I'm perfectly happy joining and following a group, but I'm not at all interested in getting bogged down with following someone elses' schedule, especially if it means expecting me to show up for practice every week on a workday morning due to timezone limitations.
During Beta 1, I had a great old time dropping with all the various units for Kurita. I tried joining one of them, and that lasted a week, because they just weren't on the same page as I was. In fact, none of them ran things in a way I was comfortable with but one, and they upped and died. Instead, I was happy with just showing up during the peak period of US friday night (Japan Saturday Morning), going onto the Kurita Teamspeak, and hanging out in the LFG until someone needed their ranks filled out. Of course, it seems like none of the Kurita units are actively using the TS channel anymore - or at least, never when I'm on, so I can't do things the way I used to.
I've been told that I "Should make my own unit or shut up", but no, the responsibility of showing up every game and managing a hodgepodge of players with their internet machismo squabbles? Yeah, no thanks. That's just worse than joining a unit.
I just want a generic faction cue for the pugs. If there was one thing that playing as a 12 man that drove me up the wall, it was the fact that between every.single.drop, some guy had to go eat lunch, put their kids to bed, or something like that, meaning that you're left hanging with 11 players hoping desperately that there'll be the one pug that shows up so you can start to attack that world.
Right there, That's why we need pugs. However, it needs to be more automated, Instead of pugs just dropping somewhere and hoping for an opponent, a matchmaker needs to be installed so that pugs and small units (Lance or smaller) are assigned to a world automatically, and in order to pick which world you drop on, you must drop as at least a 5-man or larger unit. Further, the Match-maker would be best off warning any 12-man groups or large units when a world is being defended by a hodgepodge of pugs against 12-man units.
Further, the matchmaker can throw the glut of pugs against each other, especially on worlds that aren't actively being fought over, making the game more dynamic, and reducing the threat that they face a full 12-man.
Another option? Make 4-man games another possibility. Further divide up the planet from 15 slots to 45. Make a 4 on 4 match worth one slot. and a 12-on-12 worth 3. It's bound to make matches much easier to get, make starting a group easier to do, and small units more likely to get a chance to participate. The increased ease of making a group means that more players will try making a group, means the player base increases.
...but shunning pugs and lance-sized groups? There already is a mode for 12-on-12 units, called Private Matches. If CW is changed to only being able to support 12-man groups? it won't be a slow death. It will be almost instant, No pugs to farm means that even 12-mans will need to cross their fingers and hope to hell another 12-man, that JUST SO HAPPENS to be on a shared border, appears. This, of course, being only the proportion of 12-mans who chose to play CW, and not the lions share who just drop in the public cue because they don't give a rats' ass about CW.
Edited by ice trey, 10 August 2015 - 07:27 AM.
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