6 replies to this topic

[SgtMcFarty]

I know this topic had been beaten to death, but I was wondering if there has been any recent comment from the developers on this issue (posts I've found are several months old). I played this game when it first came out, and am now getting back into it, now that it released on Steam. However the issue (which I don't remember being an issue when the game first came out) is that my brother and I (both rusty at the game) get stomped in group queues, which makes it no fun for newer/bad players that want to play together. Has the developer even acknowledged this problem? If not, they are never going to grow their player base by any significant amount, as we we want to play together, but also don't want to get stomped by elite 12 man teams every match. If there is no compromise in sight, I'm afraid we will be yet another set of new players that will leave the game to go play other multiplayer games where we don't get paired against a group of elite players every match. There are way too many multiplayer games that don't suffer from this problem for us to just suffer through loss after loss, until we "just get better, or get more friends", like most of the comments on this issue suggest.

[Rogue Jedi]

SgtMcFarty, on 07 January 2016 - 12:19 PM, said:

I know this topic had been beaten to death, but I was wondering if there has been any recent comment from the developers on this issue (posts I've found are several months old). I played this game when it first came out, and am now getting back into it, now that it released on Steam. However the issue (which I don't remember being an issue when the game first came out) is that my brother and I (both rusty at the game) get stomped in group queues, which makes it no fun for newer/bad players that want to play together. Has the developer even acknowledged this problem? If not, they are never going to grow their player base by any significant amount, as we we want to play together, but also don't want to get stomped by elite 12 man teams every match. If there is no compromise in sight, I'm afraid we will be yet another set of new players that will leave the game to go play other multiplayer games where we don't get paired against a group of elite players every match. There are way too many multiplayer games that don't suffer from this problem for us to just suffer through loss after loss, until we "just get better, or get more friends", like most of the comments on this issue suggest.

PGI are trying to help smaller groups, at current smaller groups get a higher tonnage per Mech than larger groups, if 6 2player groups come up against a 12 player group they have literally double the tonnage available, 100 tons per Mech for a 2 player group vs 50 tons per Mech for a 12 player group.

PGI are constantly looking into options for balancing the player base and as I understand it are considering removing the ability to have groups larger than 4, now I do occasionally group in 5+ player groups, and would like the option to keep doing so but they remove the option for 5+ player groups I can live with that.

edit:

as I recall when the game entered open beta there were groups up-to 4 in solo queue and group queue only catered to 12 player groups, it was rather challenging to find a match as a 12 player group due to most arranging drop times, so if you tried to drop at the "wrong" time you would not find a match, if one side in the "solo" queue had a team and the other side did not, the side with a team had a massive advantage.

Edited by Rogue Jedi, 07 January 2016 - 01:45 PM.

[Not A Real RAbbi]

SgtMcFarty, on 07 January 2016 - 12:19 PM, said:

I know this topic had been beaten to death, but I was wondering if there has been any recent comment from the developers on this issue (posts I've found are several months old). I played this game when it first came out, and am now getting back into it, now that it released on Steam. However the issue (which I don't remember being an issue when the game first came out) is that my brother and I (both rusty at the game) get stomped in group queues, which makes it no fun for newer/bad players that want to play together. Has the developer even acknowledged this problem? If not, they are never going to grow their player base by any significant amount, as we we want to play together, but also don't want to get stomped by elite 12 man teams every match. If there is no compromise in sight, I'm afraid we will be yet another set of new players that will leave the game to go play other multiplayer games where we don't get paired against a group of elite players every match. There are way too many multiplayer games that don't suffer from this problem for us to just suffer through loss after loss, until we "just get better, or get more friends", like most of the comments on this issue suggest.

So, the grass is once again greener on the OTHER side.

They COULD try to match up groups by an average PSR or something. That would lead to two things. 1.) LONGER WAIT TIMES FOR EVERYONE. 2.) Some players sandbagging with low-tier alt accounts.

Sorry, but aside from first-come-first-served assembly of 12s from the available pool, there isn't much matchmaking going on at all. Group or CW. Wanna be matched against similarly experienced players? Solo queue, homie.

It kinda sucks, sure. It beats timing-out waiting for a match, which used to happen pretty regularly.

Will that stop the player base from growing? No. No it won't. It hasn't. It's like being that one customer who's REALLY salty at Best Buy over their return policy. Yeah. That policy has worked all this time, and evolved in response to the bulk of customer feedback. They lose one customer here, they gain three over there. They don't even bother to wave goodbye. MWO is safe for a couple of years, group matchmaker or not.

DO email them your feedback of course. We can always hope for an effective novel
solution.

And, uh, welcome back?

[SgtMcFarty]

I guess what we would really need to know, in order to understand the hurdles to solving this issue, is the statistics behind the player base.

One solution is to lower the maximum team size. This would upset the group of players that typically play in groups larger than 4, however the question I would then pose is, what percentage of the player base typically play in groups larger than 4? If it’s a statically insignificant number, then I would think it would make more sense to please the much larger group of 2-4 man teams. 2-4 man teams being a larger population is an assumption, without seeing the numbers, but a pretty good assumption, as people have said that queue times used to be much longer for 12 man teams, before the current arrangement. The only counterpoint I can think of, is if this smaller player base group of 5-12 man teams (again, an assumption) are freemium “whales”. If this group of players provide a larger income stream than 2-4 man groups, then I can understand why they would keep things the way they are. I may not like it, but I could at least understand it.

Another solution is auto team balancing, a lot of multiplayer games do this. A 12 man team may enter the queue together, but if one side is made up of a bunch of unskilled 2-4 man teams, then it could switch players around to different teams until the average skill level of the 2 teams are more balanced. An example of this (and I know this isn’t an apples to apples comparison) is Battlefield. If you have an team of noobs against a team of level 100 generals (complete with sh!t buckets), the game will move players around until the teams are balanced. Not an ideal solution that makes everyone happy, but it is a possible solution, and would solve the issue of long queue times. As an addendum, I would say you would need to devalue the bonus for winning a match, and focus more on rewarding good play (i.e. damage done, spotting, etc.), so that even if your team loses, you still get rewarded for good play. Your win/loss ratio shouldn’t be a factor on your pilot rating. I could be the 1 noob on an elite 12 man team that wins every match, that doesn’t make me an elite pilot. And to the point of people creating alt accounts to sandbag their stats, no matter how many controls you put in place, people are always going to find a way to game the system. I’m sure there are ways to cheat the system already, for example (and I’m not sure if this is a real thing), but couldn’t someone (or a group of people) create 2 accounts with premium time, create a private match, and just go blow up their alt account(s) over and over to get c-bills? Even if you can’t, I’m sure people have already figured out ways to game the current system.

I don’t know the perfect solution, or even the hurdles, without seeing the statistics (which developers rarely ever release), but I do feel that making a multiplayer only game a single player centric experience (unless you have 11 other friends that play) is not the way to go. You just have to look at Star Wars: The Old Republic or Elder Scrolls Online to see that doesn’t work. I like playing games with friends, but I shouldn’t be punished for not having enough of them. I really like the changes they have made in the past couple years, the Mechlab had an amazing design overhaul from what I remember it being, but maybe I just need to let this game “cook” a few more years. The good news for me is that, since this is a multiplayer only game, with the new ruling from the Library of Congress, once the player base drops to a point that they shut down the servers, we will be legally allowed to bypass the DRM and create our own servers, at which point we can create any matchmaking system we want. So for me, it’s just a waiting game, I guess I’ll go play some other multiplayer game, that doesn’t punish me for playing with friends, until they either fix the problem or the official servers die.

[Koniving]

CW stage 3 is supposed to have a 4 versus 4 mode, which you could load with small groups.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Russ actually proposed dropping the max group size but there is a lot of resistance to that idea. Instead, they decided to go with tonnage based matchmaking due to community feedback. It's not the best, but players want choices. There just aren't enough people in the queue to solve the "jigsaw" problem of group sizes. Now, large groups actually are in the minority of teams in group queue. Something like 80-90% of all teams in group queue are composed of groups of 4 or less.

[Rogue Jedi]

SgtMcFarty, on 08 January 2016 - 12:02 PM, said:

I guess what we would really need to know, in order to understand the hurdles to solving this issue, is the statistics behind the player base.

One solution is to lower the maximum team size. This would upset the group of players that typically play in groups larger than 4, however the question I would then pose is, what percentage of the player base typically play in groups larger than 4? If it’s a statically insignificant number, then I would think it would make more sense to please the much larger group of 2-4 man teams.

I usualy drop in larger groups 1-2 evenings ^{(maybe 2 hours total, and some of that is usualy CW)} a week, about half my playtime is spent in solo queue, I spend 2-3 hours a week dropping with a small group (2-4 players, usualy my Lance practice time)

Russ ^{(head of PGI, the Developer)} has in the past said that only something like 20% of the drops in group queue are bigger than 4 players, but the way he interpreted the stats suggested he taught that only 20% of players in group queue ^{(already a lower population queue than solo)} ever play in groups larger than 4, where as the way the stats were worded could be that everyone drops in large groups occasionally but there is only an average of 20% of the group queue player base doing so at once.

if it is a case of 80% of the group queue player base does so occasionally then that is a lot of people you would be annoying by taking it away, if it is only 20% who ever drop in larger groups then they can probably risk annoying them ^{(including me)}

Edited by Rogue Jedi, 09 January 2016 - 07:37 AM.