99 replies to this topic

[Sorbic]

I mostly play QP and while I'll hit some losing streaks they're almost never that long and I acknowledge that I will also have winning streaks. Unless they're pretty terrible no one has a long term really lopsided lost games ratio. I'm not saying the tier system is perfect. Just that too many people get stuck only seeing the bad or only take a small sampling and ignore that losing streaks happen in most multiplayer games.

[Narcissistic Martyr]

Get drunk, play something hillariously off meta, have fun.

In short, stop giving a flying frack.

[Tarl Cabot]

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?

It is a militarist type game with no CoC, a sports game generally with no real team play unless/until one gets into unit play, be it the group or FW queue. One can get that occasionally in the solo queue when many like-minded individuals ends up in the same co-op/drop by chance. But many who drop may have very little experience working as a unit. It has been discussed in other threads that time zone/regional differences in game play style. NA prime-time the drops tend to be more aggressive (good or bad) while during European prime-time the drops tend to be more slow-moving/campish types. Again, that is tends to be but not always.

When in the solo queue, I keep my sanity by simply playing, trying to work with the others, try different things. If I screw up, I screw up. And when spectating, I have to remind myself that most are playing on much smaller screens/monitors, so what I can easily see on my 42in/46in LCD TV (depends on which room I am in) may not be as visible for someone playing on a standard 25/27in WS monitor, if that. And it is no wonder that so many play while zoomed in when in close combat. Lets not leave out those who play with 20-30FPS (shudders), and I thought at times I was a masochist.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 15 May 2016 - 08:39 AM.

[maniacos]

kapusta11, on 15 May 2016 - 06:51 AM, said:

Is it that hard to download TS and find people you'd like to play with?

Is it so hard to read my post entirely?

[DreadDevil]

Here is the only thing i will say, there are people that refuse to listen to others, there are those that wont take command that have a mic, there are those that want the game there way no other , there are those who get int the game jst to vent or yell, there are those(fill it in), , either learn to play the game take command, play with your friends, or you can keep complaining about it, or you can quit, see it is that simple.

Good luck, have fun or do not it is your choice.

[Khobai]

umm no gamemode in MWO provides an acceptable game experience. whether its QP or CW its all just deathmatch.

weve been complaining about every single gamemode being deathmatch for 2 years

It seems PGI has finally listened and the new assault gamemode coming out in july/september sounds promising.

But CW needs the same treatment. They need to add destructible walls, jamming towers, etc... to CW as well.

Edited by Khobai, 15 May 2016 - 09:49 AM.

[TheArisen]

Find a unit, it's done wonders for my own experience. You won't always win but that's part of any game, online or not.

In Solo que you can't completely rely on your teammates. Your individual performance is the first thing you should worry about. I don't mean playing selfishly (not completely) but if you can't put out a decent amount of DMG, etc, it's not the teams fault entirely.

It's also important to try and coordinate early, you'll have the best chance of having ppl listen. Even if you have some idiots, if the majority of ppl follow what you're saying so will they. It won't always work & you won't always win but you'll have more fun & win more.

Admittedly, I've had matches where I get 800 - 1k & still lose but knowing I did my part brings some satisfaction.

Ultimately, you can't control the other players, just yourself.

[Wintersdark]

One can blame the MM all one wants, but there's not a better system. Certainly, not one I've seen.

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.

And while I always hear of people complaining that others refuse to listen or what have you, my experience over many thousands of solo matches has been overwhelmingly that people DO tend to listen, so long as the person taking command isn't an utter ****** about it.

In fact, I'd say I've had easily a 80% solo queue win rate when someone takes command, even if it's in a very simple way (such as Mr. Blasterman's classic "Go here, kill things").

But, as to the MM itself... The hard reality is we have relatively few players and with tiers and weight class restrictions, we need tens of thousands of concurrent players at any given moment to be able to get acceptable matches. Thus, much of the time outside of prime time you're getting matches that the MM is "settling for", not matches the MM feels are well balanced. No amount of different rating systems or MM tweaks is going to change that, aside from dramatically increasing match search time... and while that's fine for some, waiting 10-15 minutes for a match isn't good.

[Lykaon]

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

After a longer time stayin away from QP and playing FP only 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

Here is what I have found.

Weekends are a complete s**t show with the general quality of play being rock bottom if you play during prime time.

I can predict the team that will win with at least 75% accuracy based upon how many players from each team have unit tags, The team with more unit tags will generally pull the win (less accurate if the difference is one player)

I can also extrapolate the likely turn out by looking at my team's mech choices.The more "meta" the mech choices the better your odds are.

Essentially I pretty much know if my team is going to win right after I see the team ready screen and can see the mechs and unit tags. So basically not all that exciting most of the time.

To avoid this I play with my unit in the group queue. At least then I know that at least the other players in my group will cooperate and have my back.

[Moldur]

Quickplay is a demo and I am a little bit sad that it is all many people imagine MWO to ever be.

[Ghogiel]

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

[maniacos]

Khobai, on 15 May 2016 - 09:46 AM, said:

It seems PGI has finally listened and the new assault gamemode coming out in july/september sounds promising.

Scout mode did sound promising too at the first sight, especially for someone like me who performs best in light mechs or fast mediums. Performance in scout is acceptable but the mode becomes dull soon too. I was hoping to get maps as big as FP maps (minimum) and less dead match style but that hope was void too.

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

Who spoke about solo FP?

[maniacos]

Moldur, on 15 May 2016 - 10:29 AM, said:

Quickplay is a demo and I am a little bit sad that it is all many people imagine MWO to ever be.

Because PGI didn't get finished after 3 years what they promised at launch and the QP mode was just some compromise until the "main" mode is ready, QP became like the real main mode. And you are even forced to play QP with some mechs when you are leveling them, because some unleveled mechs are just inferior for FP so that you don't really want to bring them into your group.

[Narcissistic Martyr]

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

I actually created my own throw away unit to do faction wars solo without being stuck in that mess.

[Yosharian]

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

After a longer time stayin away from QP and playing FP only 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

I was losing game after game earlier today, including a one where a teammate wasted 5 minutes of everyone's time at the end of the match by walking to the corner of the map.

Then a few games later I was absolutely crushing, game after game 800+ damage.

Multiplayer is chaotic by nature. It's very difficult for the human brain to determine trends accurately. The matchmaker definitely has its issues, but your subjective experience does not provide objective, accurate data on the subject.

[DAYLEET]

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

quickplay-does-not-provide-an-acceptable-game-experience

Last few weeks had an event going on. That has always made playing during that time terrible. Unless you are grinding the event with a clear goal that you use to shield your sanity, you can expect to have a harder time than usual. Then at hours with less people you are also going to have a harder time unless you are a very good solo player in the purest sense and not trying to herd cats.

Maybe it's time to revisit the LFG, ive mostly had good experience there in the past. It never had a vocal leader but you could play expecting certain stuff to happen.

Edited by DAYLEET, 15 May 2016 - 12:09 PM.

[Davers]

Not sure why people expect the MM to create teams capable of SEAL quality coordination out of a random collection of players and mechs.

[Wintersdark]

Davers, on 15 May 2016 - 12:14 PM, said:

Not sure why people expect the MM to create teams capable of SEAL quality coordination out of a random collection of players and mechs.

And even if you pretend PSR is completely accurate and skill based, that's still dividing players by skill into 5 buckets. There's a HUGE gap between the best and worst players at this game, so those buckets are big.

Throw random players together, and you get random results.

[wanderer]

Lemming of the BDA, on 15 May 2016 - 05:51 AM, said:

The only common denominator on a loosing streak is yourself. Improve your own game first. Even when you do everything right, some games you will loose. Thats life. Specially pugging it in MWO. Keep at it. Record some of your games. Look at what YOU did well and what your enemy did well. Learn. Or quit.

This platitude is amusing, but also BS in a PUG.

I get plenty of games where I look at the death screen and go "Hey, I got a few kills and 500+ damage, how's everyone doin-"

...and the rest of the team is dead and none of them cleared 200 damage, and most of them didn't even hit 100,

And they're heavies and assaults. The problem is you can't get rid of bad players that don't belong in higher tiers because the system carries -everyone- towards T1, and this means the matchmaker becomes increasingly meaningless over time.

The general common traits I see in a losing streak?

1) Horrible builds, horrible chassis choices. When I see people in my lance blazing away with standard Clan AC/5 builds on their Timber Wolves or LRM Atlases, the team is already one foot in the grave.

2) PUG-pattern behavior. The guys who inevitably bunch up at a caldera entrance in Terra Therma and try to trade 4:1, routinely ditch their assaults to engage ASAP. Saying something does nothing as these people apparently mute chat or ignore it due to congenital illiteracy. Moreover, they do it again, and again, and again.

3) The same names, over and over again. Either the player pool is dry, or else the game's deliberately sticking the same names on my roster repeatedly. My personal best here was getting the same guys in my lance twice in a row, and two of them the third go-round...in the solo queue. The fourth guy ended up on the other team. We one-shotted him. Laughs were had.

[wanderer]

Oh, and the tier system is a joke. Here's how it ends up working.

1) You start playing. It'll select a tier for you based on your first 25 games to start in.
2) Regardless of any real changes in skill, you will eventually end up advancing through tiers until T1 as the system is majorly biased towards gaining PSR.

That's it. The result is that we have the March of the Potatoes, as the initial tier settings are obliterated by the PSR gain until everyone is automatically on the road to T1, and by T3, players are splattered randomly into supposedly "high-tier" (read: they're supposed to be good amiright?) teams where they proceed to either devoured whole by actually good players or part of a seal-clubbing run, depending on the whim of the MM.

Good players are not grouped with good players, bad players do not end up in low tiers in their own level of skill. Tier gain does not become more difficult going from T4->T1. Being a T1-T2 has become the equivalent of getting a trophy for playing a lot. Go you.