1169 replies to this topic

[MurghSharduk]

Wall angles, unit coffers, 2 minute waits, VOIP while waiting, who cares?

Biggest problem with Faction Wars is that it is not a war. There is no goal, no win condition, conquering systems means nothing. It is just glorified Quick Play with drop decks.

I want something in these lines, possibly wouldnt need much programming:

1) Civil War. When IS faction fights IS Faction, (or Clan vs Clan) conquering factions home systems forces them to become serfs of the winner. Secondary win goal is to be the on Faction left (on one side)

2) Clan vs IS War is about conquering factions home systems. If Clan attacks say Kurita home system, other IS factions may act as allies, and vice versa. If Clan conquers Kurita systems, Kurita must become sub faction of some other IS faction.

3) Win condition fo whole war is fight for Terra. If/when Clan reaches Terra, something like week long campaign (like the one just now) decice the winner of current war. Clans win by taking Terra, IS by defending it.

Of course, IS could do same with Clan home system (if theres one) but that is of course pure fantasy and could not happen.

If the war cant be dynamic, even the current mini campaign format would work.

Give fighting a meaning, and I still laugh while I'm seal clubbed by EVIL:

[Xaat Xuun]

MechaBattler, on 09 August 2018 - 11:38 AM, said:

Could we get the gates replaced with the destructible walls? It seems silly that the gates would open because the generator went offline.

I like this idea . . means one can choose where they want to enter from, and eliminates the gate choke point

[Horseman]

Cadoazreal, on 10 August 2018 - 12:24 AM, said:

Sorry I noticed others, who have already made their viewpoint, are continuing to shut down anyone else who states anything other than "this game,mode is for the top 5% of the playerbase only and PGi should continue to create content solely for this minority, anyone else, no matter how much money or time they have invested in MWO is irrelevant unless they want to git gud"

Hyperbole much? Anyone who is willing to make a modest effort to learn, adapt, and overcome will find themselves just fine in the mode.
Try it, and you just might see the mode in a different light
Like I said... been there, done that. It hasn't taken me six months between being the 400-damage scrub and carrying my own weight just fine.

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So I will continue counterpoints to represent the casual playerbase

In other words, you're speaking for the players who expect the mode to be "balanced" around their lack of abilities and lack of ambition, who would dearly like the opposition to be handicapped so they have an easy win.

Calvin Coolidge would like a word:

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who do not have time to assert the countering view on the forums to the good players

If their time is so limited then when do they actually have enough to play the game?

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I would like to have shorter queue times with closer matches. where KAI STRAY and some average to good players and 2 stock mech / joystick warriors form 1 team and PROMOWAR and some average to good players and 2 stock mech / joystick warriors form the other team

There's a mode for that already. It's called Quick Play. Something tells me you'd be perfectly fine with Siege mode ending up in QP queue.

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How many of those Teams would have the MAJORITY of their matches end in results Closer than 36-48 ?

Do you know what makes the mode worthwhile? Worthy opponents. Enemy teams who make an effort against you and come back despite the odds, clutch situations where the battle is won - or lost - by the skin of your teeth, where the final victory is just barely eked out in the last seconds of the clock... that kind of tension is when the mode is fun.
Any player who doesn't run on bully mentality will tell you that there's no satisfaction in crushing an opponent who doesn't put up a fight, it's just going through the motions.

Edited by Horseman, 10 August 2018 - 12:28 PM.

[TooDumbToQuit]

Add NPCs.

My hands hurt too much to explain it again but adding NPC units in the right way would help.

(I need to set up my voice recognition software)

[Wizywig]

Okay Chris, I know you are looking for direct feedback on FP... Here's a few core points I have about it.

- FP should be _only_ 12 man drops. No others should be permitted. This will go with the whole "this is end-game content" and will ensure that even rando groups forming on discord sort of gather together.
- FP should always show the tier of the player during group creation to indicate what you're dealing with. You don't want a T5 player going into a game with T1 players as it'll suck.

Honestly though... Remove faction play. At least for now. Completely.

The matchmaker is already having a near impossible time matching up group queue, and barely okay with solo queue. We need more players there. FP hasn't had a matchmaker in forever, and not enough population to support it. I think FP should take all the points you mentioned, but be put on the back-burner. For now this should practically mean no FP until the player numbers are brought up. And by up I mean we need at least 1 year of triple the current population.

Once MM has been going strong, then you can introduce FP.

-----

FP introduced a nice mechanic of picking a mech (or at least a drop deck) for a given map. I think QP should give you the ability to build maybe 2 - 3 mechs to drop with. All 2 - 3 much be identical tonnage. Or maybe +/- 5 or 10 tons. This will allow players to at least slightly react to different maps. Would be nice if I could drop in a lighter heat build of a nova vs mass heat nova in caustic valley or something. Give us some ability to pick mechs.

I'd love to see people drop into Polar with massive AMS to counter the usual LRM vomit. Like 1 ams per mech or so. That'd do a lot for making the game more countarable.

---

Also please remove all game modes not fun at the moment.

- escort is utterly broken
- incursion is effectively kill everyone, then shoot at a base, remove it.

Once you can get the escort AI to be really really nice, then we should play it. I mean I want to see the AI hide behind buildings, following a leader, etc. Let it be tactical. Right now it is just frustrating no matter what side you're on.

---

I typically play with 15-30 ping. Sometimes sub-10!!!! And here's the aiming fun.

Honestly I wouldn't focus my developer time AT ALL even on escort. We need that accuracy fixes. I VERY OFTEN shoot pirhannas with a full alpha of SRMs, lasers, autocannons, and hit them on my screen, only to show zero damage on the mech. The reason everyone boats streaks is because there's no alternatives. A pirhanna can destroy an assault quickly if the assault doesn't have streams and is unsupported, no matter the player's skill and distance, because the pirhanna doesn't get hit.

The problem isn't the pirhanna, it is any really tiny mech, Pirhanna, Comando, Locust, all mechs that are small enough to cause these problems. I've seen it to a lesser extent on fast Assassins where i full alpha one and it takes no damage.

Mechs like the Osiris are completely garbage because they don't have the bugs and thus can be hit. This is why they aren't used, because they aren't broken.

---

What I would focus on entirely is the core gameplay experience:

- shooting
- walking
- mechlab
- matchmaking
- mechs (terrible animations)

Once you can get solid on those then you will see a lot of the community enjoy the game again. After that pick a game mode, make it work, and follow up constantly on it. In a week, a month, 2 months, 3 months, etc. Always revise. See what is broken. Etc.

---

It feels like the game has been in maintenance mode for years now. If you don't want the community to leave, please start doing active development.

[Eisenhorne]

Wizywig, on 10 August 2018 - 05:43 AM, said:

Okay Chris, I know you are looking for direct feedback on FP... Here's a few core points I have about it.

- FP should be _only_ 12 man drops. No others should be permitted. This will go with the whole "this is end-game content" and will ensure that even rando groups forming on discord sort of gather together.
- FP should always show the tier of the player during group creation to indicate what you're dealing with. You don't want a T5 player going into a game with T1 players as it'll suck.

Honestly though... Remove faction play. At least for now. Completely.

.... and that's where I stopped reading. I spend the majority of my playtime in Faction Play. Many other very good players I know do the same. It's the most fun. You actually can pick the appropriate mechs for the map, and there's an actual strategy you can employ between your team instead of the general melee that is quick play. Removing FP would kill my enjoyment of this game. If anything, they should remove group Quick Play and have only Faction Play.

[Sixpack]

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

Re: My question about insta-popping 'Mechs into existence...

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. However, if the insta-pop is okay, that's one way I can work on getting selectable drop points on the table. Not guaranteed, but at least it can be brought up again.

In regards to the instapop I see two ways.

Basic "low effort" instapop.

Using a set of spawning bases and the Steiner Arena elevator.

I assume doing the second option would be difficult or maybe even impossible to implement as those elevators would need to move up and down, not to mention that it makes an easy to spawncamp location, but it might look nice with the incursion mode. Depending on how you work from that and maybe make an actual "assault" mode out of this with a destructible base on one side that a team defends and an attacking team on the other with respawns for both sides it would look rather sweet and give more of a base feel if the attacking team gets in via dropship and the defending one would use bunker elevators.
But again, easy to think about cool things, hard to implement them.

Edit: still going threw the thread so things might get added.

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.

I could see the option of "Player X,Y,Z has selected this spawn point, wait X seconds to spawn" as a text for the spawn screen.
Or add multiple elevators to allow lance spawning.

Edited by Sixpack, 10 August 2018 - 06:12 AM.

[Eisenhorne]

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.

[xX PUG Xx]

Wizywig, on 10 August 2018 - 05:43 AM, said:

Nicely written post that I mostly disagree with

Your suggestion to fix or improve Faction Play is to remove and spend the resources on Quick Play?

Where's the down vote button? Do you remember the pre-CW days? Massive Loyalist units? MANY Mercenary unit's created to specifically play CW? ALL of thdm lost huge numbers of players as the monotony of QP slowly ground them down until eventuall CW was released? Do you honestly believe returning to a QP only game will increase overall player population? To that pre-CW level?

What Paul is doing here has been a longtime coming and FP or some sort of story driven (immersive) mode is required to keep the long term population engaged and active. The resources are definitely going to the right place for the moment, in my opinion.

P.S. A players Tier is not an indication of their skill, I can introduce you to several players that started T5 alt. accounts, jumped into trial (C) 'Mech decks and pulled 1500+ damage and won more games than they lost. The current PSR/SSR system doesn't give a true indication of skill unfortunately.

[MischiefSC]

On the premades vs pugs question -

Respawns amplify the impact of teamwork. That's inherent to the mode. The meta vs non-meta build question is irrelevant as anyone can bring meta or non-meta builds. Even a pretty big skill-gap can be crossed in FW by better teamwork and coordination.

Which is why groups happen and why the mode is inherently biased toward grouping up. Two or three guys wanting to 'do their own thing' in QP isn't that big a deal. In FW it separates winners from losers in all but the most one-sided of matches. That's why grouping up vs pugging is such a big deal in FW and why no queue change will really alter that. All you'd get was people finding new and inventive ways to sync-drop, because people in FW 'doing their own thing' are absolutely toxic to the success of their team.

You can't use a matchmaker to balance for incompetency in that regard because the MM can't really tell who's trying to solo Rambo in FW and who isn't. It isn't just about mechs/builds/loadouts/skill but your soft skills, teamwork, that's the biggest single factor for success in FW.

There isn't a way to try and separate pugs and premades in FW. Just sync-drops and non-sync-drops. Given the population and the way the queue works there's no way to address that. You'd just turn FW into another QP mode but with a population comparable to Solaris.

GQ got more or less broken trying to make it more casual friendly. FW had 100x the population it has now when it was LESS casual friendly. FW originally wasn't going to allow pugs in it at all but we begged and begged, saying we knew what it was a group/unit focused game mode and wanted to do it anyway. The population issues in FW are not and have never been a pug vs premade issue but always tied to a lack of certain promises and expectations and then neglect, before getting Long Tommed.

Now Paul has taken the time to have a real honest discussion here and look at realistic changes and that's awesome. Very, very appreciated and has even a bunch of us salty bittervets happy. Let's see where that goes before we start trying to find new ways to pretty much finish FW off. Again, its biggest population era was when it was way less pug friendly than it is now.

[Horseman]

MischiefSC, on 10 August 2018 - 06:31 AM, said:

FW originally wasn't going to allow pugs in it at all but we begged and begged, saying we knew what it was a group/unit focused game mode and wanted to do it anyway.

Of course, no good deed goes unpunished - now the pugs are trying to have units kicked out of the mode the unit system pretty much exists for so that they can play the comm-less quick play with respawns they believe they are entitled to.

I think that's what TV Tropes refers to as "gone horribly right".

[Paul Inouye]

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.

[r0b0tc0rpse]

Paul Inouye, on 09 August 2018 - 10:02 AM, said:

My notes:

While not all encompassing on every single topic... these are the notes that are in for investigation for the update. These are higher level notes in which if your suggestion touches on the same area, consider your suggestion to be part of the discussion.

FP Update – Notes from the Community
Make faction alignment meaningful and rewarding

• Faction specific rewards (Colors/boltons/cockpit items/skins/etc)
  
• LP used as a currency
  
• Story/Lore/Faction driven choices to cement a desire to stay loyal
  
• Expand on the Loyalist path drastically
  
• Expand on lore in global descriptions in FP

Map Alterations

• Revisit sightlines
  
• Revisit pathing
  
• Look at generator positioning

Game Mode/Hooks

• Tug-of-War adjustment for less punitive win condition flips.
  
• Removal of Tug-of-War mechanic for smaller events with different win scenarios.
  
• Incursion base building health adjustments.
  
• Drop Zone wall angle adjustments.
  
• More reward kickers based on player behavior.
  
• Bring back queue count.
  
• Planet/event specific map selection.
  
• Objective play reward increase.
  
• Conquest score adjustment.
  
• Adjust launch countdown.
  
• Earlier win conditions based on team destruction (stomps)
  
• CalltoArms timer change.
  
• Unit based objectives.
  
• Queuing integrated into LFG
  
• Reward group play at a higher level than solo
  
• Scouting mode end condition investigation (diving)
  
• Rewards for CalltoArms participation
  
• Battlefield based tonnage restriction (e.g. only 4 assaults at a time)

Systems Update

• More than 4 drop decks
  
• VoIP prior to drop

UI

• Refresh on friends list
  
• Favorites on friends list
  
• Status indicator (drop type/game area)

Coffers

• Unit management taxation removal/change.
  
• C-bill transfer between players.

Misc

• Tool for players to enter planetary data

NOTE: This list is not a list of things definitely going in. Again, it's a list of investigation points that I'll be presenting on top of what is already in play to see if anything can be included. i.e. NOTHING on this list is promised.

The best thing to happen to faction in years was the removal of the penalty to change faction, even though they removed the reward for playing certain low population factions, then wrenched it from you if you were still maintaining an old one. We need to maintain the flexibility to change faction for events, for those of us who like to 100% every possible event. I understand the desire to translate lore into careers... but at this point simplification is better. Look across the industry and you'll see games are being distilled down to the core of what makes them fun, rather than having them expanded out into to thousands of nuanced choices (which will always get optimized into a few metas any how). Variety for variety's sake isn't a worthwhile pursuit.

In other words; crafting mechanics that will compel people/units to remain a certain faction is at odds with frequent FP events that require you to be a certain faction. While the penalty for breaking contracts / loyalties has been removed, you'd effectively be re-introducing a penalty in the form of denied rewards. (Like how gas stations can't charge a credit card service fee, but offer a cash discount...)

Rather, allow people to maintain their unit faction and concurrently a personal faction, allow them to drop for any faction while keeping their primary loyalty, particularly during events, or keep the event as they are now, and just reward both faction items for the same objective, IE a Davion and Kurita banner.

While we're on the subject, why remove the faction bonuses at all? After all, it's just imaginary virtual space money that only enables the players to play more of the game. Seems a little tightfisted to eliminate these bonuses entirely with out balancing it by increasing the base rewards (or did this happen?). You're also cutting off your own legs, you want more people playing, since in order to get really deep into the game, c-bills are critical for buying, equipping, and now skilling, the extremely wide range of varied chassis you need to play FW competently. A drop deck of four mechs currently represents ~60-80 hours of in game time in order to grind the c-bills to build and equip and XP to skill, with premium time. But that's only 4 mechs, and FW often requires specific mechs for certain maps, and yet others depending on if you're attacking or defending. If you want to get more people in faction, they need more mechs - and they need them faster, which means more c-bills and XP. If you play ~40 hours a week, I'd estimate it will take you about 5 months to flesh out a well rounded set of mechs for FW for either IS or clan (not both). You could always give trial mechs consumables and skills, and have a separate (read:FW specific) set of trials for FW. That would help people fill the gaps. Commute all XP gained on trials (currently thrown in the trash) to GXP, because right now all they give you is C-bills, where as under the old system you got to keep that mech XP if you ever bought that variant.

Edited by r0b0tc0rpse, 10 August 2018 - 10:09 AM.

[Revis Volek]

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.

No we cannot


Limiting Units size does NOTHING to stop the population swings. You literally said those exact words in your post so why would you think then a few sentences later it would work?

You need to create incentive to STAY with a faction you create events that are Wolf and Jade Falcon only for example what are we suppose to do over at CSJ? or Davion? You events alone create this population problem and i dont get how you cannot see that.

FW has a lot of problems, limiting the unit sizes will only make MORE population problems. DO you guys not remember the past? or where the game has been? These modes did not flourish until you allowed units and teams of ANY SIZE to participate. Also this 100 member cap wont even touch the top 5 units in the top 5 units in the game currently as they are all under 100 players. Hell the entirety of SA is only 82 players and thats 3 teams.

https://leaderboard.isengrim.org/units

In fact, one unit in the top 50 is above 100 players. GOON.

Edited by Revis Volek, 10 August 2018 - 10:13 AM.

[Deathshade]

The reason for these constant shifts is that it is easy to do and has created your chaotic queues like this. You either have to moderate the population manually or put caps like you said. What was the original reason for making it so easy to flake out to another Faction so easily?
The Skye Rangers have been penalized by the current system but it is just forcing us to break off into other units but still essentially SR. Not really a stopper for large unit creation. One thing that weed these units out is have activity play a role in whether a player is still considered part of the unit or coming back from Drop Ship Reserves as we put it when they become active. With active I mean, playing a min of games a day or week depending on how much you want to restrict it. There maybe large units but it is very tough keeping all these guys and gals active and manage them in a way that keeps them all coming back for more.

Edited by Deathshade, 10 August 2018 - 10:17 AM.

[r0b0tc0rpse]

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.

Or like I said, let people maintain their unit loyalty and then a personal loyalty, or simply allow them / the group leader to chose which faction they're dropping as at that moment. More elegant solution than artificially limiting the size of a unit, you're just going to make people feel like they're getting picked last for dodge ball when they get kicked out into a sub unit.

[Marquis De Lafayette]

@paul

As it is “on the ground” (I.e....what is actually happening) unit size today seems pretty irrelevant. Our unit has 54 members and is basically fielding 4-6 man’s most of the time. Some guys are just taking a break from FW...so they are active in the game, but haven’t dropped FW in months. Even MS (which won all 4 conflicts in Davion-Kurita) isn’t rolling out multiple 12 man’s (maybe once in a blue moon, but it’s rare). The best advice I can give you is to actually visit the TS’s (to see what’s actually going on there and talk with unit leadership) of the biggest and most active units. It’s not huge numbers in any of these units playing FW at any given time. no matter what unit size is. 100 would be far to small, as in our case we are over 50 and are at the moment are dropping 1/2 (or less) a of 12 man most of the time (in NA primetime only)...despite the pool of tagged players we have. Unit size just seems like a concern that might have been relevant 3 years ago...i.e...its not a significant factor in how the game plays out today.

P.s....I think many of us do appreciate your engagement and asking questions of the community. We won’t all agree on everything or with every decision you make (we do understand you are often in a tough spot), but the way you have engaged with this thread is encouraging.

Edited by Marquis De Lafayette, 10 August 2018 - 10:27 AM.

[Jaybles-The-PegLeg-PotatoCaptain]

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 think the biggest issue is that a lot of the larger units left are generally the units that are new player friendly. Limiting size would limit their ability to help with the new player experience.

A unit of say 150 may only have 100 people active and of those, maybe 10-15 drop FP consistently. Others randomly. As Ash has mentioned and some others, Is it possible to have the populations calculated more dynamically? As in it only counts a player if they have 5 drops a week or something?

I understand that you are referencing the rather large unnamed unit that dominated FP2.0 and that units would switch sides to avoid facing said unit, but It also allowed for multiple fronts to be active as they had the numbers to be active on multiple fronts. FP3.0 and limiting ability of factions to have multiple attack lanes did more to kill the aforementioned large unit than any unit tax or member limit could.

Having accurate information on how many ACTIVE players are in each faction would go a long way in helping people choose where to go for the best opportunities for quick matches. People will still stack. And people will still avoid certain units if they can, but those same people will try to do it even if you limit unit size.

[r0b0tc0rpse]

@Paul

Solve faction population issues by simply de-syncing your actual loyalty with the faction you're dropping as. Allow the player/group leader to chose the faction they're dropping as and the players personal/unit loyalty remains, and their efforts count towards progressing their loyalty points.

[Daurock]

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

Group size stuff

I'm not sure there will be much change if group size caps were to be implemented. Nearly all the groups/clans I've been a part of have either been 1) small enough that the group cap size doesn't matter, or 2) Organized enough that it is easy to simply create, Xclan1, Xclan2, Xclan3, etc, and Work together. (In MWO, that means basically that when clan 1 switches, 2,3, and 4 will too, with at most maybe a week apart) I have yet to find really ANY groups that would have a problem coordinating once they get big enough to reach any normal cap (I've seen groups split into multiple clans with as few as 20 members each.) The only thing that reducing the clan size really does is to put minor road-block into seeing who is all available in the clan. (As you'll have to manually add people to friends lists, ask the other leader who's on, hop onto teamspeak/discord and see who is playing, etc.) It's really not a change worth the effort.

If you REALLY want to put a foot into population balancing, look at the Merc units - Make them unable to join a side, and flow with whichever side needs them most (Which may change on a daily, or even more frequent basis.) Pay them well, and many people will flow to that "Unaffiliated" faction.
Additionally, you could in theory go even further than that - Imagine if there was a Drop Que Similar to solaris, where the MM Pulled players every X Minutes, and only then attempted to create games. (Instead of simply creating a game as soon as there are enough players on each side to create a full team) Were that type of drop system in place, you could have those "Merc" units fill a third "pile", in addition to the Side 1 and side 2 piles, and be added to the side with fewer players when the MM goes to create teams. In that fashion, a merc could potentilly drop on either side, on a match by match basis.

Edited by Daurock, 10 August 2018 - 10:29 AM.