1126 replies to this topic

[Craig Steele]

SuckyJack, on 15 April 2014 - 04:30 PM, said:

Just going to say one thing Craig Steele, Design is best when it is Inclusive, not Exclusive. The Bolded Quote means Including Groups into the focus of Balance and CW and NOT excluding Solo Players.

Right now, Group Play is completely excluded from their design and as such excludes a portion of their playerbase.

Great, so if you needed to explain it now then I was correct in my assessment that it could be read to the derogatory of Solo'queues and therefore, appropriate to ask the question.

PS, Group Play is not completely excluded, just groups of 5 - 11 under the Launch Module. But they did say they are looking at that and CW is still some time away so maybe the planets align? Idk.

[Lindonius]

SLDF LawDog, on 15 April 2014 - 03:47 PM, said:

Since UI 2.0, The have been putting out some content and fixing some shit.

How many fundamentally necessary fixes to UI 2.0 did they release in the last patch?

How many Hero and Champion mechs did they release in the last patch?

They have fixed sweet FA, produced NOTHING in the way of new content, and released more items that allow them to dip their hands back into the cookie jar.

A cookie jar that keeps getting refilled by the terminally stupid.

[SweetJackal]

Craig Steele, on 15 April 2014 - 04:36 PM, said:

Great, so if you needed to explain it now then I was correct in my assessment that it could be read to the derogatory of Solo'queues and therefore, appropriate to ask the question.

PS, Group Play is not completely excluded, just groups of 5 - 11 under the Launch Module. But they did say they are looking at that and CW is still some time away so maybe the planets align? Idk.

No, I'm defending my thoughts as you are trying to play a small thing I've said completely out of the context of the half dozen posts of I've made on the subject as your entire argument revolves around the idea that for Groups to get thrown a bone and be included in the design process like every other game has done that Solo Players would have to give up their toys, which is false.

Not including a natural progression for groups to move from 4 players to 12 dramatically increases the difficulty of organizing a 12 man group in the first place and excludes those that want to play with friends. A limitation that is continued to be enforced and continues to hurt the game.

And yes, there is an edit as I failed at reading comprehension of your last line. Which for a moment thought that you said that groups 5-11 were getting something in LM and not what you really said, which is group play is getting something in LM, just not groups of 5-11. Which is a contradiction of logic.

Edited by SuckyJack, 15 April 2014 - 04:51 PM.

[Kesslan]

What I don't get about this statement that a game can't launch without 12 v 12 players is that this happens all the time. Hell I've once been 3 people short on my team vs a full team of 12 in PUG and it's not uncommon for one team to be 1-2 players short before counting for disconnects during certain times of the day.

As to allowing single players to link up with 11 man premades.. why not?

I mean you argue it isn't 'fun' for that solo player but some people might enjoy the challenge or work well with a group anyway and it's a good way for clans to possibly pick up a new player along the way who works well with them. And It's not like they can't just share voice com information. A quick 'Hey dude, here is our Vent/TS/other VIOP. Hop on and join us!. Though that said It would be nice to see some actual in game VOIP at some point. Works just fine for plenty of other games though I realize there are development/lag issues etc which is why there's still plenty fo games that don't have it, even if it's increasingly common.

But hey, just keep that in mind for long term stuff at least!

Beyond that I just want to see more maps at some point. The map rotation honestly hasn't changed that much since closed Beta.

[Craig Steele]

SuckyJack, on 15 April 2014 - 04:45 PM, said:

No, I'm defending my thoughts as you are trying to play a small thing I've said completely out of the context of the half dozen posts of I've made on the subject as your entire argument revolves around the idea that for Groups to get thrown a bone and be included in the design process like every other game has done that Solo Players would have to give up their toys, which is false.

New BOLD

Craig Steele, on 15 April 2014 - 04:36 PM, said:

Great, so if you needed to explain it now then I was correct in my assessment that it could be read to the derogatory of Solo'queues and therefore, appropriate to ask the question.

PS, Group Play is not completely excluded, just groups of 5 - 11 under the Launch Module. But they did say they are looking at that and CW is still some time away so maybe the planets align? Idk.

I get you guys want a bogey man to bash up in the absence of PGI, cause you know, you can't be right unless someone is wrong.

But thats not me.

You typed something that suggested something (and there were other peoples hints to but I cbf pasting them all)

I asked for clarity.

And now I'm trying to derail the argument or mis represent or "take out of context"?

At least I gave you (and the others) the benefit of the doubt and asked a question before coming to a conclusion.

[Aym]

FupDup, on 14 April 2014 - 09:41 AM, said:

As someone who pugs for the vast majority of his games, I can say that I would try out going in the group queue and maybe even stay there (depending on how close the skill level of each team would be).

Getting away from the "steering wheel underhive" type of teammates/enemies might be refreshing (group queue players would probably on average be more experienced).

QFT, since the "Solo launch statistic" includes group players playing solo for MMM, some other solo drop fun night thing, weekend SOLO ONLY TOURNAMENTS and prizes like the Centurion A(c) (Which is the single best event PGI has ever done for players imo), group players who are playing solo to level up a new mech or test a new build and don't want to drag down their teams performance, or slow down the drops with tweaks in the mechbay, or don't want to be slowed down by others tweaking in the mechbay, and lastly simply not being ALLOWED to drop in a group due to the 4-player restriction. I'll be the first to admit that last statistic is certainly less than 1 solo drop per 4-player drop, but none the less all of this is not just a drop in the bucket for solo drop statistics AND I'm sure other kinds of solo players would appreciate the better team-work in the group queue. I'm just so surprised that solo players are being EXCLUDED from communities and groups in this way.

[murtaugh]

Amsro, on 14 April 2014 - 09:47 AM, said:

Public Player Queue

• Solo players
  
• 1-12 man groups. 1 group per team as it is now. Extra spots filled by solo players. Both the teams would be of similar size +/- 2 fill the rest with solo. Tonnage Maximum for teams, as the team gets bigger the limits get tougher.

Seriously just save yourself all that headache remove the restrictions and your answer forms itself Paul. After that you can work on Community Warfare.





Make your job easier, stop overcomplicating.!

DO IT NOW PLEASE!

[TigerOne]

Nikolai Lubkiewicz, on 14 April 2014 - 09:25 AM, said:

A solo player would have MUCH greater success at winning in the regular public match than up against teams.

Can you substantiate this with any data?

I read the thread explaining how the distribution of group matches were calculated. The only way that you could prove this statement would be to have data where either one guy synch dropped with a group of 11, or 11 guys synch dropped with 1. I don't understand from that explanation how you could figure out who synch dropped especially with such a weird group size, but if you can, what were the numbers?

Further, there's not very much evidence to justify that 11 man teams always lose against 12 man teams anyway. Again, the only way to prove that would be to take all the games where people disconnected or were dropped in game and normalize it using the same set of criteria. If you specifically mentioned these games where one team was short on game end, I apologize, otherwise, let's see the numbers. I myself have fought several battles with my clan where we were two short, and won, though that evidence is anecdotal, and I do play with a very good team.

If the concern is that no one would drop solo into a 11-man drop, then I reiterate my same suggestions - allow larger drop sizes for idle servers, incentivize players with more XP or CBills, or make the criteria that the MatchMaker uses selectable (functors) by the player to lessen its responsibility.

Now, the one point that you bring up, which is very true, is developer bandwidth. For that, it's absolutely true, there have to be a set of constraints for now. I also think that if this is a priority, anywhere on the list, the easiest way to make players like me happy is to keep it simple - let the true Lone Wolf drop with the group, or let them short drop. Once there is enough data to understand what odd-man drop sizes mean for game balance, you can make better decisions, even if it is painful in the short run.

[Sandpit]

TigerOne, on 15 April 2014 - 05:25 PM, said:

Can you substantiate this with any data?

teams have better chances of winning by all accounts from devs. so 11 premade +1 solo will have a better chance at winning than 12 random pugs

Edited by Sandpit, 15 April 2014 - 06:10 PM.

[Sandpit]

TigerOne, on 15 April 2014 - 05:25 PM, said:

the easiest way to make players like me happy is to keep it simple - .

PGI has become notorious for doing everything they possibly can to NOT take a simple approach to things

[Sandpit]

I just honestly feel Paul has some sort of bias against group play for whatever reason. The tone and information he's given regarding groups just comes across like that to me. So instead of balancing a game that is more inclusive to all players we get balancing features that cater to one group more than the other. Want to see some REALLY funny stuff? Check out some of the old CC posts regarding groups before they implemented group limits.

A short history lesson:

8v8 any size groups
outcry from some int eh community that premades were ruining the game
devs state groups are unbalanced due to their current MM system
devs implement "temporary" group limits

one year later...
new MM and Elo system introduced
group sizes still nerfed
players still experiencing roflstomps on a regular basis (and still blaming premades quite a bit as well incidentally)
Devs announce group limits were only "temporary" at the time and will be permanent

I challenge anyone to show me where group limits stopped
roflstomps
enhanced the NPE
helped balance MM
etc.

It didn't because it's not the root cause. It was an easy scapegoat to use. Now we have an entire segment of the population ostracized, excluded, and pissed off. Meanwhile, every single issue that group limits was supposed to mitigate are trucking along just like they always have.
So now they implement a complex rule of 3, keep group limits, tighten Elo matching, and a few other balancing things done recently.
So they did all of this (which some of us have pointed out and firmly believe still won't help the roflstomps or NPE). They took a complex route when all they really had to do to be more effective was:

Instead of averaging Elo, all players in a group enter MM at the highest Elo in the group.
EX: 8 man
Player A has an Elo of 1700
Every other players has sub 1200 Elo
Instead of coming up with an Elo of 1262 for MM purposes they would have a group Elo of 1700, preventing them from gaming the MM system

open up the 12man queue to be the group queue, give solos the chance to opt in if they want.

start new players at bottom of Elo brackets and have them finish cadet bonus before being able to opt into group queue

instead of recoding, reprogamming, redoing the entire MM system, they could have very simply adjusted one queue and made a lot more of their player base happy without creating an imbalance in the MM and actually making a better MM system that helps mitigate things like roflstomps

but this is PGI so it's much better to come up with the most complex system possible that will piss off and alienate a good portion of your player base. (This doesn't even take into account that generally speaking players that do stuff like build websites, recruit, build TS servers, etc. are usually going to spend a lot more money over the course of the game than the casual player who logs on twice a week and plays a dozen matches or so. How many gold mechs were purchased by those players as opposed to players in groups?)

Welcome to MWO

[Tekadept]

Sandpit, on 15 April 2014 - 06:23 PM, said:

PGI has become notorious for doing everything they possibly can to NOT take a simple approach to things

There is the easy way, the hard way, then there is the PGI way.

Edited by Tekadept, 15 April 2014 - 06:43 PM.

[Sandpit]

Tekadept, on 15 April 2014 - 06:42 PM, said:

There is the easy way, the hard way, then there is the PGI way.

up until a few weeks ago I would have disagreed with you. When you look at their body of work since CB regarding MWO the case can definitely be made that they seem to want to make things more complicated than they need to be.

[Navy Sixes]

FupDup, on 14 April 2014 - 09:41 AM, said:

As someone who pugs for the vast majority of his games, I can say that I would try out going in the group queue and maybe even stay there (depending on how close the skill level of each team would be).

Getting away from the "steering wheel underhive" type of teammates/enemies might be refreshing (group queue players would probably on average be more experienced).

I solo exclusively right now, and I totally second this sentiment. I'd give it a shot, at least. It may even work in getting more of us solos interested in moving into group-play. Give the team-players a first hand opportunity to show us what we're missing out on.

Oh, who am I kidding. They'll just blame me and the other solos every time they lose . Still, I'd like to give it a try.

[Roland]

The rage, Sandpit.. It builds, doesn't it?

[Tekadept]

Pugs cry they get stomped
Groups are shattered dreams long gone
Impotent Pug Life

Edited by Tekadept, 15 April 2014 - 07:00 PM.

[Sandpit]

Roland, on 15 April 2014 - 06:56 PM, said:

The rage, Sandpit.. It builds, doesn't it?

More frustration than anything to be honest. It's not really any kind of anger. It's a video game. I can easily (and have) start playing other games. The clan pack money that was going to purchase a Massakari pack has gone to SC instead. It's not the end of the world for MWO but more and more people I know are doing just that. Why get all bent out of shape over it? It's much easier to just find a game that DOES let me play with friends.

[Roland]

As you say, it's the frustration of knowing what might have been.

[Sandpit]

Roland, on 15 April 2014 - 07:15 PM, said:

As you say, it's the frustration of knowing what might have been.

I think in this particular case it's more of knowing they COULD do what many of us are wanting, they just choose not to.

This isn't a matter of not being able to code it, UI bottlenecking something, inability to figure out how to do it, etc. It's a matter of they simply don't WANT to do it which I just don't understand. I don't see how a professional multi-million dollar company with a small player base can look at this situation and think it's much better to alienate a portion of that player base as opposed to simply letting them drop in the 12man queue as any size group, keeping private matches as their esport aspiration (which this just isn't going to make as an esport, it's not mainstream enough), and letting solo players opt in.

then just keep the solo queue as is, if they want to allow 2-4mans there go for it, if not restrict all group sizes to the group queue. That's far less complicated than all of the things they're doing AND doesn't piss off everyone who plays in a group or just doesn't like a condescending attitude dictating what's "best" for them (IE solo players wouldn't want to play in a group queue and it would be bad for them~Paul)

[Craig Steele]

Can I play devils advocate for a moment on this allow solo in group concept?

Lets say a 7 man team loads up with 5 solo PUG's who are looking to be carried or just farming?

They are the same inept "drool" that some people have described them as, they're not going to improve the game experience for the "Team Player" or perhaps they will rambo off and die so they can reload another mech and churn those C-Bills.

Is this going to be satisfactory to the 5 - 11 calls?

Is this a cost we are happy to bear?