18 replies to this topic

[Deathlike]

Previous posts on this topic: http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__3770603

This is essentially "post #3" of the current series of posts of hoping to solve the "middle ground" that got majorly affected by the transition from mixed solo+groups (minus 12-mans) in the same queue... to separate solo and group queues. Refer to the previous post for the basis for this discussion.

Let's be honest. The NPE is garbage. We currently have a solo queue that literally plays like a "PUG lotto" as you are assured inconsistency in any match... whether you have newbies or veteran players that don't have their friends online. We also have a group queue that encompasses EVERY group size, no matter how big or small, into a match. Just like the solo queue, not every group is the same... whether you are big or small.

Imagine that you have some friends you invited into the game, but need to "train" them on how they should be playing the game. If you dropped into the group queue, you are effectively assigned to "the deep end"... you'll can get anything, including a 12-man by the very nature of the queue. Forget Elo, you just want to teach them how to torso twist. This is very impractical by design.

Now, I've seen the other "suggestion" to use premium time for a private match. How you do expect your friends to cough up money for a game that they aren't sure they want to invest in? I guess maybe you'll be nice enough to buy it for them (can't really gift yet right?), but this is far far more impractical than the previous suggestion.

Anyways, to fix this, a three tired system is required...

1) "Normal" Queue - This queue is primarily for players that are new to the game or do not want the "pressure" of playing competitively (for whatever reason, including trying out new builds or just being a casual player). This queue will be divided into two sections...

1a) Solo queue - It will look exactly like what we have now for the most part.

Pros: This will literally be "the newbie queue" that people have been wanting.
Cons: Inconsistent, but that's normal.

1b) Small Group Queue (2 to 4 man) - This is the kind of queue some groups have been wanting... rather than subjecting everyone into the "deep end" for all matches... EVERY GROUP that is included here will be 2 to 4 mans. There is NO EXCEPTION.

Pros: Small casual groups get what they want, while not immediately getting "initiated" into the "competitive groups"
Cons: Multiple group communication may prove to be problematic (multiple-TS channels/usage). Command rose greatly needed to improve communication to cut through language barriers and amongst the multiple teams.

2) "Competitive" (Hardcore) Queue - Anyone (Solo + 2 to 4 mans) can opt into this queue (perhaps, it may need some sort of Elo minimum to go here, so newbies don't wander in), but 5 to 12 mans are automatically enrolled here. Solo and small groups get a bonus (10 to 15%, whatever it takes to make this feasible). This will allow for maximum MM flexibility (11-mans are allowed), similar to how the MM worked prior to the separation of solo+group queues, while not restricting the creation of a large premade (11-man adds a solo player, 10-man can get 2 solo players or a 2-man, 9-man gets 3 solo players, or 1 solo+2-man, or 3-man... etc.)

Note that this system will make 3/3/3/3 extraordinarily difficult to work by design, and it will likely degrade into weight class matching (what we have now anyways) and mismatches (12-mans vs mixed groups, which is what we have already as well).

Pros: Big groups can still function in this w/o penalty. Also, solo/smaller players who wish to play with competitive/bigger groups instead of the "Normal" queue will have an incentive to do so.
Cons: Mismatches will exist, but if you're a good player, you wouldn't be complaining about adversity.

So, I'll try to be quick by summing up some important questions you may have...

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions):
1) Why give a bonus to solo+smaller premades for this new queue?

If there's a need, you need to give people a reason to do it. Besides, people need money for more mechs. It's a win-win for everyone.

2) Would this incentive draw bad players into this queue?

Sure, it would, but it wouldn't be profitable if you're losing often.

3) How would this affect solo tournies?

All players wanting in tournies MUST play in the Competitive Queue. For reference, remember that PGI has held MANY tournies where you were in just the same queue with everyone else (with groups and other solo players). So, while these "solo tournies" in the solo queue "may" be an improvement, you are also smashing lots of newbies along the ways. This will isolate them OUT of the Solo "Normal"/Newbie queue. You can't say you're a good player if you destroy newbies at will. That's not a challenge.

4) What about sync drops? Wouldn't breaking a bigger group (say 8-man into 2 4-mans) to get the small-premade bonus happen?

This is a simple rule that has to be reinforced by the MM in the Competitive queue.. it should NEVER be possible for a player in a unit to be on the same team or on opposing teams (through sync dropping). This affects tournies as well. This isn't the best method, but it's one way of ensuring integrity of the game... as sync dropping would put into question the validation of tourney results (tanking or allowing you to steal kills in a tourney). That is the only realistic way to go.

You could sync drop in the Normal Group and Normal Solo queue if you want, but I think public embarrassment (not really name and shame, but word gets around) is sufficient... unless you honestly don't care.

Also, I guess players with "hidden unaffiliated accounts" would benefit, but that would seem kinda impractical for the "glory" of winning a tourney (but, this is rare and in a real minority, unlike some would like to imagine).

5) Can I opt into both Normal and Competitive Queues?

YES. This in fact is ideal to reduce MM work, similar to selecting all Game Modes or selecting less used Weight Classes to get a faster drop. This is ONLY applicable to Solo and 2-4 man teams, as 5-12 man teams do NOT apply.

There should be an indication post match (possibly pre-match) to inform you what queue (Normal or Competitive) that you ended up in, so you know that you got the bonus in the Competitive Queue as a solo or small-premade.

6) So, why is there a cutoff to force 5+ man teams into a different queue?

I will say that this cutoff can be @ 6+ man teams (and change the rule of a small group to be 2 to 5 players, but that is a different discussion)... Understand that when you group is a 6+ man, you are a greater influence to the result of the match. When you ARE 50%+ of the team, you are that much responsible for your own team's performance. Even if you are a casual group, a 6+ man group is realistically "not casual" when the matches are 12v12. Something has to give here. You can't have everything.

Just remember that there will ALWAYS be tradeoffs for a system, like waiting longer if you are being more selective or having more players on your team. It's natural that playing solo should be faster than being part of a 12-man.

I hope this covers everything I've said before and then some. Please give constructive feedback and perhaps this would get some consideration for PGI to implement.

[Kavoh]

Interesting post. Would solve many of the issues people are having, but I can already hear the clawing and screeching from the people who are going to tell you to "get good" and that "everythings fine as it is" and that "12 mans vs 6 2man teams is balanced because there is that one team that got rolled last week". But interesting nonetheless.

EDIT: I can see one semi valid point that it would cause much higher que times for larger groups under normal circumstances, but with your ""Competitive" (Hardcore) Queue - Anyone (Solo + 2 to 4 mans)" opt in, would completely solve that problem and actually give them more room for group size (would be able to take 11 into a drop). The only problem is how this would all be done on PGIs end. I could imagine it would be a lot of work.

Edited by Kavoh, 28 September 2014 - 03:40 PM.

[Naduk]

overly complex solution that would ruin the experience of the game entirely

you need to look at the bigger picture
wait times

the MM already struggles with its hard limitations as it is, its going to get worse when half the players ship out for CW
and you want to split the Que system by a factor of 3 ?
i do not want to spend 40mins waiting in Que for a match because there are not enough players looking for my specific type of match and then gets placed in the far deep end because the MM release valves go crazy when i have been in que for so long

not to mention it would completely collapse when ever they release a new mech, especially a heavy

the simple solution is to allow players on the cadet pay to count as premium for the purpose of dropping in private matches
aka training mode, then your noobs can be taught

Edited by Naduk, 28 September 2014 - 03:52 PM.

[-Natural Selection-]

Wait for CW battles to clear out the larger groups from the group que then see what its like. I mean isn't that what most of the people who "try hard" enough to be organized have been waiting 2+ years to play?

[Project_Mercy]

This suffers the same issue as all the others. It runs off the basis "We have a small and every shrinking (or not growing) base of players". It then proceeds to aly out "here's how we'll make new player experiences terrible" which pretty much reinforces nobody wanting to join the game.

MM changes that don't fix the underling solo queue problem just result in polishing the titanic. If you make a game caustic to new people, you don't get new people. Turning off all did nothing to remove the underlying problem. It just reduced GGCloses.

[Deathlike]

Naduk, on 28 September 2014 - 03:51 PM, said:

overly complex solution that would ruin the experience of the game entirely

Sure... but you have to explain yourself first by at least using point by point analysis first.

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you need to look at the bigger picture
wait times

Wait times are generally influenced by player mech selection vs 3/3/3/3. When I drop in a Light, I tend to "accelerate" the drop wait times... because that weight class OFTEN is generally needed. Since a fair majority of people stick in heavies and assaults, my suggestion will not influence that change that dramatically. Remember, the queues don't fill themselves.

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the MM already struggles with its hard limitations as it is, its going to get worse when half the players ship out for CW
and you want to split the Que system by a factor of 3 ?

It actually won't... as I'll explain further later in my reply.

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i do not want to spend 40mins waiting in Que for a match because there are not enough players looking for my specific type of match and then gets placed in the far deep end because the MM release valves go crazy when i have been in que for so long

I love hyperbole, as the MM "hard cutoff" (worst case scenario) is 4 minutes. This is coming from the devs themselves (I'm pretty sure Karl Berg said this in his informal thread) on how long the MM waits AND STILL brings you to a match.

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not to mention it would completely collapse when ever they release a new mech, especially a heavy

The current system ALREADY DOES THIS.

Why would this be that dramatically different?

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the simple solution is to allow players on the cadet pay to count as premium for the purpose of dropping in private matches
aka training mode, then your noobs can be taught

Good luck with that, when these players want their money ASAP and trying to buy and configure their mech... 25 matches is a relatively small window for lots of sad punishment. Of course, you'd have to inform them somehow (aka, need more work on UI 2.0).

Look at the queues for what they are in my projected queues (there will be problems, but it's sadly no different than what we have):

1) Solo - Since there will be players siphoned off for the Competitive Queue, this queue will mainly remain unchanged, for the vast number of solo matches going on. This is a non-issue.

2) Small Group Queue - Many players/groups will fall into this category as these sizes are as not hard to construct and it'll happen before AND after peak times of any group and any time zone. Time to get a match shouldn't be too long, since there should be plenty of candidates to match up with in the first place. Some will be siphoned off for the Competitive Queue, and that is the optimal condition, so nothing changes.

3) Competitive Queue - Since we're siphoning off volunteers from both the solo AND small group queues, we're trying to "fill" in spots for large groups "the best we can". That's what the MM does anyways, but it completely implodes on 12-mans (and that's to be expected really). The bigger the group, the likely that the MM can pull in the solo+small group volunteers quickly. However, the match quality will suffer without some time spent waiting as pulling them too fast will cause inevitable skill inequities... and in the worst case weight class matching inequities. So, those that are waiting a long time in the queue aren't going to get their match going any faster than before.

Just consider this.. would you want a group that volunteers into this queue KNOWING the potential for imbalance in games AND willing to go for it, or would you want a group that doesn't want ANY PART of being part of a bigger group? I would choose the group that is willing to be team players in this system... some would disagree, but that is my choice and it is far more productive to have players (including solo players) willing to work with the team that is constructed, than those that want to screw around and do their own thing.... to the detriment of the match (you may see some of that in the small premade queues by nature).

It will if anything MIRROR CW (we'll see what they do with Solo players in their MM addition for CW), so it arguably won't look that much different from what we have now.

I'm not saying it is perfect, but we already have some existing systems in place (4-min worst case scenario, best try weight class matchmaking, and 3/3/3/3 if everything goes right - though that works best for solo and that's it). It would certainly take time to code though, but you have to realize with "flexibility" or "choice", needs to come with some consequences. Something inevitably HAS to suffer when you look into the finer details.

Edited by Deathlike, 28 September 2014 - 08:22 PM.

[Corduroy Rab]

Personally, as someone new playing with getting dumpstered with a hand full of other new players in the group queue I would definitely be down for a normal vs competitive queue at least for groups (solo queue I really haven't had too many bad experiences with maybe i just blend in better with the rabble). That being said none of us have quit and are finally enjoying the game now that we got a hang for proper (at least better) fittings and bringing our own ECM.

While this game is keeping us for the moment I easily see how someone going though the NPE for this game would just not bother, epically when there are plenty of games that scratch the same itch with much improved NPE and the new player has no financial investment in the game.

Unfortunately, the game seems between a rock and a hard place when it comes to solutions to this issue and potentially it is too late in the game's life cycle to really change anything. It goes something like this, our matchmaking system prevents us from getting many new players and keeps our player base small, stratifying the matchmaker would be good for new players but we might lose a good chunk of our already small player base in the near term before those new players show up. Given this game is pretty niche to being with that is a pretty big risk.

Overall what I am saying is that yeah the NPE sucks and having more queues would be nice, i agree with that, but changes that risk losing the current player base (or a good chunk of it) are likely not viable. This is not to say things should not be done to improve the NPE, like making trial mechs not be so trashy and adding a better explanation of some game mechanics

[Votanin FleshRender]

Pretty simple, my 2 cents...

Let LOW Elo 2 mans into the solo Q
Let solo players opt into the group Q

done

[Squally160]

I still have issues with this. What is to stop 4 man "comp" teams from opting out of the big group q, and stomping as many "casuals" as they can in the small group q?

I dont think you understand the impact a lance of organized folks can have, especially if its up against teams they know are split at least 3 ways.

you can say Elo matching will be better all you want, but if they opt-out of the big group q, valves will go off and BAM, stomps.

As well, as Mickey said, wait for CW, I think it will alleviate a lot of the problems people perceive now.

All the comp teams will be doing comp stuff in CW. Any other big team that cant handle CW, well, they shouldnt be a problem for casuals to kill. If they were that good, theyd be in CW.

[aniviron]

It took me way, way too long to guess what NPE is.

The queue idea is nice, and it would work in a very large game. Not sure about MWO, where Russ and Karl keep telling us that the MM is struggling to make games with the limits it has now; not sure that more limits are going to make it better. FWIW, I almost never have blowout games now, closeish matches in the solo queue (12-6 or better) seem to be the norm. Not sure what my Elo is.

[Deathlike]

Wraeththix Constantine, on 28 September 2014 - 08:17 PM, said:

This suffers the same issue as all the others. It runs off the basis "We have a small and every shrinking (or not growing) base of players". It then proceeds to aly out "here's how we'll make new player experiences terrible" which pretty much reinforces nobody wanting to join the game.

MM changes that don't fix the underling solo queue problem just result in polishing the titanic. If you make a game caustic to new people, you don't get new people. Turning off all did nothing to remove the underlying problem. It just reduced GGCloses.

The thing is, my idea is based on what we have currently. It's not trying to reinvent the wheel... rather it is refining what are already have.

The "technical" difference is that there will be less players to pull from for 8-10 man teams (essentially, 2-4 mans are in extraordinarily high demand under my scenario), and thus potentially create more difficult matchups under a limited amount of time. It's not like the MM is doing much better when 12-mans are facing multiple groups.

Corduroy Rab, on 28 September 2014 - 08:54 PM, said:

Personally, as someone new playing with getting dumpstered with a hand full of other new players in the group queue I would definitely be down for a normal vs competitive queue at least for groups (solo queue I really haven't had too many bad experiences with maybe i just blend in better with the rabble). That being said none of us have quit and are finally enjoying the game now that we got a hang for proper (at least better) fittings and bringing our own ECM.

While this game is keeping us for the moment I easily see how someone going though the NPE for this game would just not bother, epically when there are plenty of games that scratch the same itch with much improved NPE and the new player has no financial investment in the game.

Unfortunately, the game seems between a rock and a hard place when it comes to solutions to this issue and potentially it is too late in the game's life cycle to really change anything. It goes something like this, our matchmaking system prevents us from getting many new players and keeps our player base small, stratifying the matchmaker would be good for new players but we might lose a good chunk of our already small player base in the near term before those new players show up. Given this game is pretty niche to being with that is a pretty big risk.

Overall what I am saying is that yeah the NPE sucks and having more queues would be nice, i agree with that, but changes that risk losing the current player base (or a good chunk of it) are likely not viable. This is not to say things should not be done to improve the NPE, like making trial mechs not be so trashy and adding a better explanation of some game mechanics

I pretty much agree so many other things needs to be done (command rose and more tutorials are just the tip of the iceberg). I believe the MM is able to accomplish this task... with the caveat that there will be side effects (they exist already).

Squally160, on 28 September 2014 - 09:15 PM, said:

I still have issues with this. What is to stop 4 man "comp" teams from opting out of the big group q, and stomping as many "casuals" as they can in the small group q?

I dont think you understand the impact a lance of organized folks can have, especially if its up against teams they know are split at least 3 ways.

you can say Elo matching will be better all you want, but if they opt-out of the big group q, valves will go off and BAM, stomps.

As well, as Mickey said, wait for CW, I think it will alleviate a lot of the problems people perceive now.

All the comp teams will be doing comp stuff in CW. Any other big team that cant handle CW, well, they shouldnt be a problem for casuals to kill. If they were that good, theyd be in CW.

All I can say is "reputation" and shame is the only way of doing it... at least being accused of "small group stomping" can be "acknowledged" at the End of Round screen where the game will inform you what queue you were in (so, screenshot verification will do the work for you).

Seriously though, if you believe trolling the small group queue won't get your a reputation, then I don't know what to tell you. Technically for "real" competitive teams/players, they will be EXCLUSIVELY be running in the Competitive Queue.

aniviron, on 28 September 2014 - 09:29 PM, said:

It took me way, way too long to guess what NPE is.

The queue idea is nice, and it would work in a very large game. Not sure about MWO, where Russ and Karl keep telling us that the MM is struggling to make games with the limits it has now; not sure that more limits are going to make it better. FWIW, I almost never have blowout games now, closeish matches in the solo queue (12-6 or better) seem to be the norm. Not sure what my Elo is.

Well, that always depends on whether you solo often or go in groups.

I've played enough games to see somewhat bad groups join my team and not really contribute to the match... inevitably losing the match (I'm guilty of not pulling my weight at times). Then again, I play in many matches where my existence didn't affect the outcome. The games tend to even out over time though...

I wouldn't be surprised if the MM struggles more than what I see... I mean, it is easy to get self-bias in the data, and sometimes you can get a good feel of how things are going...

Of course, if we had replays (and I don't mean twitch, because it's effectively just one-view, when there's 23 others to consider)... things would be easier to review, spot, and understand what went on... That's a feature to be repeatedly requested for another day (I mean, I'd still rather have smurfy's mechlab in game).

[Hoax415]

Votanin FleshRender, on 28 September 2014 - 09:06 PM, said:

Pretty simple, my 2 cents...

Let LOW Elo 2 mans into the solo Q

This is the solution to the truly pressing problem. New players need to be protected from group queue instead of being punished for playing with friends.

We lose a lot of people because they can't find the place to learn the game.

I would take the LOW Elo rule a bit further maybe to alleviate solo players concerns and feelings of **** being unfair and make it so a "mentor" (someone not on cadet bonus, grouped with someone who is) must be using a trial mech or else they will not be able to drop in the solo queue.

Hopefully that would make a solo queue exception palatable enough to be possible.

***

As to the OP.

First of all the second you are trying to implement anti sync dropping stuff you are asking for alot more technical work than you realize. But you have to have some kind of anti sync system because your idea creates tons of incentive to sync drop in groups under 5.

Second of all giving out bonus cbills is probably more problematic than you imagine. People get their feelings hurt very very easily. Its unreasonable but there would be a ton of QQ if some people get a bonus from the people who don't want to participate in the bonus activity. Look at the QQ every time there is a challenge with good rewards.

Its also crazy to me that you are punishing people if they make bigger groups by taking cbills away from them. That's not a great plan at all.

Lastly a lot of people are going to end up waiting a lot longer for matches than they did. Either in the new casual group queue or the HC queue. There is no way one if not both are going to be longer times than the current group queue takes. Probably the latter although who knows how much you could influence that with cbill and/or xp bonus type incentives though again I think the incentive structure in the OP is assbackwards.

Edited by Hoax415, 28 September 2014 - 10:47 PM.

[Deathlike]

Hoax415, on 28 September 2014 - 10:42 PM, said:

As to the OP.

First of all the second you are trying to implement anti sync dropping stuff you are asking for more than I think you realize. But you have to have some kind of anti sync system because your proposal is a sync droppers dream.

It's not that complicated, but even if that weren't the case... being overly paranoid about sync dropping is silly IMO. If you can't handle the challenge, you have more problems than you are admitting to. People that care to play the game are in units more often than not. Sync dropping will still happen, deal with it. If Sync dropping happens in the majority of cases, then we can revisit this. That's just paranoia of the highest order otherwise. The game is struggling as is with what we got, and complaining about sync dropping is pretty much at the bottom of the "list of things to address".

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Second of all giving out bonus cbills is probably more problematic than you imagine. People get their feelings hurt very very easily. Its unreasonable but there would be a ton of QQ if some people get a bonus from the people who don't want to participate in the bonus activity. Look at the QQ every time there is a challenge with good rewards.

QQ will always happen. It won't cease regardless. If small groups or solo players don't want a challenge, that's not my problem. The incentive is there for people that want to help out the big group queue. Take it or leave it.

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Its also crazy to me that you are punishing people if they make bigger groups by taking cbills away from them. That's not a great plan at all.

When you are a big group, you are controlling the match by design, whether you agree with that or not. Whether you are good or not, that's a different issue. If you group constitutes 50%+ of your team, you are relying on "strength in your own clan/unit/group's numbers" over "being able to help carry the team with your smaller numbers".

Quote

Lastly a lot of people are going to end up waiting a lot longer for matches than they did. Either in the new casual group queue or the HC queue, probably the latter although who knows how much you could influence that with cbill and/or xp bonus type incentives though again I think the incentive structure in the OP is assbackwards.

I've already said in the thread that there ALREADY EXISTS a match cutoff wait time of 4 minutes. That is actually pretty generous (it's better than "failed to find match" every 3 minutes in previous MM iterations). It is HIGHLY unlikely said problems would exist in the casual queue (frankly, I don't think you understand the logistics). I've already stated there are certain issues that will definitely exist in the competitive queue, so I'm already put that out there in the first place.

While you may disagree with the rewards, consider that 12-mans prior to various MM changes, were generally a ghost town of sorts... only functioning at certain hours of the day. Unless you were super-competitive (like the Lords or SJR), this would not appeal to the semi-competitive/casual crowd.... there was very LITTLE incentive to be in said queues, outside of bragging rights. If you're complaining about a reward structure is supposed to help supply smaller groups to combine with the bigger 8 to 10 man teams, then there's literally no reason to have said team sizes in the first place. It's the same kind of issue that 12-mans have... trying to find those 1 or 2 more players just to run a 12-man drop deck... which has always been a pain in the arse.

It's rather shortsighted to play "every oddball worst case scenarios" that don't actually happen.

Edited by Deathlike, 28 September 2014 - 11:03 PM.

[Haipyng]

Deathlike has summed up what small groups are looking for, worked out some wrinkles and articulated some areas of concern very nicely. This sounds like the elegant fix we are looking for. Thank you for taking the time to put this out there.

In regards to Elo...many games (and I believe Mechwarrior does this too) start out with an Elo in the middle of the bracket assuming that you sink or rise to your level. In theory, starting at the low end of the Elo bracket means that the low end is often flooded with players of a higher skill level on their way up muddying the game for players that would naturally be in that Elo bracket. The starting point for Elo is always debatable as to which is best.

I don't believe sync dropping would be as problematic as some believe, for many of the same reasons Deathlike has already said. It should also be relatively simple to create a matching rule that says in effect if these small groups have already dropped together on the same team, they can't drop again on the same team for X number of matches to help alleviate the issue. It's not a fix all, but it does make it a bit more inconvenient to try and with more players it becomes less of a problem.

[Mawai]

Hi,

First question I have is ... exactly what is the problem that you are trying to solve?

It seems to me that the objective is primarily to find matches in which large teams are matched against other large teams ... and small groups are generally matched against other small groups on a more regular basis.

The suggestion is to create a casual and competitive queue ... and then split the casual queue into solo and small group subtypes ... the large groups are all considered to be competitive by default.

The fundamental problem here is the definition of "competitive" vs. "casual". Ideally, all the small groups would be playing casually for fun ... in practice you will probably get competitive 4 mans dropping in the small group queue looking for "fun" stomps ... and they will get them. Competitive and casual are up to the players ... the matchmaker can't tell whether folks in a group are on TS chatting about baseball during the match or coordinating and using focused fire and intel to wipe the other team.

The next problem I see ... WHY does the matchmaker NOT already match large group with large group? As far as I know it is designed to TRY to do this first. However, you need to find opposing large groups in a similar Elo bracket and then fit together other groups to find a reasonable mech distribution. The conclusion I reach is that there aren't enough large groups, in similar Elo brackets with the required exactly matching paired group in the queue to fill the missing spaces.

e.g. There are both a 12 man and a 10 man in the queue ...
- it would be best to match these up
- is their Elo compatible?
- The 10 man is missing 2 mechs ... say a medium and a light ... is there a 2 man group in the queue .. in the correct Elo bracket which are using a medium and a light? Honestly, it seems to me that the odds of meeting all of these conditions at the same time ... particularly the missing group to give the best match ... are hard to find.

This is the problem with the current matchmaker and it would be the issue with the suggestion made here. It is quite possible that the 12 man in the competitive queue would get matched against 3 x 4-mans in the competitive queue since that was the best match it could put together from what was currently in the queue. The small groups get stomped a few times by the 12 mans (what is currently happening) ... the small groups decide to go back to the small group queue ... queue starvation happens in the competitive queue since large groups are forced there and the small groups have had some bad experiences and go with the small group queue ... where they competitively stomp the casuals . The end result is no matches or long waits for large groups in the "competitive" queue ... and some unhappy casual folks in the small group queue.


In the short term I would suggest the following ... try to adjust the large group formation parameters in the group queue to favour the formation of large group vs large group matches at the expense of a longer queue time ... wait longer, trigger release valves ... but form the matches with large groups on both sides (ideally 9-12 vs 9-12, 5-8 vs 5-8). Try to form matches of predominantly small groups as well but do it as a PREFERENCE in the existing queue structure since I don't think the game can support separate queues at the present time.

P.S. Russ is proposing removing the game mode hard selection since it apparently makes it harder for the matchmaker to form balanced matches ... if the game mode switch is an issue ... separate queues would be an issue for the same reasons.

P.P.S. I like the basic idea of the OP suggestion and the objective ... I just don't think it would work in the reality of MWO as it currently stands

Edited by Mawai, 29 September 2014 - 05:48 AM.

[Screech]

I don't really object to any of the proposed changes I just don't think they would really out to the intended results. I just see the competitive queue dying out for the most part and the solo and 2-4 group queue will become the defaults again. Might be able to have limited support for the competitive queue during NA primetime but otherwise it will largely resemble the tumbleweed dustbowl the 12 man queue was before and the circle will become complete.

[Haipyng]

Screech, on 29 September 2014 - 06:02 AM, said:

I don't really object to any of the proposed changes I just don't think they would really out to the intended results. I just see the competitive queue dying out for the most part and the solo and 2-4 group queue will become the defaults again. Might be able to have limited support for the competitive queue during NA primetime but otherwise it will largely resemble the tumbleweed dustbowl the 12 man queue was before and the circle will become complete.

I understand your concerns. The big difference here is that there are now Units so grouping up into 12 mans and keeping track of everyone is a bit easier than it was before. There would also be mobility for solos and small groups into the large queue, which there was not before (matching 12 mans or nothing). The proposed bonus makes it it even more likely that there will be plenty of filler for full groups.

I'd like to see something happen that creates that middle ground to casuals and newbies to step up to.

[Wieland]

As long as the MM does crappy things like putting 4 DW in one team and a DW a Stalker a HighlanderC and a VictorC in the other you can forget all that.

[Asmudius Heng]

More queue splitting could be problematic.

However I actually agree mainly because the hardcore queue would be all inclusive - if I was plying solo I would opt into the hardcore queue personally so I know my teammates would be semi competent.

Do we have the player base to actually have so many queues is my worry?

Maybe the hardcore queue would just morph into CW and faction warfare?

This would help address the complaints about big/small/solo and keep pretty much all groups happy except the baby seal clubbers who I despise anyway.