94 replies to this topic

[Malecite]

Hello everyone

Well it's been one week, one glorious week of running around guns blazing enjoy all the fruits this game has to offer. I am hugely impressed with the level of detail and customization the game contains. After being cajoled for over a year by a friend, I finally caved and installed.

170 patches later and 8 hours I was in.

I grabbed my holiday premium time and my trial mechs and went to work.

2 days later I bought a firebrand because I was in love with the game.

3 days later I stopped playing.

Why you might ask?

Well I was averaging 400 pts a match, which I think is reasonably okay. I am fan of FPS so this game fit well into my play style. But all of a sudden I started to notice an extremely frustrating pattern. The pub matches were seemingly balanced in terms of W/L, you would have streaks at times, but then all of a sudden I was winning maybe 3/10. The games went from being fun and seemingly balanced to wipes in both directions. Like 12:3 or 12:0 every game.

So I decided to stop playing pub matches and only play when my friends were on. After all it's a game that centers around team work, and our team is pretty good. Or so I thought.

This is when things went from bad to horrible.

Last night (I kept track mind you) after 3 hours of solid play we ended up with a score of:

3/14

3 wins

out of

17 matches

We were facing 8-12 man drops and when I say 3 wins I mean we absolutely, no mercy, crushed them. The 14 loses were brutal wipes with at least 4 of those loses our team failed to score even a single kill. Several times our entire lance was wiped by 8 man ECM rushes before we could even link up with the team. It was beyond frustrating

So I am at a loss with what to do. This game is amazing, has potential, is fun ect. But right now I don't even want to bother clicking *play* because I know what awaits me. On top of everything the inability to even play with my friends basically makes this title worthless to me.

I don't mind having spent the 10 dollars to support the devs, but my advice is:

1) Separate the elite people with their 8-12 man teams from the mainstay pubs who just want to have fun without getting their rears taken to pound town.

2) Give new players some kind of overarching instruction as to how the game works, I am a pretty hardcore gamer and I still found the game had a huge learning curve requiring extensive forum reading to fully understand the mechanics.

Anyways, thanks for the hard work devs and good luck, I am off to find something that allows me to play the game without wanting to smash my keyboard in frustration!

Edited by Malecite, 05 January 2015 - 10:59 AM.

[Axeface]

I have told my friends that I DONT want to play with them on many occasions because of this.

Make 12 mans private matches and CW only IMHO, it might help a lot.

[TyphonCh]

I expected a rage post, lol. Well done, very modest. You nailed it

Edited by Team Chevy86, 05 January 2015 - 10:44 AM.

[Vandul]

They have committed to enhancing the new player experience. Public matches are 'supposed' to be matched by the ELO system, but with the advent of CW, the matchmaker is being forced to relax some of its matchmaking magic.

Dont give up, it gets better.

[etrius]

I highly recommend joining a unit. There are several advantages to be had. First, coordination over teamspeak revolutionizes organization and effectiveness. You also get to tap into the knowledge base of players who have been around a lot longer than you.
With the introduction of community warfare, units are looking for eager recruits to swell their numbers. Go into any of the community warfare clan or inner sphere forums and introduce yourself as an experienced gamer, new to MWO and looking for a unit. The game gets exponentially more fun in unit and in cw.

[Vassago Rain]

Such is life in an elo controller world.

[Steve Pryde]

MWO is pain in the ass for small groups of teams. That's why most of my friends quit playing MWO because we allready got stomped by big groups when we are playing in small 2-4 man groups.

[topgun505]

Yup. At present this game is not at all friendly to small player groups (2-4 player teams) as you will typically get paired against an 8-man and a 4-man which will, typically, result in a severe butt crushing despite how well your small group might perform.

This should be a major concern for PGI.

Why?

Because if a new player joins up it is likely going to be from a friend bringing him in and showing him the ropes. But if you continually punish 2-mans by pitting them up against 8 or even 10-man teams resulting in one crushing loss after another then chances are that new player will get disheartened very quickly and poof, another potentially paying customer is out the door before they had a chance to open their wallets.

[Triordinant]

Malecite, on 05 January 2015 - 10:32 AM, said:

So I am at a loss with what to do. This game is amazing, has potential, is fun ect. But right now I don't even want to bother clicking *play* because I know what awaits me. On top of everything the inability to even play with my friends basically makes this title worthless to me.

Here's the history behind what you experienced with your friends: Almost no one wants to play against the big organized well-trained Units. In order to save the game (players were leaving in droves after being repeatedly curbstomped by big organized Units), PGI created a solo-only queue to keep the big Units from preying on the casual PUGs that made up the vast majority of players. However, they also wanted to retain the big organized Units who were not playing because they had to wait forever to find a match for their 12-man teams or were being limited to 4-man teams. Someone had to get the shaft and I suspect rather than sticking it to the solo players (who are by far the most numerous) or the big organized Units (who are supposedly the biggest spenders of real money per player), they decided the short end of the stick would go to the small casual groups (who are neither the most numerous nor the biggest spenders).

If you want to have fun with friends, try playing when the big competitive Units aren't on or when they're playing Community Warfare (presumably they play CW on weekends and peak hours). Stay away from CW because there's no Elo matchmaking there and no solo-only queue, making it far more likely you'll run into those guys no one wants to play with.

[Targaeryen]

I concur wholeheartedly OP.
I like the concept, love the feel of the whole thing, but I simply cannot enjoy playing the 'game' if I have expectations on winning.
The ONLY way I can play a few matches without wanting to strangle my teammates is to not care AT ALL about the outcome.
If I can manage that then I can battle away for a while and derive some enjoyment from it, but as soon as I start to want to win, nine times out of ten I log off cursing my teammates, their families, their heritage, the way they dress...
I really want to like this game but it keeps spurning my affections.
I even joined a clan to see if that helps but no, it is worse. And committing to dropping with a clan means sitting and waiting every match for people to fiddle with their mechs, drop group, join group, switch mechs, bleh. Drop less, lose the same or more than lone-wolfing. So I quit the clan too. Fun!
I used to love MWO, been playing since closed beta, now... I keep it installed in the hopes things will change, that somehow it will start being consistently fun rather than 90% frustration, 10% reward. Mess with it maybe once a week now. Sad really.
This is my secondary account. I have a primary account with some 40 or so mechs with elite mastery, modules out the wazoo, cool paint jobs and camo schemes, and I do not play any of them, nor do I care to.
So I have one lonely stormcrow with gauss and lasers, and no desire to buy any more, and I do not care. Sad really.

Edited by Targaeryen, 05 January 2015 - 11:43 AM.

[HARDKOR]

I also only feel like playing pug or 12 man now. Playing with just a few people is pretty unfun and not worth the extra wait for the much lower chance of winning.

[Utilyan]

Malecite, on 05 January 2015 - 10:32 AM, said:

Hello everyone

Well it's been one week, one glorious week of running around guns blazing enjoy all the fruits this game has to offer. I am hugely impressed with the level of detail and customization the game contains. After being cajoled for over a year by a friend, I finally caved and installed.

170 patches later and 8 hours I was in.

I grabbed my holiday premium time and my trial mechs and went to work.

2 days later I bought a firebrand because I was in love with the game.

3 days later I stopped playing.

Why you might ask?

Well I was averaging 400 pts a match, which I think is reasonably okay. I am fan of FPS so this game fit well into my play style. But all of a sudden I started to notice an extremely frustrating pattern. The pub matches were seemingly balanced in terms of W/L, you would have streaks at times, but then all of a sudden I was winning maybe 3/10. The games went from being fun and seemingly balanced to wipes in both directions. Like 12:3 or 12:0 every game.

So I decided to stop playing pub matches and only play when my friends were on. After all it's a game that centers around team work, and our team is pretty good. Or so I thought.

This is when things went from bad to horrible.

Last night (I kept track mind you) after 3 hours of solid play we ended up with a score of:

3/14

3 wins

out of

17 matches

We were facing 8-12 man drops and when I say 3 wins I mean we absolutely, no mercy, crushed them. The 14 loses were brutal wipes with at least 4 of those loses our team failed to score even a single kill. Several times our entire lance was wiped by 8 man ECM rushes before we could even link up with the team. It was beyond frustrating

So I am at a loss with what to do. This game is amazing, has potential, is fun ect. But right now I don't even want to bother clicking *play* because I know what awaits me. On top of everything the inability to even play with my friends basically makes this title worthless to me.

I don't mind having spent the 10 dollars to support the devs, but my advice is:

1) Separate the elite people with their 8-12 man teams from the mainstay pubs who just want to have fun without getting their rears taken to pound town.

2) Give new players some kind of overarching instruction as to how the game works, I am a pretty hardcore gamer and I still found the game had a huge learning curve requiring extensive forum reading to fully understand the mechanics.

Anyways, thanks for the hard work devs and good luck, I am off to find something that allows me to play the game without wanting to smash my keyboard in frustration!

I don't believe you are a noob...

Your a "NEW" player who played for a week, tells a story about quitting in 3 days, and you've been a member since febuary of 2013.

[cDnStealth]

If the only way for MWO to be fun is for players to join a unit then this game isn't going to last very long. Successful games need those pub players. They make up the majority of the player base and are essential to a healthy community. Rather than telling people they're playing the game incorrectly perhaps we should be addressing the bigger issue(s). Matchmaking needs an overhaul. Almost every game I play is a landslide victory in one direction or another. I was on board with the changes they implemented a couple months ago but too many people valued game mode choice over balanced matches.

I can also vouch for the fact that Malecite is indeed a new player. I wasn't the friend who was convincing him to play but was one of those playing with him over the past few days. He's never set foot in MWO prior to this.

Edited by cDnStealth, 05 January 2015 - 11:58 AM.

[Thorqemada]

Fun can be found in the PUG matches - Group Queue and CW is "Combat Work".

I had some luck with CW matches lately and soloed into CW-Pugs containing People who did know what to do and won even 2x IS vs Clan Defenses and a IS vs IS attack and felt very short a IS vs Clan attack (it was 10% and if they had split up the forces intead of deahtballing in front of the Gun rears to the enemy it would have become a win).

You can shot the Gun with ranged Weapons on both Maps from the East Corner (Boreal ~G7) and on Sulfur also from the West Corner (~C2/F2).
The Defender now must a. split up the firepower and b. you show your more armored Front to him instead of being backstabbed.

Never go to 60/60Worlds or multiples of 12 - the Side with more Players is liketly to attack/counter - the Side with less Players defends/holds.

Edited by Thorqemada, 05 January 2015 - 03:14 PM.

[LORD TSARKON]

Utilyan, on 05 January 2015 - 11:43 AM, said:

I don't believe you are a noob...

Your a "NEW" player who played for a week, tells a story about quitting in 3 days, and you've been a member since febuary of 2013.

^ Just so you know I signed up back in March 2012 but quickly realized what PGI was and so did not participate in the Closed Beta or Founders Program (because it was a rip off in my book) but started to play in Jan 2013..... so someone with a forum profile and when they started to actually play the game usually do not sync up

Also when I SOLO this game I'm like a PUG stomping machine (lots of kills and damage usually...not all the time but very often) and win percentage is decent... even in a loss I usually can get a carry harder pic.... but in group of 2-3 we get stomped all the time.... Sometimes I have more fun SOLO than with my friends (always fun though with a friend)

[Screech]

Are there way more 12 man groups playing in the group queue then CW? I ask because from my experience in CW the 12 man is pretty rare. I just want to know how the small group units are constantly facing 12man groups when my time spent in CW was maybe once every 8 to 10 games.

6 to10 man were more common, but they were as likely to be on my side as against and often they were on both. So what gives? Why are there such differences between CW and group?

[Xyroc]

Common response is "join a group" that in it self is a trying task. Too many people trying to have control over others.. Its not fun in these militaristic hierarchies of forum warriors.

This is why I'm now solo / not playing.

Edited by Xyroc, 05 January 2015 - 12:22 PM.

[Flaming oblivion]

So stop giving 12 mans a free win .

Instead put us against pugs so we can have a massive advantage and stomp pugs.

We don't want to be rolled but we want to roll pugs.

Sounds reasonable.

[Tristan Winter]

Vassago Rain, on 05 January 2015 - 11:15 AM, said:

Such is life in an elo controller world.

What's the alternative?

Personally, I've long been an advocate of separating players into groups purely based on number of matches played. In other games, you have a Tier system (e.g. Tier 1-5 vehicles) or an XP level (e.g. level 1-60) which takes care of matchmaking. Those options probably won't work for MWO, so at least you could extend cadet period to 500 matches and then make a veteran group for people with 3000 matches or something. Then again... that player population.

[misterhodgekins]

I have a couple of friends i occasionaly play with - As a group of two or three we regularly get grouped in against 12 mans. Its better to play alone - or sync-drop and hope to get lucky...