92 replies to this topic

[Estrous]

I am going to post some screenshots here that are disturbing me. This is a trend in my games that happens way more than it should. These are all public matches by the way, I forgot to note this before.

My average game ends up with my team losing all mechs and the enemy losing about 1-2 mechs. Why such devastating rolls? What's even worst is I've had about 9 matches where the enemy team lost no mechs at all, I started screen shoting them after a while.

Is this what I will have to expect? Read below for screenshots and more concerns in detail.





So as you can see, after about six times of this happening I started taking screenshots. How can this happen so much? If I took a screenshot of every time the enemy wins with only losing one mech I would have about 3 more of these. So of the 12 times I've lost 9 of those were perfect wins for the enemy team, and the other 3 were almost perfect.

I would also like to note I played these matches on and off with some other new friends who are just getting into the game, after playing solo and getting rolled so much I started playing with friends and it's happening just as goddamn much!

Just look at my stats page, .57 k/d ratio, 40% win ratio, what gives? I would also like to note I've seen a screen like this for my side once, it was nice to see but made me wonder how we won so amazingly. Is this game's match making really so awful?

I am trying my best to learn but this game is so amazingly difficult, and I am met with a much greater amount of pain than pleasure. Of my 10 friends who have tried this game, all but one has quit due to it being much too difficult and the extreme loss after loss was just too much for them to handle. The only time I live in my matches is when I hide, but by hiding I'm not helping but at this rate I don't think it matters. I die before I even get a chance to fire on an enemy mech.

It seems like the only people who play this game are vets and I never run into new players, from my perspective I've just stepped onto a playground as an 8 year old and all the other kids are like 17 with baseball bats. It's an old dog's show and I've not chance to compete, this is how I see a lot of indie online games die, a group of early beta testers get on the game, get really good, then stay there so it's just a buncha really strong people fighting really strong people and when a new person shows up it's a pub stomp till they leave.

Mech warrior online you're killing me baby! I wanna get real close and comfortable to a studly game like you with depth and interesting game play but the pub stomping, continuous either great or bad teams, mixed with the huge grind is just so much!

Edited by Estrous, 14 August 2014 - 04:43 AM.

[DrSlamastika]

It was PUG or private matches?

[Estrous]

DrSlamastika, on 14 August 2014 - 04:40 AM, said:

It was PUG or private matches?

I should have noted that, these are all public matches. I will add this. I also get like 3 more posts so I need to make them count.

[Wrathful-Khan]

Stay with it man. If it was easy it wouldn't be worth it.

Honestly took me 50-100 matches to find my feet, and then many hundreds more to really feel valuable. Just keep working at it and really try to learn your own strengths and weaknesses.

[Estrous]

Indiandream, on 14 August 2014 - 04:43 AM, said:

Stay with it man. If it was easy it wouldn't be worth it.

Honestly took me 50-100 matches to find my feet, and then many hundreds more to really feel valuable. Just keep working at it and really try to learn your own strengths and weaknesses.

That's cool and all, but isn't it asking a bit much of a player to play up to a 100 matches to just start to get decent? Another thread I posted in someone quoted me about 1000 matches to start getting good.

That is many, many complete months solid of game time, like over a year of daily play of many matches each day or about 3 matches everyday of an entire year. That is craaaazy!

Edited by Estrous, 14 August 2014 - 04:47 AM.

[Koniving]

Estrous, on 14 August 2014 - 04:34 AM, said:

Mech warrior online you're killing me baby! I wanna get real close and comfortable to a studly game like you with depth and interesting game play but the pub stomping, continuous either great or bad teams, mixed with the huge grind is just so much!

You're playing group games as a new player that still has yet to learn what you're doing.
Why wouldn't you expect rolls?
You need to learn what you're doing first. Play some solo queue games against other people that are still learning and after you get confident in all that you do and make it past "recruit" and have some funds behind you, THEN go on suicidal tirades against entire organized teams.

[Macksheen]

Looks like a mix of group and public matches.

My advice: Hang in there. My first ... many ... matches were harsh. At first, I just wanted to maybe get an assist - I was that bad. I started sporting SRMs and LBX exclusively. I'd tried LRMs, but I still died too fast, so went semi-brawlery. I can't tell you when my kills/death broke positive - but it wasn't a small number of matches in - I had a pretty deep hole to climb out of. You will get better, you will start to "feel" how the game moves.

Some mechs get MUCH better after you have your skills unlocked - and being a new player, you're just going to be bad at first anyway. Get your newbie matches in the trial mechs out of the way,then move on to good teaching mechs.

[Koniving]

There are two queues. Solo queue and group queue.
Every screenshot I'm seeing is in the group queue, against groups of 2 to 10 people PER GROUP all on voice comms, very organized, it's a comparison of fighting kids handed guns without any instructions (solo queue) to a fully fleshed out organized force with a command structure and the military hardware to kill you without even having to see you.

Play solo for a little while. Your luck will Drastically change.

In a group queue if you have fewer than 3 people, it's not worth trying. (Unfortunate but true). This was my luck with 4 people. Me and Lordred had a final stand 2 against 6. That was not easy, especially considering he had a single heatsink Awesome with 3 PPCs and less than 250 armor (as his full armor) with an XL 210 engine. Myself, I had a Warhawk with 2 ER LL (freaking worthless now), 2 ER ML, and 4 LRM-10s against enemies that were mostly ECM lights with sniper lasers of death.


Goddamn spiders man.. >.<

On the other hand, this was my most recent solo match.

I do well because I know what I'm doing, which is a skill I developed playing regular matches. Once you go into a group queue, only the meta prevails. The best, most overpowered, most ridiculous weapons in the worst sort of balancing will prevail. We call it "hell."

Avoid it. And maybe some day PGI will let us into the solo queue with 1 friend so that the game will still be kinda fun.

Edited by Koniving, 14 August 2014 - 04:56 AM.

[DLFReporter]

You were also running (at least it looks like it) trial mechs. Use your beginners bonus,get the mech class that suited you best and start to level it. Things will get rounder eventually. Don't always lead the charge and don't try to be a rambo. Group up, coordinate with the others and try to anticipate which enemy is the most dangerous in each situation.
It's a steep curve and quit a few of our "need-instant-gratification" gamer buddies don't like it, but it can be so worth your time.

[wanderer]

Estrous, on 14 August 2014 - 04:34 AM, said:

I am going to post some screenshots here that are disturbing me. This is a trend in my games that happens way more than it should. These are all public matches by the way, I forgot to note this before.

My average game ends up with my team losing all mechs and the enemy losing about 1-2 mechs. Why such devastating rolls? What's even worst is I've had about 9 matches where the enemy team lost no mechs at all, I started screen shoting them after a while.

It's not too hard to explain. You'll notice a trend on those stomps- a good number of (C) model chassis in the obliterated side.

This is a big neon pointer towards "The matchmaker has decided you will lose and filled your team with newbies, noobies, and C-bill kamikaze farmers." Even assuming good players, multiple Trials like that effectively put you down a 'Mech or more depending on how bad the Trial in question is.

Yes, the matchmaker tries to set things up for a winning team and a losing team, and it's ham-handed about it, resulting in a "balanced" matchup that is only a match in skills by accident vs. deliberate action.

[Macksheen]

I also wouldn't take the "best" mechs right out of the gate - take some classic but "teaching" mechs - you learn more, and it preps you to be better when you get into "better" mechs.

[Estrous]

Koniving, on 14 August 2014 - 04:48 AM, said:

There are two queues. Solo queue and group queue.
Every screenshot I'm seeing is in the group queue, against groups of 2 to 10 people PER GROUP all on voice comms, very organized, it's a comparison of fighting kids handed guns without any instructions (solo queue) to a fully fleshed out organized force with a command structure and the military hardware to kill you without even having to see you.

Play solo for a little while. Your luck will Drastically change.

Yup, you just killed the game in an instant for me. I kind of wish I didn't know this because ignorance is bliss in this situation.

I had no idea this existed. I thought small groups of 2 or 3 were placed in a random que (kind of like every single online multiplayer game I've ever played), so even if you were new you still fraught other new players and had some kind of chance and your on-voice communicating thing wasn't that big of a deal because you were still flying blind. This is like getting forced to play a ranked game as team of 2 against a pre-made 5 man team no matter what in league of legends.

I play multiplayer games to have fun with friends, if by playing with my friends I am getting set up to have an awful time I have no business here at all. If I want to play solo I will play a single player game tailored to perfection for a single person.

I would also like to note the few matches I played in solo I got pretty wrecked too (only did a bit better), but those que times are huge. I waited over 10 minutes each for them.

I am not sure anything more said could change my mind about the situation, you are welcomed to try but... Getting your decked stacked simply to have fun with friends? What the actual ****.

Edited by Estrous, 14 August 2014 - 05:00 AM.

[That Dawg]

Quote

How can this happen so much? I

Matchmaker is broken
the ELO method of determining who is what, is broken
the attempts to fix it have actually, stunningly made it worse.
there is no monetary advantage to fixing it

I've been bashed for suggesting this, but the matchmaker we have now, hands one side a win, or a loss.
Seemingly sorting one side of talent against one side of low, or lower average skill.
Sometimes one side can pull it off. But usually its a roll stomp and "gg"
Dont worry, tonight when you play, you'll roll stomp the otherside about the same amount.


If you think I'm full of it, note the weight on those roll stomps, and the amount of ELO
how could matchmaker NOT know?

and dear lord, you should optimize your mech, practice off line, you really need to lay out more damage than that.
spend time when you die in others mechs
learn to twist, not stand in the open, practice shooting in the offline maps.
dont give up, it will get fixed soon.
but to your point, yes- HALF of your enemy teams should have been on your side to even it up.
AND I have found dropping with a two man (you and only one other) are the WORSE battles I had.
run solo pugs, or find two more, all the difference in the world
matchmaker uses "pairs" as some twisted game of plug the hole with bigger drops.
it all started with 12 mans

[The Basilisk]

While you are right saying that beginners in this game have a very hard time getting anywhere, the effect you are experiencing isn't reserved for beginners.
There are sometimes two or three days in a row where I didn't win a single match and had to struggle to keep my D/K at least even.
And then there are days or even weeks where its vice versa.
Its just luck.
Since the guys at pgi seem to be completely resistent against any good counsel their matchmaker still uses primary ELO then weight class to even out the skill levels of ppl, its next to random what will happen in PUG games.
The ELO system was developed for Chess and Go turnaments to match players.
This means it does not take into account if a certain player is using a build suitable for a certain situation or the fact you don't have a duelling situation but a dynamic multi opponent setup.

What we need to get more intresting matches is the implementation of pre game config options ( would be simple if a player could preconfigure his mech to a variety of configs ( alpha: longrange; beta city; gamma: storm etc)) and just choose the config for the map then the matchmaker determins its battle value modified by the players skill level and there you go.

Edited by The Basilisk, 14 August 2014 - 05:00 AM.

[Koniving]

Since I noticed you're still mainly running spiders...
This video by Lordred should help you out. I know his first target isn't at the keyboard, but the ones after are.


That should help you quite a bit. It won't work in group queues unless everyone is distracted with your team, but in solo queues you'll rack up the kills in no time at all.

[Koniving]

Estrous, on 14 August 2014 - 04:59 AM, said:

I am not sure anything more said could change my mind about the situation, you are welcomed to try but... Getting your decked stacked simply to have fun with friends? What the actual ****.

Those solo players, unfortunately, felt the same way about having 1 to 3 groups of 2 to 4 players decked and stacked against them.

It wouldn't be so bad if ELO actually worked in group play but so far it does not.

The other issue I'm seeing is that you guys, despite Shader's rather start-worthy mechs, are doing very little damage.

What exactly are you doing? What is your strategy? How are you engaging a tactically minded and highly organized enemy?
Are you just running around having fun? Or are you fighting an enemy force that is intent on winning by slaughter?

Keep that in mind. Take a moment to think about what you have.

----

Tactics: If you're running in a 2 person group (Shaders is always with you from what I see), you should set yourselves up to compliment and support each other.

If your friend is in a Summoner, is he using LRMs or is he using energy and ballistics?

If LRMs, he needs a spotter who can find targets and press R, keep them in sight but stay out of sight and alive. A Spider, Locust, Jenner, etc can do this very well.

If energy and ballistics, he'll need an escort, someone who can watch his back. And a Spider...isnt' going to be able to do that. Not enough firepower. Lemme look at what trial mechs are available right now, one sec.
And back.

Okay, so supporting a direct fire Summoner or even an indirect fire one if protecting Shaders is typically more important than finding locks for him, you will want to use the Blackjack trial mech (The AC/20 save for close range; 3 hits in the same spot will completely screw over most Dire Wolves which are the most heavily armored of Clan mechs. Same is true against Atlases which is the IS version of the Dire Wolf in terms of armor) and the lasers will work good as well. Both weapons are best at 270 meters or less.

Also good is an Orion. The streaks are solid against light mechs. The AC/10 and large lasers are effective at longer ranges and the armor is pretty solid. In fact you'll have more armor than the Summoner and equal armor to the Timber Wolves.

If your friend Shaders can wait for you or go a bit slower, the Victor and Highlander trials are pretty solid as well. The Victor one hasn't got good defenses against light mechs, though.

Of these mechs, if you have armlock turned on go with the Victor or the Blackjack. If you have it turned off, use any of them.

Edited by Koniving, 14 August 2014 - 05:16 AM.

[Macksheen]

Well, if the matchmaker can't find a match quickly, it starts releasing the stops ... weight class, Elo, etc. Group queue is going to be even more brutal for a new player.

Drop in the solo queue more, for sure, or get with a very coordinated group.

[SethAbercromby]

Koniving, on 14 August 2014 - 04:48 AM, said:

There are two queues. Solo queue and group queue.
Every screenshot I'm seeing is in the group queue, against groups of 2 to 10 people PER GROUP all on voice comms, very organized, it's a comparison of fighting kids handed guns without any instructions (solo queue) to a fully fleshed out organized force with a command structure and the military hardware to kill you without even having to see you.

[...]
Avoid it. And maybe some day PGI will let us into the solo queue with 1 friend so that the game will still be kinda fun.

Oh Konivig, you are quite the drama llama sometimes. Yes, people know what they're doing in group queue, but it is much less horrible then being put together with the common PUG mouthbreather that keeps hugging his favorite rock.

I'm playing in the group queue for fun, while I consider solo PUGging a special hell made to make newcomers feel bad about themselves.

If you want really want a newcomer to learn the ropes, take him to the group queue. Players will be more coordinated on both sides so the player in question gets the chance to observe skillful play and take pointers for his own play, as well as live advice from his group parterners.

[Fire and Salt]

Everyone gets stomped on occasion, unless you have a full group of 12 players (or almost 12) you are going to run into people that are more organized than you.

Stop worrying about whether your team wins or loses, and worry about your personal performance.



Also - if you are playing with a group, you are going to get stomped more often than solo, unless your group is actually good. Most of the best players play in groups, and groups only play against other groups. If you play when there are not a lot of players on, you will get stuck playing against the really good groups.



IMO, there is not really a problem with the game, it is really more of a problem with our society, in that we feel entitled to win all the time. Realistically, you are a beginner so you should expect to lose most of the time. A.5 kill death ratio is actually pretty good for a beginner.
Most games are more beginner friendly because
A.) They are single player and are designed to make everyone feel like a winner. Fact: everyone thinks that they are 'good' at single player games.
B.) Lots of kids play them (ex Halo / COD) so it is easy to reach 1.0 kdr because your killing a lot of 5th graders.


Most mechwarrior players are between the ages of 20 and 40, and are long time fans of mechwarrior. Obviously they are going to be harder to kill than a 5th grader. If you need any confirmation of the maturity gap, go play GTA V online and listen to all the dbasses in chat. MWO seems like a bunch of PhD holders by comparison.

I looked at the screenshots, and there are some very good players on the other team, including tournament winners, etc.




TL DR:
You are doing fine for a beginner. Stop worrying.

Alternatively, go play an easy mode ego inflating game against bots or children. That would be a waste, IMO because it seems like you have potential. But our society is built on instant gratification, and everyone's a winner mindsets.

Edited by Fire and Salt, 14 August 2014 - 05:20 AM.

[Koniving]

SethAbercromby, on 14 August 2014 - 05:10 AM, said:

If you want really want a newcomer to learn the ropes, take him to the group queue. Players will be more coordinated on both sides so the player in question gets the chance to observe skillful play and take pointers for his own play, as well as live advice from his group parterners.

You can do that, but the groups I face... Yeah...

Turn a corner. HEADSHOT!
Crest a hill. HEADSHOT!
Look away for a second. HEADSHOT!

Needless to say I'm iffy about bringing a new player into a group match with me anymore, it just isn't the same. The headshots went down with slower PPCs, it's still pretty nasty, as now it's two-shot headshots.

Now.. Back in the day...

Take two new players, and bam. (Can learn quite a bit just watching this).

If you want to train new players, bringing them (with a friend) into a private match is the way to go right now.

Edited by Koniving, 14 August 2014 - 05:21 AM.