Launch Module And What It Means To The Community
#81
Posted 02 March 2014 - 03:13 PM
I am sorry if you will have to split tonnage class to sync drop more than 4 or that the 4 can no longer be the same tonnage. I am also sorry you can no longer sync drop two groups except against each other (wait no I am not sorry).
There is nothing bad about the proposed launch module, other than it did not fix the srm problem. Matching by tonnage class 3/3/3/3 and then within class by elo and exact tonnage if possible. Is not a problem. Allowing one group per side max, not a problem.
Not having a voip for everyone, still a problem.
Private free match, free and easy. But need 23 other friends. Can be used to now have ladders and leagues and civil wars. Can even be used to put House vs House. Just saying, this is nice.
Private Premium match. Now this baby can be used to do everything from 1v1 solaris mathces, just go to ngng.net and have George LeDoux do the play by play for your solaris matches, and put them on You Tube. Yep, Duncan Fisher announcing your very own Solaris death match. That my friend is BattleTech Porn. You can also use premium private matches to play leagues, ladders, deathmatch, clan trial of position, circle of equals, run a campaign based on 3025, 3039, etc. There really is no downside to this other than to get the goods you have to pay for it. Hopefully PGI will not get greedy here and stick to having only two people with premium time needed to run this.
Having been the 84% and faced nothing but a minimum of 6 to 8 heavy/assault meta jump sniping mechs almost every match for the last 3 months. I am happy to see medium mech challenge because that has helped a bit, but I am sure tomorrow we will be back to 1-2 premades in meta cheese, against 4-6 noobs in trial mechs or their first mechs and go back to seeing stomps and roflstomps nearly every game. At least this weekend because of all the mediums I have played in more close games than in the entire last six months over the last two days.
Generalizations are like anything else. You can claim I lumped everyone together and attempt to read my mind. While I can do the same. Its opinions, yours stinks like mine does.
I like what is coming, it has been too long since we had even a semblance of balance in the matchmaker. I think they didn't go far enough yet, but this is a good start. Hopefully they will actually start using value of equipment, value of modules and number of drops as a way to handicap elo so we get even closer and tougher matches. But, I like competition, I do not like stomping or roflstomping the other team. Stomp is win by 4 or more mechs. Roflstomp is win by 8 or more mechs on your side still being alive.
Chris
#82
Posted 02 March 2014 - 03:19 PM
#83
Posted 02 March 2014 - 03:49 PM
Edited by BLOOD WOLF, 02 March 2014 - 03:50 PM.
#84
Posted 02 March 2014 - 04:39 PM
Chris
#85
Posted 02 March 2014 - 05:47 PM
wwiiogre, on 02 March 2014 - 04:39 PM, said:
Put yourself into the shoes of someone who wants to play the game with a few of their friends. More than 3 other friends, but not EXACTLY 12 friends.
Private matches doesn't really address their situation at all.
Those players want to play in public matches (i.e. play in the actual game, against other people). Not go to the trouble of setting up specific matches against pre-selected opponents that they already know.
Private matches are a great addition, but they primarily support league play.. that is, folks who have some external system of competition, where they are playing pre-scheduled matches against pre-selected opponents. This is important to support certain parts of the community, but it doesn't really address the needs of normal grouped players.
I understand that you are afraid that premade groups will stomp you. That's fine. This is why most people have suggested that instead of the queues we have now, we instead break it up as follows:
1) A solo queue - In this queue, ONLY ungrouped players can join. Thus, if you really want to play without any premade teams, you can join this queue. Most games that exist have such a thing, and it's generally called a "mercenary" queue.
2) An unrestricted queue - In this queue, anyone can join. Solo players can join. Grouped players can join. Everyone gets to play.
In this system, everyone would be able to play, and there would be no notion of forced pug-stomping. Indeed, the solo queue would allow people who are afraid of pug stomps to play in an environment where it was impossible, and where they would KNOW that neither team had this kind of advantage.
And at the same time, the unrestricted queue removes one of the most damaging errors that PGI has ever made. It removes the arbitrary cap which has devastated most small units since it was put in place over a year ago.
Everyone wins, with the possible exception of 4 man premade teams, who would no longer be the most powerful group in the regular queue. However since most of those groups would benefit from being able to actually have that fifth guy who shows up on comms just jump in and start playing with them, most of those folks would be totally in favor of such a system.
Additionally, it removes any ability for folks to sync drop or anything to try and avoid higher level competition. If you want to group at all, then you play in the "big boy's queue". There's no way to game the system.
#86
Posted 02 March 2014 - 09:27 PM
I have also been suggesting the same exact system, with solo que and group que. You know who screamed the loudest about this? Those people that got tired of getting stomped in 12 mans vs other 12mans. The same thing happened in 8v8. The premades stopped dropping vs each other broke up into 4mans and synced dropped and rolled pugs.
Well, hopefully after looking at the population with 84% solo pug drops, about what I drop myself. And only 16% group drops. They decided to limit groups to one side each. And to only 4 total players, with max three in same tonnage class. Those are some huge restrictions. Why would they want to let you or your friends or anyone take more than 4 in a group? They just decided more than 4 grouped on one side is uneven vs. Pugs. Based on their data.
I am sorry your 5th person cannot join the group for the stomp of the pugs. He can however make sure he doesn't have the 4th mech in the same tonnage class as your group, pick the same game type and sync drop. And hope he is not against you. Which is currently what i see all the time. Half the drops today had sync drops going on. It was bad. Stomp after roflstomp.
Until PGI includes voip as standard for the game and everyone playing has a mic, headset and tech savvy enough to setup and run voip. A premade group of 4 players is more effective than an equally skilled group of 4 random players with no communication almost every single time. Really great players do not need to talk and even set up focus fire with a minimum of text chat, during pregame lobby.
Example: Focus fire starting from left, starting from right, Starting from largest mech, starting from ecm first. Etc. Then whenever the group is moving and contacts the enemy, everyone, without a word being spoken picks the target and opens fire at the appropriate target. Easy, beginners can do it. Yet they don't.
Which is why voip is a force magnifier as implemented currently in MWO. And probably why PGI is restricting it and planning on restricting it. I know my data shows dropping in a premade 4man on voicecomms in hvy/assault gives our team roughly twice the winning record. Increases our k/d and damage output. Why, we together are better than 8 mechs by themselves and can drop most hvy or assault mechs in less than 4 seconds each.
So, perhaps, your idea has merit. I would love it, but is it worth to PGI, given the track record of 8v8 and now 12v12 where it takes sometimes 30mins to find a match and if you do, you have to fight the same 12man over and over all night. And like the last three times we dropped. The other team brought nothing but the hvy/assault jump sniping meta with every person having arty/air. That really is no fun to face. When we could just as easily go into 4mans, sync drop and usually get all 12 of us in the same match. And which ever team got the 8 completely rolled the other team.
Once again, this appears to be what PGI are trying to avoid.
I hope this is the start of something better than what we currently have which is a complete joke of a matchmaker.
Chris
#87
Posted 02 March 2014 - 09:51 PM
wwiiogre, on 02 March 2014 - 09:27 PM, said:
I hope this is the start of something better than what we currently have which is a complete joke of a matchmaker.
Of everything said in this thread this is the only thing we can really hope for, something better than what we have now
#88
Posted 02 March 2014 - 09:54 PM
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Then we're in agreement, and there's no issue. We make a solo queue and an unrestricted queue. Everything is cool, and everyone is happy.
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The thing you aren't really grasping is that the reason the 8man, and then the 12 man queues were empty, isn't because no one wanted to play in them.
It's that it was almost impossible for people to play in them. It was simply too difficult to get EXACTLY 12 players online, especially since you had this huge chasm between 5-11 players, where you couldn't play together. Thus, it wasn't really feasible to just have folks show up, and then eventually have a full team. Once they put in the player cap, it became a huge chore to get a full team, because once you hit 5 guys, you had to break up into smaller teams, or have people play by themselves. This tended to make folks just stop playing, so you had a very hard time getting beyond 4 guys online at once.
Many, many teams have reported this as the case. It severely hurt the MWO community at large.
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Because by letting people play with their friends, it means that those people are actually going to play the game.
By preventing that, you drive players away from the game, and the population dwindles.
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First, I doubt you actually can say with any kind of certainty that you were witnessing sync drops. I suspect you are imagining things, no offense.
Second, the idea that you are complaining about sync drops, but then offering them as the solution to teams who want to play together, is ridiculous.
If we just make a solo queue, where pugs can drop as they please, and then an unrestricted queue, then there's no more sync dropping.. Folks just drop and play. Everyone's happy.
As an aside, I'm working on a detailed writeup of exactly how to implement a dynamic battlevalue system which will automatically balance mech usage over time... It also has the added benefit of being able to account for the advantage of a pre-organized team, and give bonuses to smaller teams and solo pilots. This could potentially help deal with some of your fears about being beaten by organized teams.
#89
Posted 03 March 2014 - 12:34 AM
#90
Posted 03 March 2014 - 03:17 AM
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Worthless. If you are playing with between 4-10 friends + you, you would generally be grinding mech xp, and playing for funzies/practicing, not playing competitively. This is best served on a public server with other players.
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In terms of public play; completely worthless. This feature is clearly designed for private competitive matches/practices. Completely avoids addressing problems with public gameplay, so stop trying to shoehorn it into being a solution to an unrelated issue, you aren't going to make that happen.
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Everyone worth anything will run meta builds in those 3 slots that are available for each weight class. Everyone who doesn't want to run those might as well just uninstall. I promise you that pub games will continue to play out as they have always done, who will you blame for your stomp then? I can't wait to find out.
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The only appause this idea deserves is the one handed golf clap of derision. Personally I would struggle to come up with a change to the current system that would make things worse, yet PGI have managed.
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Enjoy your premium time, I hope that PGI actually allow cbill xp gain on matches with custom parameters, otherwise it will be wasted.
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I play solo more often than I play in a group as it is a far quicker way to gain xp/cbills, as I dont need to wait for teammates to fanny around in mechlab equipping airstrikes etc between games. I am doing a lot of solo at the moment in particular as I'm trying to take my last 16 mechs (all mediums, although the number will go up this month with the fresh assault coming in) from full elite to mastery, then will be clearing off any modules I havent unlocked, hopefully in time for clans. Therefore stick your assumptions somewhere uncomfortable
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Doesnt offer any possibilities that any other team vs team online game doesnt already offer, and dragging in the map editor idea is completely baseless and left of field as it is unrelated to this particular matter.
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I hope the idea dies in a fire, like it deserves, because it will have a massively negative impact on match searching times and mind numbingly dull levels of predictability for how each game will play out.
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Again with the baseless assertions. Sorry you are afraid of being too incompetent to play against groups, I suppose.
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People have been holding off against the promise that 2-11 man would come in, as per previous PGI tweets, and are correctly upset that this has been reneged on (yet another in a long line of backtracks against comments made to hold onto playerbase).
Edited by NextGame, 03 March 2014 - 03:35 AM.
#91
Posted 03 March 2014 - 10:54 AM
let me get this straight. You play solo to grind xp. So this proposed change does not affect you whatsoever. The reason people stopped playing 8mans and 12mans was it was hard to find a match. And when you did, it was much harder competitively. Meaning some teams gave up cause they got beat over and over by the same team. With no variety. So they broke up, and 4man sync dropped.
How do I know if someone is sync dropping. Well perhaps its cause I can have mumble, vent and ts3 open with all the servers up that are advertised on the forums here. Also I have up and open multiple private servers as well. And the fact that I pay attention to people in games, then actually run their name thru the mwo forum search engine and look them up. I do not do this all the time, but it allows me to see what I am facing. Especially when I am collecting data for forum threads. Which I did religiously for about a month. With screen shots of every match. When I would run 100 drops, 25 in each class all solo. Then 100 more drops 25 each in nothing but 4mans. Then compare the w/l; k/d; difference in results showing what overall score was. Stomp win by more than 4 mechs, roflstomp win by 8 or more mechs.
Guess what my data showed. Probably the same thing PGI's showed. That pre mades had a huge impact on the way a game finished. Also that hvy/assault composition had a huge impact on how a game finished.
And look what happened. PGI, took data and made changes based on that data. Was it perfect? No. Did it go far enough? No. Is it better. We do not know yet. But based on the data I saw in my own games. It looks like it will probably help. But, I will judge it, when I can play in the system proposed.
I made this thread because of the possibilities it offered. Yet, instead of responding to the actual OP or original post. You have instead tried to divert the subject of the thread. While contradicting yourself repeatedly. As have other posters.
Perhaps you should start your own thread decrying the fact that you and your 4 friends cannot play together anymore in your meta cheese builds. Or in your 4pack of lights. Either way. I see the glass is half full. Until proven otherwise. And your posts do not prove otherwise. They only prove you prefer the system as is. With a meta cheese assault/hvy jump sniper warrior online.
Which is currently what we have. I hope they make it better with this proposed change. Having played in the beginnings of closed beta and having seen both exact tonnage drop matches and exact tonnage class drop matches. I can tell you that both were better than what we have now. The big difference at this moment is we do not have srm's working correctly or trust me, those meta jump snipers would be in trouble. Because, before srms broke, you could reasonably get in the midst of the meta ppc/ac builds and **** them with srms. You currently cannot do that because srms are broken.
I look forward to the day srms are fixed to reacquaint some people to the fact brawling with a specialist srm boat is death incarnate. 6 srm6 will obliterate most assault mechs in the first volley. And have a pair of srm boats get close and its sure death for the jump snipers. At least that is how it used to play out before srms became broken.
Well, try to stay on topic please.
Chris
#92
Posted 03 March 2014 - 12:05 PM
wwiiogre, on 03 March 2014 - 10:54 AM, said:
Chris, this part is simply incorrect. The difficulty in having exactly 12 players online resulted in most teams not bothering with 12-man. This in turn resulted in remaining few teams having trouble finding a match and lack of variety, which caused those remaining teams to throw in the towel too. What you're describing is not the cause of the problem, but the result of PGI forgetting to accommodate for group sizes 5-7 and later 5-11.
#93
Posted 03 March 2014 - 12:29 PM
wwiiogre, on 03 March 2014 - 10:54 AM, said:
let me get this straight. You play solo to grind xp. So this proposed change does not affect you whatsoever. The reason people stopped playing 8mans and 12mans was it was hard to find a match. And when you did, it was much harder competitively. Meaning some teams gave up cause they got beat over and over by the same team. With no variety. So they broke up, and 4man sync dropped.
Obviously you have selective reading problems, as I clearly stated that I solo more than I group. however that does not mean that I do not also partake in group play. Perhaps I might even partake in group play more often if it was encouraged by the game and I didn't feel as though I was causing others to miss out on playing in groups (those 4 man limits, huh?).
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I couldn't care less if you have MechWarrior Forum OCD. I'd rather people had a chance to play with their friends whatever the numbers (Imagine that, wanting people to have fun together with their friends in an online game?!). If they are all on the same team and there's more than 4, so be it, I will have a go at shooting them anyway.
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And look what happened. PGI, took data and made changes based on that data. Was it perfect? No. Did it go far enough? No. Is it better. We do not know yet. But based on the data I saw in my own games. It looks like it will probably help. But, I will judge it, when I can play in the system proposed.
forum stalking != empirical research.
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That selective reading again I see. There are no worthwhile possibilities offered by the continuation of a 4 man pub game limit with weight class restrictions added on top. I have already stated that private matches are a non-issue. If I was not clear enough (quite possible as I am raging about the 4 man limit and 3/3/3/3) let me make this statement. Private matches have long been required and are a very necessary introduction, however they do not address the current or future deficiencies of public play.
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I prefer not to spam the forums with baseless assertions based on extremely tenuous threads (you got map editor from this shambles of a setup that PGI are putting in. lol. really?
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In closed beta I saw your definition of stomps all over the place. You really like to pick and choose, don't you?
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Nothing I have posted is off topic, it is in direct response to the content of this thread to date, therefore very much on topic.
Edited by NextGame, 03 March 2014 - 01:15 PM.
#94
Posted 09 March 2014 - 10:09 AM
Roland, on 02 March 2014 - 05:47 PM, said:
I've been asking for a premade-free, PUG-only queue for over a year. Most of the opposition to it came from premades.
#95
Posted 09 March 2014 - 10:13 AM
Triordinant, on 09 March 2014 - 10:09 AM, said:
Most premadaplayers said, you can go to comstar and find a group in the channels there and then play against them ...
... now they cant go on comstar and fill their 9 man with a 3 man and play against 12?
Edited by Galenit, 09 March 2014 - 10:15 AM.
#96
Posted 09 March 2014 - 10:16 AM
This went on for a solid year.
#97
Posted 09 March 2014 - 10:34 AM
MWO has been in pretty much the same basic state for 18 months. The only thing I've observed PGI actually deliver in that time are Mech chassis, bobble heads, weapon algorithm changes and some maps. Oh, and we recently got UI2.0, which in the end turned out to be a re-skin of the old UI, removing some of the old UI's ease of use, but which we're told included a re-engineering of underlying code which will make other functionalities ''posslble''.
But that is yet to be seen. So far, all the other ideas discussed or promised - in all the Tweets, PowerPoint charts, NGNG interviews and blog posts - remain notably absent from the game.
Still.
How the game could have got out of beta without a functioning lobby (or in-game VOIP, or a basic metagame beyond PokeMech) boggles the mind.
So, we can all speculate and debate and come up with wonderful interpretations of what yet another blog post says the lobby will be - here, in the forums the lead developers never bother to read.
But in my view, PGI have serially over-committed and under-delivered, time after time after time. There's simply no reason to believe that this latest blog post, and its ideas and commitments, will lead to anything concrete at all, or anytime soon.
Edited by Appogee, 09 March 2014 - 10:57 AM.
#98
Posted 09 March 2014 - 02:30 PM
Nicholas Carlyle, on 09 March 2014 - 10:16 AM, said:
This went on for a solid year.
Hopefully, now the jig is up...
#99
Posted 10 March 2014 - 01:09 PM
So the new launch module changes a lot of things. It does not change the fact you cannot drop with more than 3 friends in pug matches and roll the pugs. It does however allow you to have less than 12 players and play against each other in premium private matches.
So I have no sympathy for those crying about not getting to play with more than 4 players in a group and roll pugs or to have two groups and sync drop and then roll pugs. Which I saw repeatedly this last weekend.
What this does is, change matchmaker, bringing matches closer to real balance for mechs. It only puts one premade, upto 4 players on each team. It will eventually attempt to balance exact tonnage.
Private free matches let 12 man groups play against each other with a lot of choices. Allowing league and ladder matches for free.
Private premium matches let even 1v1 matches or any variation of team players to play in a match with near complete control of the environment (outside of a map editor). This will allow literally everything any player wants for setting, up leagues, ladders, solaris, timeline matches (3025 anyone?), clan trials of position, clan trials of refusal, batchall bidding before clan battles if the clan is big enough, allowing roleplaying for the first time ever in a battle tech game for clan players. This will separate the meta cheese playing clans from the real clans. I would love to see PGI incorporate clan run roleplaying and bidding for matches in CW with the Khan of each clan being a PGI representative (this could be for MC) or to have PGI appoint a community member to GM or run these types of things for those players interested.
Some of you are so narrow minded and are completely missing some of the grand oppurtunities that this provides us as players. Will it cost money? Yep, do I care if the money cost is low enough? No. Will I personally take advantage of premium private matches even if I have to buy premium time or pay at a one time cost each time. Yep.
The glass is half full and at this point it appears to be getting fuller. I look for many more good things to come. The sad part is I stated in other topics that I would not buy Clan mechs until PGI started to get its act together on some very basic things. Guess next month at payday I will be buying the high end clan pack. $250 bucks worth, and I do not want to play clan in CW, but I do want to have them for the private premium matches and if possible to join someone elses clan campaigns or to use them against my own players in an IS campaign. So either way, PGI wins more money from me and a bigger chunk of my time. Because I plan on enjoying this immensely.
Now for those that say grinding cbills is hard, I have bought three Cataphracts including the 3D in the last two weeks just from grinding cbills everyday. Yep 20 million cbills, then another 5 million cbills to upgrade them. And I wasn't even trying that hard. Just putting in a couple of hours each day. I cheated a bit, by using my founders mechs more than usual, but I like playing my Jenner and Hunchback.
Sorry for the negative nancies, who see nothing but darkness and no hope. Eventually one day, your own attitude may change and you can have fun in giant stompy robots without the need to make yourself feel better by rolling pugs with your friends. Otherwise, perhaps Titanfall or Hawken are the games for you or even B4.
I enjoy the BT lore and universe and hope to soon see melee and collisions and falls back in the game. But, I know they are in the future. I do know that PGI made a turn for the better towards real role warfare when they announced this upcoming change. I just hope they keep this trend going and the change lives upto the hype and makes more games challenging and closer than the continual roflstomps I saw this weekend.
Chris
#100
Posted 11 March 2014 - 04:11 PM
PGI: "We didn't put in chat or lobbies. Our in-game voice com sucks so no one uses it. 15-20% of all matches have disconnect, crash, or fail-to-reconnect problems. We have zero community building or communication tools. GOOD GOSH why are people launching solo?"
I dunno PGI, it's a mystery to me too.
On the more serious side, 20 years of MMO's has shown me that people mostly play solo, UNLESS group-building, communication tools, and areas where players SEE and INTERACT with other players are made a focus of the game.
If you want a team oriented game, give us some decent team tools.
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