62 replies to this topic

[BIoB]

So first off, let me start by saying that the games we played while the Unit Queue was in place were fantastic......rarely were there many stomps to be had and thats always a good thing. Maybe it was because everybody wanted to try Phase 3, but there were plenty of units out there enjoying those matches and surely this is still the way forward.

The splitting of the Queues failed (in some peoples eyes) for 2 reasons we all know:

• First & foremost, the original problem with CW was not Units vs Solos......It was Groups vs Solos. This is a very small but immensely important difference.
  
• This in turn lead to the second problem....The inability for unit and solo players to crossover between the queues, resulted in the Unit Queue being populated and solo one empty, which in turn caused 1001 solo players who were looking for the more competitive gameplay to create 1 man Units.

This was a ridiculous solution, forced upon us by a poorly implemented gameplay mechanic. I think the Devs decision to go with a Unit Queue instead of a Group Queue was influenced by posts on this forum in the past.....But I think we can all see it was the wrong choice.



There may also have been fears that if they went with a group queue, that unit players would abuse this and sync drop in the solo queue to have an easier game to farm.....but come on, this simply isn't going to happen often enough to be a problem. Make it against Terms of Service.....BOOM.....job done. Plus the units likely to do this probably aren't worth their salt




TL;DR Can we at least talk about the possibility of re-implementing a proper solo and group queue (not unit) in the future?

Edited by Irish BoB, 30 April 2016 - 04:07 AM.

[DarklightCA]

My fears about that had nothing to do with unit players sync dropping the solo queue which could have been easily avoided if PGI made planetary conquest actually mean something to units as no unit capable of forming a 12 man would want to sync drop just to stomp some unorganized pug team when they can form a 12 man to cap a planet if they mattered.

My fears about it was that there isn't enough units out there capable of forming groups large enough to compete against each other to validate having their own queue. What people need to realize about this game is that it's a niche game that has a low population and majority of that population is not likely playing Faction Warfare.

So while everybody thinks that splitting the population so everybody gets their ideal opposition may be a good idea, which may have been the case if this game was a actual popular game with the population to do that. For me I don't see any of that being any realistic goal and no matter how you split the population. Units and non-units, Groups and non-groups you don't realisticly have the population to accomplish it and it likely would have failed regardless of which way you did it.

[BIoB]

DarklightCA, on 30 April 2016 - 03:00 AM, said:

My fears about it was that there isn't enough units out there capable of forming groups large enough to compete against each other to validate having their own queue.

Did you read my post? Because you've completely missed the point.......

Having a group (not unit) queue will remove the seals vs premade that nobody wants to fight while still allowing everybody to play with each other, irregardless of the queue or need to be in a unit?

Whats not to like?

Edited by Irish BoB, 30 April 2016 - 03:07 AM.

[DarklightCA]

Irish BoB, on 30 April 2016 - 03:07 AM, said:

Did you read my post? Because you've completely missed the point.......

Having a group (not unit) queue will remove the seals vs premade that nobody wants to fight while still allowing everybody to play with each other, irregardless of the queue or need to be in a unit?

Whats not to like?

I did read your post and understood that part. It still doesn't change the fact that there isn't enough units capable of forming groups large enough to compete against each other to support a group queue and beyond units there really isn't very many random people starting groups with each other, LFG is a very underused tool.

So if unit grouped players who represent likely 95% of the actual groups in Faction Warfare + all the unit solo players who likely represent majority of the total population of the gamemode made for a underpopulated queue with long wait times. How exactly is getting rid of the primary population for those groups suppose to benefit them other than getting them better opponents after the 10th ghost drop.

Edited by DarklightCA, 30 April 2016 - 03:23 AM.

[BIoB]

AH, I see your point.......sometimes you need that solo utility player to complete certain queues at times.

But I think the main idea still holds true......but I guess we don't the knowledge of how many 2 man groups queue up for CW to fulfill that role

It would encourage people to actually use the LFG function as it was intended

Edited by Irish BoB, 30 April 2016 - 03:34 AM.

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

It's easy to fix a "group missing 1" problem: simply give all players a checkbox to "opt in" to the Group Queue.

Beyond that, the LFG/LFM system need a serious overhaul to make it more convenient and useful.

[Cy Mitchell]

I posted this in another thread and I will post it here. After that, I am not wasting any more brain cells on what I now consider to be a hopeless case:

Rampage, on 30 April 2016 - 10:37 AM, said:

The one real disappointment to me was Russ' comments on re-merging the FW queues. He indicated that he was against splitting them and knew what the results would be but he did it anyway as a experiment due to popular demand of the players. At the risk of coming off sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I think the failure of the split was a self fulfilling prophesy. If Russ and PGI had really wanted it to work then they would have just made the split a mirror image of the QP split queues with solos and groups separated and left it at that. Instead they created roadblocks to solo players actually being able to enter FW games.



My, rather naive, understanding was that the goal was to allow an avenue for new players to transition into FW play without suffering the frustration and humiliation of the so called "baby seal clubbing". Thus, it would have increased the population of FW by providing a sort of minor league training ground to the big leagues. Instead a system was put into place that protected the existing FW from the loss of players moving over to the "easy" queue. After only a week of increased wait times in the unit queue and low population in the solo queue, the split was declared a failure and it was announce that it would be reverted. Russ even admitted on the Town Hall that he had talked to a unit player earlier that day that was telling him about being back to "seal clubbing". So the cannon fodder has returned to fill out the queues. I cannot help but think that the big units and PGI like it this way despite some of their protest to the contrary.



This is one topic that I will not waste my time discussing in the future. I am sure it is a dead debate. Any attempt to resurrect discussing separate queues will be met with a "We tried that and it did not work. End of discussion."



IMO, so much potential was left untapped. Ah well, as Russ likes to say, "It is what it is."

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

"It is what it is" is a fatalistic hogwash. I hate this statement.

I much prefer "It is what we make it".

[AnimeFreak40K]

The way I see it, FW3 is made up of pretty much everything that the player-base wanted and has been asking for in FW. From seeing Long Toms in the game to splitting the queues, from reducing Attack Lanes to making Loyalists matter. Heck, even finding some way to make the Unit Coffers mean something and a way to limit/restrict the influence on large units are in there.

We, as a community, asked for this. PGI gave us *EXACTLY* what we asked for.

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

AnimeFreak40K, on 30 April 2016 - 06:19 PM, said:

The way I see it, FW3 is made up of pretty much everything that the player-base wanted and has been asking for in FW. From seeing Long Toms in the game to splitting the queues, from reducing Attack Lanes to making Loyalists matter. Heck, even finding some way to make the Unit Coffers mean something and a way to limit/restrict the influence on large units are in there.

We, as a community, asked for this. PGI gave us *EXACTLY* what we asked for.

There were many changes made for the good of the game. Unfortunately, these changes were undermined by splitting the queue along the wrong lines and not providing real access to Freelancers.

[AssaultPig]

As somebody who wanted the solo queue... there weren't enough players to support it. Getting invasion games was all but impossible.

I'm not sure why you think unit members would not have sync dropped in the solo queue; especially when there isn't an event on, it'd be trivially easy to organize.

a pub getting smashed by an organized group is still a miserable experience... but it doesn't seem like the population is there to avoid it happening.

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

AssaultPig, on 30 April 2016 - 06:42 PM, said:

As somebody who wanted the solo queue... there weren't enough players to support it. Getting invasion games was all but impossible.

I'm not sure why you think unit members would not have sync dropped in the solo queue; especially when there isn't an event on, it'd be trivially easy to organize.

a pub getting smashed by an organized group is still a miserable experience... but it doesn't seem like the population is there to avoid it happening.

Well, with the split being Solo/Unit, 1-man units being in the Unit Queue and Freelancers having no access but "Call to Arms" pop-ups; the Solo Queue was doomed to low population.

I'm not sure how/if they even expected it to be viable with those 3 factors.

[Randy Poffo]

DarklightCA, on 30 April 2016 - 03:00 AM, said:

My fears about that had nothing to do with unit players sync dropping the solo queue which could have been easily avoided if PGI made planetary conquest actually mean something to units as no unit capable of forming a 12 man would want to sync drop just to stomp some unorganized pug team when they can form a 12 man to cap a planet if they mattered.

My fears about it was that there isn't enough units out there capable of forming groups large enough to compete against each other to validate having their own queue. What people need to realize about this game is that it's a niche game that has a low population and majority of that population is not likely playing Faction Warfare.

So while everybody thinks that splitting the population so everybody gets their ideal opposition may be a good idea, which may have been the case if this game was a actual popular game with the population to do that. For me I don't see any of that being any realistic goal and no matter how you split the population. Units and non-units, Groups and non-groups you don't realisticly have the population to accomplish it and it likely would have failed regardless of which way you did it.

When you give up on growing that population, you admit that you're just waiting for it to die.

So the real choice is between hope, and trying to make decisions that would make things better... or making things come to a long drawn out end until finally all the baby seals have been clubbed and the existing population loses interest.

And nobody, not even PGI, knows how many solo players there were. Why? Because there was no way for Freelancers to q, nothing that could be recorded in a database. They know how many Freelancers clicked CTA buttons, but when those buttons were not appearing there was nothing for them to record. And given what Russ said in the town hall I do not think that was an accident.

[meteorol]

Full tinfoil mode:

PGI had the numbers to actually see a queue split would never work. They also knew that the group queue would draw the short straw, because in the end of CW phase 2, CW was basically kept on life support by solo players (And we know for a fact that atleast in quickplay, 84% of the playerbase are solo players). They predicted group queue would collapse due to endless waiting times. Since they always pitched CW as the "big units playground" they couldn't let that happen.

Trapped between seeing many people asking for a true solo queue, knowing that solo players are a huge (when counting CW and quickplay together probably even the vast majority) part of their playerbase and knowing it would kill off CWs group queue they came up with an idea:

Implement "solo" aka "non unit" queue in the worst possible way anyone could ever think of. A way pretty much no one ever asked for, a way that had no chance, 0% chance to EVER work. That way they could easily scrap it one week after release and tell people "yeah sorry, we listened to you, but it seems like there are simply not enough people interested in CW "solo" queue."

This way they could kill two birds with one stone. Showing solo players "sorry guys, but we "really" tried", while dodging the "CW WAS A MODE FOR UNITS WHY ARE YOU KILLING GROUP QUEUE, THEY HAVE TO JOIN UNITS AND GIT GUD OMG! PGI YOU LIED TO US AGAIN! ON AN ISLAND! 3PV!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" bullet.

//exiting full tinfoil mode.

I like to keep telling myself they had those ulterior motives. I want to believe it. I really want to. Because the only other explanation would be that PGI actually thought this would work, which would make me lose any faith and trust i have left for them. They actually can't be "that" delusional. Please. Tell me it's not true.

[AdrenaHawk]

Yes, the solo FW system was either a deceptive intentional failure or a hilariously incompetent attempt at a serious fix. I'm not sure which is worse to believe. I do know, though, that if Freelancer wasn't obviously the worst "career" option, there might not have been quite so many single-player units. What's wrong with letting solo players get Merc Ranks and a few freebies?

[BIoB]

AssaultPig, on 30 April 2016 - 06:42 PM, said:

I'm not sure why you think unit members would not have sync dropped in the solo queue; especially when there isn't an event on, it'd be trivially easy to organize.

It would be ridiculously easy to organise but im giving Unit players the benefit of the doubt in assuming that no unit worth its salt would try to game the system and sync drop in a potential solo queue, but as i said, make it against the ToS. For the record, couldn't solo players have sync'd in the previous solo queue?

Anyways, I think its a risk vs benefit situation. I used to have a conscience when it came to playing against pugs.....but now that the queues have been merged ,I'm going to finish every game vs skittles in the first round.....or camp the dropship horrendously in a counter attack modes, apologies in advance

[Deathlike]

I simply don't think it's possible.

It is simply harder to pull 12 solo players of the same faction together in any reliable fashion because you have to think how this works...

1) The only time 12 solo players get together reliably as currently constituted is when they are pooled from multiple factions in a IS vs Clan fight. This means that 4 or 6 factions will have a far greater pool to work with when it comes to defense AND the reason for the existence of the term "skittles" (players from multiple factions). This is the most common matchup that solos complain about because the opfor is usually a group with potentially a number of faction solos filling the ranks.

2) Getting 12 faction solos on a defense (aka IS vs IS or Clan vs Clan battles) is much harder to do. The likelihood of these matches going off becomes very difficult (most commonly seen on the Davion-Marik-Liao fronts) and what ends up happening is that a ghost drop is inevitably created and once that happens, the likelihood of faction solos requeuing decreases significantly (unless it is profitable, the wait doesn't always justify your time spent).


These factors are the MOST LIKELY COMMON results of what the game has done (applicable to even to Phase 1) as a consequence so trying to create any form of solo queues are literally going to be met with queue starvation aka "it's not happening".

[BIoB]

@Deathlike

Yes but look at the amount of solo players who created 1 man units to avoid the solo queue times......that in combination with actual unit players who were dropping alone but automatically got thrown into the unit queue because of their tag would of supplemented the solo queue sufficiently....

There are 2 types of CW matches that are really enjoyable, pugs vs pugs (with both good and bad players, unit or unitless, on both sides) and close Group vs Groups games, win or lose....

Surely there is common ground here to be had? We cant say we've already tried it because we haven't

[Deathlike]

Irish BoB, on 01 May 2016 - 10:21 AM, said:

@Deathlike

Yes but look at the amount of solo players who created 1 man units to avoid the solo queue times......that in combination with actual unit players who were dropping alone but automatically got thrown into the unit queue because of their tag would of supplemented the solo queue sufficiently....

There are 2 types of CW matches that are really enjoyable, pugs vs pugs (with both good and bad players, unit or unitless, on both sides) and close Group vs Groups games, win or lose....

Surely there is common ground here to be had? We cant say we've already tried it because we haven't

There is no common ground if there truly isn't enough solo players to fill a 12-man group consisting of solos reliably. Even if I agree with your position, the problem is what I'm saying it is... not enough people literally translates into "can't do it".

My position has always been that you need to actually PLAY IN GROUPS (that doesn't mean joining a unit - it means dropping with groups through the faction teamspeak hub). Not doing this is more detrimental to the quality of play.

Let me say this...

The logical reason why solo players created one man unit is LITERALLY to avoid the wait the solo queue would suffer. Yes, the issue itself exacerbates the problem, but if that's how many of them felt (the wait for solos being too long), then it stands to reason that they felt they were better off avoiding the wait, which was always my primary contention.

Even if say half (50%) of these solo players didn't do the one-man unit thing, I don't think there would be enough for what is actually needed at the time. 10-minutes is too long a wait for 12-solo players of the same faction to show up and defend an invasion attack. Solo players are virtually reliant on a even a small group (4-man or bigger) to start an actual match with... and that's usually on an Attack lane. The Defense lane for Clan vs IS is easier to fill, but for all the wrong reasons.

Edited by Deathlike, 01 May 2016 - 03:04 PM.

[Djinnhammer]

Irish BoB, on 01 May 2016 - 10:21 AM, said:

@Deathlike

Yes but look at the amount of solo players who created 1 man units to avoid the solo queue times......that in combination with actual unit players who were dropping alone but automatically got thrown into the unit queue because of their tag would of supplemented the solo queue sufficiently....

There are 2 types of CW matches that are really enjoyable, pugs vs pugs (with both good and bad players, unit or unitless, on both sides) and close Group vs Groups games, win or lose....

Surely there is common ground here to be had? We cant say we've already tried it because we haven't

Actually there is only ONE type of FW match that is enjoyable. namely one where everyone works together and communicates. that works with pure solo, pure group or a mix.
The only thing preventing that from happening is bad attitude.