22 replies to this topic

[FlipOver]

Hi guys,

I need some help understanding why, 80%+ of the time I play with friends, the games become too frustrating, for a number of reasons:
1 - Inexperienced players or even full teams with as much experience playing as any player with 1 month in on MWO against well organized and / or more experienced players / teams
2 - Team mates under-performing to the point of 4+ people doing over 2 digit damage while piloting heavies/assaults (this usually means poor situation awareness or even poor judgement calls)
3 - Watching people make bad calls over and over people or not knowing what scouting is or which mechs are best suited for it
Well, in a nut-shell, most of the time I play in team mode (2+ people), the rest of my team (or most of it) is worthless, especially compared to the enemy.
This leads to 0-12 up to 3-12 matches, being played over and over.

Thing is, when I play solo, I usually find much more balanced matches with much more balanced teams.

I've been watching friend after friend quitting the game early (for that day) due to frustration. They are mostly good players so why would we get stuck with so many bad players on our team against better organized and more experienced players most of the time?

I mean I do like a good challenge, but this is getting to ridiculous levels.

Thanks

[Bulletsponge0]

I'm having the opposite experience.

I've lately been in some 12 man groups consisting of random puggers and not on TS, and we've been doing amazing, and still have a fantastic time even when we lose (which isn't often)

[Lupin]

VERY hit and miss, as seems to be about what time you play and how big player pool is at that time.

In group drop I have watch our 3 x 4 random drop wipe 12 man team, which had no clue about team work.

Playing in single player drop without comms is all about getting a plan together and getting as many players to follow it as possible. That and typing REALLY fast.

[Sadist Cain]

Command wheel and communication tools

It may well be shocking but 9/10 the rest of those players are just like you. Everyone has their own agenda, some folk speak different languages.

Whats needed is the ability to communicate our plans in a streamlined and effective way in-game.

Most issues in the small group queue is lack of and mis-communication

Rewards 2.0 is a step in the right direction towards getting players to fill roles in battle, couple that with a command wheel and we're golden.

Edited by Sadist Cain, 24 October 2014 - 08:03 AM.

[Gamuray]

Played a match a couple days ago. Opposing team had a 10-man and a 2-man premade. 10-man ended up enemy, 2-man ended up ally. The 2-man then preceded to act as quote "moles". The enemy even confirmed the action. ...I realize this is hard to avoid, but I was in a two man with a jumble of other 4man or smaller. Obviously, we got rolled and backstabbed as well. I personally think that some way to prevent such occurrences (both 10-mans vs 2-mans AND sync drops) would be beneficial fairly often to group balance. That could be something along the lines of a timer which attempts to spread groups launching at the same time to different games (not for 12-mans. Unnecessary then). Attempts. Not limited to such so that wait times don't lengthen much.

Maybe something that also checks the faction/company/title (whatever it's called. The tag thing after their name) of launch groups so that they don't end up in the same match.

At the moment, group matches (non-12-man) are ~75-85% predictable when you see large launch groups on one team and not the other. And that's pretty generous.

[FlipOver]

Sadist Cain, on 24 October 2014 - 08:01 AM, said:

Command wheel and communication tools

It may well be shocking but 9/10 the rest of those players are just like you. Everyone has their own agenda, some folk speak different languages.

Whats needed is the ability to communicate our plans in a streamlined and effective way in-game.

Most issues in the small group queue is lack of and mis-communication

Rewards 2.0 is a step in the right direction towards getting players to fill roles in battle, couple that with a command wheel and we're golden.

Couldn't agree more, although I communicate often, also often I don't get any answer...

It's so frustrating...

[Bulletsponge0]

Lupin, on 24 October 2014 - 07:58 AM, said:

VERY hit and miss, as seems to be about what time you play and how big player pool is at that time.

In group drop I have watch our 3 x 4 random drop wipe 12 man team, which had no clue about team work.

Playing in single player drop without comms is all about getting a plan together and getting as many players to follow it as possible. That and typing REALLY fast.

and there is my problem...

[Angel of Annihilation]

Honestly this is kind of my issue too. I have a friend I wanted to get involved with playing and was even going to buy him one of the pre-order packs to get him going but then I started thinking about it and realized that in order for the two of us to play together, we would have to drip into the group que where often as not, we would be facing coordinated teams, using dedicated TS communications. I am sorry, but it is not fun being the whipping boy in 75% of the matches.

[AlphaToaster]

Elo is weird like that and in group queue it gets averaged across the team.

If you're finding that you're having a problem I would change up what you're doing.

If you're in a slow mech, move to a faster one or speed up the mech you're in.

Slower mechs usually mean they have more armor, but speed is also another form of armor. It's a fallacy to think putting new players in heavy and assault mechs is good for them.

When you drop as a group, try taking the lighter end of the weight spectrum so that other players with more experience can take the heavier mechs. This is because you have a group of new players, so you're kind of hogging up the weight if you're all dropping in heavy/assault mechs.

Easier to learn the maps in a light mech. Run around the maps on training grounds in a trial light mech to learn the map layouts. Then in the light mechs scout out the enemy locations and work on learning the spawn points and where the teams meet up. Training situational awareness is really important, and the heavier mechs just move too slowly and are too hard to hide, to be able to safely tour a map in the middle of a game.

I'm approaching this from the angle of helping you and your friends improve, as you have control over that, and less over which players you get matched with. Fix what you can and train up to deal with what you can't.

[terrycloth]

Marik's kind of a joke in the group queue. Yeah, I get it. Anubis was talking about how other teams mock us because we 'play like a bunch of PUGs' which is sort of accurate since most teams are a bunch of random people on the TS server dropping together and chatting on team speak about other video games or some movie coming out or something while paying minimal attention to the match.

But man, ELO in the group queue just doesn't seem to exist, because it's just getting rolled over and over and over and it's not even always by teams with more coordination, it's by individuals with much better aim.

The group queue sucks. A lot.

Then I go back to the solo queue and have a free win streak because all the losses carry over. 9.9

[Belazaar]

People keep blaming the newbies, but how are we suppose to learn?

There is little to no training from what I can find. When I drop in pug groups (solo or TS groups) they seems about the same. In fact with small TS teams someone will say to follow the pugs. And on team speak some will call out enemy locations and maybe some talk about builds, but that is about it.

I've found videos on the shooting and solo skills, but nothing group play.
And the guilds I've come across are looking for more competitive players. I didn't play table top or any of the other Mechwarrior games, so maybe I'm not the target market for this game.

Without better training from the community, I believe it will be hard to attract and keep newer players. Nothing has changed on this since beta with the pug play styles. In fact I see teams going to the same spots we did back in beta.

Maybe I should just check back in another year to see if It has gotten any better.

[AlphaToaster]

The new player experience definitely needs some work helping get people up to speed.

There are several units out there who put a lot of effort into training new pilots that show the desire to improve.

Check out the Faction and House forums to see who is recruiting. A good method that I've seen several teams use is host some kind of weekly event during one of the week nights where they play stock mechs, or even have workshops where high elo players try to share what they've learned with whoever shows initiative to show up.

The resources are there if you look for them. You will find a lot of us in the community would be more than happy to offer guidance if you approach them.

[NKAc Street]

Yeah, after a match the "uber" players often just say how much of a noob team they are on. In reality they want to win and they didn't and couldn't give two shits about helping anyone.

You have the other aspect of people who usually premade, then either solo drop, or mass drop with others and then go to comms when they figure out whos team they are on (because premade que is hard). But they have he right to do that., But then just gripe about pugs and gloat about how great they are.

YAWN, if you can't understand the solo que and aren't willing to help, play premade only, but you won't so cry MOAR. LOL, us solo que only, really don't care about your woes.

Edited by NKAc Street, 24 October 2014 - 03:59 PM.

[jackal404]

Well, I'm currently sitting on a 12 game loosing streak because I only play with friends. They love the game and will drop solo frequently, where I only play when they ask me to come join.

Much more of this and I'll find another game - just want to have fun playing, not competitive hard core Mech Warrior.

p.s. Please don't invite me to your your clan/group/whatever. If that's what's required to have fun playing MWO, I'll move on. If you have to be a competitive player to play with friends, we'll play something else.

[Triordinant]

jackal404, on 24 October 2014 - 04:23 PM, said:

Please don't invite me to your your clan/group/whatever. If that's what's required to have fun playing MWO, I'll move on. If you have to be a competitive player to play with friends, we'll play something else.

Bad News: that's probably what will happen in Community Warfare, especially since there's no Elo matchmaking there (according to the Devs). Good News: whenever Community Warfare is on, the big, competitive, highly-trained Units no one else wants to play with will play there instead of the Group Queue, meaning it'll be mostly small casual groups in the Group Queue. Not much of a consolation prize (since you basically have to exclude yourself from Community Warfare), but that's the only hope so far for small casual groups.

Edited by Triordinant, 24 October 2014 - 04:47 PM.

[FlipOver]

Guys I want to get one thing straight here.
This is not about blaming bad or new players!!!

This is about the ability (or lack there of) of the matchmaker (MM) to pair even quality teams against each other.s
Often times, me and my friends do much more damage and kills than the rest of the team and this is not a good thing since we are average players.
On the opposite side there are 12 guys, pugging or not, who manage to stay on target, to press R, to use the arms without lock, to play without constant zoom...

I mean, is this the best we can get from the MM? Or am I not seeing something obvious here?

Why pair a few guys with other teammates that do not play to par, against other teams that indeed do play to par over and over?

And to point out something else as an example:
I never used a medium, never played with one in the past (or if i did was just to try it out and locked to the stock loadout) and even so, most matches i used a medium, same thing happened. My teammates and I usually pull the team and when its against good players gets too frustrating to bare.
Why does this happen and why so often?

[XX Sulla XX]

Simple answer is to join or form a unit and make more friends to play with.

[Novakaine]

Solution is simple.
"Take charge and the lemmings will follow."
Of course knowing and using a bit of tactics always helps.

[FlipOver]

XX Sulla XX, on 24 October 2014 - 07:14 PM, said:

Simple answer is to join or form a unit and make more friends to play with.

Not valid since I'm already in a unit and the problem is when I play in a group not alone.
If you had spent the time reading what's been said you'd know this.

Novakaine, on 24 October 2014 - 08:23 PM, said:

Solution is simple.
"Take charge and the lemmings will follow."
Of course knowing and using a bit of tactics always helps.

We do take charge and you know what usually happens?
80%+ of the time, me and my friends get to a fight where our team simply isn't even looking at, they are more interested in chasing that one light mech without a leg armor or just sniping from the distance without making any significant damage to force the enemy to rethink their positioning.
And in the meantime we are fighting, spreading damage taken as best as possible from direct fire and LRMs, destroying UAVs and placing as much damage as possible.
If we are just 2-4 guys, we can manage to get one or 2 kills but that's about it when the rest of the team has their own agenda and didn't even bother letting the others know.

It's frustrating as hell especially when we almost every single time use the ingame text to give intel and commands for the team to follow and they just don't seem to know how to read.

On the other hand, when the team reads and follows, we manage to actually get a fun match where most of the team is actively participating in the action. On those matches, we do enjoy them either win or lose, but those matches are so uncommon that most of the people playing in groups end up frustrated and calling it over much sooner that they usually do.

This topic was created to try and find a way to understand why these things happen and why do they happen so often.

[Vassago Rain]

If PGI's elo was working flawlessly, every game would end 0-12 or 12-0.

Kinda funny when you think about it.

In MWO, we're very used to seeing 0-12, 1-12, and 2-12. They're gg easy, ggclose, and good game. Anything that ends with 6-12 or more is usually a hilariously FUBAR experience for both sides.

Edited by Vassago Rain, 28 October 2014 - 11:59 AM.