65 replies to this topic

[Tarogato]

AnimeFreak40K, on 05 February 2017 - 08:53 PM, said:

Spoiler

I will agree that there is a matchmaker in the manner that you have described, but, as you said, that is not a matchmaker in terms of what is expected of a matchmaker to be....hence my statement about there being no matchmaker to speak of, which by extension means that something that does not exist cannot be broken.

With regard to some means of separation of goods vs. bads or however you want to separate them, I disagree. People are warned, in advance, that FW is not for the faint of heart. It is for organized teams, units and players of sufficiently high skill. If you are none of these things, then FW is not for you.
FW is where the big kids go to throw down, and you had better be able to keep up, because there are no brakes on the pain train. That was the intent of FW from day one.

While I understand that it really sucks for everybody all around to have this sort of disparity (low-end players get frustrated by having their teeth kicked in and high-end players get bored with easy matches), and I agree that it is not optimal... the fact of the matter is that this was attempted in FW3 several months ago. I mean, there was a LOT of people from both the Solos and Units that wanted some sort of separation...and those that had a better idea of the situation (PGI being one of them) said that this was a bad idea.

But enough people begged and complained and so PGI put it in place; Solos (those without a unit tag) were separated from Groups/Units (those with a unit tag). To say it went poorly would be an understatement. It was not even in place 3 days before people on both sides started complaining about the (much longer) wait times...but the matches that were had were all pretty well balanced. The separation was removed by the end of the week.

The lesson learned was one that PGI had noted was the case awhile back and that far too many people here just can't seem to wrap their heads around and that is MWO players would rather have fast matches where they have a minimal amount of waiting time instead of balanced matches.

To be clear, in an ideal situation with a generally high population in both QP and FW, there would be minimal wait time for all matches, and matches would be reasonably balanced. But we do not have an ideal situation here; the game as a whole has a low population (with FP even moreso), so we are either stuck with long wait-times or disparities in skill-level. And the fact of the matter is that people would rather have quantity (low wait times) than quality (even skill levels).

I would agree with you if it weren't for one glaring issue: FW/CW/FP/CP ^{(bloody hell PGI did you really have to stop calling it CW and change it to FP? Urgh. This is getting out of hand)} is embraced by not the competitive natured players, but the casuals. PGI made the mistake of letting everybody in from the beginning, and now that casual players got a taste of it and like it (and the competitives got a taste and didn't like it), you're not going to be able to just get rid of them by saying "this is for competitive players only." If you try something like that, there will be a helIstorm of epic proportions and PGI will lose a lot of paying (whaling) customers.


While I would like that to be the solution - make CW as it was originally intended for only competitive-natured units, I don't think it's currently a reasonable course of action.

[Sarsaparilla Kid]

AnimeFreak40K, on 05 February 2017 - 08:53 PM, said:

I will agree that there is a matchmaker in the manner that you have described, but, as you said, that is not a matchmaker in terms of what is expected of a matchmaker to be....hence my statement about there being no matchmaker to speak of, which by extension means that something that does not exist cannot be broken.

With regard to some means of separation of goods vs. bads or however you want to separate them, I disagree. People are warned, in advance, that FW is not for the faint of heart. It is for organized teams, units and players of sufficiently high skill. If you are none of these things, then FW is not for you.
FW is where the big kids go to throw down, and you had better be able to keep up, because there are no brakes on the pain train. That was the intent of FW from day one.

While I understand that it really sucks for everybody all around to have this sort of disparity (low-end players get frustrated by having their teeth kicked in and high-end players get bored with easy matches), and I agree that it is not optimal... the fact of the matter is that this was attempted in FW3 several months ago. I mean, there was a LOT of people from both the Solos and Units that wanted some sort of separation...and those that had a better idea of the situation (PGI being one of them) said that this was a bad idea.

But enough people begged and complained and so PGI put it in place; Solos (those without a unit tag) were separated from Groups/Units (those with a unit tag). To say it went poorly would be an understatement. It was not even in place 3 days before people on both sides started complaining about the (much longer) wait times...but the matches that were had were all pretty well balanced. The separation was removed by the end of the week.

The lesson learned was one that PGI had noted was the case awhile back and that far too many people here just can't seem to wrap their heads around and that is MWO players would rather have fast matches where they have a minimal amount of waiting time instead of balanced matches.

To be clear, in an ideal situation with a generally high population in both QP and FW, there would be minimal wait time for all matches, and matches would be reasonably balanced. But we do not have an ideal situation here; the game as a whole has a low population (with FP even moreso), so we are either stuck with long wait-times or disparities in skill-level. And the fact of the matter is that people would rather have quantity (low wait times) than quality (even skill levels).

However, that separation was done when there were many buckets, one for each IS and Clan house...now we have just 2 buckets, so shouldn't the population theoretically be large enough for even a rudimentary matchmaker, one that tries to either separate tiers by high or low, or at least average the tier of the team and match it against another of a similar average?

[naterist]

^it would work during most times. and by not having a limit on how broad it can search over time like qp does with teirs 1 and 5, it would still theoretically work in oceanic too. it would just go from a usaual wait to que time of 3 minutes, to a required wait time of 3 minutes there. a very basic matchmaker though would be nice. splitting the ques now, so that means 4 bukkits instead of 2, still less than 3.0 had by half. and since itll probably work, the numbers will most likely start growing, and maybe we can get our factions back once we have a viable pool of players.

[Terrorsdawn]

naterist, on 05 February 2017 - 08:58 PM, said:

just they should change it so that the further the bar goes, the more planets taken. each phase 1 planet, ordered from most votes to least on the tug of war. that would be the simple fix for making events like this mean something.

Be careful what you wish for with no limit to Faction stacking it would version 3 all over again.

[Sarsaparilla Kid]

naterist, on 05 February 2017 - 11:43 PM, said:

^it would work during most times. and by not having a limit on how broad it can search over time like qp does with teirs 1 and 5, it would still theoretically work in oceanic too. it would just go from a usaual wait to que time of 3 minutes, to a required wait time of 3 minutes there. a very basic matchmaker though would be nice. splitting the ques now, so that means 4 bukkits instead of 2, still less than 3.0 had by half. and since itll probably work, the numbers will most likely start growing, and maybe we can get our factions back once we have a viable pool of players.

On the other hand, with both my accounts at T4, I'm surprised at how many times a T1 player gets into my QP matches...sometimes even in QP the pool opens up too wide to really make for a closer game, so the same is likely to happen in FP at certain times. I usually play after midnight EST.

[AnimeFreak40K]

Tarogato, on 05 February 2017 - 09:58 PM, said:

I would agree with you if it weren't for one glaring issue: FW/CW/FP/CP ^{(bloody hell PGI did you really have to stop calling it CW and change it to FP? Urgh. This is getting out of hand)} is embraced by not the competitive natured players, but the casuals. PGI made the mistake of letting everybody in from the beginning, and now that casual players got a taste of it and like it (and the competitives got a taste and didn't like it), you're not going to be able to just get rid of them by saying "this is for competitive players only." If you try something like that, there will be a helIstorm of epic proportions and PGI will lose a lot of paying (whaling) customers. While I would like that to be the solution - make CW as it was originally intended for only competitive-natured units, I don't think it's currently a reasonable course of action.

I agree with you for the most part. I personally do not think FW was made to be for the comp-crowd. At least that's not how I see it anyway. Instead, I see it as being more for groups/teams as a general thing. A way for groups and teams to go at it without having to worry about many of the restrictions that are in place in Group QP as well as give them clear objectives that did not hinge on 'kill them all'1 and asynchronous missions (Attack/Defend).

That it attracted people who were less interested in playing in a group and more interested in the async missions and respawns is an unforeseen consequence.

Sadly, that genie was already out of the bottle.

And now, for good or bad, the fact that there are QP maps/missions in place, this gives the guys who frequent QP *another* reason to muck about in FW; Respawns.

I say this because folks have been asking about, wanting and otherwise begging PGI for QP respawns. They have their reasons for this of course, and PGI has their reasons for not including it... but now those guys that want to play QP with respawns (in a team or otherwise) are now able to do this.

Sarsaparilla Kid, on 05 February 2017 - 11:11 PM, said:

However, that separation was done when there were many buckets, one for each IS and Clan house...now we have just 2 buckets, so shouldn't the population theoretically be large enough for even a rudimentary matchmaker, one that tries to either separate tiers by high or low, or at least average the tier of the team and match it against another of a similar average?

In theory, yes. However, in practice not so much. I say this because there have been folks complaining for a long time (especially those that play Group QP) about team balance and the ability to find matches in a reasonable time.

The fact of the matter is that most people that play this game don't give one hairy rat's a** about balanced matches. They just don't. They want to find matches quickly and get to playing as soon as possible. Oh, sure, folks will raise hell about broken matchmakers and imbalanced teams, and they're not wrong. But every single time PGI has done something to bring more balance to the matchmakers in place to have teams pitted equally against each other (in tonnage, mech-class and skill-level), those same people complained about it taking too long to find a match.

I'm not saying the idea of some semblance of a matchmaker is without merit, because it has plenty. But make no mistake, if it comes to having to choose between waiting to find a match or having a balanced/fair match, people will go for speed every single time.