58 replies to this topic

[El Bandito]

Karl Streiger, on 11 October 2018 - 01:23 AM, said:

So people still trying to play a game mode that was virtual killed by the Long Tom?

FP has its charms.

[Asym]

Ninjah, on 11 October 2018 - 01:16 AM, said:

I stopped playing and sold off all my mechs for a number of reasons but what really made me quit is the fact that I don't have a whole day to devote to searching. I have a life and stuff to do in RL so when I finally get an hour or two to play MWO I get nothing but ghost drops. So I started playing something else after 5 years of nothing but MWO and immidiately realised how much better and more fun other games are compared to... this. I'm really sad for quitting (mostly because of the friends I made here) but PGI doesn't deserve my time and they don't have anything to offer anymore but frustration and a spinning circle with Searching written under it.

BINGO ~~! We have a winner !

Let's see, we're clan as a team, only 42 left in the active list out there and only 5 or six play at all............

PGI : "You are reaping what you've sown...." Events only, one day a month and NEVER, ever again Faction Play; so long as the same teams exist......

Ninjah, well said.

[Astrocanis]

Appogee, on 10 October 2018 - 07:47 AM, said:

No clanners found. After a couple of hours, most of us just gave up.

The question is: do PGI's leaders actually care...? Even a little bit...?

I have the impression, following Paul Innoue's recent invitation to provide suggestions "that don't involve much development effort" - which has been followed by more than a month of nothing happening at all - that PGI might be quite happy to keep driving FP players away.

That way they can just disable the mode and stop bothering to even pretend that they care about it.

How are they supposed to care? "If you don't meet your quota of FP [whatever faction is not playing] we are revoking your ability to QP!"

They aren't driving FP away. In fact, the only thing they can do is FP events, which make people play it a little more. A little. The problem with FP is that the game is full of solo players and big groups stomping them (yeah, I know, "GROUP UP") is not fun. Not a little.

Tell me how you would propose that PGI force people to play something they don't like? Or is it your opinion that there are already too many players and we need to weed a bunch of them out?

[LordNothing]

Astrocanis, on 11 October 2018 - 05:27 AM, said:

How are they supposed to care? "If you don't meet your quota of FP [whatever faction is not playing] we are revoking your ability to QP!"

They aren't driving FP away. In fact, the only thing they can do is FP events, which make people play it a little more. A little. The problem with FP is that the game is full of solo players and big groups stomping them (yeah, I know, "GROUP UP") is not fun. Not a little.

Tell me how you would propose that PGI force people to play something they don't like? Or is it your opinion that there are already too many players and we need to weed a bunch of them out?

its lonely at the top. its nice to see their own elitest snobbery snuff out the mode they like the most. pgi catering to those types certainly hasnt helped the game much. i kind of wanted to see fp become the primary mode in the game that would obsolete the minimally viable quick play and actually move the game forward, but thats impossible with so much self-sabotage from all sides.

Edited by LordNothing, 11 October 2018 - 05:52 AM.

[Eisenhorne]

LordNothing, on 11 October 2018 - 05:51 AM, said:

its lonely at the top. its nice to see their own elitest snobbery snuff out the mode they like the most. pgi catering to those types certainly hasnt helped the game much. i kind of wanted to see fp become the primary mode in the game that would obsolete the minimally viable quick play and actually move the game forward, but thats impossible with so much self-sabotage from all sides.

"elitest snobbery"... what? I have no idea what you are talking about here. Is PGI being elitist?

[Appogee]

I want to respond, but I actually don't know what they're talking about.

[LordNothing]

Eisenhorne, on 11 October 2018 - 05:58 AM, said:

"elitest snobbery"... what? I have no idea what you are talking about here. Is PGI being elitist?

you know that attitude some of the units had about pugs? that brand of elitest snobbery. you know, the ones who think that the warning message was a good idea. that likely discouraged a lot of people from even trying the mode at all before writing it off as hard mode. to grow a mode you need the bulk of players in the middle of the bell curve, not a few percent at one end. pugs are actually good for the mode, because you need to start somewhere and theres not a link in the game to *some teamspeak server*. thats likely the first experience everyone had in the mode and for a lot of people it was a terrible first experience. it ended up creating that us-vs-them attitude that is non-conductive to growing a mode. joining a unit really isnt the answer either, the number of units which i as a pug considered a serious threat i could probably count on one hand. i was in several not very good units before i gave up on that.

problem is pgi should have really replaced qp as soon as possible. it was an un fleshed out beta after all and fp was supposed to be the end product. leaving it in gave the lesser pugs an easy out. had fp been the only mode they would have been forced to adapt and pgi could have used a match maker or split queue because the player base would not have been split between fp and qp/gq. something like the theoretical mm that paul was on about recently would have worked out great.

other problems with fp could have been sorted out at a later date. bucketpocalypse would have happend reguardless because 10 factions is unsustainable in perpetuity. pgi was a little over optimistic about the potential population and retention for that to ever be viable. 3 or 4 faction alliances all at war with eachother may have worked out better. long tom may have been an issue, i like the way pgi had it just before it was removed completely. that would have been fixed a lot faster if it was the only mode in the game.

Edited by LordNothing, 11 October 2018 - 06:55 AM.

[Karl Streiger]

El Bandito, on 11 October 2018 - 05:11 AM, said:

FP hasd its charms.

FTFY but otherwise you are were correct

Edited by Karl Streiger, 11 October 2018 - 06:22 AM.

[Eisenhorne]

LordNothing, on 11 October 2018 - 06:18 AM, said:

you know that attitude some of the units had about pugs? that brand of elitest snobbery. you know, the ones who think that the warning message was a good idea.

Ah. I guess I'm an elitist. I'm not in a unit. I drop as a "filler" in other units basically. I'll drop with 420, BCMC, EVIL, EmP, o7, T, basically any unit that needs an extra guy to fill up their group (in faction). The solo pug players, who pull 200-400 damage over four mechs.... yes, they should be banned from playing. They are effectively a waste of a space. The warning message is supposed to dissuade them, but it's not enough. Not only do they not have any fun, but they can often degrade the experience for everyone else on their team. You're effectively playing a man down. If the rest of the teams are relatively balanced, they cost the game for their team. It happens all the time. THOSE Pug players need to be warned off.

Some pug players (like me) try to do it right. I'll go around teamspeak's looking for a unit to drop with. If I can't find one, then I'll drop solo until I either see a unit in my drop I haven't played with before and ask for an invite for the next drop, or until I'm frustrated by the terribads who do not belong in FP and the warning message wasn't effective enough at getting rid of.

Honestly, if you're doing under 1000 damage on average over four mechs, (especially if you're doing under 500) you're basically a liability, and should go back to quick play until you know what you're doing. Waiting longer for better pugs is always better than accepting these players into a group.

Edited by Eisenhorne, 11 October 2018 - 06:36 AM.

[El Bandito]

Karl Streiger, on 11 October 2018 - 06:22 AM, said:

FTFY but otherwise you are were correct

You do not speak for me. Mercstar is still very much active in FP because we like it more than other modes. And no, not because we are there to tryhard (we are one of the precious few big training units, as opposed to pure tryhards), but because we like how our own community operates and socializes in FP environment.

[McGoat]

Eisenhorne, on 10 October 2018 - 08:03 AM, said:

PGI should just remove group queue entirely, and get rid of solo queue faction play. If you wanna play solo, you do solo queue. If you wanna play with a group, you do faction play.

lol.
No.

FP has zero incentive to bring groups as it is, which is why low pop for 80% of the day. You force people who want to play with teammates into it and the general population will suffer even more.

[Eisenhorne]

El Bandito, on 11 October 2018 - 06:49 AM, said:

You do not speak for me. Mercstar is still very much active in FP because we like it more than other modes. And no, not because we are there to tryhard (we are one of the precious few big training units, as opposed to pure tryhards), but because we like how our own community operates and socializes in FP environment.

You guys are always welcoming whenever I need some guys to drop with, and always willing to take pretty much anyone along with you. Thanks for that. From the average puggle's perspective though, literally any unit is a "tryhard", because while you may stomp pugs 48-24 instead of 48-12 like a fully stacked unit, the end result is still pretty stompy. I really don't see a way to change that unfortunately, since many of them seem to hold the view that bringing coordinated mechs and communicating is "powergaming" or some such nonsense.

McGoat, on 11 October 2018 - 06:54 AM, said:

lol.
No.

FP has zero incentive to bring groups as it is, which is why low pop for 80% of the day. You force people who want to play with teammates into it and the general population will suffer even more.

Can you expand on this? I always assumed FP had a much larger incentive to bring groups than group queue, as you don't get penalized in tonnage for larger groups, and you can coordinate roles even better than QP since you can pick mechs to fit the map.

Edited by Eisenhorne, 11 October 2018 - 06:59 AM.

[LordNothing]

Eisenhorne, on 11 October 2018 - 06:35 AM, said:

Ah. I guess I'm an elitist. I'm not in a unit. I drop as a "filler" in other units basically. I'll drop with 420, BCMC, EVIL, EmP, o7, T, basically any unit that needs an extra guy to fill up their group (in faction). The solo pug players, who pull 200-400 damage over four mechs.... yes, they should be banned from playing. They are effectively a waste of a space. The warning message is supposed to dissuade them, but it's not enough. Not only do they not have any fun, but they can often degrade the experience for everyone else on their team. You're effectively playing a man down. If the rest of the teams are relatively balanced, they cost the game for their team. It happens all the time. THOSE Pug players need to be warned off.

Some pug players (like me) try to do it right. I'll go around teamspeak's looking for a unit to drop with. If I can't find one, then I'll drop solo until I either see a unit in my drop I haven't played with before and ask for an invite for the next drop, or until I'm frustrated by the terribads who do not belong in FP and the warning message wasn't effective enough at getting rid of.

Honestly, if you're doing under 1000 damage on average over four mechs, (especially if you're doing under 500) you're basically a liability, and should go back to quick play until you know what you're doing. Waiting longer for better pugs is always better than accepting these players into a group.

i do pretty well in fp as a pug. but i cannot play fp as a pug if its dead. i cannot play fp in a unit if its dead either. pgi didnt make a mode, they made a schism and they never brought those players back together. they walled themselves off in their own little subcommunities and stagnated. its happening in fp now and qp will follow suit at some point.

[McGoat]

Eisenhorne, on 11 October 2018 - 06:57 AM, said:

Can you expand on this? I always assumed FP had a much larger incentive to bring groups than group queue, as you don't get penalized in tonnage for larger groups, and you can coordinate roles even better than QP since you can pick mechs to fit the map.

There isn't any reason to expand - if your assumption were true, there'd be more groups.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the mode - but play the same thing for 20 minutes to stomp pugs is about as bland as it can get. Oh but wait, lrm strats make it fun!

Do not forget, there is no reason for any comp type team to play FP over GQ other than for "fun", as none of the comp leagues cater to the mode. The individual drop-decks, they mean nothing when GQ forces you to adhere to the classes you'll probably use in comp anyways.

So other than... playing siege, there isn't really any attractant to groups. PGI killed the groups who were here for FP. BCMC and EVIL, the two last "try hard" FP teams.. Do not exist. All that is left is Macclearly's nightly group and a few ragtag teams who NSR or PVE.

I wish this weren't true, but this is where the mode is.

Edit:
36 teams signed up for BFM - if there was an attractant to FP i'd wager they'd be playing the mode, too.

Edited by McGoat, 11 October 2018 - 07:13 AM.

[Karl Streiger]

El Bandito, on 11 October 2018 - 06:49 AM, said:

You do not speak for me. Mercstar is still very much active in FP because we like it more than other modes. And no, not because we are there to tryhard (we are one of the precious few big training units, as opposed to pure tryhards), but because we like how our own community operates and socializes in FP environment.

well maybe it did change (it has been years since i stopped to worrie) but MercStar was one of the reasons that FP is as dead as it is now.
Its a kind of parable that MercStar is now the only thing that keeps it alive.

[El Bandito]

Karl Streiger, on 11 October 2018 - 07:45 AM, said:

well maybe it did change (it has been years since i stopped to worrie) but MercStar was one of the reasons that FP is as dead as it is now.
Its a kind of parable that MercStar is now the only thing that keeps it alive.

Current Mercstar is far removed from the old 400-man Mercstar Alliance--only a handful pilots are from the old unit. A lot of people still don't know the difference though.

[Spheroid]

LordNothing, on 11 October 2018 - 06:18 AM, said:

Bucketpocalypse would have happend reguardless because 10 factions is unsustainable in perpetuity. pgi was a little over optimistic about the potential population and retention for that to ever be viable.

Its only non-viable if you attempt to resolve ten factions simultaneously. However the option to fight battles sequentially either from a fixed or numerically proportional turn order would have solved this. The sides would be formed from technological or ideological compatible allies available in the waiting queue.

A two sided conflict that never advances a front is boring as hell. With a dozen factions the subtle changes in cartography would have been readily apparent.

A large number of factions is viable as long as you fight one battle at a time, cycle through the factions and keep the result of the battle persistent so that progress is not erased at the end of the eight hour combat phase. Save the progress but continue to make the planet ownership check during that eight hours.

Faction warfare is really no different than a variation of Risk or Axis & Allies. Those are turn based territory control games. BattleTech Succession Wars was FASA's variation of this concept. I see no problem with the concept of turns. The battles are still real time that's all that matters. Another game that does this is Total Warfare. The battles are real time with in a strategic turn based framework.


https://mwomercs.com...-in-wait-times/

Edited by Spheroid, 11 October 2018 - 11:38 AM.

[LordNothing]

Spheroid, on 11 October 2018 - 10:53 AM, said:

Its only non-viable if you attempt to resolve ten factions simultaneously. However the option to fight battles sequentially either from a fixed or numerically proportional turn order would have solved this. The sides would be formed from technological or ideological compatible allies available in the waiting queue.

A two sided conflict that never advances a front is boring as hell. With a dozen factions the subtle changes in cartography would have been readily apparent.

A large number of factions is viable as long as you fight one battle at a time, cycle through the factions and keep the result of the battle persistent so that progress is not erased at the end of the eight hour combat phase. Save the progress but continue to make the planet ownership check during that eight hours.

Faction warfare is really no different than a variation of Risk or Axis & Allies. Those are turn based territory control games. BattleTech Succession Wars was FASA's variation of this concept. I see no problem with the concept of turns. The battles are still real time that's all that matters. Another game that does this is Total Warfare. The battles are real time with in a strategic turn based framework.


https://mwomercs.com...-in-wait-times/

i only mean the way it was implemented by pgi. im sure there are other ways to have done it that could be all inclusive so people could rp their factions. if they had done a rotation, like the civil war events, but a lot more regularly that may have worked. you could have expanded that from 2 fronts to 3 or 4 with different factions invlolved. if you didnt belong to one of the factions in question you could moonlight as a merc and participate that way (merc would no longer be a faction, just something you are when your faction is not part of the current event).

[lobsterhierarchy]

I can speak on behalf of Eisenhorne here (short time lurker and new guy) that there are some good pugs out there or potentially good players...but sometimes abrasive behavior (try hards) or lack of recruiting drives them away. I was absolute garbage when I started up a couple months ago, barely breaking 800 damage on faction, but now I’m making a solid 1000-1650 due to CBR guys picking me up and helping me learn the game better.

I won’t pretend that I don’t get angry when you get some absolute potatoes on the team, but usually that is because they don’t listen to the pug whisperers or team calls. I can forgive a newer player that plays bad but is actively trying, I can’t forgive those who don’t listen to the team dynamic or start playing the blame game when only half of the team commits to pushing, and they sat back and farmed. On the other hand, I’m not a fan of the try hard stat padders that only include people to act as meatshields.

TL;DR while PGI can be at blame for some things, I think the high learning curve and lack of group outreach and naughty online behavior (won’t name any names) prevents faction play from reaching its potential. Some of my best matches were close losses when both sides had phenomenal players on it...but that is few and far between. It’s either a roflstomp of a stacked group against you that refuses to break up for a challenge, or a complete and utter ****show on the other side that thinks triple LRM supernovas sitting in the back is the epitome of group play.

[Appogee]

Astrocanis, on 11 October 2018 - 05:27 AM, said:

How are they supposed to care?

By working to fix the mode in a meaningful way - as per their own original design proposal. Or at the very least, implement the suggestions the experienced playerbase has been providing them for literally years.

Astrocanis, on 11 October 2018 - 05:27 AM, said:

They aren't driving FP away.

Yes they are... through their ongoing refusal to make the mode the immersive and sustained meaningful experience it was supposed to be. They have to code the mode properly, not keep slapping band-aids on the half-baked skeleton they rushed out the door 4 years ago (because they had wasted 18 months lying about how they hadn't even started to code it).

Astrocanis, on 11 October 2018 - 05:27 AM, said:

In fact, the only thing they can do is FP events,

Are you really that short-sighted...? Or are you going to let PGI claim they are powerless to do their job, deliver what we pre-paid for, and fix their own product?

Astrocanis, on 11 October 2018 - 05:27 AM, said:

Tell me how you would propose that PGI force people to play something they don't like?

Obviously - well, obvious to sentient life forms - you don't force people to play anything. You entice them to play something - and keep playing it - by making it engrossing.

Just like a TV show, you make the episode (battle) interesting, with each episode contributing to a compelling long-term story arc (supply lines and logistics, factions with different flavours, careers, heroes and villains, milestones). I should not need to re-hash here the dozens of ways we've told PGI how they could make FP an immersive long-lived experience.

Instead, all we got after 4 years of band-aids was Paul Innoue making a rare appearance to try to squeeze one last squirt out of the cash cow, with the frankly insulting request that we "please make suggestions ... but none of them can involve too much effort". As if we haven't made enough suggestions in his own forum for 4 years. As if it's ok to do barely nothing to make the mode work properly for customers who have invested heavily, propping up his business and salary for 5 years in pursuit of a promise that will apparently never be delivered.

It's beyond pathetic.

Edited by Appogee, 11 October 2018 - 07:09 PM.