26 replies to this topic

[Naduk]

i am sure most of you have played games online before and understand the nature of Clan/guild/team/unit tags
they are usually added as a prefix to a players name and indicate that players actions represent the group

my suggestion is to create a system that allows registered units with in the game
for merc players this would be the merc unit
for house players it would be a unit created by groups of friends ect

this would function like battlefield 3's Platoon system allowing players to make/choose logo's
have leader boards for competition amongst its own member's and other fun stuff

but it would also enforce the wearing of your tags on your player name

i suggest this as a feature for a few reasons
-people in a foul mood will not be able to fill their tags with profanities before going on a griefing spree (or simply removing them to avoid backlash for their unit)
-tags are automatically added/removed from your name upon joining/leaving a unit (no need to roll new char if you leave a unit)
-players tags would always be correct according to their unit
-upset players would not be able to adorn the tags of a unit they are upset with and attempt to hurt their reputation (my BF clan has had this happen to us a few times)
-players would not be able to fill tag space with useless junk as unit membership would be required
-offensive unit names/tags could be reported and PGI would have to power to fix it (league of legends currently does this)

devs have stated there is complex rank and organizational systems in place for Mercs
so this kind of thing should be in good hands but i just hope this small feature has not been over looked

[Mautty the Bobcat]

Pretty sure PGI already has something like this swirling about in their magical land of computers and mechs. There was a mention about the creation of insignias for units, though there was no real information on it and nothing about whether it was going to be a simple "Here's a bunch of basic symbols, go nuts editing one together." or something that will allow us to upload our already made ones.

[Naduk]

ok insignias and logos not exactly what i was talking about

your sig claims your unit is Dawnstar Wolves
so your in game name would be Mautty
you make a merc corp called Dawnstar Wolves
it applies the tag DsW to your name, now you show up in chat rooms, game chat, score boards, forums ect as
[DsW] mautty

lets say i am [UNR] Naduk
you beat the pants of me in a pub match and i feel robbed due to your teams tactics (or even your personal tactics)
i go change my clan tags to [DsW] Naduk and proceed to grief anyone i come across (preferably your unit)
as there is no way for you to ever stop me or report me i can do this and wear your tags for as long as i want

lets look at something less sinister
say i apply to join your unit, i go through a week or two trial period
you find i am not really fit for duty within your unit for what ever reason
how do you stop me from just putting your tags on anyway and following your team around
or i could go around impersonating your unit and organize scrim's that your team never shows up for

how would you feel about the defacing of your units tags and your units reputation
its not nice and my Clan has been faced with this several times before

and an even less sinister view
say my unit is called Dread Sun Warriors
i would naturally wear [DSW] Naduk
are you going to be angry and tell me to remove my tags if we meet in a match ?
or would i tell you to change yours as i had mine first

if Tags were registered along with your unit none of this is an issue

battlefield 3 ALMOST got it right
you register your Platoon, you cannot have the same name as other platoons
it has leader boards and all sorts of cool stuff for its members and visitors to view
but
clan tags are just a empty field that players manually fill
i am proposing the joining of a Unit adds the tag to a players name and nothing else

**disclaimer**
i would never do any of the greifing type actions described in this post
nore would anyone in my Unit (we have received it plenty of times however)

Edited by Naduk, 26 February 2012 - 09:59 PM.

[Glodan]

I agree with Naduk. Unique clan (merc unit / group) tags would be awesome.

In pretty much every competitive game these days there are players that become household names. Starcraft has them, League of Legends has them, as I'm sure every game with a competitive scene does. Along with the legendary players come the legendary teams. Even if your clan isn't one of the teams that are feared throughout the inner sphere you can wear your tags with pride and people will be able to recognise who has anything to do with your group.

[Mautty the Bobcat]

I never said that having tags submitted with your unit would be a bad thing. I agree that it would be a good thing, and prevent a lot of mix up while also allowing unit members to be distinguished from amid the rabble of others.

I have to point out with your example of the [DsW] tag that Dread Sun Warriors would be [DSW] with a capital S. Still, both incorporate the same letters and could still become fairly confusing. You have to figure that while making 'tags' unique, this also presents the problem of a combination limit to how many tags you can have for the entire game (while still fairly large) and not all are commonly used.

A better thing to do would be to have a Warrior's 'profile' page implemented in the game and show if they're attached to a unit, if so have that unit click able and open the Unit's 'profile' page in the game as well with a full list of members. This would prevent the warrior pretending to be part of a unit and as you said, setting up fake battles, giving your unit a bad reputation, and general griefing.

Any time that I've run any sort of clan/unit or been part of one, we've made sure that things were kept fairly secure as far as fake members. All members had to be added to the roster to be considered part of the clan which was handled by 4-5 people total (Leader, maybe sub-leader, and 3-4 officers). Also, Clan warfare could again only be set up by one of these people who were also in charge of amending the roster, which prevented accusations of us not attending a fake battle. All of these were posted on a forum that the clan had by one of the people in charge, it was also listed on the main site for the unit that you HAD to contact one of those people to set something up, and that they were the only ones who could set something up with others. Anyone in the clan that violated that rule would be reprimanded by being put on probation, marked in the roster that they were and the effective date, and weren't allowed to participate in clan activities for the duration on their first offense. Second offense was a kick from the clan.

I believe unit/clan security is more about how it is handled by its members. I would still recommend the implementation of Unit pages and having it be listed somewhere on a Warrior over having tags; maybe a little popup that tell you basic info about them. Unit pages could be either website based or ingame depending on PGI's preference, either works effectively. This may just be my bias though, as I'd rather not have a clan tag cluttering up my callsign.

Edited by Mautty the Bobcat, 27 February 2012 - 04:31 AM.

[SI The Joker]

To expand on the 2 great ideas already here from Naduk and Mautty... it would be a 8 character field (call it Unit Callsign?) that allows special characters in addition to alphanumerics. For clarity.. it would need to be unique. Period. [DSW] is not the same as {DSW} which is not the same as {{DSW}}... for example. [DSW] and [DsW] however, are the same unit. Let's not be sensitive of the case!

Adding a player to your roster adds the text from your 'Unit Callsign' automatically to that player's Callsign when they play. They are going to have to implement some kind of request/approve & join/quit system to handle joining/leaving units... which I'm thinking they already have in place.

I for one am excited to see how this portion of the game pans out. I hope that managing units plays a fairly large role in the planetary conquest aspect of the game.

Edited by SI The Joker, 27 February 2012 - 06:34 AM.

[CoffiNail]

most MMO like games have this, you join a guild you get their name/tag tossed on to your name. I see no reason why it would change for MWO

[TimberJon]

I don't need to read this thread to know that the Devs have already talked this over with loremaster Bills. Unit tags have been in the mix forever. Even back on the Zone.com sysop admins were allowed to retain their faction tags. I am sure they have at least outlined a direction to take that would make us happy. This question I believe, is one of the few that should be raised in the next Dev blog / interviews.

[TimberJon]

SI The Joker, on 27 February 2012 - 06:33 AM, said:

...it would be a 8 character field...

I dunno about that man! An 8-character maximum = player restriction. Tags like XxXx>-TW-<xXxX are just silly beyond measure IMHO. How would you list your faction unit in one of today's military? on paper or in a system? They typically don't abbreviate anything.

I wonder if I would be going too far to suggest that a small icon system be developed where you register (like a tabbard?) a small graphic that goes in front of or after your name that would be authorized by a game admin which, when you click or roll over it would show a larger version of your unit logo, full name, founder/commander, website address and maybe any other pertinent info.

The devs can maybe provide pre-configured icons, an icon-building system, and allow user-submitted icons. This way, all that work you have put into your icon over the course of hours or years won't go to waste.

In your dropship, you would pull this kind of info up on your opponent or affiliate in the same way, as much info as possible. Why shouldn't we be able to represent? Every Merc wants to make a name for themselves and their unit, don't they?

Edited by TimberJon, 27 February 2012 - 09:00 AM.

[SI The Joker]

TimberJon, on 27 February 2012 - 08:58 AM, said:

I dunno about that man! An 8-character maximum = player restriction. Tags like XxXx>-TW-<xXxX are just silly beyond measure IMHO. How would you list your faction unit in one of today's military? on paper or in a system? They typically don't abbreviate anything.

I wonder if I would be going too far to suggest that a small icon system be developed where you register (like a tabbard?) a small graphic that goes in front of or after your name that would be authorized by a game admin which, when you click or roll over it would show a larger version of your unit logo, full name, founder/commander, website address and maybe any other pertinent info.

The devs can maybe provide pre-configured icons, an icon-building system, and allow user-submitted icons. This way, all that work you have put into your icon over the course of hours or years won't go to waste.

In your dropship, you would pull this kind of info up on your opponent or affiliate in the same way, as much info as possible. Why shouldn't we be able to represent? Every Merc wants to make a name for themselves and their unit, don't they?

I agree... totally ridiculous... but something like {{CJF}} is not... and that's 7 characters... You aren't trying to get down to the nats arse about which regiment you are in... just which unit. From there, yes... that could all be in your pilot profile.

I like the icons idea... but what ends up happening is that everyone winds up using the same "cool one" because they, for whatever reason, can't/won't create their own.

CoffiNail hit it on the head (pardon the pun)... this is standard stuff for MMO games... there's no reason to think that they didn't account for that in a game that absolutely relies on your unit membership. I keep saying it... but I am beyond excited about the planetary conquest part of this game!

\m/ \m/

[Felicitatem Parco]

Back in the day, on a 56k modem playing Team Fortress Classic (a game that Paul will no longer acknowledge), we would simply affix our Guild name to the front of our player gametag, but it never required more than 4 characters because we didn't have to list what subsections of which troop unit of who's military we belonged to. I was "AoE_Corsair" as I called myself Corsair and I was in the Army of Engineers guild, but nobody had to worry about huge prefixes with something like "4RFWLCD_Corsair" or whatever these long unit names have in BattleTech.

I do agree that unit tags should be affixed in-game with some kind of official Unit Roster system to prevent Unit ID Fraud.

Also, I feel like the BattleTech unit tags should be Suffixes instead of Prefixes, owing to both their long length and the fact that your Gamertag is more important than your unit tag. If someone goes out to make a unit look bad, they will wind up making themselves look bad.

Edited by Prosperity Park, 27 February 2012 - 01:32 PM.

[Havoc2]

Since this is MMO-esque and the home page on this website states RESERVE YOUR PILOT NAME! I would hazard a guess that pilot names will be unique (as in almost every other MMO) and you will not be allowed to change your name.

If you're being a ***** (bad person in case the forum censors the name for a small puncture made by a needle) then you're going to be ultimately labelled as one, you won't be able to change your name to give them a bad rep.

As to a person creating a new character in order to join a unit and make a bad name for it, well that's the fault of the unit for allowing that person in or stay.

[TimberJon]

@ }{avoc,

I analyzed the implications of the "reserve now" request about pilot names. I would push that a unit icon would not be allowed to be duplicated. How to moderate that however.. would be a deep discussion. It is always going to come down to "how can we KISS this?".

[CoffiNail]

They need to be bigger than a couple characters. For example, my 304th Assault Cluster, each trinary within the cluster has it's own tags. in game i am GB-304AC SCol CoffiNail as I am in the 304th Cluster Command Supernova, but the original unit was GB-72AT, Ghost Bear's 72nd Assault Trinary.

[SI The Joker]

CoffiNail, on 27 February 2012 - 10:27 AM, said:

They need to be bigger than a couple characters. For example, my 304th Assault Cluster, each trinary within the cluster has it's own tags. in game i am GB-304AC SCol CoffiNail as I am in the 304th Cluster Command Supernova, but the original unit was GB-72AT, Ghost Bear's 72nd Assault Trinary.

Clanners... always gotta make things more complex than they need to be! (Totally kidding!)

You did lose me on that one though, CoffiNail... that's just too much IMO. In the game, you would be [CGB] or whatever your Khan designates the Ghost Bears to be... and then in your pilot profile you'd reflect that you were a member of the 304th Assault Cluster. Those references would be something your unit would decide on within itself, and expect its members to reflect in their profiles.

[TimberJon]

Better yet, as the founder, you decide how you want your unit to be displayed, so that there is only one place that content would need to be moderated. When you join the unit, the unit name and how it is displayed would be default and non-editable by the individual pilot.

This makes the most sense for in-game presentation. In a forum, sure we all get to say or place whatever we like in our profiles.

[Havoc2]

What about full unit names below callsigns?

For example, 20 point font: RANK CALLSIGN
Then below it in 14 point font: UNIT


So I could be:

Capt. }{avoc
Black Death Union

Just like most MMO(RP)Gs do it.

IMO there's no need to have all the Regiment, Battilion, Company, Lance information displayed. No one outside of the home unit would care or possibly understand. THAT'S all information that could be located under the pilot profile for anyone who cared enough to look.

Having a pilot's name and associated unit displayed should be more than enough. I mean if a MMO like SWTOR or DAOC can have 30v30 fights with all the character's names and guilds displaying, MWO should be able to do it with 8v8, 12v12 or whatever they decide to do.



One thing that I would LOVE to just bombard the devs with would be this.
Please design the game/lobbies to be able to comfortably handle twice the number of people that you intend to actually fight. I hate dropping a match and being able to manually count the frames because the lag is causing everything to stop.

Edited by }{avoc, 27 February 2012 - 01:16 PM.

[CoffiNail]

SI The Joker, on 27 February 2012 - 11:05 AM, said:

Clanners... always gotta make things more complex than they need to be! (Totally kidding!)

You did lose me on that one though, CoffiNail... that's just too much IMO. In the game, you would be [CGB] or whatever your Khan designates the Ghost Bears to be... and then in your pilot profile you'd reflect that you were a member of the 304th Assault Cluster. Those references would be something your unit would decide on within itself, and expect its members to reflect in their profiles.

Actually we got a lot of flak from the MWLL community when we went and changed from GB-72AT to [CGB] A lot of people liked our individual tags. One of the reasons are in theory we want each Trinary to be a separate unit of the 304th. Plus GB-72AT looks a lot more like a unit designation vs a 'clan' tag.

[Garth Erlam]

I'll see if Paul will come in here and be useful for once say something.

[CoffiNail]

Oh you know he will 'say' something... And his post will have a spoiler tag.

*edit*
So, when you have questions like this you want Paul or someone else to see, is it a in Tank PM, going over with a tap on the shoulder or you going, "HEY PAUL GO CHECK OUT THE THREAD PILOT TAGS!"

Edited by CoffiNail, 27 February 2012 - 01:33 PM.