15 replies to this topic

[Muffinator]

Hey all,

Has anything been said about plans to address wait times lately? I'm sitting here with 2 mates I encouraged to play again and it took us more than 5 minutes to get into a game. This is just not acceptable - I would waaay rather have more unbalanced games (whether weight or ELO) and not have to wait minutes at a time for games (or 10 minutes + for CW games).

[Karl Streiger]

better to have a bad balanced game in an instant - rather than a bad balanced game after 5min

OK although your friends quitting is not a direct problem of the game.

CW needs collective queues

Edited by Karl Streiger, 20 March 2015 - 03:03 AM.

[627]

let me guess, you tried with 3 heavy mechs?

[Otto Cannon]

Your friends quitting is making the wait time for a game longer. Vicious circle.

[Raggedyman]

Muffinator, on 20 March 2015 - 03:00 AM, said:

Hey all,

Has anything been said about plans to address wait times lately? I'm sitting here with 2 mates I encouraged to play again and it took us more than 5 minutes to get into a game. This is just not acceptable - I would waaay rather have more unbalanced games (whether weight or ELO) and not have to wait minutes at a time for games (or 10 minutes + for CW games).

an unbalanced/quick queue would help, but it would also split the players so increase time on the balanced queue even further so would be negative in the long run.

[Cola]

Makes you wonder how may people play this game, the match maker itself can only account for so much of the equation.

[Scyther]

It may be a time-of-day or a weight class issue. I play some matches during the daytime (Eastern time), mostly during the evening. These are times you can assume most of North and South America have players awake and gaming. I *rarely* wait more than 2 minutes to join a match, usually around 1 minute to 'find' the match and 1 minute while it map-loads etc.

As for weight-class, hover your mouse over the the 'Play Now' button and check the weight class distribution. If it says 'Heavy - 40%" or higher, then yeah, playing in a heavy is a going to cause a long wait. Switch to a less popular weight class.

(Note: as a comparison, MWO is only slightly slower at finding matches (for me) than World of Tanks - which likely has 3x the playerbase or more (per server))

Edited by MadBadger, 20 March 2015 - 05:08 AM.

[Zeusus]

Cola, on 20 March 2015 - 05:02 AM, said:

Makes you wonder how may people play this game, the match maker itself can only account for so much of the equation.

I feel its more a result of everyone in heavies. Like it sits there looking for groups to fit the 4/3 rule and that takes a while before it gives up.

When I take heavy or assault queue is slow, take light/med and I complain I get into matches too fast (because I assume it'll be slow and walk away).

I am in the NA timezone so that certainly helps too.

TLDR, take heavies and assault and you will have longer queue times.

[Vandul]

Go play Titanfail. We will be here waiting when you come back.

[Muffinator]

627, on 20 March 2015 - 03:02 AM, said:

let me guess, you tried with 3 heavy mechs?

No, I deliberately took a medium because they were in a heavy and an assault. That aside, like I said I'd rather they drop this silly weight class balancing and let me play twice as many games instead.

MadBadger, on 20 March 2015 - 05:06 AM, said:

It may be a time-of-day or a weight class issue. I play some matches during the daytime (Eastern time), mostly during the evening. These are times you can assume most of North and South America have players awake and gaming. I *rarely* wait more than 2 minutes to join a match, usually around 1 minute to 'find' the match and 1 minute while it map-loads etc.

As for weight-class, hover your mouse over the the 'Play Now' button and check the weight class distribution. If it says 'Heavy - 40%" or higher, then yeah, playing in a heavy is a going to cause a long wait. Switch to a less popular weight class.

(Note: as a comparison, MWO is only slightly slower at finding matches (for me) than World of Tanks - which likely has 3x the playerbase or more (per server))

Have you found the weight class display shows as 0% for all classes when dropping as a group lately? I have only been able to use it when dropping solo.

Zeusus, on 20 March 2015 - 05:21 AM, said:

I feel its more a result of everyone in heavies. Like it sits there looking for groups to fit the 4/3 rule and that takes a while before it gives up.

When I take heavy or assault queue is slow, take light/med and I complain I get into matches too fast (because I assume it'll be slow and walk away).

I am in the NA timezone so that certainly helps too.

TLDR, take heavies and assault and you will have longer queue times.

Surely though we all have a right to actually use the mechs we paid a ton of money for without having to also wait for ages because we want to use them?

[AThousandD]

Muffinator, on 20 March 2015 - 05:58 AM, said:

Surely though we all have a right to actually use the mechs we paid a ton of money for without having to also wait for ages because we want to use them?

And who says you don't have the right to actually use the mechs you paid a ton of money for? You do. But you have to take into account that if everyone wants to play a heavy at the same time, the matchmaker will struggle with finding a game to accommodate everyone.

Just because you bought an extremely fast racing bike doesn't mean you can expect to go out on public roads and have the road all to yourself.

[Paigan]

And if they make more unbalanced matchmaking up will go the rants about how "broken" matchmaking is and that it gets worse and worse and people quitting because of it.

Same with map selection or europe servers.

Customers tend to demand the impossible (ideally for free). My bet is they already put very much thought into achieving a well balanced solution (and nothing is perfect).


I would, however, agree upon loosening the weigth restrictions. Maybe not completely remove it but something like 4-6 per weight class. That would surely give the MM a lot of space to fill gaps.

Edited by Paigan, 20 March 2015 - 06:10 AM.

[John1352]

Trying to enforce 3/3/3/3 is ridiculous and is only serving to make players vastly underestimate the amount of players PUGing and then thinking that MWO is a ghost town.

[Muffinator]

AThousandD, on 20 March 2015 - 06:05 AM, said:

And who says you don't have the right to actually use the mechs you paid a ton of money for? You do. But you have to take into account that if everyone wants to play a heavy at the same time, the matchmaker will struggle with finding a game to accommodate everyone.

Just because you bought an extremely fast racing bike doesn't mean you can expect to go out on public roads and have the road all to yourself.

That is not at all a good analogy here

[Zeusus]

Muffinator, on 20 March 2015 - 05:58 AM, said:

Surely though we all have a right to actually use the mechs we paid a ton of money for without having to also wait for ages because we want to use them?

Yes you do. You only have to a wait at most a few minutes. Hardly ages. you are playing with buddies, have a conversation.

Lets put things in perspective. The few times I've played dota the wait times was >3min and that game has millions of players. MWO is niche, so 5 minutes (which is on the high end for a wait time) isn't all that bad.

And even if they got rid of 4x3 you'd get no where near "twice as many games". Might save a minute of searching. If you can't talk with your buddies for an extra minute are they really 'buddies'?

[Gyrok]

Muffinator, on 20 March 2015 - 03:00 AM, said:

Hey all,

Has anything been said about plans to address wait times lately? I'm sitting here with 2 mates I encouraged to play again and it took us more than 5 minutes to get into a game. This is just not acceptable - I would waaay rather have more unbalanced games (whether weight or ELO) and not have to wait minutes at a time for games (or 10 minutes + for CW games).

If your friends are quitting after the wait for CW matches they will be in for a good 15-30 minutes typically; then, truthfully, they are probably the "trophy for showing up" crowd and would probably not contribute to your experience the way that people who understand the game and how it works would...