58 replies to this topic

[MischiefSC]

FW was full of groups. Dozens of 12mans on each side, it was incredibly active and it was full of groups playing vs groups.

What killed FW was, first of all, no real development for years. It got boring and was clearly ignored.

Then it got Long Tom, which make the game stupidly un-fun for a year and a half.

Then it got One Bukkit, which actively drove out the persistent loyalist units that were the bread and butter keeping matches firing off from inception.

FW was never populated or sustained by pugs. It was never reliant on pugs. Given that the moment you have respawns and drop decks the impact of teamwork is magnified significantly it is never and would never be a pug-focused environment.

I could post a long and storied list of the best suggestions over the last few years but it would be pointless. PGI pushed FW down the stairs, laughed and then ignored it until it died. The phrase 'aggressively apathetic' best describes PGIs attitude to FW for the vast bulk of its existence.

FW was that concept that would have kept MWO chugging along with good sized groups long after MW5 came out because it offers what MW5 can not - a group focused gameplay that was, for years, a strong draw for units of players. However they didn't want to put the effort into basic maintenance and actively ignored critical issues for too long and it died. Those players have largely moved on.

The best thing PGI can do for FW is make something like it after MW5 and make good choices from the start and not actively curb-stomp their population into leaving.

Note for PGI - if something like, say, Long Tom comes up and players clearly hate it and object to it and populations decline precipitously, maybe don't just ignore it for 18 months. Hotfix it out the next day. Long time games do that. It's why they're still around with a solid baseline population.

[Asym]

El Bandito, on 11 October 2018 - 09:55 AM, said:

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.

Perception EL. It's that simple. We don't have to know......the difference.

If you see a Pit Bull when you are out running, how do you know that Pit Bull is a sweet heart versus a dangerous animal until it attacks or wags it's tail and wants it's ear scratched? Either way, you are too close in any case.

FP is that analogy............no one will ever take the chance again. MS, EVIL:, EMP, et al. made sure of that. You and that crew did such a great job slaughtering people and having a blast doing so, those actions drove off entire teams en mass from the game itself........

As I have said all along: "you reap what you sow......" Now, you are just about alone in a game that has so much potential. Some are now asking how could this happen....... Why won't they come back? Perception is reality.

[El Bandito]

Asym, on 12 October 2018 - 04:17 AM, said:

Perception EL. It's that simple. We don't have to know......the difference.

If you see a Pit Bull when you are out running, how do you know that Pit Bull is a sweet heart versus a dangerous animal until it attacks or wags it's tail and wants it's ear scratched? Either way, you are too close in any case.

FP is that analogy............no one will ever take the chance again. MS, EVIL:, EMP, et al. made sure of that. You and that crew did such a great job slaughtering people and having a blast doing so, those actions drove off entire teams en mass from the game itself........

As I have said all along: "you reap what you sow......" Now, you are just about alone in a game that has so much potential. Some are now asking how could this happen....... Why won't they come back? Perception is reality.

I joined Mercstar after the original one had split up so it is useless to pin any blames on me. Current Mercstar--unlike other tryhard units that siphon off talent from the rest of the units--actively recruits and trains pilots who wish to play in organized settings.

We actually plant trees while chopping wood.

Edited by El Bandito, 12 October 2018 - 04:53 AM.

[Ghogiel]

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.

Wait times have sucked for like a couple years now. At least now you can just switch faction and try from the other side. Before you had to wait days to do that and at some point they even penalised players for switch lol. That barrier, literally stuck unable to play at all, killed the bulk of the players that were queuing.

Back in phase 1 and 2 PGI stated that pugs made up the majority of players in FP. It's not a pug focused environement as someone else mentioned, so even when it had some resemblance of a population, it was unlikely to last unless it got some developement work done on it to keep it fresh. And it didn't.

Secondly sounds like you weren't a 12man, 12s jump queues so if only 1-2 matches are kicking off every 30mins, especially if you are in the over represented faction, you may simply be pushed aside perpetually, even 15mins of searching is too much. But even when they condensed the queues and removed penalties for faction switching it was too late, this needed to be addressed when there were actually was a player base there.

The vast majority of players had already abandoned it because Mming was non existant (pugs), the meta conditions are not skill based (competive minded players), then eventually queue times sucked (casuals), longtom (everyone across the board) then the tiny % of lore nerds that were left got buttmad about the necessity of queue condensing and removing barriers to switch faction to keep the mode on life support and supposedly killed it. Though for me the 1 bucket simply improved accessibility to the game mode made it so I can actually play more often> being stuck in a different faction unable to play with my friends was the most garbage barrier ever.

[Appogee]

Ghogiel, on 12 October 2018 - 05:50 AM, said:

Secondly sounds like you weren't a 12man,

We were. Front of the queue for 8 straight ghost drops.

That means either there were literally <12 enemies to play against - so noone was playing - OR if there were 12 enemies, they were dropping against some other 12-man.

Those of us who play FP daily know each other pretty well by now and are in each others' friends lists. So I'm pretty sure there weren't even 12 people playing Clan for the 8 drops in a row that we ghosted.

[Daurock]

Appogee, on 12 October 2018 - 06:12 AM, said:

We were. Front of the queue for 8 straight ghost drops.

That means either there were literally <12 enemies to play against - so noone was playing - OR if there were 12 enemies, they were dropping against some other 12-man.

Those of us who play FP daily know each other pretty well by now and are in each others' friends lists. So I'm pretty sure there weren't even 12 people playing Clan for the 8 drops in a row that we ghosted.

If you knew there weren't many /any opposing groups running FW, I have to ask though - What, exactly, was the expectation if clan actually had managed to scrape together 12 players? Would the opposing mix-match of puggles have been a reasonable challenge, creating a good game? Or would it have more likely been yet another boring beatdown? (or flipside, disheartening loss)

Honestly, I'm not sure the game was worse off by having all those ghost drops by a full 12 man, since there were no opposing large groups to play against. It's probably better than having them face-off against a group of rando's that don't have a reasonable shot of actually competing.

Edited by Daurock, 12 October 2018 - 08:14 AM.

[Ghogiel]

Daurock, on 12 October 2018 - 08:13 AM, said:

If you knew there weren't many /any opposing groups running FW, I have to ask though - What, exactly, was the expectation if clan actually had managed to scrape together 12 players? Would the opposing mix-match of puggles have been a reasonable challenge, creating a good game? Or would it have more likely been yet another boring beatdown? (or flipside, disheartening loss)

Honestly, I'm not sure the game was worse off by having all those ghost drops by a full 12 man, since there were no opposing large groups to play against. It's probably better than having them face-off against a group of rando's that don't have a reasonable shot of actually competing.

Doubt people play FP because it's a competitive game mode, because it's not.

Even tagging planets had nothing to with competitve play at all. It was just spamming queues and catching puglings. Not to mention the way they balanced rewards.

I think it's the respawn and dropdeck selection for specific map mechanic pretty much solely setting it apart from other modes in mwo. So at least it offers a different tactical aspect even if it's not competitive. It's never done anything else better to other modes, in fact it's done many things worse.

Edited by Ghogiel, 12 October 2018 - 09:46 AM.

[50 50]

MischiefSC, on 11 October 2018 - 06:39 PM, said:

... A well written analysis ...

Truth.

[MischiefSC]

Ghogiel, on 12 October 2018 - 05:50 AM, said:

Wait times have sucked for like a couple years now. At least now you can just switch faction and try from the other side. Before you had to wait days to do that and at some point they even penalised players for switch lol. That barrier, literally stuck unable to play at all, killed the bulk of the players that were queuing.

Back in phase 1 and 2 PGI stated that pugs made up the majority of players in FP. It's not a pug focused environement as someone else mentioned, so even when it had some resemblance of a population, it was unlikely to last unless it got some developement work done on it to keep it fresh. And it didn't.

Secondly sounds like you weren't a 12man, 12s jump queues so if only 1-2 matches are kicking off every 30mins, especially if you are in the over represented faction, you may simply be pushed aside perpetually, even 15mins of searching is too much. But even when they condensed the queues and removed penalties for faction switching it was too late, this needed to be addressed when there were actually was a player base there.

The vast majority of players had already abandoned it because Mming was non existant (pugs), the meta conditions are not skill based (competive minded players), then eventually queue times sucked (casuals), longtom (everyone across the board) then the tiny % of lore nerds that were left got buttmad about the necessity of queue condensing and removing barriers to switch faction to keep the mode on life support and supposedly killed it. Though for me the 1 bucket simply improved accessibility to the game mode made it so I can actually play more often> being stuck in a different faction unable to play with my friends was the most garbage barrier ever.

Short answer -

Nope.

Longer answer -

People pugged in FW in season 1 and 2 because they were in units but we didn't have as good a tools as we do now for grouping up and everyone was spread over dozens of TS, no in game voip. Because there was constantly groups dropping you could pug and more often than not end up with a 6man+. We used to call drops in chat; I know I did it all the time.

In any given match the vast majority of players were tagged unit members, just that you could pug and still drop with groups pretty consistently. Full pug teams were incredibly rare. The only exception was Davion which had a huge casual pug population. However by Season 2 when Davion was ignoring the Marik front and focusing on Kurita the Marik players could still get matches vs a Davion pug 12man. They'd have ghost drops because it was usually only 1 12man but it was there. However at this same time we generally had 3 12mans going between one private TS and Davion TS groups.

Having been in Davion leadership chat in WhatsApp with the officers and leadership of 6 different Davion units with an active population of about 800 players in Season 2 and close to double that all together in season 1 I feel I have a decent view of why, at least, loyalist players in units quit. I've also heard the same thing from the units in the dozen plus TS I have played in across all the factions. Lack of depth/purpose, lack of logistics especially. Lack of a *point* to winning or losing. Punishing environment for Loyalists vs Mercs and most critically the sense of being ignored. Poor balance between IS and Clans for the first 3 years of FW and iffy since then.

Matchmaking was a complaint but it was way down the list. Same as it is in QP or GQ.

So the removing the 'factions' from Faction Warfare made it more fun for you and people like you. That's great. It made it less fun for a good 1,000 plus players I can directly speak to just in Davion and I've heard of similar complaints from the other factions. So, how's that population picking up?

The real issue is that FW content should have been available in a QP environment from day 1. It was always 'end game content' in concept. That needed a lot of development and while it didn't need a matchmaker it did need tools to let factions adjust populations and move mercs around to play against each other while discouraging stacking.

It needed a lot of things - none of those are One Bukkit and a more pug friendly environment.

[Laser Kiwi]

I like the concept of Faction play, but i usually play oceanic times during the week and sometimes my wife (the boss) lets me play NA times in the weekend. I like the guys i drop with in OC times, but the same 12's will drop and sometimes dudes change sides to make matches, when we ghost drop a few times i can't stay with it, even in teamspeak most of the dudes are watching youtube or television whilst they wait for a drop, and then it often ends up being a quasi-organised group vs pugs, neither of us really full units though. Hell for shits and giggles i had to change sides and go clan just to balance numbers even though hearts of hearts i'm a steiner stalwart. But after a few drops and sometimes changing sides and still not finding another 11 players to form a team, i wonder if my time is not served better playing against or with my kids in some arena last man standing shooter, cause i tried to get my kids to play this game, and they don't get it, its too "slow" for them. Anyway point is I feel your pain, cause i really like this game i've spent a fair wad of cash on it cause i'm a fan boy, but when i ghost drop, i find other things to do, things where is says matchmaker ETA 12 seconds and comes through on it, in this i can spin circle for 10 minutes sit in lobby for 10 and do the lobby over and over (presumably another 12 gave up) and an hour later i'm thinking, WTF, may as well QP a few times and then go play XXXXX for a while.

And on that point, the 10 drop loyalty penalty, just ditch it so we can change sides and manufacture drops at will, i mean FP isn't really serious anyway, no one cares about the map anymore, pretty sure the clans won last year and they managed to screw up those events too (draws etc lol), every time this account goes clan i have to play 10 more steiner matches to fix it, so then i need a smurfy account, which is bad because it gives the ILLUSION of another player when in reality its me twice, not a bigger player base.

[Full Meta Jacket]

Daurock, on 12 October 2018 - 08:13 AM, said:

If you knew there weren't many /any opposing groups running FW, I have to ask though - What, exactly, was the expectation if clan actually had managed to scrape together 12 players?

Those of us who play FP daily watch their friends list to see when either a friendly or an opposing group forms up.

But if everyone sits there waiting for a group, no group ever forms. So someone will form a group first, then the opposing players will see there's an enemy team, and they form an opposing team.

But in the week I wrote this thread, there was clearly not even been enough regular FP players dropping for there to be two groups.

Daurock, on 12 October 2018 - 08:13 AM, said:

Would the opposing mix-match of puggles have been a reasonable challenge, creating a good game? Or would it have more likely been yet another boring beatdown? (or flipside, disheartening loss)

Most of those of us who play FP regularly in groups prefer dropping against other groups because the battles are more interesting.

Stomping PUGs is boring. In fact, several PUG stomps in a row often sees our group disband.

In my observation, the people who like PUG stomping in FP are actually the randoms who don't play it regularly and are just after easy money.

[Laser Kiwi]

Full Meta Jacket, on 12 October 2018 - 11:41 PM, said:

Stomping PUGs is boring. In fact, several PUG stomps in a row often sees our group disband.

Stomping pugs is boring cause after it happens 2 or 3 times they give up and then no one plays

[Ghogiel]

MischiefSC, on 12 October 2018 - 10:25 PM, said:

Short answer -

Nope.

Longer answer -

People pugged in FW in season 1 and 2 because they were in units but we didn't have as good a tools as we do now for grouping up and everyone was spread over dozens of TS, no in game voip. Because there was constantly groups dropping you could pug and more often than not end up with a 6man+. We used to call drops in chat; I know I did it all the time.

In any given match the vast majority of players were tagged unit members, just that you could pug and still drop with groups pretty consistently. Full pug teams were incredibly rare. The only exception was Davion which had a huge casual pug population. However by Season 2 when Davion was ignoring the Marik front and focusing on Kurita the Marik players could still get matches vs a Davion pug 12man. They'd have ghost drops because it was usually only 1 12man but it was there. However at this same time we generally had 3 12mans going between one private TS and Davion TS groups.

Having been in Davion leadership chat in WhatsApp with the officers and leadership of 6 different Davion units with an active population of about 800 players in Season 2 and close to double that all together in season 1 I feel I have a decent view of why, at least, loyalist players in units quit. I've also heard the same thing from the units in the dozen plus TS I have played in across all the factions. Lack of depth/purpose, lack of logistics especially. Lack of a *point* to winning or losing. Punishing environment for Loyalists vs Mercs and most critically the sense of being ignored. Poor balance between IS and Clans for the first 3 years of FW and iffy since then.

Matchmaking was a complaint but it was way down the list. Same as it is in QP or GQ.

So the removing the 'factions' from Faction Warfare made it more fun for you and people like you. That's great. It made it less fun for a good 1,000 plus players I can directly speak to just in Davion and I've heard of similar complaints from the other factions. So, how's that population picking up?

The real issue is that FW content should have been available in a QP environment from day 1. It was always 'end game content' in concept. That needed a lot of development and while it didn't need a matchmaker it did need tools to let factions adjust populations and move mercs around to play against each other while discouraging stacking.

It needed a lot of things - none of those are One Bukkit and a more pug friendly environment.

PGI has already told us the truth on the player base distribution. But if anyone cared about anecdotal. I was farming pugs most games in phase 1 and 2. I think most of my screenshots from the 100s of CW games from that era was me in 6-12 mans of csjx or jgx farming skittles day in day out. Besides the meta game being about spam, that's why nearly the entire comp player base stopped playing it in the first year, because it was, as PGI stated, filled with pugs. Who then came to the forum and whined nearly daily about pug stomping and a crap MM. Outside clan OP, every other issue was completely overshadowed.
I don't really care about about loyalists, I am primarily talking about the mercs units and skittles that overshadowed them in relelvence to the queue pop in phase 1 and 2 anyway. ie the real state of the the pop distribution according to PGI.

[Mystere]

MischiefSC, on 11 October 2018 - 06:39 PM, said:

What killed FW was, first of all, no real development for years. It got boring and was clearly ignored.

Amen.

MischiefSC, on 11 October 2018 - 06:39 PM, said:

Then it got Long Tom, which make the game stupidly un-fun for a year and a half.

But I loved the Long Tom, especially the shenanigans.

MischiefSC, on 11 October 2018 - 06:39 PM, said:

Then it got One Bukkit, which actively drove out the persistent loyalist units that were the bread and butter keeping matches firing off from inception.

That's where it finally went downhill for me.

Edited by Mystere, 13 October 2018 - 09:23 PM.

[MischiefSC]

Ghogiel, on 13 October 2018 - 05:07 PM, said:

PGI has already told us the truth on the player base distribution. But if anyone cared about anecdotal. I was farming pugs most games in phase 1 and 2. I think most of my screenshots from the 100s of CW games from that era was me in 6-12 mans of csjx or jgx farming skittles day in day out. Besides the meta game being about spam, that's why nearly the entire comp player base stopped playing it in the first year, because it was, as PGI stated, filled with pugs. Who then came to the forum and whined nearly daily about pug stomping and a crap MM. Outside clan OP, every other issue was completely overshadowed.
I don't really care about about loyalists, I am primarily talking about the mercs units and skittles that overshadowed them in relelvence to the queue pop in phase 1 and 2 anyway. ie the real state of the the pop distribution according to PGI.

Going to need you to link me to that post from PGI. I spend a lot of time going over archives plus PGI posts on FE. Never seen it. Not saying it never happened but going to need to see the post you keep referencing.

Also if I go back I to archives of the actual forums for FW in phase 1 and 2 I don't see the majority, or even a significant minority, of posts about pugs vs groups. I see complaints about stacking mercs and bad IS/Clan balance. Also lack of purpose and endless dreaming of new ideas/content.

[MischiefSC]

Addendum -


I'm a big fan of actually looking at stuff rather than trying to portray something I remember as a fact.

I went through every single post from the dev thread and announcements from November 2014 to July 2016, which covers CW phases 1, 2 (CW Beta) and 3. Nowhere did it say the majority were pugs save that there was a lot of people pugging in Tukayyid, which in Tuk 1 had 1600 to 1800 players on and in matches in FW at any given time.

I went through forum posts, the original 56 pages of them, about 1,680 threads. 2.7% of them were threads complaining about groups vs pugs. The vast, vast majority were wait times, problems with mercs, Clan/IS balance, Attack vs Defend balance and a lot of surprisingly positive stuff. The first 26 pages all popped up in Dec 2014 to Jan 2015.

So, again, nope.

The only thing I could find relative to all the pugs was about the mixed pug/group queue we had before and only about 12% of players were grouped up.

Edited by MischiefSC, 14 October 2018 - 07:46 AM.

[Jon Gotham]

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?

It wasn't killed by Long Tom.
It was killed by Lord Solo Johnny Mcrambo.
Or rather, the solo players that refused to use TS,join units or groups or work together with other people. The people that refused community and wanted to "just play" with no thought or involvement beyond instant gratification.

[Karl Streiger]

Jon Gotham, on 14 October 2018 - 07:55 AM, said:

It wasn't killed by Long Tom.
It was killed by Lord Solo Johnny Mcrambo.
Or rather, the solo players that refused to use TS,join units or groups or work together with other people. The people that refused community and wanted to &quot;just play&quot; with no thought or involvement beyond instant gratification.

So it's the fault of the gamers that played the game like it was designed?
Only after a big merc unit gave PGI the argument that FP is only for experienced players with well equipped hangars they added this message.
And it's still wrong the ultimate game winner in FP was the team and the second important reason was the team....
Why not forbid FP for non groups or small groups? Or create queues for small groups and solo? Don't come with the apologist reason of not enough players MWO had the population to make it right. But as usual you only have one attempt for good first impression. And PGI delivered poor maps and poor game design when FP was distributed.

[MischiefSC]

I thought this was relevant -

Quote

Paul Inouye Command Chair post COMMUNITY WARFARE UPDATE - DEC 2

Grouping In CW

To re-emphasis what has been mentioned before. Community Warfare is primarily directed to role-playing and unit gameplay.

As to how that worked out?

As stated prior it had times of 1600+ players dropping at once. Based on observable community feedback that was killed by a huge gap in development and the absence of features that were expected and teased, then significant balance issues.