94 replies to this topic

[Bellum Dominum]

cDnStealth, on 05 January 2015 - 11:52 AM, said:

If the only way for MWO to be fun is for players to join a unit then this game isn't going to last very long. Successful games need those pub players. They make up the majority of the player base and are essential to a healthy community. Rather than telling people they're playing the game incorrectly perhaps we should be addressing the bigger issue(s). Matchmaking needs an overhaul. Almost every game I play is a landslide victory in one direction or another. I was on board with the changes they implemented a couple months ago but too many people valued game mode choice over balanced matches.

I can also vouch for the fact that Malecite is indeed a new player. I wasn't the friend who was convincing him to play but was one of those playing with him over the past few days. He's never set foot in MWO prior to this.

Nope wouldn't last long at all... not 4 years certainly... not like EVE, CoD, etc etc etc...

Fact is it's not the only way to have fun, but it is most certainly an advatange towards winning matches and if you only have fun by winning then it would behoove a player to make use of it wouldn't it?

[Rando Slim]

Yea I know OP. And its even worse since the clans came out, which are prohibitively expensive to new players and completely overpowered compared to an un-elited, un-moduled inner sphere mech. The double grind wall for modules is an unreasonable time sink. on top of all the other things you said.

Edited by Scrotacus 42, 05 January 2015 - 12:54 PM.

[Dirty Starfish]

As an avid pugger myself, I really think they should let 2-4 man groups back into pugland.

[darkkterror]

Serial Peacemaker, on 05 January 2015 - 12:58 PM, said:

As an avid pugger myself, I really think they should let 2-4 man groups back into pugland.

You will not be prepared for the mountain of QQ that will be dropped on these forums.

[Gyrok]

Targaeryen, on 05 January 2015 - 11:40 AM, said:

I concur wholeheartedly OP.
I like the concept, love the feel of the whole thing, but I simply cannot enjoy playing the 'game' if I have expectations on winning.
The ONLY way I can play a few matches without wanting to strangle my teammates is to not care AT ALL about the outcome.
If I can manage that then I can battle away for a while and derive some enjoyment from it, but as soon as I start to want to win, nine times out of ten I log off cursing my teammates, their families, their heritage, the way they dress...
I really want to like this game but it keeps spurning my affections.
I even joined a clan to see if that helps but no, it is worse. And committing to dropping with a clan means sitting and waiting every match for people to fiddle with their mechs, drop group, join group, switch mechs, bleh. Drop less, lose the same or more than lone-wolfing. So I quit the clan too. Fun!
I used to love MWO, been playing since closed beta, now... I keep it installed in the hopes things will change, that somehow it will start being consistently fun rather than 90% frustration, 10% reward. Mess with it maybe once a week now. Sad really.
This is my secondary account. I have a primary account with some 40 or so mechs with elite mastery, modules out the wazoo, cool paint jobs and camo schemes, and I do not play any of them, nor do I care to.
So I have one lonely stormcrow with gauss and lasers, and no desire to buy any more, and I do not care. Sad really.

You joined the wrong clan unit.

[Malecite]

Utilyan, on 05 January 2015 - 11:43 AM, said:

I don't believe you are a noob...

Your a "NEW" player who played for a week, tells a story about quitting in 3 days, and you've been a member since febuary of 2013.

Hah I can see how that would look suspicious.

Cdnstealth is indeed one of my friends, although he wasn't on last night, we probably would have done a lot better if he was.

However, I did orginally *try* to play the game over a year ago and got sick of the 100+ patches it tried to install and never actually got to playing it.

I appreciate the helpful responses.

I tried CW a few times with stealth and one of my other friends. I think we were placed on attacking like 9/10 times and it was basically us against 12 man teams of smoke bears with laser boats and dire wolves. We got our asses collectively handed to us, and the only real reason we continued was to get the *loot stockings*. I can tell you right now it was one of the stupidest gameplay experiences I have ever had. But the modes in Beta so really what do you expect?

It kind of saddens me that PGI went out of their way to please the 12 man roflstomp crews, but from a business standpoint it makes sense. Afterall, these are the people willing to shell out a jaw dropping 180-240 dollars on the Clan packs, I can tell you right now the thought of spending that much money on digital content paralyzes my brain with angry confusion. However, it seems that with the publisher gone they are probably in not the best financial straights.

I suppose its solo pub matches or nothing at the moment, either way it's really too bad. Some good match making and easy accessibility would probably draw a much larger crowd, and with more people inevitably comes more money.

Hah I recall the first day playing I heavily criticized cdstealth for spending money on the game, and yet 2 days later I was buying a freaking mech. So maybe PGI should reconsider their approach to how the title generates income, by deciding who to make it more appealing to. I can't be the only new player who just got immediately fed up with the overwhelming frustration of being completely destroyed over and over and over again.

Edited by Malecite, 05 January 2015 - 01:36 PM.

[Malecite]

Triordinant, on 05 January 2015 - 11:37 AM, said:

Here's the history behind what you experienced with your friends: Almost no one wants to play against the big organized well-trained Units. In order to save the game (players were leaving in droves after being repeatedly curbstomped by big organized Units), PGI created a solo-only queue to keep the big Units from preying on the casual PUGs that made up the vast majority of players. However, they also wanted to retain the big organized Units who were not playing because they had to wait forever to find a match for their 12-man teams or were being limited to 4-man teams. Someone had to get the shaft and I suspect rather than sticking it to the solo players (who are by far the most numerous) or the big organized Units (who are supposedly the biggest spenders of real money per player), they decided the short end of the stick would go to the small casual groups (who are neither the most numerous nor the biggest spenders).

If you want to have fun with friends, try playing when the big competitive Units aren't on or when they're playing Community Warfare (presumably they play CW on weekends and peak hours). Stay away from CW because there's no Elo matchmaking there and no solo-only queue, making it far more likely you'll run into those guys no one wants to play with.

I actually just re read this and thoroughly appreciate you taking the time to spell it out.

When exactly is a good time to avoid the larger units so I might actually get a shot at enjoying some matches with buddies?

Also as some people have stated above, and as directly quoted by one of my friends: "you know I find you enjoy this match making a lot better when you just expected to get completely annihilated each time". My only problem with that is then you can't get any freaking C Bills. As a new player I obviously would like the chance to get some money to actually explore the content, but this aspect of the title has to be the most frustrating.

I feel like if you are facing 8-12 man teams, some kind of *good for you for being cannon fodder for their lasers buddy!* bonus would be nice. Especially if the game ends within 5 min with 12:0 and you get like 12K pity Cbills.

[Lukoi Banacek]

With the publisher IGP gone, signs are PGI is actually better off.

I pug quite a bit personally, or run in small groups. It is about 50% of my game playing time. I find the game enjoyable as hell personally.

BUT.....I know what I am doing as a player. I understand that occasionally I will get matched with a 9 man of aces and other times, I will he on the opponent side and get rickrolled (altho sometimes we pull off the upset).

I know how to make cbills, what builds generally work, how ghost heat, quirks and all of the game's hidden nuggets basically work.

What truly saddens me about the game and probably what feeds into a new player experience more than anything is simply the HORRIFYING LACK OF ANY DOCUMENTATION TO EXPLAIN HOW THE GAME WORKS, minus a stilted tutorial, the periodic "hints" posted before each match and these stupifyingly organized forums.

PGI...take all of the rules, explainations, hints, quirk lists and other helpful tidbits and copy/paste them in some form or fashion into something like a PDF....put a big, bold button on the patcher that says....wait for it....GAME MANUAL and leave it for the new players to notice and dive into.

As haphazard as that product might be initially it would be leaps and bloody bounds better than this unintuitve ****-show we currently have. Afterwards you can have some add the storyline and faction fluff that would help those new to the IP actually immerse themselves into the game a bit and BANG new player retention goes through the roof.

And...seriously, this stuff is already written and scattered about the forums, reddit, twitter etc. Would it really be so hard to collate the stuff into a single place that newbies can discover via the patcher rather than having to hunt for it?

[cSand]

I play almost always in a small group, non CW and have yet to have more than 1-2 rolls a night since CW was put out.

SO I am wondering if you ware not just experiencing some growing pains moving into the group queue... you have to be much more on the ball there I find in general, the groups are less forgiving than the solo queue.

Especially if you've only been playing a week!

Edited by cSand, 05 January 2015 - 01:37 PM.

[Malecite]

cSand, on 05 January 2015 - 01:35 PM, said:

I play almost always in a small group, non CW and have yet to have more than 1-2 rolls a night since CW was put out.

SO I am wondering if you ware not just experiencing some growing pains moving into the group queue... you have to be much more on the ball there I find in general, the groups are less forgiving than the solo queue.

Especially if you've only been playing a week!

Well... I am not certain how I could have helped/prevented getting utterly messed up by coordinated teams obviously using voice chat. I mean it was just ugly, and really if you think about it obviously it would be. The confusion of pub games is absent when you are getting flanked and focused down by clans with better range and better coordination. I still ended most matches with scores of around 100-300, but 0 kills and 5 min of gameplay still doesn't pay very well.

The old ECM rush was pretty constant, 8 guys coming over a hill and just focus firing mechs down with the other 4 flanking was pretty common.

One match... er the wood one I think we were holed up outside the cave entrance. Thinking we had a defensible position I felt pretty good. That was until 3 medium mechs with jump jets landed in the middle of us, 3 assaults came out of the cave, and the rest poured in from the left and right. 12:0 again.

Or the match in caustic valley where they had 4 gauss/er LL units sitting on the hill behind us sniping, while the other 8 pushed us inevitably towards the kill box. 12:2, over in 5 min.

There is no substitute for coordination and higher play in this game, so I don't think "growing pains" had anything to do with it. But then again I am new so what do I know really?

Edited by Malecite, 05 January 2015 - 01:49 PM.

[terrycloth]

PUGs without voice chat use flocking behavior instead of coordination. It can work! It can also be predicted and manipulated, though. I don't see that happening much in the solo queue.

The group queue is painful for 2-mans but you don't need a 12-man. 6-8 is enough really.

[Kirkland Langue]

Here is probably the answer I would go with, even though I recognize that it's impossible to make everyone happy.

1. Get rid of Normal Group Queue completely. Even if the rest of the idea is frowned upon, I still believe this is a MUST for the health of the game.

2. Modify the existing Normal Queue maps so that they can work in CW. The smaller maps should be 8v8 and the larger ones should be modified so that they work with the existing CW game mode.

3. Change the planet capture mechanic to have more than 15 "zones". Raise it to 45 or even 90. Then have different CW game modes award different amounts of "zones". Maybe the longer games win you 5 zones while a quick skirmish is only worth 2.

4. Have 2 different CW queues:
a. Dropdeck queue where ONLY groups of 4, 8, or 12 can join 12v12 battle.
b. Single Mech queue where 1, 2, 3, or 4 players can join for a 8v8 battle.

5. have a single Normal Queue which is ONLY solo-drop.

[Aethon]

Malecite, on 05 January 2015 - 10:32 AM, said:

Hello everyone

Well it's been one week, one glorious week of running around guns blazing enjoy all the fruits this game has to offer. I am hugely impressed with the level of detail and customization the game contains. After being cajoled for over a year by a friend, I finally caved and installed.

170 patches later and 8 hours I was in.

I grabbed my holiday premium time and my trial mechs and went to work.

2 days later I bought a firebrand because I was in love with the game.

3 days later I stopped playing.

Why you might ask?

Well I was averaging 400 pts a match, which I think is reasonably okay. I am fan of FPS so this game fit well into my play style. But all of a sudden I started to notice an extremely frustrating pattern. The pub matches were seemingly balanced in terms of W/L, you would have streaks at times, but then all of a sudden I was winning maybe 3/10. The games went from being fun and seemingly balanced to wipes in both directions. Like 12:3 or 12:0 every game.

So I decided to stop playing pub matches and only play when my friends were on. After all it's a game that centers around team work, and our team is pretty good. Or so I thought.

This is when things went from bad to horrible.

Last night (I kept track mind you) after 3 hours of solid play we ended up with a score of:

3/14

3 wins

out of

17 matches

We were facing 8-12 man drops and when I say 3 wins I mean we absolutely, no mercy, crushed them. The 14 loses were brutal wipes with at least 4 of those loses our team failed to score even a single kill. Several times our entire lance was wiped by 8 man ECM rushes before we could even link up with the team. It was beyond frustrating

So I am at a loss with what to do. This game is amazing, has potential, is fun ect. But right now I don't even want to bother clicking *play* because I know what awaits me. On top of everything the inability to even play with my friends basically makes this title worthless to me.

I don't mind having spent the 10 dollars to support the devs, but my advice is:

1) Separate the elite people with their 8-12 man teams from the mainstay pubs who just want to have fun without getting their rears taken to pound town.

2) Give new players some kind of overarching instruction as to how the game works, I am a pretty hardcore gamer and I still found the game had a huge learning curve requiring extensive forum reading to fully understand the mechanics.

Anyways, thanks for the hard work devs and good luck, I am off to find something that allows me to play the game without wanting to smash my keyboard in frustration!

I feel your pain, dude. Honestly, when I am not doing factional warfare, I prefer solo-pugging. Why? Because everyone in that queue is alone. There are no 10-man try-hard groups who should be running 12-man teams or CW, or breaking up into smaller groups, but want to pugstomp all night instead. It is particularly disappointing to see competitive groups doing this; these are supposedly the best players in the game, just running around stomping pugs for easy wins at the expense of people trying to enjoy the game. When you solo-pug, there are 23 other individual players who want to enjoy some drops.

The other problem is Elo matchmaking, which was designed for chess. A matchmaking system that uses player score works great when it is 1v1. When you have teams of 12 players, and you try to come up with two teams with similar scores, it does not work well; I need only point to the lop-sided end result of most matches to back that up.

So, hopefully Elo will be trashed at some point, and a team size restriction put in place, as with platoons in World of Tanks. Until then, I mostly solo-pug when not doing factional warfare.

[Ryoken]

@OP: You should try the CW queue! There is no ELO ruining your gaming experience and without ELO trying to balance good players with very bad players or huge teams on the other side this game is much more fun!

In fact I even was able to level some mechs trough basic skills without getting frustated because I can not carry as ELO "expects" me to.

And I also used the no ELO queue to teach new players into the game because I actually could take some time explaining the game instead of having to carry and without warping the new players into higher ELO.

So really I hope we get rid of ELO for public queue some day - it does not work and mostly causes frustration to experienced and new players as well. (Maybe WoT has a larger player base but they got no ELO and do well.)

[Malecite]

Ryoken, on 05 January 2015 - 02:23 PM, said:

@OP: You should try the CW queue! There is no ELO ruining your gaming experience and without ELO trying to balance good players with very bad players or huge teams on the other side this game is much more fun!

In fact I even was able to level some mechs trough basic skills without getting frustated because I can not carry as ELO "expects" me to.

And I also used the no ELO queue to teach new players into the game because I actually could take some time explaining the game instead of having to carry and without warping the new players into higher ELO.

So really I hope we get rid of ELO for public queue some day - it does not work and mostly causes frustration to experienced and new players as well. (Maybe WoT has a larger player base but they got no ELO and do well.)

Wait so your saying you have had a good experience with CW?

I don't know... Stealth and I won a handful of matches here and there but mainly it seems like if you have to attack clans defending you may as well just give up hope without an organized team, and even then they hold a ridiculous advantage with those long range weapons/turrets. I had a few matches where the defenders just rolled out of the gates and brutally murdered us as we landed. When you say it doesn't use the ELO do you mean its just randomly whoever happens to click into the game?

Edited by Malecite, 05 January 2015 - 02:45 PM.

[Impossible Wasabi]

Aethon, on 05 January 2015 - 02:13 PM, said:

The other problem is Elo matchmaking, which was designed for chess. A matchmaking system that uses player score works great when it is 1v1. When you have teams of 12 players, and you try to come up with two teams with similar scores, it does not work well; I need only point to the lop-sided end result of most matches to back that up.

So, hopefully Elo will be trashed at some point, and a team size restriction put in place, as with platoons in World of Tanks. Until then, I mostly solo-pug when not doing factional warfare.

Pretty much, it also works great because Chess starts the same way every time and has both players using the exact same chess pieces against the exact same chess pieces.

It works thus in Chess because it's much easier to compare player skill due to the static nature of chess as a game (at the start and regarding what is possible).

Edited by Merlevade, 05 January 2015 - 02:41 PM.

[Triordinant]

Malecite, on 05 January 2015 - 01:24 PM, said:

I actually just re read this and thoroughly appreciate you taking the time to spell it out.

When exactly is a good time to avoid the larger units so I might actually get a shot at enjoying some matches with buddies?

Also as some people have stated above, and as directly quoted by one of my friends: "you know I find you enjoy this match making a lot better when you just expected to get completely annihilated each time". My only problem with that is then you can't get any freaking C Bills. As a new player I obviously would like the chance to get some money to actually explore the content, but this aspect of the title has to be the most frustrating.

I feel like if you are facing 8-12 man teams, some kind of *good for you for being cannon fodder for their lasers buddy!* bonus would be nice. Especially if the game ends within 5 min with 12:0 and you get like 12K pity Cbills.

Good Times: if we are to assume most competitive Units play CW during prime time, that would be 9 or 10 pm Eastern Standard Time until maybe 4 am (the latter for the West coast). Maybe starting in the afternoons on weekends.

Show Me the Money: you said you bought a 'mech. If it's a Hero or Champion 'mech, I believe there's a cbill bonus when you use it in a match.

Not to Be Cannon Fodder: Maybe once CW is fully up and running they can limit the group queue to 4-man (or fewer) teams so as not to chase away the new players being trained or the casual groups.

[Triordinant]

Ryoken, on 05 January 2015 - 02:23 PM, said:

@OP: You should try the CW queue!

[Escef]

Small groups seem to have a place in Community Warfare. So long as you don't get paired up against a 12-man, you should do passably. 4 and 5 man groups of the BAGrs (Barely Adequate Gamers) have managed to hold our own in CW matches. Unless we end up in a match against a competitive team (Lords, 228, etc.), in which case we do what we can to give a good accounting of ourselves while we get our asses kicked.

Edited by Escef, 05 January 2015 - 02:48 PM.

[Malecite]

Triordinant, on 05 January 2015 - 02:33 PM, said:

Good Times: if we are to assume most competitive Units play CW during prime time, that would be 9 or 10 pm Eastern Standard Time until maybe 4 am (the latter for the West coast). Maybe starting in the afternoons on weekends.

Show Me the Money: you said you bought a 'mech. If it's a Hero or Champion 'mech, I believe there's a cbill bonus when you use it in a match.

Not to Be Cannon Fodder: Maybe once CW is fully up and running they can limit the group queue to 4-man (or fewer) teams so as not to chase away the new players being trained or the casual groups.

Excellent thank you for the tip!

That translates into roughly 7:00PM Mountain time which actually is annoying because that is mainly the time I am able to play, which would directly explain the facerolling beating we keep taking.

I get what your saying about ELO as frankly it makes no sense how good one team is when the other has teamspeak and a 8-12 man drop. Ultimately that seems like the WORST possible way to balance the teams.

A skill bracketing seems like it would make more sense ex: 500+ matches gets you vet, 1000+ gets you elite, and if you choose to play in a lower league you take a Cbill/Xp penalty. Plus anything over a 4 man drop should be relegated to a different game mode, because the organizational advantage is just absurd. If the larger teams don't like it, well then they can implement on going tournament game modes to incentivize play or relegate it to the domain of the *balanced* CW.

Right now it is completely silly that a bunch of random pubs should have to play against elite groups of organized clans with vastly superior mechs, and get virtually nothing in terms of spoils while they are actually REWARDED for stomping you.

Edited by Malecite, 05 January 2015 - 02:57 PM.