367 replies to this topic

[J a y]

Paul Inouye, on 23 May 2019 - 03:57 PM, said:

TL;DR - News incoming but will be tomorrow.

Paul, if you roll this back, I will fly right up to Vancouver from NYC and take you out for a romantic yet work-safe steak dinner, no strings attached*




*unless your favorite mech is also the Hollander

[50 50]

Paul Inouye, on 21 May 2019 - 11:20 AM, said:

It's patch day.



-Paul

Hi Paul & PGI,



Thank you for all the effort that has gone on the last few months in regards to working on the match maker and having these story based conflicts and progressions to add some depth and immersion.

I appreciate that there has been some focus on the game and some communication with the MWO population.



I realized at the start of this cycle of development that Faction Play was going to move into a single confllct between two sides to allow the story to be followed and that this would make the mode more of a focused event rather than the sense that there is fighting occurring between multiple sides across the galaxy 24/7.



It would appear that you are damned if you do, damned if you don't because while there was a push from a significant portion of the population to have these story based conflicts, to get it to function within the framework that is there requires the mode to be reduced to a focused event which obviously ruffles the features of a significant portion of the population.



Part of the problem as I see it with the whole 'story' aspect is that it is a story presented to us that we are trying to follow and in a choose your own adventure kind of way get to a particular outcome. It's a story created for us and not one we have created.

I'll bring up the voting we used to have from an earlier iteration of FP which allowed a faction to pick who they wanted to fight during the attack phase. This is an example of how we had the ability to generate the story ourselves and we could have elaborated on those results giving them voice.



Players also wanted their victories to mean something more, the planets to have more value. The map as it was simply was too big with too many planets of little to no significance so reducing that down to a handful or so is necessary. Allowing the players to then vote which which solar system they were wanting to capture because it gave their faction a certain bonus going forward, would have been, in my opinion, the next step in players creating the story. We are fighting Faction X because we want System Y which will give our faction Z as a bonus while we control it.



You could see how that might start to weave a story which can be recorded in the war logs and so on and it's similar to the little events that were run a while a go.

"Clan Wolf is mounting an attack on the FRR Sputnik system to capture the space ports in that region. This will allow Clan Wolf to gather larger forces to attack other systems."



and so on.



To look at the modes we play, which are essentially missions, and how they are presented. At the moment, it's controlled at a faction level and dictated to all players regardless of if they have played or want to play those missions or not. There is no sense of getting a group together and picking out various missions because it will help the group and create that sense of having our own campaigns within the overall 'capture the system' objective for the faction.

So I agree that Scouting is a part of Faction Play, as are the other various missions we can run, but again it is dictated to us instead of being a player initiative. It has been mentioned about adding a vote on the missions for FP and I can see some value in this as it starts to bring in a strategic element for the players. The other part of it is having those missions mean something to us personally. EG: I will do a Conquest mission because it gives me resource points when I win and those resource points let me repair the mechs in my drop deck. I'll do a scouting mission because the intel points give me the radar for my next match.

All we really need to do is have any victories we achieve fighting for our faction on any mission add to a tally so that at the end of it, if that tally is in our favour, our faction wins the system.



To address the point made about only having two factions or two sides in the conflict, I can only suggest looking at more of a free for all approach.
Take what Quick Play does and simply allow one team to fight another in a single queue.

If teams were restricted to only having players from a single faction then we would get all the inter-faction conflict we have had and more as it would allow IS vs IS, Clan vs Clan and Clan vs IS without the need to split the queues.

If we include the voting ideas for enemy and system then we have that purpose behind each battle. We have to win more for our faction to succeed and we will fight anyone to make it so.

However the system also needs flexibility as we do not want the situation where one faction is able to muster a full 12 player group and there are not enough players in another single faction to create a match. This is important because if players want to represent their individual factions, you have to allow smaller conflicts. Yes, I'm talking again about allowing 4v4, 8v8 and 12v12.

You can't have a situation where there are 12 Clan Wolf players ready to go, but we only have 4 in Marik, 4 in Davion and 4 in Jade Falcon because this is what would happen if teams are prevented from mixing. Therefore, the system needs to take a small leaf from the Private Lobby and allow smaller team sizes to fight. Let the 12 Wolf players break up into 3 lances and get matched up against any other 4 player lance from another faction. Should another faction start to get more players on as the hours tic by, then you could expect the conflict to escalate between those two sides and build up to the 12v12,



This again feeds into the story we are telling.

"There has been some ongoing border skirmishes between Clan Wolf and the FRR this week" (4v4)

"Tensions escalated between Clan Wolf and the FRR this week with some raids on key planets" (8v8)

"A large scale attack was mounted between Clan Wolf and the FRR this week" (12v12)



Given the recent work on the match maker, I can see all of that working quite well in this sort of setup.



So, to sum up. TL:DR
I would seriously consider making FP a free for all and restricting teams to a single faction.
Look at the voting for enemy and solar system to allow players to create their own incentive as to why they are attacking
Put a value on the solar systems that when controlled by a faction they provide a certain bonus for players in that faction (c-bills, XP, drop deck tonnage.... there is room for several values to be explored)
Consider a voting option for players to pick their missions and add a value to those missions that directly affects the players who complete the missions.
Look at the group system as we need to allow flexibility for team sizes if teams are restricted.
I know everyone is very passionate about MWO and FP.

This is how I feel it could work.

[MischiefSC]

The original pitch of FW, way back at one of the first MechCons (the first?) was largely geared toward the Mercenary experience. It talked about Freelancers and Loyalists it was pretty Merc focused.

FW at release and pretty much every patch since then has skewed pretty heavily toward the Merc gameplay experience and being a Loyalist has always felt very punished and 2nd rate so to speak. This has always been the trend, which is strange to me because the IP itself is one that's geared very much toward the Loyalist mentality. What faction is your faction, who do you associate with. The bulk of the games for the IP has followed suit with this.

I'm concerned that the end result of the proposed changes Paul is talking about is pretty much just tweaks to the existing system. No, this isn't the end of the world. None of it every is. However the unfortunately reality of that is that this patch of 'improvements' is going to result in a net reduction in total FW players with no real tradeoff. Some new interface stuff but the final result of the changes seems like it's going to be fewer total people wanting to play FW and absolutely nothing to draw players who've left back.

I get that it wasn't the intent. I think it's stupid to say 'PGI just doesn't care/wants to kill FW/similar strawman'. Obviously that isn't true - PGI has been invested in MWO for what's got to be 8 years or so. More? We're sneaking up on a total of 100 chassis between Clan and IS, all of which have different audio for yaw, pitch and throttle. It's gotten patches weekly for most of that time, now down to 1 per month but none of it is just little bug fixes. You can not reasonably argue that PGI isn't heavily invested and engaged in MWO.

Which is what makes this particular long-standing issue so confusing. Years, even decades long fans of the franchise who've identified with a specific faction as 'their team' are baked into it and seem like a core dedicated fan base you get for free. Why has catering to that segment always felt like a struggle? Especially with FW (once CW) it seemed like that was the lowest hanging fruit.

Anyway. I appreciate Paul taking the time to post here and clearly working to find some sort of options. FW will still be here, just likely with fewer total players. MW5, which looks amazing, is coming in like 3 and a half months.

Just keep in mind that with MW5 out, faction identity and being involved in 'your team' is one of the big things that MWO potentially can offer that MW5 really can't. Not to the same degree. It seems strange to leave that on the table.

[J a y]

50 50, on 23 May 2019 - 05:58 PM, said:

[color=#959595]It would appear that you are damned if you do, damned if you don't because while there was a push from a significant portion of the population to have these story based conflicts, to get it to function within the framework that is there requires the mode to be reduced to a focused event which obviously ruffles the features of a significant portion of the population.[/color]

Nah, that isn't how it worked. Most of the issues presented from the active faction warfare community were about incursion being in FW (in its current state, at least), a lack of incentives to play FW, and a lack of population.

The community asking for "story" stemmed from a desire for meaningful conflicts, not from pilots looking for a single-bucket FW experience.

[R79TCom1 Night Lanner]

Paul Inouye, on 23 May 2019 - 03:57 PM, said:

Hooboy...


Ok... so after a BUNCH of meetings and discussions... we have some things we'll be addressing including what I mentioned earlier in this thread (Varying game modes during a phase, swapping factions between phases, shortening phase durations) plus a few more topics. I still need some critical information from the devs and one of them is ill at the moment but I should have a much clearer set of information I can pass off to you in terms of what can happen, what can't happen, hopefully some ballpark time estimates etc.

With Russ' podcast tomorrow, I'm going to try to document and post my update as soon as he's finished his podcast.

TL;DR - News incoming but will be tomorrow.

I noticed that he doesn't plan on addressing the issue where Loyalists are forced to play as factions they. don't want to.

[John McClintock]

Finally got to play some faction play, thanks to the updated que, and got to play a couple times, it was interesting.

last try I waited for 15 minutes for a drop only to be ditched and sent to the end of the line... that was a bummer.

guess it's back to QP, but I can get a FP game in for rewards occasionally, i guess.

[Hanky Spam]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie, on 23 May 2019 - 04:14 PM, said:

if only you had feedback on all those things that drive people mad right now.
oh wait.. you had.
anyway: pls fix that on a not-live-server. and take your time, nobody is in a rush.
but in the meantime, give us back the faction from pre-patch.
it is the cleanest solution there is ... riiiight?

Of course they will fix it on the live servers because they also pushed a FP mode onto the live server that was not ready for the public.

[Bowelhacker]

And even if you have the numbers for a drop you still have to wait the two minutes. Better than every ten seconds though.

[Appogee]

Bowelhacker, on 23 May 2019 - 11:08 PM, said:

And even if you have the numbers for a drop you still have to wait the two minutes.

And you can't even use all this waiting to modify your drop deck, as you no longer know which map you will drop onto.

Instead you get a 50-second scramble, every time you're lucky enough to get a drop.

Edited by Appogee, 23 May 2019 - 11:15 PM.

[BenMillard]

TL;DR

• Matchmaker GOOD.
  
• 2-minute countdown GOOD.
  
• Planet choice BAD.
  
• Drop deck tonnage bug BAD.
  
• User interface BAD.

A few things to like:

• 2-minute countdown between drops.
  
• Queue sizes displayed.
  
• Biggest and best groups face each other.
  
• PUGs fill in the gaps and can follow the strategy of the group.
  
• No such thing as bad publicity - FP is busy today even if most people are just seeing how bad it is!

Returning FP to the pre-patch state but keeping 2-minute countdown (also for Scouting) and the new matchmaker would be fine. This stuff seems to work well.


As it was on the PTS, the GUI really needs tidying up. Below is when viewed in Full HD, an obvious target to test with plenty more space than your baseline of 1366x768. Everything should be fine at this size...but isnt:

• Poor alignment of elements in the right side panel.
  
• Panels not central within each other.
  
• Things not centred.
  
• Uneven spacing.
  
• Divider lines far too close to text.
  
• The story text doesn't fit. LOL.
  
• It scrolls to the end instead of the start by default.
  
• Sometimes the first line is the actual first but but the scrollbar 'thumb' is at the end.
  
• Clicking the scroll buttons is glitchy. Sometimes scrolls, sometimes doesn't.
  
• Sometimes the downward scroll arrow is missing when I first look at FP. It's covered by the scroll thumb until I scroll up.
  
• When hovering the up arrow of this scrollbar, it seems to momentarily flash the hovered version of a down arrow before showing the hovered version of the up arrow.
  
• Only 1 planet is up for grabs so why is "Conflict Planets" such a big, scrollable box? The space should obviously be re-allocated to the story text.
  
• Scrollbar for "Conflict Planets" (which isn't needed anyway) is positioned slightly off the right edge of the conflicts panel section it sits on.
  
• Clicking the "View Conflicts" button resets the planetary explosions and smoke particles, therefore making it harder to see where the conflict is in the couple of seconds after the user has asked to see where the conflict is. (LOL!)
  
• "Conflict Planets" should say "Conflict Planet" when you know there will only be one planet involved. Likewise, in the new system there is only one conflict at a time so the panel should be called "Conflict Panel" not "Conflicts Panel". It's just a bit messy and shows things weren't given the TLC they needed, despite us waiting months for any FP changes.
  
• "View IS Map" button also resets the particle, making it harder to see the current conflict in the overall context. (The tall smoke particle was specifically to help with this, right?)
  
• The planet chosen for this story doesn't have any "Detailed Information". It's just a earth-looking ball. It doesn't even have gravity, let alone an intriguing socio-political backstory like some other the planets. Why choose such a banal location? Why would this literally nondescript location excite anyone to play FP?
  
• "Select Role & Faction" screen should have a close button top right, or dismiss if user clicks an empty part of the screen.
  
• "War History" from the left menu is completely empty at the moment. Might be worth showing the current conflict that is underway, just so it doesn't look broken at launch.

We have to set 255T dropdeck to launch the Group. Once we get a lobby we can change back to 265T drop decks.


EDIT: This feedback was written before the hotfix. Was about to post it when systems went offline for the patch.

EDIT2: The CSS for the forum prevents numbered lists from showing their numbers:

.post_body .post ul li
{
list-style: inside;
color: #CCC;
margin: 10px 0px 10px 15px;
}

The WYSIWYG editor generates <ul class> for numbered lists rather than using <ol> which means this list-style shorthand rule overrides the decimal style, defaulting it to standard bullet list disc.

I'd also mention that list-style: inside looks awkward and pointless. That line should simply be deleted to fix numbered lists.

EDIT3: Further review of MWO FP interface.

Edited by BenMillard, 27 May 2019 - 12:48 AM.

[Oor Wullie]

Any chance of getting call to arms back? maybe when 1 side hits 12 a call could go out.......

[PhoenixFire55]

Paul Inouye, on 23 May 2019 - 03:57 PM, said:

Ok... so after a BUNCH of meetings and discussions...

The thing is ... why did you even run FP PTS three times if you completely ignore all feedback from people taking part in it? Ya know its not that hard ... listen to what players want for a change and then you wouldn't need a whole BUNCH of meetings and whatnot. Its like you are actually trying to p*ss off your playerbase as much as possible every single time.

[BaronDeath]

The entire game was rebranded with Solaris months ago and RARELY ever is there activity there. We wait and wait, and nothing, but we use it internally as a Unit building tool. We waited and waited and waited for FW drops tonight, swallowing Wolf skins for our Ghost Bear loyalty, and yet no matches. We waited and waited and waited for QP matches but had very few. PGI claims a storyline drives this newest change now, yet your story line was completely wrong last night!!!!! wow !!!! - a quick Google Search would reconcile that, and yet tonight I see you have changed the "storyline" - and yet the Loyalists who adhere to a "storyline" have always been mocked and ridiculed for being a coherent Unit developed and matured slowly by a storyline as a foundational narrative to attract and keep pilots together AND MAKE YOU A LOT OF MONEY. I see the logic and the dot to dot narrative you are attempting to build, and how this can end up being a sandbox for all the really good pilots - and that's okay, but you should have a few different versions of your game. Oh, wait, you tried that, called Comp play, to give a platform for those who excel and know how to do XL checks and stay together as a team - based on experience and nothing else, and to mock and ridicule any other reason for Team cohesiveness based on "storylines".

Argggh, in English, this is called circumlocution.

[BaronDeath]

Bottom line: almost 200 pilots through our horrible unit called ARC7, bound strongly to a Loyalist bond FOR MANY REASONS, resulting in (as I have polled my pilots), 10s of thousands of dollars in revenue for PGI. Positive feedback: 50% have LOTS of money, 50% do not but give everyone else something to shoot at. The ones you have counted "out" have something to give to the entire community. This is what LOYALIST Units have to give. A balance. You have destroyed that balance with this downgrade for both sides. For the first time, I feel sorrow for the IS Loyalists. We have 1+ billion in our coffers because of how we have managed my Unit. Turn it back like so many say here, and I will commit to 200 more pilots over the next few years at a 50/50 ratio to give money and pay your salaries AND for really good pilots who like to mock Loyalists so they can have someone to shoot at and give them ego (until they get good and no longer do that effectively).

Paul, thank you for your efforts. You are bound.

[Sjorpha]

Thank you for trying to improve FP, I hope you find good solutions to the immediate problems so the queue becomes functional.

I think one of the most important things is to give units and players a sense of agency in the conflict, just forcing everyone to play a single game mode for hours forced into specific factions feels like taking away even more of that agency.

We had the most influence over Faction Play back in phase 2, when we could choose planets to fight on, manage the player numbers, freely choose faction and so on. Actual communities was formed around faction loyalty back then. What was missing in phase 2 was a strategic impact of taking planets and more tools to further make Faction Play a community creation.

You have since taken Faction Play in the complete opposite direction, removing more and more agency and player influence with each phase and patch. Large units and large scale community organisation became more and more pointless as there was less and less impact to be made on the mode by such efforts, instead of rewarding successful community warfare efforts and schemes like the campaigns MS did to reach Terra, or the organised reclaiming of FRR space by the FRR community hub, you decided those amazing examples of real community warfare was somehow bad and unwanted, and instead of improving the tools to enable even greater large scale community organisation and achievements you took the influence and control away from the players bit by bit until the anchoring organisers of the community finally gave up and left.

THAT is why the population has dried out, THAT is why Faction Play is a failure. You had the start of something great back in phase 2, you had a community with great units and ambitious leaders prepared to make great things happen, but instead of rewarding and welcoming that potential that power within the community scared you and you pussied out of your vision and redesigned Community Warfare into the Faction Play we have today where all you do is play matches in a narrated linear experience that has absolutely nothing to do with community co-creation of galactic warfare.

Too late now? Yeah, of course it's ******* too late. I appreciate the renewed effort but I'm damn pissed that this pitiful thing we have now is what the vision of Community Warfare became.

[Mighty Spike]

Bring back my Steiner Fist dammit

[Bows3r]

BaronDeath, on 24 May 2019 - 01:10 AM, said:

Bottom line: almost 200 pilots through our horrible unit called ARC7, bound strongly to a Loyalist bond FOR MANY REASONS, resulting in (as I have polled my pilots), 10s of thousands of dollars in revenue for PGI. Positive feedback: 50% have LOTS of money, 50% do not but give everyone else something to shoot at. The ones you have counted &quot;out&quot; have something to give to the entire community. This is what LOYALIST Units have to give. A balance. You have destroyed that balance with this downgrade for both sides. For the first time, I feel sorrow for the IS Loyalists. We have 1+ billion in our coffers because of how we have managed my Unit. Turn it back like so many say here, and I will commit to 200 more pilots over the next few years at a 50/50 ratio to give money and pay your salaries AND for really good pilots who like to mock Loyalists so they can have someone to shoot at and give them ego (until they get good and no longer do that effectively).

Paul, thank you for your efforts. You are bound.

Bruh.

[Nathan White]

Okay. I think I found a solution to the problem. Just add FP (siege and counter-attack mode) in Private Lobbies with some option - drop deck limit, type (IS v IS, Clan vs Clan, IS vs Clan) - and we will play all day and all night, without pugs, genrushers, beep-beep-beep sounds. Only with friends.

[MischiefSC]

World won't end today either way. Panic or anger driven decision making is far from ideal. Paul has said he's listened to the concerns and is talking and sorting stuff out.

While I'm exceptionally unenthused with the changes I can respect that there's no magic instant fix. I absolutely get and agree with the units who are deeply upset and feel like this was a personal shot at the core of what draws them to MWO and the franchise and such but we've got a long relationship with PGI and it doesn't seem unreasonable to just chill for a bit and see what comes of it. I do feel confident that the various concerns have been expressed and PGI listened. Doesn't mean they're going to give everyone what they want but taking a pause to see what comes of it seems fair.

[Natural Predator]

The emotional overreaction is useless and distracts from people making real points. We can accomplish more with PGI by posting measured responses. Feel free to make a separate thread for your virtue signaling your moral outrage.