127 replies to this topic

[Vasili Kerensky]

Fact: 12-man premades will never get taken down by PUGs. The favourite argument of the well-to-do clanner premades is 'become part of a team' and 'get organized'. If you do that, everything will be fine.

Nice argument but it's crap. Not all people have the time or the desire to invest time and effort into keeping regular gaming hours and become semi-professional players. That's why they're called casuals and they probably are and will continue to be the majority of the population.

Fact: This game demands a huge investment in time and money for a player to become competitive. In order to build a proper drop deck you have to make informed decisions beforehand, acquire 12 'mechs, master them all, equip them properly, unlock all the proper modules for them and buy them. That's the minimum of effort to enter the competitive scene with hopes of victory and that's if you already know the game before playing it.

Die-hard players will view the 6-month period for this to happen as a normal time investment. It isn't. It's a huge investment of time, effort and money and many people won't be able to do it or they simply won't want to give so much of their time in the game.

So, we have all these damn casuals running around, getting into drops with trial 'mechs, getting killed from 1 klik by professional clan pilots that pilot 'mechs that kill with ERLLs from 1 klik away and with 1 salvo and they rant and complain.

The solution is so easy, it's a wonder why it hasn't been done yet.

Split the goddamn FP into Solo and Group queues.

Allow premades to duke it out with each other and let casuals have the experience they want to have - a proper Faction match against players at their own level of skill and equipment and a realistic chance of victory without going professional.

I further recommend to allow up to 2-man groups to join the solo queue. Many casuals play with a friend and want the company.

Zero implementation time, zero cost for PGI and a damn win-win situation for all concerned. I'm going to pre-empt the argument of larger wait times for the queues. As far as solo queue is concerned, I don't think that there's going to be a wait time larger than normal. Once the casual realize that they can play a proper FP match, they'll jump in whenever the Call to Arms appears. As for the groups - you are organized. Get on a TS server, arrange the day and time and play your match.

Just do it and let's be done with this tragedy that is the current environment of FP.

Edited by Vasili Kerensky, 19 August 2016 - 05:20 AM.

[Gruinhardt]

Fact: We already had split queue in FP, with the release of phase 3. Not enough solo players were interested. This lead to long queue times in solo FP, eventually solo FP became a ghost town.

If any new player wants to play FP, they should really consider joining a unit. Most units are more than happy to help guide a new player.

[Kurbeks]

On top of that solo players can be ultra-comp and kill easily all enemy team of pugs in scouting mode.

[DarklightCA]

You are completely missing the point. The biggest advantage a 12 man has is coordination. 12 solo players are never going to be as coordinated as a 12 man even if they do agree to follow each other and have nobody going off on their own. Another advantage is that a unit 12 man is constantly playing with the same players so overtime strategies and builds are incorporated, you will see none of that in a solo team.

Joining a unit and playing as a 12 man doesn't mean you have to be competitive or devote much time to it. There are plenty of units that are casual and have people that don't have a lot of time to play. The only thing that's crap is the excuses why you can't do that as well.

Also PGI already added a split queue and it wasn't popular. The solo queue couldn't find very many games and while the quality of games increased in the group queue, the wait times were even more horrible which is what happens when you split a limited population that was already struggling finding games. As much as I would love to fight nothing but 12 man's in Faction Play, it doesn't have the population to support it because there is still no incentives for units to play Faction Play over Quick Play which btw is a lot more solo friendly than Faction Play is as it should be.

[KahnWongFuChung]

Not enough solo players were interested


I have to say [Redacted] on this Russ caved into his [Redacted] premade wanabees and it never even got a chance to be tried out.

Edited by draiocht, 19 August 2016 - 01:17 PM.
inappropriate language

[justcallme A S H]

Vasili Kerensky, on 19 August 2016 - 04:55 AM, said:

Fact: 12-man premades will never get taken down by PUGs.

Well a 6-man group last night defeated a 12-man Davion team. I was in it as a PUG. We had really good players and it was 12-0 our way, against a 12-man.

So yeah, they do get taken down but admittedly it's not common.

Vasili Kerensky, on 19 August 2016 - 04:55 AM, said:

Fact: This game demands a huge investment in time and money for a player to become competitive. In order to build a proper drop deck you have to make informed decisions beforehand, acquire 12 'mechs, master them all, equip them properly, unlock all the proper modules for them and buy them. That's the minimum of effort to enter the competitive scene with hopes of victory and that's if you already know the game before playing it.

Not trying to be rude here, but a few months back there was a drop deck bug that would reset you to a trial deck.

I had this happen a few times and still punched out 2k damage on basic mechs, no modules no nothing and winning games. So to do well, you do not need to invest that much time. You just have to work as a team and that is the key for Faction Play.

Vasili Kerensky, on 19 August 2016 - 04:55 AM, said:

Split the goddamn FP into Solo and Group queues.

This was tried at the start of Phase 3 launch, 4 months or so ago.
It was reverted because - no-one played in the solo queue. Wait times were over 45mins for solo players. It failed because people did not back it.

All the solo players created their own "single person unit" to get back into the unit queue, and then the change was reverted.



I get you are a new player, as evident by that T5 tag - but a lot of what you are saying is uneducated and simply untrue.

I don't avoid playing against a 12-man, even as a PUG.

I've stood there many a time and taken a beatdown from a 12-man KCom team, but each time I will always queue up again and repeat. People might think that was stupid... But...

It made me a better pilot. Yeah it sucks to lose, but as long as I put in my best effort every time, I walked away happy (and usually with 5-8 kills/1500dmg even in a 48-18 facesmash)

[KahnWongFuChung]

Look all you have to say about this subject is Russ and PGI messed up the CW/FP game play by not making it 2 separate MM queues and sticking with it.

All they had to do was make the matchmaker take 12 random pugs/casuals Vs 12 random pugs/casuals no matter what tier level or mechs they had in there drop deck up to the correct tonnage and launch a match.

But no lets make it complicated(PGI'S Achilles heal) so it fails then we can tell our premade buddies they can seal club the pugs and casuals so they can quit crying.

Edited by KahnWongFuChung, 19 August 2016 - 03:58 PM.

[DivBy0]

It is not true that PGI try out Solo and Group Queues at the start of Phase3. They make a Unit-Tag and a No-Unit-Tag group. And the Game-UI and logic was so brocken that only player with a Unit-Tag could play FP. Solo-Player who want to play FP were forced to make One-Man Units.

Edited by von Haudegen, 19 August 2016 - 04:33 PM.

[jss78]

IMO the attempt at split FP queues at the launch of Stage 3 was half-hearted.

There's a long history of more casual players drifting away from FP. Of course Stage 3 wasn't going to bring them back unless you make a concerted effort towards that population, as opposed to the small population that still played FP.

What they need to do is to (obviously) make the core gameplay in FP more fun. This is a given to have any hope of raising the population. Then they need to try the split queues again, while running a long event with amazing rewards. Make it ridiculously better rewards compared to QP, and run the event for damned month if necessary, but you need to make an effort to get those lost players to try FP again.

There's easily enough players in MWO to sustain the split queues, but not if 90+% of players never even look in the direction of FP.

IMO the bottom line is that without both better core gameplay and split queues, % of player base coming to FP will forever remain so low that it's not worth the development effort.

Edited by jss78, 19 August 2016 - 05:07 PM.

[Hobbles v]

FALSE!

Fact: Pugs groups do in fact defeat 12 mans and organised groups sometimes. Point is you have to take the responsibility to make yourself a better pilot and try to work with your random team mates.

http://smg.photobuck...rary/Pugs%20win

Edited by Hobbles v, 19 August 2016 - 05:22 PM.

[Leone]

Vasili Kerensky, on 19 August 2016 - 04:55 AM, said:

Fact: 12-man premades will never get taken down by PUGs.

Dear Original Poster,

As you may have noticed, leading with a false statement, does not, in fact, lend credence to your thesis.

Please do some more research next time and we would be happy to provide advice and assistance.

~Leone

[Nightshade24]

TBH I just wish 12 man teams were a lot more rarer and that the standard CW only allows 4 mans at max.
As fun as 12 vs 12's are, that's rare.

And most often, the pugs that the 10-12 man team is fighting are not enjoying it at all. Feeling like a bunch of fish in a barrel isn't quite fun. I think 12 vs 12's should be a thing. Maybe it be done as a challenge to an enemy factions unit or something. say 228's are jade falcon and HHoD is Davions, the 228's could challenge the HHoD's and if they accept then 12 vs 12 time. Leaving the pugs out of those battles. I do not know that many people who are all the same faction who want to drop in with me to do a 12 man team anytime soon and my problem with doing it with a unit is they have a quota or what ever.
"No LRM boats, have always 1 light mech for 3rd wave light rush, always have a pair of UAC 5's" or what ever and when you do not do it and they do not mind you are a bit out of sync as they often loose any interest with working with you... you are an LRM boat and a lights on you? your fault for being an LRM boat, we're not helping you... You do not have any sniping gear? tough luck, try to snipe with your AC 20. that might work. etc....

[TWIAFU]

KahnWongFuChung, on 19 August 2016 - 03:57 PM, said:

Look all you have to say about this subject is Russ and PGI messed up the CW/FP game play by not making it 2 separate MM queues and sticking with it.

All they had to do was make the matchmaker take 12 random pugs/casuals Vs 12 random pugs/casuals no matter what tier level or mechs they had in there drop deck up to the correct tonnage and launch a match.

But no lets make it complicated(PGI'S Achilles heal) so it fails then we can tell our premade buddies they can seal club the pugs and casuals so they can quit crying.

The CW queue in relation to solo pugtards and Group/Unit is fine.

The issue is NOT with MM but is with solo players demanding that a queue designed primarily for the Group/Unit be changed to cater to them, again.

Solo pugtards are clubbed because they play solo in a game mode that was not and will not be designed for them. They make excuses as to why they cannot or will not put forth a minimal amount of effort to take part in the primary design function of CW, Group and Unit play - just like you did.

Solo are clubbed because they ignore the warning box for CW and think they are special.

Don't want to get clubbed in CW, then join a team, a unit, and faction TS. If that is to much "effort" then stick to the QP short bus or get clubbed.

[DarklightCA]

Nightshade24, on 20 August 2016 - 12:28 AM, said:

TBH I just wish 12 man teams were a lot more rarer and that the standard CW only allows 4 mans at max.
As fun as 12 vs 12's are, that's rare.

And most often, the pugs that the 10-12 man team is fighting are not enjoying it at all. Feeling like a bunch of fish in a barrel isn't quite fun. I think 12 vs 12's should be a thing. Maybe it be done as a challenge to an enemy factions unit or something. say 228's are jade falcon and HHoD is Davions, the 228's could challenge the HHoD's and if they accept then 12 vs 12 time. Leaving the pugs out of those battles. I do not know that many people who are all the same faction who want to drop in with me to do a 12 man team anytime soon and my problem with doing it with a unit is they have a quota or what ever.
"No LRM boats, have always 1 light mech for 3rd wave light rush, always have a pair of UAC 5's" or what ever and when you do not do it and they do not mind you are a bit out of sync as they often loose any interest with working with you... you are an LRM boat and a lights on you? your fault for being an LRM boat, we're not helping you... You do not have any sniping gear? tough luck, try to snipe with your AC 20. that might work. etc....

Only that Faction Play was designed with those 12 man Unit groups in mind. It's the only gamemode that does not limit or nerf large groups and the only gamemode who's primary basis (planet conquering) can only be completed by Units.

The only gamemode that should have group sizes limited to 4 man's is Quick Play. Large group's don't belong there, it should be meant as a means of solo queuing or grouping in small groups. The fact 12 man's were still allowed to operate in Quick Play while giving no incentives for them to play in Faction Play because conquering planets did not matter was a huge mistake for this gamemode.

Along with the fact every solo mentality player despite having no chance of conquering planets over Units thought somehow a gamemode about Unit planetary conquest with no match maker or limitations on groups was actually a gamemode for them and swarmed it trying to berate and kick out all the grouped players for playing the gamemode as it was meant to be played.

[Vasili Kerensky]

A PUG beating a premade one time out of 20 does NOT make it something that "can be done" and my statement false. It makes it a lucky break. A lucky break is NOT something to base an argument on. The classic mistake in your reasoning is that you present one exception that defeats the original statement and then you invent a number of conditions upon which this one exception can be the rule. We are NOT talking about how solo casuals can become better players and get organized and listen to orders so that they can beat premades. We're talking about the state of affairs as it stands, not as it could be if and when. The facts are that casuals don't listen to orders, they aren't organized, they run all over the map and they die fast. This won't change no matter how much you talk about what would happen in an imaginary server where casuals were proper, focused, driven players. It won;t change no matter how many examples you present about PUGs that consisted mainly of such players or that were damn lucky. For each one of these examples I can post 20 pics of unhealthy, undignified, pathetic stomps of PUGs by premades.

As for the supposedly split queues that PGI implemented 4 months ago, I read two accounts. Those who smugly said that it was done and it didn't work and those who said that it was done half-heartedly and it was crap. I'm inclined to believe the second group.

So, I'm not convinced by your counter-arguments. PUGs are meat for the premade grinder except when they get lucky and PGI needs to implement a proper Solo FP queue.

Let me show you how easy it is; go to the game and press Quickmatch. You'll see 12 solo players matched against 12 other solo players within 30 to 90 seconds tops. Take this functionality as it is, without added rules and conditions and move it to Faction Play. Problem solved.

Edited by Vasili Kerensky, 20 August 2016 - 05:08 PM.

[B L O O D W I T C H]

Gruinhardt, on 19 August 2016 - 06:07 AM, said:

Fact: We already had split queue in FP, with the release of phase 3. Not enough solo players were interested.

That is false, solo queue was full, the premade queue had nothing to do and was very very veeeery vocal about it. hench pgi to the split of the queue back.

[Rogue Jedi]

von Haudegen, on 19 August 2016 - 04:30 PM, said:

It is not true that PGI try out Solo and Group Queues at the start of Phase3. They make a Unit-Tag and a No-Unit-Tag group. And the Game-UI and logic was so brocken that only player with a Unit-Tag could play FP. Solo-Player who want to play FP were forced to make One-Man Units.

what happened was they made it so players without a unit tag could not play against people with a unit tag, the "non unit" queue was averaging 1 game per hour, note that was accross all factions.

if they had instead made it so ungrouped unit players could drop in the solo queue that would have been diferant, but then 12 players from a unit could just call a planet, and have a very good chance that their 12 "individual players" would all end up in the same match if they wanted an easy win against a PUG.

PGI did have a reason for setting it up as they did, the whole reason for trying to split the queues was to prevent premades from "seal clubbing" against a Pick Up Group, so they did as much as possible to make it hard for an organised group to come up against a PUG but there were insuffiscent PUG CW players to make it work

[DarklightCA]

Solo players were complaining about being stomped by premade groups so PGI added a separate queue Units and non-units. It may not have been your perfect example of what you wanted that separate queue to be but it gave you the exact thing you wanted, a queue where you did not have to fight unit premade groups.

That separate queue failed for obvious reasons. Biggest being you can't take a already limited population that is struggling to find games, split that population in half and expect people not to have problems which is exactly what happened. There was so little people willing be apart of the new queue system that people formed solo units just to get into the grouped queue.

A separate queue just for you solo player snowflakes won't work just because you can't deal with fighting coordinated teams. You came to the wrong gamemode if that's what you think needs to happen. Also, "We are NOT talking about how solo casuals can become better players and get organized and listen to orders so that they can beat premades." is pretty unproductive. People have been telling you guys for a long time how to get better games in Faction Play but for some reason you don't want to listen.

[Nightshade24]

DarklightCA, on 20 August 2016 - 01:38 PM, said:

Only that Faction Play was designed with those 12 man Unit groups in mind. It's the only gamemode that does not limit or nerf large groups and the only gamemode who's primary basis (planet conquering) can only be completed by Units.

The only gamemode that should have group sizes limited to 4 man's is Quick Play. Large group's don't belong there, it should be meant as a means of solo queuing or grouping in small groups. The fact 12 man's were still allowed to operate in Quick Play while giving no incentives for them to play in Faction Play because conquering planets did not matter was a huge mistake for this gamemode.

Along with the fact every solo mentality player despite having no chance of conquering planets over Units thought somehow a gamemode about Unit planetary conquest with no match maker or limitations on groups was actually a gamemode for them and swarmed it trying to berate and kick out all the grouped players for playing the gamemode as it was meant to be played.

It was designed for it, but it rarely happens... tell me, if they removed pugs and smaller groups in FP and force 12 mans only. How often do you think you will see games?...

FP was also designed with role warfare in mind... how strong is role warfare when you have 12 Timberwolfs and EBJ's with that 1 ECM hellbringer with laser vomit? I see more role warfare and incentives to play different weight classes and roles in conjunction with others in solo play and games with small groups because it forces your lights to help get targets for those guys who took LRM boats and for that one atlas to be there when they push hard in close quarters instead of forming a conga line of heavy mechs and waltzing over to omega generator or a hornets nest of light mechs.

One problem I think with FP is that it tries to force 12 vs 12's too much instead of enough.
In lore we had some bases only garrisoned with a few light and medium mechs stationed there, say a few wolfhounds, maybe a centurion. luckily a single heavy, etc... now, I do not think forcing weight limits like that would work but I personally think 'massive' assaults that we have now in invasion 12 vs 12 with 4 waves each is a bit to much, I think a (3-4 man group max, only 1 group per team) 8 vs 8 with No respawns could work well for smaller base invasions (ie: no anti ship gauss rifle battery, maybe something more simple like a factory to capture with no huge walls around it)
Another thing in lore is that Merc Companies (arguably less co ordinated then faction loyalists) and lone wolfs (which sometimes made up a large bulk of the forces).

Not quite saying get rid of 12 man teams. I'm only saying there should be some form of limitation that is not a hindrance... for eg: if you are defending a planet your unit owns, you get 12 people from your unit to defend it. easy.
However defending that one planet on the other side of the inner sphere for that call to arms thing?.. nope.


Regardless of which way you look at it. FP can not survive only on 12 man teams and FP doesn't appeal to most people bellow that unless they consider it fun to be killed 4 times in a row while omega generator is already opened up and at 1 point of health for the whole match because the enemy doesn't even have the common courtesy to end your misery.

realistically, removing groups in general would help attract people to FP as it allows more people to play and lower wait times in general however this is also the least practical and just makes FP another game mode.
We can make it 4 people (a lance) only, but the lack of 12 vs 12 could be a deal breaker for some.

Trying to make 12 vs 12 / 12 vs randoms on at specific times/ events (ie you can do it when this planet is about to be captured, it's your planet, etc) or something can be a compromise.

Saying that FP is perfect the way it is and saying adding more MC rewards in it or unique planets won't attract that many people if the majority still do not want to play against 12 man teams...

Personally the most fun I had was durring the battle of tukayiid event as so many smaller units, groups, and lone wolfs were playing I was rarely being clubbed by a 12 man team but mabye a 4 man team, a pair of 2's, and rest are lone wolfs with a very close and good fight where both teams are using the in game VOIP and text to issue commands and do things... those were good times. Sadly I do not want to wait once a year to play FP.

[Vasili Kerensky]

When will you people get that the fact that you are good and organized players, doesn't grant you any rights? You don't have the right to demand better performance from every kid and casual who logs to play a FTP game. You don't have the right to stomp over pathetic pugs full of pathetic casuals. FP is crap and it needs fixing. The demand for people to get better and organized ISN'T the way to fix things. Appealing or demanding from people to change NEVER produces results. It's the mechanics that need to change, not the people because the latter WON'T happen.

If things don't change, in the end the only losers are going to be you - the veterans who love this game and have invested a lot of time and effort into it. For how long will the pathetic casuals log into this crap FP to get stomped by you? Some will stay and get better but the majority will forget there is a Faction Play button or they'll drift away to other games where they'll feel they're doing better. If you don't cater to useless and crap players by giving them their own environment, the game and its veterans will cry in the end. The kid and the pathetic casual will be in another game pushing buttons and typing crap and won't mind.

Edited by Vasili Kerensky, 21 August 2016 - 04:34 AM.