52 replies to this topic

[Stuii OCAU]

Jez, on 21 June 2013 - 01:38 AM, said:

8 mans have been dying a slow death ever since PGI implemented the restriction that only full 8-man teams could play in 8-man matches. No more 6-man + 2 pugs or 7-man + 1 pug. That single move by PGI reduced the available pool of players and created a stupidly difficult and lengthy situation for players to organize themselves into full 8-man teams.

People will try to blame ECM, PPCs, pop tarting, ELO. What it really comes down to is that PGI made it so ridiculously difficult to assemble and maintain a group of 8 people that the population for 8-man team play could never make it to critical mass and has been dying a slow death ever since.

And just wait! soon it will be 12... there will be no more playing with your mates...

[Sephlock]

Stuii OCAU, on 21 June 2013 - 04:37 AM, said:

And just wait! soon it will be 12... there will be no more playing with your mates...

You guys just need to get those wives of yours into the game . THen you can be like that one Jade Falcon couple that had mixed DNA (mixed with Clan Wolf DNA, IIRC).

[Belorion]

I still say that an optional PUG only que rather than an 8 man only que was the way to go. Its just too difficult to manage the 8 mans.

Edited by Belorion, 21 June 2013 - 05:46 AM.

[Vassago Rain]

http://mwomercs.com/...little-friends/


http://mwomercs.com/...w-world-begins/

[Greyfyl]

It's almost as if they should have put some serious thought into matchmaking before they started writing any code.

[3rdworld]

Kraven Kor, on 20 June 2013 - 08:50 AM, said:

Pretty much this.

FWLM went from having a hundred or so on TS to, oh, maybe 20. Nobody does 8-mans that I am aware of. The civil war tournament tore us apart, my unit has at least 10 guys that simply vanished after the last infinitely frustrating round.

"Have fun with that."

I'm just a pub-star now.

What happened?

I thought the SH were probably the better of the house marik units. Sad to see you guys have issues.

[mailin]

Zerberus, on 20 June 2013 - 06:21 AM, said:

Many 8 man teams now syncdrop as 2 4 man teams simply becasue they find matches faster... unfortunately, they don`t seem to realize that by doing so, they are directly helping to make the 8 man queue even worse /emptier.

I really hope the dev's get on this issue. I remember the closed beta days before they had a separate 8 man queue. An 8 man dropping as a group of 2 4 mans will kill this game if it continues unchecked. Nobody wants to play as pugs (the majority of players) against a group that moves as a unit and always focuses their fire. I think the dev's should limit the number of 4 man groups to one per side, this would take care of the issue completely.

Stuii OCAU, on 21 June 2013 - 04:37 AM, said:

And just wait! soon it will be 12... there will be no more playing with your mates...

Sorry, but I don't understand how PGI changing the number of mechs per side will eliminate the chance of playing with your friends.

[Kraven Kor]

3rdworld, on 21 June 2013 - 08:46 AM, said:

What happened?

I thought the SH were probably the better of the house marik units. Sad to see you guys have issues.

AHAHAHAHA no.

"Better" as in less drama, less attitude, I dunno, maybe. Not to insult any other FWLM unit, and not to discount some drama that involved us that I was mostly unaware of.

"Better" as in "Losing every single round of the Civil War, period." Sure.

There are only about five or six of us I see log on, ever, right now. We aren't dead, but we probably won't be growing or even trying to to grow again until CW is out. And we certainly aren't running 8v8

[Artgathan]

mailin, on 21 June 2013 - 08:55 AM, said:

Sorry, but I don't understand how PGI changing the number of mechs per side will eliminate the chance of playing with your friends.

It will make it more difficult to get people together to reach critical mass and drop. If people are already having trouble finding 8 people to fill out a drop, finding 12 is going to be a nightmare.

The last time my company tried 8-mans (pre-poptarting nerf) it was awful. It left a really bad taste in everyone's mouth and we haven't attempted it since.

[Aurien Titus]

You can thank PGI for killing off 8 mans. The minute they decided that 8 man drops wouldn't even try to match weights they killed it. It used to be that you could bring 2 assaults, 2 heavy's, 3 mediums, a light and the other team would have a similar makeup. Well as soon as PGI separated them, it became it didn't matter what you brought. It just found the first group no ELO matching and dumped you in. Oh you brought a mixed group great, they brought 8 assaults, enjoy.

If they had fixed the real issue of no in game VoIP, separating would have never had to happened. Contrary to what people believe the real advantage 8 mans have always had is being on VoIP together. I remember clearly in closed beta jumping on the public TS servers getting in a group with 7 random people bringing whatever 'mech they wanted and we would win most games. Wasn't because we played all the time together, or brought a super balanced group of 'mechs that compliment each other. No it was the fact we could talk to each other. Texting and driving is dangerous, so why would texting and piloting a 'mech be any safer? And no a voice quick menu like Tribes Ascend isn't the answer either. Implementing a menu system that only veterans will use to spam voice isn't going to fix the problem. And no one uses C3, because it doesn't put you in a channel with people you're playing with. If it did, I'd actually use it. It'd be nice to talk to everyone on my team.

Edited by Aurien Titus, 21 June 2013 - 10:17 AM.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

It's not the PPC meta, it's the "Cheese" meta.

The "competitive" scene in Mechwarrior games has always been like this. ALWAYS. And it's why I backed out as hard as I did.

There are steps PGI could take, Zylo has some good ideas on the first page at the bottom. One thing that needs to happen, is the 2-2-2-2/3-3-3-3 weightclass limiting. All matches would have 2 [3 when 12 mans come out] of each weightclass... it would be forced, if you were dropping as a squad of four, you would be forced to take one of each weightclass in a pug match...

Yes it's restrictive, but for a good reason.

Secondly we need more stringent restrictions in the mechlab... the hardpoint system is ok, but it's not enough, we need sized hardpoints.

Another fix is they need to almost entirely re-work the heat system... and add penalty for firing more than 2 weapons together in a .5 timespan. As well as more harsher heat caps.

Honestly the entire heat system needs to be reworked from the ground up practically... it's just not working for what is needed in a mechwarrior game.

[Novakaine]

It went the way of dinosaur's - extinct.
Mainly because, and proably not the dev's fault by using COD and Modern Warfare formulas.
Proably some clown in a tacky business suit screaming those games have hundreds of thousands
of players we can too.
Mechwarrior/Battletech has always been a niche game and always will be.
And the dumb masses only want a clicky shooty respawner.
Just run around die and do it again.
MWO could have the best of both worlds, but it has to be a segregated world.
Pointy shooty on one side and hardcore sim on the other.
Both groups would be happy.
Sadly I think the tacky business suit guy has already destroyed MWO.
Pity.

[Clit Beastwood]

I've tried a few 8mans, and holy cow those dudes treat it like a freakin' job! This is a *game*, people.

One day of 8mans goes as follows (the 8man group I was with was all randoms, having a great time sync dropping a few 4mans until we decided to try 8). side note: sync dropping 2 4mans on opposite teams... but staying in the same teamspeak channel can be *hilarious*

Match 1: we all dropped in flesh colored spiders. LOTS of fun. We won by destroying the enemy team. Only 1-2 of us made ourselves visible at a time, drawing off 1-2 enemy mechs at a time, killing them, and baiting the trap again.
Match 2: we picked a variety of mechs (still flesh colored, because naked is funny) and were steamrolled by 8 multi ppc stalkers, all painted lime green.
Match 3: a variety of mechs on our side again, enemy team was 6 highlanders and 2 somethings that actually died. POP TART FIESTA.
Match 4: we all rolled in flesh colored stalkers, because they look like dongs. various loadouts, we had 2 lrm boats, one dude with 4 erppcs, and everyone else with a variety of weapons (and many tags, to back up the LRM boats). We did really well, then had someone from the clan jump into our ngng dropship and start harassing us about "cheese builds" and how we wouldn't have won a fair fight. Blah - I don't see how 2 lrm boats and one cheese stalker, plus a whole team of rounded out stalkers was really "cheese", but eh, whatever.

In summary, it's not fun - most of the people in 8mans are just too serious for their own good. Unless you're getting paid to play the game, cool your jets and remember its a game. Get too serious and you just wind up being great at something that doesn't matter. I would like to eventually see a feature where your 4man can *choose* to be matched with another 4man against an 8man. That might be fun, keep things fresh. I'd rather play two 4mans against two 4mans if possible, but it really doesn't matter. I'm rambling because cold medicine.

Edited by Fierostetz, 21 June 2013 - 12:13 PM.

[Khavi Vetali]

We drop Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, 10:30PM to 12:30AM~~ Eastern Time. With the exception of the past 2-3 weeks, we drop 8s each night, and the current hiatus has been because of people on vacation, etc, etc. Sometimes we don't get enough together. I'm sure many units are experiencing the same thing. Summer is just less activity. Hell, the days are longer, I'm outside more ;p It doesn't have to do with lack of interest in the game, although it very much is still a work in progress.

We're on NGNG as NWMC (Night Watch), so if you see us in the public dropships, or even in our channel, drop in, and if there are enough of us around or we can scrounge up some wolves, we'll drop 8s, and soon 12s. Hell, I called for 2 hours last night for a mixed group.

Edited by Khavi Vetali, 21 June 2013 - 01:38 PM.

[buttmonkey]

simple answer, they are still around, only now they are sinc dropping with man groups, or just 4 manning it. why go into an 8 man match you might lose when you can go pug stomping

[Pando]

I'm still running 8's, up to 30+ games a week. Though, it's the same thing every time.

Go meta or go home.

[Will HellFire]

We are at Ronin Legion still dropping 4-6 8man drops a week with success, though its true its getting harder to find opponents. What we do is drop in some friendly units TS and tell them to gather a group, it usually works. We have EU drops and NA drops, so we pretty much cover all the timezones. We are not too big, but most of our people enjoy 8mans and the attittude with which we approach it, so its not too difficult to find 8 people to do an impromptu drop. Our schedule events always work.

Check our events page at roninlegion.enjin.com and drop in our TS to coordinate with us, we are glad to drop with restrictions such as 500tons or2/2/2/2. We are an easy going group whose emphasis is in fun, we try to adapt to the cheese though we dont like it, but everything for the fun! We dont give too much importance to all the shortcomings of the game, as long as it is fun.

So, all the people out there missing 8mans, gather round! Please visit us!

W

[Appogee]

The 8-mans turned into two 4-mans who get their jollies roflstomping the noob teams I now consistently drop with.

Unless the devs step in to fix matchmaking soon, it feels a bit like ''end of times'' for MWO to me.

[Rashhaverak]

My group can field an 8 man most nights, but after playing a couple of games we decided that was not fun. We are trying to set up real lances of balanced builds, and the other team is nothing but PPC, gauss, and AC40 heavies and assaults. There might be a raven in there once in a while (with a PPC, no less)... not fun. I sure hope CW isn't like the eight man cause that would really be the end. I still don't understand why they don't have weight limits in drops. It's not like it would be hard to do. Set it up so that you can have, say, 400 or 500 tons maximum in any given drop. Any type of mechs can fill the weight pool, but if you exceed the drop weight limit it doesn't launch. That simple change would fix so much just by itself. I just don't get why nothings been done to fix eight mans....

[OnLashoc]

I run a merc corp Hell's Black Aces and we run 8 mans for 6-10 games every other night almost sometimes multiple days in a row.

In the mean time when we don't have 8 and there isn't a contest we just drop in groups of 4 or less. We still love the game even as head scratching PGI can be, and want to stay on top of our game for when the CW begin.