94 replies to this topic

[WarZ]

Vandul, on 05 January 2015 - 11:00 AM, said:

They have committed to enhancing the new player experience. Public matches are 'supposed' to be matched by the ELO system, but with the advent of CW, the matchmaker is being forced to relax some of its matchmaking magic.

Dont give up, it gets better.

Ummm... No it doesnt. Once you clear the cadet levels, you enter various stages of elo hell. Goodness forbid you get good. Thats a whole nother level of elo hell in itself.

Matchmaking has been a horrible problem for this game since elo was installed.

Whats funny is the devs occassionally try to address the MM issues right ? Lets add in tonnage matching ... ooops people cried lets take it out. Lets add in class matching ... oops, no one wants to pilot the weaker mechs, so they "relax" / "open the release valves", and then class / tonnage matching is no longer a factor in matches. Yep, back to the old 5 assaults per team meandering around the battlefield. Lets establish firm elo brackets so elites cant farm noobs ... oops ! the elites cried so they relaxed the MM ranges so much, now you get elites in with cadets. They removed game mode choices to better consolidate the pool of players so the already strained MM would have a real chance at properly matching players ... OOOPS ! Reversed that too, because people whined. There have been more fixes that have been reversed than I can remember too. Those are just the ones off the top of my head.

In the end, the devs have tried to fix MM problems, THEN PROMPTLY REVERSED THE CHANGES SO WE ARE STUCK PLAYING WITH THE SAME PILE OF CRAP ISSUES WE HAVE HAD FROM THE BEGINNING.

Short story, they havent actually fixed or addressed anything over the years, cause they always reverse what they "fix".

The ONLY GOOD change that has stuck in all this time has been the recent addition of a solo only queue. But of course they do not do that for CW. They can only seem to half-ass anything.

Edit for typos.

Edited by WarZ, 06 January 2015 - 05:07 PM.

[beerandasmoke]

Solution is very simple. Group que is reduced to 4man teams or less. Any larger than go play CW. That way casuals have a fighting chance against a comp group dropping to farm. Yeah I know large groups are going to scream bloody murder but they have CW and private matches to compete against each other now. Make the group que more for casual friends wanting to play togther for a few friendly fun matches. You want hardcore mode than go play CW against the bigboys. If we want this game to continue to grow we need to retain these people that just like to play with friends casually. The writing is on the wall and its going to have to be done. Otherwise the only ones going to be left are large comp groups and solopugs.

[Xetelian]

2 Mans in pug queue is acceptable to me.

[Fate 6]

I've found that games are pretty evenly balanced. My friend who generally only hits about 100 damage (if he even gets that much) and I went out last night and did great when I was coaching him more than when we're in a bigger group. We only lost 2 games, and we won at least 5 or 6 if not more. Usually I think it's basically 50/50. Sometimes we have a bad streak.

What I'm saying is, overall it seems to match you pretty well. I think I win more than I lose (I could be wrong) and that's because when I play my best there aren't a lot of players that really seem to match up in PUG games. Sometimes you have back games and bad streaks. That's true of most competitive games. I know I've had plenty of loss streaks in LoL, and more than a few win streaks.

I do understand the frustration of playing against large groups though. Especially in CW, playing against an 8 or 12 man team can just be overwhelming and demoralizing. I would recommend you keep playing, because playing more games leads to more balanced games with matchmaking. I've definitely felt that in the resent few months it's been a lot better because of mech balance, and both teams have good and bad players. Many of my games will be even for a long time, at least until about 5 mechs are dead on each team. Sometimes you'll get wipes, but at least those are generally pretty quick and then you can move on to your next game.

I think CBills need to be more consistent between wins and losses. It does feel really bad when you get stomped and get nothing for it.

[CocoaJin]

The population is small, we all have to learn to have tougher skin when it comes to w/l and match making. Wipes will happen, more balanced matches will happen...it's the way it goes. Either we look past our own noses and suck it up a bit or we "*****" this game into the ground. Frankly, I love this game, so I'll take a little skin off my nose to keep here.

Edited by CocoaJin, 06 January 2015 - 07:15 PM.

[lshtaria]

beerandasmoke, on 06 January 2015 - 05:25 PM, said:

Solution is very simple. Group que is reduced to 4man teams or less. Any larger than go play CW. That way casuals have a fighting chance against a comp group dropping to farm. Yeah I know large groups are going to scream bloody murder but they have CW and private matches to compete against each other now. Make the group que more for casual friends wanting to play togther for a few friendly fun matches. You want hardcore mode than go play CW against the bigboys. If we want this game to continue to grow we need to retain these people that just like to play with friends casually. The writing is on the wall and its going to have to be done. Otherwise the only ones going to be left are large comp groups and solopugs.

You know what, that's one of the best suggestions I've heard for a long while.

Have a beer and a smoke on me.

[CocoaJin]

beerandasmoke, on 06 January 2015 - 05:25 PM, said:

Solution is very simple. Group que is reduced to 4man teams or less. Any larger than go play CW. That way casuals have a fighting chance against a comp group dropping to farm. Yeah I know large groups are going to scream bloody murder but they have CW and private matches to compete against each other now. Make the group que more for casual friends wanting to play togther for a few friendly fun matches. You want hardcore mode than go play CW against the bigboys. If we want this game to continue to grow we need to retain these people that just like to play with friends casually. The writing is on the wall and its going to have to be done. Otherwise the only ones going to be left are large comp groups and solopugs.

Make it three or less and I'm onboard. The whole myth about small groups in PuG drops be the main cause of roll stomps seems more or less disproved, but if groups allowed into PuG drops are too big, the ugly head of blame will rise again. If four mechs is a Lance, then they belong in CW.

[Zergling]

I've had a similar experience trying to play with a friend lately; we eventually gave up playing together, and decided to solo queue, it was just that stupidly frustrating.

I honestly think that 2 man groups should be allowed to drop into the solo queue; two players working together won't have a significant effect on the battle.

3 and 4 player groups shouldn't be forced to fight 8-12 player groups either; they should be queued with other similarly sized groups.

[CocoaJin]

Zergling, on 06 January 2015 - 10:52 PM, said:

3 and 4 player groups shouldn't be forced to fight 8-12 player groups either; they should be queued with other similarly sized groups.

When game population allows...in the meantime they have to go either Group or solo. More than three should certainly go group.

[Ace Selin]

LOL, have no problems with my small group in group queue and we don't even use TeamSpeak. Most hard-core teams
are few and far and even more so since CW started. Group queue same happens as solo queue, win some lose some (often embarrassing either way).
So changing PUG / solo queue or group queue is not solution. Join a clan etc and play with friends and larger community, but you will see not much will change, you still lose / win in streaks.

[Onyx]

beerandasmoke, on 06 January 2015 - 05:25 PM, said:

Solution is very simple. Group que is reduced to 4man teams or less. Any larger than go play CW. That way casuals have a fighting chance against a comp group dropping to farm. Yeah I know large groups are going to scream bloody murder but they have CW and private matches to compete against each other now. Make the group que more for casual friends wanting to play togther for a few friendly fun matches. You want hardcore mode than go play CW against the bigboys. If we want this game to continue to grow we need to retain these people that just like to play with friends casually. The writing is on the wall and its going to have to be done. Otherwise the only ones going to be left are large comp groups and solopugs.

I disagree. As a preface, I stopped playing this game about 1.5 years ago (sometime after ECM was nerfed a little but just after LRMs were basically one-salvo coring people and poptarting was just starting to become a thing. By the way, nice to see poptarting is basically gone now PGI). For reference, this was back when 8v8 games still existed and group queues were allowed into the random pug.

4 people had way, way too much control over the game back then. It's no wonder to see why, it was literally half of your or the enemy team acting in a coordinated or semi-coordinated fashion (sometimes no coordination, you just wanted to play with friends).

Using my experience in other games like War Thunder or World of Tanks, unless you were one of the best players in the game, you as a group of 3 people could not exercise much influence over the course of a battle. It was possible, but you had to be really good for it to start consistently impacting game after game.

Now, while MWO has 12v12 games, it's not a 15v15 like WoT is. In WoT, a group of 3 (the maximum) represents only 20% of the team's population, whereas 4 people in MWO represents ~33% of the team's population. Back when I played last, I actually did this, and we won a considerable amount of the time due to having half of my team as very coordinated whereas the entire enemy team likely was not.

Because of this and the nature of how high the lethality can be in MWO (for people who don't suck at brawling like I do, otherwise it tends to not have a high lethality) I think it's fair to say that allowing four people to drop into random queues is way, way too much. 3 people is probably also too much, but it's far more reasonable at 25% than 4.

I'd honestly only feel comfortable with the devs starting out closer to 2 and then seeing if the game can handle 3 in public queues.

But right now, I came back, and solo-queueing is fun, but the one friend I came back with I can't really play with for the same reason that this thread was brought up. And I hate it. I actually felt comfortable enough not only coming back, but dropping a fairly sizeable chunk of change only to find that I really can't group queue because people are allowed to drop in 6 or 8 man groups and it's maddening and sickening. I can't even play the game with friends without being forced to play against even more players with considerably more friends on their side than I have on mine. It's made especially ironic and sad when the person I do play with I don't have any sort of extra coordination with because we don't use voice comms, we just play together and find ways to be individually better.

And this really, truly needs to be fixed. The game should definitely cap group queues in random matches down to some 2, maybe 3 people, but no higher. Any high-coordination group operations should be kept to its own separate section.

I actually enjoy the game to come back after a year, but this is something that will stifle my enjoyment relatively quickly. Group queues are impossible, solo queues could use some easing on the ELO system but is otherwise fine in that regard.

[Madman7]

Has the game improved any since? I use to play, but got tired of it. Wanted to come back, but not sure if I want to go through the pain of downloading again....

[oldradagast]

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.)

Um, no.

ELO is not great, but the OP said he was tired of being run through a shredder by 12-mans. CW is nothing but 12-mans, cannon fodder, and a few small groups (which are barely above cannon fodder.)

The "horror" of ELO isn't there, which means "anything goes." I don't see how anyone can think this makes for a more balanced play experience. "If you don't like unbalanced games, you should try the mode where there's no attempt to balance anything! That mode where everyone complains about being rolled before leaving forever!"

To the OP, stay out of CW unless you're part of a large unit and like rolls since that's what that format is about.

[CptGier]

Yeah, this game has the worst NPE of any game ever. And yeah, you play solo and get stomped cuz pugs suck, then you get into a 2 man with a budy and get stomped cuz now its premades everywhere.....you get into a 4 man with a clan and get 8 mans, you get an 8 man and run into a 12 man...you get in a 12 man and run into LORDS.....

[TLBFestus]

Vandul, on 05 January 2015 - 11:00 AM, said:

They have committed to enhancing the new player experience. Public matches are 'supposed' to be matched by the ELO system, but with the advent of CW, the matchmaker is being forced to relax some of its matchmaking magic.

Dont give up, it gets better.

Vandul, on 05 January 2015 - 11:00 AM, said:

They have committed to enhancing the new player experience. Public matches are 'supposed' to be matched by the ELO system, but with the advent of CW, the matchmaker is being forced to relax some of its matchmaking magic.

Dont give up, it gets better.

This is how much work PGI has to do to "enhance" the New Player Experience;




THIS is how much they've accomplished;





Seriously,.....they've been claiming to be working on this almost as long as they claimed to be "working" on Community Warfare.

While they have improved significantly(if you are a White Knight)/modestly(if you aren't) in some areas since the IGP break, survived the TRANSVERSE clusterpluck, I'm starting to feel that they are falling back into old habits again;

-Lots of monetization
-Less progress on areas of the game in dire need of addressing.

I'm an original Founder, who was/is a huge fan of this game, but in all that time they still haven't convinced me to crack open my wallet for them again. In the intervening time I have spent over a grand on other games. Some were risky and turned out to be horrible purchases, but I still spent money on them instead of MWO.

I'll take a risk on something, but I won't be suckered twice by the same game. A significant revamp of the NPE is vital to improving this game. As it stands now, going on STEAM will be a waste of time and smack of desperation. It souolnd like they are hoping to overcome their problems via volume rather than quality.

But hold it,.....that was PGIs rep back in the pre-MWO days wasn't it?

[ZenFool]

The next iteration of CW will be scouting missions, designed for groups of up to four people. Sounds like it was made for you and your buddies.

As for CW being better or worse than group queue, its so much better. You can easily have four 12-0 matches in a row playing solo or group. In CW that becomes something like 48-25. You at least get the satisfaction of taking out their wounded mechs as they try to kill you.

[Madman7]

Thanks for the feedback all.. I will hold off on downloading again. Does not sound like it is any better then when I played it a year ago.

[Jiang Wei]

They could have avoided many of the matchmaker issues if they had stuck with 8vs8. But hey... not everyone is so well endowed with common sense....

[Troutmonkey]

Jiang Wei, on 08 September 2015 - 06:15 AM, said:

They could have avoided many of the matchmaker issues if they had stuck with 8vs8. But hey... not everyone is so well endowed with common sense....

What's with all the Necro'd threads lately? Been like 4 or 5 this week...
Granted this issue is still relevant, especially with the announcement of group queue possibly changing.

[SkyHammyr]

Yeah, there's been some necro-ing happening lately.
That's fine, though, I hope the OP decides to come back around on the 22nd and have a gander at the new Tutorial. That'll help one of his issues.

For the other, Group Queue issues been debated a lot on other threads. I guess we'll see what comes out of it.