1169 replies to this topic

[Iron Buccaneer]

Well I doubt it will happen but I would like to see the map functionality based on phase 2 with multiple fronts. In order to make this successful you will have to take a serious look at the different career paths. One thing that might help would be to treat the "Freelancer" career path more like the Lone Wolf mercenary cartel. Allow them some communications options that would help them move about between different areas of conflict in a more coordinated fashion to help keep the buckets full. You would also have to re-vamp the Loyalist and Mercenary paths to provide more flavor and options. I would suggest some kind of commendation program for all career paths that could eventually be turned in for rewards like special decals or cockpit items or even faction specific mech variants. The other thing is to replace all current Loyalist rewards with faction specific rewards. Why would I get a cup of pop or a hamster from my house? Makes no sense. In short this would take at least as much work and promotion as you gave Solaris. Probably more.

If that can't be done and we still have to have one bucket there are some other things I would like to suggest. I haven't read all 20 pages so far so I don't know if these have already been suggested.

One thing Faction Warfare has always lacked is a good training ground. I think it would be good to have a planet where there is an ongoing conflict to use as a training ground for people interested in Faction War. I would choose a neutral periphery world like Antallos and have a perpetual Dark Caste vs Pirates battle. Get rid of trial mechs in the main conflict but allow them in this one. You could also use this as a proving ground for regular Faction play. Require everyone to play 25-100 matches in the training ground before they can join regular faction conflict.

I think it would be interesting if players could earn champion mechs during this training phase so they could build a more viable drop deck for regular faction play. Perhaps after 10 matches they could get a voucher for a light champion. At 30 they could get a voucher for a medium champion then a heavy at 60 and an assault at 90. After 100 matches they could enter regular Faction play. I also thing regular c-bill awards should be given for these games. You could also just tie the champion mech vouchers to ranks in the proving grounds so people could not just blow through them in scouting mode.
I would suspend all faction and unit tags in this phase and perhaps make it a pug que only to foster teamwork. That would also give people who want to play pug groups only a place to play that would also allow them to guide new players.

I would also like to see a "Raid" mode added if we stick with one bucket. This would be a 4v4 mode but all mech weight classes would be enabled. Players would select a "Drop deck" of one mech of each weight class for this mode. Each drop would have one mech of each weight class per side that would be randomly determined so you wont know what mech you are going to drop in until the loading screen. Like scouting the mode would have no re-spawns. Raids could be used to augment the mercenary bonus your faction gets. I think it would be nice to allow raids across all border allowing for some constant inter faction play but it would also work to do them just along the Clan/IS front. In this case each pilots bonus for each match should be calculated for their faction. It might also be an interesting bonus to only allow loyalist to innate raids then allow mercenaries to join if the loyalist doesn't have a full group.

That's all I got for now for simple ideas.

[Iron Buccaneer]

Another thing you could do is introduce the Jihad. Have a WoB vs IS bucket and a WoB vs Clan Bucket and an IS vs Clan bucket. I doubt WoB would attract as many loyalist but they could be given some awesome mercenary rewards while the other factions could be given some awesome Loyalist rewards.

[Sneaky Ohgoorchik]

The last - kurita vs davion event was great!

I do hope more civil-war kind events in future. It was interesting.

Edited by Sneaky Ohgoorchik, 08 August 2018 - 10:47 AM.

[Paul Inouye]

Back. Sorry for the lag there... that 'other' thread has me pretty busy.

Since the feedback is starting to slow down a bit.. I'm thinking of releasing a list of notes I have. While not EVERYTHING talked about is in there.. it's the stuff I can present to get traction on internally.

[creativeabyss]

Paul Inouye, on 08 August 2018 - 11:56 AM, said:

Back. Sorry for the lag there... that 'other' thread has me pretty busy.

Since the feedback is starting to slow down a bit.. I'm thinking of releasing a list of notes I have. While not EVERYTHING talked about is in there.. it's the stuff I can present to get traction on internally.

no need to wait for someone to say yes. lets see them notes.... please?

[Will9761]

Yes, Paul show us the notes. Please.

[Wing 0]

It was nothing but instant matches during siege Paul. That is how its done. Cant say anything good about certain units making those gen rush attempts. So many did just that than putting up a fight and we kept putting them down. Sad but there are a lot of players who just don't know how to play siege. Not our fault of course but that's Faction Play in its original mode.

Btw Paul. We did use those LRMs you guys buffed in a inappropriate fashion on boreal a few times and it made some players Rage Quit because of it. Thanks for buffing a weapon that didn't need it *Its Raining LRMs!*

Edited by Wing 0, 08 August 2018 - 01:26 PM.

[Eisenhorne]

OK, new idea for faction play.....

"Adopt a newb" system. Anyone with less than 50 Faction Play matches can enter the system, which would look like LFG. Any player with 500+ Faction Play matches, and a W/L ratio of 2.0 or greater, can pick up a new player from the queue, and do duo drops. The idea is that they can explain how to play, what mechs to bring, etc. The experienced player would be paid 10-20 MC per drop, to reward them for effectively acting as a tutorial mode. PGI would also have to put in a "report" function to let new players report any experienced guys who are being jerks in the queue, and actually pay attention to reports. Too many reports of a bad mentor, they get banned from participating.

Giving free cosmetics / heroes would be a great incentive to having experienced players group with less experienced ones, and would encourage them to drop in smaller groups than the 12 man deathballs.

[Horseman]

Eisenhorne, on 08 August 2018 - 01:30 PM, said:

"Adopt a newb" system. Anyone with less than 50 Faction Play matches can enter the system, which would look like LFG. Any player with 500+ Faction Play matches, and a W/L ratio of 2.0 or greater, can pick up a new player from the queue, and do duo drops. The idea is that they can explain how to play, what mechs to bring, etc. The experienced player would be paid 10-20 MC per drop, to reward them for effectively acting as a tutorial mode. PGI would also have to put in a "report" function to let new players report any experienced guys who are being jerks in the queue, and actually pay attention to reports. Too many reports of a bad mentor, they get banned from participating.

Too easy to exploit using smurf accounts.

[Eisenhorne]

Horseman, on 08 August 2018 - 01:47 PM, said:

Too easy to exploit using smurf accounts.

Well yea, but even if they do that... then it still accomplishes the secondary goal of helping to break up 12 man groups that destroy everything, because the players who would be participating in this program are probably the ones that are more likely to group up and crush the newbs. It's also not THAT much MC.... people flocked to the event this week because it was effectively 100-150 MC per match, assuming it took most people 2-3 drops to get it. This would be a fraction of that.

[Cato Zilks]

Paul, can the system allow us have events where the say Wolf and Steiner fight on one side against Kurita and Ghostbear? Or are we looking at a hard coded clanforce and isforce?

[Horseman]

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

I must admit, I did not read all the 18 pages of posts here, but what I have read, and can gather from this is that very little people have thought this through, and have understood what FP needs to be.
(...)
If your faction affiliation determined your mech Cbill and MC prices, if how many planets your faction holds determined your earnings in Quick Play, if it mattered that THAT particular planet be attacked, and not that other one.. And if you felt it in your heart that THAT faction is the right one for you, that it is where you should be, for it's ideals, it's mech availability, it's prices, or simply cose' you like what the faction stands for..

Should have read the whole thing, Vellron. This was already brought up, and deemed non-feasible on PGI's end.

[Paul Inouye]

Cato Zilks, on 08 August 2018 - 02:20 PM, said:

Paul, can the system allow us have events where the say Wolf and Steiner fight on one side against Kurita and Ghostbear? Or are we looking at a hard coded clanforce and isforce?

Not possible at the moment. The queuing system was never meant to do that. Originally it was just IS vs IS, then Clan vs IS.. always 2 faction front, not combined/alliance stuff. This is one of the investigation points I'm looking into though.

Sneaky Ohgoorchik, on 08 August 2018 - 10:46 AM, said:

The last - kurita vs davion event was great! I do hope more civil-war kind events in future. It was interesting.

That's the plan with smaller events and bigger events and a combination of smaller events leading to a big event etc.

[justcallme A S H]

Paul Inouye, on 08 August 2018 - 11:56 AM, said:

Back. Sorry for the lag there... that 'other' thread has me pretty busy.

Since the feedback is starting to slow down a bit.. I'm thinking of releasing a list of notes I have. While not EVERYTHING talked about is in there.. it's the stuff I can present to get traction on internally.

Please do Paul.

I've stopped posting ideas for now as you said the Podcast will go over a bit more of the restrictions / PGI thoughts and so on. I mean I have more and have been talking to a bunch of FP regulars as well for other options... Some are excellent QoL (basic) stuff too that I missed initially.... But holding fire for now. I might even start a room on my discord just for discussing as priv messages are getting messy haha.

Also I think now at 20 pages... The last 4-5 pages are starting to fill up with stuff that you clearly outlined earlier cannot happen due to varying restrictions..

So yeah - a document or post outlining a bunch of it, in addition to Podcast = best for us to then help/provide feedback.

[Wing 0]

When was the last time we had something like this Ash. I cant seem to recall that last so called round table meeting.

[justcallme A S H]

Last round table was Nov '16 I think mate.

[Wing 0]

justcallme A S H, on 08 August 2018 - 04:04 PM, said:

Last round table was Nov '16 I think mate.

Ouch. I remember it now. Pure Disappointment that went.

[Cato Zilks]

Paul Inouye, on 08 August 2018 - 02:53 PM, said:

Not possible at the moment. The queuing system was never meant to do that. Originally it was just IS vs IS, then Clan vs IS.. always 2 faction front, not combined/alliance stuff. This is one of the investigation points I'm looking into though.

Thanks Paul!

[Paul Inouye]

One other thing I need to ask here. Thoughts on a 'Mech spawning into the match without dropship animations? Kinda like Battlefield/CoD/et al. I know it's not the greatest for immersion but it will help address some other issues on the table.

[Wing 0]

Look at Mw4's Spawning system for a start paul. It wasn't perfect based on what it was back in the day but its a good place to start. Problem is that the Quick Play Maps were not specifically designed for Faction Play.

Edited by Wing 0, 08 August 2018 - 05:26 PM.