55 replies to this topic

[MischiefSC]

You'll still have tons of singletons. Most drops on Steiner TS are comprised of singletons and pairs of unit members who are not dropping with their unit. The split isn't 'singles vs premades'. It tags vs no tags. More to the point it's 'able to form a group and drop' queue vs 'you have to pug and pull a random team' queue. You have a unit tag you drop in the first. You don't have a unit tag you drop in the secon.

[C E Dwyer]

MischiefSC, on 28 March 2016 - 01:56 AM, said:

You'll still have tons of singletons. Most drops on Steiner TS are comprised of singletons and pairs of unit members who are not dropping with their unit. The split isn't 'singles vs premades'. It tags vs no tags. More to the point it's 'able to form a group and drop' queue vs 'you have to pug and pull a random team' queue. You have a unit tag you drop in the first. You don't have a unit tag you drop in the secon.

I hope your right, and I'm being unduly pessimistic, but I still think a third party campaign would be more fun, the one I was briefly involved in made me care more about the game, then FW has ever managed to

[BSK]

Cathy, on 28 March 2016 - 01:49 AM, said:

Myself I'm currently not with a unit, I'm holding out either putting my own tag on or rejoining a unit, and frankly, until the drop ship exploit is delt with in counter attack, I doubt i'll ever bother with FW, but I'll have a look at the split queues, if they ever become a thing, as I think the split queue's were spoken about in an air of optimism shortly after the steam launch. and the numbers are not growing but sinking.

They are willing to control the unit sizes by making the unit pay an escalating fee for new unit members in the next phase. The more members it has, the more it has to pay for new members. Make sure you found a home then, because good units are probably not willing to take the risk to pay for loner pilots ..

[C E Dwyer]

BSK, on 28 March 2016 - 02:23 AM, said:

They are willing to control the unit sizes by making the unit pay an escalating fee for new unit members in the next phase. The more members it has, the more it has to pay for new members. Make sure you found a home then, because good units are probably not willing to take the risk to pay for loner pilots ..

Thanks for the warning, but I'm not going to rush in and as I mentioned, I don't really have the inclination until they fix the Counter attack drop ship Exploit, got pretty sickening being in teams where we were one or two mechs up, then the DC demand we pull back to the drop ships and hide under them, and its extremely frustrating trying to fight against teams that do this.

Some might try to justify their actions by calling it a feature, but we all know its an exploit.

I'm thinking in the solo, queue few will organise to do this, some will do it because they are losing badly, but then the games won, so it might actually have some merit, and I want to try it before I think about joining a unit, and if none want me so be it.

My membership of a large unit, wasn't a pleasant experience, the vast majority were and are great people, but they get over shadowed by one or two with ego's that even trash talk their own units members, and are protected by pals, which ruins the good feelings, its not an experience I'm prepared to endure again for a long long time.

But once again, thanks for letting me know.

[DarklightCA]

I don't get what splitting the queue's is exactly going to solve, the solo players in both queue's are still going to be stomped. Large units or units with high skilled pilots will still dominate Community Warfare. There will still be bad players who don't cooperate and complain about losing their games in both queue's. You are not changing anything about the gameplay or the people that play it.

Community Warfare needs competition more than anything, competition will spark more unit interest in it as well as more dynamic and interesting games. You cannot do that by pandering to the solo queue population and punishing units for being effective. You promote people to join units, you promote people to create units, you promote more units to play Community Warfare and you get those units to go kick each others *** and learn to beat those effective units that currently dominate Community Warfare.

That's not possible if you remove the only source of recruitment those units have to grow, nobody is going to visit the MWO forums, dig through the recruitment section of hell and try and find a Community Warfare unit. It's far more easier to play some games with players, see how they do and add them and vice versa.

Quick play is no longer the only gamemode this game has so there is literally no reason to have more than 4 man groups in it anymore, besides for private lobbies Community Warfare should be the only place where large groups of players can form up to compete against other large groups of players. Pandering to solo mentality in quick play makes sense but not in Community Warfare.

[MischiefSC]

DarklightCA, on 28 March 2016 - 12:57 PM, said:

I don't get what splitting the queue's is exactly going to solve, the solo players in both queue's are still going to be stomped. Large units or units with high skilled pilots will still dominate Community Warfare. There will still be bad players who don't cooperate and complain about losing their games in both queue's. You are not changing anything about the gameplay or the people that play it.

Community Warfare needs competition more than anything, competition will spark more unit interest in it as well as more dynamic and interesting games. You cannot do that by pandering to the solo queue population and punishing units for being effective. You promote people to join units, you promote people to create units, you promote more units to play Community Warfare and you get those units to go kick each others *** and learn to beat those effective units that currently dominate Community Warfare.

That's not possible if you remove the only source of recruitment those units have to grow, nobody is going to visit the MWO forums, dig through the recruitment section of hell and try and find a Community Warfare unit. It's far more easier to play some games with players, see how they do and add them and vice versa.

Quick play is no longer the only gamemode this game has so there is literally no reason to have more than 4 man groups in it anymore, besides for private lobbies Community Warfare should be the only place where large groups of players can form up to compete against other large groups of players. Pandering to solo mentality in quick play makes sense but not in Community Warfare.

It's not pandering.

There's a big segment of the game that does not have and will never have an interest in unit/group/teamwork play. They do not and will not. Their presence in CW is what makes it a cluster ****. Every single unit in the game has higher and lower performing members - obviously degree varies but a 'good unit' still isn't dropping a 12man of people who throw up 4k games in CW every match.

Units win because of coordination and teamwork. Even mediocre units win that way. There are and will always be winners and losers, there is every single game. The difference however is splitting out 'people who want to play on a team' from 'people who don't want to play on a team'.

The people who don't want to play on a team still want to play CW. Okay. How do you keep them out so they don't **** it for everyone else? Require a personality test?

That's the point of the split. People who don't want to play on a team can **** off to solo CW queue and derp it out. By removing the people who actively work against team cohesion you make it easier for the people who are left to group up, coordinate and play as a team.

Competition already exists. Adding value to it is great - that might, hopefully, draw some more teams in. However even with teams not everyone is on at once; MOST units can not and likely will never be able to just roll 12mans, or even 6mans, all they want.

So you split the queue. Everyone who is in CW for teamwork and wants to play with a team even when their unit isn't around gets in one line, the people who don't care about teamwork (and everything that goes with that) gets in the other line. When they're in the same line playing the same game the don'tcares absolutely **** the game for the people who play because they want to win and play on a team.

You want to promote units? Have an environment where only unit members can play. Give that environment special rewards while making it clear that playing there requires teamwork to get those rewards.

Which is exactly the point of queue split and rewards for worlds (which you only get in tagged queue).

[DarklightCA]

It is pandering because they made a gamemode designed around unit conquest and unit vs unit fighting and are focusing a lot of it's efforts to make the game more enjoyable for those who don't want to group up with other people. You can't have a gamemode that makes everybody happy, especially when you don't have a big population.

The same can be said about quick play as stated which should be for those lone wolfs and people wanting to grind mechs but they allow 12 man's and any other combination of grouping to play it when it's not needed. It does the exact same thing you want, gets rid of the lone wolf types by giving them a better quick play experience to enjoy more suited to what they want and forces more units and large groups to play Community Warfare all without splitting the community.

As stated splitting the queue solves nothing, solo players will still be slaughtered. Unit queue will still get solo players bitching about large units creaming them in their games. You will still have bad players and players who don't want to work with their team. Splitting the people without the tags solves none of these problems and gets rid of the biggest chances units have to grow.

I also laughed when you said competition already exists, when there are only a small amount of units playing Community Warfare and those units cannot fight each other most of the time because they are swarmed by smaller groups and solo players there can't be a lot of competition. Attracting more units to play Community Warfare, attracting people to join/create units and keeping unitless players in the same queues for those units to recruit them and train them so they can grow is the only way you can create competition in Community Warfare.

[MischiefSC]

DarklightCA, on 28 March 2016 - 04:09 PM, said:

It is pandering because they made a gamemode designed around unit conquest and unit vs unit fighting and are focusing a lot of it's efforts to make the game more enjoyable for those who don't want to group up with other people. You can't have a gamemode that makes everybody happy, especially when you don't have a big population.

The same can be said about quick play as stated which should be for those lone wolfs and people wanting to grind mechs but they allow 12 man's and any other combination of grouping to play it when it's not needed. It does the exact same thing you want, gets rid of the lone wolf types by giving them a better quick play experience to enjoy more suited to what they want and forces more units and large groups to play Community Warfare all without splitting the community.

As stated splitting the queue solves nothing, solo players will still be slaughtered. Unit queue will still get solo players bitching about large units creaming them in their games. You will still have bad players and players who don't want to work with their team. Splitting the people without the tags solves none of these problems and gets rid of the biggest chances units have to grow.

I also laughed when you said competition already exists, when there are only a small amount of units playing Community Warfare and those units cannot fight each other most of the time because they are swarmed by smaller groups and solo players there can't be a lot of competition. Attracting more units to play Community Warfare, attracting people to join/create units and keeping unitless players in the same queues for those units to recruit them and train them so they can grow is the only way you can create competition in Community Warfare.

Competition exists, it's just not common. There are things to compete over and when worlds have value it'll be more to compete over.

You're hitting the crux of the issue though - the difficulty in having units play against units without seas of terribad pugs in the way.

So get them out. All those terribad pugs?

They don't want to join units. Most don't. The vast majority of tagless don't. Even a measurable number who are nominally in units will leave the moment the chance to pugstomp and not have to actually try to compete happens.

Let them go. They are exactly what prevents competition, they are exactly what makes finding worthwhile people to recruit so hard.

The people who want to join units? They'll create a 1man unit and come play. What we need is a special tag for 'looking to join a unit' that people can use so you'll know who's actually looking.

The whole point is that what gets pugs slaughtered is that 1 in 3 of them is in **** builds and won't push past the gate or follow direction. You shake them out and you get those good pug matches - I know I love them. Where almost everyone on your team is there to play as a team, someone calls it (even just in chat), everyone forms up and they play a great game.

There's not some magic trick that's going to let average teams beat 228/KCom/MS/etc. That's never in the cards. The point though is to strip the wheat from the chaff - I hate pugging. I hate QP even more. I don't hate pugging because I get stomped by great teams though; I hate it because so many of my teammates are dontcares who won't push the gate or bring an LRM50 TBR or the like. THAT helps me get better at the game. That makes the game more fun.

I'm not alone in that. Ask most people what they hate about pugging in CW. If you drill past the 'getting stomped' you'll get to their frustration with their teammates. Comp teams are a rarity in CW. I play against competent teams that win because they're top performers like 1 match in 20 or 30. The rest of the time you lose because the other team coordinated better and communicated better. Even that's okay if your team communicated and coordinated AT ALL.

The people who want to play on teams will gravitate, even solo, to the unit queue. The people who don't care and don't want to get good or play in a competitive environment will migrate to scrub/tagless queue. GOOD. All the things you're saying don't apply to them. They don't want to get good, they don't want to compete. They're sandbags that pugs have to carry when they don't drop in a 12man.

Let us ditch that weight and then we can see how we perform.

[iLLcapitan]

I really feel the pain OP, nothing like the team-blamers who rant on about the own team because they got time do so, having wasted 4 mechs during the first 2 waves.

Baddies will be bad, no seperation will change rambozilla's mind. So build a wall. Really. I was against it all the time, but there's only so much one is willing to help, coordinate, till you freak out. Leave them alone and let us have a competitive, team-based environment with appealing rewards.

My concerns:
- The interaction between unit-less people and units. Shouldn't be left to 3rd party communication. Form a hiring hall or some equal community tool for heaven's sake. Don't leave all the organisation to your players you lazy designers.

- Pool the factions. To Russ the twitterking: it's not about eradicating certain factions, it's about POOLING them. Otherwise some factions are simply left behind the action. Easy logic. Changing alliances, monthly focussing on one reach, pick one possibility and don't design it lazily please.

- Call-to-arms mechanic gotta change. Make comstar intercepts that rally ATTACKERS. Otherwise I don't see how the Pugs will ever get a match in this queue tbh.

I really hope that enough incentive will bring good units and players back to CW. However we might need pre-set contracts (by PGI or some automated mechanism) so they are able to roughly balance populations. Let's say you can't just hop faction to faction, you gotta go where there is work. You wanna switch? Sure, but only Liao and Ghostbear need contract work this week (for example). That in combination with some reasonable pooling should do the trick called reasonable match-making time.

A lot of good things in this threat. Hope still lingers on remote places like Butte Hold.

[Danjo San]

What do we have right now? Everybody everywhere farming bays, waiting times for FW Liao - Davion ... 3 Ghostdrops + 10 Minutes, maybe someone will show up ... other than that we have 2-3 Dropships more IS Defenders than Clan Attackers. And this is Combined Queue. Split that, Things will be way worse! Waiting times will rise, hence players won't put up with the long waiting times and go to quick play. It's the norm right now!!! I hear players everywhere and from every House complaining about waiting times more than being stomped by a premade. I even have droppped with 12 IS Pugs and kicked the **** out of a full 12 man Clan Wolf Unit last night.
Next major point lots of folks out there are missing is the recruitment opportunity. If you are running a small unit (less than 10-12 active) Players, but you do a good job calling, Unitless players are more likely to approach you and ask to join your unit. I know, this has happened several times to me. In fact more often than over the recruitment posts in the forums and the enjin page combined. How is the split gonna benefit that?

Now imagine this: You are a Member of [XYZ], a hard working decent unit, you win most of the time, even against other better than average Units. You have your designated Weekday FW Night, and all you want is to gain a planet for your house (for what ever reasons). You are fighting and winning every Match, beating down 12 Man after 12 Man. Just line up, attack, win, repeat.
But at the same time your great House Pugs suck so bad, and outnumber your Unit-Dropships, that for every Sector you gain you lose two.
Yeah, now that sounds like a great motivator to play FW.

[Danjo San]

And one more Idea ... what if one house just rallies up all of its Solo Players in one large union? Like the [HLPU] House Liao Player Union. Every Pug, every Solo Player so that just nobody is left without a unit tag. Power in Numbers. Just leave it to exploit the queue split. flood it.
who can and how should that be prevented. It's an extreme scenario, but it can be done.

[Shard Phoenix]

MischiefSC, on 28 March 2016 - 05:39 PM, said:

The whole point is that what gets pugs slaughtered is that 1 in 3 of them is in **** builds and won't push past the gate or follow direction. You shake them out and you get those good pug matches - I know I love them. Where almost everyone on your team is there to play as a team, someone calls it (even just in chat), everyone forms up and they play a great game.

There's not some magic trick that's going to let average teams beat 228/KCom/MS/etc. That's never in the cards. The point though is to strip the wheat from the chaff - I hate pugging. I hate QP even more. I don't hate pugging because I get stomped by great teams though; I hate it because so many of my teammates are dontcares who won't push the gate or bring an LRM50 TBR or the like. THAT helps me get better at the game. That makes the game more fun.

I'm not alone in that.

100% agree with you on these paragraphs.

I don't understand the players who drop into FW and try to play it like it's QB's. I think if players are just looking to fight like they're in Stompy Robot Romper Room then they need to stay in QB and leave FW the hell alone, that way those of us who do want to try to get a bit more out of our MW:O experience can do so away from the kiddie pool. My playstyle just isn't good for how absolutely passive a lot of players are in QB. I don't want to hide behind hills and poke.. I want to push the opponent, flank, be mobile and engage with prejudice.

The other evening I played in the first FW drop that was actually two PuG teams facing off. Team I was on had someone who took charge and everybody worked as a team. We did have the advantage of being on the defense, but I think we would have stomped the @$@% out of the other team if we had been attacking. Other team was full of players who would not push beyond cover (except one by one....) or the second they took a hit they tucked their tails between their legs and dipped out. We, the organized and aggressive team, rolled over those guys with ease. Just a simple case of how "OP" teamwork is.
On the flip side, I know for a fact we'd of been rekt hard if we'd been fighting a group such as KCom. Been there, done that and I think my butt cheeks are still bright red from that spanking. But instead of running to the forums to cry about how the Evil 12 Man just forced me to suck my thumb, I see it as a challenge to rise to their level.

Edited by Shard Phoenix, 29 March 2016 - 03:08 PM.

[Arrgyle]

Cathy, on 28 March 2016 - 03:11 AM, said:

... I don't really have the inclination until they fix the Counter attack drop ship Exploit, got pretty sickening being in teams where we were one or two mechs up, then the DC demand we pull back to the drop ships and hide under them, and its extremely frustrating trying to fight against teams that do this.

Sounds like someone has been playing against HHoD !

[Aresye]

Shard Phoenix, on 29 March 2016 - 03:08 PM, said:

I don't understand the players who drop into FW and try to play it like it's QB's. I think if players are just looking to fight like they're in Stompy Robot Romper Room then they need to stay in QB and leave FW the hell alone, that way those of us who do want to try to get a bit more out of our MW:O experience can do so away from the kiddie pool.

That's my main issue with the queue segregation: A solo-only queue already exists.

The reason FW has rewards like mech bays, cbill bonuses, etc. is BECAUSE it's supposed to be a harder game mode that's heavily focused on teamwork and unit cohesion.

I really, really, really want to believe that the reason solo players play CW is because they enjoy the different game mode, as that would make a good argument to split the queues. Unfortunately, I don't believe this is the case, because if solo players truly cared about the game mode and objective based play, they would be willing to actually work as a team to accomplish said objectives.

No, I think the vast majority just want those sweet, sweet rewards.

If this was CS:GO, these players would essentially want all the perks of playing the competitive queue, without having to face actual competitive players. It's no different than the F2P argument. Those who pay real money get perks such as premium time, MC, and earlier access to new mechs.

For FW, the reward for having cbill bonuses, loyalty rewards, etc. comes at the cost of having to play more competitively, and with better teamwork than the normal queues. Don't want to play tougher games against tougher opponents? That's fine, you just don't get the rewards.

I personally feel PGI needs to make FW more rewarding for units, as right now it really isn't worth it, and to be quite honest I don't think their MC idea is going to make it worth it either.

EmP, SJR, AS, S RS, and other highly competitive teams barely touch FW. Why? because the rewards aren't worth the loss of dedicated practice time, and the majority of games offer no competition whatsoever.

FW should be CRAWLING with units. Teams like EmP and SJR should be trying to figure out which "side-leagues" they can participate in while still maintaining a full commitment to FW, and every unit should be fighting as hard as they possibly can to win.

[MischiefSC]

Aresye, on 30 March 2016 - 10:31 PM, said:

That's my main issue with the queue segregation: A solo-only queue already exists.

The reason FW has rewards like mech bays, cbill bonuses, etc. is BECAUSE it's supposed to be a harder game mode that's heavily focused on teamwork and unit cohesion.

I really, really, really want to believe that the reason solo players play CW is because they enjoy the different game mode, as that would make a good argument to split the queues. Unfortunately, I don't believe this is the case, because if solo players truly cared about the game mode and objective based play, they would be willing to actually work as a team to accomplish said objectives.

No, I think the vast majority just want those sweet, sweet rewards.

If this was CS:GO, these players would essentially want all the perks of playing the competitive queue, without having to face actual competitive players. It's no different than the F2P argument. Those who pay real money get perks such as premium time, MC, and earlier access to new mechs.

For FW, the reward for having cbill bonuses, loyalty rewards, etc. comes at the cost of having to play more competitively, and with better teamwork than the normal queues. Don't want to play tougher games against tougher opponents? That's fine, you just don't get the rewards.

I personally feel PGI needs to make FW more rewarding for units, as right now it really isn't worth it, and to be quite honest I don't think their MC idea is going to make it worth it either.

EmP, SJR, AS, S RS, and other highly competitive teams barely touch FW. Why? because the rewards aren't worth the loss of dedicated practice time, and the majority of games offer no competition whatsoever.

FW should be CRAWLING with units. Teams like EmP and SJR should be trying to figure out which "side-leagues" they can participate in while still maintaining a full commitment to FW, and every unit should be fighting as hard as they possibly can to win.

The problem is that there's a lot of people who like the respawns, longer matches and new maps.

So they come scrub here.

I agree with everything you said - I do. Completely. However you need to give a scrub version of it for people who want to scrub around in it.

The problem right now is FW is artificially inflated with solo bads who just want to bad. So it creates a false impression of how popular CW is with playing as a team, which should be the focus.

Will there be a population dip at the split? Oh hell yes.

At which point you've got a legit reason to push PGI to up the perks to play CW for units.

[Jman5]

My hope is that the reduction in attack and defense lanes will help concentrate the CW population more effectively. Instead of juggling 18 different planets, you will only have 1 attack lane and just a handful of defense queues.