 people on at the same time to drop. Are there any units dropping more than 1 contiguous 12man? That's because dropping with pugs in FW has become a horrible, painful experience as the pugs have 0 perceived incentive to play as a team and as such you're making it way more likely you'll lose against any team that did get 12 people together.

Pay for teamwork. Pay a lot for teamwork in FW. Pay pugs more for wins vs units, a lot more. Pay units more for dropping with less than 12. A lot more. This will do what you're wanting 100x better than functionally telling a bunch of people not to play and the people who are good at getting more people into FW to stop.

[MischiefSC]

Angm4r, on 10 August 2018 - 03:34 PM, said:

Bias (I'm the leader of the HHOD) and we tend to run in the 105 - 115 headcount range. (Do people think that's big?) As a general rule I'm not a fan of a cap < 100. But I will say we have decided to cap membership ourselves internally at ~120 to accommodate our mix of casual and FW players.

If it was capped at 100? We could probably adjust.

The downside would be that there would be less bandwidth for us to train newer pilots. We've stepped into the breech where game-based training does not exist with a 16 course curriculum. We've spent man-months creating this and running pilots through it. A lot of times people get trained up and leave us... it is what it is, but that loss feeds the overall community.

Do smaller units spend this much time bringing newer pilots up to speed on the teamwork required to be successful at FW? (Genuinely asking - because I don't know - I suspect the answer is "no").

It would seem like a cut too deep would negatively impact the bringing the newer player base up to speed on what it takes to be successful in FW.

HHoD when they were at full swing were bringing dozens of new players into FW every month, on their own. Sometimes every week. A segment of those new players then went on to join other units. MS was the same way in its heyday - they brought in new players, trained them and then sometimes those players split off.

If both HHoD and MS hadn't been able to do that the result would NOT have been those players just magically getting into FW on their own. The great majority just.... never would have been here.

Unit caps or any real limit or restriction on units getting people into FW is a bad idea. We need less pugs and more units, not smaller units.

[Ensaine]

Paul Inouye, on 10 August 2018 - 10:00 AM, said:

I have another question I need to look into here...

Unit Size Restriction. Here's the issue that has proven itself over and over. Multiple massive units not picking opposite factions to align to. Even with contract locks in place, when it came time to switch, they all switched to the same faction. IS/Clan... didn't matter... Russ mentioned this casually in a roundtable a long time ago and this situation hasn't changed.

Don't get me wrong here. I was guild leader for a 250 member WoW raid guild. I know the benefits and fun of being in this type of social gathering place. However, WoW didn't allow your typical faction change (Horde/Alliance) at all. That was the population balancer there. We made the guild based on the players already locked into our faction.

With MWO, we've allowed the massive faction changing ability (Clan/IS) to allow players to participate and use the 'Mechs they've purchased.

Now sometimes this behavior was a coincidence and other times it was intentional. But it's this behavior that makes it very difficult to population balance and to make sure the large units out there are fighting each other.

A unit size cap will not stop the behavior of creating multiple sub-units of a super unit. But it does breakdown the overall influence of a singular entity above a certain size.

What am I getting at? Can the community get behind a unit size cap of X size? And I'm guessing that X would be less than 100.

I like a soft cap at 50 or maybe 75.... after the cap is reached, the clan gets a monthly tax based on each player over the cap.

This will make Units cull the inactive members often, and keep rosters at max available players.

This also fixes the ones who want an unlimited Unit size so they can play with all 250 of their 'friends' .....

The tax will still provide a CBill dump for you guys, yet, by eliminating the invite costs, this will make Units want to actually get new members......

Just having Units of Uber size is moronic, and I too come from a 200+ member WoW raid guild......a roster with 50 active players can field FOUR teams..... that should be fine .....

[Marius Evander]

When your going to be spending 20-30 minutes in a match + load times, 2 minutes in the lobby to make sure you have everthing sorted with your team, and not going to get deployed / stuck in the wrong mechs is not long. I vote 3 minutes with a ready up button that means, something like Comp Queue, if everyone ticks ready it launches earlier.

Edited by Cadoazreal, 10 August 2018 - 08:13 PM.

[Deathshade]

Paul Inouye, on 10 August 2018 - 10:47 AM, said:

Finnnnne.

Let's put the issue directly on the BBQ. Faction swapping so units avoid fighting each other.

Adjusting rewards/incentives does nothing in this scenario due to people swapping to the winning side or just mass joining one faction to ensure it's the winning side. And this is the direct problem I need to hammer down.

BBQ? Now your talking my language for Team PIGY in Comp. We even have bacon camo.

[50 50]

Paul Inouye, on 09 August 2018 - 11:12 AM, said:

Issue: 8/12 of your players get obliterated in a highly intense frontline battle. All 8 are queued to respawn and they pick the same spawn point (where the elevator is), who comes up the elevator first? What do the other 6 people do while the first 2 are moving up the elevator?

If there's no static object to spawn from, we can pop people in an area and only have to worry about people spawning on top of each other.

Can't have more than two elevators?
I would have thought the aim would be at least a lance at a time.
As with the dropships, the next set of players are in a holding pattern and pop in 30 seconds later.
Otherwise if it's easier to just pop the mechs into existence in individual hangers..... but would that mean having 12 hangers at each location?
I feel that if there isn't some sort of structure to it there will be a minute or two of players running into each other while they try to move from the zone. A dodgem derby drop.

[50 50]

Paul Inouye, on 10 August 2018 - 10:00 AM, said:

I have another question I need to look into here...

Unit Size Restriction. Here's the issue that has proven itself over and over. Multiple massive units not picking opposite factions to align to. Even with contract locks in place, when it came time to switch, they all switched to the same faction. IS/Clan... didn't matter... Russ mentioned this casually in a roundtable a long time ago and this situation hasn't changed.

Don't get me wrong here. I was guild leader for a 250 member WoW raid guild. I know the benefits and fun of being in this type of social gathering place. However, WoW didn't allow your typical faction change (Horde/Alliance) at all. That was the population balancer there. We made the guild based on the players already locked into our faction.

With MWO, we've allowed the massive faction changing ability (Clan/IS) to allow players to participate and use the 'Mechs they've purchased.

Now sometimes this behavior was a coincidence and other times it was intentional. But it's this behavior that makes it very difficult to population balance and to make sure the large units out there are fighting each other.

A unit size cap will not stop the behavior of creating multiple sub-units of a super unit. But it does breakdown the overall influence of a singular entity above a certain size.

What am I getting at? Can the community get behind a unit size cap of X size? And I'm guessing that X would be less than 100.

Use the existing structures from Battletech as the limit.
Lance (4 players)
Company = 3 Lances (12 players)
Battaltion = 3 Companies (36 players)
Regiment = 3 Battatlions (108 players)
http://www.sarna.net...itary_Structure

It may also be worth looking at different limits according to loyalist or mercenary unit.
The houses typically organise by Regiment.
Personally don't think it matters if units decide to sync drop, I think that's actually a nice effect and a showing of co-ordinated force in a scenario and would instead suggest looking into ways to improve unit comms, co-ordination and interaction within the game as this is a social aspect that we don't have.

In fact, could the call to arms feature be adapted at all to have some sort of unit to unit call for reinforcements or something?
We can do it out of game, but having the tools in game makes a huge difference in binding the community together.

MischiefSC, on 10 August 2018 - 04:39 PM, said:

Unit caps or any real limit or restriction on units getting people into FW is a bad idea. We need less pugs and more units, not smaller units.

Going to disagree with your statement re the cap limit and you kind of did it here yourself.
It's all well and good to have units train up players and those players might go on to other units.
But having a single unit of overly large proportions is also not good.
It wouldn't be as bad if the active population in Faction Play was in the thousands.
But to have a single unit make up half the population in the mode is just as bad as it's like having a fat kid on a seesaw and everyone just falls to that side.

MS was a good example of this and I wish you guys did break up into your smaller units when this population issue and unit cap thing was raised before around phase 2 as it meant you could have spread out to different factions and there would have been more inter faction conflict. We might still been in phase 2.

Edited by 50 50, 10 August 2018 - 08:40 PM.

[50 50]

Eisenhorne, on 10 August 2018 - 06:13 AM, said:

In regards to the "instapop" of mechs.... has there been a reason given why you can't just select the dropship you want to spawn out of? Add a way to select which spawn zone you want to drop in on the map. If it's currently got 4 people spawning in it, you pick a different drop ship. That would be all that's really needed, there's no reason to implement a whole new system for bringing mechs to the field.

From memory, this was something to do with the way the lances are linked to a particular dropship which is linked to a particular drop zone.

Personally, don't know why it wouldn't just be a first drop ship in first to land and have the others hold above it (like airports do) until the dropzone is clear and they can move in.
Eg:
Dropship Alpha flies to Dropzone Alpha and straight to holding level 2 which is the highest.
A quick check to see if holding level 1 is free, if so it decends, a quick check to see if the dropzone is free and it decends and deploys at ground zero.
If any of the lower points are not clear then the dropship holds.
If it's only a 30 second delay between drops, I don't see that being a problem.
Probably want some sort of comms after drop to "Move Move Move!" and clear the zone for the next lot of mechs.

[50 50]

Paul Inouye, on 10 August 2018 - 10:47 AM, said:

Finnnnne.

Let's put the issue directly on the BBQ. Faction swapping so units avoid fighting each other.

Adjusting rewards/incentives does nothing in this scenario due to people swapping to the winning side or just mass joining one faction to ensure it's the winning side. And this is the direct problem I need to hammer down.

Think this needs to be a Loyalist vs Mercenary difference.
Loyalists obviously won't swap.
But mercs are there for the contract benefits.
Therefore it needs a mechanism to improve things for loyaists as the faction becomes more successful, but less so for mercenaries.

Consider this concept.
Ignore the map for a moment and pretend it's not there.
Each faction starts with 10 star systems.
Each star system represents a modifier to the match rewards ie. c-bills.
A faction that has no star systems under it's control has a high base c-bill payout for mercenaries but low for loyalists.
As the faction captures more system this gradually shifts in the other direction with each system adding a positive modifier for loyaists but a negative one for mercs.

This would change the contract problem of 'active population' for mercs to a territory/success based system and creates the effect of mercenary units propping up factions that are getting hammered. It also kind of simulates a faction not being able to pay for a large standing armed force.