1142 replies to this topic

[Kjudoon]

PGI noticed the same thing I did for fixing the group queue. In one month I hope they publish what the new variance average is so we can see how much limiting group queues to 4mans improved things for group psr averaging

Now, if they allow opt in solo players to the group queue, this will be another improvement.

As for the flexible groups idea around weight class, that's not really the point. Although it is a problem, it is not as much of an issue as having tier mismatches inside the group being averaged.

[Havyek]

Increase teamwork by limiting teams. . . . . great freaking idea.

We should also remove groups from Community Warfare because why would you want teamwork in a team oriented game?

PGI please for the love of God work on improving the game, not handicapping it for people who are either too bad or can't be bother to use the communication tools that have been given to them.

[Tangent253]

All I have to say on the 4-man group size limit: the last time you did that, my entire unit quit. We had been playing during closed beta, almost all of us were Founders, all had bought into the game. With one decision you killed the game for us. Over the course of the years I have managed to bring one or two back, but if you are going to do that again...look I love this game but I don't know if I can stand another exodus like that.

[Kiiyor]

Russ Bullock, on 03 September 2015 - 03:11 PM, said:

I will think on it again - MAYBE if it pulls just a very few it might be okay. I do not want to effect the quality of the solo queue.

Maybe you could make it opt-in, with an additional tickboxes in the launch options dialog server/game mode/ whatever.



I'd probably tick the box.

Maybe you could even craft some further release valves that add particular emphasis to either queue based on global wait times; if someone has the group box ticked but the solo queues are struggling with wait time or skill match, the MM would favour solo drops, and if the group queue wait times are struggling but the solo queues are fine, you'd be more likely to drop in a group.

[Kjudoon]

Havyek, on 03 September 2015 - 07:08 PM, said:

Increase teamwork by limiting teams. . . . . great freaking idea.

This assumes that teamwork is being achieved among multi-group teams. It obviously is only happening for the most part on unit's teamspeak channels, not joint unit matches.

That was my experience when I would playin the group queue. After all, a not insignificant minority of units turn off VOIP and text due to the garbage found there.

[Sereglach]

Tarogato, on 03 September 2015 - 05:37 PM, said:

A lot of units don't want to play CW because they consider it trash. Mine is one of them. Unless CW is completely overhauled, I won't be playing it regularly anymore. If group queue is limited to only groups of 4, then many units would have nothing left. I for one would probably quit at that point.

And your point is? Your unit will stop playing if your big groups can't stomp small groups in the open queue? Units need open queue to do anything? Not to be too rude here, but . . .

1. There are threads scattered on these forums screaming at PUGs to not participate in CW because they're a hindrance to the "big boys". The sword cuts both ways, so to speak, so something needs to give.

2. Even PGI has encouraged PUG players to join units for the purposes of participating in CW.

3. Phase 3, as you even stated, is being worked on; so it's not going to be that "trash", as you're calling it, forever. That needs to be acknowledged in this debate, as it will be a factor.

4. CW was, is, and will be branded (for the foreseeable future) as unit warfare. It's where units are supposed to be playing. If they don't like it then that's their problem.

5. If large units went and played CW in large groups, as they were expected to, then maybe CW wouldn't be as dead.

For these reasons, CW is a factor in this debate, and it IS the place that units (especially larger ones) are supposed to be fighting. Thusly, it's only logical that people will make the statements that large groups and large units are supposed to be fighting in CW.

[Ihasa]

Kjudoon, on 03 September 2015 - 07:13 PM, said:

This assumes that teamwork is being achieved among multi-group teams. It obviously is only happening for the most part on unit's teamspeak channels, not joint unit matches.

That was my experience when I would playin the group queue. After all, a not insignificant minority of units turn off VOIP and text due to the garbage found there.

then that is the problem with those units. you can't expect to be a contributing part of a team when you purposefully don't contribute in the least bit. it's so systemic, circular and contradictory it baffles.

[Peiper]

So far tonight, at least half our public drop matches have been against top tier players (ones I recognize and know to be excellent teams and/or players) and we're introducing some new players to team play. I would say around half our games are versus these better teams/players and of course, we're getting destroyed. I think mine and a couple of my other Devil Dogs are probably upper tier and maybe we're skewing the MM?

If this is due to new MM perameters, I'd rather wait for more fair fights than what we had tonight.

[Threat Doc]

Havyek, on 03 September 2015 - 07:08 PM, said:

Increase teamwork by limiting teams. . . . . great freaking idea.

We should also remove groups from Community Warfare because why would you want teamwork in a team oriented game?

PGI please for the love of God work on improving the game, not handicapping it for people who are either too bad or can't be bother to use the communication tools that have been given to them.

I 100% agree with this, all the way around.

You want to fix it, you have to take away the ability to lone wolf, you have to make units live in the game -not the BS you have, now, but really provide controls and abilities for unit commander's and command staff's to use-, and you need to roll ALL of the maps, including the old small maps for River City and Forest Colony in, and you need to develop game modes that will require units, or allow unit commanders to set up, the ability to take worlds through multiple phases.

PGI, you KEEP ignoring this, and it's the way it's always been done; I think EVERY League that was EVER constructed for the sake of playing MechWarrior was done so with multiple objective achievement requirements in mind, not this mindless fighting for planetary percentages you have, now. The big difference, here, is that YOU have the opportunity to actually model the various types of contracts/orders that can be played, as based in actual BattleTech already, in the Mercs Handbook, and Mercs Handbook: 3055, and surely in the forthcoming Field Manual: Mercenaries.

The rules have been written, and it's why so many people love the game. They come for the stompy robots, they stay for the story. Why in the hell can't you guys get that through your little heads?

[bad arcade kitty]

>Average Skill Diff per team: 405

405 of what? inches? parrots? amperes? is it a lot of little?

Edited by bad arcade kitty, 03 September 2015 - 08:04 PM.

[Rayne Vickers]

I don't have much to say about this, except to say I've been playing since closed beta, and I've seen all sorts of crazy group matches. I tend to side with Phil (Sean Lang) on my belief of how the group queue should work (assuming he hasn't changed his beliefs since we last spoke). That is to say: scale it back to 4 or less members, and PROBABLY make the game mode selection a suggestion and non-binding on the matchmaker. I'm tired of listening to the community complain, I'm tired of watching a select few stand in the way of what is best for THE GAME as a whole (not just thelmselves, or any single player, or group of players). The last time it was suggested to try this, the whining and backlash was such that it wasn't even given a proper test (at least 2-4 weeks IMO) and myself and many others (Sean being one) were very upset that PGI cowered to an extent that it wasn't even properly TESTED That is simply unacceptable from any MMO community. The concerns to the welfare of the game have to be paramount. At the very least give it a good time to test, if it proves to not work, it can always be reversed, and I will have no objections to that if that's what the data shows is best. Please give it a chance.

TLDR version: By all means, place the restrictions back in place on the group queue in the name of better matches, give it a good thorough 2-4 week (1-2 patch) testing cycle, then analyze the data and decide from there.

Full Stop.

[50 50]

@bad arcade kitty
Yeah, until we can see our player ratings, know our tiers and the range for each tier, those numbers didn't mean that much other than in the solo queues you can expect a closer match up.

I also don't see why solo and group need to be different queues if the PSR is averaged over the number of players in the group.
I would think that it would still even out.

It might work out differently if you were only matched with players 1 tier above and below your own instead of 2.

Anyway, I did a little number crunching and think it would make a lot of sense to use a weight limit for the matches instead of the 3/3/3/3 matching.
If we consider a single lance in a 1/1/1/1 configuration could have:
1x 100 ton
1x 75 ton
1x 55 ton
1x 35 ton
For a total of 265 tons giving a full company of 12 mechs in a 3/3/3/3 setup 795 tons as the upper limit.
I wonder if it would be easier to match based on the tonnage instead of light, medium, heavy and assault class limits?

[bad arcade kitty]

Kiiyor, on 03 September 2015 - 07:13 PM, said:

i hope they will never introduce something like that
it would drastically decrease the quality of solo queue for those who check the box because they will be stomped by groups just like pugs are stomped on cw and would increase wait times for those who will not check that box

nope. the group queue times problem it's a group queue problem and solo queue has nothing to do with it and is not a means to solve it and people here in solo queue don't give a flying thing about group queue problems and definitely don't want them being solved on their behalf

[XX Sulla XX]

Russ Bullock, on 03 September 2015 - 03:43 PM, said:

As you can see I am willing to try and keep the any group size thing around a while longer if we make a few other changes.

1) possibly allow solo's to opt in - so long as it doesn't pull to many solo queue should still perform well.
2) game mode selection likely needs to be random or the voting we once had. In other words all three available - this becomes even more important and would actually encourage us to add a 4th mode.
3) This one is your home work : reduce the jig saw pieces by allowing more restrictions in group creation - something better than the 3 of any weight class we have now - atm too many groups of 2, 3 and 4 ALL contain 3 heavies and so on. Go with 2 max until you slip into groups 9+?

Stepping away for the time being.

1- Please I would much rather play in group even as a single player.

2- Thats fine with me. Random is good.

3. Here is the problem. The match maker expects you to carry no matter what mech you are in. If there are only say 2-3 of us we have a better chance of carrying a game runnings heavies or assaults. Any way not sure what the answer is will have to think about it.

[Wildstreak]

Let group queue test that 4v4 mode mentioned some time ago. Different ways it could be done.

Quote

This currently has created the best feeling public matches in MWO we have ever had, very happy with this and even at the lowest population point of the day with current settings it should hold up fairly well.

Tell that to all the people who keep walking in front of me either getting backshot because I fired as they did or stopped my movement. Thanks Arctic Cheetah for stopping my Executioner advance.

[SkyHammyr]

I posted earlier about my Thursday gaming crew of four guys.
More details as follows:

We play in Northern California from 6:00pm to around 10:00pm PST. We do not experience the extreme wait times that others have noted. We’ve played on the EU and Oceanic Servers without issues.
We’ve been pitted up against 5 thru 8 man teams quite often. We’ve played against EMP, SJR, 228, -MS- and the like. We’ve done well, we've also had our share of stomps.

We don't see the problems with the Group Queue on it’s present iteration. We’re having a great time. The guys all remark to me how much they're enjoy this game.

I wonder if maybe we should focus more on getting more players, which seems to be the crux of the problem. We have a new tutorial coming in a couple of weeks. Now might be a great time to tell folks to give this game a shot.

Edited by SkyHammr, 03 September 2015 - 08:44 PM.

[XX Sulla XX]

Dr Tachyon, on 03 September 2015 - 03:57 PM, said:

Maybe the ability to drop solo in the group queue coukd be a perk of being psr tier 1 or 2.

Hmm that might be a good idea.

[DEN_Ninja]

Hey Paul,

Bring down the group max to 4 and ignore the 'competitive' lobbyists. It is POOR player experience to allow large sized groups that have higher levels of co-ordination. When new or old players play with their small groups of friends they do not want to see 8+ players with the same tags. YOU CAN'T CATER TO THE 'Competitive' PLAYERS IF YOU WANT STEAM RELEASE. Plan for the future players that just want to play the game and have FUN matches.

Their counter arguments are about how they want to play with all their friends. If you want to play with all your friends you still can do private matches or hope to sync up. There are alternatives rather than building a super group to romp in the queue.

Their counter arguments are about how they need to practice with their group. Private matches exist for the sole purpose of this. While a merc group is willing to bring 12 people to a fight they will either not find a 12 man or fight smaller groups. If they wanted to practice they could just ask another merc group to skrim with. They would normally get the same result in a group queue anyways with a longer wait period.

Their counter arguments are not valid and are entirely selfish. They don't put into mind that the Matchmaker is suppose to faciliate fun games for the ENTIRE playerbase and not just their own.
_____________________________________
Here's an idea over re-implementing restricted team structures by weight class. I would almost say abandon the 1/1/1/1 restriction in groups and use a lance Drop Weight to compensate.

The 1/1/1/1 as I have seen puts far too much strain on the matchmaker because it does try to make as close matches as possible but are not faciiliating fun matches persay. Allowing a much more freeform team mech compositions by either balancing by weight or the value of the mech would be much more appropriate.

The argument against 1/1/1/1 has always been there. A 20 ton Locust is not always worth as much as the 35 ton Jenner. It would be more prudent to judge by the value of the mech or more generally the tonnage.

My angry two cents,

[panicbutton]

I actually really like this. Other games have similar limitations for good reason. I would, however, like to see the return of a dedicated 8v8 and potentially 12v12 queue. I know the queue times for 8v8 and 12v12 were ridiculous back when it was "12s only" and "8s only", but these matches made up the heart and soul of mwo for me. Groups launched into the 8's or 12's queue with the intention of finding worthy challengers. It's where the 228th's competitive squad started trying to find practice. We have been crushed in that queue by SJR, SWK, HoL, DV8, and others, and we, in turn, have doled out our fair share of skull bashing. It was well worth the wait in queue. This was really the reason I joined a unit, and when 12s could drop against other sized groups... it really made the competition quite bad. Not to say that the smaller teams we faced were bad, but there is a huge advantage gained from being part of a group over size 6. A few other members of the 228th and myself were really disappointed in the "new" queue which supported variable group sizes. We want our old, more challenging (albeit less populated) queue back as much as the folks running small groups want us out of the queue with our 8+ premades.

[XX Sulla XX]

Triordinant, on 03 September 2015 - 04:08 PM, said:

Make it an option only for Tier 1 players (possibly Tier 2). I'm guessing most soloists and groups would be happy with that.

Probably 1 and 2 would work fine.