s3nate, on 28 January 2015 - 07:25 PM, said:
Is this a random occurrence that evens out over time ? I've spent the last CW games with pugs facing large organized groups. How is that fun ? we got murdered every time.
When they rolled CW out, PGI plainly stated that it was a "hardcore" mode without Elo matchmaking that favored premade teams and that it would be hard on PUGs. In the weeks since CW rolled out, a lot of PUGs have tried it and decided it wasn't fun while a handful of PUGs enjoyed it and still do. Based on how CW was designed and what PGI said it was, this was to be expected.
Many have asked why PGI would design a game mode and separate queue for such a small slice of the MWO playerbase. I'm guessing that they were hoping that there would be a huge influx of players joining established Units and forming new ones. The problem with that assumption is the many reasons why most MWO players won't or can't join Units didn't miraculously disappear with the appearance of CW, so while there was an initial surge in Unit recruitment when CW showed up, the vast majority of MWO players are still unaffiliated and will continue to be so.
Since this fact was established, several ideas on how to get PUGs to play CW have come up and some are being implemented. One of these is in-game VOIP. While it would certainly help, it can't make up for the fact that the competitive Units have trained together for months so they know each others moves; or that they've memorized the main features of all the maps and have code names for them so they don't need to use Battle Grid coordinates; or that their 'mechs are not only fully mastered and moduled but their 'mechs and loadouts are preselected to work together as a coordinated team and compliment each others' strengths while making up for the weaknesses. On the PUG side, VOIP doesn't help at all if some of your teammates don't speak the same language or have VOIP muted.
Another suggestion has been a solo-only queue for CW. Unfortunately, this won't help much either. The reason the solo-only queue that currently exists works is because the big competitive premade groups can't reliably sync-drop into it. If there was a CW solo-only queue, the big competitive premades CAN reliably sync-drop into it because each team in a match is all the same Faction so there's
no chance their Unit's players will end up on opposing sides. The Natural Law of online gaming states that if something can be exploited, it will be. Not all premade teams aim for easy wins against random PUGs, but many do.
As each of these (and possibly other) bandaids are rolled out, I'm sure there will be a surge of PUGs who'll want to try the "new, improved" CW out despite the writing on the wall. Just as before, most will be disappointed but a few will stay.
I generally like to see a glass as half full rather than half empty, and there are some good things about CW. For one, it pulled a lot of top tier competitive premade teams out of the public group queue. Before CW, players would try to introduce their friends, partners, siblings or offspring to MWO by "sheparding" them in the group queue only to get curbstomped over and over again by well-trained competitive teams using maxed out coordinated 'mechs. When the comp Units are playing CW, this doesn't happen as much.
Hint: if you're a small casual group, drop into the public group queue in the hours just before the CW ceasefires.
As for me, I just enjoy the current solo-only queue for what it is: the perfect "filler" game for when you have 30 to 90 minutes to spare because, unlike other online games, a match is guaranteed to never last more than 15 minutes and most of the time they last only half that. My piloting and gunnery skills have greatly improved and when I feel up to it, I try to herd my PUG teammates to victory -and it works slightly more than half of the time.
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