107 replies to this topic

[InnerSphereNews]

Greetings MechWarriors,

As we close the 13th Season and start the 14th Season of Solaris we have decided to remove the Season Ending Leaderboard Rewards.

• That means Season 14 will not have any end-of-season leaderboard rewards (MC, C-bill, and GXP) for playing Solaris Mode.
• Solaris mode will still allow you to get sponsors and earn Loot crates ETC.
• Solaris mode will still contribute to all Events. (Where the criteria are achievable in Solaris)

Why have we done this?

We have decided to remove the Solaris Season Leaderboard rewards due to a few reasons:

• Solaris Mode is the least played mode in MWO with each season having a declining amount of players.
• We do not believe adding more rewards is the way to attract players back to the mode.
• Some players either exploit to gain a leaderboard spot, or happen to play and win against the same people over and over again.

What are we doing to fix this?

• We don't have a solution in place yet, however we are still interested in finding a solution for Solaris mode.
• One possible solution has been the idea of an Event Queue with one Division at a time to reduce the # of the overall queues.
• Or it has been proposed to let players queue for any or all modes at once.

Any solution we pursue will be significant work and take place in the future.

I do want to take a minute to circle back on where we are and how we got here. When we started out this year we wrote out our Guiding Goals for MWO.

The objective of project reborn is to Improve MWO in these Key areas:

• Engage current Player Base
• Improve the New Player Experience
• Attract New Players / Re-engage players who left
• Add Localization and New Regions
• Improve existing content 'Mechs and Maps
• Improve Features and Gameplay
• Reconfigure the existing game modes to maximize value
• Add New High-Value Content

Everything we have done this year has been filtered through these goals and as you can see we still have a lot of work to do. Fixing Solaris fits into the goal of "Reconfigure the existing game modes to maximize value".

So with that said please feel free to give your feedback and ideas for Solaris Mode and for those of you who have left feedback about Solaris mode already, please know Daeron has compiled a large amount of it on our internal WIKI.

Regards,

The MechWarrior Online Team

[imhoopjones]

First.

This is sad. I needed that economy to keep up with skilling my mechs.

[Scout Derek]

not surprising at all.

[Agent Super Chicken]

It's true that numbers dwindle and a few players farm all others who enter.
I love what you're doing, and as a teacher I can say I've made errors in my approach that seem obvious in retrospect. Please let me speak plainly:
Respectfully, teacher to teacher, please take on the entire blame yourselves. (*hearts, though, for all you do!*)
You set profound rewards for doing this farming behaviour, and getting to the top and staying there, and zero reward for participation or fairness. If someone takes their foot off the gas pedal, they get 2nd in division, and that has HUGE implications for their compensation.
How could this be worse?
How about if any top players go easy on newbies, say let them get the first shot in or a 5 second head start (like my dad would go easy on me at chess when I was EIGHT years old, and LEARNING, in a competition with ASYMMETRICAL skill levels), there is a threat of banning for win trading!
To fix everything that's wrong, please flip all that 180 degrees.
Remove the rewards for winning, place ALL the rewards for engagement. You play 25 games in each category, and get at least 20 points of damage in each game, win or lose, you get the reward.
Why is this so crucial?
Because then there's a reason for people to participate - it's GREAT for new players to have more fun with the lovely game assets you guys paid to build. It's great for experienced players to have matches if they're seeking them. It's great for PGI that people are using your game in a wider variety of ways, and not getting bored with same old QP.
And what else happens?
What happens when someone does 25 matches in each division? They start to IMPROVE, as I did. And by game 25 they've won a few and it's actually a lot more fun now. Imagine that!
There's a reward system in place for involvement, so you get kickbacks in c-bills and MC that you can spend on additional mechs to play MWO in all 4 game modes (QP, FP, Solaris, Private Lobby). So it's FEASIBLE for newbies to see themselves participating, and derailing some of their mech purchases and builds and skill-ups to take to Solaris instead of somewhere else, because they're "breaking even" on the back end.
And what ELSE happens?
Well, if the reward is for being there and playing, and not a total Feast or Famine situation, you might have some top players (No, not all, lolz, I know - just some), take an interest in communicating to new players so they can train more engaging competition.
I've been the beneficiary of this with top players, more than once. I've dispensed what I know to total newbies, often.
Oh!
Yeah, one more thing - you need to change the win screen to run an extra 2 minutes.
Sometimes a more seasoned player and newbie are having a good chat after a match, sharing tips and advice, and the screen kicks them out before anything useful can be exchanged. The current system runs just long enough to facilitate insults, but not to foster community building. That's an interesting design choice. So fix that.
That's it.
You say people play as if they're being paid to club baby seals relentlessly, as if no other goals matter.
Yeah.
*glances at mountain of money you're giving them to do precisely that*...
Please and thanks.

Much love on all your recent hard work, as always.

[BodakOfSseth]

Good.

I think S7 was a cute idea and very fluffy for the universe, but it's impractical in its current incarnation. The biggest benefit was to either hold showcase 1v1 or 2v2 tournaments or to hold inter unit training or competitions.

The maps are handy, but the mode is nearly useless.

Maybe use it as a testing ground for AI pilots that you could later insert into future modes.
It would *guarantee* matches in different divisions instead of players hoping to match against a live pilot. You could even set multiple AI difficulties and try different AI settings. The maps are small, so wouldn't pathing be easier?

[Wraith 1]

Awww. Kinda sucks removing one of the only incentives to play the mode without doing anything else yet, but I'm glad it's being looked at. As flawed as Solaris is, I did really enjoy it when it had more pilots playing it, and PGI has recently been doing a much better job of actually looking at and fixing things, so I'm cautiously optimistic.

[yrrot]

S7 has a lot of systems that are good, but the mode was designed for an audience that wasn't there. Plenty of folks in the community really just wanted a free for all mode that is reminiscent of MW4 multiplayer. MWO doesn't draw in the hyper-competitive crowd in the numbers to support all of the system S7 had in place (divisions, Elo rankings, etc). Like most F2P titles, it draws a larger casual base with a smaller contingent of competitive folks (probably a glance at WoT random battles vs clan wars population would have some insight...)

My proposal to "fix" solaris would be the following:

• Remove division-based match maker (keeping the division of the mechs, but letting cross-division matches happen, reduces from 14 buckets to 2--1v1 and 2v2 queue)
  
• Scale rewards up based on division and Elo separation between players (ie, spider vs MkII-B gets bigger rewards, unless spider is high Elo and madcat is low Elo). Of course more accolades for the spider pilot that wins, right?
  
• Add rewards (via events?? or dynamic interface like call to arms??) to encourage players to pick underplayed chassis/variants

Basic idea is to make S7 a fun mode where you can run kind of whatever you feel like and still get rewarded, even if you get a bad match. The rewards scaling would help reduce the "top in division" meta that exists in the current iteration and encourage good players to play worse mechs for better rewards. This streamlines matchmaking to scale better with lower population (you only need 2 players to kick off 1v1, regardless of what mechs they queue up with), while still allowing plenty of room for growth.

That is, unless FFA is on the table, then...do that.

[AndiMech]

This really pisses me off! And why theres people who didn't play it say "good" i don't understand.
How about some people like the mode? Oh yeah, i always have problems understanding the "Me, Me and ME!" mentality.

I really had fun there! Maybe not my headsets... but looking back i had really fun!!! Why play it now?!

I found it sad that you took away the event. That was the first coffin-nail... getting rid of the 25 matches rewards is the last. I can't stop thinking you guys want to get rid of the mode, and did that on purpose!!!

Edited by AndiMech, 24 August 2021 - 02:49 PM.

[Beadhanger]

I´d stil play it, never did it for the rewards....but nobody else will so bye solaris...

[Tatze Tattmann]

Weak, nothing more to say... bye solaris i allways loved you! gj community

[AndiMech]

DAEDALOS513, on 24 August 2021 - 02:52 PM, said:

[redacted]

hey man, Solaris thread!!! stop spilling your conspiracy nonsense!

How about people who don't even play the mode, and thus have no horse in the race... kinda post on page 5 or 6 of the thread...

Edited by Ekson Valdez, 25 August 2021 - 12:51 AM.
quote clean-up

[crazytimes]

To me, the biggest issue with Solaris is the overly convoluted queue process. If it was "Select any mech and hit queue" and the matchmaker just sorted into divisions as required from there, it would be very accessible and may get enough people to actually be a meaningful mode,

[Nightbird]

Do what I posted day 1 when Solaris was surprise released if you care to salvage this mode.

1. Calculate a skill multiplier for every chassis variant mathematically (ex. 0.5x, 1x, 1.5x, etc)
2. When a player queues, their skill is their ELO x the chassis multiplier
3. There is one queue, and you can only be matched against people +- 10% of your skill value regardless of how long you wait

People want to play different mechs, don't penalize them for not picking the best in each tier. People want to have a chance of winning, don't match players with too separate skill levels.

If this doesn't make sense, I don't know what to say.

Edited by Nightbird, 24 August 2021 - 02:59 PM.

[justcallme A S H]

People have stopped playing Solaris because of Cauldron patches?

Lol... What?

People stopped playing Solaris LONG before Cauldron and more recently with the reward changes a little while back.
I mean yeah you are full of conspiracy - on this however you're just flat out incorrect because you don't even know what happened or what you're talking about.

Edited by justcallme A S H, 24 August 2021 - 03:04 PM.

[DAEDALOS513]

justcallme A S H, on 24 August 2021 - 03:04 PM, said:

People have stopped playing Solaris because of Cauldron patches?

Lol... What?

People stopped playing Solaris LONG before Cauldron and more recently with the reward changes a little while back.
I mean yeah you are full of conspiracy - on this however you're just flat out incorrect because you don't even know what happened.

Didn't say that I said it could be contributing to the fact that it's LOWER THAN EVER.. it's been on a continuous slide downwards, pgi's words.. not mine. Your changes did NOTHING to help the situation.

Your petty token nerf this patch will do nothing to alleviate the sniper fest that infests this game..

Edited by DAEDALOS513, 24 August 2021 - 03:08 PM.

[LordNothing]

i think the best thing for solaris is go to a 4-division system, one for each weight class. would also be nice to add a 4v4 mode and a match maker for the team modes. that would be my solaris wish list. not sure if that would get people to play. people who miss scouting in fp would probibly find it a better alternative. i think 4v4 with assaults only would be hella fun.

Edited by LordNothing, 24 August 2021 - 03:12 PM.

[justcallme A S H]

DAEDALOS513, on 24 August 2021 - 03:05 PM, said:

Didn't say that I said it could be contributing to the fact that it's LOWER THAN EVER.. it's been on a continuous slide downwards, pgi's words.. not mine. Your changes did NOTHING to help the situation.

Your petty token nerf this patch will do nothing to alleviate the sniper fest that infests this game..

Did nothing? You might wanna look and compare year on year population data before going any further - you know - the facts.

Otherwise you're going to look quite silly, again. When they are spelled out for you.

Edited by justcallme A S H, 24 August 2021 - 03:11 PM.

[DAEDALOS513]

justcallme A S H, on 24 August 2021 - 03:10 PM, said:

Did nothing? You might wanna look and compare year on year population data before going any further - you know - the facts.

Otherwise you're going to look quite silly, again. When they are spelled out for you.

Me silly? We're talking about SOLARIS here.. as Andi pointed out.

BTW steam charts show declines in the last 3 months..

Edited by DAEDALOS513, 24 August 2021 - 03:15 PM.

[MechNexus]

DAEDALOS513, on 24 August 2021 - 02:59 PM, said:

[redacted]

Solaris has been as dead as a doornail for as long as I can remember, and I showed up in late 2018, not sure why you're blaming the cauldron for this.

If we're to revive the mode, we're probs best off just dividing it into weight classes (or just matching people within like 10 tons either way) or something rather than the weird division thing. Keep it simple.

Edited by Ekson Valdez, 25 August 2021 - 12:56 AM.
quote clean-up

[justcallme A S H]

DAEDALOS513, on 24 August 2021 - 03:13 PM, said:

Me silly? We're talking about SOLARIS here.. as Andi pointed out.

BTW steam charts show declines in the last 3 months..

Yes and compare year on year data for the past 3 months over the past 3 years and you'll see that you're once again lacking understanding of the big picture.