I think 12 man groups are fine to have in the game but from the perspectives of both parties a better match making system could really go the extra mile. While people are pointing out 12 mans are less than 1% it's not particularly just 12 mans but 8+ groups vs full pugs with likely not even a single pair (based on unit tags). I think i'll start by saying both sides make very excellent points, and catering to either side solely doesn't seam like a viable answer, a nice compromise would be very ideal for both player bases. For the sake of transparency, while i'll try to be as objective and unbiased as possible I am generally a solo player who will CW during events or weekend occasions, take that as you will but please don't discredit my post as catering to either party without at least reading it in it's entirety.
Team work in this game is more important than anything, no matter how good you are or optimized your build is, if you do not work as a team efficiently you lost the game before it started. You as an individual in such a large group mean absolutely nothing, in the current meta of the game with a narrow long hallway to walk across you'll likely be cored or destroyed in a few seconds by a single alphas, even as an assault (those focused alphas). The only way to combat dying one by one to huge focused bursts and coordinated flanks are coordinated efforts to counter these tactics and to counter attack as a group as well. this statement is very true on the IS side of CW also, when you see no one is in the same unit if the opposing side isn't a full pub you've likely lost the game on the loading screen. This is what's frustrating to the newer players and often myself included, the utter lack of control you have on the match outcome.
It's not the likelihood of running into complete 12 man premades that is discouraging, it's being paired with a much more disorganized and non-optimal cooperative team vs even small groups on the other team. The times I was on the upper hand team with a 8+ premade vs a mostly pub wasn't very engaging or fun, you just had a quick win and the fun ended quickly.
For solo players even if you try to communicate or work as a team its difficult, some people might be afk or watching a stream, others don't care for command, others are in trial mechs and don't even have firing groups optimized. In these common situations your personal input is very limited, in a pug vs pug scenario you have more input on your individual skill since the other team will be likely be less coordinated and less synergistic or optimized in builds.
It's not losing that upsets myself or others, it's losing so hard it's a painful and inputless situation, a similar feeling to this occurs if you've played a game such as Marvel vs Capcom when you are comboed in a corner, you don't even get to play the game but watch your attacker input commands while you watch yourself slowly die. When losing but you get to say, hey that was pretty close and a good fight then it's still fun and perhaps you'll work that much harder to win next time. Getting spawn camped and killing maybe 1 or 2 mechs with absolutely no control over organization is very demoralizing and leaves the player feeling absolutely helpless, one asks themselves, how could I improve the situation other than simply never playing as a solo again. Given the ultimatum to quit, relive the nightmare of helplessness in team cooperation or find a group somehow will little knowlege of the game or ways to find other players you can see why the player base avoids CW or leaves the game. The games in CW that I found fun even when i lost usually had a 3 or 4 man IS group or a rare occasion of IS pilots that happened to use coms and work together, however the likely hood this happens is low. Perhaps in a 4v4 scout mode having 1/2 of your team being non cohesive is still manageable to add something to the team, but in a 12 man game, while you likely aren't the best player on your team, if you don't have any close team work it will feel like you are alone, and 1 or 2 people make much less of an impact on a 12 man scenario.
I'm not asking for 12 man to die, but perhaps the match maker being slightly more selective and perhaps putting at least a 4 man group or multiple smaller groups preference against larger groups, or at least a small group on each team would go a long ways. With just a small group, the pugs that want to work together have small leading unit to follow and back bone for team work.
This isn't even addressing the other problems with match making indirectly being the imbalance of mech variants ( i know it's going to be fixed or better soon) that cause less informed or non meta players, perhaps in trials to give your team a disadvantage, sometimes a heavy heavy disadvantage. Seeing Timberwolves, storm crows and dire wolves every game in large pairs gets rather boring. Top this with simple linear maps with little room to flank or room for basic tactics, you are playing just a narrow passage game of skirmish with gates, a rather poorly designed end game mode. Also, as said before the ability to find players and make friends is incredibly difficult, with a small base already the game feels liek a ghost town in terms of chat, seldomly you see people talk in game, but with no chat room menus or way to contact anyone outside of a game it's very difficult to find people to play or group with. Chat disappears in game and the game mechanics as well as UI isolate users unless they are devoutly motivated to find others. Faction chat is almost always barren, I've only talked to a person directly once in Steiner faction chat with us both replying several minutes apart in between games as if we were using email and I usually type things such as "Hi" or "Anyone here, group maybe?" with no response (perhaps I was very unlucky or poorly timed but this has been my first hand experience of the faction chat). Lack of tutorials and any real idea of what to do was boggling for myself alone who played this game in solo que for a few months prior, it took several games to even recognize all of the generator placements and internalize the main map objectives, I can't imagine how daunting this is for new players. For those with rewards and C-bill grind efficiency, unless you are stomping quickly, it's just much more time efficient and consistent to run solo que or a small group for the play mode to gain more rewards (C-bills and XP) per hour. Unless a CW event (like the mc for invasion and counter attack weekend) is occurring it makes no sense from the point of view of time to reward calculations to play CW. Encouraging friends outside of the game to play is very hard with mechanics such as the very grind mech skill trees and very expensive mech option. Even if you explain to them the 3 mech variant situation and which mechs are bad they want to play for fun themselves, if they blow their cadet C-bills on a mech they end up hating you can be assured they will quit. Needing to grind for weeks to months to even compete in CW (its less stressful when you only need 1 good mech for solo que) isn't engaging and feels like a huge entry wall that prevents any players I've tried to recommend this game to. If the mechs were allowed to be elited with a single variant but required 3 for the master module and if modules were less expensive, at least the important ones(playing without radar deprivation is night and day frustrating) would help the barrier of entry. A C-bill farming boost for CW over solo que might help people focus on that to get geared faster and help with the que.
In summary / conclusion, perhaps some kind of compromise can be made. In addition to better incentives/rewards to CW, just slightly more selective even match making of each team having a group of some kind (even if its a 3 or 4 man group) would help lots! Making the game all pubs vs pubs all the time solo que would still find meta problems and be boring. With nothing to ever stride for in terms of competition it feels like grinding all c-bills for gear for that end game arena of 12 man team matches on the competitive edge would really fade away, not the mention losing the option to play with friends. However, lop sided asymmetric match making causing many players to experience not just loses, but dying on the drop deck and losing so hard they can't even kill more than a few mechs will kill the main player base of this game. If solo que only was enabled for cw to opt out of groups it would undoubtedly harm the que time and population for cw even for groups so they need the pugs, but if things keep getting worse people will just leave the game and the same problem will happen, except they wouldn't be part of the MWO player base. You aren't wrong when you say this is a team game, and you make many great points hard core MWO players on a rich rewarding system of competing against better players or playing among friends, but being so rigid and condescending to mock and laugh in people's faces for legitimate complaints and calling them cry babies is not only a red herring for ignoring the problem, but also ad homiem for attacking that person's character to discredit them and not attacking their ideas. Also please try to under stand the indirect systems as mentioned previously that cause this kind of miscommunication and problems with the base community in the first place and why people feel so frustrated. Also calling the very dedicated, hardcore elite or dedicated group members multi account trolls and pub smashing conquers wishing to keep their iron throne with the dev's attention locked only to them seams rather far fetched and disrespectful to them. They likely want the game to be as successful and fun as everyone else, especially when they zealously have a passion for this game and come to the forums to strong voice their opinions trying to improve the game (at least from their point of view).
Thank you for reading this post in advanced, any constructive criticism would be appreciated. Pardon for the possible confusion or jumbling of topics but this post was constructed at the speed of thought to key stroke.
Edited by Tycon, 27 June 2015 - 05:00 AM.
12
Joseph Mallan, on 27 June 2015 - 03:47 AM, said:
