45 replies to this topic

[Liveish]

Following on from this topic- http://mwomercs.com/...20#entry5374374

On the odd chance PGI take us up on our offer to help list and give some soluitions to fix the problem lets get our **** together.


Mission Statement

To improve the AP "Group Drop" Play in the AP Prime time, We will not be looking at modes or mechs, just things that impact the AP player in group Q.

We should Limit CW talk, as we need to fix the main game mode first, once we get numbers and CW gets better it should go up.

Impact Statement

Most units in the AP time zone is losing members fast, this is not from burn out or no longer playing the game, More to do with wait times.


Outcome

Able to give feedback to PGI, or new Idea that PGI to hopefully improve the game in our timezone.


RIsk
Major Risk
PGI might not take us up on the offer
Ideas we have might not be possible
Changes might not be worth the cost
Units might not be able to get on the same boat with how to fix the problems
Units might see problem in not the same way.




Action Items

Units to speak to there playing members, People who do not play anymore and find out the top 5 problems they are having

Units to think of 5 things they would do to fix the problems listed.


As a group we try and drop it down to the Top 3 problems and top 3 Ideas to make it better

Edited by live1991, 02 September 2016 - 10:40 PM.

[justcallme A S H]

Yeah between 8pm and 10pm AEST - There can be up to 15-20mins wait for a match very regularly for QP. This is with AU/US servers both ticked/checked AND with the MM throwing everyone from T1 to T5 into the same pool (as it currently does).

I mean that is a population issue so without it, such a problem is not easily resolved. But then you add in the "connecting screen" of doom, which can be up-to a 30sec-1min+, it just adds to frustration.

Edited by justcallme A S H, 02 September 2016 - 07:10 PM.

[Mr Pataks]

Lets face it the oceanic population is SMALL. Matchmaker works great when US and EU players are online. Perhaps after a few minutes if a match hasn't been found the matchmaker can split up the AP groups waiting for a match into lances and mix and match so that we actually find games in the public group queues. I'd be happy to drop against my own team as long as we end up in the same match.

If match maker could reorganise the AP teams waiting to get us a quicker game that would stop people walking away from MWO altogether. I guess the main problem is matching up the correct number of people in the groups to make 12x12. ie there's a group of 12, a group of 3, a group of 10, a group of 6 and a group of 7. Thats more than enough people a game but the match maker can't do it.

Disconnects are annoying but the number one reason people stop playing this game is rediculous waiting times for matches. Sometimes we will be on for an hour and literally not find a match. When new players join our group it does not a good impression make! (and this isn't even factoring the desolate graveyard which is faction warfare during AP primetime)

The second problem related to this one is after waiting 20 minutes for a match to drop against the same top tier 12 man squad over and over and getting curb stomped every time. This causes morale issues with many players, it probably isn't much fun for the winning teams either sicne there is no challenge.

After a few years of playing I probably have most of the regular oceanic player base on my friend lists and there's often only about max 30 people online late after about 10pm AEST.... Mixing teams to get quicker games going could resolve the unfair team balances that can occur when the player base is low.

(just to clarify i was only referring to proposed changes affecting the AP server and perhaps only during certain times)

Wait times are much better in solo queue but it's better to drop with your friends!

Edited by Mr Pataks, 02 September 2016 - 10:59 PM.

[mr bear]

Going to take 5 mins to bash out my $0.02

1. We (256th Bear Cav & Friends) do group drops most nights from about 2100 hrs GMT+8. Server setting is usually NA and AP. Group sizes vary from 2 to 10. Though frankly I prefer groups of 4-6 for easier match making. Odd numbers I find result in longer wait times. We wait on average about 5 to max 10 mins for a game most nights. But yes, we do get games and often or not might end up playing the same people twice in a row.

2. If we want to increase the chances of groups games. My suggestion:

- Dedicated Group Drop nights. eg. Thursday/Friday night madness. All units drop in groups of 4, co-ordinate on 1 TS. eg. Comstar TS and drop in groups of 4 from 2100 hrs GMT+8 (bad for AUST/NZ I know) but I'm speaking as someone living in GMT+8.

- Mix it it up. One central gather TS and let players group up with players from other units. Same thing. Drop in groups of 4.


As usual my $0.02

[Dar1ng One]

Mr Pataks, on 02 September 2016 - 10:29 PM, said:

Lets face it the oceanic population is SMALL.

.....about max 30 people online late after about 10pm AEST....

Try after 10pm WA time. It's a ghost town by then. Still, out of 14 F8L members I only occasionally see Mycrus and Jimmy T online. We used to have a high grade team but Tek, Kid and King are simply burnt out. Still, if you can organize something, Happy to provide a challenge.

Mmmmmmm..... yes

Mech-Cellent!

[Wilthanan]

As people have mentioned, the population of this game in the AP region is small. This seems to be the root problem for the group queue. So the question becomes why? Server crashes and high pings to other servers are never going to win you friends, but I can't see PGI being able to fix this (not without further dividing the playing population.)
But, as both a school teacher and a gaming café owner, it shocks me to hear that NO-ONE seems to have heard of MWO. The game has been out for a while now and is part of a long running franchise and yet no-one knows how awesome this universe is. At best there are some old game reviews out there from 2013, not a lot that can discuss how much has been added over time. Maybe some money being spent on marketing, getting some of the big media outlets to relook at what is happening now.
Once we have new players looking into this game, how do we keep them?
Stabilising the AP server would be important.
Adding some game modes, ATM everything is a variation of deathmatch. (An expansion of the scout mission from FW could be awesome)
Greater community development, maybe a button inside the client that connects to TS servers, discord servers, forums, youtube channels, twitch streams?
Maybe a dedicated community developer for each region that can deal with issues in a realistic timeframe?
Maybe allowing groups of 2 or 3 to fall back into the single player queue after a set amount of time?

Anyway, there is a couple of my thoughts for the moment.

Wilthanan
1BTC

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

mr bear, on 04 September 2016 - 08:39 PM, said:

- Dedicated Group Drop nights. eg. Thursday/Friday night madness. All units drop in groups of 4, co-ordinate on 1 TS. eg. Comstar TS and drop in groups of 4 from 2100 hrs GMT+8 (bad for AUST/NZ I know) but I'm speaking as someone living in GMT+8.

I like this idea. It will help build camaraderie and fun between the various groups and help with the match making.

We could try different group sizes on different nights ... two-man Tuesday ... Three-man Thursday ... Four-man Friday ... Six-man Sunday, etc. Get a few streamers going and I'd bet we could get a hundred or so players on at once.

We could even make a competition of it ... possibly highest combined match score or closest match scores.

If we know which units are aligned to which factions, we might even be able to make AP FW a thing again.

Unfortunately, that doesn't solve the main problems ...
- high ping and high ping differential make hit reg wonky and collisions supremely annoying (not sure any more can be done about this, other than only playing on OC, which means low pop, which means long waits).
- speaking of which ... low population and long waits. We need to do a better job attracting and retaining players.

How much interest does everyone think there would be in a stock mode competition? (What if it were restricted to Technology Rating D?)

[justcallme A S H]

Yeah trying to drop with odd numbers means super long queue times
Tried to drop with 3 and 5 a lot this week, wait is long. Get 4 or 2 and you're laughing.

I honestly am not that fussed about hit-reg etc. Everyone suffers equally for the most part, just have to accept it's part of it all.

[Liveish]

Looks like Tina/PGI does not care

O well back to the searching

[justcallme A S H]

Do you know if they are even aware of the thread?

Maybe email support / ATTN Tina?

I was on TS last night while just buggering around in the mechbay. I think 10pm AEST, my guys were in a 3/4 man and waited like 15mins for a QP game, as usual. (US/AU servers ticked. EU is just too inconsistent)

Such epic wait times, all the time. I mean I get why, but you can't help wonder is there something that can be done?

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

For what it's worth, the currently ongoing FP event is affecting the QP group queue in our time zone.

Monday night, we were going to do some lance-sized group training in the queue, and in four 3-4-man group, we couldn't find a match on any server. We changed up and started Scouting, and got petty much instant fights for 3 hours straight.

Not saying that there isn't a population problem, just saying that right now may not be the best time to judge.

[justcallme A S H]

Nah it's always like that (outside of a FP event).

7pm-10pm AEST, usually it's the same bunch of 24-48 people just rotating through, after 10-15min waits.

I'm sure most will confirm what I say, given we are the same people shooting at each other every night lol

[Liveish]

justcallme A S H, on 13 September 2016 - 05:55 PM, said:

Do you know if they are even aware of the thread?

Maybe email support / ATTN Tina?

She is the community manager yeah ? she would be looking on here, or the Mods advising her.... ( I still have not heard back about the DC problems with the AP server which was logged 3 weeks ago)

Kageru Ikazuchi, on 13 September 2016 - 07:56 PM, said:

Not saying that there isn't a population problem, just saying that right now may not be the best time to judge.

It's been like that for months.

mr bear, on 04 September 2016 - 08:39 PM, said:

- Dedicated Group Drop nights. eg. Thursday/Friday night madness.

We used to do this back in the day, Thursday was unit drop nights.

With daylight saving come in, it will only make games worst

justcallme A S H, on 13 September 2016 - 05:55 PM, said:

Such epic wait times, all the time. I mean I get why, but you can't help wonder is there something that can be done?

Yes, There is always something that can be done.

First Step is for PGI to admit there is a problem, then fix it with or without community involvement.

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

Quote

It's been like that for months.

Usually, we have no problem finding a match with small groups (3-6). Occasionally, we'll get some long wait times with odd numbers or very large groups.

Monday night, however, we waited in the group queue for 15 minutes in four groups (4, 4, 4, 3), and didn't get a match. This has not happened before (even with FP events going on).

I agree that there is a problem, but it seems that the group queue population right now is lower than normal because of the FP event. I think it started about the same time that details for the World Championships came out.

Enough about the problem, though ... does anyone want to talk about possible solutions?

For the Oceanic Battalion of the 228th IBR, Monday is our normal practice night, Friday is traditionally our "no *** given" shenanigans night (the more the merrier).

Mr Bear used to organize 12-mans on Friday nights, and Cashel has been an occasional outgoing leader of PUGs ...

Assuming that PGI doesn't start a massive advertising campaign, what do we do to attract old players back to the game? Other than passing the word ourselves, what can we do to attract new players?

I think twitch streaming goes a long way to remind people that we're still having fun playing the game. In the meantime, I will encourage my guys to stream (at least the ones whose PC and internet performance is not significantly impacted). Mid-term, MRBC sign-ups are still open. Long term, a semi-casual Oceanic community event night could be fun, but I can't really dedicate the energy to organize something until next year.

[justcallme A S H]

LOL I've been on the receiving end of 228 drunk Friday hunchback sessions, always a laugh win or lose... But then it's usually drunk 54MR/EK sessions too hahaha

I've found if after 10mins, cancel and research and half the time it is an instant game.

Not I'm not if waiting another 10sec would've landed a game but given how many times I have cancelled our groups search, started and found insta match... I wonder if there is not something greater at hand here.

live1991, on 14 September 2016 - 03:50 PM, said:

She is the community manager yeah ? she would be looking on here, or the Mods advising her.... ( I still have not heard back about the DC problems with the AP server which was logged 3 weeks ago)

Well you'd assume all of this. But given the CM posts in some threads that have, little relevance, yet leave important stuff like the official tournament threads totally ignored for weeks.

Who knows?

[Mr Pataks]

Did you try contacting her directly? IE PM on the forums on lodge a support ticket referencing your post... (monitoring the entire forums would take a lot of time and effort)

[Live X]

justcallme A S H, on 16 September 2016 - 02:18 PM, said:

Well you'd assume all of this. But given the CM posts in some threads that have, little relevance, yet leave important stuff like the official tournament threads totally ignored for weeks.

Who knows?

It was linked from the other post, which i had a ticket logged for. ( and she replied too)

I have also PM her.

****************************

Maybe is the break down of T1 and t4/T5 in AP time zone
Alt account games in 5 mins
All T1 player searching for 10 to 30 mins

Edited by Live X, 18 September 2016 - 01:32 AM.

[Live X]

Mr Pataks, on 17 September 2016 - 05:13 PM, said:

Did you try contacting her directly? IE PM on the forums on lodge a support ticket referencing your post... (monitoring the entire forums would take a lot of time and effort)

I have done it now, But in the pass have never got a reply and the messages still marked as unread.

[Live X]

For those playing along at home - Job logged no answer

PM to Tina 18 September

Tina BenoitRead: Not yet read

Edited by Live X, 28 September 2016 - 05:55 AM.

[Mr Inconsistent]

Good thread, the wait times have hurt the APAC guys for N-71 too. Gaming time is a precious commodity. I'd say most of the MWO base, at least in this region appear to have lives outside of gaming and therefore you want to spend the time you do have in actual game play, not watching spinning wheels of drudgery.

We have experienced many of the same things - smallish groups, generally 3 or 4 man work best in finding games quickly.
Cancelling the search after a long wait time and restarting the search often gets a game quickly (nearly instantly).
FP events understandably kill the group queue even further.
We've also found there is a witching hour roughly 6pm to 7pm AEST where you can pretty much guarantee not finding a group match.

The root cause is 100% low player population on at the time we are trying to find matches. It is better now than it was say earlier this year when Overwatch was launched and the # of guys playing seem to take a nose dive, but it is still poor.

In terms of some potential solutions:
Maybe MM could somehow pick up guys that are waiting in LFG to pad any numbers where it is struggling to find matches. They are effectively consenting to wanting to do group play, so hopefully no stigma like group queue and solo queue being combined.

Another option might be after a max wait time, eg, 5 minutes, it drops you in a match regardless. So you may end up in a 8 v 7 situation. Ideally this could be corrected with Bots/AI controlled mechs in the very near future.

Also agree with sentiments around marketing this game. Outside of community members streaming, making vids, etc, there is not a lot of air time for this game. I haven't even seen anything on Steam for months. However, they need to fix new player retention issues before they invest too heavily in marketing as they will just get new people dropping in and then out promptly when they get stomped because they understand basically nothing about how the game works.

Has anyone Tweeted this to Russ? Might be an idea if Tina is not responding.