32 replies to this topic

[TheArisen]

I'm starting this thread more to try and get people sharing ideas in a single place. Hopefully some good ideas can be hashed out.

This is for group or pug que.

Personally, my favorite matches are the ones that are hard fought. I'd think most players prefer these games to being on either side of a stomp.

Discuss!

[Mcgral18]

A proper tutorial to help the new players getting thrown in with veterans, to help avoid them doing an incredibly silly move and dying with less than 100 damage might help.


Or stop those players from playing with veterans...

[Jacobei]

TheArisen, on 18 April 2015 - 11:05 AM, said:

I'm starting this thread more to try and get people sharing ideas in a single place. Hopefully some good ideas can be hashed out.

This is for group or pug que.

Personally, my favorite matches are the ones that are hard fought. I'd think most players prefer these games to being on either side of a stomp.

Discuss!

I say more themed games. And calls to war - where you list your preferred top 2-3 mechs and the game picks to match.

CW could also be better if offence and defence were picked. Premades can attack which is the point and pugs can defend which also would be true to lore. Give pugs a handicap with turrets to make it more difficult for premades. (I don't premade or like the idea of handicap npc to make it harder for them) But I just don't think pug vs premade in CW is any fun.. There is no competition even if pug communicates. Its a stomp feast X4

Edited by Jacobei, 18 April 2015 - 11:20 AM.

[Rampancy]

Closer-ELO matches lead to more stomps, because in a perfectly evenly matched game, once one side gets an advantage it snowballs from there.

The best you can hope for is smaller player matches (the 4v4 and 8v8 that are coming) with equally good carriers on both side.

[TheArisen]

RampancyTW, on 18 April 2015 - 11:31 AM, said:

Closer-ELO matches lead to more stomps, because in a perfectly evenly matched game, once one side gets an advantage it snowballs from there.

The best you can hope for is smaller player matches (the 4v4 and 8v8 that are coming) with equally good carriers on both side.

I agree to an extent. Until the advantage gets substantial its not finished. I've seen more than a couple matches come back from 3-4 down.

[TheArisen]

Any thoughts on alternatives to ELO?

[sycocys]

1. Communication - text or using comms
2. Use a different strategy than just going for the center point of the map.

Those are the two driving issues that lead to stomps. Terrible coordination and this lazy charge to the worst places on the map to fight it out in -generally followed by 8-10 of your teammates not following through on the charge because their paint gets scratched.

TheArisen, on 18 April 2015 - 12:00 PM, said:

Any thoughts on alternatives to ELO?

Yes, go back to the random matchmaker. The matches were wildly more fun.

Edited by sycocys, 18 April 2015 - 12:03 PM.

[Torgun]

If the matchmaker would stop putting 2-3 trial mechs with fresh newbs in one team while the other don't get any, it would be a start

[Mudhutwarrior]

If you cannot stop tryhards you cannot stop stomps. Perfect example this weekend. With all the hardcores in CW for the battle solo play has been really the best it has been in a long time. All of a sudden it went bad. pretty much every team i dropped with was being slaughtered in minutes by precision operators no mistakes made, only kills.

I asked in chat and the answer was cease fire in progress in cw.

You have a class of players far above anything in solo so when they decide its time to farm the stomps begin. No way to avoid that and honestly now I understand that most often even having voip makes no difference to the outcome. Solo players are lose and make mistakes. No avoiding that.

Come up against hardened surgeons and your screwed.

[Alistair Winter]

Here's my solution:

• Stop 12v12 on tiny maps. Allow 8v8 matches on smaller maps, 12v12 on big maps.
  
• Spread out bases in Conquest. Look at how big Alpine is, look at where the bases are positioned.
  
• Spread out spawn positions a lot more to increase the chance of early engagements, before both teams have formed deathballs. In Skirmish mode, the closest enemy lance should drop closer than the closest allied lance.
  
• Increase TTK, making it less likely that one team loses 2-4 mechs in the first 2 minutes.

But it's pretty hard to fix something like this, once it's broken. For example, if you put the 5 bases on Conquest all along the borders of the map, then it's probably physically impossible for a Dire Wolf to have a real impact on most matches, because they're going to get left behind and spend most of the match just slowly wandering towards the action. This comes down to a major flaw with the "stand on squares" game mode, which is a fundamentally bad game mode, in my opinion.

[Clint Steel]

Not all stomps are stomps either. We need the ability to see how hurt the mechs are on the other team, to judge how close the matches really are.

If you are a good player you will play as a front line mech until you are hurt then fall back, so a good team might have spread damage across all the Mechs on the team, and just never hit that tipping point, where they all start dieing.

[Jman5]

One thing that gives me some cause for optimism is that PGI is finally looking into splitting Solo and Group Elo. This means that guys from high performing teams wont occasionally drop into solo queue and be treated like the next Messiah. I think part of the problem is these players are expected to carry hard, and they normally do. However when they occasionally flop, the entire team crashes and burns. For example in my last game we had a landslide victory 12-1. Part of the problem is that their best player disconnected at the start of the match. Not only were they down a Heavy meta mech, they likely lost their highest Elo player.


group queue I think is hopeless unless it gets a big population boost. Otherwise I don't think there is anything you can do to improve that.

[El Bandito]

This game needs a MMR tracker, as an add-on. Then we can REALLY complain.

[Smag]

The maps aren't balanced. You can't avoid stomping through an ELO-based matchmaker with the maps and spawns the way they are.

It happens. It's okay.

[TheArisen]

I'd like to dissuade ppl from thinking this is a whine thread or something. This is more about how can we get the game more balanced to have matches end by a smaller margin. 12-2, etc, is pretty common. I think it should be a little bit more on the few and far between side of things.

[Impossible Wasabi]

Sometimes the Space Pope has considered that stopping people from dropping into the normal group queue with more than 6 players would help. By this he doesn't mean that big groups shouldn't be able to drop, but he thinks it might be beneficial to separate them from the smaller groups. Perhaps by adding a 8-12 player group drop.

It isn't really too much fun to be with or against a 8-12 man in a pug match, at least not with the limited population the game has. Usually, whoever rolls deep has to pretty much try to lose in order for the random puggers to have a chance.

Groups of 4-6 players is enough to dominate, but it can also leave some chance of things not going exactly according to plan.

Edited by The True Space Pope, 18 April 2015 - 11:15 PM.

[Davers]

There are 'stomps' in every single game ever invented. Why do people think MWO will be able to do what no other company/franchize/sports team in history has accomplished?

Edited by Davers, 18 April 2015 - 11:14 PM.

[Kiiyor]

I think the venerable Mr Winter has the right idea.

Over the course of my SCIENCE, I found that games were much, much closer when they were 8v8. The average was around 8-5, whereas now it's around 12-3. I think it's because on smaller maps the difference in firepower is far more telling. Whichever team has more guns pointing at the other team at first contact is almost always the winner.

I think caustic and river City should be 8v8. Maybe Frozen too.

[Sandersson Jankins]

The most effective way to prevent stomping for individual players is knowledge and clever thinking.

A big problem people face (not me, almost never see this in FRR in my timeslot) is large groups against PUGs. Easy way to prevent this from happening is observing the plant queues closely. You see an enemy's queue increase 8-12 players at a time? Might wanna avoid that planet unless you're willing to fight them. Likely with a PUG team.

In addition to this, if you are able, but unwilling to attempt to lead a team, you have no leg to stand on, in my opinion. If you are unable, or vastly hindered by circumstance or personality, that is one thing. But if you are simply too complacent to even type out commands, a minimal effort, the fault of a loss also lies with you.

Sometimes you'll get lucky and have a small or large premade group with you calling commands. Sometimes you'll get lucky and have some crazy fool herd the PUGs around (these crazy fools exist, I'm one of them often). But if you DON'T get lucky, you gotta step up.

Now, the first suggestion is not suitable for every player to use. In order to benefit ALL solo/pug/new CS players, changes must be made to the game. I hope the changes are good; but I am more concerned with IMMEDIATE results that the PLAYERS can make to improve the game.

MWO's success is our responsibility too.

[One Medic Army]

We should really separate this into 3 discussions:

12v12 PUG queue (matchmaking, no groups)

12v12 group queue (less effective matchmaking, groups of 2-10)

CW (no matchmaking, lots of 12man vs group action)