The Faction Play Proposal
#41
Posted 20 October 2020 - 06:59 PM
We never had the population to support planetary conquest with the scope of the map and the division of players across factions limited by borders.
With the significantly reduced player numbers we have now, reverting back to the original design will never work. It didn't work when there were 10x as many players.
A seperating scouting queue further compounded the population problem and as it's own mode it never evolved like invasion did to include additional maps and 'missions'. Having the impact of scouting felt in the siege maps was a nice touch but it should never have been a global effect for all players in that faction. It needed to relate to us on a personal, group or unit level.
Plus, if you are going to have one mode affect another, then it should work the other way around as well or at least create a meaningful link between each of the missions.
With all the iterations of community warfare to faction play that the mode has been through it's tried to have it's own system when really it should have taken the strengths of quick play and added flavour and function on top of that.
Ironically, it may not be too far from doing that at the moment.
#42
Posted 20 October 2020 - 07:12 PM
ccrider, on 14 October 2020 - 11:20 PM, said:
Yondu Udonta, on 15 October 2020 - 05:18 AM, said:
Don't think it is necessary to limit the number of factions.
Consider this.
If you took the quick play match maker, slapped a rule in there that a team can only consist of players with the same faction tag, put the same limitation on groups and set it up so that a match was always two different teams of two different factions, we could allow players to keep that loyalty and have a system that allowed unlimited conflict.
#43
Posted 20 October 2020 - 07:35 PM
Charles Sennet, on 17 October 2020 - 06:25 PM, said:
Tried to argue that point when FP became the event game mode where two factions were selected and a story written for the players to pretend to pay attention to and player under the pretext of.
Should have been the other way around where through our continual battling, or victories and losses added up to something which was then told as a story in the war history.
Charles Sennet, on 17 October 2020 - 06:25 PM, said:
What about earning a unique currency for the faction that can be used to buy certain mechs and the related camo & decals?
eg:
You sign up with Steiner and every battle earns you some s-bills.
Use those s-bills to buy iconic faction mechs, camo schemes and decals relating to Steiner. Maybe have the cost somewhere between a c-bill and mc price on those items, even consider letting your loyalty rank provide a discount to that cost.
Encouraging players to use certain totem mechs relating to a faction could be done by adding a drop deck tonnage modifier to the mechs that relates to the drop deck tonnage limit. ie. Let that Deathstrike be treated as 5 tons less for that total weight allowance.
#44
Posted 20 October 2020 - 07:58 PM
Yondu Udonta, on 14 October 2020 - 10:15 PM, said:
^this is very true^
personally i think i recall that for every two potatoes that quit because it was too hard there was a third potato who was prepared to keep getting bashed until they learnt but the community used to scream "potato! go back to quickplay! UNINSTALL!!!" etc and so they did and now almost everyone in faction knows one another by build and tactic.
(i am only still here because as you all know i hate nascar and i am too f*n stoopud to know how to uninstall...)
it's fantastic that everyone is prepared to help in their own ways but it'd be helpfull too if nobody told noobs git gud or git lost.
*can we please have a random long tom event? drop it on both sides, regularly
#45
Posted 20 October 2020 - 11:55 PM
#46
Posted 21 October 2020 - 01:14 AM
50 50, on 20 October 2020 - 06:59 PM, said:
We never had the population to support planetary conquest with the scope of the map and the division of players across factions limited by borders.
LOL in its hey day, before the Long Tom Incident, that was not true, then we definitely had the population.
Heck even I played FW back then.
Not never
#47
Posted 21 October 2020 - 03:02 AM
The only action that was happening was on one of the Clan borders.
It would have been different at different times of the day and I know some units organised faction nights and did get regular battles.
More often than not you could look around the map and see maybe 2 or 3 planets that had enough players for matches.
On others there might be a smaller number waiting and simply not going anywhere.
What I'm getting at as there was always way too many planets to compete over compared to the number of active players.
It needed a different approach for the matches that allowed players in any faction to fight any other faction and a bit more of abstract view of the territories.
Edit: Got a screen shot from April 2016 but having trouble posting it.
Edited by 50 50, 21 October 2020 - 03:02 AM.
#49
Posted 21 October 2020 - 10:04 PM
50 50, on 20 October 2020 - 06:59 PM, said:
We never had the population to support planetary conquest with the scope of the map and the division of players across factions limited by borders.
With the significantly reduced player numbers we have now, reverting back to the original design will never work. It didn't work when there were 10x as many players.
A seperating scouting queue further compounded the population problem and as it's own mode it never evolved like invasion did to include additional maps and 'missions'. Having the impact of scouting felt in the siege maps was a nice touch but it should never have been a global effect for all players in that faction. It needed to relate to us on a personal, group or unit level.
Plus, if you are going to have one mode affect another, then it should work the other way around as well or at least create a meaningful link between each of the missions.
With all the iterations of community warfare to faction play that the mode has been through it's tried to have it's own system when really it should have taken the strengths of quick play and added flavour and function on top of that.
Ironically, it may not be too far from doing that at the moment.
50 50, on 20 October 2020 - 07:35 PM, said:
Tried to argue that point when FP became the event game mode where two factions were selected and a story written for the players to pretend to pay attention to and player under the pretext of.
Should have been the other way around where through our continual battling, or victories and losses added up to something which was then told as a story in the war history.
What about earning a unique currency for the faction that can be used to buy certain mechs and the related camo & decals?
eg:
You sign up with Steiner and every battle earns you some s-bills.
Use those s-bills to buy iconic faction mechs, camo schemes and decals relating to Steiner. Maybe have the cost somewhere between a c-bill and mc price on those items, even consider letting your loyalty rank provide a discount to that cost.
Encouraging players to use certain totem mechs relating to a faction could be done by adding a drop deck tonnage modifier to the mechs that relates to the drop deck tonnage limit. ie. Let that Deathstrike be treated as 5 tons less for that total weight allowance.
Bringing back planetary conquest meant being able to conquer planets, tagging them and getting MC from them. There are probably other aspects of the old system that needs reworking no doubt about it.
Could you please go back and refer to the main post? It has been observed that the player base for scouting and invasion are generally mutually exclusive. The only reason why either side would play the other game mode is because their preferred mode is not available.
Take strengths of quick play? There is nothing that I would take from that mindless game mode and put it in FP.
This is what has been happening the past year or so? This dumb storyline thing that's full of fluff?
It would be nice to have unique faction currency. However I would not go so far to giving the use of totem mechs such benefits, like I've said there are some factions whose totem mechs are garbage.
#50
Posted 22 October 2020 - 12:54 AM
So best change we can hope of is delete fluff and set attacker / defender on random.
Edited by Ignatius Audene, 22 October 2020 - 12:56 AM.
#51
Posted 24 October 2020 - 01:40 AM
Yondu Udonta, on 21 October 2020 - 10:04 PM, said:
I get the idea about how players loved to see their unit tag on the systems, how there was that little MC reward which if your unit had a 100 players or so was really FA.
What I am getting at is that the original setup had way to many planets for the number of players in the game.
The map is nice, but it's not practical.
It needed to be adapted to have a more abstract approach to the solar systems that didn't rely on the map with it's borders.
A system where you would try and queue up as many players as possible to get ghost drops to win a planet is not playing a game, it's just gaming the system.
Have planetary conquest, but not like it was originally done.
Yondu Udonta, on 21 October 2020 - 10:04 PM, said:
Sure.
Scouting as a mode and it's own queue had several problems/limitations that never really evolved.
-The division of players creates a wait time issue or the inability to even get a game particularly when there are other limitations in place such as the faction borders. Again, queueing for ghost drops is not playing a game.
-Scouting had the ability to apply a bonus (the radar and so on) that worked for the entire faction but only applied to Siege. There was nothing in Siege that impacted scouting. There was nothing in the other missions (conquest etc) that was impacted or that winning one of those missions fed back anywhere else.
-To leave it as it's own queue, Scouting never picked up any additional missions like we saw in what became 'Invasion Mode'. Perhaps missions like Incursion or even Escort might have been good to try out as a 4v4. NFI. It wasn't done. The alternative would have been to make scouting a mission that popped up in the invasion queue and work out how to do that.
-If separate 4v4 and 12v12 modes are to be retained I bet there would be players out there who would demand an 8v8 for faction. So does it make sense to keep splitting queues? Or would a better long term approach be to work out different matches and team sizes within one queue?
Yondu Udonta, on 21 October 2020 - 10:04 PM, said:
The player behaviour and play in QP might leave a lot to be desired but that's not the strength of it.
I'm coming back to the point on how the map with all it's planets and borders created 100 new queues for FP when it should have taken the single queue, get two teams, let them fight.
The faction play part is then to do something with the results of each of those matches like let them tally towards planetary conquest.
Edit: The voting for maps/missions in QP is something that could be adapted for FP and fit within the context of the whole process as well.
Yondu Udonta, on 21 October 2020 - 10:04 PM, said:
Not sure which bit of my comments you were referring to here.
I appreciate the effort put in by PGI to craft the events and write a story but I don't read it and don't agree that was the best approach.
Not sure I can really explain what I'm getting at with some of these points well enough in a forum post.
Yondu Udonta, on 21 October 2020 - 10:04 PM, said:
An idea for loyalists that one.
Might be easy to setup and if mechs needed some quirks or even some new variants, we have seen that's not hard to do either.
But if saving 5 tons on one mech that might not be top tier but it allowed you to bump up the tonnage of another mech in your drop deck to some thing better, it might create some alternative drop deck options.
From a lore perspective it also feeds into some of that idea that when you face Faction X you tend to see more of mechs A, B, C and D than you might see against Faction Y. That will appeal to some players and maybe it's as simple as that to bring more activity to Faction Play.
Edited by 50 50, 24 October 2020 - 01:45 AM.
#52
Posted 26 October 2020 - 05:42 AM
50 50, on 24 October 2020 - 01:40 AM, said:
What I am getting at is that the original setup had way to many planets for the number of players in the game.
The map is nice, but it's not practical.
It needed to be adapted to have a more abstract approach to the solar systems that didn't rely on the map with it's borders.
Scouting as a mode and it's own queue had several problems/limitations that never really evolved.
-The division of players creates a wait time issue or the inability to even get a game particularly when there are other limitations in place such as the faction borders. Again, queueing for ghost drops is not playing a game.
-Scouting had the ability to apply a bonus (the radar and so on) that worked for the entire faction but only applied to Siege. There was nothing in Siege that impacted scouting. There was nothing in the other missions (conquest etc) that was impacted or that winning one of those missions fed back anywhere else.
-To leave it as it's own queue, Scouting never picked up any additional missions like we saw in what became 'Invasion Mode'. Perhaps missions like Incursion or even Escort might have been good to try out as a 4v4. NFI. It wasn't done. The alternative would have been to make scouting a mission that popped up in the invasion queue and work out how to do that.
-If separate 4v4 and 12v12 modes are to be retained I bet there would be players out there who would demand an 8v8 for faction. So does it make sense to keep splitting queues? Or would a better long term approach be to work out different matches and team sizes within one queue?
The player behaviour and play in QP might leave a lot to be desired but that's not the strength of it.
I'm coming back to the point on how the map with all it's planets and borders created 100 new queues for FP when it should have taken the single queue, get two teams, let them fight.
The faction play part is then to do something with the results of each of those matches like let them tally towards planetary conquest.
Edit: The voting for maps/missions in QP is something that could be adapted for FP and fit within the context of the whole process as well.
Not sure which bit of my comments you were referring to here.
I appreciate the effort put in by PGI to craft the events and write a story but I don't read it and don't agree that was the best approach.
An idea for loyalists that one.
Might be easy to setup and if mechs needed some quirks or even some new variants, we have seen that's not hard to do either.
But if saving 5 tons on one mech that might not be top tier but it allowed you to bump up the tonnage of another mech in your drop deck to some thing better, it might create some alternative drop deck options.
From a lore perspective it also feeds into some of that idea that when you face Faction X you tend to see more of mechs A, B, C and D than you might see against Faction Y. That will appeal to some players and maybe it's as simple as that to bring more activity to Faction Play.
Yes the MC isn't much, perhaps they have to rebalance it by giving less through events or more for every Faction cycle or risk receiving less revenue through MC purchases. I believe you are referencing the earlier iterations of Faction Play while I am referencing the last iteration of Faction Play that had the tug-of-war, where borders were not a concern.
Scouting is meant to be a side mode, name suggests so. Why incentivize people to leave the invasion queue by adding more stuff to scouting? As regards to 8v8 being requested, that is merely a slippery slope fallacy.
This is exactly how the previous iteration of Faction Play is before we got this current system.
Yes we are on the same boat here, that the current system with a fluffed up storyline to narrate the current 2 factions in conflict is pointless.
Slight benefits for faction-related mechs would be nice, but it shouldn't come at the expense of the opponents. E.g. Liao vs Ghost Bear, 5T bonus for every faction-related mech used, Liao is an easy 10t bonus due to how strong the Sleipnir is, Ghost Bear is not going to get that bonus tonnage because the Kodiak is trash and lighter mechs like the MCII and BAS would be more worth bringing tonnage-wise. Faction currency could be used to buy the more unique variants faction-related mechs, such as the [S] variants and maybe even [P]/[R]/[I].
#53
Posted 26 October 2020 - 04:36 PM
Yondu Udonta, on 26 October 2020 - 05:42 AM, said:
Fair enough and yes, I was looking more closely at the Beta 2 iteration which had the loyalist war vote.
Regarding the tug of war specifically.
We saw how there were a few problems with it. A victory tally might be a good approach to determine if a faction wins a planet so it adds up over the course of a week or so and hopefully avoid the last minute rush. Try and promote more activity.
The war vote for loyalists (re-introduced) can direct the result of those victories to the planetary conquest.
Eg: At the start of a new campaign Kurita loyalists vote to declare war on Davion. At the end of the campaign Kurita has 122 victory points and Davion has 97. Kurita takes a planet from Davion.
Planetary conquest driven by the players.
Could be a little more interesting than that if we talked about what it means to actually have control of a planet such as the MC rewards. Few other options to consider in that regard.
Yondu Udonta, on 26 October 2020 - 05:42 AM, said:
This is exactly how the previous iteration of Faction Play is before we got this current system.
Because we can divide up players according to faction and there are something like 13 factions plus mercenaries I don't see splitting Scouting to it's own queue as being necessary. If the match maker had a bit of flexibility and we used the group of 4 as the building block for teams we should be able to scale matches up and down all in the one queue all while encouraging multi-faction conflict.
With regards to which missions you get (scouting, siege etc) then perhaps this is more dependant on the size of the team and match. Or, we make use of a voting system.
Edited by 50 50, 26 October 2020 - 08:49 PM.
#54
Posted 27 October 2020 - 12:11 AM
So how about allowing Sphere players to take one clan mech into Faction? And the same on other side: Allow Clans players to take one IS mech into Faction. Do like one month of tests. It could be funny, it can make some matches more even, or just more surprising, funny etc. Just to honor salvage, looting, and scrap collecting - one of the coolest feature in MW universe.
#55
Posted 27 October 2020 - 01:24 AM
Bistrorider, on 27 October 2020 - 12:11 AM, said:
So how about allowing Sphere players to take one clan mech into Faction? And the same on other side: Allow Clans players to take one IS mech into Faction. Do like one month of tests. It could be funny, it can make some matches more even, or just more surprising, funny etc. Just to honor salvage, looting, and scrap collecting - one of the coolest feature in MW universe.
Problem with this is that PGI will not sell a single mech or mechbay to players if it is implemented. You get your salvage through your C-bills earning.
#56
Posted 27 October 2020 - 01:31 AM
vonJerg, on 27 October 2020 - 01:24 AM, said:
It's not about salvaging mechs from battlefield. It's about allowing a player to use one of his clan mechs in Faction, when he is playing for Sphere and vice versa. It would be like a simulation of salvage system.
#57
Posted 27 October 2020 - 05:13 AM
50 50, on 26 October 2020 - 04:36 PM, said:
Regarding the tug of war specifically.
We saw how there were a few problems with it. A victory tally might be a good approach to determine if a faction wins a planet so it adds up over the course of a week or so and hopefully avoid the last minute rush. Try and promote more activity.
The war vote for loyalists (re-introduced) can direct the result of those victories to the planetary conquest.
Eg: At the start of a new campaign Kurita loyalists vote to declare war on Davion. At the end of the campaign Kurita has 122 victory points and Davion has 97. Kurita takes a planet from Davion.
Planetary conquest driven by the players.
Could be a little more interesting than that if we talked about what it means to actually have control of a planet such as the MC rewards. Few other options to consider in that regard.
Because we can divide up players according to faction and there are something like 13 factions plus mercenaries I don't see splitting Scouting to it's own queue as being necessary. If the match maker had a bit of flexibility and we used the group of 4 as the building block for teams we should be able to scale matches up and down all in the one queue all while encouraging multi-faction conflict.
With regards to which missions you get (scouting, siege etc) then perhaps this is more dependant on the size of the team and match. Or, we make use of a voting system.
Yes I would personally prefer that the tug-of-war not be threshold-based and just be based on whoever had the most wins.
Sounds too complex for PGI to program, they can't even do a multiqueue system for Solaris, adding more complications like different match sizes, everyone know something will definitely go wrong.
Bistrorider, on 27 October 2020 - 12:11 AM, said:
Sounds interesting, would add another depth of complexity, whether for better or for worse.
#58
Posted 27 October 2020 - 03:46 PM
Bistrorider, on 27 October 2020 - 12:11 AM, said:
So how about allowing Sphere players to take one clan mech into Faction? And the same on other side: Allow Clans players to take one IS mech into Faction. Do like one month of tests. It could be funny, it can make some matches more even, or just more surprising, funny etc. Just to honor salvage, looting, and scrap collecting - one of the coolest feature in MW universe.
Believe at one point PGI said that they couldn't do mixed teams of Clan and IS and with the mechs relating to those tech lines it was a no go for the matches within the structure of FP. You do get that salvage bonus in c-bills at the end of the matches. It might be more interesting to get that in components and maybe that's what it was doing right at the start when there was also a repair cost. Someone else would have to verify that.
Still, salvage in items does make it feel like you walk away from a particular battle with some loot and could be an incentive to play FP.
We have had events in the past where we did get items from loot bags. Plus there is the supply cache's. Salvage is also a big part of mercenary contracts if you look at games like HBS Battletech and MW5 and it would be nice to have that level of complexity with it. Not sure that is something that could be done to extend to mechs or parts of mechs but just getting equipment could be something as there are elements of it already.
Yondu Udonta, on 27 October 2020 - 05:13 AM, said:
Sounds too complex for PGI to program, they can't even do a multiqueue system for Solaris, adding more complications like different match sizes, everyone know something will definitely go wrong.
Lostech programming is real.
There are some additional steps to re-implementing something like the war vote and determining planets but it was all there before in some fashion.
Even the tug of war is essentially wins on one side vs wins on another but instead of that being a back and forth meter linked to phases and missions it shouldn't be too difficult to just have it as a running total for each faction for the duration of the attack phase and work out the results at the end.
I would suggest longer attack phases and far fewer planets so each planet has significance. (Bit like the skill tree issue)
Even the variations in the team sizes for the matches.
When we have the private lobby where we can unlock team sizes and do things like 3v3 5v5 4v4 8v8 or whatever we fancy you would think this sort of change in the match maker is not out of reach.
Personally, the biggest issue facing the game is just being able to get games and having a match maker that can manage different team sizes would go a long way towards increasing participation. The more people that can be seen playing the more it will attract players.
Return to the mode things like faction identity, the planetary conquest and other incentives that add some depth and there is a lot of attraction to it.
Add in tweaks like adjusting tonnage, timers, points and object health and we'd be saying the mode looks pretty robust.
#59
Posted 28 October 2020 - 02:25 AM
50 50, on 27 October 2020 - 03:46 PM, said:
Sure, salvage system is somehow present in MWO, like with supply caches and Sollaris caches. I'm not a big supporter of getting components from battlefield and repair system in multi game. It could go like: all mechs for free and I think players should buy their mechs or get them from the events.
H'm from my laic perspective it's only about changing drop deck and choosing one mech of other side For better or worse. Sure you still should have an option to go full sphere or clan deck, voluntary thing. If it's impossible - tough luck. But we can go any mech in any of the MWO game modes. Is it really sucha gap that you can't add that option to FP?
#60
Posted 28 October 2020 - 02:53 AM
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