367 replies to this topic

[Rustyhammer]

Paul Inouye, on 21 May 2019 - 04:30 PM, said:

Loyalist should only be pledging loyalty when their faction is part of a conflict. This is why you can change your role every conflict cycle. If you're a hardcore loyalist for Davion and they're not part of a given conflict, you can select Freelancer or Merc for that conflict.

It's completely strange to me as well, but for many it's about playing only for their chosen faction. Ask i.e. ARC7 guys how happy they are to play under non Ghost Bear banner as mercs or freelancers. I can be wrong on this one but I remember hardcore loyalists refusing to go mercs during FP special events.

Why not to implement alliances when multiple factions can be dropping on the same side of the conflict? It still can hurt the feelings of some loyalists to drop along some faction, but much less then the current implementation.

Paul Inouye, on 21 May 2019 - 04:30 PM, said:

but a severe reduction on how long a scouting phase is will allow both to happen with a focus on 12v12 over the 4v4. This is part of the story telling process.

I know I won't be playing scouting and I don't like some game modes. So now I need to log in, check if I want to play and log off if not. Guess how many times I will do it before stop even bothering to log in?
Playing the same game mode is boring. While playing conquest non-stop can be fun for someone I won't be playing it for more than 1-2 matches. And I won't even bother to queue when it's incursion.

Why not to keep random game modes with increased chance of the game mode required by story?

Paul Inouye, on 21 May 2019 - 04:30 PM, said:

Self-balancing would be ideal, but in the past this was not the case when it was allowed for side swapping. It was almost exploited in fact.

Easy way to stop exploiting - put mercs into common queue and assign faction in lobby. If someone want to guarantee drop on a particular side, they go loyalists (or group up with loyalists). If someone want quick matches and don't give a f.k about lore/factions, they pick mercs and get faction assigned every drop. No more side swapping to avoid teams and more balanced population.

[J a y]

Hobbles v, on 21 May 2019 - 05:17 PM, said:

Random game modes is better. No one will want to play during times when they are locked into only one game type. Especially Scouting and Incursion or even conquest sometimes.

100%. As an IS loyalist, conquest is incredibly tough when you're fighting 12 linebackers 3 waves in a row. Alternatively, when your clan, being stuck fighting assassin rushes on incursion over and over would be nauseating.

There needs to be variety.

[Bjorn Coston]

Perhaps give IS Loyalists a Star League coalition option? *Shrug* So that way they stay with their faction and still are able to be part of the story conflict? For Clans I don't know, maybe an "ilKhan's Bid" where planets are open to an invasion by all Clans by decree of the ilKhan (like Tukayyid)? Clearly I'm just throwing out a sloppy band-aid idea on this thing but we're going to see A LOT of loyalist units/pilots leave the game mode entirely cause that provided a lot of the lure of choosing factions and making units and that concerns me.

Obviously I'm reaching here and this'll run up against lore timelines concerning the formation of the Second Star League as well as what mechs were available and when etc. but as the map/game barely follows the timeline meow anyways I don't see it being that big of an issue as long as our die-hard loyalists get to keep their loyalty to the faction they want and stay active in FP which is my biggest concern considering how big of a hit this is to FP.

Disclaimer: I love the lore of Battletech but I'm not a loyalist and don't let lore dictate how I play but I recognize its importance in this game for a lot of people who enjoy the battletech universe and this is a big step away from faction identity and cheapens the experience for some and will make background game content such as faction loyalty and lore inconsequential to many which brought some of them here to MWO in the first place.

Edited by Bjorn Bekker, 21 May 2019 - 05:35 PM.

[OldSchoolCav]

It seems the easiest solution is to either have all drops for IS count towards IS loyalists and vice-versa for clan and to allow mercs to switch sides at any time to balance the queue. Why make it so hard to play? A next step is to allow IS vs IS and Clan vs Clan if that is what is queued. The pooint should be to allow the smallest possible group - 24 players - to drop FP and be fairly balanced.

If the story is what is turning people off, drop the story - that was never the draw to FP.

[Nightbird]

1. Reduce scouting to 1hr due to it's LOW popularity.
2. Remove Incursion until it is fixed
3. If and when the queues are imbalanced, allow people to switch from the higher pop to the lower pop side, and not vice versa.

Don't do these things and watch FP pop plummet.

[Lotspeech]

scouting is broken. any time a players wins for running around polar highlands and doing absolutely no damage until the dropship shows up is not skill. at least make it where the defending team can prevent the dropship from leaving if a player is in the drop zone

[Marquis De Lafayette]

-Scouting was always a sidelight to faction. Some like playing it a bit, many don’t....why force it on everyone? It should have remained a sidelight...something to play or not (depending on player preference)...it just isn’t the main conflict.

-Incursion was always DOA in a 48 v 48 mode as designed. Unless there are major fixes in this patch forcing the mode on us for any length of time will make the (low) population for scouting look good. It is something we endured having to play, not enjoyed. I doubt literally anyone would miss it if it were gone

-conquest for a game or two is fine and can be fun....a whole phase of it...that’s not going to keep interest.

-forcing the most loyal of the loyal to break loyalty or not play FW for who knows how long.....I didn’t think PGI would ever do that to poor Grus (and many others).....but here we are. I may not agree with them, but they have been very loyal to this mode for years and this is what they get? Wow

This this all seems very tone deaf PGI. I don’t believe you actually want to alienate the players who play this mode the most....but you are flirting with it here

[Khalcruth]

Paul Inouye, on 21 May 2019 - 05:14 PM, said:

Where do you get the notion of not being able to play FP?

Surely you can't be that oblivious?

The people who care about having a story driven conflict are ALSO the people who care about what side of the conflict they play on. THIS IS CRITICALLY IMPORTANT. There are a lot of people who have been playing battletech for 30 years now. Do you really think these people are interested in just playing "whatever"?

Myself, I won't play clan. Period. End of story. You put up a clan vs clan only set of missions, I'm flat out not playing. Never going to happen. And I'm one of the relatively faction-flexible people. A lot of people pick one faction (for example, Ghost Bear), and will not change that ever. Hint - the people that feel this way, are ALSO the same people who tend to form loyalist units with other people that feel the same way.

I really can't believe this requires explaining.

[Grus]

Paul Inouye, on 21 May 2019 - 05:14 PM, said:

Some valid points here and I will be talking to some shot callers and devs who will have to let me know what can and cannot be done etc.

An immediate point will be the reduction of phase lengths (after this conflict as it's in motion already). Keep in mind, they can't be too short or very few people are going to see any type of gameplay/mode/story, but they don't have to be 24 or 48hrs either.



Where do you get the notion of not being able to play FP?

From your previous statement. If I'm a GB loyalist, and in a GB loyalist unit, I can not be apart of FW because I'd have to alli with "wolf" or go freelancer/merc. Negating the whole point of being a loyalist.

[Grus]

Loyalist
noun
a person or thing that supports.
an adherent, follower, backer, or advocate.
Heraldry. either of two human or animal figures flanking and supporting an escutcheon in an achievement of arms.

Edited by Grus, 21 May 2019 - 06:11 PM.

[slide]

I think a few people here need to get a little perspective going that isn't entirely focused on their own needs.

@ players

1. Nobody is excluded from playing as anyone can be a freelancer or merc. If you are too stubborn to change from being a loyalist then that is on you.

2. There is no conflict that PGi can create in the current (or any) system that isn't going to upset one or more faction loyalists, which refers me back to point 1. One or more groups is always going to miss out. Eventually you will get a turn to play your favored faction.

3. Concurrent match ups ie Clan v Clan and IS v IS. This doubles the buckets thereby halving your chances of getting a match
Not going to happen.

@PGI (Paul)
You need to make being a loyalist valuable, because as it currently stands it is a waste of time as it hampers both in game (LP) progression and the ability to play.

We need some kind of system where you can play as an ally of a faction in conflict and still accrue LP for your faction of choice. Even if this means that every event has to have designated allys and enemies. ie in the current Wolf v Rassalhague conflict then all IS factions are allies of Rasalhague and all Clan factions are allies of Wolf. These alliances might need to change on a per event basis but that might be unavoidable atm.

[Grus]

So now ill never be able to earn GB LP and reach rank 20 because of a few factors. 1) I can no longer earn GB LP on my own by just logging in to play FW. 2) I now can only gain GB LP at PGI's grace when ever there is a "story" with GB in it...

This is a time gate that would make Activision/Blizzard devs go.. really?

[slide]

Under the current system no you can't earn GB specific LP unless there is a GB specific event. But that is the same for everyone not you specifically. PGI obviously would have make sure each faction gets a fair go.

That said as I also pointed out PGI have to find a way to make LP for a specific faction accrue irrespective of the factions involved in the event.

Maybe they just need to change how loyalty works. For example you choose your permanent faction alliance which accrues all your loyalty points but you play for different factions on a per event basis. Kind of like a loyal merc. Take the Kell Hounds or The Grey Death Legion, they were always loyal to Steiner but they took contracts from other clients/factions.

ATM it is more important to get people playing and improve participation (if the MM works) than it is to worry about individual progression in a faction. At least you can go on mech bay tours easily now. Something which would be extremely valuable to newer players.

[Racerxintegra2k]

How in the hell does this make anyone happy ???? Seems like every subsection of the player base got shafted with this FP change. Give me my damn Davion logo and you can keep faction play then.

[MechTech Dragoon]

Having conflicts last 6 or 8 hours with 3 phases between them was an exciting prospect.
This allowed the map to change on a regular basis, and actually give a feeling of pressure to the conflict.

Yes you have to select a faction during a conflict now...thats whatever.
Its really not much different, before you were a davion loyalist fighting for "insert faction conflict here"

Now your a freelancer, merc, or loyalist fighting for "insert faction here"

Big woop. You like clan or is? thats the big decider.

[Alurath]

A while back, we ran into a situation where you could get stuck with the same game type for hours because both sides won equally and the tug of war didn't move to the next phase/game type. You listened and added some randomness to the game type. If I remember correctly, different slots of the tug of war would give a higher percentage to specific game types, but this still allowed for some variation.

Now you're locking us into one thing for hours again. Now it doesn't matter if Clan or IS wins a lot, we're still stuck. I am in total disbelief that the decision makers thought it was a good idea to introduce the new system and then lock people down into a 24 hour cycle of any type of game, especially scouting. I think it would of been much better to lock it down for 1-2 hour phases so that people could experience many game types during the first couple of days of this.

I've been a member of a team for years. Part of the fun I get is hanging out with teammates and chatting while we play. Now, we can end up on different factions because the team leaders say to go clan but somebody wasn't paying attention and went IS. Now they're stuck not being able to play with the rest of the team for the conflict. So, the entire weekend when they wanted to put in many hours of play, they're going solo. Again, I ask why the decision makers thought this would be good.

I've seen lots of people talking about being dedicated loyalists. Many others become loyalists for a period of time to earn ranks and get the associated rewards. Now, instead of earning reputation with every match, I have to wait days or weeks before the faction I was working on becomes available again. Makes even the first couple of ranks feel so much harder to earn.

[- World Eater -]

Paul Inouye, on 21 May 2019 - 04:30 PM, said:

If you're a hardcore loyalist for Davion and they're not part of a given conflict, you can select Freelancer or Merc for that conflict.

Going freelance or merc negates "hardcore" loyalty to a faction.

[Telemachus -Salt Wife Salt Life-]

Wow. Just wow.

I THOUGHT THE PATCH WAS JUST A MATCHMAKER FOR FACTION PLAY.

I watched the power point YouTube video thing where the match maker was explained. That was great. If you had just added that match maker to the current faction play with the proposed ELO system, then that would have been a good addition.

Instead, this...

W.T.F. PGI...how are you so bad at game design that you take a beloved franchise and implement objectively unfun features? At least 4 months of development (I assume probably more) and you literally break the game?

This patch is a waste of resources, time, and player good will. Just roll back everything you did to faction play and implement the match maker. I am quite sure that everyone will be happy with that.

I literally cannot think of anything positive to say about these changes.

I logged in tonight. It was my only day for the rest of the week to play video games. I learned about these changes and how I'd be forced to play scouting, looked at how dead the queue was, along with a broken event system where I couldn't complete the current event, and I logged out.

I played Skyrim and Diablo 3. The only bright side of driving me away from MWO for long periods of time is that perhaps I'll actually invest some real time into other multiplayer games and git gud there.

-10/10 (That's a negative 10 out of 10)

Edited by Telemachus -Salt Wife Salt Life-, 21 May 2019 - 08:04 PM.

[Yondu Udonta]

Rustyhammer, on 21 May 2019 - 04:12 PM, said:

- And on top of that, we're no longer able to self-balance the population.

Paul Inouye, on 21 May 2019 - 04:30 PM, said:

Self-balancing would be ideal, but in the past this was not the case when it was allowed for side swapping. It was almost exploited in fact. I won't write off the idea completely but being able to swap between matches is not what FP and choosing your role in a conflict is about. Will keep an eye on this one as FP moves forward.

Already said it was going to be an issue. And side-swapping EXPLOITED? Side-swapping is what I need to do after getting many ghost drops in a row because the population is so ******* low. Why is it low? Because PGI decided to leave FP to rot for years after dumping lots of ****** updates that pissed off so many FP players. Now I suppose PGI wants to piss off the remaining diehards off. Removing self-balancing shows how out of touch you guys are with how the FP population works. I wouldn't suggest doing a round table because the whole population knows that you guys have some kind of ego issue where everyone's ideas are 'considered' but never accepted because you devs think you know best. Let's face it, devs are so out of touch in so many aspects of MWO the community should be deciding on balances and updates instead of you all.

I've already wasted my precious time typing a comment on this ******* brown sea with the dumb hope that it would give PGI a wake up call. Now give me back the ability to switch sides as and when I want. **** storytelling. There's going to be no ******* storytelling when there ain't anyone playing FP. And don't get me ******* started on scouting and incursion being even present in conflicts.

[TheCallandor]

Is this PGI's way of forcing us to play Solaris or Quick play?