20 replies to this topic

[SplashDown]

Or has the IQ lvl of the player base taken a dive into the crapper in the last year?..
Now granted i dont play much these days,BUT when i do play i find myself wanting to shoot my own team.
Now i know pug que has never really been the place to go for high lvl tactics....but ive never seen it this bad before either.
I'm seeing
0 common sense
0 situational awareness
0 clue how to counter move
and the list goes on.

Now i'll admit im a bit heated while writing this...but not salty.
But these days im seeing more stupid in 1 hour than i used to see in a day in the pug que.
So i ask any CB vets or any-1 who has played a year or more,

Is it just me?

[XxXAbsolutZeroXxX]

Overall I'm seeing a lot of improvement. There are more cases where we're coordinating. Less nascar to nowhere. Less bad calls all around. There is still the occasional dysfunctional team of crash test dummies. I think timezone matters a lot. There are certain times of the day when its guaranteed bads will be active and out in large numbers. Around 9-10 PM EST seems like about the time bads leave and some of the more reliable team players come out of hiding.

[El Bandito]

Although higher tiers are continuing to be diluted by players who have no business being there, pugs are still performing adequately to command. I currently see no reason to flip tables.

[Bombast]

First...

Second... aren't you the guy who doesn't know what 'all the time' means? He who lives in a glass house shouldn't cast stones.

[BLOOD WOLF]

SplashDown, on 06 November 2016 - 01:43 PM, said:

Or has the IQ lvl of the player base taken a dive into the crapper in the last year?..
Now granted i dont play much these days,BUT when i do play i find myself wanting to shoot my own team.
Now i know pug que has never really been the place to go for high lvl tactics....but ive never seen it this bad before either.
I'm seeing
0 common sense
0 situational awareness
0 clue how to counter move
and the list goes on.

Now i'll admit im a bit heated while writing this...but not salty.
But these days im seeing more stupid in 1 hour than i used to see in a day in the pug que.
So i ask any CB vets or any-1 who has played a year or more,

Is it just me?

But I was told that voice comms would make things all better. maybe we got a *1 to all those things listed, and it still made 0 difference

[Spheroid]

The answer I suspect will be deeply insulting so I say it with caution, but the current population is simply not as good or as motivated as what once existed.

MWO has entered a new phase of its lifecycle where the playerbase has gotten both less native-English speaking and more casual. Anyone who cared about the IP would have been here year one. MWO is a F2P game and the people who play it now are the same types you see populating other older FPS titles since it is a cheap form of entertainment worth a ruble or two.

It has to be lack of passion because the mental skillset required in MWO could easily be mastered by a child between the ages of 8-10.

Edited by Spheroid, 06 November 2016 - 04:12 PM.

[Idealsuspect]

SplashDown, on 06 November 2016 - 01:43 PM, said:

Or has the IQ lvl of the player base taken a dive into the crapper in the last year?..
Now granted i dont play much these days,BUT when i do play i find myself wanting to shoot my own team.
Now i know pug que has never really been the place to go for high lvl tactics....but ive never seen it this bad before either.
I'm seeing
0 common sense
0 situational awareness
0 clue how to counter move
and the list goes on.

Now i'll admit im a bit heated while writing this...but not salty.
But these days im seeing more stupid in 1 hour than i used to see in a day in the pug que.
So i ask any CB vets or any-1 who has played a year or more,

Is it just me?

Even goods pilots are doing YOLO push for farm cbills also expect nothing good in puglandia

[Tristan Winter]

I've been pugging 99.9% of the time since 2012. I see a marked improvement since 2012. Basically, the "elo" based matchmaker we used to have was a joke. Even as a veteran of the game, you would still get matched up against people in trial mechs (remember when trial mechs were stock mechs, btw?) and you would regularly see questions like "how do I disable 3PV?" or "how do I change to night vision?". You would ask players on your team how long they'd played the game, and you'd often get answers like "a few days". And in the same match, you would see elite players from Lords, for example.

I think you're wearing rose colored glasses. MM in MWO was never great, even back when this game had twice as many players.

[Daggett]

I have to admit that i had high hopes in reaching a higher PSR-Tier, but what i have to witness when pugging is rather depressing.

Players do the same mistakes over and over again with the most prominent one being too passive.
There are way too much assault drivers out there who are totally unable to learn that when they don't push agressively at some point, their whole team will lose. Don't make it that easy for the opponent. Put some pressure on them and give your short-range brawlers a chance to influence the match before the enemy gets the upper hand.

[Xetelian]

I went from Tier 3 to Tier 2 recently and I'm working my way to one. I've seen the worst of it and the best of it. I've been paired off with Tier 5 4 3 2 and 1 and get paired up with Rambos all the time.
"I'm gonna go tunnel to flank" is the single most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. Usually the guy is in an Assault so wont actually be in battle for 3 or 5 more minutes of walking. Then when he arrives he steps out of the tunnel and dies in 3 alphas to his CT from the four or five guys he surprised. Sometimes they take one down with them and consider themselves elite as they then participate in the match but watching every screen and calling people horrible things for easy mistakes or no mistake at all.


I've also seen matches that come down to 4 mechs vs 1 RVN 3L with two ERLL and he proceeds to laser them all down without ever taking return fire.


Without being able see your Tier rating I can't tell you whether you're just witnessing bad 3s or new 5s.

I still see Tier 4s that bring Assault sized LRM boats and carry all that armor in the back line.
I still see loadouts that are so jacked up that I couldn't ever explain them.
The "best" loadout that I've seen was an LBX10 and an AC5 and an AC2 on a STD (I'm assuming because he was running 54KPH) JM6-DD.

I think the potatoes you could be seeing are the new Steam users if you're in range of Tier 5 or 4.

Edited by Xetelian, 06 November 2016 - 06:20 PM.

[Deathlike]

If you were asking for intelligence, we should've stopped catering people wanting to have a solo-only mentality.

In a game dependent on teamwork, your worst opponent is the guy that refuses to listen.

Edited by Deathlike, 06 November 2016 - 06:19 PM.

[Wil McCullough]

it isn't you. i quit in 2013 and came back pretty recently. player quality has DEFINITELY gone down.

the number of assault mech players who consistently put out <100 damage leaves me feeling a little dead inside.

there's also a really noticeable influx of players who can't seem to use both hands together - if they're moving, they don't shoot. if they shoot, they don't move.

also very noticeable are the number of players who can get lost going straight forward (reminds of me zorro from one piece). sometimes, trying to get players to go to the ridge on alpine is like trying to herd a pack of ******** cats. for one highlander, i had to LITERALLY lead him around by shooting my small lasers in the ground at his feet, in the direction he was supposed to go in.

it made me want to cry.

Xetelian, on 06 November 2016 - 06:10 PM, said:

I think the potatoes you could be seeing are the new Steam users if you're in range of Tier 5 or 4.

i'm in t3. i see absolute potatoes all the time. like ABSOLUTE. i've dropped with and against players from comp teams like EmP too. even they can't carry in qp when saddled with a potato team.

Edited by Wil McCullough, 06 November 2016 - 07:15 PM.

[DiabetesOverlord Wilford Brimley]

It's called Brazil they are the best dungeon pugs (only true wow players have felt this pain! )

[Chuck Jager]

take an elited version of one of the 4-6 mid range OP mech high alpha or dakka builds with modules and life is better.

Fun builds are not fun unless your skills are CWAZE.

This may sound boring, but you will find you save enough cbills by not playing craptastic builds that by the time the meta changes it will be an easy shift.

[Daggett]

I forgot to mention one point in my previous post: Though many players do questionable things when pugging, there are times where one guy (or even more) gets on comms and guides the team.

Those matches are much better most of the time so in the end there is some improvement since voice-chat was implemented. Problem are the matches where no one is guiding the team. A sufficient self-organizing team without a leader is no rocket science but most pug teams somehow can't do it.

[Wil McCullough]

Daggett, on 07 November 2016 - 12:58 AM, said:

I forgot to mention one point in my previous post: Though many players do questionable things when pugging, there are times where one guy (or even more) gets on comms and guides the team. Those matches are much better most of the time so in the end there is some improvement since voice-chat was implemented. Problem are the matches where no one is guiding the team. A sufficient self-organizing team without a leader is no rocket science but most pug teams somehow can't do it.

i do agree with this. voice comms does wonders especially if used properly. it can give the team a proper plan and motivation.

that being said, i've seen ineffectual voice comms as well when the drop caller just gets plain ignored. the backfire is immense when half the team does what the caller calls and the other half doesn't. all it takes is one guy to declare "i'm going the opposite way alone to "spot" and "flank"".

if that guy is in an assault mech...

[MeiSooHaityu]

SplashDown, on 06 November 2016 - 01:43 PM, said:

...has the IQ lvl of the player base taken a dive into the crapper in the last year?..
Is it just me?

Yes, it is just you.

I have been playing this game a long time. It has always been like that.

Edited by MeiSooHaityu, 07 November 2016 - 02:18 AM.

[Mycrus]

SplashDown, on 06 November 2016 - 01:43 PM, said:

Or has the IQ lvl of the player base taken a dive into the crapper in the last year?..
Now granted i dont play much these days,BUT when i do play i find myself wanting to shoot my own team.
Now i know pug que has never really been the place to go for high lvl tactics....but ive never seen it this bad before either.
I'm seeing
0 common sense
0 situational awareness
0 clue how to counter move
and the list goes on.

Now i'll admit im a bit heated while writing this...but not salty.
But these days im seeing more stupid in 1 hour than i used to see in a day in the pug que.
So i ask any CB vets or any-1 who has played a year or more,

Is it just me?

Depends on your proximity to north american peak hours... i find many bads during that play time zone... good for seal clubbing and raising your tier..

[burns]

It really was better in 8v8 with small maps (no nascar incentive since you we´re ded if you left the brawlers).
There was of course the big upside of the smaller crowd* - sometimes on matchup screen seeing the names on your teams you could determine how good of a match it was going to be
*(and no DHS and no power creep and everyone besides founders being spacepoor and and and..)

When World of Tanks introduced optional game modes besides the one known since it´s closed beta i deactivated those ASAP because i knew people would be too stupid to comprehend the changed meta of those modes. Now, 3 years later, it still is that way.


Then again, with PGI we´re still putting hopes in the same company that lets little issues/bugs go untouched for months when all it´d take to straighten out would be a small 1mb hotfix *shrugs*

Edited by burns, 07 November 2016 - 03:56 AM.

[Stone Wall]

It's MWO. The combat isn't that demanding on IQ to begin with.

Edited by Stone Wall, 08 November 2016 - 04:05 AM.