159 replies to this topic

[D0hle]

1) What is it that you like about the Launch Module? (Please enter as many items as you wish.)

Basically all the changes made: More balanced teams (in terms of weight classes), cancel button when searching, minor visual improvements to the UI. The private lobby was really nice as well and seemed to be working very well overall.

2) What do you like least about the Launch Module?

Longer queueing times, occasionally couldn't find a match even with three or four tries. Obviously this is partially due to the more limited amount of players on the test server but still this is something that should be monitored very closely during the actual launch of the Launch module.

3) What are your impressions of the Weight Class Restrictions?

Seemed to be working quite well.

4) Any other comments, concerns or suggestions?

Not sure if it was a bug or not but in the private lobby I wasn't able to see all my 'mechs for some reason. For example, I could see all my TDR variants but for many other chassis only one or two variants were selectable. Also, unless I somehow missed it, I was dissappointed to not be able to configure your 'mechs while in the private lobby.

[Redshift2k5]

1) What is it that you like about the Launch Module? (Please enter as many items as you wish.)
Private lobby is great. The UI elements for private lobby is great. The mech select menu, module menu, etc in private matches is great.
One premade per team is nice.


2) What do you like least about the Launch Module?
Longer queue times, no indicator of which mech classes are in demand/over saturation. A percentage of mechs in queue or an estimated wait time would be nice.


3) What are your impressions of the Weight Class Restrictions?
3/3/3/3 is interesting; changes the way you play, changes expectations. Seeing more lights than I'm used to and the lights are not being killed in a timely manner. It's nice knowing you won't be put against 6-12 Assault mechs!

I really feel, when I lose, that I have been out played and not simply losing because I was out-tonned.

4) Any other comments, concerns or suggestions?
Still seeing multiple premades per team (only seems to happen when groups of 3 are present?)
Wait time indicator or weight class balance in the queue (how many assaults are in the queue vs other classes?)
SSRM locks seem to have poor performance?
FPS seems degraded in this build.

Having to pay premium time for custom private matches and not receiving any CB/XP for the match feels like a waste; Having to pay premium time and paying to consume consumable while not gaining any CB/XP is a non-renewable model and I feel like it is a waste of money.

[Rashhaverak]

First match in group of four (all modes selected) (1H, 2M, 1L): 3 minute wait, dropped on Assault.
Second match solo (assault selected) (H); Gave up and hit cancel at 10 minutes. Thank god for the cancel button.
Third match solo (all modes selected) (A): 12 second wait. Dropped on Conquest.
Fourth match solo (all modes selected) (L): 1 minute, 15 second wait. Dropped on Skirmish. Two on my team with 0 ping.
Fifth match solo (All modes selected) (M); Gave up and hit cancel at 11 minutes. Good grief.
Sixth match solo (all modes selected) (A): 39 second wait. Dropped on Skirmish. I'm sensing a pattern developing.
Seventh match solo (all modes selected) (M): 5 minute, 21 second wait. Dropped on Skirmish.

That's it for tonight. Comments on the evening:

• I hate that I was the fifth man and had to drop as a solo. HATE! Re-establish the ability to play with friends, in a 2-12 group queue.
  
• Wait times were excessive at times. I waited as many minutes to drop into a match as the number of minutes I played. Not fun.
  
• The 3/3/3/3 did not make the matches feel any more balanced. If they were, I sure couldn't tell.
  
• My friends and I loved the private match ability.

Edited by Rashhaverak, 24 April 2014 - 04:11 PM.

[Bilbo]

Nikolai Lubkiewicz, on 23 April 2014 - 12:03 PM, said:

This thread is to cover any qualitative feedback regarding UI 2.0. If you would like to report specific bugs with the preview, please use the New Issues thread.

Please follow the questionnaire provided. This is to help us better organize and process your feedback after the test.

---

1) What is it that you like about the Launch Module? (Please enter as many items as you wish.)
3/3/3/3
2) What do you like least about the Launch Module?
Nothing as of yet
3) What are your impressions of the Weight Class Restrictions?
See 1
4) Any other comments, concerns or suggestions?
My issues with leaving a match early have completely disappeared on the PTS. Here's hoping it makes it way to production.

[scgt1]

You should give us all a free day of Premium time to have to suffer through these wait times.

[TheCaptainJZ]

1) What is it that you like about the Launch Module? (Please enter as many items as you wish.)

Cancel button

2) What do you like least about the Launch Module?

Wait times can be either a minute, or never. battles aren't any better or worse balanced, but I assume that's due to the population composition in test, and I wasn't really focused on gameplay.

3) What are your impressions of the Weight Class Restrictions?

I would honestly prefer not having it and having a total tonnage limit instead, it just seems more fitting to the battletech universe and weight restrictions clamp down on freedom of teams. But I guess that only makes sense if teams are formed before joining a match. Pugs are random and you had to cut back some of the variables.

4) Any other comments, concerns or suggestions?

I didn't have any major complaints against the existing system. I mean, there are clear stomps, but as others have pointed out, that may not be a result of the matchmaker at all. And it's not hard to get a stomp going after a couple opponents are dead.

[Aluminumfoiled]

2.5 hrs, 4 matches. Yeah that. I see you extended test time. These test server times are way too early and I guess you see that now.

1. 4 matches
2. 4 matches
3. Good. Very good. All 4 games were 8+ min and tooth and nail. Thank you.
4. I thought there was a lobby for public too. Mechlab funtioned fine. Key binding in options was strange. Four things bound to #4 and it let me save. No effect, no problem.

Increase 5 match test server reward to 3 days premium time to populate. 1 is not a sweet spot-Download test, x2 patch, reset bindings, weapon groups, look around and test functions... and wait. I watched a streamer play Quake while waiting for match, while waiting for match. Groundhog Day and Deja Vu all over again. _Or have no 5 match reward. don't do it for a free day_

List what class there is a shortage of. "Medium shortage %20" Or wait times, never liked that though and not accurate. I will change mechs to reduce queue, help game and help team. I started in mediums and selected any to get matches and no help. Tried med-assault.

Quad 3 looks very good.

Cancel button. A good added click. Stopping at 4 matches likely, I'd pay 500MC to not have to go back , and my time is all eaten up. Might slip in later with extended ending.

edit: about a 2 million cBill opportunity cost for these 4 games if you add up all the time and effort. I would have been playing. Looks good if those queue times are better live.

Edited by MicroVent, 24 April 2014 - 04:34 PM.

[Bilbo]

Bilbo, on 24 April 2014 - 04:14 PM, said:

Spoke too soon. Connecting forever happened at 8:40 EST.

Edited by Bilbo, 24 April 2014 - 04:47 PM.

[King Merrygold]

1) What is it that you like about the Launch Module? (Please enter as many items as you wish.)

I loved the fact that it wasn't 8+ assaults on each team, or worse, just one team. Wait times were a lot shorter for me than normal. Usually I max out the wait time, but for this test the average wait was about 20 seconds in an assault mech, both at the very start of the test and again later that night. Cancel button is a nice feature, but I didn't try it out.

2) What do you like least about the Launch Module?

The balancing of the end scores seemed the same. Did six matches, won five of them, two were close including the match I lost (12-9 and 7-12), and four of the wins were 12-1 or 12-2.

3) What are your impressions of the Weight Class Restrictions?

Love it. Thank you for this. Didn't seem to help the steamrolling, but the matches were more enjoyable.

4) Any other comments, concerns or suggestions?

Please show how many mechs of each weight class are in the queue, or at least a percentage breakdown.

Edited by King Merrygold, 24 April 2014 - 08:02 PM.

[tucsonspeed6]

Nikolai Lubkiewicz, on 23 April 2014 - 12:03 PM, said:

1) What is it that you like about the Launch Module? (Please enter as many items as you wish.)

Matches were much more balanced.
I saw a good mix of mechs as well.
I was afraid it would feel boring, but it didn't.
Most matches finished closer than without the module.

Nikolai Lubkiewicz, on 23 April 2014 - 12:03 PM, said:

2) What do you like least about the Launch Module?
​

It's hard to tell if this is part of the launch module or if it's an artifact of the test server's low population, but it seemed like I was getting matched with guys who were much higher Elo than me. Wait times were long for all Mech classes. Longest for Heavies though.

I was expecting the full implementation of launch module, complete with the post-match lobby. THis isn't a criticism of the module itself, but rather of the communication to the players. If the lobby is to be implemented later, it should have been better communicated to the players so we wouldn't expect it.

Nikolai Lubkiewicz, on 23 April 2014 - 12:03 PM, said:

3) What are your impressions of the Weight Class Restrictions?
​

Good. I didn't pay too close attention to make sure that the matches were perfectly split, but there was clearly never a class bias.

Nikolai Lubkiewicz, on 23 April 2014 - 12:03 PM, said:

4) Any other comments, concerns or suggestions?

My first match out was one of the more fun matches I've had in a while. Later matches weren't as close, but at no point did it feel worse than the current balance, the odd Elo matchups not withstanding.

My second match in, I dropped in the same lance as xImpalerx. I have never dropped in a match with any of the NGNG guys prior to today, so I can only assume that somebody was thrown into the wrong Elo bucket.

[GrizzlyViking]

Nikolai Lubkiewicz, on 23 April 2014 - 12:03 PM, said:

This thread is to cover any qualitative feedback regarding UI 2.0. If you would like to report specific bugs with the preview, please use the New Issues thread.

Please follow the questionnaire provided. This is to help us better organize and process your feedback after the test.

---

1) What is it that you like about the Launch Module? (Please enter as many items as you wish.)
2) What do you like least about the Launch Module?
3) What are your impressions of the Weight Class Restrictions?
4) Any other comments, concerns or suggestions?

1.The "Cancel" button.

2. Wait time avg of 4:10 for me. (waiting to see how it is when it goes live.)

3. Seems more balanced...I wonder if the same could be accomplished with weight matching instead of class restrictions.

4. Not at this time.

Edited by GrizzlyViking, 24 April 2014 - 04:59 PM.

[Wo0t]

Nikolai Lubkiewicz, on 23 April 2014 - 12:03 PM, said:

---

1) What is it that you like about the Launch Module? (Please enter as many items as you wish.)
2) What do you like least about the Launch Module?
3) What are your impressions of the Weight Class Restrictions?
4) Any other comments, concerns or suggestions?

1) - Private lobby
- Private matches are fun to work with, a little on the p2p side but meh.
- Cancel button ftw! I was actually thinking earlier today while waiting for a game (not pts) how nice it would be able to cancel should something come up... and well tada!
2) - I am hoping it was just because of the PTS environment/time and I am sure it was, but man were the wait times horrendous! If I have to wait over 15 minutes all the time to join as a heavy or assault you can guarantee I'll be looking for a new game.
3) - 3/3/3/3 is just awesome. It definitely felt battles were more even with the weight classes in game.
- The variety of mechs were easily noticed and I saw mech variants in game that I haven't seen in a while, perhaps people felt they were more viable?
4) - Didn't get a chance to really test SRM changes (if there were really any?) as any mech I tried to join games that had SRM's was waiting too long in queue to try.

Edited by Wo0t, 24 April 2014 - 05:00 PM.

[Jaawa]

1) What is it that you like about the Launch Module?
Private matches worked quick, easy and the UI for it looks great, felt like a completely finished feature! Public matches were found relatively quickly and felt balanced.

2) What do you like least about the Launch Module?
Sometimes the public match maker separated our group to different lances, even though we dropped as 1-1-1-1.

3) What are your impressions of the Weight Class Restrictions?
Worked marvelously well!

4) Any other comments, concerns or suggestions?
Great job PGI, can't wait for next tuesday!

[Klappspaten]

Nikolai Lubkiewicz, on 23 April 2014 - 12:03 PM, said:

1) What is it that you like about the Launch Module? (Please enter as many items as you wish.)

• ​3/3/3/3! The few matches I could make have been well balanced. Not every match was super close, but I haven´t sen a sngle stop (12 to 1 or 12 to 2)
  
• The private match lobby! Good looking and funktional.
  
• The changes to the social window. Especially that it now shows if a player is in a group or not.
  Although I would wish to organize my friends into groups. Since I organise a tournament and do most of the relations stuff with other units I have like 500 of them and its hard to remember ho is who with that.

Nikolai Lubkiewicz, on 23 April 2014 - 12:03 PM, said:

2) What do you like least about the Launch Module?

• I had a very bad time connecting to the mechlab. The game repeatetly threw me back into the login screen with some "unknown error". This happend at the very start of the game, where it took me two hours (!!!) to get into the client for the first time. And after every (!!!) match. I then needed to close the game, reopen it and log in, which took almost every time at least five tries.
  This is a problem that I know from the normal client and it probably has something to do with my bad internet connection. But on public test the issue was just ridiculous. And I don´t have that issue with other online games.
  
  
• The fact that you added another klick to the launch button. I now need three klicks just to quicklaunch. It would be easier and more intuitive if there was a private match button next to the launch button.

Nikolai Lubkiewicz, on 23 April 2014 - 12:03 PM, said:

3) What are your impressions of the Weight Class Restrictions?

• I ******* love it! The only problem I had was that I couldn´t find matches with my mediums. So I ended up doing almost all my matches in the Banshee and I really wanted to try how I could do in a medium.

Nikolai Lubkiewicz, on 23 April 2014 - 12:03 PM, said:

4) Any other comments, concerns or suggestions?

• I expierienced a slight increase in framerates and when I looked into the video settings I found out that they where actually on a higher setting than in the normal client. It would be very nice if that would stay like that in the final build. But, I have seen similar effects in almost all public tests I participated in so far and it never translated to the final release.

[The Yeti]

1, Private matches are cool.

2, Removal of odd man groups is terrible.

3, Eh, did not really notice.

4, suggestion, let us drop in odd number groups, i personally never play solo, always with a group, and having to leave out members of my corp due to group limits has really hampered gameplay.

Edited by The Yeti, 24 April 2014 - 05:03 PM.

[Jack Avery]

1. That Cancel button is a nice touch. Very handy with the rather, erm, longish wait times for this test. (But those were expected.)

While I didn't test any private matches, the fact that they are finally there is great. Better variety of mechs on the field with class restrictions.

SRMs felt like they were working better, but I only got a few matches, and too much long range play still to get a good feel. Live play will be the real test.

2. No indication of what weight class is in shortest supply.

3. I like it. It isn't much fun to launch in a medium and see that the enemy team is 80-90% heavies and assualts (and if on the lower end the rest are lights). It still feels like you might be hurting your team if you take a mech on the lighter end of each weight class, Victor being an exception. I'm not sure if any tighter weight matching is appropriate right now, wait times could get pretty bad on live.

I was surprised that the class I had the hardest time finding a match was mediums. Was everyone trying to run them today?

4. As has been noted, it would be nice to know what the current need for weight classes is. I'm pretty flexible in what I run, so I don't mind grabbing the needed class.

Cancel button might work better near the center of the screen in a box that also shows the Connecting message. I find important buttons don't work so well in the corners when they are all you can interact with. Don't make people search for it.

[Cimarb]

1) What is it that you like about the Launch Module? (Please enter as many items as you wish.
I love the cancel button, though it took me 20 minutes to notice it (may want to make that a little more obvious, like putting it in the middle of the screen like all the other launch-related buttons)
The queue time was far shorter than I had expected it to be. Granted, I normally drop in Skirmish only, but after waiting 23 minutes in that mode, I switched to "all" and had almost zero wait time (30 seconds to a minute). Considering this was in the Test Server, that is outstanding!

2) What do you like least about the Launch Module?
People already complain about the number of clicks to do anything, then you guys add another click to launch
No noticeable difference otherwise (see below)

3) What are your impressions of the Weight Class Restrictions?
No noticeable difference (see below)

4) Any other comments, concerns or suggestions?
I only dropped solo to see if anything had changed from my usual perspective. Here are the results:

Match - Weight Class - Game Mode - Wait Time - Outcome
1 - assault(DDC) - skirmish only - 6:11-6:34 - cancelled
2 - assault(DDC) - all/skirmish - 6:34-6:35 - (left before end of fight, doh)
3 - assault(5M) - all/skirmish - 6:42-6:45 - 12-4 victory
4 - assault(DDC) - all/conq - 6:52-6:53 - 12-10 victory
5 - assault(DDC) - all/skirmish - 7:02-7:03 - 12-6 victory
6 - assault(DDC) - all/conq - 7:12-7:13 - 12-5 victory
7 - assault(DDC) - all/skirmish - 7:22-7:23 - 12-2 defeat
8 - heavy(4x) - all/assault - 7:32-7:34 - 12-10 victory

I wanted to give a comparison, so I dropped on the live server a similar number of times. Granted, I was grouped with a couple others most of the time (marked as "g"), but see how similar the numbers are (I didn't keep track of time, but they are just slightly longer because of grouping):

Match - Weight Class - Game Mode - Outcome
1 - heavy(tdr9s) - skirmish - 12-5 victory
2 - heavy(ilya) - skirmish - 11-7 loss
3 (g3) - heavy(ilya) - assault - 12-6 victory
4 (g4) - assault(bnc3e) - ? - 12-3 loss
5 (g3) - assault(bnc3e) - ? - 12-4 victory
6 (g3) - assault(bnc3m)- conquest - 6-9 victory
7 (g4) - assault(bnc3s) - skirmish - 12-1 victory
8 (g3) - assault(DDC) - skirmish - 12-2 victory

Not all that much difference, if you ask me.

(boo for table formatting)

Edited by Cimarb, 24 April 2014 - 07:56 PM.

[Sirous]

1) What is it that you like about the Launch Module? (Please enter as many items as you wish.)
The Cancel but was a great addition. That is definitely a much needed addition.
Don't really have too much else to say on that matter

2) What do you like least about the Launch Module?
Cancel button is not prominent enough. This does add another layer of prompts when launching a game.

No counter to see how many of each type of mech is waiting for a match.

3) What are your impressions of the Weight Class Restrictions?
Mixed feelings on this one.
While I do appreciate the thought of going into it knowing what types will be on the other team, it does leave out that during non peak times it could take much longer to find a match. If the public test was any indication.

It will be nice to know that the majority of the time we will not be going up against a whole lance or two assaults or lights for that matter on conquest.


4) Any other comments, concerns or suggestions?[color=#00FFFF] [/color]
Overall I would say it was pretty good. There were more one sided matches than I would have thought. I never believed that this would fix the steam rolling of other teams. This proved that. You will still get grief for perceived balance issue, which you will have no control over. Mainly some teams just won't work well together. This will not fix that.

Hopefully the long wait times will not carry over once it goes live. The addition of the Cancel button was great.
One way to alleviate that could be to add a counter when launching so that people can see how many of each type are queuing for a match. This way they can adjust and help find a match quicker if they so choose.

[VoodooLou Kerensky]

1) What is it that you like about the Launch Module? (Please enter as many items as you wish.)
The ability to cancel the search as well as choosing public or private drop
2) What do you like least about the Launch Module?
Text size is still too small (but Ive been asking for adjustable font sizing from the start)
3) What are your impressions of the Weight Class Restrictions?
Its nice to finally have some MetaGame, now give us the Inner Sphere to conquer
4) Any other comments, concerns or suggestions?
More beer and maybe a few nudes (females and males depending on orrientation and gender)[I cant be serious ALL the time!!]

[ZosGrinder]

1) What is it that you like about the Launch Module? (Please enter as many items as you wish.)
[color=#959595]Canceling the search! [/color]
2) What do you like least about the Launch Module?
[color=#959595]The process of pulling people into the lobby is clunky. I would prefer not to have to go the social tab to do it. Just have the friend list permanently up in the lobby (or make it toggle on and off).[/color]
3) What are your impressions of the Weight Class Restrictions?
[color=#959595]Nice -- it felt like it helped keep the game balanced in pug drops. I wouldn't mind if it occasionally takes an extra mech of a class in order to help keep the queues short for matches. [/color]
4) Any other comments, concerns or suggestions?
[color="#959595"]Just keep the updates coming on a regular basis.[/color]