58 replies to this topic

[Appogee]

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.

[kapusta11]

I had 4 today before I called it quits.

[El Bandito]

During NA prime time? Switch to Clans if you aint getting drops. Mercstar is currently IS and we always drop during NA prime time.

[Appogee]

El Bandito, on 10 October 2018 - 07:59 AM, said:

During NA prime time? Switch to Clans if you aint getting drops. Mercstar is currently IS and we always drop during NA prime time.

I think our unit is due to rotate to Clan in about a week or so.

Edited by Appogee, 10 October 2018 - 08:23 AM.

[Eisenhorne]

I had 3 in a row last night, at like 2:00am EST. All were as IS.

I was in a 12 man group, and we instantly got the lobby each time as well, meaning there were no other 12 man IS groups either, since if there was one they'd have gotten the lobby and we'd have been searching. There was literally no one else playing, so switching to clans wouldn't have helped.

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.

[El Bandito]

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

I had 3 in a row last night, at like 2:00am EST. All were as IS.

I was in a 12 man group, and we instantly got the lobby each time as well, meaning there were no other 12 man IS groups either, since if there was one they'd have gotten the lobby and we'd have been searching. There was literally no one else playing, so switching to clans wouldn't have helped.

2AM EST way to late. Gotta drop during prime time.

[K O Z A K]

Cmon, we all knew this was coming, it's not just FP, it's MWO

thank you for all the fun times over the past couple of years



...wanna buy a mechpack? cmon we're even making straight up gundams now

[Variant1]

i recomended pgi add bots but since they dont do ai your SOL my friend

[Prototelis]

Didn't have any issues last night.

But there were only a few teams running by the time I hopped on after bfm practice.

[Blockwart]

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

The question is: do PGI's leaders actually care...?

No

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

Even a little bit...?

No

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

that PGI might be quite happy to keep driving FP players away.

Yes

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

stop bothering to even pretend that they care about it.

Yes


#thankyouruss

Edited by Blockwart, 10 October 2018 - 10:08 AM.

[MechaBattler]

I don't think PGI is happy to let it die. But I think they're placing their hopes on MW5. Perhaps the proposed small changes are coming, but they have one guy working on it part time.

[Spheroid]

If it was primetime last night I can assure you there was at least one premade of KCOM dropping Clan.

Beyond low population the very fact that it is a two sided conflict means that a vast number of potential conflicts are ignored. That is rather stupid as AND will always result in fewer combinations than AND + OR. Quick matches require balanced faction numbers, something the game makes impossible to determine since there is never a census of active players.

In that FP suggestion thread I outlined how a waiting group(s) could have the option of dropping against the opposite techbase or the same one depending on which ever the matchmaker can assemble as opponents first. This suggestion is the obvious solution to imbalances in the ratio of Clan to I.S. The spill over simply fights itself. You command the matchmaker to split the grouping by nationality or ideology so that one side is considered majoritarian and distinct for purposes of a specific planet conflict.


Here is an example. Team A has the larger Davion population, they determine it is a Davion conflict. Team B has the largest number of Davion enemies so the world in contention is one on the Capellan-Suns border. I tried to illustrate a problematic combination. Obvious the smaller the premades or the higher the number of pugs the more authentic the conflict can become.

Team A (majority Davion)

Davion (7 man)
Davion
Davion
Davion
Davion
Davion
Davion

Kurita ( 3 man)
Kurita
Kurita

Liao (solo pug)
Marik (solo pug)


Team B (generic ad hoc defending team)

Davion (6 man)

Liao (two man)

Kurita solo pug
Steiner solo pug
FRR solo pug
Marik solo pug

This of course would require multiple front faction warfare, something that was bizzarely stripped out for no reason.

All Inner Sphere factions historically war with their geographical neighbors and were loosely aligned (at least during the 3rd SW) long Davion-Steiner vs. Marik, Liao, Kurita blocks.

The Clans obviously war amongst themselves for a variety of reasons and fall more generally into Warden and Crusader camps. Given these loose parameters I can very easily imagine rough assemblies of disparate factions that could approximate specific or general factions.

Edited by Spheroid, 10 October 2018 - 11:23 AM.

[Rick T Dangerous]

Well, two claners that ran big groups recently switched sides. A lot of claners did so. My friends list was almost entirely claners some months ago, but now it's very mixed. So it's no wonder that IS players have problems finding a match.

But why might claners switch sides? Clan OP, we all know that. Maybe they are tired of winning? Who knows...

But you IS players need to be careful: you might win some planets by ghostdropping and then people might start saying IS OP, which cannot be true.

[LordNothing]

i think the inner sphere is a lot more fun tech wise. clan have laser vomit. meanwhile is have mrms, ballistics, hgauss, stealth armor and other fun things. so clan is actually very boring (i wont call it op but i feel like in order to make clan work im stuck in some rather boring mechs).

even if you some how fix that pgi doesnt have a system in place to keep people from slanting to whatever side is winning at the time. dont get me wrong im glad to see penalties gone for the most part and dont want them to come back. best thing i can think of is to separate rewards from ranking. ranking becomes much less difficult than it is now, and not having rewards tied to them makes that possible. rewards themselves would be replaced with a new system that grants rewards at regular intervals rather than a limited set of rewards tied to increasingly difficult to attain ranks like we have now (another source of move about as players collect low hanging fruit). the rewards become regular with a lot less grind in between, maybe in the form of faction specific supply caches. should also avoid doing events that require a lot of shuffling about (should be attainable without changing faction).

rank also determines your pay rate so if you stay with a faction long enough to build rank thus you get more pay. if you switch factions you get busted down and have to start over at the lowest paygrade. staying put gets you the most cbills and the fastest progress towards the now more regular rewards. major focus needs to be put towards keeping the units spread out as much as possible, keeping them from dogpiling on one side. maybe waive recruitment penalties for units on the loosing side. while the winning side has to pay a lot out to recruit players, the winning side can do the same for free. this allows them to build their unit. this would encourage units to self balance the game a little more. maybe also make it possible for the majority of a unit to veto a decision to switch sides from the unit commander. i know one of my big reasons for avoiding units was to avoid penalties from the unit changing sides. important thing is it needs to be possible to stay put without having to miss out on events or rewards but also encourage units to spread out a little more.

mm is a maybe, though i dont see any mm working with the current population in qp, let alone fp. a little too late for that. had you done it back in phase 3 (instead of long tom) you might have had something. you need a new game that doesnt have the stalwart that is qp sucking up all the player base into the land of nod.

Edited by LordNothing, 10 October 2018 - 11:03 PM.

[vonJerg]

Come to the dark, err, clan side grasshopper, you know you want to. We are getting insta drops, as soon as we manage to find 12 willing ppl that is.
Last night, had a game in FP as a 2 man group, then the stupid ceasefire changed the group type so after a match we ended in GP, played one, came back to FP, and got insta-insta drop, the one where lobby timer is already at 0 when it creates a lobby, and it was vs the same FP group we fought like 15 min ago.
PGI needs to take active steps to control the FP population spread, or provide us with more clues how population is spread at any given time.
We want games, not search warrior online.

[Ninjah]

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.

[Karl Streiger]

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

[vonJerg]

Have no fear, PGI is sending their best robot to fix it ...

[BumbaCLot]

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?

1000s were playing it the 3 months prior to this one. There were events.

[LordNothing]

to be fair back when phase 3 rolled out fp was very active. i actually enjoyed games where you are fighting against the long tom. it made games a lot less static because if you stopped to trade you would usually get nuked to death. it was initially way too op (and victories against an un-nerfed long tom were exquisite), but after pgi toned it down it was ok, but of course by that point fp's reputation was completely ruined and new players were constantly sent packing. not even the bucketpocalypse could save it at that point.