222 replies to this topic

[Kali Rinpoche]

I for one am happy the CW queues have been recombined. As a solo dropper, I don't mind getting stomped by 12 mans. Usually the units are cool about it and not jerks so its something I can live with occasionally. There just isn't the population for complete IS level fights with split queues. I'm sure PGI knew that but tried to listen to all the moaning about it. We at least they have the split queue design finished so if numbers ever grow dramatically they can re-open the split buckets.

To me, private matches have always been where you can go if you want unit v unit combat on demand.

Edited by Kali Rinpoche, 26 April 2016 - 09:47 PM.

[Randy Poffo]

AnimeFreak40K, on 26 April 2016 - 08:38 PM, said:

Heck, I would argue that because FW players tend to be more experienced and such, they're probably not throwing much in the way of money at PGI anyway. So regarding the idea of getting more 'bang for the buck', that's a matter that revolves entirely on population...and that is just one that can't be solved because MWO always had a small population simply because it's a game based on a very niche market.

That wasn't quite what I was getting at with the economics question. The economics question is, does it really make sense to sink all the dev money into a part of the game that is only intended to serve a minority of the player base? Will the non-FW players who get nothing from that stick around and continue to spend money? This doesn't seem like a particularly sustainable model.

Kali Rinpoche, on 26 April 2016 - 09:40 PM, said:

I for one am happy the CW queues have been recombined. As a solo dropper, I don't mind getting stomped by 12 mans. Usually the units are cool about it and not jerks so its something I can live with occasionally. There just isn't the population for complete IS level fights. To me, private matches have always been where you can go if you want unit v unit combat on demand.

I would have agreed with you two or three months ago but I think the last game in phase two that I played that *wasn't* a seal-clubbing was two contracts ago or so. That's not an "occasional" occurrence, that's close enough to 100% of the time as makes no difference.

I don't quite follow what direction you're coming from here, though, because you talk about solo dropping CW and at the same time talk about unit drops in private matches.

[ExoForce]

MM should put all solo players in [SOLO] group. Everybody happy.

[Silra]

Max group size of 3 in every queue, both CW/FW and QP, with equal amount of groups on each side if at all possible.

Then get rid of solo queue and don't allow groups bigger than 3 at all.

Done.

Could make it 4 man for the whole 'lance' lore thing, but gameplay over lore every time.

[MrKvola]

Malleus011, on 26 April 2016 - 06:30 PM, said:

Yep, I was in Hrunting's 10th (the Black Watch) for a long time. Just couldn't make the practice times and manage to regularly login to TS. Being out of the country for six weeks at a time can interfere with your gaming.

The Rangers are an *awesome* unit, no question, and I wish them the best. But I couldn't manage to keep up with their modest and reasonable requirements. But I'd still like to be able to play CW on those occasions when I can play, and be able to contribute at least a little to whatever faction I'm supporting. Sad to see that option being taken away.

You still could have transfered to a more relaxed regiment, or Dropship Reserves even Does not matter, perhaps you'll rejoin us some time in the future

[NocturnalBeast]

MrKvola, on 26 April 2016 - 11:38 PM, said:

You still could have transfered to a more relaxed regiment, or Dropship Reserves even Does not matter, perhaps you'll rejoin us some time in the future

He may want to join the Free Worlds League offensive against FedCom

[AnimeFreak40K]

Randy Poffo, on 26 April 2016 - 09:55 PM, said:

That wasn't quite what I was getting at with the economics question. The economics question is, does it really make sense to sink all the dev money into a part of the game that is only intended to serve a minority of the player base? Will the non-FW players who get nothing from that stick around and continue to spend money? This doesn't seem like a particularly sustainable model.

The beauty of video game development is that once stuff has been done, it can be left alone. While Devs are sinking time, effort and resources into this, once the heavy lifting is done (map creation, etc.), they can pretty much just leave it alone except for the occasional tweaks (such as rewards, tonnage, etc.) that may not even require a patch to perform.

As far as housing the servers and such, notice that FW takes place on North American servers. It's not a huge diversion of resources to have 1 or 2 servers for FW when they have several already dedicated to QP.

[Levon K]

Please integrate the "Quick Play" mode with community warfare.

[JaxRiot]

Personally I don't think it was given a fair chance. We didn't even make it 2 weekends

Plus the system was skewed anyway.

Any solo player that wanted any Faction flexibility had to choose Mercenary. And to be a Merc a player Has to be in a Unit, which in my mind bloated the Unit que with players that might not have been there and might possibly had changed to Solo if given a chance for their contracts to expire.

Also, people were testing the waters on both sides to see where they liked it and I don't think 8 days was long enough to seriously judge the situation.

Myself as an example made a one man Unit to test the Unit ques because in Faction Chat, they kept saying that the Unit que was much more active. So I jumped over to test it out and after a few stunning butt whoopins, I dropped my one man Unit and went back to Solo.

I suspect many people were doing the same during the first week but Russ didn't let the system find its balance. One week isn't enough time to let the dust settle for people to find their place.

It just seems too hasty to me

[Tuebor]

ExoForce, on 26 April 2016 - 10:24 PM, said:

MM should put all solo players in [SOLO] group. Everybody happy.

that is pretty much what was happening in the first place. a 12 man (solo) will get slaughtered by a 12 man (grouped unit) 9 out of 10 times. i love playing FP. and i get that FP is meant for units. but my unit is too small and our play times dont match up to get a group going. separating the games by solos and units did nothing. i may be in a unit but when i was on game i was still solo. in order to work it needed to be separated by solo players and grouped players. why should solo players be cut off from the best part of the game. im spending the same money that the guys playing in groups do. and LFG is no use, iv sat in LFG all day and never got a hit. the very few times i have had offers to get into a group they wanted me to join TS. but i dont like TS. iv never had anything but problems using it. the in game voice system works perfectly .

[Mawai]

Cath, on 25 April 2016 - 06:14 PM, said:

So, PGI gave split ques a week.

Players complained about pug vs 12 man for many many months.

PGI comes up with a system that actively works against players playing solo FW.

New system fails (on purpose IMO)

PGI remerges the ques in one week: so we are back to square one.

NOTE and EDIT: I was one of those "solos" that this spit was supposedly aimed at. After looking at the way it was implemented, I declined to play. Freelancers got no rewards commensurate with time involved, Mercs HAD to be in units, therefore group que. Loyalists were tied to faction much more than before, so faction hopping was not an option like before either. There was literally no method for a player that wanted to play solo could do so and earn rewards even equivalent to QP for time spent, even if player got matches. No point = no players.

Just wanted to add my opinion.

PGI designed this system to fail. PERIOD. As long as one man merc units have greater income and about the same flexibility as freelancers ... there is no motivation for people to play solo freelancers.

They then design the solo queue for ONLY solo freelancers and solo loyalists but NOT solo units or folks who are a member of a unit who drop solo.

This immediately drops the number of solo players by at least a factor of two and probably more since there are likely many times when a unit player doesn't have a unit group so drops solo into FW queues.

Any real test should have been a grouped vs solo split like that applying in the Quick play queues. Why they would test this any other way ... I have no idea.

Personally, I don't really care that much what they do either way, I would like to get into FW but I would most likely only be playing solo ... and there are still outstanding issues with this mode of play.

Most of the issues of solos vs 12 man groups could be solved with matchmaking tweaks by aiming to put equal numbers of solos on each side and utilizing large and small group sorting in the matchmaking process.

However, anyone who claims that this design of their FW solo queue split made any sense or actually proved anything is pretty brain dead.

[WarHippy]

Fastwind, on 26 April 2016 - 06:51 PM, said:

Ok i give it one last try i doubt you gona understand it but i kinda have to
This game used to have a far bigger playerbase like 1,5-2years ago
I have hundreds of people on my friendlist,back than whenever i came online there were atleast 20+ playing at any given time
Now its a lot when there are 5 during primetimes
Pretty much all of the best players that are still playing only play LEAGUE matches no CW no PUG and there are very few of em left
The playerbase was so big because there was a shitload of solo players,all gone
The game easily lost three quarters of its playerbase over the last 2 years,and it continues losing
They changed the matchmaker because there weren't enough players to fill matchers in under 5+min. queue time
If they keep doing the **** you solo player thing,the game keeps dieing
Hf playing your CW matches against the 2 same units over and over,oh and waiting to get matches against them every 4 hours

Actually, early on there were a lot of groups and solo players, but the first big exodus of players was when they initially separated the groups out of the main queue and then proceeded to spend the next year plus treating group players like complete crap. They could have handled it a lot better than they did but instead the end result was groups leaving in droves. Add in some of the other colossally bad decisions and statements by the devs over the years and you end up where we are currently.

The worst decision they made was to never implement proper social interaction for the players so they could easily find groups and build up a list of friends with common goals in game.

On another note to all the players complaining about commitments and only having time for one or two matches or only having 15 min to play I have some questions. Why are you trying to play CW at all when those are your restrictions? The quick queue is where you should be playing if you don't have the time. If you want to play CW you need to be willing to dedicate some time because not including the time it takes to find a match an Invasion match can take the full 30 min. What do you do if you only have 15 min to play and manage to get in a CW match that lasts 20+ min? Do you just drop from the game leaving your team short, or do you quickly get yourself killed also leaving your team short? If that is what you are doing you shouldn't have to worry about finding a CW match because you shouldn't even be here anymore at all.

CW should be focused on groups and designed for the groups, and open for the solo players willing to take a backseat to fill holes on teams. If the only thing you are interested in is quick matchs and playing by yourself for whatever reason you may have then you need to play in the normal quick queue.

-Signed,
A solo player.

Edited by WarHippy, 27 April 2016 - 08:01 AM.

[WarHippy]

Mawai, on 27 April 2016 - 06:35 AM, said:

They then design the solo queue for ONLY solo freelancers and solo loyalists but NOT solo units or folks who are a member of a unit who drop solo.

This immediately drops the number of solo players by at least a factor of two and probably more since there are likely many times when a unit player doesn't have a unit group so drops solo into FW queues.

Seems to me they made it more of a compromise than a system designed to fail. I play solo, but I enjoy playing in the unit queue because I find the matches more interesting. I have no interest in playing in a solo queue for CW so either way I wouldn't have been there to bolster the numbers for the freelancers.

The truth is the freelancer queue was clearly designed as a way for people to dip their toes into CW and try it out before diving in head first. Had the freelancer mode been fully functional and rewarded as fully as the other career paths you would have people staying there forever instead of giving them incentives to branch out into the game and community(such as it is).

[Randy Poffo]

WarHippy, on 27 April 2016 - 07:55 AM, said:

CW should be focused on groups and designed for the groups, and open for the solo players willing to take a backseat to fill holes on teams. If the only thing you are interested in is quick matchs and playing by yourself for whatever reason you may have then you need to play in the normal quick queue.

-Signed,
A solo player.

I would actually concede this point if we had a system that facilitated social interaction, etc, which we don't, as you've admitted. And they don't seem to be working on that, nor is the CW community pressuring them on that point; it might even already be too late for that as a fix.

Smaller unit games and solo q are a gateway in that regard. Preferably not an end destination for the player base, but something worthwhile on their own and if done right a way to draw people into actual group play.

If you do *neither* of these things then CW is doomed, flat out, no matter what else you do with it.

WarHippy, on 27 April 2016 - 08:12 AM, said:

The truth is the freelancer queue was clearly designed as a way for people to dip their toes into CW and try it out before diving in head first. Had the freelancer mode been fully functional and rewarded as fully as the other career paths you would have people staying there forever instead of giving them incentives to branch out into the game and community(such as it is).

Well no, not as it stood. Because regardless of what the rewards were - and I've been saying that rewards are a red herring all along - if you can't actually *play* as a freelancer because the q's are set up such that you can only respond to a CTA, then you're not going to stay there forever, they're just going to quit.

[Gizmoo]

how about the broken Probation counter ? Will it be fixed ? i'm still stuck at 10 matches and this seems to affect a lot of people

[TheLuc]

There is a lot of good with MWO but sadly more bad, the game is very balanced and more balanced than any other MW title that came out so far. hot fix ? all good with me but wont fix the real issues with the game.

we need more players....

[WarHippy]

Randy Poffo, on 27 April 2016 - 08:57 AM, said:

Well no, not as it stood. Because regardless of what the rewards were - and I've been saying that rewards are a red herring all along - if you can't actually *play* as a freelancer because the q's are set up such that you can only respond to a CTA, then you're not going to stay there forever, they're just going to quit.

That is pretty much exactly what I said. The way it was designed was just a way to test it out in a limited fashion not a way to participate for the long run to which their goal was for people to switch to the other career paths. What I was saying was that if they gave full functionality and rewards for the freelancer queue people would stay forever instead of branching out, but their goal was to get more group participation not just provide another avenue for people to play by themselves. The solo players have their game mode and potentially PVE at some point, but CW is intended for group play.

[Tordin]

Umm, am I missing something? Yes this post says the update are tomorrow (28) but n the main page, the 26. Just noticed.

Edited by Tordin, 27 April 2016 - 10:14 AM.

[Randy Poffo]

WarHippy, on 27 April 2016 - 10:08 AM, said:

That is pretty much exactly what I said. The way it was designed was just a way to test it out in a limited fashion not a way to participate for the long run to which their goal was for people to switch to the other career paths. What I was saying was that if they gave full functionality and rewards for the freelancer queue people would stay forever instead of branching out, but their goal was to get more group participation not just provide another avenue for people to play by themselves. The solo players have their game mode and potentially PVE at some point, but CW is intended for group play.

Is this what you said? If its purpose was just to allow players to "test it out in a limited way" but the system does not allow freelancers to actually play (and thus to "test it out"), isn't this a system that has been set up to fail? I thought you disagreed with that assessment.

[WarHippy]

Randy Poffo, on 27 April 2016 - 10:16 AM, said:

Is this what you said? If its purpose was just to allow players to "test it out in a limited way" but the system does not allow freelancers to actually play (and thus to "test it out"), isn't this a system that has been set up to fail? I thought you disagreed with that assessment.

It failed in their goal, but I don't see it as them purposefully setting it up to fail. Subtle difference I suppose, but I do see the wisdom in what they were trying for rather than what they ended up with.