94 replies to this topic

[terrycloth]

ELO tries to balance the teams and does a reasonable job. Balancing the teams means you're going to get around a 50/50 win/loss, because it's putting you up against worthy opponents. If you're on a streak crushing everyone you're currently playing against, it's going to mark you as being more skilled and suddenly you'll be facing harder opponents, which can result in a losing streak if you were just getting lucky.

I haven't really noticed that happening much. Then again, I usually pay more attention to my own performance and don't always remember who finally won.

The main problem is that it only separates by weight class, so the un-basiced standard engine locust I'm trying to level uses the ELO rating from my other tricked-out lights. This does not result in a lot of wins.

[KharnZor]

You cant play this game for a week and reasonably expect to be good at it. There is no instant gratification, you got to work for it.

[Wolfwood592]

KharnZor, on 05 January 2015 - 04:54 PM, said:

You cant play this game for a week and reasonably expect to be good at it. There is no instant gratification, you got to work for it.

Being good at it doesn't change crap matchmaking

[Burktross]

Kirkland Langue, on 05 January 2015 - 02:07 PM, said:

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.

Here, let me give you my honest, heartfelt opinion.
Q.Q.
please i want to play stompy robots not stormcrow rush please dont make me fight the big bag stormcrow rushes

[LordKnightFandragon]

Yeah, the endless stomps is my #1 main complaint about this game. Something about the friggin MM absolutely is rigged to always put you on the losing side.....even with a 5 man group today, we won 2/8.....the enemy team was some Kurita clan with another clan group. another game was like 3 clans in 1, several more were 2 clans...

Our side kept being....our 5 man+pugs.....we got rekt in every fight except for 1.......where we did the wrecking.....

But yeah, this game isnt fun for that reason.....the game plays out in such a way that once your team starts to lose, you might as well just run off a cliff and kill urself, there will be nothing you can do but die in under a second....

I suppose thats why CW is so much more fun imo, the game plays in such a way that there is a chance to fire, move, and all in all play the game.....even on attack, if its going badly, you can still poke around and take potshots, maybe brawl some guys who step outside the gate......

but the normal Q? Naw....its ready, set, stomp...../yawn....

[Impossible Wasabi]

Sometimes the Space Pope thinks it would be fun to see what happened if they turned off ELO for a week.

At least then it would be purely random if you ended up with good or bad players with or against you.

[Gattsus]

Nicolai Kabrinsky, on 05 January 2015 - 12:24 PM, said:

What's the alternative?

Personally, I've long been an advocate of separating players into groups purely based on number of matches played. In other games, you have a Tier system (e.g. Tier 1-5 vehicles) or an XP level (e.g. level 1-60) which takes care of matchmaking. Those options probably won't work for MWO, so at least you could extend cadet period to 500 matches and then make a veteran group for people with 3000 matches or something. Then again... that player population.

I've thought exactly the same.

[Thunder Lips Express]

I went from having 9-10 real life friends play almost every Tuesday and Saturday down to 4 of us sporadically often just 2 of us for various reasons. When ppl quit this game I have found there is no way to get them back into it.

[Novakaine]

KharnZor, on 05 January 2015 - 04:54 PM, said:

You cant play this game for a week and reasonably expect to be good at it. There is no instant gratification, you got to work for it.

This.
You really can't think "Hey I'm a Tetris guru", and jump in this game and expect to do well.
And that's the bottom line, no amount of elo/matchmaker qq is going to fix that.
And it's been many many months since I noticed any group larger than 4 in the pub queue.
And four is just as rare.
What PGI needs to do is allow single lance drops in the training grounds.
That way people can actually train their new friends/new players.
But until that happens.
People just go to the training grounds and practice.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Ecliptor, on 06 January 2015 - 07:34 AM, said:

I went from having 9-10 real life friends play almost every Tuesday and Saturday down to 4 of us sporadically often just 2 of us for various reasons. When ppl quit this game I have found there is no way to get them back into it.

Yeah, cuz no one enjoys seeing the endless stomps.....this game is not that fun overtime. Its neat, its cool....for about 10 minutes, then you realize its just the same old crap. The Grind sucks, the MM sucks, the TTK is surprisingly short, the gameplay has no depth, its just the exact same replica copy in every game, there is all of like 10 maps, like 3 of which get repeated on any given day. Then, the endless getting on the losing side. Games never last long enough to ever really enjoy the game.

You try to poke out to fire but LRMs and everything just pummel you back into a hole. trying to push just gets you mowed down under hte combined fire of the enemy deathball. Then finally, if you do manage to have a good game, you dont get proper payday for it, even with premiums and (C) mechs.....its like YAY, I FINALLY made a 400K game.....now lets see what I can buy.....

Summoner Prime...14million
My bank: 4.5million.....after the game, 4.9 million......average income per game....60-170K.....that is like...200 more games....and as your buddy sits there reviewing the last hundred matches hes played he sits back and realizes hes not actually had that much fun.

The group Q is just premades and stomps, the solo Q is just fail and more losses......

I can see it...

[lshtaria]

This is exactly my problem with some friends from work. I can't join up with them because we just get absolutely ***** in the group queue to such an extent it's not even worth playing.

The only thing we can do is try sync dropping in the solo queue and so far we've only managed it once because of wildly different ELO values I would imagine. Oh and he was on the opposing team as well so that doesn't exactly count.

Great if you're a srs bsns min/maxer pro-comp gaming group of friends, you can have your fun but there is absolutely nothing in this game for casual groups.

[Kassatsu]

Nicolai Kabrinsky, on 05 January 2015 - 12:24 PM, said:

What's the alternative?

Personally, I've long been an advocate of separating players into groups purely based on number of matches played. In other games, you have a Tier system (e.g. Tier 1-5 vehicles) or an XP level (e.g. level 1-60) which takes care of matchmaking. Those options probably won't work for MWO, so at least you could extend cadet period to 500 matches and then make a veteran group for people with 3000 matches or something. Then again... that player population.

Steam will see a massive, VERY short-term influx of new players that hop in a trial mech (dat Nova), overheat and then quit because they didn't learn the mechanics (which in all honesty, are extremely complicated, and more often than not, even more convoluted in their inner workings and actual triggers or uses if you haven't played past Mechwarrior games, even someone who's played them for years and is just now starting will have trouble and have more than a few "WTF" moments looking over the stats, mechs, hitboxes etc.).

That could work for about a week once the game hits Steam. At least then you'd have lords stuck in their own queue against nobody, random 12 mans crying that they can no longer faceroll the random smaller groups that were unfortunate enough to get matched against them (because they'll be matched against other old players that have been facerolling in a group since forever). The underhive will improve greatly in terms of not seeing trial mechs, being mostly non-trial mechs that people actually bought, though we'll have a new under-underhive that is nothing but stock clan mechs and trials overheating left and right.

EDIT: I just had the best thought ever. Have a "ghost heat" lock in the options menu. If you try to fire enough weapons to trigger ghost heat, automatically remove the ones that would have triggered it from that attempt, and don't allow you to fire them until the ghost heat threshold is gone. No more Novas shutting down for five minutes because they thought "AWW YEAH TWELVE LASERS" without getting a Phd. in heat scaling. Much like throttle decay and arm lock, default it to "on". Oh boy are those two options bad.

Edited by Kassatsu, 06 January 2015 - 01:02 PM.

[Impossible Wasabi]

Kyocera, on 06 January 2015 - 12:28 PM, said:

This is exactly my problem with some friends from work. I can't join up with them because we just get absolutely ***** in the group queue to such an extent it's not even worth playing.

The only thing we can do is try sync dropping in the solo queue and so far we've only managed it once because of wildly different ELO values I would imagine. Oh and he was on the opposing team as well so that doesn't exactly count.

Great if you're a srs bsns min/maxer pro-comp gaming group of friends, you can have your fun but there is absolutely nothing in this game for casual groups.

The Space Pope agrees and has also found it very hard to give new players he has brought to the game an enjoyable start.

Kassatsu, on 06 January 2015 - 12:55 PM, said:

That could work for about a week once the game hits Steam. At least then you'd have lords stuck in their own queue against nobody, random 12 mans crying that they can no longer faceroll the random smaller groups that were unfortunate enough to get matched against them (because they'll be matched against other old players that have been facerolling in a group since forever). The underhive will improve greatly in terms of not seeing trial mechs, being mostly non-trial mechs that people actually bought, though we'll have a new under-underhive that is nothing but stock clan mechs and trials overheating left and right.

This would greatly amuse the Space Pope.

Edited by The True Space Pope, 06 January 2015 - 01:06 PM.

[Blakkstar]

I don't doubt that this is an unfriendly game for newcomers, but I don't really know what OP expects. One rough night after playing for a week and you quit? *A week*? People can play thousands of games and not be an expert on all chassis, maps, and the meta.

Would you expect to win 50% of your games after a week jumping raw into League of Legends, Call of Duty, War Thunder, or any other online shooter?

That being said, PGI has no excuses for not providing better tutorials and background for new players. This is not an easy game for Battletech veterans, much less newcomers off the street. They have access to tons of lore as well as previous MW games that had far deeper tutorials. It shouldn't kill them to produce a couple videos and interactive guided missions to help out players.

[lshtaria]

Blakkstar, on 06 January 2015 - 01:05 PM, said:

I don't doubt that this is an unfriendly game for newcomers, but I don't really know what OP expects. One rough night after playing for a week and you quit? *A week*? People can play thousands of games and not be an expert on all chassis, maps, and the meta.

Would you expect to win 50% of your games after a week jumping raw into League of Legends, Call of Duty, War Thunder, or any other online shooter?

That being said, PGI has no excuses for not providing better tutorials and background for new players. This is not an easy game for Battletech veterans, much less newcomers off the street. They have access to tons of lore as well as previous MW games that had far deeper tutorials. It shouldn't kill them to produce a couple videos and interactive guided missions to help out players.

I think the problem I find is how difficult the group queue is when you (or your friends) are very average at best. It's not necessarily PGI's fault because grouping up is always going to be advantageous for good players. It's just frustrating that I'm not really able to play with my friends and enjoy the game at the same time.

[Zerstorer Stallin]

How come a brand new player can see this yet its still an issues is only amazing. Good Post man.

[AlbannLaoch]

im sure when your friends got on and you launched your elo score was lower than the other team and your teammates which made you look even worse than you already were

[BleuDeath]

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.Daily.

[Obelus]

Good post OP and thanks for sharing.

My suggestion is to focus on the little things. If you're playing with your friends try to work on your teamwork. Take satisfaction from the good things you did together and laugh at the bad. Forget win/loss. It's nice to win but it's not everything. If I kill one mech in a match that I lose I'm okay. I did my part. If I kill two then awesome. To me I won.

Anyway good luck out there.

Edited by Obelus, 06 January 2015 - 04:45 PM.

[MechWarrior9376871]

You probably fell into ELO Hell. I have 3 accounts, 2 for events and experiments like joining units in CW.

My main account is always enjoyable to pug in. My secondary accounts have a lower ELO and are hell. I lose constantly even though I am always #1 or #2 in damage. Not sure why things are so different at low ELO but I can barely stand playing that account.

My advice would be to start over with a new account and make sure you play meta and carefully and win a lot. Or join a group with your existing account so you don't drop with terribads.

Edited by 911 Inside Job, 06 January 2015 - 04:52 PM.