59 replies to this topic

[SilentScreamer]

Spazamataz, on 27 August 2015 - 03:56 PM, said:

seriously? the problem is even effecting solo drops.. Piranha have more than enough staff and budget to give ppl what they have (often) payed for... a multiplayer 'social' mech game...

Getting "what they have paid for" will vary from player to player. Some want quality of connection, others a good even skill level match, some have just 15 minutes to play and want a quick drop.

Community Warefare "ceasefires" were changed from once a day to accomidate a global player base. Not everyone was happy with the change, but it was a step to show MWO was not going to be built around only the northwestern hemisphere. The cost to the playerbase was minimal, two extra timeouts during the day. Community Warefare queues aren't that busy most of the time anyway.

Servers at other locations were the next logical step. As a N. American player I have enjoyed a good connection since Beta. Since Euro and Oceanic servers came out and I got to experience what our neighbors across the oceans have experienced for YEARS...ugh....

I do not blame any player for choosing to play ONLY on the server closest to them. This comes at a higher cost than the CW changes. Player population is split, off-peak matches will be harder to find if you are not willing to play in any of the three regions. Even if you are willing, other players may still prefer just the server closest to them. Wait times will increase until the player population grows.

The only alternative I see would be for PGI to take away the ability to choose a server. You get the first match regardless of server, which means 2/3 rds of the time you will not be in your home region. I doubt many players would support a choice like that.

[Fabian Wrede]

well proves they don't have the population for 3 servers, ga,mem failed

[Darth Futuza]

SilentScreamer, on 28 August 2015 - 05:18 AM, said:

The only alternative I see would be for PGI to take away the ability to choose a server. You get the first match regardless of server, which means 2/3 rds of the time you will not be in your home region. I doubt many players would support a choice like that.

They could change the selection from "only use" to "preferred" server. That way If you select N.A as the preferred server and leave the other two unchecked, after a long enough wait time it will just begin searching for all.

[BattleBunny]

more feedback on the searchtime for this weekend

https://www.reddit.c...es_group_queue/

[BattleBunny]

Sunday my unit gets together and drops in a big group. we work on our communication and movement usually.

after three 10+ minute waits (all enabled) we decided to go to a lobby and do 4 vs 4 because we couldn't stand the spinning wheel anymore.

[Catalina Steiner]

@BattleBunny: I would condole with you but... telling your opponents that they were not worth the waiting time last night make me smile about the matchmaker. Maybe, maybe there is some justice in this world.

[BattleBunny]

I jokingly asked 'are you guys worth the wait?' , I never told anybody they weren't worth the wait.

[Rogue Jedi]

I have not ever had to wait more than 5 minutes for a match in the solo or group queue, but then again being UK based, and EU evening time being one of the "prime times" for MWO there could just be a larger population inline when I am.

I recommend making sure you have all game modes selected, if that does not help then go all servers as well.

[BattleBunny]

Rogue Jedi, on 31 August 2015 - 04:37 AM, said:

I recommend making sure you have all game modes selected, if that does not help then go all servers as well.

offcource. Everything is enabled.

[Dodger79]

BattleBunny, on 31 August 2015 - 04:51 AM, said:

offcource. Everything is enabled.

Problem is: even if YOU have all servers and game modes enabled but other don't that coul lead to underpopulated queues. Before the introduction of the regional servers every group was matchable, now every group queuing on only "their" regional server gets lost for the others.

[BattleBunny]

yeh I think that is definitely affecting it. And the fact there are no release valves. Earlier after 5 minutes it would just throw us into whatever match. Now it keeps looking for players or group sizes that aren't there.

I dropped solo with a few buddies in TS for a while today. That was fun. We decided to give the groups another go around 14:00 GMT on this Monday afternoon. We cancelled a 12 minute search and went back to solo. It really feels the group queue has been taken away from me and my friends.

Edit: I then joined a group of friends from another unit. They had good search-times they said.



I am currently looking at the spinning wheel while typing this. Its coming up on 10 minutes again. No match found yet.

edit: they cancelled after 12 minutes and threw me out haha



I then tried to form a random group with LFG. Maybe other PSR rated players would even it out. The searches remained very long. The other players in the group were not amused by their sudden rize in searchtimes.

Edited by BattleBunny, 31 August 2015 - 06:35 AM.

[DAEDALOS513]

What is going on with these search times.. ever since the patch that adjusted matchmaking, search times have been wavering from bad to TERRIBAD. Has PGI acknowledged this yet?

Edited by DAEDALOS513, 31 August 2015 - 08:03 AM.

[DAEDALOS513]

PGI I don't know what you are doing but this is bad. You have to do full scale PR and tell everyone you are acknowledging the problem and working on it.

[Cyberiad]

One way to solve the waiting problem for games with a small playerbase is to have 24/7 rolling battlefields. I think games like Planetside 2 have this (although I haven't played the game before). This way there's always a game that you can jump into without waiting at all for a matchmaker.

[TDN Dreadnaught]

I'm on vacation. I do not usually get home and start playing till some time around 7pm EST so at first I thought it may be a player base issue. However, over the last two days I've been coming and going, dropping at all hours of the day (first match was at 10am. Last one was around 3am) and the matches were long waits every time, with the exception of solo queue. And even some of those got tedious. Now, I was dropping in anything from a 2 man to an 8 man and all point in between. We never got to the 10 or 12 man mark where I expect to see some longer waits. And to answer the question, yes all game modes and servers are checked(with the exception of oceanic servers) For the moment, I am throwing my weight behind the idea that the new matchmaker needs some tinkering. (currently in a 2 man drop, over 10 minute wait. Plenty of people online)

[Better Call Saul]

Still experiencing long search times, please look into this.

Further to this it feels like grouping together is punishing people with longer search times.

Edited by Better Call Saul, 02 September 2015 - 12:23 AM.

[BattleBunny]

I did pseudo science.

Since small groups with my unitmates seem to search forever I tried something new.

I created a 12 men team of people I would all consider to be tier 2 or 3. I hope I am a good judge of skills as this is purely based on my assumption. No obvious good or bad players in the group, but all were veterans of the game and had a good idea how to pilot their mechs. I started at 21:30 my time(Netherlands) which i would classify as EU prime time.

The results were astounding.
For nearly 3 hours we had instamatches. Our longest search time (I timed them all) was 35 seconds. (!!)
Our 12 men coordinated well and comms were good so we quikly rolled through each match, but we found instant matches so we didnt mind much. (sorry if you were on the other side of this experiment at this point)

Around 1:30 am (the early start of US prime) one guy dropped and was replaced with BMMU Weztside, who I would classify easily as tier 1. Our search times increased immediatly to 2-4 minutes, but it was still very acceptable.
As more and more people dropped from the original group they were replaced by people that are all much better pilots then I am, so I would classify them all as tier 1. Search times increased with each replacement.

During what I think would be US prime time, our search times increased to 7 minutes average, with spikes to 15+ minutes three times. So as the playerbase supposedly grew bigger, our search times increased as more really good pilots entered the group.

Conclusion
Find a buddy that is not tier 1 and group with him. Find somebody that has acces to the group queue. Dont group with to many really good players. Playerbase online doesnt seem to affect search times. Group size and high tier players in the group do.

Is this how you want the matchmaker to work PGI?

PS: I hope I didnt insult anybody last night or with this post. All skills assesments are mine and are not based on anything except my personal opinion. Everybody involved in this experiment are fine pilots and good people.

Edited by BattleBunny, 03 September 2015 - 05:09 AM.

[Better Call Saul]

Thanks for taking the time to post this BattleBunny, so if you're good at the game you're punished with longer wait times if you group up with others?

[BattleBunny]

Yes. and this by itself isnt new. I often watched Proton (prtNspz) stream the solo queue and I was always amazed at his long search times, compared to mine. Better players always had longer searches in general.

For the group queue after the PSR system was implemented, this symptom has increased to a point where the game becomes unplayable.

Edited by BattleBunny, 03 September 2015 - 07:58 AM.

[Styxx42]

And you can thanks Capitalism.
Because that is the only reason we have this wonderful queuing.