Tw1stedMonkey, on 02 April 2014 - 10:12 PM, said:
It could be a lot more but humans suck and any time you give a potential advantage to a group of players (4 mans) they will do everything they can to lord it over other people and thusly ruin their chance at a fair gameplay experience. I am all for depth and teamwork etc. but the main market to target is the plug and play crowd and their gameplay experience should come first. If they can find a workable solution in which teamwork cannot be exploited to dominate and stomp PUGS then I will support it fully. But it seems like PGI has chosen the gameplay model that is most difficult to balance and in which imbalances become most apparent: team-based non-respawning shooter in which all mechs/weapon systems should be balanced against one another based only on tonnage, crits,and heat. Certain weapon are meant to be better but more rare/expensive making certain weapons (like small lasers) nearly useless.
Adding a respawning, semi-respawning, or limited lives/drop mode would do well to offset/disguise imbalances. I would also love to see a mode where spawn with x amount of money and then they buy a mech that is either a trial or mech they customized and work/fight to get enough money to afford a more powerful mech, and the mode has respawning and has battles meant to last like 30 mins to an hour. Pretty much hour mechwarrior living legends was. That makes it much easier to balance since an assault mech with XL engine, DHS, endo-steel and gauss/LL will and should be better than a standard engine medium mech wielding medium and small lasers.
TL;DR add more modes and modes with respawning/limited drops so that min/max doesn't cause as huge landslides as currently tend to be the case.
wanderer, on 03 April 2014 - 04:00 AM, said:
The only way this ever happens if there is a completely separate solo queue. Period.
All things being equal, two guys shooting one kills faster than two guys shooting two guys. It's what makes LRMs sweet in lower-ELO (read: players who cannot into team) matches. They create focus fire, simulating team play to an extent- which is extra-effective on less organized teams.
Teams laugh at people who have a fundamental disconnect on the subject. As long as there's one MM for both groups and solo players, the solo player is fodder. And at this point, I think at best PGI doesn't have the capacity to handle it,at worst they're enjoying watching the PUGs suffer.
The moral of the story is you can either work within the system and adapt or try to rail against the injustices of things beyond your control and gnash your teeth in frustration.
Should PUGs have a better means to communicate (ie: VOIP, comm rose, etc)??? Yes but it's not here at the moment (if ever) so either join a group or get used to working against the odds.
You could try appealing to the devs but they don't seem to read these forums or make changes based on what players are asking for so you are probably just spinning your wheels there.
For example, me as a solo driver (PUG) in freeway traffic thinks it is unjust that a soccer mom and her 2 year old baby (premade) can drive in the car pool lane while I can't. I can get mad about it all I want in traffic and stew over it but it won't change anything so I choose to ignore it. I could write my senator (PGI) about it but nothing will probably change so I don't worry about things outside my control. If I really wanted to, I could find someone to carpool with that is going in the same direction at the same time of day (premade/unit) but I choose not to so I get stuck in traffic every day (rolled by premades).