70 replies to this topic

[BourbonFaucet]

Recently after playing a few games against what we call the "meta" PPFLD Dire Wolves with 2 PPC and 2 Gauss, I drew a very strange conclusion.

Oh sure, we can whine and complain that these sorts of things are "overpowered" and what not, but honestly, changing it only removes that build out of the hands of players that were using it.

It's those particular players that are the problem.

Let's be honest here, no matter what we change in the game, there's always going to be this chunk of the playerbase that will always run the cheesiest, most metanerd builds possible in the game, because winning is all they truly care about. It's not that somehow this is a grievous crime against humanity or anything, it's just... we don't have an option to not play against the riff raff who do this.

There's plenty of people I see on these forums who run non-meta builds all the time. They're not stupidly inefficient builds (12 flamer nova anyone?), they're builds that make sense, but aren't the absolute best of the best.

So here we are, having tried quirks, and nerfs, and all sorts of changes, and we haven't fixed the real problem. The servers all belong to PGI at the moment, and so we, the players, can't join servers that might ban builds that are considered to be part of any kind of meta that ruins the game. In fact, as far as I can see from these forums, we have a tiny playerbase and really can't afford to split ourselves up that way.

Ok so, if we have a tiny playerbase, the implication is that we have a whopping percentage of players who are willing to run the insta-gib builds at the expense of the rest of the playerbase.
Which is why I won't whine about "X is OP" anymore. It's not the machine. It's the people who run it because they don't see value in anything but winning with relative ease.

That being said, I look forward to anything that might bring in more players, such as the talk of the possibility of moving to Steam, as that would dilute the playerbase a bit and make avoiding these unsavory players a bit easier.

Thoughts? Comments? QQ? Post Below.

TLDR:

When the meta changes, the people playing the old meta will simply switch to whatever works best again and therefore perpetuate the whining and terribad matches. We need a bigger playerbase to make avoiding these people easier, and I look forward to that.

Edited by Techorse, 06 November 2014 - 01:36 PM.

[WVAnonymous]

Hypothetically matchmaking would fix that by segregating the metas along with other high-performance players, and then the problem would be self correcting.

Now, this assumes a working matchmaker...

[RG Notch]

WVAnonymous, on 06 November 2014 - 01:42 PM, said:

Hypothetically matchmaking would fix that by segregating the metas along with other high-performance players, and then the problem would be self correcting.

Now, this assumes a working matchmaker...

You could have the best match maker in the world (not that this game does) but it can only work with the number of players you've got. PGI chose to focus efforts on catering to a small group of whales at the expense of expanding the player base and you get what we have now.

[BourbonFaucet]

RG Notch, on 06 November 2014 - 01:49 PM, said:

You could have the best match maker in the world (not that this game does) but it can only work with the number of players you've got. PGI chose to focus efforts on catering to a small group of whales at the expense of expanding the player base and you get what we have now.

Except that I'm a "Whale" for purchasing the packs, and I don't play those builds and styles. So am I the exception and not the rule?

[RG Notch]

Techorse, on 06 November 2014 - 01:55 PM, said:

Except that I'm a "Whale" for purchasing the packs, and I don't play those builds and styles. So am I the exception and not the rule?

I didn't say whales necessarily play that way, I said PGI aimed for whales and thus you have a small population. When you have no real micro transactions and all macro it doesn't lead to lots of new players. Nor does neglecting the new player experience or quality of life issues to focus on things you can sell. People can blame IGP all they want, they are gone and PGI has moved to all packs all the time. They are now selling 2 packs at once. They have said they don't advertise and they are still charging a lot for cosmetics.

Edited by RG Notch, 06 November 2014 - 02:46 PM.

[WVAnonymous]

Techorse, on 06 November 2014 - 01:55 PM, said:

Except that I'm a "Whale" for purchasing the packs, and I don't play those builds and styles. So am I the exception and not the rule?

Meta Whale != Whale != Meta *****

Avoid the Meta ***** Whale?

[CDLord HHGD]

We need more details on CW to better determine how to counter the meta. If it's PGI's intent to hand CW over to the "comp" crowd then they can count me out of CW. We are already in discussions about starting a separate league, our own separately tracked CW if you will, that will take advantage of the standard queues.....

EDIT: Spelling

Edited by cdlord, 06 November 2014 - 02:01 PM.

[Tristan Winter]

If you're going to start a thread about an acronym, you may want to consider explaining what it means.

We're not all hip to the latest MWO / Call of Duty lingo, you dig?

[CDLord HHGD]

Nicolai Kabrinsky, on 06 November 2014 - 02:01 PM, said:

If you're going to start a thread about an acronym, you may want to consider explaining what it means.

We're not all hip to the latest MWO / Call of Duty lingo, you dig?

And why the hell not?? Where have you been?? This goes all the way back to when the Highlander was popular at it's release!!

j/k

Edited by cdlord, 06 November 2014 - 02:03 PM.

[Nemesis Duck]

I don't like the idea that those types of players are influencing major changes. Their way is not the fun way to play a GAME.

[BourbonFaucet]

Assmodeus, on 06 November 2014 - 02:09 PM, said:

I don't like the idea that those types of players are influencing major changes. Their way is not the fun way to play a GAME.

This right here is pretty much the point of my post. Aren't games supposed to be about fun?

[CDLord HHGD]

Techorse, on 06 November 2014 - 02:10 PM, said:

This right here is pretty much the point of my post. Aren't games supposed to be about fun?

The problem becomes, and I'm not defending them, but they define the "win at any cost" their "fun". IMO with the open mechlab, we were given enough rope to hang ourselves and hang we did....

Next time, reign in the lab....

[BourbonFaucet]

cdlord, on 06 November 2014 - 02:13 PM, said:

The problem becomes, and I'm not defending them, but they define the "win at any cost" their "fun". IMO with the open mechlab, we were given enough rope to hang ourselves and hang we did....

Next time, reign in the lab....

Ok, so granted, fun is somewhat subjective, some people have more fun running heavies than mediums for example. But defining winning as the only form of fun reeks of trilby and cheeto dust is really trying to force your view of fun on everyone else. You're absolutely right cdlord.

Edited by Techorse, 06 November 2014 - 02:18 PM.

[Gauvan]

Just my opinions, but I think MWO is in an odd place right now. Regardless of what's in the best interests of long term growth, PGI has to get over a hump where they have to focus on player retention. I think they are working under a valid presumption that if certain game elements aren't delivered in the short term a financially significant chunk of their player base is going to walk.

I don't think the efforts at better communication are insincere, but I think the charm offensive is part of the retention strategy.

But MWO suffers from a low player base. I think this is due in a large part to the lack of a new player experience and I expect that is going to be a top priority next year.

So because I think we have a low player base, and that player base is composed to a significant degree with more experienced, dedicated, players you are going to see more of what Techorse is talking about that you would in an ideal community with a mix of new, intermediate, and experienced players. With healthy growth this sort of gamey min-maxing becomes diluted.

I'm not also convinced that all the folks that run the builds are coming from the place you describe. Some might just be new players who are overwhelmed by a small player base that is a whole lot better at the game that they are.

Edited by Gauvan, 06 November 2014 - 02:31 PM.

[Alistair Winter]

I feel like I've had the solution to this for a long time. Separate the competitive players from the other players. Create Solaris mode with a weekly and monthly leaderboard. Hand out rewards, skins and cockpit items for weekly and monthly winners. Let the competitive players enjoy the e-sports aspect of MWO, and make it so enjoyable that very few competitive players will want to switch to Community Warfare or normal quick matches, dropping in their meta-overlord-builds to kill people in normal, fun builds.

Embrace the variety in the playerbase, don't shoehorn everyone into the same experience. Yes, this means fewer people in each queue, initially. But it may also make the game more fun for many people, which means more people in the queue, in the long run.

[Felio]

Quote

Ok so, if we have a tiny playerbase, the implication is that we have a whopping percentage of players who are willing to run the insta-gib builds at the expense of the rest of the playerbase.
Which is why I won't whine about "X is OP" anymore. It's not the machine. It's the people who run it because they don't see value in anything but winning with relative ease.

That being said, I look forward to anything that might bring in more players, such as the talk of the possibility of moving to Steam, as that would dilute the playerbase a bit and make avoiding these unsavory players a bit easier.

Why would the percentage of people running problematic builds change?

And are you suggesting PGI reigning in these builds is not worthwhile?

[RG Notch]

Techorse, on 06 November 2014 - 02:10 PM, said:

This right here is pretty much the point of my post. Aren't games supposed to be about fun?

Not to these folks, it's all about winning. They would rather play unfun builds and have boring stagnant meta than lose. When people focus so much on winning games it brings up what's happening in the rest of the lives. Some folks gotta win somewhere.

[Krivvan]

Assmodeus, on 06 November 2014 - 02:09 PM, said:

I don't like the idea that those types of players are influencing major changes. Their way is not the fun way to play a GAME.

Playing to win and trying their hardest is fun for them. Doing silly "fun" stuff isn't fun for a lot of them.

It's like saying people who play high level League of Legends are tryhards that are not doing the fun way to play a GAME. Or people who play chess to win instead of doing wacky openings are not doing the fun way to play a GAME. Or anyone who gets very good at a hobby are doing the fun way to do a HOBBY.

[RG Notch]

Alistair Winter, on 06 November 2014 - 02:31 PM, said:

I feel like I've had the solution to this for a long time. Separate the competitive players from the other players. Create Solaris mode with a weekly and monthly leaderboard. Hand out rewards, skins and cockpit items for weekly and monthly winners. Let the competitive players enjoy the e-sports aspect of MWO, and make it so enjoyable that very few competitive players will want to switch to Community Warfare or normal quick matches, dropping in their meta-overlord-builds to kill people in normal, fun builds.

Embrace the variety in the playerbase, don't shoehorn everyone into the same experience. Yes, this means fewer people in each queue, initially. But it may also make the game more fun for many people, which means more people in the queue, in the long run.

You forget that just because people want to be called competitive, it doesn't mean they want competition. Some of these folks have made competitive = win at any cost. Lots of these players do want to play matches against other like minded folks, sadly there is a subset who want to compete but keep losing so they need seals to clobber so they can win. The whole "competitive" term gets thrown around very loosely in this game. Likely due to there not really be much of a real competitive scene. Once again goes back to low population.

[Krivvan]

RG Notch, on 06 November 2014 - 02:41 PM, said:

They would rather play unfun builds and have boring stagnant meta than lose.

Why are you declaring the builds they play to be unfun? The best games are when both teams are trying their damned hardest to win, and that involves playing the best builds. Games where both sides are headless chickens running around with LRM+SRM+SL Jenners are gimmicks that are fun for a game or two before becoming unfun and boring.

Frankly, games where one team is playing full meta whereas the other team isn't also aren't fun. But that's why tournaments exist, except other than that there's no chance for this to happen beyond just group queuing and hoping a real match happens.

And we love it when the meta changes.

Edited by Krivvan, 06 November 2014 - 02:48 PM.