66 replies to this topic

[Greyhart]

So Russ has realised/caved in/come to his senses (whatever is your particular narrative) and will get rid of the solo queue in FW if things don't pick up.

Clearly the game population is not large enough to give everyone exactly what they want when they want it. As can be seen periodically by people throwing down in relation to one thing or another, be it map or game mode.

Then there is the idea of solaris adding yet another bucket.

Of course I want all of these things but there also has to be a way to get people into games quickly.

I think for the vast majority of people they just want to play a game and wouldn't be too bothered if it was FW or the solo queue, excepting of course that length of match and waiting times are a factor.

It seems to me that the only way to solve this problem is to merge FW with the solo queue. perhaps with an option to not play the longer form of the game (assuming you don't relook at invasion which I think is a limited game mode and limited game play due to the maps).

Therefore to do this merging you need to look at changing the drop deck system.

So each player would have a clan and IS drop deck. That deck would have to include a mech from each weight category and possibly not exceeding a tonnage.

Then you hit play. you can play select not to play invasion. MM then places you in a match if it is not the type of game that uses the entire drop deck it selects a mech to balance the teams or in scout the light mech.

If you have a contract with an IS faction you could only drop IS.

They would therefore have to institute additional pilots so each player could have an IS and a clan pilot. with a revamped skill system you could make the pilots customisable and sell additional slots past the 2 free ones.

Then you can have a separate queue for solaris which would in effect be solo play with one mech. But with a leader board a ranked queue if you will.

Obviously this is only a rough idea and requires major reworking of how things work in the game and therefore is never going to happen.

Also obviously people are going to hate the fact that they can't take X mech only.

But I don't see how the game can add more queues and buckets if it can't sustain the split between solo and unit FW.

Edited by Greyhart, 22 April 2016 - 01:44 AM.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Who'd have thought that a small playerbase would be a problem.

[Greyhart]

Also if you added in AI then a co-op game mode would be possible as well and therefore throwing people into the general queue would work as well as if there is too few for PvP then it can throw together a Co-Op game until more people arrive.

Perhaps they should keep this in mind for the engine upgrade.

Get people in playing mech stomp and move them around game modes when there are the right numbers available.

[Alistair Winter]

You can't merge Quick Play and Faction Play without diluting the product too much.

Solaris could be a problem, but it's probably going to be Quick Play with very few players involved. It's not hard to fill a 1v1 match, you just need 2 people. So I would expect a lot of 1v1 matches in Solaris during quiet hours, and more 4v4 during peak hours. In this regard, Solaris is perfect to accomodate the low playerbase

Of course, Solaris will drain players from Quick Play and Faction Play. But in the long term, PGI will see which of the three alternatives are most and least popular and make decisions accordingly. They could go back to 8v8 in Quick Play, for example. Which would be bloody fantastic, and it would also make 12v12 in Faction Play more special and intriguing.

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

Merging the Queues is a huge mistake.

The problem with the FW Solo Queue is that is does not include 1-man "Units"; they're lumped in with the Unit Queue and depleting the population!

We need the Queue to be split along "in-group" lines, not "unit-affiliated" lines!!!

See my poll here:

http://mwomercs.com/...m-a-1-man-unit/

Add you vote!!!

Edited by Brandarr Gunnarson, 22 April 2016 - 02:30 AM.

[Greyhart]

I would prefer the Group v solo queue certainly.

But I think the problem will get worse if (as I would like) they introduce solaris to quick play and FW without coming up with a way to put people in one simple bucket.

It could be like server selection tick the game modes you're happy to play. Just get me a match as quick as possible.

Group queues would remain separate as I can't think how you would merge solo and group without problems.

As for sync dropping just have it so the MM splits people from same unit or tries not to pair people that have been paired before.

Really people doing things like sync dropping are the reason we can't have nice things.

[ArmandTulsen]

The focus is on all of the wrong things. Re-merging the queues will not solve the problem of low player counts. Casuals and scrubs alike need to be guided by hand to go play FW. The casual needs to be conditioned to normalize faction play as the standard mode. As it stands, quick play is presumed to be the "standard" mode and FW is seen as that other game mode.

Efforts should be directed towards attracting new players and keeping them. FW phase 3 is fine. We just need more people playing the damn game.

[Alan Davion]

Yeah... I'm just gonna kick back and wait for the inevitable firestorm of PUG players complaining of being ROFLstomped by the Elite Units... And the Elite Units complaining that there is no one in CW/FW to ROFLstomp.

Back to business as usual I see.

[Lucian Nostra]

I think one of the big things PGI needs to do for CW/FW is to make the standard ol matches count in some way ON the FW maps.

Why are we just brawling it out constantly? there's gotta be soooome point right? Think it would help FW in the long run by having the map not be so heavily dominated by large groups like MS and could also get some of those more puggy style players more interested in things like invasion mode, it is a fairly interesting game mode overall

[Axeface]

The introduction of the solo queue to cw is the only reason I just reinstalled the game, and was planning to play this weekend. havent played in months. If it's removed i'll simply uninstall again. Thats not meant as some kind of threat or something, I'm just tired of quick play and I refuse to play cw if I'm pugging against organised groups. And organised groups shouldnt want to stomp pugs, surely.
I dont think i'm alone in that, pgi need to give is a week or 2 at least to see if people start trickling into cw. It's only been a couple of days.

And cant 4v4 scouting be added to quick play in some way?

[TLBFestus]

But......but...... STEAM fixed all this didn't it?

[Alan Davion]

TLBFestus, on 22 April 2016 - 08:34 AM, said:

But......but...... STEAM fixed all this didn't it?

Steam would have fixed this, if 99% of Steam players hadn't found the game to be severely lacking and left within the first couple weeks for the next new thing.

[Dread Render]

The key to quick solo games is flexibility.
Lets say there are only 6 people available for a pug match.
The MM could just split the 6 people into two groups as evenly as it can and populate a match.
This would create very dynamic and exciting pug matches.
What ever the current available players are, divide them as evenly as possible and let them play.
Just the excitement of the possibilities would make it fun.
You could get anything from 1 Vs 1 to the usual 12 vs 12.
I think I personally would love it.
Just my two cents.

[Remillard]

Axeface, on 22 April 2016 - 08:24 AM, said:

The introduction of the solo queue to cw is the only reason I just reinstalled the game, and was planning to play this weekend. havent played in months. If it's removed i'll simply uninstall again. Thats not meant as some kind of threat or something, I'm just tired of quick play and I refuse to play cw if I'm pugging against organised groups. And organised groups shouldnt want to stomp pugs, surely.
I dont think i'm alone in that, pgi need to give is a week or 2 at least to see if people start trickling into cw. It's only been a couple of days.

And cant 4v4 scouting be added to quick play in some way?

Honestly, I just haven't had time to experiment with it. Last weekend was Battleborn and Overwatch betas, this week there've been raids every night.

I'm not averse at all to a faction warfare solo queue, as I would probably make some use of it. Honestly I'm not entirely sure where the new system leaves me. I have enjoyed joining in with the Free World Guard for Marik and playing a few FW rounds on a weekend but I don't want to do that all the time. However I'm not in a unit and I used to just pick up a faction contract for 7-14 days to play. Do I need to be in the 1FWG to play with them now? Do I have to create my own pointless one-man unit, but then get excluded from solo play? It's kind of confusing for my playstyle and time available and honestly, just haven't had the time to figure out the best way to adapt yet.

And they think a few days is enough to evaluate? Seriously weird.

[Alan Davion]

Remillard, on 22 April 2016 - 10:26 AM, said:

Honestly, I just haven't had time to experiment with it. Last weekend was Battleborn and Overwatch betas, this week there've been raids every night.

I'm not averse at all to a faction warfare solo queue, as I would probably make some use of it. Honestly I'm not entirely sure where the new system leaves me. I have enjoyed joining in with the Free World Guard for Marik and playing a few FW rounds on a weekend but I don't want to do that all the time. However I'm not in a unit and I used to just pick up a faction contract for 7-14 days to play. Do I need to be in the 1FWG to play with them now? Do I have to create my own pointless one-man unit, but then get excluded from solo play? It's kind of confusing for my playstyle and time available and honestly, just haven't had the time to figure out the best way to adapt yet.

And they think a few days is enough to evaluate? Seriously weird.

That's one of the problems PGI has been making in the long run.

They make sweeping changes without giving themselves enough time to REALLY gather a substantive amount of data.

Now for something like weapon balance, that's fine and dandy, they must get literal Giga-Tons of data on that every week/month.

But when it comes to things that aren't so easily quantifiable, lets say the Info Warfare stuff, or player population, they don't give themselves enough time to watch the numbers.

They LITERALLY just split the queues, and now, after not even a week they're already thinking of rolling it back?

In the words of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.

Big mistake. Big. Huge.

You need at minimum a month to watch the CW/FW numbers after this kind of change.

[Tordin]

PGI, please for the love of your game, at least wait a week! Preferrably a month. Dont make hasty decisions!

[Malleus011]

Instead of lumping solos in with units, remove Quick combat; allow PUGs to either drop into 4v4 scouting missions, join 12v12 planetary 'skirmish' missions, or 12v12 Invasion matches.

[Dolph Hoskins]

Holy crap. Someone can take something like a year break from this game and the forums, come back, and the threads are exactly the same.

Time stops in this place...going back to real time now.

[Alan Davion]

Malleus011, on 22 April 2016 - 10:55 AM, said:

Instead of lumping solos in with units, remove Quick combat; allow PUGs to either drop into 4v4 scouting missions, join 12v12 planetary 'skirmish' missions, or 12v12 Invasion matches.

What is this?!

I just... I don't even... Not sure if serious... Trolling... Or just stupid.

That would be an even more bone-headed decision than the one they're thinking of right now.

I kid you not, you remove the normal quick play mode from the game, you might as well just shut the whole damn thing down because there will be NO ONE left to play if they did that.

[Mochyn Pupur]

ArmandTulsen, on 22 April 2016 - 04:00 AM, said:

The focus is on all of the wrong things. Re-merging the queues will not solve the problem of low player counts. Casuals and scrubs alike need to be guided by hand to go play FW. The casual needs to be conditioned to normalize faction play as the standard mode. As it stands, quick play is presumed to be the "standard" mode and FW is seen as that other game mode.

Efforts should be directed towards attracting new players and keeping them. FW phase 3 is fine. We just need more people playing the damn game.

I pay my money for mech packages, premium time, MC just like anyone else who wants to participate, however, please do not think to tell other people how to play their game. Not being in a larger unit for CW/FW purposes, doesn't mean many soloists out there are not seasoned players who enjoy their game time their way and enjoy dropping in and out of more involved gaming modes and can bring with them the ability to support partial 12 man teams enjoy a good drop.

This idea, like as not, closes games down to a minimum or out of existence all together. With MWO being ftp, there is no guarantee of income and therefor continued growth, development or access to the game.