65 replies to this topic

[LordNothing]

i didn't want to say anything about troll commanders in that post because that's not really constructive. but every now and again you will get somone to take command who just wants to get everyone killed, or use them as cannon fodder to pad their stats, or maybe its just a noob that wants to give command a shot and just doesnt know the mode that well. ive maybe seen this twice since phase one, so its pretty rare and most commanders are worth their weight in gold.

but i hate seeing an excellent commander pretty much go 'screw it' and give up because nobody wants to listen or worse when they show blatant disrespect.

Edited by LordNothing, 06 October 2023 - 05:35 PM.

[Half Ear]

LordNothing, on 06 October 2023 - 05:30 PM, said:

i didn't want to say anything about troll commanders in that post because that's not really constructive. but every now and again you will get somone to take command who just wants to get everyone killed, or use them as cannon fodder to pad their stats, or maybe its just a noob that wants to give command a shot and just doesnt know the mode that well. ive maybe seen this twice since phase one, so its pretty rare and most commanders are worth their weight in gold.

but i hate seeing an excellent commander pretty much go 'screw it' and give up because nobody wants to listen or worse when they show blatant disrespect.

A commander not dropping as part of a group, even a small group, would be rough for anyone unless the drop includes players said commander has previously/historically dropped with and those people are willing to follow his lead.

And there are no real... chatrooms that would allow players to help other players, almost everything has to be done via 3rd party programs/websites, etc. Timeframe-wise, PGI didnt add in-game Teamspeak until a few months AFTER CW (aka FP) had gone live. Everyone had been dependent on TS outside the game.

[LordNothing]

Half Ear, on 06 October 2023 - 06:03 PM, said:

A commander not dropping as part of a group, even a small group, would be rough for anyone unless the drop includes players said commander has previously/historically dropped with and those people are willing to follow his lead.

And there are no real... chatrooms that would allow players to help other players, almost everything has to be done via 3rd party programs/websites, etc. Timeframe-wise, PGI didnt add in-game Teamspeak until a few months AFTER CW (aka FP) had gone live. Everyone had been dependent on TS outside the game.

in game mic support could be better, perhaps make it available in the lobby as well as in game. so you can say things like "bring rage", or my personal favorite "crab rush", while you still can make changes to your deck. i prefer in-game chat, but you will always have those that prefer the 3rd party utilities. i do not like ts and i like discord even less. discord especially is not very secure, its always got some cve listed for it, and its definitely one of those apps where you're the product. i generally think its better for everyone if the in-game chat was a lot better.

having a bunch of small groups on their own private channels, and where the skittles in the match have no idea what any of them are doing, its not very team play. if the game could pipe audio from 3rd party apps better, that might be a worthwhile feature. up to now the only way to make them play nice is have somebody parrot calls to the in-game chat, which is kind of splitting your attention too much from the game.

[kalashnikity]

Toxic? The old Solaris 7 had the most toxic players i've ever seen. At least some of them, especially the ones with dedicated Solaris builds who obviously spent all their time in solaris, and their mom's basement.

[Curccu]

kalashnikity, on 08 October 2023 - 09:19 PM, said:

Toxic? The old Solaris 7 had the most toxic players i've ever seen. At least some of them, especially the ones with dedicated Solaris builds who obviously spent all their time in solaris, and their mom's basement.

Having optimized build for game mode is toxic? Well I'm toxic player then...

[Nathan White]

Curccu, on 09 October 2023 - 12:21 AM, said:

Having optimized build for game mode is toxic? Well I'm toxic player then...

If you win the match, you are toxic. It's simple logic

[Curccu]

Nathan White, on 09 October 2023 - 02:06 AM, said:

If you win the match, you are toxic. It's simple logic

More like if your goal is to win the match... that stuff is toxic, everybody should just have fun and not even try.

[Sjorpha]

So when we are talking about "toxicity" does that mean things like verbal abuse, team killing, cheating and so forth?

Or are people actually thinking there is some kind of "toxicity" in playing well, coordinating as a team, planning builds and tactics and grouping up with your unit?

If it's the latter, I'm sorry to say but that's an extremely weird mindset to have in a competitive pvp game like this. Are you expecting people to play bad on purpose? To not play with their unit? To use bad builds? To not improve tactics and strategy as a team?

Faction Play, formerly Community Warfare, is built for units and teams. It is the mode where they can play together and coordinate, note that there is no other game mode suited for unit play unless you are a comp team playing in tournaments and such which most units are not.

That brings us to the other weirdness of the conversation, the idea that Faction Play is full of elite comp players. This is a complete delusion, the units you are facing in Faction Play are not comp teams and very few of them are comp players. They may be better at the game than you and they may be playing together as a unit, but they are still casual players who play for fun. They just think being in a unit and putting some thought and effort into their play sessions is more fun than solo dropping. Which it is imo, getting a unit vs unit game in FP is and always has been the most fun you can have in MWO, so if you haven't tried it you should.

If you remove large groups from Faction Play you are essentially kicking casual units out of MWO completely, and you are removing the main reason FP was created in the first place.

I could see an argument for making special newbie events for FP and turn groups off during them, just so inexperienced players could try it out in a softer environment a couple days.

Other than that you simply have to accept that solo dropping in FP takes a lot of skill, it's not the way to start playing the mode at all. You start by tagging along a big group of more experienced players, and then you can solo drop when you're good enough.

Edited by Sjorpha, 09 October 2023 - 09:44 AM.

[-K H A N]

Ohh a manager !! ohhh everyone, you better listen. He's a manager so knows better than the rest of us. We are lucky to have a manager tell us how everything is wrong. A manager !! an actual manager !! Manager.
Shame he can't manage to learn how the game mode works.
P.S M A N A G E R ! ! ! ! !

Edited by -K H A N, 09 October 2023 - 01:14 PM.

[VeeOt Dragon]

if just being a place for Units and Large teams to play then just turn it into another Que (you can keep the drop decks) and get rid of those special rewards that you can only get by playing FP. then i would agree that its just a place for large units. done (even add an extra disclaimer that says "LARGE UNITS ONLY" if thats your view of the mode), now its just another game mode. don't dangle nice rewards in the nose of new players and say "oh sorry this is only for the elites you can't play here. keep your noob and casual gamer butts out" besides we have enough events now days that honestly we wouldn't lose anything by getting rid of those faction loyalty rewards

[Duke Falcon]

VeeOt Dragon, on 09 October 2023 - 10:31 PM, said:

if just being a place for Units and Large teams to play then just turn it into another Que (you can keep the drop decks) and get rid of those special rewards that you can only get by playing FP. then i would agree that its just a place for large units. done (even add an extra disclaimer that says "LARGE UNITS ONLY" if thats your view of the mode), now its just another game mode. don't dangle nice rewards in the nose of new players and say "oh sorry this is only for the elites you can't play here. keep your noob and casual gamer butts out" besides we have enough events now days that honestly we wouldn't lose anything by getting rid of those faction loyalty rewards

The real rewards of faction loyalty is not those CBills, mech bays and other stuffs. The ranks! The feeling you bear a certain rank of a certain faction. I were pretty happy when acquired my current star captain status because I felt I worked for that, competed against betters and still I succeed to achieve it! This you can not get from QP where sometimes I feel shame got involved in some matches.
And noone may ever think that QP is not toxic! F**king toxic-fest sometimes to a point you really want to kill some f@**ts for real. Not certain modes toxic for any given players but a bunch of given players toxic and poison the whole game. QP has only two (three) advantages: Group drop with friends, no FAIT and excellent for test your builds before bring them to FP...

[Knownswift]

kalashnikity, on 08 October 2023 - 09:19 PM, said:

obviously spent all their time in solaris, and their mom's basement.

I'll have you know as an elder millennial I inherited this house, and I'm going to flaunt the hell out of this small piece of boomer wealth.

Also building mechs for Solaris was the whole point. If it weren't it would be stock mode only and you'd probably still cry about toxic compies.

Solaris builds are a thing. And you couldn't sit on solaris "all day" after week 2 of launch unless there was an event.

Edited by Knownswift, 11 October 2023 - 12:41 PM.

[LordNothing]

Sjorpha, on 09 October 2023 - 09:42 AM, said:

So when we are talking about "toxicity" does that mean things like verbal abuse, team killing, cheating and so forth?

Or are people actually thinking there is some kind of "toxicity" in playing well, coordinating as a team, planning builds and tactics and grouping up with your unit?

If it's the latter, I'm sorry to say but that's an extremely weird mindset to have in a competitive pvp game like this. Are you expecting people to play bad on purpose? To not play with their unit? To use bad builds? To not improve tactics and strategy as a team?

Faction Play, formerly Community Warfare, is built for units and teams. It is the mode where they can play together and coordinate, note that there is no other game mode suited for unit play unless you are a comp team playing in tournaments and such which most units are not.

That brings us to the other weirdness of the conversation, the idea that Faction Play is full of elite comp players. This is a complete delusion, the units you are facing in Faction Play are not comp teams and very few of them are comp players. They may be better at the game than you and they may be playing together as a unit, but they are still casual players who play for fun. They just think being in a unit and putting some thought and effort into their play sessions is more fun than solo dropping. Which it is imo, getting a unit vs unit game in FP is and always has been the most fun you can have in MWO, so if you haven't tried it you should.

If you remove large groups from Faction Play you are essentially kicking casual units out of MWO completely, and you are removing the main reason FP was created in the first place.

I could see an argument for making special newbie events for FP and turn groups off during them, just so inexperienced players could try it out in a softer environment a couple days.

Other than that you simply have to accept that solo dropping in FP takes a lot of skill, it's not the way to start playing the mode at all. You start by tagging along a big group of more experienced players, and then you can solo drop when you're good enough.

i generally find gatekeeping to be the bulk of the toxicity. this attitude that this mode is theirs alone and not for the unwashed masses. they are the ones who tend to drive population numbers into the dirt. for example the way fp queue works is prioritizing teams first, so why are so many teams fighting skittles? did they all get on discord and plan that? gerrymandering the queue i call it. hell i saw some of that during the last event. you would figure with such plannings you could idk, coordinate with potential opponents that can give you a decent game. hell that should have been a feature. idk how playing turkey shoot after turkey shoot can be fun. i dont generally find stomps as fulfilling as clinch wins or well fought losses.

there is some team shooting or the attitude that if you are a seasoned fp player, you get to shoot your team mates if they do something they don't like. it can be as bs as someone's build choice. i once saw a lancemate vaporize another for packing a bunch of lerms. its bad enough when its just one ******, but when half the unit is doing it its rather off putting, especially to new or unskilled players. its sort of like in grade school where the 6th graders pick on the 1st graders. what we have here are middle aged nerds trying to get some payback for all the swirlies they received in grade school. anyway in the end they got what they wanted, fp is mostly dead barring an event, but at least there aren't any skittles, and the units are pretty dead too.

all elite players? no. true elite players are rare, mwowc types, usually respectable (unless they get caught cheating). they are usually the ones that hop teams when the game gets too easy for them. i win enough to stay interested if the wait times were more acceptable. i solo, but ive been playing the mode long enough to know what works and what doesn't. no its not the elite players but the elitist attitude that people who play fp are special and get to be the mode police. such players are not really all that elite, though im sure they think of themselves as such out of shear narcissism. it doesnt help when you got a guy on comms calling targets from his wall hack, that he admitted running (previous fp event).

i remember when ms dominated through shear numbers, not an exceptional hard team to beat, but by flooding the queue with a ginormous unit, they would grab a larger proportion of the skittles and get ahead by farm alone. i dont really want to lump them with the "elitists", some of those guys were great to fight with/against, and i even considered joining at one point. this was more a game design issue and a team that figured out how to put it to their advantage. the size of that unit was too big to be sustainable and is the reason why unit recruitment is so bloody expensive. was that a good move? no. it killed units off entirely. but ms needed to be limited somehow, otherwise everyone would be in it and there would be no-one to fight.

much of the problems with the mode i feel come from pgi's inaction. fp wasnt supposed to be endgame content, it was supposed to be 'the game' and replace the beta qp arena shooter we ended up getting as the primary mode. many people who had been funding the game closed there wallets over it. many founders flat up left. pgi asked some top fp players how to fix the mode, and didnt include feedback from other types of players in their focus group. simply shutting down the more anticompetitive behaviors would have been a big improvement.

also the skittles weren't innocent either. many of them were chasing mechbays and other rewards in the ranking trees, playing poorly to farm barely viable amounts of damage when they should have been attacking. games where nobody would budge to open the gates. i think i was even tked once because i tried to open them. you get a couple of those and then you get a couple more who realize these idiots arent going to push and set up to trade the rest of the match never entering the enemy base. almost every game had a few of those, and they did just as much damage to the population as the elitists. take those damn trees out, or make them apply to the whole game. no reason to have people play a mode they hate for a damn mechbay. if you enjoy playing it that should be its own reward.

[Ignatius Audene]

U got the "mm" totally wrong. When Pgi designed the mm, the where under the impression, that there will be multiple grouped pugga etc at the same time. Then the mm would priority the full group a vs max group b+C and best pugs. BUT this situation never comes up . Currently it's just: if u are in a group and sitting with 17 pugs stacking defends, u are "guaranteed" a spot. So if the rare occurrence of 12 pugs on Team A vs 12 man jgx and 12 puggas on side B comes up, the "mm" will throw the pugs vs the pre-made instead of doing its job. U need no backdoor arrangement for a bad system to fail. The usual def stack doesn't help much either.

At least in EU Prime there are barely any groups and that 2 groups could hunt each other is even more rare. Then U still need to first know / recognise have someone on your friendliest and or need discord / TS information. I would love a proper lobby TS (official Pgi) where people could arrange matches (good old soccer method etc.). But that's not a thing. And since days of random TS groups are over, at least I don't have up to date contact info.

I doubt, u actually faced premades that often but more the usual def stack

Edited by Ignatius Audene, 12 October 2023 - 12:12 AM.

[VeeOt Dragon]

LordNothing, on 11 October 2023 - 07:41 PM, said:

there is some team shooting or the attitude that if you are a seasoned fp player, you get to shoot your team mates if they do something they don't like. it can be as bs as someone's build choice. i once saw a lancemate vaporize another for packing a bunch of lerms. its bad enough when its just one ******, but when half the unit is doing it its rather off putting, especially to new or unskilled players. its sort of like in grade school where the 6th graders pick on the 1st graders. what we have here are middle aged nerds trying to get some payback for all the swirlies they received in grade school. anyway in the end they got what they wanted, fp is mostly dead barring an event, but at least there aren't any skittles, and the units are pretty dead too.

yeah back in the day when i actually played FP i got TKed a couple times just for bringing an LRM boat alongside the typical verbal abuse (my decks back then often started with my LRM Catapult if the map was good for it with other kinds of mechs filling the rest). after about the second time i just started filling my drop deck with LRM boats just to piss them off. what was funny is i often did better kill/KMDD than many of those complaining about my noob tubes. mind you this was back before LRM got the nerf hammer (i don't mention damage because LRM could do a butt ton of damage with sometimes not all that many kills). it didn't stop me from getting TKed but i would just laugh and bring out another. if they wanted to lose for the sake of their "elite" mindset then let them i'm gonna try and have fun.

after i did a few loot bag events though where i got plenty of MC and some nice free mechs (a couple of those events used to even give you unique Heroes of whatever the next new mech to be released was like with the x-mas one that gave a hero Roughneck and Sunspider (you had to wait till the mech pack came out to get it but still nice) alongside a instant free mech) i just didn't bother with FP anymore. now that we have more regular events that give mechs/MC i just don't see the point in even Playing FP (ok if they did an event with a bunch of FRR themed rewards i might just long enough to get em)

hindsight is 20/20 and i didn't start playing MWO until it became Free to play but if they wanted FP to thrive i think it would have been better to have it split into two modes one with a proper MM alongside a FP like what we have today. it might have given the mode more longevity. then again it might not have who knows.

Edited by VeeOt Dragon, 12 October 2023 - 02:19 AM.

[LordNothing]

Ignatius Audene, on 11 October 2023 - 10:30 PM, said:

U got the "mm" totally wrong. When Pgi designed the mm, the where under the impression, that there will be multiple grouped pugga etc at the same time. Then the mm would priority the full group a vs max group b+C and best pugs. BUT this situation never comes up . Currently it's just: if u are in a group and sitting with 17 pugs stacking defends, u are "guaranteed" a spot. So if the rare occurrence of 12 pugs on Team A vs 12 man jgx and 12 puggas on side B comes up, the "mm" will throw the pugs vs the pre-made instead of doing its job. U need no backdoor arrangement for a bad system to fail. The usual def stack doesn't help much either.

At least in EU Prime there are barely any groups and that 2 groups could hunt each other is even more rare. Then U still need to first know / recognise have someone on your friendliest and or need discord / TS information. I would love a proper lobby TS (official Pgi) where people could arrange matches (good old soccer method etc.). But that's not a thing. And since days of random TS groups are over, at least I don't have up to date contact info.

I doubt, u actually faced premades that often but more the usual def stack

simply stacking defends is enough to gerrymander the queue. hell they don't even need to know they are doing it. lets say youre a team captain, you know its easier to win defend, so you pick defend to improve your win rate and thus your unit standing. all the other unit commanders behind you do the same thing. pugs usually go for the lower pop queue, because wait times are horrible. some got wise and also started stacking defends. for awhile it wasn't unusual to see 3 teams in one side and 3 players in the other. give players an easy mode button and they will press it.

this seems like a queue bottleneck that could be resolved by simply randomizing attack vs defend. take away the easy button. queue manipulation would then require willful intent. that would be easier to crack down on, but requires some policing. but you can make it so its impossible, which is more realistic, since a passive system is more turn key and doesn't require staffing. go with a monolithic queue so all players/teams come from the same bucket. of course then you lose factions, you get teams made out of both clan and is players/groups. but with crossover urbies and annis, tiny fragmented units dropping together and dogs and cats living together, i really dont think anyone would notice or even care anymore. what you could do is make faction a more general thing, anyone can join a faction, then every time you win a match (any queue) while wearing your colors, your faction gets a point. then the faction with the most points at the end of the month gets to be faction of the month with faction themed items as rewards.

mm probibly still wont work, the pop isnt there, i knew that it wouldn't work before they wasted dev time on it. if the last attempt to fix faction play did anything it was turning off the pugs entirely. you cant grow the mode if you cant get more people enthusiastic about playing it. and it makes me question whether this mode-in-decay deserves any more dev time at all. events are good though, its pretty much the only thing that gets the pop up enough to make it worth playing. still not enough to make mm work, but wait times under 10 minutes are nice.

Edited by LordNothing, 12 October 2023 - 07:55 AM.

[Horseman]

ConquerorClass, on 04 October 2023 - 11:13 PM, said:

But as a "Manager" in my workplace, I see Faction play as completely toxic to New players,
segregating, isolating and frustrating.

FP is not, and never was, intended to be new player friendly. It's supposed to be an endgame mode where you go with good mechs and at least a shred of competence rattling in your skull... somewhere. There's a warning to that effect, and you ignore it at your peril.

[Horseman]

VeeOt Dragon, on 05 October 2023 - 10:32 PM, said:

to those who say that noobs or casuals should stay out then they should remove all those nice extra rewards for playing FP that draw in those new players. (i know back when i was still a newbie the big draw for FP was those free mech bays, hell i even had a trial mech in my first drop deck because back then they didn't give out anywhere near the MC and other rewards as they do today so getting enough mech bays to put together a FP drop deck was a whole lot harder. hell there were only two or three events the whole year (mind you they were Loot bag events so there is that)). this would likely stop any new players at all from ever even considering the mode so the toxic "elite" can just stay in FP and watch the match search screen for hours

That was then. Now we have a free mech and mechbay every damn month and the "nice extra rewards" barely matter.

Quote

then again the toxic Elitist mind set has already nearly killed the mode so why bother at all, no amount of game alteration will change this.

It's a game. People don't like losing, so they will play to win. When getting a FP match takes as long as they usually do, YES people ARE going to be salty that a clueless newbie is weighing down their team.

Imagine that you queue up for a game and someone asks how to shoot weapons.

Edited by Horseman, 12 October 2023 - 08:12 AM.

[LordNothing]

Horseman, on 12 October 2023 - 07:53 AM, said:

FP is not, and never was, intended to be new player friendly. It's supposed to be an endgame mode where you go with good mechs and at least a shred of competence rattling in your skull... somewhere. There's a warning to that effect, and you ignore it at your peril.

it was supposed to be "the game". "endgame content" is what they started calling it when they realized their plan was flawed and the bulk of the player base started rejecting it. sometimes i wonder if they left it in to avoid a lawsuit.

Edited by LordNothing, 12 October 2023 - 10:20 AM.

[An6ryMan69]

Some people do quite like FP as it is.

I am definitely not one of them, but I don't think its a problem to have a little FP tab in the game and let people jump in there if they want. FP may be a useful tool for pulling some groups out of QP, where they are a bit of a plague on casual solo players, so that's a benefit as far as I can tell.

I also don't really think anyone is seriously looking at why so many people don't do FP, even for high payout events, so probably no benefit in complaining about it. Just vote with your feet.