63 replies to this topic

[C337Skymaster]

Voice of Kerensky, on 24 November 2020 - 09:16 PM, said:

Someone complained that they got tired of the same prize warhorn at the end of the every season. Hahahahhaaaa!!! XD I love you, PGI! P.S. Be careful with your wishes, guys, they may come true. Only not at all in the way you would like.

As the person who keeps bitching about that (or one of the few who do), I'm honestly okay with it. It's frankly getting annoying having a larger and larger segment of useless warhorns that I have to scroll past to find what I'm looking for, and it's depressing actually dreading getting a particular reward. If we could sell cockpit items for even 1/10th their purchase cost, that'd be amazing. Anything that has a "quantity" to it, and isn't simply an unlock. Then we could sell certain items, and actually buy what we want to use in-game. For example, I have 10 "dish" warhorns that I'll never use, because they came with the Supernova and I'm only putting them on the Supernova, so I've got 4 in use and 10 left over. Never mind all the standing/hanging items... Non-purchasable warhorns might be a different story: there's no "cost" to give back 10% of, and they're a record of past performance ("I won that one in that event", etc), but it'd be nice if they weren't an eye/earsore.

[C337Skymaster]

Bistrorider, on 25 November 2020 - 12:56 AM, said:

MY WARHORN!

WERE IS IT?

LOL

That one's actually in-game. It came with the Flea, and is listed as the "Meep" warhorn. Go nuts!

[ghost1e]

Matt Newman, on 24 November 2020 - 03:20 PM, said:

People in this tread complain about the rewards removal when they haven't played Solaris in 4 seasons.
Meanwhile the top earner in Solaris mode earned 47,250 MC in the last 3 seasons.

I may not be that top earner, but I am certainly close with 41,750 MC in the last 3 seasons.

so from that perspective, let me say that I see the reason for dropping decals and warhorns (maybe doing decals for overall top 3 would be nice, as those decals are impossible to earn now, but that's just a very minor point and not really of relevance)

in addition to that, I personally feel like top 10 rewards should not be the same for 4th and 10th, and the difference between second and first is way too high, especially in MC. lowering first place MC is a must imho, as a single player can theoretically gain 70k MC every 3 months (Now, I know noone who's gotten that, and my closest was ~27k, but that's still WAY too much for just playing 125 matches in 2v2s as a CS top 12 comp player, which practically almost guarantees top3)

Edited by TheUltimateGhost, 26 November 2020 - 11:21 AM.

[Shaky Snake]

PGI: We want to work with the community to develop the game - tell us what you want!

Community: Give us content!

PGI: We're now making less content.

Where does the effort go if we're not seeing any new content, balance issues being addressed, or other bugs being fixed? THe loss of a warhorn would be easier to understand if we could see some movement elsewhere on the platform.

[General Solo]

RickySpanish, on 24 November 2020 - 01:07 PM, said:

So to further incentivise participation in this mode, you decided to remove some rewards? Surely I am misunderstanding this? That makes zero sense, why not just keep the previous season's decals and warhorn?

When I read the first part of the post I got a little excited, I thought maybe there was something cool being added to get players to take another look at the mode. But no, the exact opposite is the case.

By the way, while you're lowering expectations, would you mind lowering new player tiers as well?

Imo Solaris is not the least queue because of rewards

[Lurm God]

Matt Newman, on 24 November 2020 - 03:20 PM, said:

Creating war horns and Decals is not "too much work"
It just doesn't make sense to do it for the least played mode in the game.
(Which is also getting gamed by the same players season after season to farm MC, C-Bills, and GSP.)
We (Daeron and I) have been examining the feedback of the players but we are also examining the data of what people are playing. We have to consider both sides.

People in this tread complain about the rewards removal when they haven't played Solaris in 4 seasons.
Meanwhile the top earner in Solaris mode earned 47,250 MC in the last 3 seasons.

We're poised to take action on your concerns and we're all chomping at the bit here to transform MWO next year.

This move today just happen to be the right time for me to remove 1 thing that takes up resources so we can start using those resources for the greater good in the future.

I would WAY rather have new Warhorns and Decals for everyone to earn than just the same top 100 Solaris players season after season.

Is gaming the system just not losing? Or the win traders who should just be removed from rewards?

[OldTeef]

I think if the incentives were larger during slow times and perhaps if one could even wager their c-bills... either way. I think something dramatic needs to be done to bring people to the table.

[Fae Puka]

Excellent - PGI has acknowledged that S7 is the least popular mode and will be diverting resources to bolster other aspects of the game.

Late coming, but a welcome approach!

[Agent Super Chicken]

About time to incentivize players to attend Solaris for 25 matches!! Well done.
You'd have to pay me 50-100% more than that in MC and CBills to stick with it, but it's on the right track at least.
Hey guys, you know what would be funny? Let's have new players go into Solaris with a trial mech that has zero skill points. Bad build, no know-how, no player skill, and zero skill points. That'll get the new player population excited!

We were talking earlier about maybe putting 45-50 skill points on the trial mechs. But in Solaris, should be 85-91 skill points for trials, no exceptions. Heck, the high number of SP vs QP trial mechs might even cause new players to be attracted to Solaris and dabble a little harder.
Or make the Solaris 25 game participation bonus 10x the size, so new players can buy their own decent mechs.

[Horseman]

Agent Super Chicken, on 01 December 2020 - 07:15 AM, said:

We were talking earlier about maybe putting 45-50 skill points on the trial mechs. But in Solaris, should be 85-91 skill points for trials, no exceptions. Heck, the high number of SP vs QP trial mechs might even cause new players to be attracted to Solaris and dabble a little harder.

Or just make the trial mechs 1:1 copies of the most effective mechs in the top 10 for past several seasons. There, done.

[ghost1e]

Horseman, on 01 December 2020 - 09:23 AM, said:

Or just make the trial mechs 1:1 copies of the most effective mechs in the top 10 for past several seasons. There, done.

everyone would use those, no incentive for rich players to buy niche solaris mechs then

unless they're unskilled, in which case they'd get stomped a lot i feel like, judging by the fact way smaller things can decide a solaris match in the mechlab

[Horseman]

TheUltimateGhost, on 04 December 2020 - 09:59 AM, said:

unless they're unskilled, in which case they'd get stomped a lot i feel like, judging by the fact way smaller things can decide a solaris match in the mechlab

Unskilled or with survival tree only, either way it would still be an improvement over the current trials.

[C337Skymaster]

Two questions: what if the most effective 'mech in a division is a hero 'mech? (Kraken, whatever the Hellspawn Hero is called, etc). Do we REALLY want the Div 2 trial 'mech to be a Piranha-1 MG boat?

[Horseman]

C337Skymaster, on 07 December 2020 - 12:28 PM, said:

what if the most effective 'mech in a division is a hero 'mech? (Kraken, whatever the Hellspawn Hero is called, etc).

Should that make a difference? It might actually generate some sales for those mechs, so there could be an upside to it

Quote

Do we REALLY want the Div 2 trial 'mech to be a Piranha-1 MG boat?

That is a good concern. I guess some degree of human oversight might be called for.

[Extra Guac]

If you remove the Solaris rewards entirely, you're obviously killing Solaris.

If you kill Solaris without introducing any new MWO content to replace it, then all you're doing is making MWO worse.

If the Solaris rewards are too large, then you could simply reduce the magnitude of the Solaris rewards (without removing them entirely).

I remain unimpressed by these proposed changes.

[GARION26]

Combine the divisions. It may cause imbalance at the top of the pyramid but will improve the base

[Horseman]

GARION26, on 14 January 2021 - 03:26 AM, said:

It may cause imbalance at the top of the pyramid

It will annihilate the viability of multiple chassis. Give it enough time and the entire mode would devolve into a copy of what we have in Div 1 right now

[GARION26]

Horseman, on 14 January 2021 - 09:49 AM, said:

It will annihilate the viability of multiple chassis. Give it enough time and the entire mode would devolve into a copy of what we have in Div 1 right now

I recognize you are a more experienced player and appreciate the input. However two points:
1) Given what I understand of the meta per division there are 2 ish chassis at the top of each division and then also rans. The differentiation into divisions is highly important for the people on the top of the pyramid who are using the various specifics builds on very specific chassis that tend to dominate a given division (a very small number of people who play significant hours of Solaris), and less important for folks at the bottom of the pyramid who may essentially just be using their QP builds in Solaris or not have enough of a stable to specialize in Solaris only builds. I've definitely been steam rolled in Solaris by just trying it out with a QP build - or even with adjusting my usual QP build for what I think would be good in Solaris.

2) The total size (as per the posts at the start of this thread) of the Solaris population is very very low and it's largely a small number of competitors who are always at the top of the pyramid, with limited use by most of the MWO playerbase. Is the system as it's designed making use of the resources invested to create it? Or is it largely wasted programming resources with limited player engagement.


Fundamentally too many matchmaking buckets for a very small population of users (consistent as a problem across multiple areas of MWO.)

I don't think MWO Solaris play has the total plays volume to need really stratify the entire population of mechs (roughly 1000 variants?) into a meaningful 7 divisions with significant competitive separation between them. And those divisions slow down matchmaking significantly as finding the division with an odd number of competitors (almost always 1 for me) takes a bit of looking.

Maybe I'm missing something but in the 10 months I've been playing has the divisions been readjusted? When the engine gets changed (patches that change missile or TAG behavior) does that result in real changes in the divisions. Obviously no new mechs but when the meta changed in earlier seasons did they ever change divisions.

The division into so many buckets prevents people in the bottom of the competitive pyramid from logging many plays in the game, it slows down matchmaking significantly. Stomps are also an issue - and that's a problem from Mech Build imblances but with a low population it also probably results from skill mismatches (though I don't know the nuances of the Solaris matchmaker.)

Okay then lets make 2 divisions - one including whatever folks feel the best of the best are (that may be more then the current top division and might be top ), and then everyone else. Yes something may rise to the top of the 'best of the rest' bucket - then move it to Division 1 after a season and consider moving the bottom performer from Division 1 down to division 2.

And of course I'd suggest one thing I've mentioned in other threads - let people queing up for one mode of MWO see wait times in other modes and 'drop' in a way that allows them to pick up the first available match in any mode _if_ they desire. There is some developer work involved but it works well in some other game systems (Walking War Robots)

Edited by GARION26, 20 January 2021 - 11:18 AM.

[Darkstrand]

I believe a better solution would be to rotate the active divisions, even going down to one division per season or cut seasons into segments with each division.

[berby 680]

Ich würde Solaris gerne öfter Sielen wenn ich wüste ob jemand in der warte Liste ist bekomme meistens nichts angezeigt ob Jemand da ist .und warte 2 min für nichts