256 replies to this topic

[C E Dwyer]

I don't think it should be not on voice coms, but I support a seperate que for singleton pugs seperated from 4 and 8 man teams.

I think OP, that most of the Wah your getting, are those that team and while are perfectly happy to complain about newb players, and how we shouldn't have an opinion over game balance, don't want to lose their easy credit grind

[Roland]

Quote

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.

He's not saying that LoL is somehow bad or inferior.

He's pointing out that Mechwarrior has a huge force multiplication component due to the way that damage is modeled. And he's totally correct. Well coordinated teams in Mechwarrior can kill an enemy mech almost instantly.

Additionally, due to the larger size of teams in Mechwarrior, this effect becomes even more pronounced.

Honestly, you aren't presenting anything approaching a scientific argument. You're presenting data from an unreleated study, and then making the huge assumption that the results of that study can be applied to Mechwarrior... despite the fact that even in your own posts you are highlighting that LoL isn't like Mechwarrior.

[dario03]

xDeityx, on 08 July 2013 - 07:52 AM, said:

This is not true, even in the slightest.

Welp, guess I can't argue with that. Theres just to much amazing information and facts to sort through... But really you're comparing games that don't even have the same core gameplay. We might as well compare StarCraft to mwo since their both competitive online games. Who cares that one is a over head view rts and one is a fps, they're both online games and therefore anything that applies to one applies 100% to the other.

Edited by dario03, 08 July 2013 - 08:00 AM.

[Syllogy]

You already have a Solo Queue... it's called Training Grounds.

[xDeityx]

dario03, on 08 July 2013 - 07:58 AM, said:

Welp, guess I can't argue with that. Theres just to much amazing information and facts to sort through... But really your comparing games that don't even have the same core gameplay. We might as well compare StarCraft to mwo since their both competitive online games. Who cares that one is a over head view rts and one is a fps, their both online games and therefore anything that applies to one applies 100% to the other.

Your own claim was simply "they cannot be compared because they are different" without any explanation given. If you'd like to detail an argument I'll respond in kind but don't get on me for a lack of details when you provide none yourself. That's just incredibly hypocritical.

StarCraft II is very much comparable with MWO when the topic is something that they both share. When we're talking about the effects of premades on performance we can very easily compare any game that has premades vs. solo queuers and a matchmaking system. Does teamwork exist in both games? If so, we can compare them.

[Ghogiel]

xDeityx, on 08 July 2013 - 07:52 AM, said:

But now it isn't and we could very easily get rid of the 8-man premade queue and roll them all back together.

And over night the number of 8 mans playing MWO increases ten fold.

[xDeityx]

Ghogiel, on 08 July 2013 - 08:04 AM, said:

And over night the number of 8 mans playing MWO increases ten fold.

Yep, I think it would be a healthy change. I remember how much more activity we had before we had to tell our fifth, sixth, and seventh men to **** off and do their own thing unless we got an eighth.

[dario03]

xDeityx, on 08 July 2013 - 08:04 AM, said:

Your own claim was simply "they cannot be compared because they are different" without any explanation given. If you'd like to detail an argument I'll respond in kind but don't get on me for a lack of details when you provide none yourself. That's just incredibly hypocritical.

StarCraft II is very much comparable with MWO when the topic is something that they both share. When we're talking about the effects of premades on performance we can very easily compare any game that has premades vs. solo queuers and a matchmaking system. Does teamwork exist in both games? If so, we can compare them.

That is the explanation, they are different by quite a bit and therefore can't be compared directly. Communication in games is used to coordinate how your team is going to play the game. The game of MWO is not like LoL and therefore the amount of affect that communication has is not the same. If you want to use some points from that study fine but it in no way proves that premades don't have a big advantage in this game. Even if you found studies from games that are more similar to MWO it still wouldn't prove it to be true in MWO (though it would make more sense). Do you play Euchre? It's also a team game and I assure you that talking in Euchre would totally change the game because in Euchre talking about plays to make or telling your team mate what cards you have is against the rules. But if one team could talk and the other couldn't then the talking team would have a huge advantage. But that isn't really comparable since MWO isn't euchre. Or lets compare strategy games, real time and turned based strategy games have a lot in common but do you think using voice comms instead of text would have the same amount of benefit in a turned based strategy game as it would in a real time strategy game? One can greatly benefit from the quicker easier communication of voice comms the other is just more convinent since the speed of the communications wouldn't matter.

[MischiefSC]

xDeityx, on 08 July 2013 - 07:52 AM, said:

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.

Specifically in the quote from Riot it says that all the players playing together are the same skill level. Hence the disparity of skill level and mech quality in a single team in MWO, skewing Elo results. You can make a smurf account in MWO, spend 3 days on it and have a maxed out mech and perform at the same level as the one you play in your account with 3k drops. So, in LoL I can level a character to 30 in 3 days? A week? Elo is easy to skew in MWO

xDeityx, on 08 July 2013 - 07:52 AM, said:

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

Depends on the level you're playing at though given that the games mech population skews towards assaults and heavies it's not hard to say that most groups drop in heavy/assault mechs.

xDeityx, on 08 July 2013 - 07:52 AM, said:

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.

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.

Back up there cowboy, I'm not trying to insult your game, though WoT has more players than LoL and DotA passed it as the most played/popular game in North America/Europe, though LoL is the biggest deal in South Korea and China since Starcraft. I'm not a big fan of any of those games though so could care less. Thought it was important to keep us on the same page though.

So in LoL focused fire can kill an enemy player in literally 1 or 2 seconds? That doesn't seem to match with the games I've seen. You're attempting to equate apples with oranges here though. LoL is not an FPS, it's a level based RPG-style system. It's got more in common with raid teams in WoW than MWO, which has more in common with WoT - which limits premade teams because their stats (which involves more players than LoL) showed that premade teams have a significant advantage.

xDeityx, on 08 July 2013 - 07:52 AM, said:

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.

I'm surprised that you'd even say that. Nice 8-man smurf accounts eliminating the whole point of Elo to begin with - or even easier, you stack 3 smurf accounts with neutral Elo with your regular guys for 8 v 8 newbie stomp!

The only thing that reducing teams to 4-man max has done is average out a bit statistically your odds of having the team on your side compared to the other side. Teams still enjoy a win/loss advantage, the larger the team the bigger the advantage. Elo has reduced it from an 80-90% win/loss down to 60-70% but that's about it.

xDeityx, on 08 July 2013 - 07:52 AM, said:

This is not true, even in the slightest.

Based on what, exactly? Where is your data to back this up?

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

Yep, I think it would be a healthy change. I remember how much more activity we had before we had to tell our fifth, sixth, and seventh men to **** off and do their own thing unless we got an eighth.

So it would be a healthy change - for your team, because people like winning more than losing. It would not be a healthy change for MWO, which requires a steady influx of new players to enjoy the game and better retention of existing players - the majority of which pug some or all the time.

I get that you've got an agenda here but end of the day the reality is you're trying to equate some biased metrics from an unrelated game format to justify brining back incredibly unbalanced gameplay and avoiding any attempt to improve the balance of existing gameplay.

So, no. Not going to agree with you. I don't think teams or sync-dropping is nearly the issue people make it out to be however being on a team is a significant advantage in MWO. Conversely most people do not and never will use voice comms so you can either have a game that dies in obscurity catering to a fraction of possible players or you do your best to balance it for people and grow the base to a point where there's enough to fill whatever queue you want.

[Purlana]

MischiefSC, on 08 July 2013 - 08:40 AM, said:

So in LoL focused fire can kill an enemy player in literally 1 or 2 seconds? That doesn't seem to match with the games I've seen.

With a fed Poppy I can drop Annie in 1 combo.

Edited by Purlana, 08 July 2013 - 08:47 AM.

[xDeityx]

dario03, on 08 July 2013 - 08:40 AM, said:

That is the explanation, they are different by quite a bit and therefore can't be compared directly. Communication in games is used to coordinate how your team is going to play the game. The game of MWO is not like LoL and therefore the amount of affect that communication has is not the same. If you want to use some points from that study fine but it in no way proves that premades don't have a big advantage in this game. Even if you found studies from games that are more similar to MWO it still wouldn't prove it to be true in MWO (though it would make more sense). Do you play Euchre? It's also a team game and I assure you that talking in Euchre would totally change the game because in Euchre talking about plays to make or telling your team mate what cards you have is against the rules. But if one team could talk and the other couldn't then the talking team would have a huge advantage. But that isn't really comparable since MWO isn't euchre. Or lets compare strategy games, real time and turned based strategy games have a lot in common but do you think using voice comms instead of text would have the same amount of benefit in a turned based strategy game as it would in a real time strategy game? One can greatly benefit from the quicker easier communication of voice comms the other is just more convinent since the speed of the communications wouldn't matter.

We're looking at how coordinating via voice comms (a premade) impacts gameplay in an Elo environment. If a game has teams, teamwork, and an Elo matchmaking system you can compare them when looking at this topic.

If anything, the amount that communication impacts LoL is greater because LoL is a deeper, more balanced game.

[Disapirro]

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.

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 hardly believe running 1300+ exclusively pug drops qualifies as knee-jerk, but ok if xDeityx says so of course it must be true.

Also, not coming at this because I am losing more than winning, 1.21 win/loss ratio, which I think is ok considering I only pug, but because I see an opportunity to make the game better for all.

I think what really bothers you is that you may have to play in a more competitive environment

[xDeityx]

MischiefSC, on 08 July 2013 - 08:40 AM, said:

Specifically in the quote from Riot it says that all the players playing together are the same skill level. Hence the disparity of skill level and mech quality in a single team in MWO, skewing Elo results. You can make a smurf account in MWO, spend 3 days on it and have a maxed out mech and perform at the same level as the one you play in your account with 3k drops. So, in LoL I can level a character to 30 in 3 days? A week? Elo is easy to skew in MWO

It specifically says the exact opposite actually, that they looked at teams of mixed new and veteran players:

Quote

We performed analyses on hundreds of thousands of games to identify how much of a skill advantage this situation gives the pre-made. We found that a variety of factors influence it, including the size of the pre-made (i.e. 2, 3, 4, 5 people), the skills of the players involved, the combinations of experienced and new players, and a couple other minor factors.

The part which you are misunderstanding is just them acknowledging that in general players tend to team up with people of similar skill:

Quote

If a player pre-makes, he joins up with people of approximately similar skill

And if you think about it for two seconds you'd realize that your claim is ridiculous. How and why would Riot ensure that all players who decide to team up with each other are the same skill? 0.o

MischiefSC, on 08 July 2013 - 08:40 AM, said:

Depends on the level you're playing at though given that the games mech population skews towards assaults and heavies it's not hard to say that most groups drop in heavy/assault mechs.

You're moving the goalposts now. It's one thing to claim as you did originally that premades consist of 4 assault 'mechs focus firing on a component. It's an entirely different thing to claim as you now do that a lot of premades drop in assaults and heavies.

MischiefSC, on 08 July 2013 - 08:40 AM, said:

Back up there cowboy, I'm not trying to insult your game, though WoT has more players than LoL and DotA passed it as the most played/popular game in North America/Europe, though LoL is the biggest deal in South Korea and China since Starcraft. I'm not a big fan of any of those games though so could care less. Thought it was important to keep us on the same page though.

I'm not sure how LoL suddenly became my game or how I am a cowboy, I guess we're just descending into ad hominem at this point. I guess it beats making a cogent argument.

Nothing you said at all addresses my point, which was that LoL's popularity is orders of magnitude greater than MWO's. Instead you want to split hairs about which game is the most popular. It shows how weak your argument is.

MischiefSC, on 08 July 2013 - 08:40 AM, said:

So in LoL focused fire can kill an enemy player in literally 1 or 2 seconds? That doesn't seem to match with the games I've seen. You're attempting to equate apples with oranges here though. LoL is not an FPS, it's a level based RPG-style system. It's got more in common with raid teams in WoW than MWO, which has more in common with WoT - which limits premade teams because their stats (which involves more players than LoL) showed that premade teams have a significant advantage.

In LoL you can kill an entire team in literally 1-2 seconds with well coordinated ultimates. I have no idea what level of games you've been watching but if you watch protatomonster's top 5 plays of the week youtube channel you can see things like this happen fairly regularly.

You lost all credibility when you said LoL has more in common with WoW raids than MWO. You demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of LoL prior to that, but that was just the icing on the cake.

Edited by xDeityx, 08 July 2013 - 09:45 AM.

[xDeityx]

Disapirro, on 08 July 2013 - 09:22 AM, said:

I hardly believe running 1300+ exclusively pug drops qualifies as knee-jerk, but ok if xDeityx says so of course it must be true.

Also, not coming at this because I am losing more than winning, 1.21 win/loss ratio, which I think is ok considering I only pug, but because I see an opportunity to make the game better for all.

I think what really bothers you is that you may have to play in a more competitive environment

I already solo queue quite a bit. This change would be the opposite of playing in a more competitive environment because then I wouldn't be matched agains the premades that you are so scared of.

Could it be that you are afraid of playing in the more competitive environment we currently have?

MischiefSC, on 08 July 2013 - 08:40 AM, said:

I'm surprised that you'd even say that. Nice 8-man smurf accounts eliminating the whole point of Elo to begin with - or even easier, you stack 3 smurf accounts with neutral Elo with your regular guys for 8 v 8 newbie stomp!

Smurfing is something that gets around Elo. The ability to abuse it does not depend on the maximum team size.

MischiefSC, on 08 July 2013 - 08:40 AM, said:

The only thing that reducing teams to 4-man max has done is average out a bit statistically your odds of having the team on your side compared to the other side. Teams still enjoy a win/loss advantage, the larger the team the bigger the advantage. Elo has reduced it from an 80-90% win/loss down to 60-70% but that's about it.

With Elo in place, we don't need a limit on queue size because any team running an organized 8-man tryhard comps will be at the top of the curve and will be fighting other teams running similar builds. If a solo player of average Elo runs into an 8-man premade it is because the players in the 8-man premade are terrible players who happen to be grouped up. With the introduction of Elo all you need to do is give a very slight penalty to the Elo rating of premades.

MischiefSC, on 08 July 2013 - 08:40 AM, said:

Based on what, exactly? Where is your data to back this up?

The same place as the data saying you can't compare two relatively similar things. There's no reason you can't compare two games that all share an Elo rating system, premades vs solo queuers, and teamwork. We aren't comparing MWO and LoL in any of the areas in which they are different. They both share these three aspects, and that's all we are focusing on in this discussion.

And honestly you can compare anything you want. Who says you can't compare apples to oranges? They are of similar size but the apple is red or green and sweet compared to an orange which is more acidic. There, I just compared apples and oranges. Tada.

MischiefSC, on 08 July 2013 - 08:40 AM, said:

So it would be a healthy change - for your team, because people like winning more than losing. It would not be a healthy change for MWO, which requires a steady influx of new players to enjoy the game and better retention of existing players - the majority of which pug some or all the time.

I pug as much as I team up. A lot of the time when I am solo I win more than when I'm in a group.

When the game only had one queue regardless of premade size I played with anywhere from around three to six guys who would regularly log in and play. Since the 4-man-only change was implemented that number has steadily dropped to where I'm lucky to find two other guys on.

MischiefSC, on 08 July 2013 - 08:40 AM, said:

I get that you've got an agenda here but end of the day the reality is you're trying to equate some biased metrics from an unrelated game format to justify brining back incredibly unbalanced gameplay and avoiding any attempt to improve the balance of existing gameplay.

So, no. Not going to agree with you. I don't think teams or sync-dropping is nearly the issue people make it out to be however being on a team is a significant advantage in MWO. Conversely most people do not and never will use voice comms so you can either have a game that dies in obscurity catering to a fraction of possible players or you do your best to balance it for people and grow the base to a point where there's enough to fill whatever queue you want.

The reality is that you lose because you're bad, not because of the big mean premades. I get that you have an agenda to dumb the game down so that the lowest common denominator can feel good about themselves but I'm not going to agree with you that we need to hold the hands of all the people too socially awkward to play with friends but want to delude themselves into thinking premades are the reason they aren't winning. There are plenty of good solo queue players who regularly get matched against and with premades and are doing just fine, me included.

You aren't getting your solo-only queue, that dead horse has already been beaten to death when they originally made the changes.

[Revorn]

Solo vs Solo Queue

[New Day]

El Bandito, on 08 July 2013 - 05:20 AM, said:

In case you haven't noticed, the majority of the players are solo droppers. I am not going to be the one to wait for 10 minutes.

Also, doing nothing is still more interesting than playing in the boring PPC meta--which inevitably happens when you meet a pre-made group. I prefer to browse YouTube while waiting for fellow solodroppers instead.

So **** the premades? Also, have you stopped playing the game?

Edited by NamesAreStupid, 08 July 2013 - 10:27 AM.

[Ghogiel]

MischiefSC, on 08 July 2013 - 08:40 AM, said:

Conversely most people do not and never will use voice comms so you can either have a game that dies in obscurity catering to a fraction of possible players or you do your best to balance it for people and grow the base to a point where there's enough to fill whatever queue you want.

Is this one of these veiled the game is dieing (or going to) because premades are evil and steal all the fun?

[No Guts No Glory]

How does supplying a solo only queue and a queue for groups of any size **** anyone over?

It doesn't, there is no argument to be made against it. It's win win.

[El Bandito]

NamesAreStupid, on 08 July 2013 - 10:26 AM, said:

So **** the premades? Also, have you stopped playing the game?

Where did I say the pre-mades will be ******? Where did I say that I have stopped playing?

Don't try to interpret things to your own biased view.

Edited by El Bandito, 08 July 2013 - 11:07 AM.

[Ghogiel]

No Guts No Glory, on 08 July 2013 - 10:40 AM, said:

How does supplying a solo only queue and a queue for groups of any size **** anyone over?

It doesn't, there is no argument to be made against it. It's win win.

The one where match maker works best in a larger queue.