150 replies to this topic

[Count Zero 74]

So, I play for Clan and IS every day. When I go to Clan I'm able to find a group real quick most of the time. When I'm IS and none of my friends are forming a group I'll go to LFG and then....nothing.

[S C A R]

I don’t think stating something like “Go play for IS/Clans” is the correct way of thinking here.

First of all, this way of thinking highlights a problem here straight away. What you are saying is that clans are an eazy mode right now and they do have an advantage over IS in general (not taking into consideration particular mechs that can outperform Clans). This statement holds true and no tonnage change is going to address this problem. The core problem is that the same people will use heavier mechs. It is more HP for good players to farm. In the ideal scenario, one should be able to play for either side whithout complaining too much that the other side is OP. Also many people are saying that there are a lot more games now in FP and the waiting times came down. But do we really want to have quantity over quality. Remember quick play before Tier system. I made my case and I rest in peace now).

Second, the reason for playing this game mode. Some people in our unit play for the challenge, others for wins and planets. Whilst going IS is more challenging (fighting against more units) we are not winning any planets. Many people feel that this us a pure waste of time because there is no reward at the end (C-Bills don’t count – we have billions). EVIL has 2 groups that drop IS and Clans on regular basis. The size of these group changes based on how tired people get farming pugs on the clan side or carrying pugs on IS side. There is constant shifting just to keep things interesting. We love the mobility of clan mechs but we can’t also say no to insane laser quirks on IS mechs (2 fast alphas and a clanner is out of commission).
The balance of pugs and units between factions.

There are really 3 choices here. I just don’t see any other options. 1) Separation of quees (teams vs teams and pugs vs pugs) – My favourite choice. 2) Ensuring there is an equal spread of pugs between IS and Clans (the biggest deterent of pugs going to clans in the cost of clan mechs. Perhaps PGI can lease 4 clan mechs to new players. All their C-Bills earnings will go towards paying for those mechs. Another thing PGI might consider is analysing how many pugs are on each side and heavily enalising those players (C-Bills wise) for not switching to another side. 3) Implement an option where teams can choose whether they want to search for a game in the general pool of people and focus their search on other teams first (may be a tick box in the launch menu). Let’s say there are a 6 men and 7 men groups on both sides. The system could say, ok, I see 2 teams on both sides. I will amtch those 2 teams and feel the gap with pugs.

As I mentioned before Trial mechs are a cancer in FP and they should be taken out immediately. Pugs have no idea how to play FP and there aren’t many people or units to teach them. They need some kind of guide, tutorial, something that will help them understand the flow of gameplay and how to contribute to winning. There is a very steep learning curve and I see that pugs are just not getting any better. I am putting together a video tutorial but unless PGI makes a turorial themselves or put a link for new players entering FP screen towards this tutorial I just don’t know how bring it to pugs. I’ll try to finish it before the end of this year.

To sum up, I really had high expectations for FP 4.1. However, the new patch whilst brining some fresh air into FP failed to address some of the core issue I stated in this topic. Once hype runs out and everything settles down we will find ourselves in squre one.

Russ/PGI, we would like to here your thoughts on the current issues. Perhaps, we can even include some of them in the next FP townhall. Thanks

[naterist]

ya, i wanna hear whats going on in the PGI offices right now. is it chaos in there, or did they plan for this beyond the tonnage changes (i doubt they planned ahead, but gonna give them the benefit of the doubt.

we need balance to be the focus of the next roundtable.

[Count Zero 74]

S C A R, on 16 December 2016 - 03:18 AM, said:

3) Implement an option where teams can choose whether they want to search for a game in the general pool of people and focus their search on other teams first (may be a tick box in the launch menu). Let’s say there are a 6 men and 7 men groups on both sides. The system could say, ok, I see 2 teams on both sides. I will amtch those 2 teams and feel the gap with pugs.

I think you're on to something here. How about whenever a premade goes in queue the system will try to match it with another premade or a team composed of multiple smaller premades. If it won't find an enemy after a certain amount of time (lets say 10min) only THEN will it start matching them with puggies.

[naterist]

if you could toggle something like that, the pug stomps would increase and turn vindictive/for fun. it needs to be automatic in the matchmaker, otherwise, abuse will abound.

[Willard Phule]

mesmer7, on 15 December 2016 - 08:02 PM, said:

PGI will add a matchmaker for CW soon. Likely based on PSR.

And I'm sure it will be just as well thought out and implemented as every other "matchmaker" PGI has ever tried before.

[Herpes Type 9]

The fix make 3 buckets-

1. Unit vs PUG
2. Unit vs Unit
3. PUG vs PUG

Or what PGI should have done with 4.1 is make these buckets(for the tech cryhards)-

1. IS vs IS
2. Clan vs Clan
3. Clan vs IS


*edit.... or just make one big ole messy bucket-

1. Zito's Mom vs Everyone
2. Zito's Mom vs Everyone at the same time
3. Zito's Mom vs VY Canis Majoris (largest know star in the universe)

Edited by Herpes Type 9, 16 December 2016 - 04:26 AM.

[Jun Watarase]

Anyone else remember how people used to scream "but FW isn't supposed to be fair! join a unit! use teamspeak! learn2play! stop whining!"?

I don't know if those people have all stopped playing but i did a quick glance through the thread and didn't spot the usual learn2play spam.

There are less buckets now, so splitting the population into groups vs groups only should be fine. But its PGI so they will probably prefer to tinker with tonnage instead.

[Count Zero 74]

How much tons has Zito's Mom?

[Knefel]

@OP:

Quote

1)PUGs stomping:

[...]

This is boring for us. Pugs don’t want to play like this and they quit FP.

This is a lie. I participated in a match on EVILs side (Clan, Polar Domination) yesterday and after defeating the first Inner Sphere-wave the Clanners went on to spawn killing. One clan pilot who stayed in the circle was told to leave (guess which unit-tag the guy who issued the warning had...)
And when the lone Pilot in the circle replied that he would not participate in PUG-stomping, he was simply teamkilled...
(interesting side note: we lost the game, since IS-lights got around us and stayed in the circle long enough to win)

-> certain teams and/or pilots are interested in PUG stomping and will even teamkill for that

Quote

2)Clans vs IS:


There is absolutely no incentive for teams to go to IS.

This simply contradicts the first thing you said (and later on where you talked about inexpirienced pilots filling up the groups): you say it is boring to play against "easy" opponents.
-> the incentive to go IS right now is to make the game harder and therefore more interesting for yourself. Go IS and help the inexperienced players. That is the reason why you play games in the first place: the challenge. If it is too easy for you, think about increaing the "difficulty level" by yourself.

Clan tonnage adjustments are good but should only be used for minor balancing reasons. The real balancing still has to occur regarding which side the more experienced and equipped players are on. And this will not happen (for the reasons you explained correctly) by balancing the games through C-bill rewards. And even less by increasing MC rewards: just imagine a small elite unit who are online 24/7 - they will be rewarded even more! And they do not want to play with new pilots (you explained that) and so who will earn the MC-rewards? The elite or the inexperienced ones?

I think the only way to balance this is by restricting access to contracts. Monitor and limit the contracts for huge/experienced groups on the stronger side (currently seems to be the Clans). If there is no contract on the stronger side, you cannot make it even stronger. Once a balance is achieved, the matches should be more interesting again. Then you can adjust tonnage to balance the sides even more.

[Mech Nuggets]

S C A R, on 15 December 2016 - 02:34 PM, said:

1)PUGs stomping:


From our experience playing for last several days (cumulatively unit players played over 30 Invasion games. This is not counting QP matches) we met units only 3 times. When I am talkinga bout units I really mean one unit MJ12. That’s it. All other games were against absolute novices (most of them didn’t even have unit tags). Those guys did on average between 20 to 300 damage. We had a whole banch of games with the score 48-4, 48-5, 48-3.



This is boring for us. Pugs don’t want to play like this and they quit FP.

yeah right ... It felt a little different there yesterday

[Aramoro999]

S C A R, on 15 December 2016 - 02:34 PM, said:

I know many people didn’t like the idea of quee splitting but I believe this is one way of resolving an issue. Split Groups vs Groups and Pugs vs Pugs. Prohibit one man units dropping into group quee. Provide adequate rewards for the “pug” quee. Allow loyalist to put contracts for mercs to defend or attack specific planets. If a contract is achieved a unit gets additional cbills and loyalty points (without having to become loyalists).

Yes yes, this is still a big issue.

Although it will drive down pop for FW, pugs not getting totally destroyed will slowly bring them back.
But we need to ask, wy wasnt this implemented? clearly the devs arent stupid...so wy?

Edited by Aramoro999, 16 December 2016 - 06:10 AM.

[Unendingmenace]

Count Zero 74, on 16 December 2016 - 03:29 AM, said:

I think you're on to something here. How about whenever a premade goes in queue the system will try to match it with another premade or a team composed of multiple smaller premades. If it won't find an enemy after a certain amount of time (lets say 10min) only THEN will it start matching them with puggies.

I also agree, this alone could go a long way to helping things.

[Lehmund]

It's not difficult to make a proper match maker without actually splitting the queues (though I'm certainly for adopting the exact same MM system on FW as QP here). Let's call using the QP MM on FW option #1 (and easy to do).

Option #2, the one I'm talking about is what most other games use without splitting queues at all:
1. Look at groups, group sizes, average skill levels (PSR) and solos queued up for a few seconds (say 15 secs).
2. Match up as logically as possible based on the following order: Group size matchup, then PSR, fill in remaining slots on both sides with solos. Typically, within those 15 secs, there is swapping happening in the background as more people queue up to optimize things etc....
3. After the first 15 secs, system assigns scores to the matchups created in that time. If the scores are not within 10% of each other, it adds time, and continues to swap things up for another say 15 seconds to try to get closer to a match.
4. AFter 30 seconds, the match starts no matter what, assuming there are 12 mechs on both sides.

This kind of system would also help match 12-mans of equal PSR averages with same on both sides too, as well as 12 pug on 12 pug matches.

It's really only match and iterative matching. Something that has been done in video games forever.

Once something like this is done properly and active in game, then I think we can truly look at the Clan vs IS imbalance and whatnot, see if something else can be done on Mechs to equal things out.

Before then, like many have said, the issue may be more on IS having more new players or more casual players running about.....

Let a proper MM sort all this out.

As a sidenote, I'd change the PSR system to an actual ELO-type ranking system instead... way more appropriate for ALL reasons.

[mesmer]

If you build an all-star team, then drop on the side that has technical advantages in a big stompball, the boring results shouldn't surprise.

[LordNothing]

my original pugfunnel theory, while not entirely incorrect, was probibly not the major factor in creating pugstomps. this new tug of war mechanic in theory should annihilate the pug funnel once and for all. but it was not enough. it doesn't account for the clan skill and/or tech dispairity that was pointed out in dane's video. once again the good teams and the useless pugs are on opposite sides of the battle.

while the current system was on the drawing board, i actively pushed my view that a 4 bucket system, it would be far superior for its load balancing capabilities. there is no way to balance this one bucket systems without actively trying to change player behavior, and we all know that doesn't work. you are not going to get die hard clanners and competitive players looking for an edge to switch to the is, there is no incentive strong enough to make them want to do that. with 4 buckets on the other hand, it would be a lot easier to get people to switch from the wardens to the crusaders, and allow for better ability to match the high skilled units in the clan.

and aside from balancing skill, it would also balance populations better. all buckets are at war, but the game knows where the active populations are. if one bucket has a low population, they are simply given exclusive access to battles against a highly populated faction. this might fly against skill matching, but finding games should take precedence. you still want players to self regulate, give them incentives to move to failing factions, free trade down (zero penalties for moving to an inferior faction), maybe allow mercs to have mixed decks (provided theyve earned the right with some kind of salvage mechanic) so they can fight for the is without giving up their top tier chassis.

other than that some more simple options, release some really powerful is mechs, 10v12, freelancer pug/noob/casual bucket, or some kind of pve version of invasion (though i can tell from escort the ai sill needs some work). if you cant make things easier on pugs, how about rewarding their determination at least, some kind of victory pay (1mc per win, limit 5mc per phase), anything to keep them playing. dont think of it as a participation trophy, think of it as a bribe to keep them from leaving. also where are those comstar intercepts, you could use those to create little civil war type events in the clans, to get those top tier units fighting eachother (also pug v pug fights in the is).

[Wildstreak]

So it is Phase 2 all over again and I should go Clan, got it.

[Volkodav]

mekabuser, on 15 December 2016 - 08:29 PM, said:

pugs v pugs will 90 percent of the time return a good match… JUST like it does in the other game modes..

Pugs vs pugs - its very stupid of 100%, in my opinion. See QP queue - its Hell Random. )

Edited by Volkodav, 16 December 2016 - 09:08 AM.

[Positive Mental Attitude]

naterist, on 16 December 2016 - 03:25 AM, said:

ya, i wanna hear whats going on in the PGI offices right now. is it chaos in there, or did they plan for this beyond the tonnage changes (i doubt they planned ahead, but gonna give them the benefit of the doubt.

we need balance to be the focus of the next roundtable.

Look at the walls they slapped down which they had 3 months to do. You really think they actually care?

[Lily from animove]

how would bad build trial mechs banned help? what woudl rpevent the noob form building his own bad or worse than trial mech lrm mechs?

Noobs grow up in T4/5 suddenly lrms work great,noob buys lrm mechs, goes Fw, An hes stuck there for a long time until he realises and rebuys and rebuilds his mechs.



so third best reuslt in the IS fraction made in only Trials.
Yes the mech sets the possibel max potential, but the pilot is who can make use of the potential, and when tonnage and damage scales then not much would have been saved because the clanners had quite alot reserve tonnage and those below 500 damage Is pilots wouldn't have doen MUCH better.

then you have this



tonnage increase hardly helps as here not even the IS people have used all tonnage, Sure some were low on damage, BUT in an invasion mode if they would all have doen decent and the match was decent. Funnily the only guy that ruined all own mechs was the one doing the most damage. Thats probably redefining "Guns blazing" to achieve this in such a short time.
Seriously, it is the bad people that decide the balance of matches. and you can't balance that out with quirks and tonnage, tonnage and quirks will be utilised by pilots that KNOW how to utilise it. But some of the pilots of the frist screen wouldn't have done match decidingly better with those changes as they cannot even utilise the basic potentials of mechs.

to reach balance the game needs a system to distribute the skill equally by whatever incentive there is. But no clan changes or IS changes will change the result of these people much.

Two games that simply show what happens with equal people meeting each other and unequal ones.

So if you start balancing the good and fair setups towards makign the unfair ones balanced you will break balance somewhere else. And when you breka the upper skill balance the upper ksill will swap factions, and then the entire FW breaks again as it once broke when everyone went IS for some time.

Edited by Lily from animove, 16 December 2016 - 09:18 AM.