256 replies to this topic

[El Bandito]

xDeityx, on 08 July 2013 - 06:00 AM, said:

Actually it really doesn't. Riot Games did a study for League of Legends to see how premades vs. pubs performed and found that premade teams at lower skill levels got next to no advantage whatsoever by being premade. Only at the higher levels of play does the ability to coordinate via comms come into play. Some noob teams are actually hurt by being on comms because they don't even have the fundamentals of the game down and comms is just one more thing to manage. I would also challenge anyone who thinks that the average premade is coordinated to pop into the Outreach TS3 and listen in on some of the 4-man dropships there. Many times being on voice comms actually hurts your play because you've got people chit-chatting about things other than what's happening on the drop like recent changes to the game or different 'mech builds or whatever. I think solo players who have never teamed up and don't know what the experience is like are blowing way out of proportion the advantages that teaming up bring and how coordinated the average 4-man premade is.

Maybe. But my own group experience tells me different story. Even though almost 99% of my matches are solodrops, in the few times where I did group drops with chat, I had much clearer grasp on what's going on around the battlefield and had received support faster than ever when it was needed. The guys whom I grouped up were no-one special, yet communication alone had ensured me better than average win ratio.

And also unlike what you said, we didn't chit chat much except in the beginning of the match. Once we get near the possible enemy location, it is all business.

Edited by El Bandito, 08 July 2013 - 06:09 AM.

[Disapirro]

xDeityx, on 08 July 2013 - 06:00 AM, said:

Actually it really doesn't. Riot Games did a study for League of Legends to see how premades vs. pubs performed and found that premade teams at lower skill levels got next to no advantage whatsoever by being premade. Only at the higher levels of play does the ability to coordinate via comms come into play. Some noob teams are actually hurt by being on comms because they don't even have the fundamentals of the game down and comms is just one more thing to manage.

I would also challenge anyone who thinks that the average premade is coordinated to pop into the Outreach TS3 and listen in on some of the 4-man dropships there. Many times being on voice comms actually hurts your play because you've got people chit-chatting about things other than what's happening on the drop like recent changes to the game or different 'mech builds or whatever.

I think solo players who have never teamed up and don't know what the experience is like are blowing way out of proportion the advantages that teaming up bring and how coordinated the average 4-man premade is.

So you wouldn't mind if we tried it then.

[PanzerMagier]

It's simple.

We need a lobby system.

[Disapirro]

PanzerMagier, on 08 July 2013 - 06:11 AM, said:

It's simple.

We need a lobby system.

Do drop lobbies balance out the groups vs random solo drops, or will this just allow group 1, 2, 3, etc. to become group/team 1 vs. pug all solo team 2?

I can imagine that is what would happen, that groups would continue to abuse the system.

Edited by Disapirro, 08 July 2013 - 06:18 AM.

[TheMadPoet]

I think the most important issue with solo vs group is new player retention. I think many new players come in, get stomped repeatedly in PUGs against Premades and end up frustrated and leave the game. If they were on a more even playing field against ONLY solo droppers, it might help somewhat. Would it be perfect? of course not. But it would help, and the game might grow quicker.

One team can still get stomped by another in PUG only, but it won't happen as often, and much of the taunting and insulting would be absent.

[xDeityx]

El Bandito, on 08 July 2013 - 06:07 AM, said:

Maybe. But my own group experience tells me different story. Even though almost 99% of my matches are solodrops, in the few times where I did group drops with chat, I had much clearer grasp on what's going on around the battlefield and had received support faster than ever when it was needed. The guys whom I grouped up were no-one special, yet communication alone had ensured me better than average win ratio.

And also unlike what you said, we didn't chit chat much except in the beginning of the match. Once we get near the possible enemy location, it is all business.

I edited in the part I was referring to with Riot. I don't mean to belittle your experience but I trust the results of "hundreds of thousands of games" more than any one person's anecdotal evidence. Also my own anecdotal evidence runs counter to yours. I go about half and half either soloing or 2, 3, or 4-man premades and many times I find it a lot easier when I'm solo queuing or only grouping with one other person.

Disapirro, on 08 July 2013 - 06:09 AM, said:

So you wouldn't mind if we tried it then.

I see it as a waste of time and I think it would be detrimental to split up the player base further, so I would mind. It's kind of a moot point anyway since "we" don't have the ability to try it no matter what anyone's opinion in this thread is.

[Disapirro]

xDeityx, on 08 July 2013 - 06:23 AM, said:

I see it as a waste of time and I think it would be detrimental to split up the player base further, so I would mind. It's kind of a moot point anyway since "we" don't have the ability to try it no matter what anyone's opinion in this thread is.

Again, assuming the base is or becomes large enough what's your beef with the idea? Also, the "we don't have the ability to try it" is not true. I have seen plenty of changes in this game that seem to address many of the concerns that people bring up in these forums.

Edited by Disapirro, 08 July 2013 - 06:33 AM.

[Roland]

Doing what McKenna suggested wouldn't split the player base any more than it's already split.

Indeed, it would actually enable more people to play, if you just made two queues: Solo and Grouped... and let folks solo folks play in the grouped queue if they want.

[Amsro]

This whole topic will get intensified once 12vs12 comes into play, I can hear the tears already, ROLFSTOMP 12-0 victory!!

Matchmaker struggles withe 16 players, imagine the disparity with 24. Whole lances of freshly installed players, 4-man feeding frenzy.

This game punishes new players to no end while giving target practice to veterans.

[Disapirro]

Amsro, on 08 July 2013 - 06:38 AM, said:

This whole topic will get intensified once 12vs12 comes into play, I can hear the tears already, ROLFSTOMP 12-0 victory!!

Matchmaker struggles withe 16 players, imagine the disparity with 24. Whole lances of freshly installed players, 4-man feeding frenzy.

This game punishes new players to no end while giving target practice to veterans.

Even more reason to address now.

[Ransack]

I support the OP's position.

Not because I don't have a group. I do. I solo drop a lot too.

I support the OP's position so that this topic can be put to bed forever. When these people are getting rolled in a a solo only queue, maybe the premade boogeyman witch hunt will end.


Suggestion for PGI

Give 'em a solo queue.
At the same time give me back the ability to scale my team from the minimum (+1) to the maximum (+7 or 11 when the time comes)
Give solo droppers the option to drop in the team queue if they wish.

Put this to bed already.

[xDeityx]

Disapirro, on 08 July 2013 - 06:29 AM, said:

Again, assuming the base is or becomes large enough what's your beef with the idea?

My beef with the idea is that it is a bad one that is based in emotional knee-jerk reactions rather than actual data. People lose and want something to blame it on, that's all this is. I don't want PGI wasting time with something that won't accomplish anything.

As I've already pointed out in my previous post, having a premade team has been shown by studying hundreds of thousands of games to be a negligible advantage until you get to the higher levels of competition. Even then only a full premade has any real advantage, a partial premade (the equivalent of an MWO 4-man) has only a very slight advantage if any. And that's with League of Legends where there is unarguably much more strategy and teamwork happening because the game is actually balanced as opposed to the MWO situation where everybody is taking the same PPC boats.

Also if the player base became large enough to handle another split, I'd want it to be a more constructive split like another game mode.

Disapirro, on 08 July 2013 - 06:29 AM, said:

Also, the "we don't have the ability to try it" is not true. I have seen plenty of changes in this game that seem to address many of the concerns that people bring up in these forums.

Not when you're beating a dead horse like this one. This is a non-issue according to the massive amounts of data on the subject.

[Roland]

Quote

As I've already pointed out in my previous post, having a premade team has been shown by studying hundreds of thousands of games to be a negligible advantage until you get to the higher levels of competition. Even then only a full premade has any real advantage, a partial premade (the equivalent of an MWO 4-man) has only a very slight advantage if any. And that's with League of Legends where there is unarguably much more strategy and teamwork happening because the game is actually balanced as opposed to the MWO situation where everybody is taking the same PPC boats.

LoL has a fundamentally different game design than Mechwarrior Online, so that analysis of LoL really has zero applicability to MWO.

[dario03]

xDeityx, on 08 July 2013 - 07:23 AM, said:

My beef with the idea is that it is a bad one that is based in emotional knee-jerk reactions rather than actual data. People lose and want something to blame it on, that's all this is. I don't want PGI wasting time with something that won't accomplish anything.

As I've already pointed out in my previous post, having a premade team has been shown by studying hundreds of thousands of games to be a negligible advantage until you get to the higher levels of competition. Even then only a full premade has any real advantage, a partial premade (the equivalent of an MWO 4-man) has only a very slight advantage if any. And that's with League of Legends where there is unarguably much more strategy and teamwork happening because the game is actually balanced as opposed to the MWO situation where everybody is taking the same PPC boats.

Also if the player base became large enough to handle another split, I'd want it to be a more constructive split like another game mode.




Not when you're beating a dead horse like this one. This is a non-issue according to the massive amounts of data on the subject.

I've never played LoL but isn't it a diablo style game? As in not anything like MWO at all?

[MischiefSC]

xDeityx, on 08 July 2013 - 06:23 AM, said:

I edited in the part I was referring to with Riot. I don't mean to belittle your experience but I trust the results of "hundreds of thousands of games" more than any one person's anecdotal evidence. Also my own anecdotal evidence runs counter to yours. I go about half and half either soloing or 2, 3, or 4-man premades and many times I find it a lot easier when I'm solo queuing or only grouping with one other person.



I see it as a waste of time and I think it would be detrimental to split up the player base further, so I would mind. It's kind of a moot point anyway since "we" don't have the ability to try it no matter what anyone's opinion in this thread is.

The fundamental issues with the Riot study is that it doesn't apply to MWO, they're two completely different beasts. It assumes that everyone in a group is of equal skill as it uses an individual character level system. 5 level 30s for example in a group are of approximate value. In MWO a group of players in assault cheese builds on voice comms coordinating fire on a single hit location is vastly different than 5 people in varied levels of light to assault mechs.

Hit locations and focused fire are another big difference. League as a game doesn't really have the advantages for team play to exploit. Focused fire, hit locations, TAG and LRMs, PPC snipers, seismic, there's a ton of tools in MWO that are exponentially more effective when coordinated with voice coms.

Premade groups in League are not a big deal because the games design doesn't allow for the same multiplication of force that MWO does. They are hugely effective in MWO. Even if most the time everyone in the channel is joking around, just being able to say 'Help! Beings warmed by lights!' or 'CD on D' provides a significant advantage.

Prior to the Elo matchmaker it was even more of an issue. So much so that PGI acknowledged that teams absolutely crushed pugs. Plenty of teams would go drop and get an 80 or 90% win rate. I know that when I dropped with friends we were around 90-95% wins and we didn't even use voice com, we just worked well together and dropped in coordinated builds with a plan. With the new MM we don't do as well because we're consistently dropping against other premade teams when we group up but it's still around 70% wins, way above average. We don't even use voice.

Simple solution - tag next to the name of people in premade teams in the stats screen. Don't even have to separate the queues, just let people see who actually is in a group and who isn't. It'll either clear the issue up or help clarify it.

[Throat Punch]

soarra, on 07 July 2013 - 05:35 PM, said:

no game has good built in voice coms. use the TS server

World of Warcraft and Defiance have built in voice chat, but they are awful and no one ever uses them. Most people use third party chat systems because they are far superior to any built in chat.

[xDeityx]

dario03, on 08 July 2013 - 07:39 AM, said:

I've never played LoL but isn't it a diablo style game? As in not anything like MWO at all?

"Not anything like MWO at all" is a completely relative term. In the perspective of the player and the style of combat you are correct. However in regards to being a competitive game that requires teamwork and also uses a team-aggregate Elo matchmaker system they are extremely similar and very comparable.

[Purlana]

Disapirro, on 08 July 2013 - 06:17 AM, said:

Do drop lobbies balance out the groups vs random solo drops, or will this just allow group 1, 2, 3, etc. to become group/team 1 vs. pug all solo team 2?

I can imagine that is what would happen, that groups would continue to abuse the system.

With drop lobbies you can implement any restriction you can think of without creating 50 different Qs for everyone. Want to have a 1v1 battle? Drop lobby! Want a clan VS IS match? Drop lobby! Lights only? Drop lobby! New players only? Drop lobby! A drop lobby is 1000 times better then making solo Qs....

Edited by Purlana, 08 July 2013 - 07:48 AM.

[dario03]

xDeityx, on 08 July 2013 - 07:43 AM, said:

"Not anything like MWO at all" is a completely relative term. In the perspective of the player and the style of combat you are correct. However in regards to being a competitive game that requires teamwork and also uses a team-aggregate Elo matchmaker system they are extremely similar and very comparable.

I'm sure theres plenty of team games with Elo style matchmakers but if the combat system and perspective is totally different then they aren't really comparable when it comes to the effect of being in a premade or not.

[xDeityx]

MischiefSC, on 08 July 2013 - 07:39 AM, said:

The fundamental issues with the Riot study is that it doesn't apply to MWO, they're two completely different beasts. It assumes that everyone in a group is of equal skill as it uses an individual character level system. 5 level 30s for example in a group are of approximate value.

This is flat-out incorrect. The LoL matchmaker works very similarly to the MWO matchmaker in that each player has an individual Elo at the time of queuing that is aggregated into a team Elo at the time of matchmaking.

MischiefSC, on 08 July 2013 - 07:39 AM, said:

In MWO a group of players in assault cheese builds on voice comms coordinating fire on a single hit location is vastly different than 5 people in varied levels of light to assault mechs.

The majority of MWO groups are not 4 assaults coordinating fire on a single hit location. To claim otherwise is hyperbole.

MischiefSC, on 08 July 2013 - 07:39 AM, said:

Hit locations and focused fire are another big difference. League as a game doesn't really have the advantages for team play to exploit. Focused fire, hit locations, TAG and LRMs, PPC snipers, seismic, there's a ton of tools in MWO that are exponentially more effective when coordinated with voice coms.

Focusing fire works just as well (if not better) in LoL as in MWO. As does recognizing when you are the focus of the enemy team's fire and reacting accordingly. There are many more tools in LoL that are exponentially more effective when coordinated with voice coms than there are in MWO. LoL also has the advantage of being balanced so there isn't just 1 champion on the field.

MischiefSC, on 08 July 2013 - 07:39 AM, said:

Premade groups in League are not a big deal because the games design doesn't allow for the same multiplication of force that MWO does. They are hugely effective in MWO. Even if most the time everyone in the channel is joking around, just being able to say 'Help! Beings warmed by lights!' or 'CD on D' provides a significant advantage.

You sound incredibly ignorant of how LoL works. Team synergy in MWO is a laughable concept when compared to LoL. There is a reason MWO is a backwater game and LoL is the most popular game in the world. There is a reason that LoL has a competitive scene that allows players to make a living off of playing competitively while MWO's competitive scene is a joke.

MischiefSC, on 08 July 2013 - 07:39 AM, said:

Prior to the Elo matchmaker it was even more of an issue. So much so that PGI acknowledged that teams absolutely crushed pugs. Plenty of teams would go drop and get an 80 or 90% win rate. I know that when I dropped with friends we were around 90-95% wins and we didn't even use voice com, we just worked well together and dropped in coordinated builds with a plan. With the new MM we don't do as well because we're consistently dropping against other premade teams when we group up but it's still around 70% wins, way above average. We don't even use voice.

Simple solution - tag next to the name of people in premade teams in the stats screen. Don't even have to separate the queues, just let people see who actually is in a group and who isn't. It'll either clear the issue up or help clarify it.

Prior to the Elo matchmaking system it was an issue, you are right. But now it isn't and we could very easily get rid of the 8-man premade queue and roll them all back together.

dario03, on 08 July 2013 - 07:48 AM, said:

I'm sure theres plenty of team games with Elo style matchmakers but if the combat system and perspective is totally different then they aren't really comparable when it comes to the effect of being in a premade or not.

This is not true, even in the slightest.