357 replies to this topic

[Horseman]

Peter2k, on 26 August 2018 - 06:52 AM, said:

as far as I'm aware of we had:
- a change to the walls around the drop zone
- a shelling of the drop zone before reinforcement
- a way to delay the drop so the whole group can at least drop as a whole

and the note that its a kinda normal thing in games

I'm sure more had ideas, that is just what I'm aware by skimming

Ability to switch to a different drop location was another - it's a partial solution and would help on maps where the drop locations are spread out - but wouldn't do anything on those where the drop locations are clumped together very closely (eg for the defending team on most Siege maps other than Vitric and Grim).

And of course simply rebalancing the rewards so that finishing the match quickly by caps (Assault / Domination), or destroying the base (Incursion / Siege) is just as much - if not more - rewarding than spending several minutes farming the remaining opponents (possibly with a small bonus based on the amount of time remaining on the clock). The player population would start self-regulating then.

Quote

I mean seriously, cracking 100 dmg should be doable with 4 mechs, except if you picked a knife for a gunfight 4 times.

Even then. If someone isn't doing 100, then they should start practicing hitting the fire button.

Quote

So the "git gud" attitude might be over the top a bit, but its not exactly far off either

Eh, at this point many of us don't go "git gud" as much as "git above irredeemably terrible". If someone is willing to listen, their sub-par performance in FP can be mitigated - proper choice of builds, a little more caution and paying attention to comms suffice to turn a terribad player into a mediocre one, and once they get their foot in the door they will stop viewing further improvement as unattainable (which I feel is the big problem for many people who go into FP - they do badly when starting out and get locked in the idea that they can't get better so there's no point in trying to get better)

Edited by Horseman, 26 August 2018 - 02:18 PM.

[Chados]

Fair enough, Peter, but none of this-none of it at all-is going to fix the core problem with FW, that it’s just not fun unless you’re top drawer and run with other top drawer pilots.

In MWO, I can avoid the problems I experience with FW simply by not playing the mode, and instead going back to the solo queue and group quickplay queue, where deathmatches that turn bad are over as soon as you’re dead and you can grab another mech and try again-and maybe...in fact usually...have a better drop next time, rather than having to wait 15 minutes for a drop and then having to suffer through a four mech drop deck’s worth of spawn camping before you can get out of it. And I don’t play FW, usually, for that reason. And I’m not going to, as long as it is what it is. If that’s what you and Paul etc. and the rest of those who love the mode most intend for it to be, then awesome-enjoy what you’ve got, and stop complaining that new players or even a lot of established players (I’ve been around since 2015) won’t stick around and play the mode and you can’t get matches. If you want new pilots or lesser skilled pilots rounding out drop queues, then their quality of life has to be addressed. Kesmai did it with PvE, as does Armored Warfare. My.com doesn’t seem to be having problems with player retention on MWO’s level. War Thunder does it by ranking tanks. You can’t play against a T-64 with a Tier III Sherman.

See, e.g. Solaris. I don’t play it. Solaris always has been a giant e-peen-fest. For those who are into it, well, vaya con Dios, mis amigos. Enjoy. I’ve never dropped in S7 in MWO and I don’t intend to. It’s not my jam. It’s not going to be my jam.

A matchmaker won’t work in FP because within a unit you’re dealing with players of differing skill. Paul has said that in the past too. At best, you’ll have to grade it along the lines of the current group queue. Things like the walls in the spawn areas don’t stop the spawn camping. And telling new players or lesser skilled players to “git gud” doesn’t help either. We LEAVE instead, and then players like you are left endlessly watching the clock tick down while you can’t get a drop until PGI runs an event, which draws in some masochists long enough for you to club them, while they hope they can pile up enough score to reap the event rewards. I found the hassle not worth the MC, and pulled the plug.

All this discussion looks to me like slapping bandaids on a sucking chest wound. FW is terminal in its current state. To attract and retain players, it needs some sort of PvE component to keep it from simply being yet more team deathmatch. If Paul can’t bring on a PvE component because of AI issues, that bodes ill for MW5.

Edited by Chados, 26 August 2018 - 08:21 AM.

[Horseman]

Chados, on 26 August 2018 - 08:09 AM, said:

If you want new pilots or lesser skilled pilots rounding out drop queues, then their quality of life has to be addressed.

Yes, and some proposals how to do it (including unit-approved FW trial builds) have been mentioned.

Quote

War Thunder does it by ranking tanks. You can’t play against a T-64 with a Tier III Sherman.

Non-viable. Not only it would split the population into more buckets, but there are dozens of possible builds for each chassis with wildly different performance.

Quote

And telling new players or lesser skilled players to “git gud” doesn’t help either. We LEAVE instead,

Maybe you haven't seen it as much as I did, but some of them get offended by being given advice or directions from a drop caller.

[Imperius]

Horseman, on 26 August 2018 - 10:02 AM, said:

Yes, and some proposals how to do it (including unit-approved FW trial builds) have been mentioned.
Non-viable. Not only it would split the population into more buckets, but there are dozens of possible builds for each chassis with wildly different performance.

Maybe you haven't seen it as much as I did, but some of them get offended by being given advice or directions from a drop caller.

Feedback has been given by many and I have said for a long time that if pve isn’t added to FP then there will be no point. You say not viable? To that I reply. Saving FP is not viable then.

As stated just above you. People don’t care to be the stand in for AI to be farmed. That is the reality of FP.

You can’t expect people to role play your lore for you that was never viable. RP servers were extremely rare on WoW and they had 12 million users.

I’m seriously not trying to be mr doom and gloom but she’s sailed her course. Anything short of FP being reworked is a band-aid and a waste.

Thankfully MW5 is around the corner.

Edited by Imperius, 26 August 2018 - 11:54 AM.

[Chados]

Precisely, Imperius.

Unit-approved trial builds won’t solve the problem. If you put lesser skilled pilots who don’t know how to meta in zero-skill-point meta builds they’ll do just as poorly against skilled units running 91-point meta builds in coordinated decks backed by hours of practice. I’ve seen it time and time again in the QP queue. And I’ve seen skill players excel in trash builds too. It’s not the mech, it’s the pilot. And some aren’t going to be top tier no matter how good the build.

And it’s not about following the drop caller. If someone tries to herd pugs I’ll follow. Sometimes it’s awesome and sometimes it’s garbage. I get that.

And I use the War Thunder example as an example, not as the way it ought to be. Solaris already is ranked that way and you hear crickets chirping in that mode too.

As Imperius teaches above, “People don’t care to be the stand-in for AI to be farmed.” That’s my point and Imperius is right. I watched this debate play out on WoW servers when my husband was heavily into it-I’ve seen it in Star Trek Online too. Guess how big the STO PvP queues are compared to the PvE side. They’re not even close, PvE is much, much larger. My husband got me into WoW so we could just hang together in game as sort of a husband/wife duo for awhile, and I have a level 65 protection warrior though I’ve not played her in years. My husband and I were able to duo old Scarlet Monastery at level 35 (it was a 35+ 5-man instance) and both Scholomance and Stratholme at what was level appropriate for a 5-man too. He played an old healer-spec Druid. It took us awhile to pull those runs off but we did it, and we did it with low end gear because neither of us spent a lot of time as end-game raiders. It was PvE co-op for us and we loved it, and he doesn’t play MWO because you can’t do that here. And I used to frequent the WoW forums and watched the PvP vs. PvE debate there too.

You’re the kind of guy that probably doesn’t like PvE to begin with because you see it as potentially diluting your experience. You’re a higher end player so you probably spend a lot of time being the hammer as opposed to being the anvil, so you don’t get it from the other perspective. This is a species of that. The FW attitude here is the exact same attitude I saw in raider guilds in WoW ten years ago, and we used to run pickup groups from time to time with Pals 4 Life of “Leeroy Jenkins” fame so this is not my first time around the block for this debate. MWO could have a decent PvE experience. PGI doesn’t want to invest the resources. They’re working on MW5, and Solaris was a huge, expensive failure for them-just look at who’s playing the mode, and how not easy it is to get matches according to the people who are complaining about that here. They did Solaris because a few vocal people wanted it. And no one really plays it because it has all the problems of FW in microcosm, namely, lower skill players being fed en masse to the meat grinder because the overall player count is too low to run a viable matchmaker in the mode. PGI didn’t learn jack **** from the grand fail that was Beta 2 back when we all called it CW (and I was in a fairly active version 2 unit).

I’m starting to think that MWO really is dying, because if they really believed in it we’d get more than bandaid fixes and mech packs. They haven’t even announced a loyalty program this year. I’ve seen other games die, and the handwriting is on the wall here, and I hate it-I’ve spent more hard cash on MWO than any other game online I’ve played-I’m a life subscriber in Star Trek Online and Day One subscribing member, and I don’t have a tenth the investment in STO I have here. You’d think players like me would be a target for improvements, that they’d be trying to keep those like me around. I’m thinking maybe not.

MWO is the only PvP game I play regularly. The *only* one. It’s because I like the Mechwarrior universe and I’m able to hold my own in the quickplay queues. But that doesn’t mean I like being cannon fodder for high end units. I’m older, and I don’t have the hand to eye coordination, plus I’m just not willing to give up other things I like to do in order to hone the necessary skills four hours a day to “git gud” in FW. Even in group queue you usually don’t get more than two or three bad drops with big premades on the other side in a row and if you do you can bag it and go get a shot of ice cold Jägermeister and solo drop for ten minutes, and the problem will go away-yeah, you get rolls, but not every single match. In FP, pretty much every drop is like that-you’re either the hammer or the anvil and more often than not I’ve found myself reenacting the Charge of the Light Brigade for four drops and that gets real old real fast. That’s the core problem with the FW experience and no new mechs or drop callers are changing that. FW will die just like Solaris already is dying if they don’t get some PvE experience in the mode.

Edited by Chados, 26 August 2018 - 01:00 PM.

[Imperius]

Chados, on 26 August 2018 - 12:38 PM, said:

Precisely, Imperius.

Unit-approved trial builds won’t solve the problem. If you put lesser skilled pilots who don’t know how to meta in zero-skill-point meta builds they’ll do just as poorly against skilled units running 91-point meta builds in coordinated decks backed by hours of practice. I’ve seen it time and time again in the QP queue. And I’ve seen skill players excel in trash builds too. It’s not the mech, it’s the pilot. And some aren’t going to be top tier no matter how good the build.

And it’s not about following the drop caller. If someone tries to herd pugs I’ll follow. Sometimes it’s awesome and sometimes it’s garbage. I get that.

And I use the War Thunder example as an example, not as the way it ought to be. Solaris already is ranked that way and you hear crickets chirping in that mode too.

As Imperius teaches above, “People don’t care to be the stand-in for AI to be farmed.” That’s my point and Imperius is right. I watched this debate play out on WoW servers when my husband was heavily into it-I’ve seen it in Star Trek Online too. Guess how big the STO PvP queues are compared to the PvE side. They’re not even close, PvE is much, much larger. My husband got me into WoW so we could just hang together in game as sort of a husband/wife duo for awhile, and I have a level 65 protection warrior though I’ve not played her in years. My husband and I were able to duo old Scarlet Monastery at level 35 (it was a 35+ 5-man instance) and both Scholomance and Stratholme at what was level appropriate for a 5-man too. He played an old healer-spec Druid. It took us awhile to pull those runs off but we did it, and we did it with low end gear because neither of us spent a lot of time as end-game raiders. It was PvE co-op for us and we loved it, and he doesn’t play MWO because you can’t do that here. And I used to frequent the WoW forums and watched the PvP vs. PvE debate there too.

You’re the kind of guy that probably doesn’t like PvE to begin with because you see it as potentially diluting your experience. You’re a higher end player so you probably spend a lot of time being the hammer as opposed to being the anvil, so you don’t get it from the other perspective. This is a species of that. The FW attitude here is the exact same attitude I saw in raider guilds in WoW ten years ago, and we used to run pickup groups from time to time with Pals 4 Life of “Leeroy Jenkins” fame so this is not my first time around the block for this debate. MWO could have a decent PvE experience. PGI doesn’t want to invest the resources. They’re working on MW5, and Solaris was a huge, expensive failure for them-just look at who’s playing the mode, and how not easy it is to get matches according to the people who are complaining about that here. They did Solaris because a few vocal people wanted it. And no one really plays it because it has all the problems of FW in microcosm, namely, lower skill players being fed en masse to the meat grinder because the overall player count is too low to run a viable matchmaker in the mode. PGI didn’t learn jack **** from the grand fail that was Beta 2 back when we all called it CW (and I was in a fairly active version 2 unit).

I’m starting to think that MWO really is dying, because if they really believed in it we’d get more than bandaid fixes and mech packs. They haven’t even announced a loyalty program this year. I’ve seen other games die, and the handwriting is on the wall here, and I hate it-I’ve spent more hard cash on MWO than any other game online I’ve played-I’m a life subscriber in Star Trek Online and Day One subscribing member, and I don’t have a tenth the investment in STO I have here. You’d think players like me would be a target for improvements, that they’d be trying to keep those like me around. I’m thinking maybe not.

MWO is the only PvP game I play regularly. The *only* one. It’s because I like the Mechwarrior universe and I’m able to hold my own in the quickplay queues. But that doesn’t mean I like being cannon fodder for high end units. I’m older, and I don’t have the hand to eye coordination, plus I’m just not willing to give up other things I like to do in order to hone the necessary skills four hours a day to “git gud” in FW. Even in group queue you usually don’t get more than two or three bad drops with big premades on the other side in a row and if you do you can bag it and go get a shot of ice cold Jägermeister and solo drop for ten minutes, and the problem will go away-yeah, you get rolls, but not every single match. In FP, pretty much every drop is like that-you’re either the hammer or the anvil and more often than not I’ve found myself reenacting the Charge of the Light Brigade for four drops and that gets real old real fast. That’s the core problem with the FW experience and no new mechs or drop callers are changing that. FW will die just like Solaris already is dying if they don’t get some PvE experience in the mode.

2015

https://mwomercs.com...ost__p__4626174

https://mwomercs.com...ost__p__4564570

[Cato Zilks]

That was a lot of space devoted to complaining about imbalance while presenting an entirely different game as the only solution. There have been many proposed solutions for making the mode less stompy, one of which (a matchmaker) is very likely to be implemented.

As for your "only solution," PGI is not writing an AI for this one mode. Paul has said that clearly and repeatedly. PvE is not on the table. Not even close. Also, as Imperius said, MW5 is due out soon and will provide you with PvE fun. I, like yall, I am looking forward to it. But that does not mean I see no way forward for improving a this PvP gamemode.

Now, this conversation here is about interacting with Paul's ideas to better improve this PvP mode. If you don't want to help make this PvP gamemode better, that is ok. I do not fault you for that. Just don't derail this discussion because you want an entirely different game.

[Imperius]

Cato Zilks, on 26 August 2018 - 06:21 PM, said:

That was a lot of space devoted to complaining about imbalance while presenting an entirely different game as the only solution. There have been many proposed solutions for making the mode less stompy, one of which (a matchmaker) is very likely to be implemented.

As for your "only solution," PGI is not writing an AI for this one mode. Paul has said that clearly and repeatedly. PvE is not on the table. Not even close. Also, as Imperius said, MW5 is due out soon and will provide you with PvE fun. I, like yall, I am looking forward to it. But that does not mean I see no way forward for improving a this PvP gamemode.

Now, this conversation here is about interacting with Paul's ideas to better improve this PvP mode. If you don't want to help make this PvP gamemode better, that is ok. I do not fault you for that. Just don't derail this discussion because you want an entirely different game.

Implying the current matchmaker doesn’t put Tier 5 against Tier 1? Also doesn’t even actually rank by skill in the first place. I mean it’s ok to have optimism but I’ve always been a realist. The reality is, FP is dead without a total rework. We’ve been told that won’t happen hence 5 pages instead of 30.

Did you ever play chromehounds? That’s how to properly do a FP gamemode. Look it up on YouTube.

Edited by Imperius, 26 August 2018 - 06:54 PM.

[slide]

I am going to reserve judgement on the effectiveness of a match maker until Paul presents us with more info about it.

That said to continue on from what others have been saying about "fun" in FP.

I am an average player (based in my KD and win/loss always being around 1), I am 48 years old, my skills peaked at this game 3-4 years ago. I have not gotten any better or worse since then. Last time I looked, back in January, Jarls list ranked me in the top 20% of CW players. I have to serious question that result because as I said I am average.

I tell you this because I see 2 very different sides to FP.

1. Solo, Pure PUG V PUG matches.
This IMO is the most BT like experience you can have in MWO. The random builds, the random skill levels, all the WTF moments more truly represent the BT universe as I have envisioned it from the books and other sources. These matches are fun in their own right and if teams have comparable skill levels, very entertaining no matter the result.

2. Group v Group
These matches are also very entertaining, although they can happen at many levels of proficiency. Co-ordination, specialized builds, high skilled players, communicating. All these things culminate in a game that is completely different to 1. I don't know what to compare it too, but it is not BT like in the least. It is it's own game really with a completely different rule set.


Where MWO un-funs itself repeatedly, is when these two versions come into contact. The constant harping by people to split the queues, are the exact same arguments we had back in closed and early beta when there was no MM and groups on comms were ripping through pugs. Sync dropping was so powerful it was actually made a ban able offence in the TOS.

I know this for certain, there is no compromise between the above groups of players, no matter what reasons they come up with to try and "win" the argument. So unless Paul can come up with a MM that at least attempts to keep those groups as far apart as possible, to quantify skills and rank them appropriately, in an environment that encourages people to play as best they can (and hopefully improve), then FP is doomed no matter what other changes are made.

"Fun" is subjective. Pandering to top tier elite players is no better for the game than pandering to the bottom dwelling joystick user who complain all the time.

The mode has to appeal to Mister Average like me, because that is where most of the player base sits.

[Horseman]

That is true, and that is also why consideration has to be given as to why certain complaints and proposals are raised - even if the proposals themselves seem stupid (see: instakill for pushing into enemy dropzone, invulnerable dropzone turret systems with assault-level firepower), the person who gave them believed they had a good reason to make them.

Sometimes searching for the cause of the perceived problem can achieve the same purpose with substantially less complexity (see: early resolution of clear stomps, increasing objective rewards to encourage quick completion, providing the spawncamped side with a means to regroup their next mechs )

Edited by Horseman, 27 August 2018 - 04:09 AM.

[Tier5ForLife]

Attract new players. Attract more players. Then train them.

Besides have an FW Acadamy, bringing more players into the game will really help.

I'll buy a couple of mech packs if I know that the money is going towards four 15 second Superbowl ads.








https://venturebeat....crosoft-do-not/

Edited by LikeUntoBuddha, 27 August 2018 - 04:41 AM.

[Imperius]

That will never happen

[Paul Inouye]

Clarification 1:

AI and PvE will not be coming to MWO. Some people have stated that without it FP is pointless. So why should we bother with anything if that is the stance? And because that's your stance, you think that you speak for everyone trying to see what we can do to enhance the experience?

As you can see by the pages of responses coming into these feedback thread, there is a functioning playerbase wanting to see this new stuff added. There's even a much larger active player base who are remaining silent as per any public forum discussion. If PvE in BT and MW5 are what you're looking for, you have some really cool stuff coming your way. But please stop trying to shoot everyone else down who want to play a PvP experience in MWO's Faction Play game space.

I'm not trying to poo-poo on you specific folks here, I'm just trying to get FP in a position where a lot more people are happy with the feature. It won't be perfect or reach that MMO level of depth, but it will be a lot better than it is right now.

[Imperius]

Paul Inouye, on 27 August 2018 - 09:34 AM, said:

Clarification 1:

AI and PvE will not be coming to MWO. Some people have stated that without it FP is pointless. So why should we bother with anything if that is the stance? And because that's your stance, you think that you speak for everyone trying to see what we can do to enhance the experience?

As you can see by the pages of responses coming into these feedback thread, there is a functioning playerbase wanting to see this new stuff added. There's even a much larger active player base who are remaining silent as per any public forum discussion. If PvE in BT and MW5 are what you're looking for, you have some really cool stuff coming your way. But please stop trying to shoot everyone else down who want to play a PvP experience in MWO's Faction Play game space.

I'm not trying to poo-poo on you specific folks here, I'm just trying to get FP in a position where a lot more people are happy with the feature. It won't be perfect or reach that MMO level of depth, but it will be a lot better than it is right now.

How does any of the these changes fix better players or bigger units from farming people? The same issue many others and myself complained about back in 2015.

Clarification 1:

The other poster was giving their feedback and was shut down. Since their view aligned with mine since 2015 I gave some extra weight to their view. As in saying that’s how I have felt.

Edited by Imperius, 27 August 2018 - 10:19 AM.

[Paul Inouye]

Weagles, on 25 August 2018 - 07:20 AM, said:

Actually love how many suggestions and counter suggestions are being offered. Very focused thread. Have a question for Paul, how many rank 20 pilots are there? Could the count of pilots be added next to each rank in the loyalty ranks?

*snip*

Total of 513 players have reached Rank 20.

Davion: 51
Kurita: 34
Liao: 34
Marik: 16
Rasalhague: 44
Steiner: 71

Clan Smoke Jaguar: 26
Clan Jade Falcon: 118
Clan Wolf: 69
Clan Ghost Bear: 42
Clan Steel Viper: 4
Clan Nova Cat: 1
Clan Diamond Shark: 3

[Eisenhorne]

That's a lot fewer people than I thought. Is that counting for duplicates? Like, how many people have Rank 20 in more than 1 faction? And what about Mercenaries?

[Nightbird]

Imperius, on 27 August 2018 - 09:57 AM, said:

How does any of the these changes fix better players or bigger units from farming people? The same issue many others and myself complained about back in 2015.

Option (A) work towards becoming one of those skilled pilots, option (B ) wait for MW5? Option (C) add AI to MWO isn't available.

Edited by Nightbird, 27 August 2018 - 11:04 AM.

[Eisenhorne]

Nightbird, on 27 August 2018 - 11:04 AM, said:

Option (A) work towards becoming one of those skilled pilots, option (B ) wait for MW5? Option (C) add AI to MWO isn't available.

Option (D), add all the good players to your friends list and refuse to drop FP when you see any of them in lobby on the other side.

[Imperius]

Nightbird, on 27 August 2018 - 11:04 AM, said:

Option (A) work towards becoming one of those skilled pilots, option (B ) wait for MW5? Option (C) add AI to MWO isn't available.

Lol implying my unit wasn’t the one farming people. Cute lol

[Nightbird]

Imperius, on 27 August 2018 - 11:42 AM, said:

Lol implying my unit wasn’t the one farming people. Cute lol

I don't see how you interpreted my answer as anything other than a rewording of what PGI is implicitly saying with the proposed changes. They don't do anything for stomps.