99 replies to this topic

[Xetelian]

QP is where I spend 99% of my time.

FP or CW is fun in a group but I'm not able to bring my AS7 and serve the team well on attack and I still don't consider it a good idea on defense.

Solo Queue is where I have the most fun, it can be like herding cats but I have a higher Win than Loss ratio so I must be doing something right after earning about a billion cBills in QP alone.

[Beaching Betty]

The reason why I rarely play anymore, there's no more fun in the game.. Only gonna play when the new mech comes out just to see it ingame or a new patch is implimented..

[wanderer]

You can only "adjust" so much to having team-mates that do as much damage all game as you do in three salvos. Or less.

That's what "carrying" is about, after all. There's nothing more disappointing that when you go down with multiple solo kills and realize that's all the kills your team gets in the game. I've had games where I'm pulling 4-digit damage and literally killed half the enemy team....and we lose. Because my team is just plain bad.

You don't know what you're working with. Are those guys on your team because they're T1 comp-team material or somehow in T3 driving designs that only show a fundamental lack of basic play?

My personal favorite was hunting down a pair of heavies in my Orion while a lance of heavies and mediums were mopping up a single Huginn.

I came back missing most of my armor, out of ammo and down to internals to find them all dead and the light hadn't even taken internal damage, had killed all four of the very functional lance solo, and proceeded to machinegun me to death.

Six kills, 4 KMDDs, 3 kills were solo, and up five 'Mechs to three (and I'd taken two of them solo) and we lost because potatoes. If you can compensate for that, you deserve to be up there with House of Lords cappin' noobs and taking names.

[MadcatX]

A few observations based on OP post

1) Comes from FW to QP to try it out, decries that it does not deliver an acceptable game experience. Does not take into consideration the possibility that FW does not deliver an acceptable game experience since a big factor of low FW population is that it does not deliver an acceptable game experience.

The PuG life is a completely different beast. Most people ignore push calls because nine times out of ten, only a couple mechs will actually push and get toasted in the process.

At least at Tier 3 and lower QP has a lot less coordination in general and statistics such as KMDD more pertinent then win/loss.

Nah, no need to git gud if you don't want to as a solo QP, just expect to be usually matched with folks with the same mentality.

[JC Daxion]

My record is 23 in a row.. a bunch were close though, but that was like 2 years ago.


I know for a fact it would not go that long these days, because if i knew then what i know now many of those losses would of been wins.


But, some matches you will just loose, and honestly if you dropped the same teams next round you could win. Matches are a series of good and bad choices. It's more up to what 3-4 people do that wins or looses the game, and the others not doing something totally stupid. Some times i am the guy just trying not to be totally stupid, and others i am the person that is putting the team on my shoulders. The old saying Carry more...


try your best, and try to have fun, if you are not having fun take a break. Any time i am not having fun, i take a break.. But i have had plenty of fun in loosing streaks as long as the matches were pretty good, which for me, they often are. /shrug

[adamts01]

TWIAFU, on 15 May 2016 - 05:34 AM, said:

Umm, it's Quick Play.

If you want an "acceptable" game experience, stay the hell away from QP.

It is that simple.

I imagine you're talking Faction Warfare. I've absolutely hated it since day 1. I always dropped with a mediocre 12-man and we'd absolutely roll the other teams 95% of the time. The only good fights we've ever had were that 1/20 when we'd face anither decent 12 man. Seal clubbing just sucks.

Zerberus, on 15 May 2016 - 06:07 AM, said:

And, anyway, what exactly do you expect the developers to do? Hotfix PvP out of the game and give you AI teammates thet are only there to do your bidding? Or hotfix you out for not doing theirs? Or simply eliminate the solo queue completely and force everyone to play in groups?

Tarl Cabot, on 15 May 2016 - 08:32 AM, said:

What are you really expecting from the solo queue, be it at Tier 5 or Tier 1? How would you go about setting it up to provide YOU with a better experience?

I expect to have a real ranking system, and to be matched with at least semi-competent players. I expect PSR to not be a participation award. Fact: We don't have enough players for everyone to okay their own tier. Right now we have 3 game options; tier 5-3, 4-2 & 3-1. We have those 3 March types so we should just have 3 tiers. Lowest 1/3 in tier 3, middle 1/3 in tier 2, and the best 1/3 of all players in tier 1. We have the population for that and it would keep the middle of the road players from fighting the best and the worst. Have your rank depend on the community, that way everyone doesn't make it to tier 1 eventually.

[Corrado]

maniacos, on 15 May 2016 - 05:04 AM, said:

After a longer time stayin away from QP and playing FP only (edit: YES, IN A TEAM) I thought about giving it a try. However losing more than 10 games in a row is nothing that comes anywhere near "fun" or "entertaining". And yes, the teams I was in totally lost with reason. Assaults hiding behind a hill while lights and mediums die at the front, various people pleading for a push in chat, being totally ignored. Brawlers running into a bunch of enemies completely alone and isolated. People trying to call targets over VOIP while no one gives a flying **** about focussing that target. After 3 years PGI has still not managed to get a Matchmaker that's able to build team people can enjoy on either side. The amount of games that ain't lost after the first few minutes and become an entertaining, exciting close match - even if lost - gets no where near 10% of all matches played.

Why am I writing that at all? It seems that PGI won't give a **** about player experience anyhow.

inb4 git gud

two words. Carry Harder.

[adamts01]

Corrado, on 16 May 2016 - 12:39 AM, said:

two words. Carry Harder.

2 good players on each side having to do the work of the other 10 teammates is a failure. Some days I want to just get drunk, play a **** mech, pull my own weight, be part of the team and relax. Try that as a tier 1 and you'll lose 9/10 matches. It sucks.

[maniacos]

Rampage, on 15 May 2016 - 07:51 PM, said:

Or is it always Units crushing PUGs like what I have experienced from both sides.

They tried to fix that issue with splitting the queues, solo PUGs vs solo PUGs and units vs units. However, as anyone could have guessed, that made it even worse. With the split queue people had to wait even longer to get matches because there are simply not enough players to fill two queues when already one queue has issues to be filled so that everyone gets a game in a reasonable amount of time (ghostdrops anyone?).
And trust me, for unit players running against random PUGs and clubbing them like seals isn't fun on the long run either. Our whole unit's performance plumbed when we been as mercs just for some weeks at a border where we met PUGs and noobs for like every match.

Most of the problems of the matchmaker and the FP can be condensed down on the issue that PGI seems to fail aquiring enough players to fill their game.

[adamts01]

maniacos, on 16 May 2016 - 01:16 AM, said:

Most of the problems of the matchmaker and the FP can be condensed down on the issue that PGI seems to fail aquiring enough players to fill their game.

Seriously though, you just have to get drunk and not give a ****. This game is on it's last leg, PGI has said this is it, just minor tweaks from here, and now they're doing a money grab with these chests. Just yolo in to the enemy and cycle your mechs till you get a level/mode you want and hopefully you get a decent team for it. This game isn't going anywhere else besides where it's at.

[Zerberus]

adamts01, on 15 May 2016 - 10:36 PM, said:

I expect to have a real ranking system, and to be matched with at least semi-competent players.

This "great on paper" idea stands and falls with the preposterous concept of being able to empirically and accurately measure and quantify TEAMWORK.

Have fun doing that math, but the good news is that if you´re actually successful you will absolutely revolutionize both the videogaming industry and teh Sports ranking industry.

Quote

I expect PSR to not be a participation award. Fact: We don't have enough players for everyone to okay their own tier. Right now we have 3 game options; tier 5-3, 4-2 & 3-1. We have those 3 March types so we should just have 3 tiers. Lowest 1/3 in tier 3, middle 1/3 in tier 2, and the best 1/3 of all players in tier 1. We have the population for that and it would keep the middle of the road players from fighting the best and the worst.

And even if it did, how exactly are you planning on measuring someone´s capacity for TEAMWORK? Since you can´t realistically do so, the change would be entirely so you feel better, and the actual measurable impact would be ZERO, becase each match now has the exact spectrum of player quality to choose from, actually even slightly broader... 66% of the playerbase (assuming 1+2 as well as 2+3 allowed) as opposed to 60% of the playerbase it is now

Or are you instead advocating waiting twice as long for a match "within your tier", your special 33,3%, only to find out that if nobody cares about comms or teamplay the result will still be absofuckinlutely identical?

Tier 3 is middle of the road, and only the second option, which increases all search times by what can be assumed to be 100% does anything to keep them away from the best and the worst.

But it also would mean the worst have no realistic chance to see how better players play, and teh same holds true for the middle of the road. So nopbody gets better, the "1337 üb0r R00lorz" stay in their ivory tower, and the game suffers and dies becaisue nobody sees room for advancement and the wannabe skill-overlordz just scream down at the peasants even more than they already do , because even though their **** stinks too they´re just not the ones that have to deal with it... Until the terribads they refused to help get better enter FW, and then they will "need" to be removed there, too...

And it would completely **** anyone who even considers not being terribad and wanting to play with his friend that just started. If anything, your suggestions will DECREASE the quality of players available to your 1337ness, because you´ve jsut made absolutely sure there´s no way for tehm to learn ingame. But as long as the peasants are not visible from the elite´s castles in the sky, everything is OK, right?

If you want teamwork, JOIN A ******* TEAM, and suck it up in the team queue, instead of spreading what are basically non-ideas for how to "improve" the solo matchmaker just becasue your team doesn´t have the patience to wait 2 minutes for a drop and /or you believe yourself to be way too special to have to deal with people that care as much about your playing experience as you apparently do about theirs.

Conversely, If you want x people running around like chickens with their heads cut off, semi decently matched by tonnage and shooting skill, then join the solo queue.

It really is that simple, and since nobody else has been able to solve this problem in the last 20 years, and god knows they´ve tried a lot harder than people here do, I very highly doubt that any one of us is going to miraculoiusly do in in the next few hours simply by choosing different "quality of shooting" metrics as a base for PSR just so they feel better about themselves.

Quote

Have your rank depend on the community, that way everyone doesn't make it to tier 1 eventually.

And how exactly do you expect to achieve this? Should people vote who´s "good" and who isn`t? Absolutely ******* hell no if that´s the plan, thosands of games have alreads tried this, and the universal result is always that the best players get downvoted constantly, primarily becasue people are whiny ******* that want to be the best without actually doing anything for it.

And as a direct result, seal clubbing becomes the entire point of the game, until the people who are actually good get bored and leave, at which time the medium players get downvoted and have to club beginners, then they get bored and leave, too. And so the bads start clubbing beginners, and the result of that is that the game finally has "good matchmaking", while already taking it´s dying breath.

Edited by Zerberus, 16 May 2016 - 02:24 AM.

[adamts01]

Calm down there little cupcake. Do a breathing exorcise or have a beer or something.

Zerberus, on 16 May 2016 - 02:01 AM, said:

This "great on paper" idea stands and falls with the preposterous concept of being able to empirically and accurately measure and quantify TEAMWORK.

Have fun doing that math, but the good news is that if you´re actually successful you will absolutely revolutionize both the videogaming industry and teh Sports ranking industry.

You can't measure teamwork, but you can measure effectiveness. PSR isn't perfect by any measure but the way it prioritizes winning over everything else, is really the best way to measure a player. Good players will make good decisions for the team and win more. I don't even care if a Direwolf goes YOLO, as long as he can back it up and get results. If a player consistently can't hack it, he drops to the middle tier and the best of the middle tier moves up. With a third of the population in each tier everyone would have similar wait times and skill would be closer.

Zerberus, on 16 May 2016 - 02:01 AM, said:

But it also would mean the worst have no realistic chance to see how better players play, and teh same holds true for the middle of the road. So nopbody gets better, the "1337 üb0r R00lorz" stay in their ivory tower, and the game suffers and dies becaisue nobody sees room for advancement and the wannabe skill-overlordz just scream down at the peasants even more than they already do , because even though their **** stinks too they´re just not the ones that have to deal with it... Until the terribads they refused to help get better enter FW, and then they will "need" to be removed there, too...

That's just silly dude. You don't learn how to play touch football by scrimmaging NFL players. They can get better like everyone else, listening to advice, joining a group, watching YouTube. Mixing relatively new guys with comp players sucks for everyone.

Zerberus, on 16 May 2016 - 02:01 AM, said:

And it would completely **** anyone who even considers not being terribad and wanting to play with his friend that just started. If anything, your suggestions will DECREASE the quality of players available to your 1337ness, because you´ve jsut made absolutely sure there´s no way for tehm to learn ingame. But as long as the peasants are not visible from the elite´s castles in the sky, everything is OK, right?

How is this any different than now? If I brought a new player in a group with me right now he'd insta-die, learn little, contribute less and have zero fun.

From all your kind words, it doesn't sound like you want to drop in my matches, and I have a feeling I wouldn't want you there either. This would help avoid all that. I really think it would be good for everyone.

Edited by adamts01, 16 May 2016 - 02:49 AM.

[TWIAFU]

Ghogiel, on 15 May 2016 - 10:53 AM, said:

How the hell can solo QP be worse than solo FP? It doesn't even have a MM, has 250dmg over 4 mech freelancers and trial mech players in there lol

One was designed with solo play in mind the other is not.

[Cy Mitchell]

wanderer, on 15 May 2016 - 08:41 PM, said:

My personal favorite was hunting down a pair of heavies in my Orion while a lance of heavies and mediums were mopping up a single Huginn.

I came back missing most of my armor, out of ammo and down to internals to find them all dead and the light hadn't even taken internal damage, had killed all four of the very functional lance solo, and proceeded to machinegun me to death.

Six kills, 4 KMDDs, 3 kills were solo, and up five 'Mechs to three (and I'd taken two of them solo) and we lost because potatoes. If you can compensate for that, you deserve to be up there with House of Lords cappin' noobs and taking names.

If all five of you had stayed together and focus fired the Huggins and then the Heavies then you would have won. Teamwork OP.

[Death Proof]

I only play QP.

FP is a pain in the butt, takes too much time to get a match and is not very fun for me personally.

[Jables McBarty]

Wintersdark, on 15 May 2016 - 10:03 AM, said:

...

The reality is that good players do stupid things, and in a setting like QP where you have 12 randoms put together, you've 12 people with different ideas of what should be done in a match. Sometimes, they work together, sometimes they don't. Sometimes, they think they're working together and appear to be (and to each other as well) but because half think one thing is the goal, and half think another thing is the goal, suddenly things fall apart. This isn't a fault of the players, really, so much as it is an inevitable consequence of having 12 random people crammed together for a match. Unless someone takes command and directs, it's just going to happen.
...

This is also a huge factor. 99% of the time, I'm on the comms or listening to what's on the comms. The other day I silently disagreed with the guy calling the PUG match (had family sleeping in the other room so couldn't talk), did my own thing...and we lost. And I don't know if the other dude was right, but I was certainly wrong.

So not only are you dealing with the people who do their own thing 99% of the time, you're also dealing with the people who do their own thing 1% of the time.

maniacos, on 15 May 2016 - 04:10 PM, said:

I am not T5. Nevertheless this shouldn't matter, if there was a matchmaker that would work.

JigglyMoobs, on 15 May 2016 - 05:06 PM, said:

In the lower tiers there are not that many people who know what they are doing. Your game experience is likely to be frustrating if you are looking for coherent teamplay. So, your exact tier is rather important.

I find QP to be rather good about 50% of the time.

JigglyMoobs, on 15 May 2016 - 05:06 PM, said:

Your game experience is likely to be frustrating if you are looking for coherent teamplay.

Period. Solo-Q is one thing only: A zen exercise.

Here's what you need to do OP:

1. Do your best.
2. Do your best to guide and influence your team.
3. Do your best to acknowledge and listen to others trying to do #2. Don't me me in my anecdote above.
4. Accept that you cannot change or affect your team beyond doing 1-3. If you lose, you lose. Accept also that some people in your team might be idiots. Alternatively:
-they might also be leveling a 'mech like you,
-they might be drunk
-they might be new (you'll queue up with Tier 5 until you reach Tier 2)
-they might be having a losing streak and getting progressively more impulsive as the rage mounts
-they might just be a**hats who want to do their own thing, who think they know best, and will rage at everyone for the rest of the game after they yolo in an XL half-armor Rifleman
-they might be sick of playing with rage-filled a**hats and therefore muted all in-game comms long ago

It's a real grab-bag of players and reasons.

Do your best.

Accept your losses.

Rinse and repeat.

[AlphaToaster]

In QP, the players are the content until PGI adds in a single player campaign or something more formal like actual Solaris brackets or something like that.

The MM won't work to help create those equal skill games if PGI continues to allow the teirs to be lumped together.

I think the teirs should be more like:

Cadet Bonus/Tier 5
Tier 4
Tier 3
Tier 2
Tier 1

Split the queues up so no games match outside the available players in a specific tier. Wait times will go up a bit because the population is slow, but the skill levels within the games should be closer matched.

This would probably require the games in QP dynamically scale between 4v4, 8v8, and 12v12, based on how many people are in the queue.

Example - 23 players (in the same teir) in the queue waiting for <3minutes, when 1 more joins a 12v12 is kicked off.

23 players in the queue for >3 minutes, the first 16 should be put into an 8v8 and drop. The remaining 7 players would be on deck for the next player to join, kicking off a 4v4 if they've already waited longer than 3minutes. If they haven't waited that long yet, they are still able to form in a 12v12 if enough players join.

The goals are to keep the wait times low, offer varying game sizes to mix it up, and never mix tiers of players together. Later at night when populations are lower we would see more 4v4 and 8v8 games, then during peak times the games would be larger 12v12's.

Since the smaller games would in theory, run shorter, there shouldn't be that much of an impact to the number of games/hour, and earnings/hour should end up normalized across the board by adjusting the match end bonuses for the difference size matches.

[maniacos]

Jables McBarty, on 16 May 2016 - 09:56 AM, said:

Accept your losses.

Take a look at the thread headline. I don't know but accepting my loses is not what I call entertainment nor do I want to waste my time for losing streaks. Once, twice, three times happens but when it becomes constant, it failed to provide what a game should provide.

If there wasn't a FP where I can drop with a team, I would have quit this bs long ago again already. And I am actually close to quit this too.

Edited by maniacos, 16 May 2016 - 10:25 AM.

[maniacos]

AlphaToaster, on 16 May 2016 - 10:22 AM, said:

The MM won't work to help create those equal skill games if PGI continues to allow the teirs to be lumped together.

The problem is, each seperation they tried in the past resulted in more players being frustrated because of too long waiting times. Its not that this game is flooded by players, they quit for various reasons, and frustration in QP might be one of these reasons. That's my whole point, PGI was supposed to provide entertainment, they failed for too many.

[Sagamore]

maniacos, on 15 May 2016 - 05:04 AM, said:

After a longer time stayin away from QP and playing FP only (edit: YES, IN A TEAM) I thought about giving it a try. However losing more than 10 games in a row is nothing that comes anywhere near &quot;fun&quot; or &quot;entertaining&quot;. And yes, the teams I was in totally lost with reason. Assaults hiding behind a hill while lights and mediums die at the front, various people pleading for a push in chat, being totally ignored. Brawlers running into a bunch of enemies completely alone and isolated. People trying to call targets over VOIP while no one gives a flying **** about focussing that target. After 3 years PGI has still not managed to get a Matchmaker that's able to build team people can enjoy on either side. The amount of games that ain't lost after the first few minutes and become an entertaining, exciting close match - even if lost - gets no where near 10% of all matches played.

Why am I writing that at all? It seems that PGI won't give a **** about player experience anyhow.

inb4 git gud

You had fun farming disorganized PUGs with your team in FP (which has no matchmaker) and now you play QP solo which has a matchmaker and you keep losing? Carry harder. Solo queue QP is fine and currently the best option we have for a fair match.