250 replies to this topic

[N0MAD]

After reading myriads of posts/threads on these forums for years on end about seal clubbing, unfair matches, stomps, farming etc in FP, it seems that something should really be done about it.
Pugs say "its not fair its not competitive", and units say "we dont want to seal club, we want good competitive matches, we dont want to farm".
So if units truly want competitive matches, dont want to seal club etc, why dont these units actively and in numbers petition PGI to add the Solo/small group Q?.
You big units do want a competitive arena dont you? you dont want to seal club do you? you dont want to farm pugs do you?, well the majority of pugs dont want this and a very vocal about it, so shouldn't you, the big units, want the same thing. If anything you should want it more, youre looking for good games and competition to showcase your units skills etc dont you?..
Seems that units should be the forefront of a movement/petition to fix this by having separate Q.
You do want a fair and competitive game mode right?

[justcallme A S H]

One simple issue:

- The population cannot support it.

Ross and his grand FP3.0 failure-patch saw to the major kill off of FP population right then and there.
You split both queues, everyone's wait times will go through the roof. People will stop playing all together.

Why do you think we have QP with Respawns? One bukkit? Are you oblivious to why all this has come about?

Edited by justcallme A S H, 29 December 2017 - 06:06 PM.

[VonBruinwald]

But how else are they going to pad their stats?

It's all about the e-peen these days, haven't you noticed how every argument devolves into k:d/w:l...

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

I'd be infavor of reinstating the exact system we had before where if you are in a unit you go to the unit queue, if you are not in a unit then you go to the solo queue. This way we still have a pretty liquid player base on the unit side that are also all prepared for unit style play and we can still drop solo in the group queue if we know we can handle it and like working with teams. The solo players can sort it out on their own, just don't undo the queues in a matter of days, just do some type of grind event in FP at the same time that the split happens so that you fill up the solo queues of FP with a bunch of random pugs to jumpstart it.

[Mystere]

Meh!

I'd rather crazy ... ahem, I meant "daring" ... solo players be allowed into the group queue, even if just as fillers.

Apparently, CW is now so polluted with solo-oriented Rambos thinking it is just QP with respawns, that when they get seal clubbed even by another solo-only drop, they run to the forums to cry about being "unfairly" matched against a major league baseball team.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Mystere, on 29 December 2017 - 07:18 PM, said:

Meh!

I'd rather crazy ... ahem, I meant "daring" ... solo players be allowed into the group queue, even if just as fillers.

Apparently, CW is now so polluted with solo-oriented Rambos thinking it is just QP with respawns, that when they get seal clubbed even by another solo-only drop, they run to the forums to cry about being "unfairly" matched against a major league baseball team.

Time to tell the normies to get out.

[N0MAD]

ASH.
A lot of people will tell you the FP pop is so low because there isnt separate Qs.
Todays most popular Thread was about a team just quitting when faced with a large group that was just going to farm them, this is just lowering the potential FP population.
A separate Q would only increase the population, the only way it would go down is if teams would refuse to play other teams instead of being able to farm pugs.
Everyones game experience would benefit from separate Qs Pugs would get better games, units would get better more competitive games, only the clubbers/farmers would see a downside to this.
Using the excuse of low population isnt valid when you consider that keeping the current system is just driving the population away and lowering it even further.
There are many more problems in FP, as you point out, but this is something that PGI can fix unlike the many other problems they wont or cant fix.

[El Bandito]

VonBruinwald, on 29 December 2017 - 07:01 PM, said:

But how else are they going to pad their stats?

It's all about the e-peen these days, haven't you noticed how every argument devolves into k:d/w:l...

Except those who perform bad at FP are likely to perform equally bad in QP.

N0MAD, on 29 December 2017 - 05:35 PM, said:

IS IT TIME FOR LARGE UNITS TO PETITION PGI FOR A SEPARATE SOLO/SMALL GROUP Q?

Except there are plenty of small but elite units in FP, such as EVIL. They can't field 12 mans on average day, but they will murder any other small groups without a sweat. So if you say small make sure it is very small.

Edited by El Bandito, 29 December 2017 - 07:53 PM.

[Khobai]

if they added two buckets to FP, the only ones that have anything to lose are premades

enough pugs play now that pugs could find matches no problem

the premades would have longer wait times and wouldnt be able to sealclub though

[justcallme A S H]

N0MAD, on 29 December 2017 - 07:41 PM, said:

ASH.
A lot of people will tell you the FP pop is so low because there isnt separate Qs.
Todays most popular Thread was about a team just quitting when faced with a large group that was just going to farm them, this is just lowering the potential FP population.
A separate Q would only increase the population, the only way it would go down is if teams would refuse to play other teams instead of being able to farm pugs.
Everyones game experience would benefit from separate Qs Pugs would get better games, units would get better more competitive games, only the clubbers/farmers would see a downside to this.
Using the excuse of low population isnt valid when you consider that keeping the current system is just driving the population away and lowering it even further.
There are many more problems in FP, as you point out, but this is something that PGI can fix unlike the many other problems they wont or cant fix.

And a lot of people don't understand the mode to make such comments.

I've been around, a while.

FP3.0 killed units and killed loyalists dead. Killing off many units means less training / units to go around. This means far less skill within MWO. It also meant many, many good players left the game.

This was a situation that unrecoverable. It took 6 months for it to be addressed (Failings of FP3.0). Too little, too late.

Now the population is ~3,500 active players spread across 3 cycles, 7 days a week, 24hrs a day. Approx 10hrs per day you can wait (on either side, it's totally non-distriminatory) for up-to 20mins without even getting a lobby. And this is with a single queue.

You further and split the queue, into two, you then at least halve the population again.

For 10hrs per day you never find a game, ever. It's not a debate, it's just a logical outcome.

Low population IS the reason. It IS the reason we have this stupid ToW / 1 Bukkit system... All because FP3.0 killed off 1,000s of players, literally.

It is unrecoverable and doing some split queue will not fix a thing, it will just bring greater problems.


It doesn't matter if I drop in a 4man or a 12man, 99/100 games the other side will get dominated. So splitting to a "small groupQ" will do absolutely squat other than further kill off units and population.

Edited by justcallme A S H, 29 December 2017 - 07:54 PM.

[El Bandito]

Khobai, on 29 December 2017 - 07:51 PM, said:

if they added two buckets to FP, the only ones that have anything to lose are premades

enough pugs play now that pugs could find matches no problem

the premades would have longer wait times and wouldnt be able to sealclub though

Doubt it. Most of our drops are against hub groups and full units, rather than pugs. And we drop more than most.

Edited by El Bandito, 29 December 2017 - 07:55 PM.

[N0MAD]

El Bandito, on 29 December 2017 - 07:46 PM, said:

Except those who perform bad at FP are likely to perform equally bad in QP.




Except there are plenty of small but elite units in FP, such as EVIL, and BCMC. They can't even field 12 mans on average day, but they will murder any other small groups without a sweat.

Well i never, here you are always saying you want good games, and saying there are plenty of units but conveniently dont want to separate the pugs, so which is it do you want to play vs good units in your games or do you just want to farm pugs?.
The way you talk i was under the impression you actually wanted to be competitive and only play people of equal skill/organisation.
These teams you talk about should feel right at home playing the Team Q why would they want to play against the unwashed masses?.
So which is it, do you want to play vs real teams or farm seals? because if you want real competition i would of thought that separating the Qs would of been a priority to some one like you/your team..

El Bandito, on 29 December 2017 - 07:55 PM, said:

Doubt it. Most of our drops are against hub groups and full units, rather than pugs. And we drop more than most.

Thats not what the screenshot says in that Thread you made earlier...

Edited by N0MAD, 29 December 2017 - 08:07 PM.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Have we really just gone too far down this road to fix anything at this point? The ocean of players in big units being evaporated down to a small pond of players in small units is really crippling, but at this point really what is there to lose just by kicking the pugs out of matches that groups are dropping into? Most of the players dropping in FW at least have some unit tags on anyway, so you'd still have queues, pugs who would do absolutely nothing but ruin your match will be unable to join you and sit in their own bubble.

We either sit here as we are and continue bleeding out players slowly or we try to get Russ to put a plan in action that at least starts some healing.

[El Bandito]

N0MAD, on 29 December 2017 - 08:01 PM, said:

Thats not what the screenshot says in that Thread you made earlier...

Are you dumb enough to take one screenshot as evidence? Go watch Mercstar YT channel, where we post daily matches against good premade teams. The inner working of some people's brains are amazingly bad at logic. https://www.youtube....Y3B9Tz3NrKf88Fg

Edited by El Bandito, 02 January 2018 - 05:53 PM.

[Tarogato]

Wrong forum section. This is about faction play, yes?




My take: remove the ability for solo players to queue matches in faction play. If solo's want to play FP, force them to use LFG and get into groups. This should take a lot of the selfish solo pugs out of FP, allowing for more consistently competitive matches that might bring teams back into FP. And if they don't come back? FP dies. Nothing of value lost. (PGI really should shut down FP altogether for 4-6 months and relaunch it after making major changes.)

[N0MAD]

El Bandito, on 29 December 2017 - 08:15 PM, said:

Are you dumb enough to take one screenshot as evidence? Go watch Mercstar YT channel, where we post daily matches against good premade teams. The inner working of some people's brains are amazingly bad at logic.

So youre saying that your hand picked youtube clips are better evidence?.
You run a twitch that broadcasts all your games? that i would like to see not your hand picked examples.

[El Bandito]

N0MAD, on 29 December 2017 - 08:22 PM, said:

So youre saying that your hand picked youtube clips are better evidence?.
You run a twitch that broadcasts all your games? that i would like to see not your hand picked examples.

Xavier, and Mahikan both stream every day. Go look for them. At least our videos are more numerous than the single screenshot you are holding, hahaha. https://www.youtube....Y3B9Tz3NrKf88Fg

Edited by El Bandito, 02 January 2018 - 09:30 AM.

[Asym]

I am struck by the ironey of this article. Oh yes, please let the elite few not, errr sorry, play each other... They won't play even if implimented because they won't be able to farm there.... They'd actuyally have to use all of the "get GuD" rhetoric they cirrculate these days....want to be how long it would be before there were ghost drops.......

Alas, "those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it".......and now, we reap what we've sown... Solaris is the siren in the dawn of a new age where teams mean very little.....that is until PGI figures a way to have team Solaris and then, we are back to where we started !

Here we are, PGI released an "oh please, we are so sorry" event to apease the masses or, in our case, a couple hundred or so that have or are still sticking around.... It smacks of "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche...." talk about being out of touch....

You couldn't have a team que......no one wants to play anymore because there is nothing to play for... To what end? To accomplish what (other than farm or club seals)? Look at the comp que where everyday, someone is begging someone to play. If we were team viable there'd be a waiting a list an hour long. We had to "make up teams" in August and September just to make it seem like there is a larger population of comp teams.... Don't take my word for it, look up the forum pieces advertising for make-up teams.... Seriously? I played on a make-up comp team for heavens sake......

Oh please PGI, make a 'team que only' so that the rest of us can play in peace, have a lot of fun goofing around doing silly things, in stompy robots that would make elite players go "Ackkkkkk..(choking souunds)...WTF is that !?!" Mission accomplished.

[SteelMantis]

Dakota1000, on 29 December 2017 - 08:06 PM, said:

We either sit here as we are and continue bleeding out players slowly or we try to get Russ to put a plan in action that at least starts some healing.

I agree completely, FP problem is now a problem for the whole game, it's causing player loss for the game as people want to try something that's not QP and naturally go to the other mode and into a team vs, pug system that has never worked in any PvP game.

justcallme A S H, on 29 December 2017 - 07:52 PM, said:

Now the population is ~3,500 active players spread across 3 cycles, 7 days a week, 24hrs a day. Approx 10hrs per day you can wait (on either side, it's totally non-distriminatory) for up-to 20mins without even getting a lobby. And this is with a single queue.

I'm not sure where you are getting your numbers from, last season I was player number 10,593 at the end of the monthly leaderboard for QP and played around 3 matches a day, everyday. So there are at least 10,000 reasonably active players in QP. All of whom may play a pug vs. pug queue. I'm around the 1,000th merc pilot this season though and have barely touched FP since the season started (had a new baby and it's been easier to fit the shorter QP games in). Grated a fair number of the big units went loyalist but I'd be suprised if there were over 1,000k people who play FP regularly .

I'd like to see the solo queue come back. And make it Freelancer only or something so people drop with Clan or Is at random to kill sync dropping.

If there are no 12 man drops happening at least scouting drops will pop (scouting was popping fast the 3 days we had a solo queue). If the group FP queue can survive without the pugs then great, if not groups (who are a small fraction of the playerbase) still have group queue QP and Comp Mod.

The important thing is to stop losing players because of a poorly designed FP.

[Tarogato]

Asym, on 29 December 2017 - 08:43 PM, said:

We had to "make up teams" in August and September just to make it seem like there is a larger population of comp teams....

While everything else about your post might be right, this line is a bit of an exaggeration. There's actually quite a consistent number of teams that play in comp. Battle For Midway just had 33 teams play. The most recent MRBC had 79 teams I believe. The MWOWC2017 leaderboard only has 112 teams. And some of those teams are just divisions of prexisting teams (for instance, I know for sure that [EmP], [-D5-], [ISEN] and [228]SF all dropped two teams in WC, but only drop as one team in MRBC)

So basically, only between 20 and 30 teams were fabricated out of nowhere for WC, or about 20%. Considering the participation rewards and low barrier to entry, I consider that a rather low number and I'm surprised there weren't more.