296 replies to this topic

[Mystere]

Sandpit, on 13 January 2016 - 11:57 AM, said:

so many people on here want to think their personal limitations are the limitations of others.

Obviously HE can't do it so you can't either

[sycocys]

Personally I do fine in solo or grouped CW.

Fact is most people in solo queue do not do well, or enjoy the mode, and being that there are only 2 different things to play you ultimately create a situation where many solo players don't enjoy 50% of the game - not to mention the 50% of the game that actually has a reward system for earning your way into wanting to purchase things in the game.

[Screech]

Mystere, on 13 January 2016 - 10:18 AM, said:

The problem is if there are very few units playing at that time. Solo players will be forced to wait indefinitely. I'd rather drop and take my chances.

Let us not forget, units are the equivalent of highly-trained soldiers, PUGs are the equivalent of local militia, and the former almost always crush the latter. In a quasi war simulation, that is how things should be.

Having said that, it can be mitigated by more imaginative game modes, maps, and overall game depth.

Creating a separate queue is the worst solution someone can think of.

That's why I termed the pugs as auxiliary forces which supplement the core groups. I just know that when I play in CW I will never drop in to a group that exist entirely of solo players. If people are content with doing this then they need to just be quiet about the rolls. I agree with the separate queue option as the worst solution and think a hybrid system could be a viable to all sides.

Also the longer queue times for solo players might nudge them into forming their own group with the bar set low at 4 players.

[sycocys]

Mystere, on 13 January 2016 - 12:00 PM, said:

How do you accurately differentiate between members of unit XYZ intentionally sync dropping and merely deciding to drop as solos, especially if there was only 1 planetary target? Or do you just automatically assume the worst and ban them?

Repetition, and the server logs when you hit launch/queue <- funny thing when your game is so server authoritative, things like this are really easy to track.

[Lykaon]

sycocys, on 13 January 2016 - 06:45 AM, said:

As much as I was against it at the start and even well into Phase 2, with steam and a small influx of new players (or at least vets that are newly returned) that want to participate in CW that are slowly learning to adapt to group play - I think it is probably in the best interest of player retention to implement a split queue system.

Units and teams don't need to be rolling pugs, there actually seems to be enough interest in coordinated play (and could continue to/be more if rewarded better than pug play) that we really don't need the single queue.

If the majority is still adamant against split queues then the only other viable option to get the population up/keep new pug players is to eliminate the planet map and stick everyone into the 3 bucket system - IS v IS, Clan v Clan, Clan v IS to load up the drop counts and minimize how often pugs will land against larger groups.

Groups often claim to want CW to be a harder/end game mode, but constantly fight against the things that would make it so - so at some point something needs to be done to either force that to happen or to make the inclusion of solos a more welcoming environment.

-----
A solo only training planet queue would also be a welcome addition. Limited amount of drops, lower rewards and some audio/visual instruction. I'm sure there's also drop commanders that would willingly sign up to do a training/recruiting session a couple days a week.

The concern I have is split queues will increase wait times where there already exists an unacceptable wait time.

We have been down this road before. 12 man team sent of to "premade island"" where the wait times were absurd and the opposition limited. When we had a 12 man team exclusive queue the wait times were long to very long and frequently there were not enough 12 player groups playing to have any semblance of balanced matches.There were days where my group would be dropped against the same 12 players time and time again dispite having either stomped them over and over or our group getting stomped over and over. If there were 2 teams in the queue and one is a high comp tier 1 group and the other is a mixed bag of tiers playing more casual than proffesional then tough if you want to play you have to lose or if you want to play then you can't be challenged.

Another thing, Split queues discourages groups and player units. As more and more of the game is aimed towards catering to solo casual players at the expence of the play quality for player units and premade groups the desire to even bother with making player associations is lower and lower.

Split queues does reduce the match quality and increase the wait times for lower quality matching for the large groups.So the reward for putting in more effort by building a player unit is crappyer matches with less frequency.

I have been playing a lot of CW as of late and I do find much of the issue is user error.What I mean is players are not making use of the tools available.

An example: A recent drop had my 4 player group (all on a private teamspeak channel) paired with another 4 player group from a unit considered one of the best in MWo (presuming they too had a private VOIP) and the remaining players were 4 solos with two of them also from well known player units (so we can assume they knew how to play CW) Overall we have 10 good players with 4 of them being "elite" tier one types.

Did our team make use of the voice comms provided by MWo to any useful effect? nope, The "elite" 4 man failed to provide instruction to the rest of the team as to what their plan was and instead used the public comms to blame people for not doing what they wanted without being told what they wanted them to do.

Because it's easier to blame others for your loss than coordinate a successful team.

Later that week my 4 man gets a drop with a 2 man and the rest solos. Our opposition was a 7 player 2 player and 3 solos.This should go in favor of the 7 player team right?

We did use the comms we did communicate our plan our team executed the plan and we stomped the other side 14 - 48.

no user error just proper use of the tools provided.I will bet you my 118 mechs that the other team was not using the in game voip and that is why we trashed them.

[Mystere]

kamiko kross, on 13 January 2016 - 12:01 PM, said:

I can't understand why when there are 90+ queuing up on a planet on each side, they can't prio teams to tend to face other teams first. Maybe that might shut up the sad whining.

Actually, full 12-mans get to jump the line. Maybe PGI should also prioritize units with 10-11 players in a drop?

The only issue I see is that solos and small groups will be left waiting for a long time on "hot" planets.

[Johnny Z]

Lykaon, on 13 January 2016 - 12:11 PM, said:

The concern I have is split queues will increase wait times where there already exists an unacceptable wait time.

We have been down this road before. 12 man team sent of to &quot;premade island&quot;&quot; where the wait times were absurd and the opposition limited. When we had a 12 man team exclusive queue the wait times were long to very long and frequently there were not enough 12 player groups playing to have any semblance of balanced matches.There were days where my group would be dropped against the same 12 players time and time again dispite having either stomped them over and over or our group getting stomped over and over. If there were 2 teams in the queue and one is a high comp tier 1 group and the other is a mixed bag of tiers playing more casual than proffesional then tough if you want to play you have to lose or if you want to play then you can't be challenged.

Another thing, Split queues discourages groups and player units. As more and more of the game is aimed towards catering to solo casual players at the expence of the play quality for player units and premade groups the desire to even bother with making player associations is lower and lower.

Split queues does reduce the match quality and increase the wait times for lower quality matching for the large groups.So the reward for putting in more effort by building a player unit is crappyer matches with less frequency.

I have been playing a lot of CW as of late and I do find much of the issue is user error.What I mean is players are not making use of the tools available.

An example: A recent drop had my 4 player group (all on a private teamspeak channel) paired with another 4 player group from a unit considered one of the best in MWo (presuming they too had a private VOIP) and the remaining players were 4 solos with two of them also from well known player units (so we can assume they knew how to play CW) Overall we have 10 good players with 4 of them being &quot;elite&quot; tier one types.

Did our team make use of the voice comms provided by MWo to any useful effect? nope, The &quot;elite&quot; 4 man failed to provide instruction to the rest of the team as to what their plan was and instead used the public comms to blame people for not doing what they wanted without being told what they wanted them to do.

Because it's easier to blame others for your loss than coordinate a successful team.

Later that week my 4 man gets a drop with a 2 man and the rest solos. Our opposition was a 7 player 2 player and 3 solos.This should go in favor of the 7 player team right?

We did use the comms we did communicate our plan our team executed the plan and we stomped the other side 14 - 48.

no user error just proper use of the tools provided.I will bet you my 118 mechs that the other team was not using the in game voip and that is why we trashed them.

The comm wheel with immersive chat like "incoming missiles" or "uav above" will be used a lot more. Not just more but often.

Thats a lot more expensive to add though.

[MadcatX]

Amsro, on 13 January 2016 - 11:52 AM, said:

Why would you need seperate ques if the solos that can enter have a full grasp of the game. (assuming they have 4 owned and mastered mechs)


I wouldn't say a large leap of faith.

Not sure if you follow sports or not, but lets assume you are learning how to play hockey, learning to skate and use a hockey still to control the puck. Now add 4 more new players to your team, and toss 5 NHL players on the other side, and tell them to not hold back.

Everytime the new guy get's close to touching the puck he gets ERASED by the NHL player who know's exactly what to do and how to do it without thinking.

The new players will just say **** it and move on VERY quickly.

That is CW Groups vs Pugs in a nutshell at this point in time.

Is it truly a leap of faith to link the EXIT of new players with the downright unfair grouping going on in the game's "best" mode?

Actually, literally it is because we are attempting to quantify something through, in this case, an example. I do not doubt for a second that a new player has had the experience you described. But what's of importance to me is Exactly how many have?

The only thing I can think of that can be implemented right now is to lock new accounts from CW until they've played, I don't know, 10 matches maybe. At the very least it would force new players to play Quick Match and not jump straight into CW and base their opinion of the game from those matches.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

sycocys, on 13 January 2016 - 12:10 PM, said:

Repetition, and the server logs when you hit launch/queue <- funny thing when your game is so server authoritative, things like this are really easy to track.

Except that's not proof.

What you have is x people pressing play and submitting themselves to the matchmakers will. You can't prove their intent to dupe the matchmaker into matching them together.

Or are you going to now suggest units are only allowed 2 people per planet.

Edited by DV McKenna, 13 January 2016 - 12:18 PM.

[sycocys]

Lykaon, on 13 January 2016 - 12:11 PM, said:

The concern I have is split queues will increase wait times where there already exists an unacceptable wait time.

Much of that is due to teams being unwilling to line up against each other, then combined with 2 dozen attack lane system, and no global chat doesn't help either.
Queue times could be instant if teams would intentionally line up against each other.

As far as the the pub queue 12 man system, that was similar but also combined with the terrible MM system and its valves needing x amount of time to release. Should have been 12 man, here's another 12 man - go fight.

[Sandpit]

sycocys, on 13 January 2016 - 12:08 PM, said:

Personally I do fine in solo or grouped CW.

Fact is most people in solo queue do not do well,

most people in the solo queue fail to grasp the differences in CW and PUB queue honestly. That's why they have a "bad time" and most of them are simply too hardheaded to listen to anyone trying to help them. Those players? Good luck to them. CW just really isn't the mode for them and wasn't designed for them.

[Atheosis]

The other issue I see is the huge number of factions with each faction only fighting other factions they border on the map. This only serves to make a shallow player pool even more shallow, which compounds the PuG vs premade issue. I know it's not true to the fluff, but it seems to me that the mode needs to be re-designed to be Clan vs IS or to simply remove the map and allow for matches between factions regardless of whether they are bordering each other or not.

[RussianWolf]

splitting the queues would in effect make it like the old 12man queue.

The wanna be competitive teams would be forced to play the actual competitive teams and they would cry foul and start dropping solo again.

The queue time would go up drastically and the actual competitives would get bored of waiting and start dropping solo.

Exactly what happened when the 12man queue existed.

I'm sure if I searched some of the older threads I could find examples where people basically admitted it. They wanted to play in group against people that allowed them to win more than they lose. When the table was turned and they lose more than they win, they stopped dropping in group.

Oh, and it was all the Solos fault for not playing with a team mentality.

[sycocys]

DV McKenna, on 13 January 2016 - 12:16 PM, said:

Except that's not proof.

What you have is x people pressing play and submitting themselves to the matchmakers will. You can't prove their intent to dupe the matchmaker into matching them together.

Or are you going to now suggest units are only allowed 2 people per planet.

If 12 people from the same unit/sub unit hit launch on the same planet within 5-10 seconds or less of each other and do it repeatedly you can pretty well gather they are attempting to exploit the system and sync drop.

This one here really isn't rocket appliances to understand.

[Mystere]

sycocys, on 13 January 2016 - 12:10 PM, said:

Repetition, and the server logs when you hit launch/queue <- funny thing when your game is so server authoritative, things like this are really easy to track.

Always having a punitive solution as opposed to using a carrot -- or better yet better innovation from PGI -- is what caused a whole lot of team-oriented players to leave a long time ago. And now we want to use the stick even more?

[Oderint dum Metuant]

sycocys, on 13 January 2016 - 12:21 PM, said:

If 12 people from the same unit/sub unit hit launch on the same planet within 5-10 seconds or less of each other and do it repeatedly you can pretty well gather they are attempting to exploit the system and sync drop.

This one here really isn't rocket appliances to understand.

Uh apprently it is rocket science.

Because when those attack lanes consist of 1-2 planets with any que on them, then of course they are going to be playing on the same planets.

It's not like there are mass choices for people to choose from planet wise.

[Khobai]

Quote

Why would you need seperate ques if the solos that can enter have a full grasp of the game. (assuming they have 4 owned and mastered mechs)

because theres a huge difference between a bunch of solo players that have never played together and a merc corp thats played dozens or hundreds of game together

[wanderer]

Yes, feel free to split the CW queue. Not.

With the CW population, this will often mean that a unit can simply -not- form a group and sync drop anyway, rendering the point moot.

CW 48v48 is going to favor organized play, the same way 12v12 reinforced organized play vs 8v8 and a 4v4 will favor it far less.

I'd have zero problem with 4v4 having solo-queue style rules, however.

[MischiefSC]

Why not just put the maps/modes in pug queue? Why do you need to split the CW queue?

[Khobai]

Quote

With the CW population, this will often mean that a unit can simply -not- form a group and sync drop anyway, rendering the point moot.

thats fine.

but initially it should try to match pug vs pug and premade vs premade if it cant then a release valve should open allowing a pug vs premade match

but pugs should not always have to play premades if the game can otherwise prevent it.

Quote

CW 48v48 is going to favor organized play, the same way 12v12 reinforced organized play vs 8v8 and a 4v4 will favor it far less.

90% of players arnt in units. favoring organized play is stupid. that absurd mentality is exactly why we have these problems in the first place.

Quote

If 12 people from the same unit/sub unit hit launch on the same planet within 5-10 seconds or less of each other and do it repeatedly you can pretty well gather they are attempting to exploit the system and sync drop.

so dont allow more than X players from the same unit to be on the same team in the solo queue.

again simple fix. god you people act like syncdropping is impossible to prevent, its not.

Edited by Khobai, 13 January 2016 - 12:37 PM.