4
General
Tonnage: IS and Clans to have EVEN tonnage (265 or 260 tons). While people may say that Faction Play is a pretty different game mode to Comp Play, I believe that MWO should be balanced according to the highest echelon of gameplay, which is Comp Play. The data acquired from 2019 MWO Championship Series showed that IS mechs were used more than Clan mechs, which suggests that IS mechs are better than Clan mechs overall. As such, unless significant balancing of mechs occur, I think evening out the tonnage for both sides would be an overall improvement.
Leaderboards: No big concerns about this, but allow sorting of leaderboards with other metrics such as KMDD or KDR would be preferred than just having it fixed to LP only.
Planetary Conquest: I see no reason for this feature to be removed in the first place. Having your unit's tag on a planet serves as bragging rights, which is what Faction Play/Community Warfare should be all about. The MC that comes from holding the planet also serves as an incentive for one to join an unit and engage with like-minded players. Hence I think that this essential feature of Faction Play should be brought back. However, I think that the tug-of-war system that was in place should be tweaked or removed entirely as the current active Faction Play population is unlikely to be sufficient to swing the tug-of-war past the thresholds.
Queues: The queue changes made during 'the Year of Faction Play' has been generally met with dissatisfaction. While it is nice that we can once again see how many people are currently in the queue, having the two warring Factions being confined to either the attacking or defending side has resulted in the queue usually being stacked towards the latter, which leads to increased wait times as people are unwilling to switch to the attacking side due to defender's advantage. A revert to the previous system where either side can get Siege Attack or Siege Defence would improve waiting times. Also, please remove the short narrative that goes along with every conflict phase where Faction X is fighting Faction Y for Reason Z, it is unnecessary as the majority, if not all players do not care about it. It saves up on manpower too as no one would be needed to write fictional stories, while also avoiding temporary ceasefires when there were no stories in queue. Most importantly, give Scouting its own separate queue. The majority of players do not like it when Scouting is the only mode available as other modes are preferred over it. The only reason why people who prefer non-Scouting modes over Scouting would play this game mode is when there is not enough people for 12v12 Faction Play. Vice versa, people who prefer Scouting would not engage in 12v12 Faction Play regardless of player numbers.
Units: Why is there still increasing recruitment costs for units? Why is it even a thing in a mode that is supposed to be focused on playing as a group.
Mode selection: After countless Faction Play games following the last significant update to this game mode, it has become apparent that the weightage for the currently available modes are not equal. For example, Conquest and Siege are the available modes for a conflict phase. There are 12 non-invasion maps and 6 invasion maps in the pool of Faction Play maps. However, I believe that the weightage is equally spread across all 18 maps, instead of across the two modes, so that means that there is a 2 in 3 chance that a match would be Conquest and a 1 in 3 chance that a match would be Siege (pretty sure confirmation bias isn't in play here). People who play Faction Play overwhelmingly prefer to play Siege over the other modes that are available in Quick Play, so fixing the weightage to be equally spread across the available modes would reduce instances of players getting aggravated over constantly playing a less desired game mode.
Non-Invasion Game Modes
Assault: No change
Conquest: Increase required ticket count from 1250 to either 1500 or 1750. A Conquest match in Quick Play requires 750 tickets. Faction Play has 4 times the mechs, it makes sense that the required ticket count should be significantly increased from 1250.
Domination: Timer could be extended from 90 seconds to maybe 120 seconds. On bigger maps such as Polar Highlands, 90 seconds is less than sufficient to respawn and contest the circle.
Incursion: Outside of removing this mode entirely from Faction Play, building health should be increased significantly, minimally doubled. In Quick Play, teams are unable to coordinate their mechs and as such a win via objective is rare. However, in Faction Play, teams are more likely to coordinate, dropping in full Assassin or Linebacker waves to drop the base in one wave. Increasing the overall hitpoints of the base would result in more interesting Incursion matches.
Skirmish: No change
Invasion Game Modes
Siege: Should Planetary Conquest become part of Faction Play again, I would advocate for an increase in hitpoints for the generators and Omega as there would consequently be an increase in players prioritizing objectives over kills and damage. Otherwise, I think Siege is fine currently.
Scouting: Benefits from Scouting such as Combat ID, Satellite Sweep and Radar Jammer should return, as this allows Scouting to have an impact on conflicts, with such advantages/disadvantages adding extra complexity and flavour to 12v12 Faction Play. Also, smoke diving may be an issue but I will not be addressing that as I have little regard and experience for Scouting.
If you read this whole wall of text that I have painstakingly brainstormed and typed out, then I thank you for your time. Feel free to discuss any ideas and differences that you may have, as even if we may have differing opinions I think one thing is clear, that we all want the best for Faction Play. MAKE FACTION GREAT AGAIN!
Edited by Yondu Udonta, 14 October 2020 - 12:52 AM.
