366 replies to this topic

[1453 R]

MischiefSC, on 03 January 2017 - 01:07 PM, said:

...
There's no way for the system to seperate two guys wanting to derp around from two people who know how to play and like winning more than losing.

Pretending that getting coordinated with a team is like running specops or flight control is silly.
...

The issue of Beer Night Friday groups getting slapped up is sort of not an issue. The issue is that attempting to introduce new players to the game in a more structured setting, with assistance from a more experienced player trying to get her friends involved in the game, ends up slamming all players involved face-first into the worst situation and the worst mismatches MWO could throw at them.

Many groups currently advertising/accepting new members in the game make something of a fetish of extremely tight, 'specops-y' coordination, with mandatory training times, minimum hours/week requirements, specific drop decks that must be adhered to, and all the rest; it's not at all silly to find this tendency frustrating. Attempting to use the game's anemic grouping tools as a substitute for matchmaking is an endeavor that ends in failure as often as it does in success, and the time it takes an average individual to assemble a large team with LFG and the like often far exceeds the time it takes to play a match with your one buddy and just roll the dice. The tonnage boon for small groups does not help players who aren't comfortable with, or don't own, assault 'Mechs - to say nothing of how this 'balancing' mechanism further reinforces the top-heavy game state people keep trying to come up with ways of avoiding, ne?

I'm not behind the notion of slicing group queue down to 4; we've been there and it produced a lot more whine than the current situation. But the current situation is not good because it's better than what we had, and I'm continually baffled by the Lukois and Twiafus of the world who think it's just the easiest thing in the world to whip up a 12-man in two minutes and anyone who can't do so is a failure as a human being.

There are as many reasons not to group up as there are reasons to do so, and just as many of each category are valid. Some people have social anxiety issues that would make forcing themselves to deal with ten complete strangers instead of just them and their trusted friend an emotionally exhausting experience that ruins MWO as a fun night's release for them.

Some folks want to play MWO, not use Piranha's crappy half-implemented tools for forty minutes getting ready to play MWO with 'Mechs, and with people, they don't really like.

Some people are notorious forum ******** nobody wants to play with in the first place (hi, how are ya? If you had a choice between dropping with me and scooping your eyeballs out with a used garden trowel, which would it be? It's okay, I get it. You might even be able to con them into letting you wash the trowel first), so we couldn't get groups if we tried.

Some folks like piloting Trebuchets, and not the ones with large lasers, and thus are dispermitted from dropping anywhere save Puglandia.

Some folks, as stated three hundred million and fourteen times in this thread, are trying to show someone new to the game how MWO works.

There needs to be a proper answer. Telling small-group players "Sorry guys, but you're the designated buttmonkeys for this game; solos complained harder than you did and the Mil-Spec teams need to eat, too. 2bad2sad, now suck it up and die for us" is...well, how viable does that sound to you?

I know what I'm getting into when I spin up my mediums and fat lights in a drop with Maker, and am prepared to be completely ineffectual and lose seventeen games in a row because I refuse to bust out fatbros. Suzie Q. New I'm showing the game for the first time doesn't have any clue, no matter how hard I try to warn her that she's about to hate her life forever.

Is that really acceptable to you guys?

Edited by 1453 R, 03 January 2017 - 02:07 PM.

[RestosIII]

1453 R, on 03 January 2017 - 02:03 PM, said:

-snip-

All of that is exactly on point and what I'd love to say myself, but I get way too salty about this specific subject to get close to that wording. Thank you.

[Lukoi Banacek]

1453, not sure why you keep trying to illustrate my intent so incorrectly. Read above.

If you want to safeguard the NPE, it's not via capping the group queue, it's about revamping the entire NPE as I've mentioned above. I've never once said folks should just suck it up.

What I was referring to earlier in this post that you glommed onto and then have for some reason, twisted around here, is that folks who are entering the group queue knowing the risks, HAVE tools to mitigate those risks.

New players are a completely different issue and I addressed that twice on this thread alone.

Teams shouldn't have to feel bad about playing in group queue, anymore than NP's should get bashed repeatedly like baby seals. But again, that's what this game turned into because the PSR system is an experience bar not a measure of skill, because the population is already small and therefor MM cannot keep groups full of newbies out of matches against more skilled/experienced teams for reasons already noted. Ostensibly, PSR and MM was meant to prevent that. Over time, the MM gets looser and looser (and doesn't even exist at this point in Group Q).

[Suko]

As a guy who plays in a 3 man or less, I would LOVE to see some limitations on group sizes, but it isn't going to happen. A good chunk of the Forum Warriors are also the large group guys, so they start getting super pi$$ed whenever this topic comes up and fight against it. They think they represent what is best for MWO and the "average guy", but they are less than 5% of the playerbase according to Russ' own stats from years back.

Gas Guzzler, on 03 January 2017 - 09:19 AM, said:

4-man group limits was awful. "Sorry, you have to play by yourself because we already have 4". Ughh, the game is much more fun now that we don't have to worry about that.

I don't get is this comment (and the hundreds like it). You guys could always break into two smaller groups. That's how me and the rest of the plebeians play. I promise, you can still have fun without a 12 man roflstomp team.


Regarding how many group players this affects: There was a quote from Russ YEARS ago in one of the dev blog posts that said it was small. Very small. Like, <5% of all players participated in groups larger than 3. I hate trying to dig up old posts on this forum, and even if I did it wouldn't sway anyone's minds, so I'm not even going to bother. However, I did find this:

Quote

54% solo queue - 46% group queue. Groups of 2-3 the most popular within group queue

https://twitter.com/...689099346284544

That is a lot less specific and hard to use as a data point on either side of this argument. However, I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of players would NOT be affected by some cuts to pre-made size in the group queue.


My last point (and it's totally a rant):
These large group guys wanted CW to be for them. They got it there way. No matchmaker, no tonnage restrictions, nothing to hold them back. It is big-group friednly all the way and to hell w/ the pugs and small fry, and since day 1 the faction warfare aspect of this game has suffered for it. The vast majority of players (like myself) left FW and have had terrible experiences every time they try to go back. The seal clubbing is just too much to deal with.

The large team guys had their own playground. They chased all the other kids off and now they're bored since there's no one left to play with. What do they do next? They move over to Group Queue and rinse, repeat.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

But heaven forbid we upset the large group super race. They obviously make MWO what it is. Without them, what would we have left? We should all line up happily to be meta-slapped by our 12 man overlords.

Edited by Suko, 03 January 2017 - 02:18 PM.

[TWIAFU]

Bud Crue, on 03 January 2017 - 09:11 AM, said:

Wait...you're complaining about groups, playing as groups in the group queue of Quick play?

I...um...I don't know how to address that.

Forgot about complaining about Clans while being Clan.

[Lukoi Banacek]

What's funny about this thread and the ones like it is folks are all happy to spout of statistics from years ago and only PGI has the data. Wouldn't it be nice if PGI was more transparent?

I mean, they have to know the NPE is borked and what their NP retention rate is. If group queue is the problem for that, why can't they see that?

Btw, some of us arguing against caps in the group queue, play small groups as well as large (and solo), so it's not really legitimate to generalize that all "anti-cap" people are simply large group players who want to chase plebes around the queue. Some folks are just more pro-sandbox than others, that's all.

Like I mentioned on another thread, I'm a big fan of the solo opt-in to group queue option as well, because I think I'd get an even better gaming experience that way than playing solo queue as often as I do.

[TWIAFU]

ACrispyTaco, on 03 January 2017 - 09:14 AM, said:

By limiting the number of people you can bring into a Quick Match to 4. That's how you address it. I said that in my original post but you must not have read that part.

You solution when you are stomped by groups of 4?

[Gas Guzzler]

1453 R, on 03 January 2017 - 02:03 PM, said:

There needs to be a proper answer. Telling small-group players "Sorry guys, but you're the designated buttmonkeys for this game; solos complained harder than you did and the Mil-Spec teams need to eat, too. 2bad2sad, now suck it up and die for us" is...well, how viable does that sound to you?

I don't believe this is what anyone is saying. What people are saying is if you want to win, you can bring big bad scary mechs and work over the smaller mechs in the big group pretty easily. Most of my group drops lately have been in groups of 2-4 and most of the time we are doing most of the work. Yeah, a couple KDK-3s and MAD-IICs can really sway a match...

[TWIAFU]

RestosIII, on 03 January 2017 - 11:55 AM, said:

Maybe we don't want to "engage with the community", but just play with 1 friend without getting turned into target practice for a group on TS comms that have the coordination of a flight control tower?

Maybe would and you one friend would not be target practice for people on comms if you got on comms with the other 10 in your drop?

Maybe time to develop some coordination to be able to fight for that control tower?

[RestosIII]

TWIAFU, on 03 January 2017 - 02:29 PM, said:

Maybe would and you one friend would not be target practice for people on comms if you got on comms with the other 10 in your drop?

Maybe time to develop some coordination to be able to fight for that control tower?

Yes, I'm sure that 10-man group will actually listen to the 2-man group, and not be the ones occasionally barking out an order the few times they remember that there are people outside their TS server playing the game. Maybe, just maybe, I want to drop with a friend and have it be a casual experience that the solo queue offers. Group queue forces coordination or you're ****ed.

[Roughneck45]

There's no good answer for this without having a much larger player population. Too many variables with player skill and the mechlab.

I'd like it if you could bring a duo into the normal quick play que but it wouldn't be long till we got duo que op threads.

A ranked and unranked que would have been the way to go IMO but that ship sailed a long time ago.

[Lukoi Banacek]

RestosIII, on 03 January 2017 - 02:34 PM, said:

Yes, I'm sure that 10-man group will actually listen to the 2-man group, and not be the ones occasionally barking out an order the few times they remember that there are people outside their TS server playing the game. Maybe, just maybe, I want to drop with a friend and have it be a casual experience that the solo queue offers. Group queue forces coordination or you're ****ed.

So you believe it's fair to take your 2-man into the "solo queue," to allow you to play more casually?

[RestosIII]

Lukoi Banacek, on 03 January 2017 - 02:36 PM, said:

So you believe it's fair to take your 2-man into the "solo queue," to allow you to play more casually?

Yes, I do? Is that supposed to be some sort of damning evidence or something?

[Pika]

See now this is an unusual subject to approach for myself. I can only talk on a personal level here so here goes:

Yesterday, I was playing as a 2-man, 3-man and 5-man group throughout the night. Two of those in that 5 man group have literally never played the game before or havn't played in over two years. We absolutely dominated and I think only lost one game. The biggest reason for this was probably the Caps Lock key.

Today I have been playing as a 3-man and 5-man group. Every game has been a demoralising loss and in one particular case - a crushing defeat where my KDK3 was focused out and cored out in less than 10 seconds, leaving me with a whopping 83 damage.

So what's my point: Do I think the Group Queue should have a cap on the number of players? It depends what day it is.

Honestly I find you can do fine with ample use of the Caps Lock key. Call UAVs, tell the team when you're doing something you need them to follow through on (The amount of lines I've broken in my KDK that then led to a win is mental just because I told the team I was pushing.) and most importantly, if someone emerges as the shot caller, do what they ask.

That said: I do think VERY small groups such as 2 or 3 man groups should drop in the solo queue just like how World of Tanks\Warships does it. I don't know how you'd balance this against 9 or 10 man groups though. Since they would have no filler groups.

Edited by Pika, 03 January 2017 - 02:40 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

RestosIII, on 03 January 2017 - 02:38 PM, said:

Yes, I do? Is that supposed to be some sort of damning evidence or something?

What's to stop groups of 2 with a pair of KDK-3's going into solo-queue to stomp PUGs, because it will happen I guarantee and those who play solo queue will be on the forums complaining like you and others do about groups of 2? Unless we start making sure that both sides have a pair of KDK-3 groups, it isn't the best solution to just open the flood gates quite like that.

There isn't going to be a perfect answer to this because of what Roughneck pointed out:

Roughneck45, on 03 January 2017 - 02:35 PM, said:

There's no good answer for this without having a much larger player population. Too many variables with player skill and the mechlab.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 03 January 2017 - 02:42 PM.

[MischiefSC]

1453 R, on 03 January 2017 - 02:03 PM, said:

The issue of Beer Night Friday groups getting slapped up is sort of not an issue. The issue is that attempting to introduce new players to the game in a more structured setting, with assistance from a more experienced player trying to get her friends involved in the game, ends up slamming all players involved face-first into the worst situation and the worst mismatches MWO could throw at them.

Many groups currently advertising/accepting new members in the game make something of a fetish of extremely tight, 'specops-y' coordination, with mandatory training times, minimum hours/week requirements, specific drop decks that must be adhered to, and all the rest; it's not at all silly to find this tendency frustrating. Attempting to use the game's anemic grouping tools as a substitute for matchmaking is an endeavor that ends in failure as often as it does in success, and the time it takes an average individual to assemble a large team with LFG and the like often far exceeds the time it takes to play a match with your one buddy and just roll the dice. The tonnage boon for small groups does not help players who aren't comfortable with, or don't own, assault 'Mechs - to say nothing of how this 'balancing' mechanism further reinforces the top-heavy game state people keep trying to come up with ways of avoiding, ne?

I'm not behind the notion of slicing group queue down to 4; we've been there and it produced a lot more whine than the current situation. But the current situation is not good because it's better than what we had, and I'm continually baffled by the Lukois and Twiafus of the world who think it's just the easiest thing in the world to whip up a 12-man in two minutes and anyone who can't do so is a failure as a human being.

There are as many reasons not to group up as there are reasons to do so, and just as many of each category are valid. Some people have social anxiety issues that would make forcing themselves to deal with ten complete strangers instead of just them and their trusted friend an emotionally exhausting experience that ruins MWO as a fun night's release for them.

Some folks want to play MWO, not use Piranha's crappy half-implemented tools for forty minutes getting ready to play MWO with 'Mechs, and with people, they don't really like.

Some people are notorious forum ******** nobody wants to play with in the first place (hi, how are ya? If you had a choice between dropping with me and scooping your eyeballs out with a used garden trowel, which would it be? It's okay, I get it. You might even be able to con them into letting you wash the trowel first), so we couldn't get groups if we tried.

Some folks like piloting Trebuchets, and not the ones with large lasers, and thus are dispermitted from dropping anywhere save Puglandia.

Some folks, as stated three hundred million and fourteen times in this thread, are trying to show someone new to the game how MWO works.

There needs to be a proper answer. Telling small-group players &quot;Sorry guys, but you're the designated buttmonkeys for this game; solos complained harder than you did and the Mil-Spec teams need to eat, too. 2bad2sad, now suck it up and die for us&quot; is...well, how viable does that sound to you?

I know what I'm getting into when I spin up my mediums and fat lights in a drop with Maker, and am prepared to be completely ineffectual and lose seventeen games in a row because I refuse to bust out fatbros. Suzie Q. New I'm showing the game for the first time doesn't have any clue, no matter how hard I try to warn her that she's about to hate her life forever.

Is that really acceptable to you guys?

So the need for better tools and environments are real. Ideally you should be able to drop together in the training grounds and private matches.

That has nothing to do with the false assumption that blocking groups from the group queue would make that easier. 4man of EMP + 2x 4man of moderate teams will stomp you in an identical manner to EMP 12man. Only with more tonnage available.

Teams were in group queue long before FW existed and most units don't play there - group queue is more challenging.

There's no team MM in group queue *because there's too few people in group queue to give a wide band of skill to fill from*.

What is really being asked for is a terribad queue where people who don't want to try or are new and don't play well can go without playing against decent players in mediocre or better mechs.

You're better off asking for a stock mech queue. There's no way to police a terribad queue to keep mediocre or better players from going there to farm potatoes.

[1453 R]

TWIAFU, on 03 January 2017 - 02:29 PM, said:

Maybe would and you one friend would not be target practice for people on comms if you got on comms with the other 10 in your drop?

STOP. IT.

I'ma be the first guy to say it - I don't want to talk to you.

I specifically anti-desire to go through the hassle and hullaballoo and hootinany of getting twelve people together on a third-party comms system and coordinating 'Mechs, dealing with whatever load of primadonnas LFG or whatever saddles us with that REFUSE to drop in anything but their big scawwy Marauder-IIC and to hell with everyone else.

I am one of those guys with social issues. Trying to deal with a bunch of screeching randos for every single game would drive me off of MWO pretty much completely - I do not have the patience, the extroversion, or the sheer bullheaded drill-sergeant meanness to wrangle the cats into a semblance of military order and precision. I would like to be able to link up with Maker, and maybe occasionally my brother as well, and drop in our middleweight groups without being specifically blamed for Ruining All Drops Forever™ by not maxing our f***ing tonnage and bringing as many UAC/10s as we can physically cram in our drop group.

When I drop in MWO with my buddies I want to play MWO with my buddies. Not 'my buddies' and a bunch of hooting nincomprods completely unwilling to let us do what we do because it's not Meta-Compliant, or because they need us all to drop to Locusts so they can have all the Kodiaks.

I will not f***ing get on comms with Puglandia randos. I will use the in-game VoIP as required to relay information or request things like "Light in Fox 3, you're way overextended. Get back here while I still have something to cover you with", but I'm not going to download TeamSpeak (again, and hope it works this time) and install half a million private servers just to try and assuage your bizarre desire to ensure that no one ever drops in anything less than a twelve-man squad ever again.

F***ing. Stop. It. Telling people "just get more friends, you toad!" is not only unconstructive, it is insulting as hell and, as I've just gotten through demonstrating, a great way to trigger some people. So don't f***ing do it, bruh.

[Lukoi Banacek]

RestosIII, on 03 January 2017 - 02:38 PM, said:

Yes, I do? Is that supposed to be some sort of damning evidence or something?

It definitely demonstrates you haven't read half of the discussion you're arguing with.

As QSK noted, it will definitely result in ardent solo players complaining about tag-teams beating up on them in solo queue.

There is no arbitrary # (2, 3, 4 etc) that will be acceptable to all players of this game. It will always be "unfair" to someone in their opinion. Thus a solo queue and a "take your *** into your own hands" queue. For the latter, there are ways for the casual player to increase the size of their group.

That you additionally note it takes coordination or you "get ******," that's pretty ironic considering this is a team game...even in solo queue.

The one hanging chad in this, is the new player. And since the MM no longer keeps them safe in T5 from large groups in the group queue, something involving fixing the overall NPE is in order (and has been since beta frankly).

[Gas Guzzler]

1453 R, on 03 January 2017 - 02:45 PM, said:

STOP. IT.

I'ma be the first guy to say it - I don't want to talk to you.

Then just watch the mini-map and friendly/enemy team movements. Use your brain. "Thinking man's shooter".

[Lukoi Banacek]

1453 R, on 03 January 2017 - 02:45 PM, said:

STOP. IT.

I'ma be the first guy to say it - I don't want to talk to you.

I specifically anti-desire to go through the hassle and hullaballoo and hootinany of getting twelve people together on a third-party comms system and coordinating 'Mechs, dealing with whatever load of primadonnas LFG or whatever saddles us with that REFUSE to drop in anything but their big scawwy Marauder-IIC and to hell with everyone else.

I am one of those guys with social issues. Trying to deal with a bunch of screeching randos for every single game would drive me off of MWO pretty much completely - I do not have the patience, the extroversion, or the sheer bullheaded drill-sergeant meanness to wrangle the cats into a semblance of military order and precision. I would like to be able to link up with Maker, and maybe occasionally my brother as well, and drop in our middleweight groups without being specifically blamed for Ruining All Drops Forever™ by not maxing our f***ing tonnage and bringing as many UAC/10s as we can physically cram in our drop group.

When I drop in MWO with my buddies I want to play MWO with my buddies. Not 'my buddies' and a bunch of hooting nincomprods completely unwilling to let us do what we do because it's not Meta-Compliant, or because they need us all to drop to Locusts so they can have all the Kodiaks.

I will not f***ing get on comms with Puglandia randos. I will use the in-game VoIP as required to relay information or request things like "Light in Fox 3, you're way overextended. Get back here while I still have something to cover you with", but I'm not going to download TeamSpeak (again, and hope it works this time) and install half a million private servers just to try and assuage your bizarre desire to ensure that no one ever drops in anything less than a twelve-man squad ever again.

F***ing. Stop. It. Telling people "just get more friends, you toad!" is not only unconstructive, it is insulting as hell and, as I've just gotten through demonstrating, a great way to trigger some people. So don't f***ing do it, bruh.

So what you really want is some kind of co-op mode so you can have your vision of the MWO experience, vice the actual game.

It's also unconstructive to demand that the game bend to your whim, when the modes are pretty clearly established and you know what to expect when you click launch.

You want to be able to run with a small group of friends. You can. IF you face a larger premade than your own, you get a tonnage advantage per capita. If you under-ton, that's your choice to take a sub-optimal option. If you choose to run **** builds, that's your choice to take a sub-optimal option. If you guys decide to leave the main group and run off to "tactically flank" the enemy and die in a position where the rest of your team cannot support you, that's your choice to take a sub-optimal option.

Capping the group queue is not going to help you when you make those kinds of decisions.

You can run any mech you want, no one is stopping you. You can completely ignore VOIP (I don't use it either). You can do whatever you want really. But that's not the game's fault you aren't getting the experience you want and if you think capping the group queue will give it to you, you're mistaken.