534 replies to this topic

[Nightbird]

*shrug* they're not considering it. We'll get a new MM but without any pop to use it with, so stomps will continue and people will continue to leave.

If you're winning some and losing some you won't get a tonnage reduction to begin with.

[Cajun MeTaBoLiC]

Nightbird, on 13 December 2018 - 06:49 AM, said:

If you're winning some and losing some you won't get a tonnage reduction to begin with.

Thanks, but no need to clarify. I fully understood that part

[Warning incoming Humble Dexterer]

Paul Inouye, on 06 December 2018 - 11:18 AM, said:

[color=orange]CalltoArms timer change.[/color]
[color=orange]Rewards for CalltoArms participation[/color]

So right now it's prime time on a Sunday, the IS side just won 10 matches in a row (including any Ghost Drops), the IS War Log percentage is over 50% in their favor and still rising, and the IS queue has enough players to launch a 12 IS vs 12 IS match while the Clan queue has exactly 1 clueless player in it...

And I switched off my non-stop Clan CallToArms notifications because they were driving me nuts : No way I'm playing that kind of match, surrounded by a team of Tier 5 players who were curious enough to come answer that call with their Trial Mechs...

And I wish you good luck fixing that with more Tier5 player participation by "rewarding CallToArms participation", because short of being paid with MC I'm not touching that with a stick : Guaranteed stomp earning me ~25% of my average gains (plus the "CallToArms participation reward"...) ? Sorry but I'd have more fun getting a tooth pulled out

My own suggestion is to make the MatchMaker :
- Favor Group participation for the side that is losing : Meaning the biggest groups get in first, and solo players are encouraged to group up.
- Favor Solo participation for the side that is winning : Meaning the biggest groups get in last, and so 12-man groups are encouraged to split up into smaller groups to avoid permanently Ghost Dropping.
- Alternative : Limit the maximum group size of the winning side, based on the War Log percentage (such as 50% win = 50% maximum group size limit), so the MatchMaker can fit some random players into the 12-man groups of the stomping side.

Because seriously, tricking naive new players into answering those CallToArms traps by baiting them with rewards... that's totally going to backfire. At least limit those notifications to Tier1 players or something.

Edited by Humble Dexter, 16 December 2018 - 11:59 AM.

[justcallme A S H]

Humble Dexter, on 16 December 2018 - 11:10 AM, said:

My own suggestion is to make the MatchMaker :
- Favor Group participation for the side that is losing : Meaning the biggest groups get in first, and solo players are encouraged to group up.
- Favor Solo participation for the side that is winning : Meaning the biggest groups get in last, and so 12-man groups are encouraged to split up into smaller groups to avoid permanently Ghost Dropping.
- Alternative : Limit the maximum group size of the winning side, based on the War Log percentage (such as 50% win = 50% maximum group size limit), so the MatchMaker can fit some random players into the 12-man groups of the stomping side.

All those suggestions are going to do it ruin the population entirely. How selfish.

I mean if your side is winning, you wanna punish groups? Also force groups to break up if they are winning?

Newsflash - the whole point of a battle is someone wins.

Newsflash #2 - Faction Play is, wait for it, orientend around group play.

If you want to drop solo that is fine but don't ruin it for everyone else because of it.

[Nightbird]

*shrug* don't do anything and FP dies

If it's impossible to create evenly matched teams, than give the stronger team handicaps. There's no other alternatives. This can be from group size (easy to exploit with sync drops), or tonnage, or some other means.

Edited by Nightbird, 16 December 2018 - 03:54 PM.

[Warning incoming Humble Dexterer]

Instead of paying out a bonus to encourage solo players to come get stomped by 12-man groups...

PGI should pay out that bonus to 12-player groups for beating another 12-player group, to encourage the creation of full 12-man groups.

[Cajun MeTaBoLiC]

One idea that comes to mind is increased critical hit chance and/or damage multiplier and/or armor multiplier for lower skill rating teams when they are matched against highly skilled teams. It's similar to how the last place racer in MarioKart gets a blue shell, racers slower than 4th place tend to get red shells and lightning bolts, while the first place racer only gets green shells and bananas.

It could be applied to the whole team, or just the low skill individual players on the team. It would probably need some tweaking/experimentation, as is usually the case.

[Daurock]

Humble Dexter, on 16 December 2018 - 11:10 AM, said:

So right now it's prime time on a Sunday, the IS side just won 10 matches in a row (including any Ghost Drops), the IS War Log percentage is over 50% in their favor and still rising, and the IS queue has enough players to launch a 12 IS vs 12 IS match while the Clan queue has exactly 1 clueless player in it...

And I switched off my non-stop Clan CallToArms notifications because they were driving me nuts : No way I'm playing that kind of match, surrounded by a team of Tier 5 players who were curious enough to come answer that call with their Trial Mechs...

And I wish you good luck fixing that with more Tier5 player participation by "rewarding CallToArms participation", because short of being paid with MC I'm not touching that with a stick : Guaranteed stomp earning me ~25% of my average gains (plus the "CallToArms participation reward"...) ? Sorry but I'd have more fun getting a tooth pulled out

My own suggestion is to make the MatchMaker :
- Favor Group participation for the side that is losing : Meaning the biggest groups get in first, and solo players are encouraged to group up.
- Favor Solo participation for the side that is winning : Meaning the biggest groups get in last, and so 12-man groups are encouraged to split up into smaller groups to avoid permanently Ghost Dropping.
- Alternative : Limit the maximum group size of the winning side, based on the War Log percentage (such as 50% win = 50% maximum group size limit), so the MatchMaker can fit some random players into the 12-man groups of the stomping side.

Because seriously, tricking naive new players into answering those CallToArms traps by baiting them with rewards... that's totally going to backfire. At least limit those notifications to Tier1 players or something.

In all honesty, if they made the CTA bat-crap lucrative, even knowing that you're headed for a nigh-unwinnable battle, I think there'd be more takers. A 20 or 30% boost isn't gonna cut it, but make it 400, 500%? So much so, that even with one of those sub-1k damage losses, you're still taking in over a million, and if you somehow carve out a win, you're easily in the 3-4 million range? You'd find people flocking to that button when it came up if that was the case i'd wager.

The only problem with that is that at some point it probably becomes more lucrative to play with a bunch of bads than it does to group up and play well, reducing the incentive play the mode as intended. That, and the pure ridiculousness of that big of a bribe.

Edited by Daurock, 17 December 2018 - 09:20 AM.

[vonJerg]

Why are you all trying to reward bad players or bad play!?!?

Instead, reward good players and good game play, like encouraging players of all levels of gameplay to group up and play together? Reward god level player for teaching less skilled ones, reward less skilled ones for playing and hopefully learning from these players.

How, I do not know, but as a guide line looks better, doesn't it?

[Cajun MeTaBoLiC]

I don't think there is any 'reward' you can offer short of MC and mechpacks that would incentivize top tier players to run with the really bad ones. Most top level players want to stack the group with other top level players and win, not invite a bunch of bad players, only to carry super hard and still lose. We gotta make the lower-skill people stay alive long enough to maybe get a few kills so the scoreboard isn't so discouraging at the end of the match (9-48 feels worse than 24-48 or 30-48). A few hard stomps and the players just leave because it's no fun repeatedly getting stomped that hard.

I don't know how most players do it, but when I lose with teammates doing sub 200-300 damage on my team, they go straight on the blocklist so I don't accidentally get them in our group in the future. It also sounds like you assume that the lesser skilled ones will learn from the higher skilled teammates, when really, they usually won't accept any advice (instead become combative), and proceed to either stay all the way back with LRMs, or over extend and get instagibbed. Better to give them some buffs, letting them survive a little longer, giving them more time to learn from mistakes.

For example, exposing too much when they try to make a poke/trade. Give them some armor buff, so instead of getting destroyed instantly, they end up with an open component, and have the chance to reposition and expose less in the next trade. At least they stay alive long enough to do a little damage, which means more damaged/dead enemies, leading to closer numbers on the scoreboard.

[Grus]

Gonna go slighly off of the "balancing" part of the FP discussions and address another issue with FP i dont think a lot of people have voiced. ( could be wrong ) Need...

What is the NEED, to play FP... why "suffer" though long wait times just to get stomped? Or the opposite? The MC isnt that much and frankly the events that happen now and then have a better payout faster...

(Again i hate to use this example but its the best i have..)

WoW has addressed this, want that sweet looking and powerfull armor? Better get in a guild and grind those raids my man!
Want that sick looking pvp mount? Better group up and practice with a arena team to earn it!

We have nothing for the MWO FP that is shiny to earn. No special mech, paint, cammo, weapons, nothing.

Imagine if you will; top ghost bear reputation earns you Xheavy mech... but getting #1 on your faction leader board earns you a Stone Rhino with GB cammo and paints... and you can do this for each house and clan. (Just used that mech because it isnt in game.)

Edited by Grus, 17 December 2018 - 04:53 PM.

[zolop]

Faction Play adjustments...

-Remove Generator walls EXCEPT ones that have line of sight outside of Base. Force players to actually defend the base including the strategic positions
-Let people select their drop deck after the Mission and location of map has selected. So players can have a optimized deck per mission/map
-Let walls be destroyed in faction play, Let player introduce new strategies in FW.
-Redesign maps so that they are not all choke points, again let players create their own strategies in FW
-Add more functionalities (ECM Jammer, Power Generator for Turrets, etc) into bases that could be destroyed or used to defenders advantage.

MISC Changes

-Put a day and night cycle in.
-Putting AI into mechs for each tier when the MM cannot find a PSR/Rank player to combine with group/buckets.

Please let your community help create maps. I know PGI is a small studio, but this can far provide a long life to MWO. PGI could then take user defined maps and accept them if they are capabile to work inside MWO.

Edited by zolop, 17 December 2018 - 05:15 PM.

[Warning incoming Humble Dexterer]

vonJerg, on 17 December 2018 - 10:40 AM, said:

Why are you all trying to reward bad players or bad play!?!?

Yes, that's my big issue : Don't reward players for coming to lose, only reward them if they manage to win against all-odds (which is basically what a CallToArms usually is, an invitation to come fight against overwhelming odds).

My other big issue, is don't reward 12-man groups better for stomping pugs then for fighting another 12-man group : Give them a better reward for barely winning against another 12-man group, then for stomping a group of random weak solo players.

One way to do that is to receive a fixed bonus, that is shared between the two teams based on "how well the enemy team performed", and is then split within each team based on "how well a player performed within his own team".

As an example, lets say the fixed bonus is 1,000,000 credits, and the winning team performed three times better then the losing team : The winning team gets 250,000 (1/4 of the 1M) of the fixed bonus, and the losing team gets 750,000 of the fixed bonus (3/4 of the 1M). And if the losing team had 2 AFK and everyone else performed equally well, they get a 75,000 bonus each (1/10 of the 750K). As for the winning team, they get to share the 250,000 bonus, with their own share based on their own individual performance within their own team (if they all performed the same, that's 1/12 of 250k each). That is what I call, a bonus reward based on merit.

Edited by Humble Dexter, 17 December 2018 - 09:26 PM.

[NocturnalBeast]

Cajun MeTaBoLiC, on 17 December 2018 - 07:02 AM, said:

One idea that comes to mind is increased critical hit chance and/or damage multiplier and/or armor multiplier for lower skill rating teams when they are matched against highly skilled teams. It's similar to how the last place racer in MarioKart gets a blue shell, racers slower than 4th place tend to get red shells and lightning bolts, while the first place racer only gets green shells and bananas.

It could be applied to the whole team, or just the low skill individual players on the team. It would probably need some tweaking/experimentation, as is usually the case.

So a "handicap" for the lesser players? You might as well just give them aim assist, it won't make them better players, it will just make them dependent on their crutches.

[Cajun MeTaBoLiC]

Ed Steele, on 18 December 2018 - 12:06 AM, said:

So a "handicap" for the lesser players? You might as well just give them aim assist, it won't make them better players, it will just make them dependent on their crutches.

1. There is a difference between a buff and auto aim.

2. It would only be in cases where the OPFOR has significantly higher skilled players.

A buff wouldn't make them invincible unless it's way heavy handed. It might help them keep their mechs long enough to get off one or two more alpha strikes, though. +5% armor, +7.5% structure, +5-10% damage multiplier for non-lock-on weapons. So the players that normally end up doing 400 damage with 4 mechs might end up with 550 damage or something like that. In a pug vs pug game there wouldn't be any buffs for anyone. Only when it's like really lower level players vs a big group of top notch players would it be in effect, and it wouldn't necessarily have to be a global buff to the whole team - only the ones who are Tier 4-5 material.

I just figured I'd throw that out there while we were talking about lessening the severity of stomps by highly skilled groups against very low skill pug groups. They'd still lose, no doubt, just the numbers wouldn't be so discouraging at the end of the match, and they might queue up again.

It doesn't really matter to me whether or not they queue up again or they rage quit and uninstall. That's less players for us to try to carry, anyway. Forget I said anything lol. The new matchmaking system for FP is going to solve everything anyway...

[50 50]

Loyalty Points as a currency
I'll say I'm pretty keen on seeing something in this regard but might suggest that instead of a brand new currency that relates to faction specific items, which kind of suggests there would then be 13 different currencies due to number of factions and potentially more if we ever get new factions added.... that instead allow some sort of conversion to MC of the loyalty points.
Maybe it costs c-bills to do it and we can only unlock converting the points at a certain rank, but in the end, players typically want to get more mech bays, camo up their mechs, add warhorns and decals.
The rate at which MC is thrown at us from events I don't see why not.

Still concerned about the ability to get a game
Without some drastic increases in the player population it will still be difficult to get a game.
Without some big lure to draw players back or create a more active population 24/7 I want to know if I will be able to get games.
It's getting bad enough that this is a problem in the quick play queues as well.
Consolidation of queues might help.
Is there flexibility in the system to allow different scales of conflict to cater for a population that is going to fluctuate not only because of timezones, but from other factors as well.
I would likely invest more into the game if I felt I am going to be able to play it and right now the only answer that makes sense to me would be to allow different team sizes. ie.12v12, 8v8 or 4v4.

Which then leads me to ask if we would ever see inter-faction conflict again.
By this I mean, is it at all possible to simply have Faction Play as a free for all between the individual factions, or at least more than two sides so there is a possibility of Clan v Clan, IS v IS and IS v Clan all in the one bucket single queue.
Even if we didn't have the planets and just fought for the glory of our factions in a huge quick play style mixing pot.
It would seem possible if we had the flexibility of different team sizes as it may not impact wait times.

Edited by 50 50, 18 December 2018 - 02:40 AM.

[Major Major Catch 22]

vonJerg, on 17 December 2018 - 10:40 AM, said:

Why are you all trying to reward bad players or bad play!?!?

Instead, reward good players and good game play, like encouraging players of all levels of gameplay to group up and play together? Reward god level player for teaching less skilled ones, reward less skilled ones for playing and hopefully learning from these players.

How, I do not know, but as a guide line looks better, doesn't it?

vonJerg, on 17 December 2018 - 10:40 AM, said:

Why are you all trying to reward bad players or bad play!?!?

Instead, reward good players and good game play, like encouraging players of all levels of gameplay to group up and play together? Reward god level player for teaching less skilled ones, reward less skilled ones for playing and hopefully learning from these players.

How, I do not know, but as a guide line looks better, doesn't it?

Its not rewarding bad players, they are new and should be encouraged. Its like horse racing - every horse gets different wt to carry-- just like when there is a small player base different players should carry. - imo in fw.

Personally I dont see players remaining bad, alot of players i've met improve mostly because of the kindness of the senior players,

It all comes down to a good communication system in game to build a community and break down misunderstandings and prejudices- i think that would make the biggest difference

ty

[vonJerg]

Major Major Catch 22, on 18 December 2018 - 03:33 AM, said:

...
Personally I dont see players remaining bad, a lot of players i've met improve mostly because of the kindness of the senior players,
...

That is what I wanted to get to, to encourage new/less skilled players and good players to group up and play together, so currently bad players improve more quickly. Mentor and trainee system of some sort!?!

PS: I am not a native English speaker so there is greater probability of misunderstanding in communication, bear with me.

[TheBossOfYou]

vonJerg, on 17 December 2018 - 10:40 AM, said:

Why are you all trying to reward bad players or bad play!?!?

Instead, reward good players and good game play, like encouraging players of all levels of gameplay to group up and play together? Reward god level player for teaching less skilled ones, reward less skilled ones for playing and hopefully learning from these players.

How, I do not know, but as a guide line looks better, doesn't it?

This is what we currently have. Reward tiers and "group or die". "Git gud or uninstall".

How's that workin out?

[Nightbird]

Grimmwold, on 18 December 2018 - 09:44 AM, said:

This is what we currently have. Reward tiers and "group or die". "Git gud or uninstall".

How's that workin out?

Exactly. "Git gud" is great advice for IRL, but in games it's very bad for population. It's far better to create challenges at each player's level, and in a PvP game that means handicaps when the teams are lopsidedly unbalanced.

*PVP-only game. If PvE existed, that would be fine as well.