227 replies to this topic

[Almond Brown]

Joseph Mallan, on 03 March 2014 - 11:15 AM, said:

And does not touch on the ones who Sync drop.

You try much Sync dropping Joe? It is actually a very difficult way to get more than 4 players on one side at the same time. In most cases I have exp'd, 2+ groups of 4 attempting to sync will find themselves on different maps and or opposing teams (4 v 4), or (6 v 3 when only 9 players).

Although fun up to a point, fighting against your own team mates (known load-outs and tactics) soon loses its appeal. Best to just drop as a 3 or 4 man and take ones chances against the Boogieman directly. (or are we the Boogieman in those cases...hmmm)

Edited by Almond Brown, 03 March 2014 - 12:04 PM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Almond Brown, on 03 March 2014 - 11:59 AM, said:

You try much Sync dropping Joe? It is actually a very difficult way to get more than 4 players on one side at the same time. In most cases I have exp'd, 2+ groups of 4 attempting to sync will find themselves on different maps and or opposing teams (8 v 4).

Although fun up to a point, fighting against your own team mates (known load-outs and tactics) soon loses its appeal. Best to just drop as a 3 or 4 man and take ones chances against the Boogieman directly. (or are we the Boogieman in those cases...hmmm)

Does it have to be 4 or more? I am not supporting or knocking that it happens just that it would make teams look like PUG drops. Whether it is or isn't working.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Almond Brown, on 03 March 2014 - 11:59 AM, said:

You try much Sync dropping Joe? It is actually a very difficult way to get more than 4 players on one side at the same time. In most cases I have exp'd, 2+ groups of 4 attempting to sync will find themselves on different maps and or opposing teams (8 v 4).

Although fun up to a point, fighting against your own team mates (known load-outs and tactics) soon loses its appeal. Best to just drop as a 3 or 4 man and take ones chances against the Boogieman directly. (or are we the Boogieman in those cases...hmmm)

That's why I've been kinda of meh at the concept of including sync drops into anything.

We had set up a 12 man...failed 3 or 4 times...and split up. There were 3 groups. And any time we sync'd it was 1 on each side and 1 group landing somewhere else.

I'm just not sure you could ever really use it to tell us anything. And it's hard as hell to track when it is happening.

[keith]

mwhighlander, on 02 March 2014 - 06:17 PM, said:

Misleading skewed statistics are skewed and misleading...

this. y statistics is not real math, it is the art of lieing with numbers. given the same data that pgi has anyone in game can make almost any pie chart but say something different.

[Noesis]

Purlana, on 02 March 2014 - 06:03 PM, said:

So where is the pre-made Boogieman that everyone used to cry about?

He is behind you!!!

But more traditionally can be found under the bed or in the closet.

[Squirtbox]

Ryoken, on 03 March 2014 - 11:32 AM, said:

Experience and stomping new players in trial mechs has nothing to do with beeing a matter of premades.
I have observed tons of solo players in fully buffed out mechs that do prey on the new players in their trial mechs a lot more than those "evil" premades.

Usually aa experienced and communicating premade gets where the fighting is most intense and where they are needed. It is those solo players in fully buffed mechs that go hunting for those lost new players wandering around the map alone in their trial mechs.

So again, I doubt your story of the evil premade boogeyman.

In most matches if I see a trial mech I call them out so that my lance mates and I can easily remove them from the match in order to try and shift the steam roller in our favor. I don't purposely target them over say a DDC charging straight for me but if they are an easy target or the attention is elsewhere I will go for them. What makes this better is that almost all trial mechs seem to use XL engines or at the very least lose significant damage capabilities if torso'd.

[RussianWolf]

Ryoken, on 03 March 2014 - 07:03 AM, said:

Obviously it is impossible to simply put premades of equal size and number on both teams...

Possible, yes. You get a 4 man with avg 1700elo and I get a 4 man with avg 700elo. Equal but not Equal.

Kyynele, on 03 March 2014 - 07:28 AM, said:

A premade only queue would take forever to find matches, and the player pool for that would be so limited that balanced matchmaking there would be even further away than it is now, which would make waiting for those matches even less desireable.

Granted, the PUG queue would likely be slightly better balanced (since practically it would be the only queue if you prefer to play instead of wait), but for me at least it would be a killing blow for this game if I couldn't play with a friend every now and then.

And even with that, the people in the pure PUG queue would find a new scapegoat for the occasional steamrolls, because losing never means that you didn't play well: either someone cheated, matchmaking is broken or at least the game is P2W and the opposing team just paid more to overcome your mad skills.

We just had a tournament, and I played way more games than I usually play on a weekend. All solo as per tournament rules. My W/L ratio was noticeably higher than usual, perhaps because of simply trying harder and not messing around with joke builds?

The worst stomp I saw over the weekend was when my team had 7-8 top ten guys in it, all solo of course, and the only coordination the team had was a bunch of greetings in the ingame chat. If the 3rd lance in the team was a premade, their contribution to the slaughter that followed was non-existant.

I'd claim that premades by themselves make a far smaller difference than the sheer difference in the amount(s) of good players in the opposing teams. Of course, this means that when really good players group up, they may have that advantage often, but in usual cases when regular players group up, you might hardly see a difference.

I don't buy into the whole "it would take forever to find a match in a separate queue" argument. Some of us Solo Puggers would still want to play with you Teams (I know I would). As has been said many times..

2 queues

1) Stock mechs only - This is where the novices can learn and everyone is on a relatively equal field of "All the mechs suck". Solo drops only, no teams.

2) Teams and Open mechs - Veterans and Teams would wind up here because they want to customize the mechs and what not.

Edited by RussianWolf, 04 March 2014 - 10:09 AM.

[lsp]

Alot of the rolling people blame on premades is due to tonnage differences. Even a four man can't stand the powers of a entire enemy team of assaults, specially when they're on lights and mediums.

[Navy Sixes]

Mindwipe, on 03 March 2014 - 04:50 AM, said:

...premades certainly do completely screw up the tonnage balance, but overall we frankly suck.

That's pretty much my beef with premades. It's not that their skills are particularly threatening, and I've found that if you can knock them off their square, their "leet communication capabilities" can be made a liability -sometimes I imagine the rest of their squad trying to play with the guy in the Highlander I'm laying into screaming, "@#$#, @#%$, SOMEBODY HELP ME IN C6!!!"

Aside from the glaring tonnage imbalance they can thrash a game with, most prems are all right. The only ones that bother me are the occasional heel-draggers in my PUG company that want to AFK until the rest of us have weakened the enemy -you know, by having them spend all their ammo putting it into us instead of them. People complain about disconnects. These guys are frustrating because no one has disconnected, but I still have to play the game 2-4 mechs short.

Let me make it clear: These premades are not evil. They're pathetic.

[Bobzilla]

The stats really only show more people pug than form premades by a large majority. You can take that away from the stats for sure, even if it does not count sync drops.

I only pug, but I think in order for PGI and players to know how premades effect the game truely, is to allow groups of all sizes, and show an icon indicator as to who is in a premade with who, on both sides.

I see people saying, 'we were in a premade and lost to a pug', but how would you know at all if you were against a pug or other premades. On the other hand 'we pug stomped', how do you know you didn't crush another premade?

Allow it, identify it to everyone envolved and let it run for some time. Then make adjustments depending on the out come. I'm guessing more often than not, the largest premade size will win, but then again maybe 2 smaller premades are more succsessful than one large one. Maybe pugs can hold their own.

I'm willing to get stomped to know for sure and create measures that make the game more enjoyable to everyone.

[Squirtbox]

I'd say the PUGstomping has more to do with people following some stupid 'preset' pattern every time they drop on a map. Almost every single match on River City Skirmish has the top team going to upper while the bottom team goes lower. This results in a stupid ring-around-the-rosie habit with any attempts to do something different ending in failure because 8 of the 12 team members don't listen or call you a troll/idiot/MR for trying it. Its the same on every single map. The PUGs follow some stupid pattern that worked one time and try to do it again and again every single match with almost zero variation. When the team listens and works together that's when you win.

I'm getting really tired of my team having a mech orgy in C4-C5 behind that stupid hill/rock on Canyon Network and getting poptarted/LRMd to death by the other team.

[Mazikar]

my two cents;

I used to be in a guild of sorts and I liked the group of people, we played together well and there was much respect for all. We crushed other groups for the most part. When we dropped as an entire team we did well enough. But it was the pugs that made us rich. My problem with "premades" is it was not worth the extra time. I would take on average 5-10 min to gather everyone from our chat room, another 10 min to get everyone in the game in a group, another 5 min to figure out who is going to do what, drop stomp and we might get one or two more drops before one or two people would leave, we would then go back into chat and get replacements, they would join almost drop "oh hey my friends are on I gotta go sorry" another 5 min looking and drop. So in a 2 hour span I got 6-10 drops, with mostly wins... 90% ish. On the other hand....

Solo drops in 2 hours I can get 3X or 4X easy with 40% wins. Look KDR is cool but seriously cash is king. Time is better spent grumping about noobers noobing than uber stomping in my experience.

My problem with premades is they make it un-fun to a pug. I have been on both sides and premades exploit pugs period end of story, its true. Pugs fall victim to premade tricks and it is impossible in group chat for you to tell them to stop chasing the squirrels or kill the spider with the tag that is making LRMS rain on them. Look I have been in a pug that stomped a rather boisterous premade tossing out web sites and ranting about how awesome they were, but its rare. It does suck to start a match and see the entire enemy team is made up of Founders and they are all the same faction and your the only founder on your team and when you drop your lance is in trial mechs.

The match making system for this game is lacking, lacking a pre-match chat system, post match chat so you can friend people you did well with and you see here and there... they probably play the same time as you. You don't know the planet you will drop on or what your team is bringing to the fight. You are forced to make every mech "viable" for every possibility and that is the biggest crime this game has made. Mechs are meant to fight based on mission and planet. Oh well. take what we have and hope for the best.

The boogie man is real and he eats your pugs, pgi hates you and this is their tool for proving it.

[Elkfire]

I've said it before, I'll say it again. Built-in voice comms -- like the ones that exist in any other online team game worth its salt -- can go a long way to alleviate these issues. Most people will not go to the trouble to download and use a third party system, that's the way it is, because most online games these days have built-in voice chat. Arguments against it just don't hold any water, I'm sorry; mute buttons exist to deal with people who abuse it, and it can only benefit everyone else, even if they can't/won't talk and only listen. I understand if you think those people are lazy, but look at things realistically, rather than idealistically: new player retention is not going to improve if they're getting constantly destroyed by teams -- even partial teams -- using third-party voice chat.

Natural Selection 2 is an example of a game with a high difficulty curve that does a good job handling new players; there are servers specifically marked as 'rookie' or 'rookie only' servers with a different colored text and a server name that differentiates between them. Of course, being able to create servers at all in MWO would also be nice.

Edited by Elkfire, 06 March 2014 - 06:46 PM.

[Aym]

Joseph Mallan, on 03 March 2014 - 03:34 AM, said:

Sync drops look like PUGging to the Match maker. How many of those PUGs are Marik March Madness nights, or Steiner Scout games?

Loving the MMM Shoutout!

[Joseph Mallan]

Aym, on 06 March 2014 - 06:52 PM, said:

Loving the MMM Shoutout!

As you should. I am not mad that a House has been trying to work as a cohesive unit. MM should be trying to group us by Faction already! Only when that happens the Lone Wolves (players not Merc Org) will complain cause they are being segregated.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 07 March 2014 - 05:55 AM.

[Kaldor]

keith, on 03 March 2014 - 01:08 PM, said:

this. y statistics is not real math, it is the art of lieing with numbers. given the same data that pgi has anyone in game can make almost any pie chart but say something different.

Such epic truth...

God how I hated taking stats classes in college as you can bend data however you want by how it is sorted/worded/ect.

[Kaldor]

I posted this elsewhere, but it bears repeating here...

Quote

There is a reason that 84% of players are solo....

Because you took away the ability for people to run anything more than 4 or 12. At one point that number was probably closer to 50% or more of people in groups. Units thrived, community was happier, hope was alive. Then the all people crowing about "evil premades" cried and units got hit the hardest. People adapted, but then all kinds of other crap happened (ecm, ghost heat, brawling died, 12 man groups, etc), and units pretty much dissolved. My data? FWLM Teamspeak server, closed beta thru Q1 2013, over a 100 people on the server at a time minimum. Now, its a ghost town in comparison. Yeah, we still have new players coming in, but wouldnt you rather have the 90% back that already is gone? The player churn is incredible now. Who else here has a friends list with 200+ people on it, and maybe 10 of them actually play anymore?

Why is it so hard to grasp the fact this is a team based game. The lore even kinda points that out. Poor choices are pushing everyone to solo because most of the people that are interested in team play are already gone!

[VanillaG]

Ixios, on 03 March 2014 - 11:07 AM, said:

Statistics can always be bent to the way you want them:

Based off those stats, for 100 match launches:

84% are solo = 84 players
8% are 2 mans = 16 players
4% are 3 mans = 12 players
4% are 4 mans = 16 players

Total players: 128
Total solo players: 86 = ~65.6%
Total group players: 44 = ~34.4%

So one third of the player base are group players and this isn't even taking into account 12 man matches, which has 24 group players in them.

A more likely percentage is that there is probably a 40/60 split between group and solo play.

Like I said statistics can be manipulated.

Ix

These numbers explain how it is possible for there to multiple teams on one side of a match. If the MM has to deal with 100 items to match (a group is considered one item), then on average they will have to deal with 84 solo players and 16 teams of various sizes which is 128 players. Assuming that you can't have partial games that means it is trying to fill 6 matches with those items. So it you allocated 2 teams per match that means that you have 4 extra teams that needs to spread across the 6 existing matches. Since the MM most likely works on a first in, first out method, if a large number of premade teams all drop at the same it would increase the probability that multiple premades would end up in the same match, especially if they are all around the same Elo.

The new MM will enforce 2 teams per match and it sound like they are going to use those as "anchors" for creating new matches. In the above scenario that would mean that instead of starting up 6 matches, they would start up 8 matches and wait for more PUGs to fill them out. It will interesting to see how this all plays out especially if there is an above average number of premades on at any one time.

[Randalf Yorgen]

Kaldor, on 07 March 2014 - 07:37 AM, said:

I posted this elsewhere, but it bears repeating here...

Just so you know, the FWLM built a new website, the data to it is in the faction threads. You have to do a small sign up for access but everything is there.

500(+) signed up members. about 120 heavy active players, about 100 daily active players, about 200 a few times a week players and the rest casual players. Right now the leadership is watching very closely what PGI is doing, read into that what you want, but please do read into that.

[Kaldor]

Randalf Yorgen, on 07 March 2014 - 08:21 AM, said:

Just so you know, the FWLM built a new website, the data to it is in the faction threads. You have to do a small sign up for access but everything is there.

500(+) signed up members. about 120 heavy active players, about 100 daily active players, about 200 a few times a week players and the rest casual players. Right now the leadership is watching very closely what PGI is doing, read into that what you want, but please do read into that.

Randalf,

Ive been a FWLM member nearly as long as you. If you think everything is OK, your wrong at every level. You forget, I was part of the "leadership" for MGA at one point in time, not as direct as Stingr4y, Chili, Aym, etc, but I was still heavily involved was invited to the Council meetings, etc. And just FYI there is no real leadership in the FWLM right now, because there is nothing to really lead right now unless you call leading a handful of 4 mans something worth leading? Right now its about trying to hold the unit together in a game that is not setup for unit/group play.

Closed beta TS was it not uncommon to see 10+ 8 man groups running at once? What do you see now? A few 4 mans. A bunch of people sitting around BSing about playing another game. Thats about it.

Yeah, 500+ signed up members, maybe 10% play on a consistant basis. 90% of the old guard closed beta testers and founders are gone, and those accounts arent even signed up at the FWLM website for the most part.. We have new players, yes, I still get the email spam whenever someone signs up. Player turnover is huge. If i had access to the back end of the TS sever I can probably pull data as to who has used TS since we setup the new server, how long they were on, and how frequent. That data is there.

Do not be a "White Knight" for PGI. They are doing everything in their power to push this game to solo PUG player where they can make a buck selling something shiney to the new kids with a 15 minute attention span and daddies credit card. They are NOT helping units in any way right now. And alot of the response I hear is "ERMAHGRED COMMUNITY WARFARE" is a line of crap. Everything they have done in the last year has done nothing but HURT units in all reality. What happens with Community Warfare is an unknown, but I can tell you right now if its as good as this craptastic UI we currently have, then CW will flop and with it units and grouped players will get the shaft once again.

Corey