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Team ACU [PS3] (NA)


Harakiri Tiger

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This 20-person cap per team is understandable (mostly given the team/world map interface)... but kinda sucks as it is fragmenting our community slightly.

 

...Arguably, I'm not really getting into this generation much. If Wing 1 fills up I'll drop into Wing 2 or something and let more active people play.

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Hi everyone, I new to ACU and hope to have a wonderful time in this community. I joined this team in hopes of friendship through activity. I currently do not have a mic right now but will acquire one in the near future. Please take good care of me.

PSN ID: Undftdz

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This 20-person cap per team is understandable (mostly given the team/world map interface)... but kinda sucks as it is fragmenting our community slightly.

 

 

Agreed. I was on literally all day Saturday well 12 noonish to 1130 at night and I only saw 2 people from Wing 2 online at different times. They were trying to get thru missions like I was though.

 

It would be cool to see 10-15 of us online all at once...going on the same mission...just invading and a pillagin' and a plunderin'. Yar me hearties!

Edited by warlockpincher
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I've been jumping between Wing 1 and 2 to see if there are more active people when I log on... so far nothing. The one time I did see others in Wing 1, some of them don't seem to have ever left the lobby to start a mission. :

 

 

EDIT: Also. Wing 1. OUR TERRITORIES HAVE GONE TO THE DOGS. We need to do some team stomping... more regularily.

Edited by TemjinZero
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I think its time to set up "active team" when the server resets hopefully on the 4th. Been noticing a lack of active online players as well. Saturday night got up to about eight people on Core team though. Edited by Nomrah
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I think its time to set up "active team" when the server resets hopefully on the 4th. Been noticing a lack of active online players as well. Saturday night got up to about eight people on Core team though.

 

I think this is actually a pretty good idea. When you log in, you start in your base team and immediately join up the "active team". You meet up with other people who are online using the active team. We could even just make the "core team" now the active team and when you log off just jump to one of the wings.

 

I was trying to join the core team both saturday and sunday night but could not get in as it was maxed out.

 

Edit: This way we also all work towards the same team points/rank.

Edited by Chaotic11
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the only reason there are separate teams is so that the separate teams attack different specified territories in order to concentrate focus on said territory

core and wings 1&2 should all be active and should be attacking different areas

 

without focus, the team ends up with 94023840932 separate territories in separate areas and there isnt enough focus on one area to make it leaderboard status

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I see what you are saying, but that really only works if all teams are active. If we have 3 teams all attacking their own areas, doesn't that seem less focused then say, one team attacking 2 areas? Green Flamingo is on top of two territories, and there are a few other teams that are in the top three in more than one region.

 

Either way, it is a new game and the active players will eventually find each other.

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Problem is I already made an active team, which is the core team. It's also why the other teams lost so much activity. It wasn't originally like that, though. A few players complained a good bit about not being all grouped up into one active team about a week ago, so I tried to move them around so they could all be one team. The problem with having all the more active players on just one team is that it sucks up activity from the other teams and removes people who can act as team leaders to help organize and train the other players, as well as leaving no one around to encourage activity in the less active members. People basically have less of a reason to stick around if they're not on the limited space active team, which is even more problematic because you need multiple teams if you want to really take over any large portion of the map. If you spread your team's territory focus beyond about two territories, you'll just be wasting the team points that you have to grind out and you'll force your team to learn to invade and defend too many territories for them to really be able to specialize in anything useful.

 

Also, Nomrah, you are on the active team. Omnileone was supposed to be on the core team too, haha. The biggest problem isn't that everyone is inactive, it's that timezones are mismatched, like Omnileone said. It's also very hard to match up timezones. Even on the core team, which is the most "active" (most people online at the same time), you don't see too many people online throughout most of the day. Then at night you still don't see that many online every night. You're lucky to get eight people online at once at night on core team, which is the most active at night. Wing 2 has active players late at night from what I've seen as well. Wing 1 got mutilated in activity times when I switched people around by request last time, though. Everyone logs on at random times of the day on that one now, which bugs me as well.

 

I originally had the teams pretty nicely split by timezone, from when I saw people login throughout the day, though not perfectly. I also tried to take into account everyone's currrent AC or most used AC type, that I could recall or check, in relation to the maps each team attacked. That way timezones and map sort of matched up with the active players on each team. People on the NA servers want relatively impossible activity, though. ACV just doesn't realistically have the activity to support what they want, so they just endlessly switch teams or try to find the most active team ever. It's basically doomed for failure, since that very action kills the activity of each team slowly. Haha. To use a silly metaphor: It's very hard to grow a new crop in infertile ground. New players have nothing to latch on to when they join a team and are then forced to start team hopping, making it all the more difficult for other new players to find active teams. The only realistic way that any of this will be fixed is if ACV gets significantly better support and a bigger playerbase (merging all non-JP servers, for example). There's really nothing effective (in any long term sense) we can do besides just trying to enjoy the game.

 

Some small solutions players can do is to encourage their team mates to play mock battles, free battles, missions, and other such things together. Try to play together more, the more everyone plays solo the worse the activity will get. The other thing you can do is login to ACU Chat and see who is online right now. It's probably the single best way to find out who's active on which ACU team at which time and is also a great way for inter-team communication. You can also set up team free battles so everyone on all the ACU teams can play together, without even having to switch which ACU team they are on at the moment. You can also hire each other as mercs across ACU teams. There are a good few ways to get around any inactivity limits if the players all take a bit of initiative and use ACU Chat a bit.

 

ACU Chat Tip: Just ignore LS, he's an idiot.

 

Now, what can I do to fix this? The only chance I can fix this properly, I think, is if everyone posts the time of day they are normally active on, what kind of AC or playstyle they prefer to play, and which maps they like the most or feel most comfortable on. Don't ask to be on the core team, don't ask to be on the wing teams, etc. I'd much rather not have one team be the active team, as that murders all the other teams. Just list your active times, which playstyles you favor, and which maps you favor. If you have a really close friend you always play with and don't want to be seperate from them, you can list them. I just can't gaurantee anything.

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Okay... I tend to play in the evenings (GMT -5) well into the morning half the week. Mostly Monday, Wednesday and Saturday with maybe a smattering of Tuesday or Sunday. I'm pretty casual about how I play, too. That said, though, I tend to get sleepy repeating things. Mock battles, while fun, get repetetive pretty fast so I'll do a few, skip a few, rince, repeat. But not do them nonstop rapid fire.
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I mostly play a heavy mobile RJ, I excel in mid range battles and I am down for anything PvP. I am very comfortable in any map except for the abandoned facility, too flat and not enough vertical cover for me.

 

I get the most out of playing with ACU chat regulars.

 

(Central Time)

-Mon. through Thurs. anywhere from 4 to 9 P.M.

-Friday's anywhere from 4 P.M. to Midnight

-Saturday's anywhere from Noon till Midnight (Most likely in the late evening)

-Sunday's anywhere from noon till 9 P.M.

Edited by Nomrah
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I don't really believe there is any perfect solution or perfect system for this, but there were a few legitimate concerns or difficulties that pushed things into the current direction.

 

Originally there was one team, the core team, which didn't take very long at all to fill to capacity. The game was completely fresh, completely new, everyone was excited. More people came - this is fine, this is good even, it led to the creation of a Wing team, and a second Wing team (oh look, we're forming an aircraft or something). However, part of the problem from my perspective seems to be not necessarily that there's a disconnect between timezones, but that's there's a disconnect between intents.

 

What I mean is...

 

Look at what happened when we were broken down into three separate teams, with all teams having an equal amount of people. Attempts were made to match timezones, to match skill levels, to match all sorts of other criteria, but when over half the people on those teams do not interact with other players in any meaningful way (mock battles to practice skills, coordinate efforts, learn/develop tactics; territory matches/conquest matches to actually get our emblem on the world map; sharing insights about the game and play-styles, etc), the problem you end up with is that the teams are hollow and friends are more or less broken up. Decrease in morale for the intended effect of producing multiple balanced, functioning teams.

 

What did this lead to?

 

All the players who wanted to play together ended up switching to the core team, as it ended up having the most activity. The activity on the three individual teams went to a practical crawl. Despite saying that the teams weren't inactive, the truth is, you now had only 1-2 players on at any given time (tops) for any segment of time. That isn't an active team, that's a shell of a team incapable of achieving its goals of getting on the map. I don't know about any of you, but the idea of attempting to launch a territory invasion with only yourself (solo) or that one other guy who's online (who may not even have a microphone or have any desire to participate in pvp anyway) seems like a fairly empty prospect, and getting some PvP going is already difficult enough; much less stacking it with the added difficulties of people who don't have any desire to talk, pvp, mock battle together/practice, etc.

 

Don't get me wrong, this is not an attack against the casual player, it's more of attempting to pinpoint the flaws of the former structure. The ACU community is open to everyone, it's very inviting in that regard, but as I mentioned before some of the "balancing" of the teams ended up making them hollow in terms of ability to wage meaningful pvp or get ourselves on the world map, and players were disgruntled and switched to other teams so they could play with their friends. This leads me to my next concern:

 

If players are constantly switching just to play with the friends/people they want to play with, there isn't really any point to having them "officially" on a different team. If every day I have to switch or some other person has to switch (and I was actually one of the [last] to switch back to core, after getting frustrated that I was the only guy online on my wing), nobody is really staying 'true' to their assigned group (core, wings, etc).

 

Pairing those with no interest in the pvp aspect of the game or creating teams where people have wildly different timezones produces those hollow teams; they're ineffective as a whole.

 

And in terms of the players who are interested in PvP (myself definitely among them), I can try and 'organize' things all day or all night long. If I form a free lobby, a mock battle lobby, or a territory/conquest invasion lobby and politely ask anyone to join it, and most of my team consists of people who only wish to play story or order missions, I'd be sitting there twiddling my thumbs for a very, very long time, as those requests tend to get ignored. I'd wager other people have run into the same problem in the past.

 

Now, I know some people were excited at the prospect of the ACU emblem being plastered all across the world map, but with the former teams/team structures, I'd honestly say it simply is not and was not possible (if it was, people wouldn't have switched due to their perceptions of inactivity in their assigned wings -- I think really nobody was happy at this change). But really, I'd say probably half the people across all 3 teams do not seem particularly interested in PvP in any way shape or form, and do not ever join when things are called up (mock battles, territory invasions, territory defense, etc).

 

So in terms of this idea that the teams can be all balanced in terms of breaking up the skilled players (decreased effectiveness), matching the timezones (adding complexity, worked horribly so far), all of them having an equal number of people (hollowing out teams to artificially make them 'equal'), so on so forth, I just don't think it works. There should be teams dedicated to PvP, and teams dedicated to non-PvP (or atleast not having that as the focus). Yeah, that means we're probably not going to own six out of the eight world territories, and I hate to say it so callously, but perhaps our ambitions should be more realistic and more sensible in scale (considering the current set of difficulties present).

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^basically split the people up that want to do mercenary, free battles, and actual team play.

maybe make an ACU application thread to make it easier on yourself to filter people into teams

the thread would just consist of basic information that would help make teams more active (and not active meaning everyone being online and just doing story/order missions)

i dont really think finding peoples AC types help if nobodys really active, i mean if a teams really active im pretty sure they would talk among themselves to see what sort of firepower it needs.

ive stayed in core since the beginning and i only see 1 or 2 people on at a time, if there is actually 4 people on theyre all off doing their own thing

maybe post a official ACU team sortie day, where every weekend 8-12 its a known fact everyone will be online or something.

 

oh ya, and i play mostly after midnight (central) so i pair well with west coast players, have mic and i use mostly HWs and MWs, RJ or BP depending on map.

i usually like urban maps with big buildings to scale and shitloads of cover, but i need to start playing in more open areas because thats my weakness atm

Edited by supplice.
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2-3 active is what I've seen on wing 1.

Timezones are nice to know but people will be on when they're on.

 

Maybe give the different teams specific functions.

Core can be for conquest/invasion, mock battles, etc

Wing1 can be for merc/free battles.

Wing 2 can be for SP/Coop order missions.

 

or

 

Core can be for all multiplayer in general(except maybe merc and free battle)

and the wing teams will be the "Home" teams where you would move to when you log off or do SP/non team multiplayer. This will leave core for people that want to do things as a team.

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I tend to play light mobile bipedal but prefer light mobile RJ.

I'm on the east coast so Eastern standard time.

 

Usually I'll be on noonish to midnightish on Saturday. (12pm to 12am)

Noonish to about 9pm on Sunday. (12pm to 9pm)

I'll pop on sporadically during the week from about 6pm to 8pm. (6pm to 8pm).

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I realize that trying to organize the teams at this point is going to be difficult no matter the way we decide to split the teams. I am just thinking that it would be easier to screen people as "online" or "offline" by allowing online people to join the core team and offline people to just jump back to a wing overnight. It really shouldn't destroy the sense of "teamness" that I think Accursed was trying to get at. If anything we should have a better sense of team if we are all contributing to one set of team points, one (or two) specified areas to invade/conquest, and it will be easier to connect with other players who are actually online. With the current size of the teams, it is unlikely that we would have more than 20 people online at the same time, so everyone who is active would be able to meet up in the core team and bang out a few invasions/dominations/mock battles etc.

 

That being said, I will be sticking with the ACU teams no matter which way they are created. When there are others online in my team (Hey Requiem/chibi!) I have been trying to get Wing 1 into some invasions. When I am alone, I have been working on my Merc Rank (currently #120 Rank S).

 

In keeping with other members, here are my playtimes/AC style:

 

I mostly play Quadruped ACs with long range for sniping/support.

I live in EST and play just about every evening from 7PM-12AM, though I may miss a night here or there.

Weekends are hit or miss depending on what other things I have to get done. I will usually still be on in the evenings on weekends, and I may be able to sneak in an early afternoon from time to time.

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