1142 replies to this topic

[Lily from animove]

Richter Kerensky, on 04 September 2015 - 09:55 AM, said:

I dont really buy that since it currently forces solos into matches with other solos. This change seems arbitrary at best.

and when 84% of players prefer solo, gameplay, it shoudl tell you taht groupgamign in this multipalyergame is flayed, and I tell you it's not the MM beign the cause. It's how unbalanced things get beyond anything a MM can control. if you think allowing solos to enter grp Q as well will improve a lot stuff, I don't think it will.

Kjudoon, on 04 September 2015 - 10:00 AM, said:

Then you don't understand that every separate planet is a separate bucket. Get rid of the number of buckets, you consolodate and end the problem.

See the PQ is one bucket. Solo or Group. just one each. Right now how many battlefields are there in CW? 25? 40? I don't know cause I don't play it for so many reasons. When you had Tukkayid, did you have problems with matches? no, why? Everyone had to play it, just like the group queue. That solved any match problem.

Other ways to diminish the amount of players gambling about not able to find a match is to limit you to your faction only and eliminate the whole 'you can fight anywhere for nearly anyone' aspect of the game. No more Davion fighting to protect Steiner borders from Jade Falcon. No more Kurita fighting for Liao against Davion. That would limit, but not totally fix the issue just by reducing the battlefields of a faction to only 2-5. The problem is you still have player population issues in each faction, plus people who flat out don't enjoy getting roflstomped by T1 teams and so they won't take that battlefield going elsewhere where they are superior or at least equal.

That's why it's hard to get matches. You have what you desire in front of you. The problem is what you want decimates the available gamer population.

shrink CW either to one contested planet per border, or even make it IS vs Clan until population is handlign it.

but then I guess the prices of the Tukkayid event were the only reason people streamed into CW.

Edited by Lily from animove, 04 September 2015 - 10:03 AM.

[jay35]

Richter Kerensky, on 04 September 2015 - 09:36 AM, said:

The main problem with CW is that Emerald Taiga and Vitric Forge are among the worst maps ever conceived in a video game. The secondary problem with CW is that changes made to it to mollify people who lost too badly make the counter-attack mode a really boring mode where no one wants to leave spawn.

The concept of inaccessible dropship areas (Vitric Forge) was a terribad idea, but overall the attempt at MOBA-style map designs (2-3 basic lanes with chokepoints at the middle) is a very dull gameplay experience for a tactical shooter-style FPS like MWO. MWO benefits from large, open maps like the reworked River City and Forest Colony, provided the game modes encourage players to actually make use of all that terrain, which they currently don't.

Right now we have a couple great new large MWO maps in regular queue where they are somewhat wasted due to the simplistic game modes available (they amount to three minor variations on team deathmatch and encourage deathballing), and we have a set of rather repetitive maps in CW where the game modes (with a bit more work) might be better suited to more open map designs, but right now the maps in CW encourage deathballing.
So we have deathballing game modes in public queue and deathballing maps in CW. It's no wonder why, when the gameplay amounts to roughly the same thing, people would rather play quicker, faster matches and get it over with.

Edited by jay35, 04 September 2015 - 10:05 AM.

[Tasker]

jay35, on 04 September 2015 - 10:02 AM, said:

The concept of inaccessible dropship areas (Vitric Forge) was a terribad idea, but overall the attempt at MOBA-style map designs (2-3 basic lanes with chokepoints at the middle) is a very dull gameplay experience for a tactical shooter-style FPS like MWO. MWO benefits from large, open maps like the reworked River City and Forest Colony, provided the game modes encourage players to actually make use of all that terrain, which they currently don't.

Right now we have a couple great new large MWO maps in regular queue where they are somewhat wasted due to the simplistic game modes available (they amount to three minor variations on team deathmatch and encourage deathballing), and we have a set of rather repetitive maps in CW where the game modes (with a bit more work) might be better suited to more open map designs, but right now the maps in CW encourage deathballing. So we have deathballing game modes in public queue and deathballing maps in CW. =\

I don't know if this is the appropriate place to talk about CW, but I think some discussion is warranted since this change will absolutely push group queue players toward CW if they want to, you know, play with their groups.

Map design is a huge problem with CW. The reason Taiga and Forge get pointed out so much is that Taiga and Forge are just by far the two worst maps in a pretty putrid lineup. Taiga has the issue of the laughable 2d Playstation trees that you can't see through (Hellbringer gives Clans an insane advantage on this map) and Vitric Forge is so hot that if you don't have optimized elited mechs, you can't even fire your damn weapons. Barrier for new players that should not exist.

[Tiamat of the Sea]

jay35, on 04 September 2015 - 10:02 AM, said:

MWO benefits from large, open maps like the reworked River City and Forest Colony, provided the game modes encourage players to actually make use of all that terrain, which they currently don't.

This, I think, is actually a huge part of why number of weight class 'mech matching is even a thing.

Rather than focusing on altering the matchmaker or placing restrictions on player agency for 'mech choice, what should be focused on here is giving players more reasons to take more varied 'mechs. We really need to start having game modes- in CW and regular queues- that rely on more interesting, more varied goals. Not just a scouting mode added to CW, but things like 'destroy/protect this moving truck convoy and that power generator, where you haven't got time to bring the entire team to one area and then the other,' or 'cross this map with at least 50% of your 'mechs intact/prevent the enemy from getting enough of their forces across this map within [timeframe],' or other such.

Really, it's the thing I think we're missing out on most from earlier Mechwarrior titles- it's not the play against AI, it's the varied mission types and goals that, when playing with a group, can be set up to require thoughtful and deliberate splitting of the group for focused role use. Large open maps are an encouraging step because the larger area is more conducive to more varied goals in a given match, not just because they provide a wider variety of places for the robuts to slam together in.

[Kjudoon]

Lily from animove, on 04 September 2015 - 10:01 AM, said:

and when 84% of players prefer solo, gameplay, it shoudl tell you taht groupgamign in this multipalyergame is flayed, and I tell you it's not the MM beign the cause. It's how unbalanced things get beyond anything a MM can control. if you think allowing solos to enter grp Q as well will improve a lot stuff, I don't think it will.




shrink CW either to one contested planet per border, or even make it IS vs Clan until population is handlign it.

but then I guess the prices of the Tukkayid event were the only reason people streamed into CW.

If ya gotta bribe someone to be their friend, they're not really your friend.

was going to insert video of TBBT with sheldon giving away his cats for 20 dollars (that's including giving people 20 bucks to take his cats) but couldn't find it.

[SirMad]

forcing a group limit of 4 is a horrible idea

and the idea of forcing large groups into CW...? Yeah a realy good idea to force the players into a gamemode they dont like.
This will work perfectly...
Why not limit CW group size to 4 people

[LORD ORION]

If there was a PSR +/- 1 checkmark (that is to say I am matched to mechwarriors only 1 tier difference maximum), I would be willing to wait for a match.

eg: If I am in tier 2, clicking this checmark would match me against tier 1, 2 and 3 players only... I'd be willing to wait in order to not not have to put up with tier 4 and 5 players in my game.

[Wronka]

I am ALL IN for a 4 man group max. I know its not fair for the large groups, but it is just simply not fair to those that don't play with that many friends. I feel the majority of the players that play at any given time are in groups of 4 or less already, so really were just stopping super groups from coming together and rolling in 12 man stomps and ruining the game for everyone that is not on their team.

[jay35]

Wronka, on 04 September 2015 - 10:28 AM, said:

I am ALL IN for a 4 man group max. I know its not fair for the large groups, but it is just simply not fair to those that don't play with that many friends. I feel the majority of the players that play at any given time are in groups of 4 or less already, so really were just stopping super groups from coming together and rolling in 12 man stomps and ruining the game for everyone that is not on their team.

Don't splash the pot, KGB. 4-man group max is not a good or helpful idea.

[CyclonerM]

Tasker, on 04 September 2015 - 10:07 AM, said:

Barrier for new players that should not exist.

But CW is not for new players, you know..

Anyway, my answer to 4men group limits is NEG. This is a team game, and if my unit cannot drop with a Cluster-sized group, at least in a 12vs12 game i would expect to be able to drop with 11 fellow warriors..

Besides, what stops big units from just making three groups and try to sync drop? Zellbrigen aka honorable combat rules would be the only feature that imho should be against teamwork .. In a team game.

MWO should go in the War Thunder or Battlefield direction when it comes to design philosophy of all aspects of the game, rather than World of Tanks or CoD, and this includes the importance of teamwork.

[MischiefSC]

Chef Kerensky, on 04 September 2015 - 03:52 AM, said:

Here's the very real fact: mechs of differing weight classes do not work particularly well together and 1/1/1/1 is not conducive to good teamplay. Not even 12v12 is a large enough player pool to support tactics like "scouting" or "bringing up the rear guard" or whatever. Wolfpacking, deathballing, firing lines, whatever you want to call them - they're the smart way to play and punishing players for playing smartly instead of teaching them to coordinate and take advantage of the game's mechanics demonstrates entirely the wrong approach to bridging the skill gap. Cheers.

Totally get that, however we didn't used to have 1/1/1/1, it just tried to match mech classes - so you'd get matches of 10 assaults and 2 heavies vs 8 assaults and 4 heavies. You would see 2 medium mechs every 8 or 10 matches and when the Spider had broken hitboxes you'd see 10 spiders and 2 Atlases on a team.

We're already seeing this to a degree in group queue; you'll drop against a team with 4 or 5 or 6 Dire Wolves, with a tonnage difference of 200-300 tons overall. We don't see this complaint so much anymore since 1/1/1/1 came out but go crawl back before 1/1/1/1 in the forums and you'll see the rage over tonnage mismatch. It's legit.

Being the biggest tonnage team is a significant advantage, especially if skill is reasonably balanced between the teams. BT TT tried a BV system to 'balance' that and it didn't work. While you could make a PSR style system that accounted for each players performance in a given mech/loadout it would be a huge amount of work and still wouldn't equate to balance -

Balancing a match isn't about accurately reflecting the value of each player, it's about getting players to drop in reasonably balanced mechs. MM can only fill a match with the players (teams in this case) available and that's the issue. It can't add more teams so what it needs to do is get those teams to be semi-balanced themselves.

Hence 1/1/1/1. It's a solid solution, given the options. History has shown that when you let the players drop in what they want they'll try everything they can to skew the match in their favor (normally by taking the biggest mechs) meaning that's all you can do if you want to play there without gimping the whole team you play with. I get wanting to be competitive, however part of any game is having a set of rules that compels you do do something other than min/max the **** out of your team every time. Consider it part of the challenge. Did you see above the guy with the Wolf tag who was complaining that he and his friends only want to drop in Daishis and it's no fair that they have to fight over who gets the 3 Dires? Cash money says they try to sync-drop in two sixmans so they can field 6 of them sometimes.

1/1/1/1 is what keeps group/solo queue from being a tonnage war. It used to be and it sucked salty walnuts. If you want that experience I suggest you take a pair of walnuts, then put both of these walnuts in your mouth. That's what that experience feels like.

^ see how I did that? The magic trick is not using slang contracts of the words. Then it's 100% appropriate.

[Clint Steel]

Let people create large groups like 12 mans but also allow MM to break those 12 mans up into lances (or smaller) as needed.

So for example, if you are in an Elite 12 man, but there are no other 12 mans that are up to your skill level, then MM can break your group up in a way to match skills more accurately.

Maybe even allow a checkbox that says don't break my group up, but with the caveat that your wait time will skyrocket.

[Kjudoon]

Clint Steel, on 04 September 2015 - 10:41 AM, said:

Let people create large groups like 12 mans but also allow MM to break those 12 mans up into lances (or smaller) as needed.

So for example, if you are in an Elite 12 man, but there are no other 12 mans that are up to your skill level, then MM can break your group up in a way to match skills more accurately.

Maybe even allow a checkbox that says don't break my group up, but with the caveat that your wait time will skyrocket.

I see where you're going but I see this as a dealbreaker to many teams.
Just sayin.

[Wintersdark]

Kjudoon, on 04 September 2015 - 10:00 AM, said:

Then you don't understand that every separate planet is a separate bucket. Get rid of the number of buckets, you consolodate and end the problem.

I understand that completely, and have often requested a way to queue for CW at "whatever planet needs me/us" rather than actually selecting a planet. Thus, my faction sends me where I'll be of most immediate use.

Quote

See the PQ is one bucket. Solo or Group. just one each. Right now how many battlefields are there in CW? 25? 40? I don't know cause I don't play it for so many reasons. When you had Tukkayid, did you have problems with matches? no, why? Everyone had to play it, just like the group queue. That solved any match problem.

Other ways to diminish the amount of players gambling about not able to find a match is to limit you to your faction only and eliminate the whole 'you can fight anywhere for nearly anyone' aspect of the game. No more Davion fighting to protect Steiner borders from Jade Falcon. No more Kurita fighting for Liao against Davion. That would limit, but not totally fix the issue just by reducing the battlefields of a faction to only 2-5. The problem is you still have player population issues in each faction, plus people who flat out don't enjoy getting roflstomped by T1 teams and so they won't take that battlefield going elsewhere where they are superior or at least equal.

That's why it's hard to get matches. You have what you desire in front of you. The problem is what you want decimates the available gamer population.

Do you have any idea what I want? I don't think so. In your haste to slot me into a bucket, you've ended up preaching to the choir.

If CW was fixed to have prompt matchmaking, I'd have no issue with a 4 man cap in the group queue. I'd certainly accept that as a good change: I am, in fact, very open minded with this whole issue.

What I do not want to see is larger groups (the majority of them, by the way, are not big groups of pro teams but rather big groups of random normal folks, simply because there are many more random normal folks than hardcore comoies) having nowhere practical to play. Even though 90% of my play is solo - this isn't about me.

This IS a multiplayer game, and a 4 man cap on usable game modes is horrible.

CW needs to have comparable matchmaking times (and not just in a 12 man group, but in any size group) AND comparable overall c-bills/hour to be a viable, practical alternative for larger groups.

[MischiefSC]

jay35, on 04 September 2015 - 10:32 AM, said:

Don't splash the pot, KGB. 4-man group max is not a good or helpful idea.

Yep. We did this before and it drove hundreds of people away, many hundreds. There's more games for people to move to now as well. This isn't about 'do things my way or I'll leave', it's about 'this is a game and I'm only going to play it if it's fun for me'.

We have two different groups of people. One is the pug group; they just want to play around in big stompy robots and make explosions and feel like they are making imaginary game monies. That's cool, that's fun, they should get that. I'm a long time proponent of the pug queue. You can have a couple of friends you want to do that with and be in the pug group. They want a sorta-team-like experience. More to the point they want to pug drop with friends.

The other is the team group. They want to play with their friends and their team, they want to coordinate and play hard, challenging games. Well, some of them are fragile egoed jackasses who want to stomp people in a game because it makes them feel better about their otherwise irrelevant lives but that's a small segment. Mostly it's people who like MW:O for the team play it engenders and it's something MW:O can do very well. This isn't just competitive play folks, there's a lot of units and teams that have people who just enjoy the team play experience. Perhaps CW is a better place for them in concept but CW right now is trash, ghost dropping is weaponized boredom, the population is rock bottom and winning/losing is utterly irrelevant save some minor bragging rights.

Best recommendation?

Fix CW. And by fix I mean totally frigging fix it. Control over contracts for mercs, faction membership benefits, change ghost dropping to suck less, have significant value to taking or losing worlds, have it pay out WELL (better than pug dropping. Not just a little but significantly - you burn a lot of time and deal with boredom and hugely imbalanced matches sometimes, it needs more pay) and as many tactical elements as can be imagined. THEN you'll see the team play group move to CW.

Until then don't butcher group queue. Move it to a 4man cap will drive a big segment of the game away for nothing, and let's be clear - we'll probably leave. Maybe not completely but for the most part and we'll find other games that let us play with our friends. I'm sure it'll 'balance' group queue, in as much as most the people who play it now won't and you'll get little 4man pug groups playing there that are easy to balance because they're all tier 3-4 in unoptimized mechs, drinking and playing around with their friends. A 4man cap will, just as it did last time, accomplish 1 of 2 things -

start up sync-dropping again. Everyone remember that?

get teams to leave. Just like last time.

Fix CW, then you can turn the group queue into the pug-with-friends queue.

[CyclonerM]

MischiefSC, on 04 September 2015 - 10:38 AM, said:

id you see above the guy with the Wolf tag who was complaining that he and his friends only want to drop in Daishis and it's no fair that they have to fight over who gets the 3 Dires? Cash money says they try to sync-drop in two sixmans so they can field 6 of them sometimes.

If you are talking about me, i just said i want to drop with my unit mates, i hate Dire Wolves and would take a Gargoyle over 70% of the times lol.

Btw, we already have 3/3/3/3, so it is not like we can bring 12 Assaults anymore, even if we wanted.

[Clint Steel]

Kjudoon, on 04 September 2015 - 10:44 AM, said:

I see where you're going but I see this as a dealbreaker to many teams.
Just sayin.

What teams want to fight another group wildly below their skill level? It isn't good gameplay for either side.

[Kjudoon]

Wintersdark, as someone who's been here longer than me, how can you say that 4man limit is horrible? If you ignore all the improvements to the game, and the obvious flaws to the 5+ groups in group tier, I guess it could be seen that way. But now, hey, CW covers all that, and VOIP covers the rest. Then again, I did not mind the 4man limit because I knew about sync dropping and played with it. I had fun for a period with the 5+, but quickly noticed the larger the group the worse the matches became.

You also don't seem to realize (or are choosing to forget) there is NO matchmaking in CW. It's supposed to be first come first serve, and only balancing chassis of dropdecks in a team, not against opponents and the larger groups get preferential treatment.

So I'm not seeing reason for complaint towards the change.

Clint Steel, on 04 September 2015 - 10:52 AM, said:

What teams want to fight another group wildly below their skill level? It isn't good gameplay for either side.

Apparently lots of them. They just don't want to admit it. Just not those that participate in tournaments, who generally do not play CW because (as I have been told by multiple tournament players) it makes them sloppy and gives them bad skills.

Edited by Kjudoon, 04 September 2015 - 10:55 AM.

[Richter Kerensky]

CyclonerM, on 04 September 2015 - 10:35 AM, said:

But CW is not for new players, you know..

A certain unit that I won't mention that I happen to be a part of cut their teeth on CW about a week after they played the game for the first time.

Edited by Richter Kerensky, 04 September 2015 - 11:05 AM.

[SNobleJr]

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.

This is more or less the best set of suggestions so far. A couple of extra thoughts on each point:

1) I'd say this is the lynchpin of the whole deal. Solo players being able to opt into group queue would not only solve the problem of odd-numbered groups, but also make 11-player teams possibly. Possible fine-tuning for this could involve a minimum PSR/Tier threshold for opting in, solo players only being pulled in after a release valve after a minute or two of searching, and of course these solo players being eligible for getting dropped into both queues, depending on what suits the matchmaker better at any given time. This also negates the need for any team size limits. The 4-player limit was very unpleasant; it really sucked having to tell friends that they couldn't join because our group was already at a full four players, and this happened quite frequently, while groups of twelve were rare enough not to be a significant issue. Being forced to make only even-numbered teams wouldn't be any less of a hassle, either.

2) I know there are some stubborn players who'd throw hissyfits over this, but I'd be okay with the preference-based game mode selection that was in the game a while back. It's a decent compromise between player choice and ease of matchmaking.

3) Dynamic weight class limits sound like a good solution to me. 2/2/2/2 up to 8 players and 3/3/3/3 at 9+ if you just want something simple. If you're willing to implement something more complex, it could, say, start at 1/1/1/1 for 2-player groups, then with each additional player increase to 2/1/1/1, 2/2/1/1 etc. until you hit 3/3/3/3 at 10+ players.

And some additional ideas not strictly related to the other ones:

4) Consider allowing 2-player groups in solo queue. Just one per team at most, but like it's been stated, this would be a good way for experienced players to coach newbie friends without upsetting the balance of the solo queue. A single 2-player premade doesn't bring enough extra coordination to make a significant difference.

5) Another idea I've seen floating around in the thread: consider small incentives to help these changes along. Get dropped into a non-preferred game mode? Get a couple percents of C-Bill/XP bonus. Help matchmaking along by bringing an underrepresented weight class? The bonus could even scale depending on how far below 25% the weight class is. Maybe you could even have a bonus for solo players opting into group drops. And so on. This could help placate players who may not be fully satisfied with some of the changes.