Multi-Company Clans - What to do?

We go MCC because its practical and convenient, so we can kill anyone almost anywhere and anytime.

People [REMOVED] a lot in this game, they leave their clan, laugh at you and farm events freely if your clan only have members from a single company, since you cant do anything about that(if you kill them you lose honor points since they are on the same company...they leave clan and farm, and then join their clan again and fight you after farming uninterrupted for a while). WE WILL HAVE NONE OF THAT, thats why we are MCC.

Even if we were company based, there will always be imbalance. My old clan on my old server was company based, and that company dominated the server for like 5 years. You know what was the result of 1 company dominating for 5 years? VRU had 2000 members, EIC had 2500 members and MMO had 8000 members, No VRU/EIC was allowed on any map events, they weren't even allowed on their own x-6 maps...Do you think that was balanced and fun for them?

Lets be real, MCC or not, there will always be winners and losers.
People just need to coordinate better if they want to deal with the big MCC's (when we go kill people at events, there is like 5-8 of us and like 20+ of them farming the event, but when they see us, they keep farming the demaner/hitac instead of fighting us together, thats why we can dominate even if we are outnumbered, because they lack coordination).

 

So what your saying in essence is that DO is doomed to be a game for the elitists (ever dwindling numbers) because there is no room for "balance".
As for the lack of co-ordination between groups of random players doing events and the such - You do know how silly that sounds right?

The server I play on has 20+ allied MCC killing anything that comes near Demaner, Hitac, Cube or whatever. I just tried "again" to finish a cube/prot mission I've had running for nearly a month. No point going to my own X-6 as it is constantly camped by the number one (MCC) clan, so went to the first of the two others, after completing 1 cube on one X-6 I was killed by 4 guys from the afore mentioned MCC clan, so I went to the other - Didn't even get to kill the cube there before 3 of the same clan (none from the previous system) dropped on me and killed me.
They aren't cubing themselves - It's all about content denial.

NB; Both times I died had members of my company (from the MCC) involved. Like you said, they do this because they don't lose honour if they don't shoot first but do get to kill their own company freely.

Bottom line is - The players have always guided the meta and as long as it is the few with the mentality "we want it all" running servers regardless of the consequences the game will continue to decline. Eventually there will be a single server with 1 or 2 clans working toward it being closed with a single minded attitude.

You can't "win" DO but you can be a driving force in pushing the game further down the drain.....
Seems the only "winners" of DO are those who have moved on to other games. Something to be seriously considered.

 

"They aren't cubing themselves - It's all about content denial."

Blame the player, but not MCC, even if they were a company based clan, they can still deny the content to the other 2 companies.

 

Not as easily - Years ago players would at least attempt to drive out invaders from other companies, these days all they do is apply for NAPs and alliances with them. They can't shoot their own company without losing honour but can be killed by their own company when an in an MCC simply by letting someone from another company fire the first shot.

It is not just "a" player, it is the mentality of MCC members in general. I can deal with a single player trying to deny me content, I can't deal with a group from all three companies in one clan doing the same. If I'm in EIC maps and an EIC player starts to shoot me, I'll fight back with a chance of victory - But when that player has 3 or 4 friends from the other 2 companies helping him, I have no chance. Being in a same company group myself doesn't really help, there are always some number of players from our company who we can't attack without losing honour, yet they are free to shoot us as long as they don't shoot first. Often by the time you work out who from your company is shooting you it's too late, you're gonna die.
Your friends can't help you kill them as they aren't shooting them so they would lose honour for helping.
Those who belong to MCC know this only too well and use it to great advantage. This alone is possibly the most unbalanced aspect of MCC, if it were addressed then MCC would lose a lot of their advantage in group fights.

A possible fix; If a member of group A is attacked by a member of group B, ALL members of group B become valid targets for group A - Regardless of company affiliation.
This would go both ways of course, All members of each group become valid targets for the other group.

 

The best and easiest fix to the debate of MCC is for DO to adopt the game play of many other PvP games where you can not fire on your own company/faction EVER meaning NO same Company assistance for killing any player. The WAR system would have to be removed from the game also as it would only be a loophole used by MCC to allow their players to attack same Company players.

 

Wow. Edgewalker(husband) and I quit playing DO when my first child was born with hopes of returning someday and teaching our kids to play. Well, my son is ready to start playing DO and I'm heartbroken to see the adverse effects that MCC has done to the game.

Maybe, with DO merging servers, why not take the opportunity to make it to where MCCs can only attack other MCCs. Friends could stay friends and they would all have people to shoot.

OR

Years ago there was an urban lend of new companies...with NO MCCs!!!

]_adyHawK

US1

Level 19

32441478

 

"1. Not sure if dealing with 1 MCC would be better or worse than dealing with a whole faction of pirates MCC's. Removing them from the 3 existing factions would create a new "pirate" faction, which I believe would be a lot harder to deal with than what we have now. Most MCC's don't recruit new players so their ranks are primarily filled with UFE's or those close to it. On my server 8 of the top 10 clans are MCC's - Put them together in one faction as "pirates" you have an unbeatable force."

I don't this this would be the case because people in such clans would be targets for all three companies even other "pirate" clans. They would be one clan against the remainder of the server.

 

First - Blue is a terrible colour to use on forums as it is really difficult to read.
Second and most importantly - Who exactly is "the rest of the server"? These MCC are made up of the top 100 or so players on my server, there aren't enough "rest of the server" to fight them - Even if somehow you could get enough players from the rest of the server to fight them as a group, you'd still be facing an uphill battle. These MCC didn't get to be the top clans by being stupid, if they believe someone is a threat to them they simply ally or NAP with them. So, "the rest of the server" is not only fighting the big MCC they are also fighting their allies.
Don't believe me? Talk to anyone who played US West a few years ago about the top clan's that held the rest of the server to ransom for nearly 5 years. At the time, they weren't MCC but the outcome was the same - If you didn't belong to X Group you didn't have a lot of fun.

"The remainder of the server" is just that, bunches of random players who have no realistic way to unite against a common enemy.
Example of futility - A couple of days ago there was 3 or 4 members of a certain MCC picking on the few newer players cubing - while avoiding anyone who may have actually given them a fight. A couple of us (who are a bit stronger) decided to attempt to run the intruders out, we killed them a few times, we died a few times - while this was going on there were 4 or 5 other members of our company, sitting idly on a portal watching what was going on - People generally don't want to get involved in someone else's issues (same as in real life) if it isn't hurting me, stay out of it.
Ingame chat is all but useless for trying to co-ordinate fights when in a "controlled" group, let alone when you have random players sitting around who could be helping. You can only have 8 in a group, so if you have 8 random players in a group fighting 8 from a well organised MCC, who do you imagine is going to win the conflict?

These MCC are highly organised, they use voice comms, they know each other and how each fights, they co-ordinate attacks - Everyone else is just that - "everyone else" who die senselessly to the MCC or just sit around and watch.

1. Reduce/remove same company damage ability (without declared war) and MCC lose a lot of their advantage.
2. Increase penalty for same company kills, penalty should include anyone who is involved in a same company kill, regardless of who fires the first shot.
You are involved in killing a player from your own company, you lose 20% of your honour and 10 million credits (credits go to the player you helped kill).
Hmmm - 20% honour loss for taking part in killing 1 player from my company - Sure, the penalty should be harsh enough to be a disincentive...

 

this is SUCH a great idea!!! i just hope SOMEBODY, DO,is listening.

 

Blame those players then.. dont blame MCC.

You said it, they werent MCC at that moment, but the outcome is the same as if they were MCC.... Then MCC clans are not the problem, the problem are some players mentality.

 

MCC will continue. Join a clan there will always be a player or 2 MCC. Its just a game so play it and have fun. Be happy that people are on the maps fighting. Join the fight against the common enemy. You just have to find out who is the enemy today. I believe that its important to find a good clan that is active. When you have a clan playing at the same time the MCC don't bother you.

 

I'm happy to fight an enemy any time.
BUT - Not 10 minutes ago I was attacked while cubing by a player from another company, who was in seconds joined by someone from my company.
You're in many cases not fighting "An Enemy", you're fighting your own company as well as the "common enemy".

About MCC - As I said in my post, they don't need to get rid of MCC, just change the way they so freely operate to kill their own company.
Make the penalty for killing a member of your company so high as to turn it into something players will take note of.

As for the gist of your reply, I'd suggest you leave your number 2 ranked clan, change your name and join an unknown one for a month (most smaller clans aren't all that active and we can't all be in the top few clans, can we...). See if your opinion changes.

 

Funnily enough, no they weren't MCC at the time BUT it was MCC clans that took their place - With many of the same members.. That particular server now has possibly the lowest population of any US server.
So who do YOU blame? The MMO players who join mixed company clans to kill MMO OR the poor game mechanics that allow it to happen?

NB; It isn't only MCC that are the problem, the main problem is the power creep Devs built into the game itself. Rather than develop the game by adding more content and improving on what they had, they simply created more and more powerful weapons and ships - Which of course creates an arena where new players are severely disadvantaged for a long period of time. The end result is, many new players don't stick with it because they can't see a point where they can compete with or even survive (for more than a few seconds) an attack from the old guard, who for the same reasons have no-one but the few new players to kill.
The big MCC are able to (and do) take full advantage of this by creating clans with only the top players from the server.

So it would seem "some players mentality" stretches to at least the 138 players who make up the top 3 clans (on one server i play). That is quite a large percentage of the roughly 400 active accounts on the server.

 

138/400 are not that many its like 35%... thats not a large percentage.

large percentage is something like 70-80%(or atleast more than 50% if we go low).

With 35% they are just a minority. if you guys really wanted to get rid of MCC or those players, then you should take action and DO something(not only crying on the forum)...Go talk to the people that are not part of the MCC, coordinate together and just get rid of them.
Darkorbit is a multiplayer game, and as a multiplayer game, it is best played with other people.

MCC's are not on the TOP of the chain by doing nothing, they either killed their way to the top, or got the top with the right diplomacy skills and by allying with other clans. You say that is almost impossible for random players to get good coordination like those that MCC's have, well its not like they had that coordination on their start, they also had to learn how to coordinate with each other, and it takes time(i can tell you that since im part of a MCC clan). So, if people want to take MCC down, they should atleast do the same at minimum.



About the powercreep thing you say, it happens on almost all those grindy multiplayer rpg games, once certain game reaches a certain amount of time online, there will be always difference in gear between a newcomer and someone who has been playing the game for a while. Bigpoint/Darkorbit is already trying to fix this, and you can see that by looking at the most new updates they have done.
They need to keep updating the game and adding new content, so the endgame players have something to do, but they cant add something that would widen the gap between newcomers and oldtimers too much, well their solution were those new lasers a few months ago and the new quest introduced few weeks ago.


-The new lasers are really hard to get, yet they only provide very little advantage compared to normal lvl 16 lf4's (full magmadrill ships X4 ammo only hits 4k+- harder than normal full lvl 16 lf4's ship X4 --both using full damage configs ofc--).

-The new quests, they give very little uridium/honour but insane amount of experience points once completed.... Experience points make your ship hit harder? Do they make your ship sturdier? Can you buy ammo with experience points? The answer is NO, those points have no actual use on your ship, they are only useful for Top ranking chasers (lvl 18 UFE ship can do the same as any lvl 25 UFE combatwise).


As you can see they are already trying to help reduce the gap, they cant just give equipment too easily or for free to newcomers, since it would not be fair for the oldtimers since they had to work hard to get them, but they are making life easier to the newbies by giving things to do to the oldtimers (its better if they are busy farming new quests or new lasers instead of hunting newbies right?).

Also the new shared booster system introduced few months ago, while some people dont like for PVP reasons, its a blessing for PVE purposes, a group of newbies with shared damage boosters can farm uridium and kill stronger aliens much easier and faster, thus making their progression faster.

They are already fixing things, just give them time(merges should deal with MCC's theoretically, since low population was 1 of the main reasons for MCC's to thrive).

 

Going to try and answer this in order;
35% of players all with a single goal, allied and working together - Is a very high percentage when you take into account the other 65% are, 1; from 3 different companies. 2; don't have the ability to co-ordinate due to many factors not least of which can be language barriers. 3; all the top players (those who could pose a threat to the top clans) are either members of or allied in some way too the top clans. 4; to fight and stand a chance of victory, those willing would need to form yet another MCC - which sort of defeats the purpose.

A redesign of events would be a good start to giving newer players incentive to continue in the game. Do 60 mil damage to Demaner and kill 15 players on different X-4 maps, is simply out of reach of many on the server. I actually attempted this one (for the first 3 days) during the last Demaner event, I managed 6 of 15 ship kills (3 on one map, 2 on another and 1 on the third) and 22 mil of 60 mil damage to Demaner - For a total 30K X4 wasted and getting killed 26 times - I quit the mission and put it down as a lesson learned, don't bother with the epic event missions (the only one that is really worthwhile) unless you're among the elite few.

Yes the new lasers are hard to get - Put a full set of Hypers on your drones, you have 10% more HP - Not something to be sneezed at when combined with Spartans, again very difficult to get, especially for newer players. The years (and or thousands of dollars) required just to reach a level where you can stand a chance in a 1v1 against one of the older players is a huge deterrent for new players. Roughly 90 Hades gates just for the Schism to build Spartans + Zetas and Kappas for the hercs and havocs (doing the Kappas and Zeta's "might" give you enough Schism for 1 Spartan)- Is it any wonder many new players just give up and stop logging in.

Yes and these new quests have made it so much easier for anyone below lvl 22 to do missions in 5-2 - The Sab mission (17,500 saboteurs) alone has seen an increase in big players killing off newer players to better their chances at finishing such an epic mission. Of course why wouldn't they work on that "destroy 10,000 players" missions while shooting Sabs endlessly.
I'm not sure Devs at DO think things through when designing new content, or they just have very limited understanding of how the game is played by those they are designing for.

It isn't enough just to give the old timers something new to do - They need to give new things to do to those aiming to become old timers. Introduce a mission or two that gives an LF4 or 50 Schism or something useful. Make it tough, maybe tough enough it can only realistically be completed in a group. Fix Qzone so the rewards match the effort - 1 Ioil isn't a reward, it is more of a spit in the face.

LOL, How many newbies do you know have the uri to purchase shared boosters? Sure they can buy URI to get them but not many are prepared to invest money (or can't afford to) so early in their career in DO. Then of course (as you'd be aware) - Unless everyone in the group is double boostered the effect is lost.

Theories are great, what happens in practice is another thing entirely - Would you leave your MCC when your server merges OR will you stay and strive to keep your place?
Unless DO offers some incentive for MCC members to become one company, they won't change. Top ranked players will still seek out top ranked players to join clans, regardless of company. Only Do has the ability to change this.

 

I guess that is your experience on the server you play, but on many other servers(more active 1's), MCC's want to be at the top sure, but the most important thing is to have people to fight against and to kill, so they dont have too many alliances even none sometimes.

10% of like 400k hitpoints its like 40k right? 40k hp increase by having that many hyperplasmoids is a very little amount of hitpoints(almost negligible i would say), even a 8 iris newbie can hit 40k with x4.... Fighting a 8 iris newbie while you having full hyperplasmoids will only help you last 1 more laser shoot, and if you are fighting someone ufe, then you will last an extra half laser shoot.

So as i said, the advantage these new lasers give its too small for it to make a big difference on fights.

The Qzone gate is a gate used to farm endgame ships, if you are a newbie you shouldnt be farming Qzone gates unless you already have all the lf4's/10drones/drone designs/etc. This gate is supposed to be hard and to give little rewards, so the UFE's have to work hard to get those new ships.(Even with that, if you buy Qzone boosters, the Ioil rewards are decent)

There is nothing like the effect is lost, if only 1 member of the group have Shared Damage Booster, then this guy will have 10% extra boost on damage, while at the same time giving each of the other 7 members of the group 5% damage boost...So you can do the math when 2/3/4/etc people of the group have shared boosters. The more the people with boosters, the bigger the effect.

Shared boosters are pretty cheap i would say, but that is just my opinion i guess, maybe other people dont think the same as me, so i cant really argue about it being cheap or expensive.

 

Pretty sure the reason DO is doing server merges is down to such low server populations. There aren't many servers that are active enough to support a few MCC clans made up of the top 100 or so players. The two servers I play on are both dominated by MCC. On one server the top 8 clans are all MCC - 3 of those are the same clan that just out grew the 50 member limit so started sister clans, between them they have 146 members - their only reasonable competition is the rest of the top 8, 5 clans with +- 170 members. The number one clan is MCC and at least 40 of the top 50 players on the server are members (the clan has 42 members).
While these two groups talk a lot about who is best and who runs the server, neither will fight the other - Instead both groups war anyone not part of the top 10.
Our most recent war (with the top ranked clan and their allies/frenemies) is down to 1 player (EIC member of the number 1 MCC) who was, according to him, given 1-6 cubes whenever he wants them. One of our members was cubing when this guy turned up and DEMANDED he leave "his" cubes alone. Less than 30 minutes after this guy declared war on us, their only declared enemy (the 3 clan group) also declared war on us. We are now at war with all 8 of the top ranked clans on the server - These guys are enemies only in chat, they talk a lot about who's going to destroy who but when it comes down to it, they side together - In this case over who has the right to cube where...

Add that 40K to the 15% from Spartans + BO1 booster + shared booster + boosts from those in group - That 40K from Hypers adds up to well over 100K HP.

So - Qzone is just another part of the game specifically designed for the top players on servers - Pretty sure that proves my point about DO not providing for newer players. At least not for those who don't have a credit card to throw around.

Of course that 5% damage bonus to a new player, who may or may not have full LF3's, is going to make all the difference - Lets say new player has full LF3's on goliath with 8 iris drones and Promi, with X1 he's hitting around 4K, now add 5% to that - WOOHA he'll now hit for 4200 - With a group of 8, all FE, 1 shared damage booster will mean the group hit their target for 1800 extra damage.
Realistically you want the group to have at least BO1 shield, HP and damage boosters, that alone is 21k URI (with premium and rebate) or between 350 and 500 million credits. Add in BO2's for another 21k URI :- Boosters aren't cheap - You have to kill a LOT of cubes to make that sort of URI and or credits.
Of course it is much easier/cheaper when you can solo cubes in 25 or 30 seconds.
Watching the auction last night, one player bid 600 mil on each of the 3 basic boosters (Damage, Shield, HP) and 200 mil each on honour and EP boosters. Not much room there for a new player to be able to win them. Even when the extreme bidders aren't around the damage booster goes for no less than 150 mil, that's a lot of npc's for a newbie to kill.

 

I think you and I had a good talk about the merge process last night. You and I and alot of others have come to several conclusions that DO will have to shut down long enough to re-write a totally New Script that does away with the Original script and the Re-loaded version as well. Server Merging is being done in 3 steps . #1 was the Beta Testing in order to write the script . #2 is phase 1 of 2 phases for the implementation of the Beta Script .#3 In completion all merges in #2 the third part is for do a final merge in order to establish a so-called Balanced Population of that particular server in the final merge. That doesn't mean a Balanced Population of actual New Members to the BigPoint Community ... I already posted earlier this yr. some simple solutions for MCC and server merging , but that has been buried in this thread earlier this yr. ... Here is some info that DO considered in order to keep Reloaded up and going ... https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/25/16026236/adobe-flash-end-of-support-2020

Microsoft says it plans to disable Flash by default in Edge and Internet Explorer in mid to late 2019 and I use IE as my ISP .... All the gaming industry Software Developers and Techs know this. HTML5 standards have been implemented across all modern web browsers.
So in conclusion DO in my opinion is Developing its own Web Browser Download to keep up , something like what EVE did ....
But as long as MCC display the current mentality , They're driving BigPoint/Reloaded into the ground . Just my opinion since I play on 6 servers like several other good players ... Screenshot taken ...

 

This is post # 519.
Do you really think that anyone at DO cares about anything that does not generate $$$$$$$$$$$$.
No one is listening.................
Game dies more each day.
Server merges are not going to work to FIX this game.
Just more "scum on a bigger pond"
...........in my humble opinion.............enjoy what you can of this once great game...................

 

They have been trying to get the $$$$$ from before "Reloaded", but the few die hard players that keep popping back in, see the shambles of what was D O and decide they made the right decision when they decided to go play whatever game they switched to when they became newbs again, they liked the PvP and not grinding gates and as such were left in the dust of the Gate Bashers and saw their Ranks and Supremacy go down the tubes, heck the family (5 accounts) that got me hooked left when they could no longer make it to the portal without popping as they had been able to with their FE Ship, granted these were FREE accounts but they took the same position as many top players did. CAN'T DEFEND MYSELF, WHY BOTHER? The Hunters that were known to be hard to defeat entering the maps was not a concern anymore as they had left the game. The constant glitches/bugs that were slow, if ever to be corrected, the inability of protecting a map from the Portal, and the UFE handed the game to the few and they became the MCC's we have now and there is nothing anyone is going to do to correct it because now they have a quota to meet (revenue wise) and making any changes to the MCC means a drop on revenue.