341 replies to this topic

[I am]

Garth Erlam, on 30 July 2013 - 10:46 AM, said:

I do understand the frustration of losing matches like that, particularly when it seems the other team is organized. That said, in-game VoIP wouldn't stop that in the way it might seem. I've helped teams overcome premades with text chat many times, with warnings of enemy locations "E5, 2", warnings of intent "enemy in tuns" etc.

I want to get this chat back on track - we do plan to have more emphasis on keeping premades with premades, pugs with pugs, etc. That said, this will happen regardless of how much we do that, as some players simply won't/don't listen to warnings, orders, etc. They don't have to, either, though it often makes things worse for them.

The best thing one can do is try to help these people with simply commands/suggestions/leadership. You don't need to grab command or anything, just a simple "5 enemies on ridge" or "I'll get the Jenner" or "I'll cap base, rush when they fall back" etc.

I get it's frustrating, and I hope you understand we're looking at as many ways as we can to alleviate this.

@ Garth,

First off, thanks for posting in this thread. Nice to see you guys are following it. If you never read anything else I ever write, ever, please read this.

In WoT (World of Tanks) the "pub stomping" phenomenon does not occur. Not like it does here at least. In my own opinion I believe this is a two prong issue. 1. Ratios 2. Community size

1.(Ratio) There, WOT, the ratio of a group to a whole team is 20%. 3 player groups, on 15 man teams. Here it is 50%. I know 12v12 will help, making it 33%, so kudos there, but I encourage you to strive for 20%. Alike players tend to stick together, especially so for the better players. Allowing 4 friends to comprise 50% of a team definitely allows them, if they are good, to dominate the match. To dilute them, strive for a ratio of 20%. 20v20 maybe? Or reduce lance sizes.

2. (Community Size) It is a factor, so I had to mention it briefly. Even if you take these steps, the match maker will still struggle. In my opinion MWO has a lot more vets than green players. In my opinion the match maker will struggle to match them to their own skill level, if it only has more veteran players to queue with them. I would say growing the community should be a top priority. You may have to make some changes which ruffle the feathers of a number of the vocal veterans currently playing. Do it. If you find yourself faced with a decision between growth and retention, I'd encourage growth. Make MWO more appealing to the masses, even if it ticks vets off.


Here's my personal suggestions. Take, or completely disregard, them. I think things that would appeal to the masses are: greater ballistics vs. LRM/lasers(we wolves love dakka), 3rd person view(in development), much larger team sizes (20v20), more camo selections ($$ for you), in game voice chat(necessary as long as pubs fight premades), an option to mute in game voice chat (equally necessary), epic music, and a cool intro scene(could provide you a link to a great fan made one if you are interested).

Good luck. A sole solo player.

[Elbola Ierocis]

Play follow the Assault mech. Find a guy. Any guy. Latch onto him/her. That is now your buddy for the match. You don't even need to talk. Just support whatever they are doing. Protect them from attacks, shoot what they shoot. You'll live a bit longer and thus be around longer to deal out more damage.

[PropagandaWar]

Garth Erlam, on 30 July 2013 - 10:46 AM, said:

I do understand the frustration of losing matches like that, particularly when it seems the other team is organized. That said, in-game VoIP wouldn't stop that in the way it might seem. I've helped teams overcome premades with text chat many times, with warnings of enemy locations "E5, 2", warnings of intent "enemy in tuns" etc.

I want to get this chat back on track - we do plan to have more emphasis on keeping premades with premades, pugs with pugs, etc. That said, this will happen regardless of how much we do that, as some players simply won't/don't listen to warnings, orders, etc. They don't have to, either, though it often makes things worse for them.

The best thing one can do is try to help these people with simply commands/suggestions/leadership. You don't need to grab command or anything, just a simple "5 enemies on ridge" or "I'll get the Jenner" or "I'll cap base, rush when they fall back" etc.

I get it's frustrating, and I hope you understand we're looking at as many ways as we can to alleviate this.

Thats the problem you do help and then your suddenly "Bossy". Pugs want to solo with other pugs. Setup a DM channel and let them have at rock em sock em robots. Oh wait its a team game. Keep them with us. I die because of their or my stupid mistakes but this being a game I always have the next one so who cares. They need to learn to play as a team pug or not if they want to succeed. Better yet go TS hunting because this is a FTP game that has FTP comms out there. Is there anyway you can pull reports showing Premades getting steamrolled against the other team? They seem to think its only happens to them. Heck one guy was mad because he lost 1 out of 5 games. I mean its silly at this point. I want it back to bring in all the people you can with filler group or pug again.

[PropagandaWar]

Elbola Ierocis, on 30 July 2013 - 11:29 AM, said:

Play follow the Assault mech. Find a guy. Any guy. Latch onto him/her. That is now your buddy for the match. You don't even need to talk. Just support whatever they are doing. Protect them from attacks, shoot what they shoot. You'll live a bit longer and thus be around longer to deal out more damage.

This actually works great especially for new people. Also if your new and or just want some help you usually find me or one of my helpful buds over at ts.teamcored.com www.teamcored.com. Just pop in say you want some help or you want to run some matches and we will. I'm personally on usually after 6 pst. There's probably 12-16 regular players on there but all of them like me are commited to the game and pretty much been playing since closed beta and then some.

I even have no problem going silent with comms once we are established so you can work on your pug game with back up.

[Kunae]

Garth Erlam, on 30 July 2013 - 10:46 AM, said:

I do understand the frustration of losing matches like that, particularly when it seems the other team is organized. That said, in-game VoIP wouldn't stop that in the way it might seem. I've helped teams overcome premades with text chat many times, with warnings of enemy locations "E5, 2", warnings of intent "enemy in tuns" etc. I want to get this chat back on track - we do plan to have more emphasis on keeping premades with premades, pugs with pugs, etc. That said, this will happen regardless of how much we do that, as some players simply won't/don't listen to warnings, orders, etc. They don't have to, either, though it often makes things worse for them. The best thing one can do is try to help these people with simply commands/suggestions/leadership. You don't need to grab command or anything, just a simple "5 enemies on ridge" or "I'll get the Jenner" or "I'll cap base, rush when they fall back" etc. I get it's frustrating, and I hope you understand we're looking at as many ways as we can to alleviate this.

There isn't really anything you should do, Garth, other than open up the 8-man queue to 1-8/12 players. Could we have that please?

[Roland]

Kunae, on 30 July 2013 - 12:55 PM, said:

There isn't really anything you should do, Garth, other than open up the 8-man queue to 1-8/12 players. Could we have that please?

Please do this.

Lots of folks actually WANT to play in the "big boy" queue, and don't mind having pugs on our team. It's just hard for us to get exactly 8 people on, especially since when we have 5-7 people on, folks just leave because they don't want to deal with the crap of splitting the group.

Some folks suggest that it's totally unfair, because full 8 man teams just roll folks... And while that's true to some extent, the reality is that if you don't require exactly 8 man teams, then you'll have a ton of teams who aren't full 8 man teams.

That's how it was back in closed beta... You didn't have full 8 man teams winning every game. Because there simply weren't that many full 8 man teams. MOST games didn't have a full 8 man in them.

You could play with 5 guys, have some good matches... if you got matched up against a full 8, it was tough... but it was way the hell more fun than having 5 guys and just not being able to play together.

And really, it was no more tough than today if I'm pugging and get matched up with rabble against a good 4.

A few days ago I got thrown into a game and saw Dusty and Chavette on the other side... I figured it was gonna be rough, since as far as I could tell my side was just a bunch of random rabble. Sure enough, end of the game I think I was the only one on my team who broke 100 points. But I didn't just freak out and cry about how it wasn't fair. I said gg and relaunched into the next match, and the world moved on.

Please just let us play with our friends Garth. It'll do your game good. It'll get more folks to play.

[PropagandaWar]

Kunae, on 30 July 2013 - 12:55 PM, said:

There isn't really anything you should do, Garth, other than open up the 8-man queue to 1-8/12 players. Could we have that please?

About 3-4 ask the devs they were liking how mm was fleshing out and said they were going to bring it in with 12-man. When I don't know. Will they retract it. Possibly. Could even be a CW feature or non CW feature. Although if its non CW I see more people doing it that way because they like not having to split their crew up. Pug fillers would fill the gaps. That being said though Rofls would probably be still be accused that it was a premade that did it. It would also give partial premades an advantage because its clear that a lot of teams sync.

[Almeras]

PGI needs a kiddies pool to allow some gentle learning curve. Then off to gen-pop to feed the meat grinder. Tonnage balance would help (esp if they are very light or very heavy)

I play in every game type solo, 4man and 8man. And you cant judge the game on 1 match.

I've had solo games with over 100+match score and 700+dmg
I've had a loosing streak of over 10matches in a row with a 2/4man
I've been out tonned buy 300tons and a billion PPCs in an 8man

In both solo and 4man Only one thing that'll dampen your chances your heaviest mechs are green players while the other sides are vets. Your going to be out tonned and gunned at the first engagement. Does one elo fail ruin the match aff' does it ruin the game neg'

Remembering that mech piloting is like sex, all men think they are good at it. Think about that the next time you blame the pugs/elo.

Edited by Almeras, 30 July 2013 - 01:30 PM.

[Silent]

Don't worry. All of this will be fixed with UI 2.0

[Screech]

Garth Erlam, on 30 July 2013 - 10:46 AM, said:

I want to get this chat back on track - we do plan to have more emphasis on keeping premades with premades, pugs with pugs, etc.

Sounds like a good plan. Let people play the game they want and and all boats will be raised.

[Mystere]

Almeras, on 30 July 2013 - 01:30 PM, said:

Remembering that mech piloting is like sex ...

You have no idea what you are talking about. It's not even close.

Edited by Mystere, 30 July 2013 - 01:57 PM.

[PropagandaWar]

You know what. I say they need to get rid of ELO and put it on a lvl system. If you group you are going to go against your highest players level. Then there will be no excuse. You can do total levels but I say no on that because you can have a buddy start a new account to throw it off. So set it up levels 1-30 call it a day. After that nobody can say they are green or lack skill. You want to group your at your level 30 players mercy.

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

New idea to this thread ... give us a minute or two before a match to discuss as a team (even a team of random PUGs) tactics, grouping, etc. ... preferably with more than a few lines of chat to view at a time

Then, give us the option to stick around and "after action" a match with both teams ... what went well? did you know this was going on?

Let us find out before the match, who is new, trying out a new build or is grinding an unfamiliar mech, running LRMs and needs a spotter and a bodyguard, is fast/slow, etc. ... give us more tools to actually work as a team before "all systems nominal".

[Crazy Billy Joe Bob]

I love reading these threads more then I like playing the game... what does that say about the state of this game.. not so good...

[Zylo]

ztac, on 30 July 2013 - 08:57 AM, said:

Well they don't seem to have addressed this problem , and It looks as if even 8 man pre-mades are up vs 8 man pugs .. ,personally I have seen so many flaws now and to think they are putting this up for release in September! The game seems to be driven by the wrong types of people from what I have seen , but the business model is based on a well known tank game that tries to force people to pay real cash , by pitting them up against much higher tier players! As a new returning player I am dismayed to see that the playability is far worse than closed beta ever was , sure lots of shiny new mechs out there , but the game itself seems to have lost it's spark now .

Full 8-man pre-made groups only end up against other 8-man pre-made groups. What you may be seeing are sync-drop exploiters who try to drop 2x groups of 4 into the same match on the same team. The fix for this would be very easy but PGI refuses to take action to stop the sync-drop exploiting.

[Tatula]

Kageru Ikazuchi, on 30 July 2013 - 05:49 PM, said:

New idea to this thread ... give us a minute or two before a match to discuss as a team (even a team of random PUGs) tactics, grouping, etc. ... preferably with more than a few lines of chat to view at a time

Then, give us the option to stick around and "after action" a match with both teams ... what went well? did you know this was going on?

Let us find out before the match, who is new, trying out a new build or is grinding an unfamiliar mech, running LRMs and needs a spotter and a bodyguard, is fast/slow, etc. ... give us more tools to actually work as a team before "all systems nominal".

I know, huh... right now, we can't even see what our team mate's loadouts are. Funny that we can see our enemy's loadouts, but not our team mate's.

[Zylo]

Garth Erlam, on 30 July 2013 - 10:46 AM, said:

I do understand the frustration of losing matches like that, particularly when it seems the other team is organized. That said, in-game VoIP wouldn't stop that in the way it might seem. I've helped teams overcome premades with text chat many times, with warnings of enemy locations "E5, 2", warnings of intent "enemy in tuns" etc.

I want to get this chat back on track - we do plan to have more emphasis on keeping premades with premades, pugs with pugs, etc. That said, this will happen regardless of how much we do that, as some players simply won't/don't listen to warnings, orders, etc. They don't have to, either, though it often makes things worse for them.

The best thing one can do is try to help these people with simply commands/suggestions/leadership. You don't need to grab command or anything, just a simple "5 enemies on ridge" or "I'll get the Jenner" or "I'll cap base, rush when they fall back" etc.

I get it's frustrating, and I hope you understand we're looking at as many ways as we can to alleviate this.

Garth I have some comments and a question:

The original group system with the variable sized group could have been easily fixed by matching similar size groups against each other.

Why was this type of solution not used instead of the phased matchmaking that introduced the sync-drop exploits?


Players would have been encouraged to run groups as large as possible (just like closed beta) which would result in far more group vs group action. There would be no need for an underused 8-man match system either. The side effect of this would have also resulted in far more games that only contained lone-wolf players.

[Stelar 7]

KingCobra, on 28 July 2013 - 09:08 PM, said:

Normally I would agree with you but new players are getting killed so fast in normal pug battles its insane and then you add in premade teams and they die in 1-2 shots. Please Stelar 7 tell us what a new player is going to learn in 10 seconds of game play? that's about how long they live per battle I know I pug and play on a huge premade team and I can tell you im surprised we even have 100,000 players playing this game. PGI needs to turn the game around to a skill based game not a ALPHA WARRIOR ONLINE game.

More straw beaten I see. There are a few points in there though. First, there is skill involved in the game right now. If you get killed in two seconds the other guys had some. Don't be an *** about it.

Second, the new player is not kicked out of the match when they die, and their ability to communicate goes up since they can now watch from the perspective of multiple mechs and type without getting shot. By ghosting you can learn tactics, loadouts, weapon grouping and hula girl. You can also learn that most valuable of online skills, patience.

Seriously about the skill thing, you sound like a scrub. Don't be that guy.

Cirran, on 29 July 2013 - 12:28 AM, said:

Hmm, premades players. How big would the population have to be before you would support a separate solo mm?

Large enough to support a thirty second, or lower, wait on matches. If no one is stuck waiting, and no one times out, then divide away. Also be sure there is some variety, we were playing eights the other night, three matches against the same team, then they quit and we had to split our eight into two fours.

Riptor, on 29 July 2013 - 01:03 PM, said:

Huh.. guess i missed the memo where PGI explained to everyone that at first you should not be able to enjoy the game.

Sounds like a sure fire way to success right? I mean kick down the player who wants to check out this "game" and i am sure he will stick around.

Yeah people dont stick around anymore on the promise that the game will become "good" later on.

Also what kind of BS elitist attitude is that? This is a friggin game not the military where you go first through bootcamp to make sure you dont get killed during the first five minutes of deployment.

The learning should be a FUN process.. not PUNISHING... geez...

Seriously, because if you can't win right out if the box it can't be fun right? I mean there is no way to have a good time and lose, that is why we have skill unlocks on the mechs, so every new mech makes you suffer before you can enjoy anything. Push that fun as far out as possible. Tell you what, google "Joe Cartoon, shoot the singer." That is the game for you. (I'd link it for you but mobile device and all that.)

[Erata]

You can't retaliate while you're typing.
You can retaliate while you're speaking.

It is just that simple.

[Valore]

Implement FFA last mech standing deathmatch mode.

Only solo droppers can play that mode.

Team based modes like we have now are 'opt in'. If you 'opt in', then you drop with full knowledge you might meet a full 8 man on the other end waiting to roll you. No more restriction on group sizes in these drops. You can launch with anywhere from 1 to 8 man.

No more QQ.

Its stupid having a teamwork based game mode forcing a bunch of people with no teamwork abilities to try and conjure it up on the fly.

And the solution is not 'gimp the other people also by limiting their group sizes, but still make it a team based objective mode'.

Edited by Valore, 30 July 2013 - 07:17 PM.