MO lost? Here's why: (RANT ABOUT WARBONDS AND UNWINNABLE MOS)

[☢DUKE NUKEM☢]

This isn't necessarily a typical doom post. The outlook for the MO is pretty grim, and AH designed it that way.

Hopefully they don't delay the DSS, but if they do, it is because they never planned to give it to us in a reasonable time anyway. Like many AH promises, it has taken forever.

But I am increasingly sure that the REAL reason they give unwinnable MOs is because of warbonds. There had been 70 ish percent of players on Gacrux all night, and 50 ish percent even longer than that, and you're going to tell me we haven't moved the needle enough to win before time expires?

I call BS. I can't remember a single time in recent history when Arrowhead released a new warbond and we Won the MO immediately following it. If memory serves, it has almost always been some nearly impossible BS.

They may yet give us a boost, but I doubt it. This seems to be a greed-driven decision. I am all but certain these are rigged by design to make warbond progress slower for everyone, but especially casual players.

Personally, medals don't do anything for me, I already finished the warbond and am hundreds and hundreds of hours deep in the game, but I am pretty tired of seeing people who are casual players get ♥♥♥♥♥♥ over, and I am also pretty tired of AH and their stupid transparency issues.

[VIRUSOID]

You could be fighting right now, pushing us to viktory, but instead you desided to rant here with a wall of text about losing
Bruh, at least wait until MO is actually lost

[Tahla]

MO unwinnable because of a new warbond to slow progress? How is that even logical when just by playing you get loads of medals and you get MO medals regardless of you even participating or even playing?

The reason we're losing MOs is because most people have no clue what the best course of action is or don't care. And more likly they're running around farming SC on planets that have no impact at all to buy the warbond or super store stuff.

[Sotanaht]

Originally posted by VIRUSOID:

You could be fighting right now, pushing us to viktory, but instead you desided to rant here with a wall of text about losing
Bruh, at least wait until MO is actually lost

Irrelevant. Due to playercount scaling it does not matter if people log on or not. In fact it's much more effective to convince players who are already on or already planning to log on to switch targets, then it is to log on yourself. Theoretically (though there is probably a cap to scaling somewhere), if every single player except for ONE were to quit the game, that one person would be able to carry the MO easily.

[7th Necromonger Brigade - Nyx]

i've always knew there something fishy with those MO's and especialy the big ones with random objectives and multiple targets to complete it....

[☢DUKE NUKEM☢]

Originally posted by VIRUSOID:

You could be fighting right now, pushing us to viktory, but instead you desided to rant here with a wall of text about losing
Bruh, at least wait until MO is actually lost

Yeah, that's not how it works buddy. It's based on percentages, not raw count. But keep trying to prove a point while you ALSO are here. Did you bother reading it? I guess not based on your stupid reply.

[Wolfguarde]

There are traditionally three types of GM in a tabletop campaign. Some will push a narrative, some will coddle their players with plot armour, and some few will let the rules and challenges play out as they will against the party.

None of these is explicitly/absolutely bad. The issue here is not so much that arrowhead has a particular story they want to tell; it's that they can't tell it if the playerbase has the cohesion and the motivation to win where they need losses to happen to drive the story. This says to me that most, if not all, of the story decisions so far have been primary forks, and that they don't have much in the way of divergent pathways in their story's development. I think they've built too much around the primary narrative they want to develop to let the story stray too far from it.

Player agency in an unfolding story is a wonderful thing in theory, and - when properly prepared for - in practice, too. But actually putting the effort in for that prep and pulling it off properly is a metric ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of work, particularly when you're building that sort of story in a game. I think that the people who built the game and the people that are maintaining and building the post-release content have two different visions and levels of competency, and the difference means that the post-handover devs aren't willing to be flexible and risk potentially have to make new story content (ie. more work when they're already struggling with the extra workload made by stuff like bad decisions/PSNgate) when they could instead lay a firmer hand on the reins and force the story into a more linear channel for less work.

Once again - I'm not saying this is a bad thing. If it is an issue of the post-handover devs struggling with the story style, the issue isn't implicitly their competence or lack thereof so much as the original team no longer managing the game, which is either that team's choice or a corporate one. These guys are probably making the best choices they can where the story's concerned. But it does mean that the game is currently being advertised as an emergent narrative when it more resembles a managed one (yes, pun intended).

Arrowhead's made mistakes, and will probably continue to make mistakes. But not all of their choices are wrong. This could be the least bad choice in a scenario where there's too much work to do in too short a time period. Granted, the workload is a direct consequence of their prior poor choices - but they're still working, and are making an effort to do better. Let them cook.

[☢DUKE NUKEM☢]

Originally posted by Tahla:

MO unwinnable because of a new warbond to slow progress? How is that even logical when just by playing you get loads of medals and you get MO medals regardless of you even participating or even playing?

The reason we're losing MOs is because most people have no clue what the best course of action is or don't care. And more likly they're running around farming SC on planets that have no impact at all to buy the warbond or super store stuff.

1. No, you clearly misunderstood my point. The MO is rigged BECAUSE they knew a new warbond would be out and they want to keep players grinding it longer to increase retention. Most players aren't banging out a ton of high difficulty missions every day like you and I may. In fact, most play a couple low difficulty missions, then log off. So no, not everyone is getting "loads of medals" as you say, ESPECIALLY when the MO is designed to fail.

2. There is no way for players to communicate on the galactic scale except third party apps, so it's poor design, or willful incompetence on the part of AH of that is the case. If we assume you to be correct, how do we win other big MOs during times when there is no new content?

I get defending AH but you only stand to benefit from this being pointed out, so why so hostile?

I find it frustrating they damage the story narrative with these MOs that are built to fail to slow progression on new content and keep numbers up. I think they're well within their right to do so mind you, but I wish they'd find some other route.

[☢DUKE NUKEM☢]

Originally posted by Wolfguarde:

There are traditionally three types of GM in a tabletop campaign. Some will push a narrative, some will coddle their players with plot armour, and some few will let the rules and challenges play out as they will against the party.

None of these is explicitly/absolutely bad. The issue here is not so much that arrowhead has a particular story they want to tell; it's that they can't tell it if the playerbase has the cohesion and the motivation to win where they need losses to happen to drive the story. This says to me that most, if not all, of the story decisions so far have been primary forks, and that they don't have much in the way of divergent pathways in their story's development. I think they've built too much around the primary narrative they want to develop to let the story stray too far from it.

Player agency in an unfolding story is a wonderful thing in theory, and - when properly prepared for - in practice, too. But actually putting the effort in for that prep and pulling it off properly is a metric ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of work, particularly when you're building that sort of story in a game. I think that the people who built the game and the people that are maintaining and building the post-release content have two different visions and levels of competency, and the difference means that the post-handover devs aren't willing to be flexible and risk potentially have to make new story content (ie. more work when they're already struggling with the extra workload made by stuff like bad decisions/PSNgate) when they could instead lay a firmer hand on the reins and force the story into a more linear channel for less work.

Once again - I'm not saying this is a bad thing. If it is an issue of the post-handover devs struggling with the story style, the issue isn't implicitly their competence or lack thereof so much as the original team no longer managing the game, which is either that team's choice or a corporate one. These guys are probably making the best choices they can where the story's concerned. But it does mean that the game is currently being advertised as an emergent narrative when it more resembles a managed one (yes, pun intended).

Arrowhead's made mistakes, and will probably continue to make mistakes. But not all of their choices are wrong. This could be the least bad choice in a scenario where there's too much work to do in too short a time period. Granted, the workload is a direct consequence of their prior poor choices - but they're still working, and are making an effort to do better. Let them cook.

I like everything you said, but I don't see how it's relevant to my statement I guess. I just wanted to point out to people that AH gives us big Impossible MOs the week or so after the release of a new warbond to attempt to keep casuals grinding longer.

[DtHouse]

Well you can't do a MO that ask you to defend planet from Bots and invade an hold a planet from bugs. So yes, they well planned this to make us lose and slow down the DSS. I expect that the "project" will have some fatal things that will postpone it for few more weeks. why? because they didn't complete it yet, so they pushed stupid MO like allways to slow down. Like the Chaos diver told time ago, let the bot siege up Super Earth and let's see what they will do. Stop play Joel game and start use your brain

[Frost Spectre]

AH probably should make it that you have to complete the mission successfully to get the SC, requisition and medals you picked up...

[☢DUKE NUKEM☢]

Originally posted by Frost Spectre:

AH probably should make it that you have to complete the mission successfully to get the SC, requisition and medals you picked up...

Could help some, but most people quitting mid mission are crashing out, especially after the last updates.

[New To This]

Ever since their "change" to the global map that directly impacted how fast we can take planets.
(The mega nerf that is "More players online? Well each one now contributes less)
The MO's have been getting failed constantly.

They kept their ridiculous regen rates, but removes player pushing power.

Then wondered why everyone stopped giving a rats **** when they realized they had become powerless and the global map was now 100% automated and player input did nothing meaningful.

[☢DUKE NUKEM☢]

Originally posted by DtHouse:

Well you can't do a MO that ask you to defend planet from Bots and invade an hold a planet from bugs. So yes, they well planned this to make us lose and slow down the DSS. I expect that the "project" will have some fatal things that will postpone it for few more weeks. why? because they didn't complete it yet, so they pushed stupid MO like allways to slow down. Like the Chaos diver told time ago, let the bot siege up Super Earth and let's see what they will do. Stop play Joel game and start use your brain

For much the same reason as them purposely building MOs to fail (delaying content, slowing progress, and such) they also CAN force progress.

If they chose to, they could set the liberation rate to Gacrux to 100% / hr (and maybe they do and we win)

But that also means that if we all quit tomorrow to let the bots take super earth, since there is no Super Earth map ready, or even started in development most likely, they would just set all the liberation rates to 100% / hr near Super Earth, and nothing would happen.

[Singularity's Marauder]

did you gift yourself 19 rewards?

[Jumong123]

MO at the beginning was kind of impossible defending 5 automaton planets and liberating 3 planets just in a span of a week