155 replies to this topic

[Poptimus Rhyme Wallace]

Here is an idea, make a tryhard que for people who can not build a mech that can handle multiple scenarios and only knows how to use two triggers.
Let the rest of us have balanced matches with balanced mechs.
Splitting the que causing high wait times will not be a problem since the tryhards are on constantly anyway, And the rest of us, will get quicker ques with the voting MM system.
The playerbase excuse is invalid because less would leave due to griefers and rolfstomps, so customer retention should increase.

[Kjudoon]

Quote

I have seen several people say "solo and group" queue... I was not aware that we had any control over it, but that it was all dealt with in the back...

Yep. If you have friends, and group up with them, you're in the group queue. If you don't, you're in the solo queue. It's a hard lock on two communities. Groups can't be broken up to fit the needs of the solo queue, and solo players can't be pushed into the group queue to fill holes in the groups that fall short of 12man there.

Now imagine if they could be forced? You solo players remember how much fun you had trying to find people to play with in the lance challenges and how crazed some of those were in comparison where you were effectively a group, but with none of the advantages? Uh huh. And that was the Group Queue on some of it's BEST behavior. I know, some of you had no problem in doing it, but many did not/could not or suffered even worse than when you had to deal with 4man premades all day long.

Puts a whole new spin on things, doesn't it?

[Kjudoon]

Poptimus Rhyme, on 09 October 2014 - 06:57 AM, said:

Here is an idea, make a tryhard que for people who can not build a mech that can handle multiple scenarios and only knows how to use two triggers.
Let the rest of us have balanced matches with balanced mechs.
Splitting the que causing high wait times will not be a problem since the tryhards are on constantly anyway, And the rest of us, will get quicker ques with the voting MM system.
The playerbase excuse is invalid because less would leave due to griefers and rolfstomps, so customer retention should increase.

As much as I like the moxie of this, that is an even more convoluted process than what we have now.
You seem to be advocating a 'specialized vs generalized' mech queues... and to be honest, I can't see how you can determine what specialized versus general purpose mech would be, let alone who is a 'tryhard' and who isn't. Maybe you do and I just don't get it. I am slow that way.

Now if there was an option to 'opt in' to any mode... but honestly that already exists... you just leave all three modes checked. Most people I know have only 2 modes checked because they hate either conquest or skirmish. Some have only one mode checked (assault is probably the most common for that because they don't like the attitude or rewards in the other two)

So I dunno.

[Karpi]

Pug matches were getting good and close, I feel it was a real improvement! damn, it should have been around at least for a week. People are always gonna complain about new things

[Bilbo]

Tiggo Bitties, on 09 October 2014 - 06:04 AM, said:

I was hoping the threat of conquest would actually lower the overall tonnage of each side for a change. Lights have been in the single digit % for weeks.

There was no threat of conquest in the solo queue last night. I had it as my only selected mode. I'd be surprised if I got it even a quarter of the time. Much skirmish with a little assault and conquest on the side.

[ExoForce]

I picked Assault. 20 matches - 16 Skirmish (dont want to play in solo) , 2 Conquest (dont want to play solo), 2 Assault.

I picked Assault as preffered in the beginning.

[ExoForce]

Edit: seen post from Niko, they will revert mode pick. Thank You !!!

[Mawai]

themrty, on 09 October 2014 - 06:54 AM, said:

" you then have exactly the same functionality as the voting system."
NO ! Cause if you are solo gamer and you play versus a pro team (entrained for game mode assault in game mode assault for example) you have no chance (or VERY little chance) of winning. The pro teams entrained will dominate the game now. Well, ELO was a good balancing solution. PGI thank you ....

I'm confused.

"Cause if you are solo gamer and you play versus a pro tea"

Unless I am misunderstanding you which is quite possible ... you DO know that there are now separate SOLO and GROUP queues. If you drop solo then everyone else in the entire match is also solo (except the possibility of sync drops). If you drop in the group queue then both teams are fully composed of groups ... there are no solo players ... which is why you are not allowed to enter 11 man teams into the group queue.

Elo is used to balance matches in both queues.

The game mode voting improved Elo and team balance in the group queue.

Game mode voting had no significant impact on the Elo balance of matches in the solo queue. If there is any one reason why they took it out ... it would be because it was not doing what it was supposed to while at the same time was irritating a lot of customers.

Even if the poll had run a week and 80,000 people voted in favour retaining mode voting in the solo queue and 20,000 voted against ... is it worth losing so many customers when the change to matchmaking did NOT affect match balance in the solo queue and simply forced players to play game modes they don't like?

Bottom line ... no matter how people vote ... the feature may have improved group matches ... it did not improve solo matches so retaining it in the solo queue makes no sense.

Poptimus Rhyme, on 09 October 2014 - 06:57 AM, said:

Here is an idea, make a tryhard que for people who can not build a mech that can handle multiple scenarios and only knows how to use two triggers.
Let the rest of us have balanced matches with balanced mechs.
Splitting the que causing high wait times will not be a problem since the tryhards are on constantly anyway, And the rest of us, will get quicker ques with the voting MM system.
The playerbase excuse is invalid because less would leave due to griefers and rolfstomps, so customer retention should increase.

You get more balanced matches in the group queue. According to Russ, based on a small data set, the change was having NO effect on matchmaking in the solo queue ... so WHY would they keep it?

[speedy mechanic]

ExoForce, on 09 October 2014 - 07:39 AM, said:

I picked Assault. 20 matches - 16 Skirmish (dont want to play in solo) , 2 Conquest (dont want to play solo), 2 Assault.

I picked Assault as preffered in the beginning.

I had a similar observation I went in skirmish only selected and took about 10 matches before I got one. Felt like I was selecting my lest preferred mode to avoid vs selecting what I did prefer. Sure wish this would of stayed in through the weekend so I could test some more.

[Kjudoon]

ExoForce, on 09 October 2014 - 07:39 AM, said:

I picked Assault. 20 matches - 16 Skirmish (dont want to play in solo) , 2 Conquest (dont want to play solo), 2 Assault.

I picked Assault as preffered in the beginning.

As I saw it would be. Your preference is like asking for a non-smoking room in a hotel. It is not a guarantee, and if you get a smoking one, sucks to be you even if you are allergic (Which you probably are not anyway, but psychosomatically irritated and offended). not you personally, just past experience creeping into the analogy.

speedy mechanic, on 09 October 2014 - 07:55 AM, said:

I had a similar observation I went in skirmish only selected and took about 10 matches before I got one. Felt like I was selecting my lest preferred mode to avoid vs selecting what I did prefer. Sure wish this would of stayed in through the weekend so I could test some more.

One thought just came to mind... maybe they DID see a sudden shift to the vast majority of matches being skirmish mode and realized it wasn't 'working as intended' and are going back to the drawing board.

[Mawai]

Uminix, on 09 October 2014 - 06:37 AM, said:

I have seen several people say "solo and group" queue... I was not aware that we had any control over it, but that it was all dealt with in the back...

Again, to state things clearly for all... they should have held to their word (Like they had been doing since they left IGP) but instead they go off and do what they want to do. Why have a vote if you arent even going to give everyone a chance to wake up to it, that poll was not up for 24 hours (9PM till noon the next day is only 15 hours)

This is in no way a fair poll since the least time guaranteed was not kept to, and because they are going with the votes that were LOSING the vote... are you sure you and IGP split... oh and starting a ticket to get my W2 monies refunded

I don't care which mode I play in, I prefer objectives and the worst match style in this game doesn't have an objective, if I wanted death matches exclusively like some of the players here do, I would do what I suggest to them (GO BACK TO HALO)

You make a strong case for the NO vote since you do not like Skirmish and do not want to play it.

They did not keep the poll up for a week because they did not need to in order to get the information they were looking for ... if they had all they needed to know to make a decision (in this case roll back the voting system) then why should they continue with the poll?

The poll was NEVER about "50.1% YES and we keep it" ... PGI wanted to get at least some idea of how wide spread opposition to this feature was ... there was a lot of forum QQ but only a small fraction of players are vocal on the forums.

What they found was that in less than a day more than 1000 players said they don't like this feature. Not only that but the Yes and No votes weren't hugely different. There are a lot of players from around the world but the bulk of players may be from North America. PGI knows when their customers play, they know how many of them there are ... and they are in the best position to decide when they have collected sufficient data from a poll to make a decision on an issue.

They have the data. I would really like to see a post from PGI giving the following ... then everyone could stop arguing and look at the facts.

1) Statistics on game mode preference before the change was patched in - based on the past month of player data - this would give a far better view of whether players want to play all game modes or not. It is far more valuable data in making this decision than a poll on the forums that reaches only a fraction of the player base - it is data based on the active, current preferences of players in real games ... and everyone's "voice" is heard if they have been playing at all.

2) More detailed statistics on match quality from the 48 hours the feature was active.
- was there any significant effect on matchmaking on the solo queue (initial data indicated no but it would be nice to see a followup)
- initial data showed a positive effect on group matchmaking Elo ... however one aspect that was not addressed was how much easier the change made it to match large groups against other large groups. One of the group queue issues is matching 12 mans vs 3 4 mans due to large group game mode selection limits ... this may be the biggest single change that would affect group queue balance ... more than Elo ... but statistics on this weren't included (for example a 12 man in the skirmish queue and a 12 man in the conquest queue might be the best match up ... hard game mode choice prevents that ... the voting system addresses it at the expense of losing the selected game mode.

3) I would also like to see if there is any significant correlation between match outcome represented by number of mechs lost on the losing side (In matches decided by mech loss) to the Elo difference between the two teams (both for all game modes together and for each game mode separately). This information would at least give them an idea of how close Elo should be and whether they need to put any effort at all into improving the Elo matching or if they should be looking elsewhere for improvements. (For example, is there a correlation between the number of ECM units on each team to game outcomes in terms of mechs lost ... and W/L overall). There are tons of useful statistics that would give them some insight into what they should be working on to make the game better matched ... rather than speculating, using resources, changing something and then having to reverse the decision when it doesn't work as expected.


Anyway ... bottom line for me is the following ...

In my opinion, PGI did not reverse this decision due to whining, complaining, wailing, gnashing of teeth, yelling and other behaviours in the community ... they looked at the numbers that we don't have, found the feature was not doing what it was hoped it would do in terms of matchmaking and was instead making quite a large number of players unhappy ... so they backed out the change for now to re-evaluate the impact and decide how to proceed. Makes total, logical sense to me. They have the numbers on the matchmaking impact of the change ... and the poll showed that there were more than a hand full of people that were negatively impacted ... so they didn't need to wait a week since they already had the data required to make their decision.


P.S. Another poster pointed out another possibility ... if more players started to check only the one option they wanted to play ... AND there is a strong bias in the player base toward a particular game mode ... then folks who like the other modes are NOT going to see them very often. Voting could work for a more or less even distribution of game mode preference ... but if that distribution is not even then the folks who only like specific modes ... like conquest or conquest+assault or skirmish will not see their preferred game modes very often if they don't align with the majority of players.

Edited by Mawai, 09 October 2014 - 08:22 AM.

[AntleredCormorant]

IMHO the problem with the assault/conquest modes comes down to the lack of in-game communication and the relatively poor point/XP awards for completing objectives as compared to kills/assists. Make playing the game modes as intended more lucrative, make the Company/Lance command system rewarding for both commanders and the rest of their team, and they may be more than skirmish maps with some turrets to kill or waypoints to capture.

I think once the CW mode opens up, though, all the players who are interested in something more strategic than team deathmatch will be playing that instead.

Edited by AntleredCormorant, 09 October 2014 - 08:32 AM.

[Inflatable Fish]

is there any reason that the last two "hotfixes" made my patcher download the whole game every time? I'm talking 5,5 gb of data here.

[Magos Titanicus]

InnerSphereNews, on 08 October 2014 - 02:05 PM, said:

• Fixed a bug which confuses friend and foe indicators on the HUD.

is this the hud bug leads to teamkill issue, where no triangle appears?

[Kjudoon]

Magos Titanicus, on 09 October 2014 - 08:36 AM, said:

is this the hud bug leads to teamkill issue, where no triangle appears?

Fixing the Nacho/Cool Ranch Doritos of combat is a big deal.

[xeromynd]

So, I'm not usually one to get angered by things, but why the hell was the poll closed a day and a half after it was put up? Especially when it was stated that the poll would be up for a week.

[WonderSparks]

As much as I am glad I no longer have to play Conquest or Skirmish if I do not want to, I still think the idea was sound for the voting instead of selecting.
Personally I just think it should be an option, but I suppose that is too unnecessarily complicated to implement.

Either way, I am happier now. For whatever reason, Conquest and Skirmish are just not my thing, so I will stay with Assault.

[Kjudoon]

WonderSparks, on 09 October 2014 - 08:51 AM, said:

Either way, I am happier now. For whatever reason, Conquest and Skirmish are just not my thing, so I will stay with Assault.

.... as it should be.

Edited by Kjudoon, 09 October 2014 - 08:59 AM.

[bane]

As has been stated, they did not need to keep the poll going because they had already seen that a not insignificant number of players stated they did not like it. And in a game aimed at keeping paying customers, making a change that a significant number dislike is not good business sense.

While I applaud them for continuing to look at issues and trying to make what they think are positive changes, it drives me nuts when it seems they look in the wrong places.

The change they wanted here is really something I am fine with having in CW. Don't allow people to choose where\how they are fighting in that scenario, and they will either build more balanced mechs or die alot. I'm fine with that and it makes perfect sense. But when you're tossing people into what amounts to nothing more then a deathmatch, forcing them to play modes they don't want is not a good idea. I would much rather they put forth the time and effort into making more varied maps. They already have a collection of "assets" from the current maps, they only really need to shift things around and they can offer a larger number to be dumped into. Having it where you are not dropped into Terra Therma and Caustic 6 drops in a row would help alleviate alot of the complaints and would also give people less reason to not want to play specific game modes at the same time. Conquest on Alpine Peaks when you're running a whale means you're going to just want to goto the center and duke it out.

[battlescorps]

glad they restored the choice back into the drops! Freedom to choose now and forever!