17 replies to this topic

[Salvag3]

So I touched on this topic in another thread. But I wanted to give it a closer look and see what other thought.

For a long time now I have been unhappy with the match maker, I haven't enjoyed the group Q very much since getting back into the game. I have felt the pain of some other people that posted here feeling that small groups are getting the short end of the stick because often they end up filling 2-3 slots for a larger force or have a company made up up several smaller parties fighting a 12 man premade or close to it.

People keep expressing how they are trying to get people to get into the game but find it very daunting because of how steep the learning curve is in these matchs because you tend to face off against higher skill opponents with better mechs in the group Q.

I also see the comments like " join a unit " or " play solo " but my own feelings are this is counter productive to getting new players. A new player should not have to feel like they need to be a part of a large unit to have fun, they should be able to start the game run some trial mechs get a random lance mate that they click with and make a friend and drop with them. And the. That happens they should not have to buy them self a ticket to hard mode by default unless they quickly make at least 10 other friends. That notion is absurd, but like I said it's not the Match makers fault or I should say it's not all the match makers fault cause we all know it's not perfect by anymeans.

What I really think the problem is, teamwork, that's the problem, it's hard to have a bunch of random people or be the random people with a group of friends and work well together when your hands are tied by a lack of ability to talk to each other.

The solution seems very easy, and it's two things.

1) A in game VoIP system, it could be molded off the system used in BF2. Company commander can talk to the lance commanders and his own lance ( with two different channels ), lance commanders can talk to the company commander as well as their lance ( with two different channels) and lance mates can talk to each other ( via one channel ) sure a few trolls are going to flood the coms with BS from time to time, but a simple mute button can handle that.

2) a Com Rose, filled with useful commands that you can say quickly to get info out to your team with out the need for a mic, because not all the players have a mic. And we don't always speak the same language. It could be filled with a lot of simple commands like, move to here, I have spotted a lance, target this mech with missles, shoot for his legs, hold this position, ect ect ect.

I'm not a programmer I don't know how hard it would be to add them, my gut tells me it can't be to hard because so many games have communication systems like theses. I do know though that it would make giving advice to new players in battle so much quicker and do able in the middle of a fire fight. I find it silly to try to be a commander and either stop to type or open my over view map to give orders, both things end up getting you cored out. I feel like these addictions would drastically cut down on the learning curve for new players and greatly improve team work inside the game.

I know that a lot of peoe use 3rd party VoIP, but that's not going to help anyone in the solo Q I mean really how many people join your TS server when you throw out a IP at the start of a match. And they same for Group Q now that company of 4 small groups can talk to each other just like the 12 man premade.

I really feel like adding these two things would be a win for everyone, better battles, more tactics other than balling up and rolling one direction. More fun, more friendships made in game, more players learning how to play and sticking around. And we all know that more players having fun means more money for PGI and that means better improvements for the game and also means the game stays around for a good long time.

what do you guys think ?

[Koniving]

A com rose and a VoiP have both appeared within and disappeared from The Plan.

But I fully agree.

Oh, I see it's reappeared. Now found in the Backlog.

[Xetelian]

Sorry I disagree because almost all my matches are stomps and rolls I have 12 screenshots from the day before where each game was a 12 kills vs less than 4 kills on the other team.


Rarely do I get a game that is like 8-12 or 6 - 12 games that are close


This MM is supposed to be 50-50 but it feels way out of control

[Davers]

12-4 doesn't necessarily mean a stomp. The winning team could have had several mechs that were close to dying. What is your W/L? With about 1400 games played, I am almost exactly at 50/50. Considering all the variables I think the MM does a pretty good job.

Xetelian, on 23 October 2014 - 12:32 PM, said:

Sorry I disagree because almost all my matches are stomps and rolls I have 12 screenshots from the day before where each game was a 12 kills vs less than 4 kills on the other team.


Rarely do I get a game that is like 8-12 or 6 - 12 games that are close


This MM is supposed to be 50-50 but it feels way out of control

[AlphaToaster]

MWO is turning out similar to professional pool. I'm thinking a game like 9 ball is a good example. You can have 2 professional players both at the top of their game. Whoever breaks effectively wins by stomp. They run the table. The other player never has a chance to even shoot. GG. If it was the other players turn to break first, they win.

There are fast mechs and slow mechs but overall the gameplay is deceptive because you would think that a game with giant stompy robots would be slower paced. After all we stomp around at avg 60-80kph which isn't that fast in terms of MPH, so there's a sense of slowness, but it's quite the opposite in terms of window of opportunity.

Meaning when you're team is down by 2 early game you have a minute or two at the most to determine if you're going to roll over and die, or fight. Most get the mind set that it's already over, and they get defensive, they don't try to push, they try to stay alive. Then their behavior becomes infectious and now the whole team is herded like scared live stock and slaughtered.

If playing defensive isn't working, try being aggressive. If MM is going for 50/50 win, that means in theory that you will win or lose regardless of what you do. So with that mindset, why not take the bigger risks and push more? What will happen is after a while of being zerg aggressive you will learn your threshold of when too much is too much and you can adjust your playstyle and back down off that edge. If you don't push yourself to find out what you can get away with and when you can get away with it, you'll never know what you and your mechs can really do.

Example -

River city (day time), skirmish. I spawned in the center lance in a solo pug. Did you know if right at the beginning of the match, if you're on the opposite side of the citadel, you can actually reach the citadel using the river at the same time the team spawning on the other side does? Stuff like that. I managed to do this push several times and every time it causes this clog of enemy mechs at the citadel, rather than starting to circle around it makes people bunch up and focus on this target right in front of them. While this was happening I tossed up a UAV so my whole team saw I had the whole enemy team right on the other side of the building. All of a sudden when they knew where the whole enemy team was they pushed around and into them.

Seems that people on the other team didn't want to risk themselves to rush me, knowing I'd take one of them out. Because they didn't risk themselves, their team stood around and got stomped. I ended up dying shortly after the brawl started when I got focused but by then the enemy team was all out of position, and my team had momentum and crashed into them for the win.

One mech can make a difference, think of all the games a single squirrel gets several mechs to chase him and break up the other teams murder ball.

Stop playing the game like a victim and go get some.

[Salvag3]

I think both the points noted above only support the idea for the need for these to new features to make it into the game.
Getting stomped seems to happen more ( at least from what I can tell ) from one team communicating well and doing some thing that quickly turns to battle greatly in their favor, be it catching the unsupported assault lance out in the open at spawn, quickly taking a key point in the map, effective use of different types of equipment ( Bap + tag + Narc + ECM + Uav + Arty strikes ) because we see it all the time not just in this game, not just in video games but in everything all over the world, team work and group effort are a greater force than raw skill. The sum of the parts are always greater than the individual when they are working well. In fact I would go as far to say the only hope a team of avg players with non mid maxed mechs and not a full mod load out has is team work that's what's going to get them the win and prevent the " GG close " that we are all tired of seeing.

On the comment about this being like pro Pool, yes it can be a huge blow to the team to have two of your whales caught out in the opening 45 secs of a match and either killed or crippled due to their slow speed or bad piloting. But here is a few ways this could help.

1) alpha lance leader " commander my assault lance is spawned out on the flank I don't think we can regroup with the company before we are over run by their fast movers"

Company commander " Roger that, bravo lance, Charlie lance, move directly to firing positions to cover alpha lance so they can link up
( this happens before they even leave spawns while mechs are powering up )

This one would be after things have started to go side ways and one company is down 4 mechs and the other team has not lost any

1) Company Commander " We are losing this fight people, lance commanders I need a count of all consumables, and I need you all to recoup in grid c4

Lance commanders " understood we are otm stand by for count. We have 3 arty strikes and 1 Uav left "

CC " roger Deploy UAV in grid B4 , and get your Guass rifles up the hill in cover in grid c3, I want you to stand by for arty strike instructions as they move in on us, we are going to break up their advance with them.

Commander gets a idea of where they are advancing from the UAV and let's 5 mechs from the other team though the choke point his team feel back though, the. Uses his com rose to call for a arty strike blocking he other half of the team, and orders his men on the hill to power up, they open fire with 2 Guass rifles and they turn to see what's shooting at them. Company advances while they have they are facing away. He calls for focused fire on the biggest mechs first and they go down, the. He call for another arty strike on their now exposed left flank as they wipe out the split up star he calls for another arty strike as other team presses forward and the damage from it allows them to take the win.

Now I know this is a story book example of how it could help and I know it's not going to fix all the stomps they will still happen from time to time it's just how games are. Some times when you lose you just lose badly, but the point of the examples are you can do them by typing, it would take a clever commander to pull that rabbit out of his hat, but it could be done in the small window of time a team has to do something when he battle is going really bad.

[Salvag3]

And I guess it's also worth asking the people who don't think it will have much / if any positive effect of game play. What do you feel like it would take away from the game if it was added, do you think that it would some how make things worse and if so then why ? ( I'm honestly not trying to poke fun I would really like to know what you think and why )

[1453 R]

I can't tell you how much I despise the notion of being forced onto in-game VoIP in this game.

Because four hundred and ninety-seven out of five hundred of you, I'd rather stab myself in the ears than listen to. You have nothing worth saying, and I'm totally fine with not listening to you screech your curse-laden invective, needlessly ponderous and over-complex battle plans, and sundry details of your IRL relationships into my ears.

You are not the Angry Video Game Nerd. You are not Napoelon. And I really, truly, from the bottom of my heart do not care how hawt your gee-eff is.

Keep it to yourself. By all means, implement a commo rose or other shortform commands that have no choice but to be concise, on-point, and at least halfway relevant (up until someone starts spamming "Enemy found!" nine hundred times the instant they load into a match), but if you put an in-game VoIP system in the game, the very first thing I'll do is global-mute it. if I can't do that, I'll find a way to do it anyways, and if there is just no way whatsoever to avoid it, I will mute the entire game and then complain, loudly and obnoxiously, to Piranha until there is an option in the game to disable the voice system.

Edited by 1453 R, 23 October 2014 - 01:38 PM.

[AlphaToaster]

Direwhale pilot awareness is a whole topic on it's own. If the mech is that slow they need to really be moving toward the fight on the fastest vector, and the friendly players need to move toward them so they meet up in a good forward position to keep the push going. When a Direwhale starts the match moving left or right relative to the enemy and not at the enemy, then GG.

I'm a strong supporter for a Com Rose and VoIP. I do not think it is effective for PGI to put resources into the VoIP when there is already strong community resources for this, but aside from reinventing the wheel, it would be a good addition to the game.

Rushers are gonna rush, campers are gonna camp. Story of FPS games since forever. In-game comms won't change that underlying part of online gaming behavior but it will help players win more.

Edited by AlphaToaster, 23 October 2014 - 01:42 PM.

[Salvag3]

@ 1453r my post did include the suggestion that it have a mute option, almost every game with built in VoIP has one. So I'm not really sure why you made such a anger filled point about it. You seem really angry at life in gen bro to think 93% of people are not even worth talking to seems a bit harse.

[Xetelian]

Davers, on 23 October 2014 - 12:38 PM, said:

12-4 doesn't necessarily mean a stomp. The winning team could have had several mechs that were close to dying. What is your W/L? With about 1400 games played, I am almost exactly at 50/50. Considering all the variables I think the MM does a pretty good job.

Wins / Losses 344 / 356

No one likes to get stomped and I find stomps boring

Its not about my wins and losses its about how matches turn out and the majority are sweeps.

[1453 R]

Salvag3, on 23 October 2014 - 01:47 PM, said:

@ 1453r my post did include the suggestion that it have a mute option, almost every game with built in VoIP has one. So I'm not really sure why you made such a anger filled point about it. You seem really angry at life in gen bro to think 93% of people are not even worth talking to seems a bit harse.

Here's the thing.

If the dev team spends a big fat pile of time, money, and effort on a system that half the players in the game immediately disable, that strikes me as being a big stonkin' waste of time. A commo rose would be easier to implement and also more universally useful, as far fewer players would go out of their way to actively expunge a commo rose from their game. It's not as versatile as voice comms, but that's a good thing in my book.

Because no, ninety-three percent of you guys aren't worth listening to. Just like I'm entirely, 100% certain you don't figure I'm worth listening to in a MWO match, hm?

[Reitrix]

I'd much prefer that the MM stopped trying to force a 50/50 W/L/R.

It should only put together teams of roughly equal skill.

Nothing is more frustrating that playing several really close, fun games with people who appear to be of like skill to myself, only to go into the next match and be obliterated in seconds flat because the enemy team was clearly several notches higher on the skill bar. And the MM will force those skewed matchups to punish you for having a couple of good games.

If all our matches were only ever against similarly skilled teams, the law of averages would keep our W/L rates fairly close to 50/50 anyways.

[1453 R]

Reitrix, on 23 October 2014 - 04:12 PM, said:

I'd much prefer that the MM stopped trying to force a 50/50 W/L/R.

It should only put together teams of roughly equal skill.

Nothing is more frustrating that playing several really close, fun games with people who appear to be of like skill to myself, only to go into the next match and be obliterated in seconds flat because the enemy team was clearly several notches higher on the skill bar. And the MM will force those skewed matchups to punish you for having a couple of good games.

If all our matches were only ever against similarly skilled teams, the law of averages would keep our W/L rates fairly close to 50/50 anyways.

How do you measure 'skill'?

That's the question you have to ask yourself. The game has to, somehow, track how skilled you are, and in a game like this 'skill' has so many components to it, so many niggling little details, that it would be impossible to track how skilled you are.

Unless it used a fairly broad-based barometer state to track in a rough sense how you stack up against other opponents, like, say...your win/loss rate.

The game has no idea how skilled you are, or what skill even is/means. All it knows is that players with an abnormally high win rate or loss rate should be adjusted up or down the Elo curve as necessary until their W/L normalizes again, indicating that they're fighting opponents of the same general caliber as themselves. If you get several good games in a row, the matchmaker system assumes you've Gotten Gud™ and starts matching you against better teams. If you get flattened, it revises its estimate and kicks you back down a notch or two. If you consistently hold your own, it tends to normalize you around your new Elo tier because you have, in fact, Gotten Gud™.

If someone had a matchmaking system which could accurately track and evaluate a player's actual skill according to parameters set by the game's developers, they could print money by the truckful. The video game industry would go utterly apeshit for it...since it's such a head-in-the-clouds fantasy for people who know anything about coding.

Edited by 1453 R, 23 October 2014 - 04:28 PM.

[Salvag3]

@ 1453 R
Well, I can't say if I would want to listen to you or not. What I can say is that I want to listen to people with questions, and people that want to work as a team. No I do not want to listen to a seven year old whine about how op Guass are when he takes a salvo to the face. But that problem is pretty much solved in two ways one you have a mute button so you can just no listen to the people you don't to. And two with a 2 channel system you are only exposed at most ( unless your the commander ) 4 other people on the team. Theses two things drastically cut down on the mic spam. It was never really a problem in Bf2 or 2142 it just helped with the role warfare and chain of command.

[Krivvan]

AlphaToaster, on 23 October 2014 - 12:48 PM, said:

MWO is turning out similar to professional pool. I'm thinking a game like 9 ball is a good example. You can have 2 professional players both at the top of their game. Whoever breaks effectively wins by stomp. They run the table. The other player never has a chance to even shoot. GG. If it was the other players turn to break first, they win.

There are fast mechs and slow mechs but overall the gameplay is deceptive because you would think that a game with giant stompy robots would be slower paced. After all we stomp around at avg 60-80kph which isn't that fast in terms of MPH, so there's a sense of slowness, but it's quite the opposite in terms of window of opportunity.

Meaning when you're team is down by 2 early game you have a minute or two at the most to determine if you're going to roll over and die, or fight. Most get the mind set that it's already over, and they get defensive, they don't try to push, they try to stay alive. Then their behavior becomes infectious and now the whole team is herded like scared live stock and slaughtered.

If playing defensive isn't working, try being aggressive. If MM is going for 50/50 win, that means in theory that you will win or lose regardless of what you do. So with that mindset, why not take the bigger risks and push more? What will happen is after a while of being zerg aggressive you will learn your threshold of when too much is too much and you can adjust your playstyle and back down off that edge. If you don't push yourself to find out what you can get away with and when you can get away with it, you'll never know what you and your mechs can really do.

This, a million times over. Solo pug teams suffer the most from a lack of aggression. At the same time, with no respawn, it is vitally important that you live as long as possible while still contributing. 4 badly damaged mechs can often be way more useful than 1 relatively well-off mech.

Edited by Krivvan, 23 October 2014 - 05:01 PM.

[Sadist Cain]

Been saying this for a while, good to see others doing the same.

I think they're missing the mark with the mentor program (though I think that should still exist in the form of creating tutorials, videos etc.)

Teamwork, and organisation are the hidden metrics that the matchmaker cannot take into account. The limit of teamwork tends to be mechblob, new rewards for being in a lance however are a good step in the right direction.

I'm all for anything that allows pugs and small groups to organise more.
Small groups against larger ones in particular have very little provided in game to go up against an organised group of buddys nattering on TS.

Build up the lance based tactics and you build up the match quality, community relationships and the new player experience.

[siLve00]

A very good rl friend did start playing mw:o 3 days ago.. bc of me.
I couldn´t guide him since he had terrible workingtimes.

he told me 5 things... ( he did play mw pc games alrdy.. so he knows the basics about mechs )

1.he had to search which mech he could select and couldn´t even see what weapons and loadout the mechs got
2.no1 chats.. almost 50% of the matches not even a simple "hi" or answering questions like "where do we move"
3. noobs in heavy and assault mechs ( thats a +- depends in what team they are ) but he thinks it is to easy to obtain such mechs. ( trial hoho )
4. the mechlab.. he didn´t even buy 1 single mech.. he just used trial mechs since he mad as hell about it.

he was surprised that the tutorial were realy cool and you get used to the mechs.. very fast. he liked the game but won´t keep playing bc of reason 2 and 4.

I can fix reason 2 for him... since we used to join clan with TS but.. well.. what can i say.. that´s just him the problem is realy the communication ingame.. the lack of commanding and pointing out what to do... it would even help if you could see the loadouts of your teammate somehow ( lrm / energy / balistic and so on ).. or that some1 can chose a role in a match.. like "sniper" "brawler" something like that.