37 replies to this topic

[Shifty McSwift]

A blocklist/blacklist is surely a tempting option at times, but consider how adversely it would effect the MM system, particularly with groups.

So why not go the opposite direction, beyond flagging people as friends, add a further option for "whitelisting" or adding as a close ally or whatever label you want to put on it, when this option is flagged by both parties (both add to whitelist) in each instance, the MM could focus on matching them up more often and/or not pitting them against eachother, as well as have an automated lobby system where whitelisted player groups will be placed in a "ready to go" lobby area (which they can leave or appear inactive if they desire), where pressing QP will autogroup with whoever is also ready to go (could come up like the invasion war messages, "allies preparing for a fight" sort of message.

I feel like it is much more containable and reasonable and encourages better attitudes than a blacklist system by far.

[Siegegun]

A blacklist system simply will not work. Even in large games they will not work and do not work.

A whitelist system is actually an interesting idea. Of course I seem to play with mostly the same people anyway lol...

[Bombast]

Oh yah. Allowing people to improve their probability of dropping together (Already hilariously easy to do) is a bad idea.

[Shifty McSwift]

Bombast, on 01 April 2018 - 03:40 AM, said:

Oh yah. Allowing people to improve their probability of dropping together (Already hilariously easy to do) is a bad idea.

Aha, but you see whitelisting is a way of encouraging people to do it "legitimately" as well as adding the internal functionality/framework for it would discourage the idea of trying to mass drop in QP and getting placement on either ends, it also starts to mould a system of group PSR and actually allows a way of managing who you WON'T be favoured to drop with without outright blocking players from being placed with or against eachother.

[El Bandito]

Yeah, lemme just whitelist all of those 228 guys.

[Shifty McSwift]

El Bandito, on 01 April 2018 - 03:57 AM, said:

Yeah, lemme just whitelist all of those 228 guys.

And if they whitelist you back then you have your core ally set sorted, and if some end up with massive whitelist lobbies the game can start to focus on placing games consisting entirely of whitelisted parties 24 players all on the "same team" as better than 13 players split across the teams on "one group team" I would say.

[PocketYoda]

You already have a whitelist its called friends..

[El Bandito]

Shifty McSwift, on 01 April 2018 - 04:01 AM, said:

And if they whitelist you back then you have your core ally set sorted, and if some end up with massive whitelist lobbies the game can start to focus on placing games consisting entirely of whitelisted parties 24 players all on the "same team" as better than 13 players split across the teams on "one group team" I would say.

Except me with 228 grouped will wipe the floor with some random guy who whitelisted random decent players he solo-qed with. Balance will become just as bad as Group Queue then.

Edited by El Bandito, 01 April 2018 - 05:14 AM.

[Asym]

OP, very bad idea.... As El and others just said, we don't need another exploit that even further refines the ability to "farm" players.... There already are too many way to circumvent MM as it is. And, low population is the result of "exploited game play."

Maybe, a Karma system op-out might be fun where the lower tier player can opt-out of any match where there are players with high levels of negative karma. After all, it's a game and should be fun. I know, the above would exploit that too..........(sigh).

Good idea though.

[Nightbird]

Can already do this via groups. Get off yur lazy bums people and out of solo QP.

[Shifty McSwift]

Nightbird, on 01 April 2018 - 06:44 AM, said:

Can already do this via groups. Get off yur lazy bums people and out of solo QP.

Mmm, yeah, group with basically randoms who I have very little control over unless I created the lobby, to enter a group who basically doesn't speak and is in a mad rush to play, refusing to communicate strategy pregame, or have pregame setups, and get thrown against real teams applying real tactics, plus extending your wait time by some 10x or more.

Perfect right?

As for exploiting, c'mon, you think it would be worse than what we have? QP is a clownfiesta poopshow. The "exploits" of mass QP joining and player farming ALREADY EXIST, this doesn't make it easier it leans toward it being automated rather than player controlled (no group leader etc). Groups and friends would still exist alongside this, or it could potentially replace the friending system (or be an advanced version of it).

With abuse potential aside entirely (exploits can be worked on separately too), the idea is gearing players toward group play and teamwork, not punishing them for it.

[Shifty McSwift]

El Bandito, on 01 April 2018 - 05:14 AM, said:

Except me with 228 grouped will wipe the floor with some random guy who whitelisted random decent players he solo-qed with. Balance will become just as bad as Group Queue then.

The specifics are speculative and open to ideas/changes but the idea as is would function like so;

The "lobby" wouldn't be active it would just be a list of all the players in your whitelist, currently online and "ready to go"/currently playing. pressing QP would check a players list versus other players and match them up accordingly, it would definitely extend the queue time, but only enough to give time for the lobby to fill with people who have clicked QP and/or players who get the "your allies are readying for a fight" message and click on it.

If your whitelist has 3 people on it, and those 3 people are ready and clicking, the system would within reason work to put you with them, rather than against them, if your whitelist consists of 20 assaults clicking and ready to go, obviously it won't be designed to break the game and drop 12 on one team, but it would work to assign on average 4 of them to the same team (on 5 different teams), and if possible not pit them against eachother, again within reason.

[Deathlike]

It would primarily "exploit" the idea that grouping with good players gets you better results.

Honestly, if people just grouped up, it would solve more things (outside of juggling tonnage).

The inadvertent problem is that it would make solo queue more like group queue... and when you consider the complaints bad players have with "competence" and "teamwork"... well, I don't think you can solve the "intelligence" factor (or lack thereof).

Also, there's probably not enough people to realistically whitelist to be helpful considering the playerbase. You are better off adding friends, grouping up, and/or join a unit.

Edited by Deathlike, 01 April 2018 - 12:42 PM.

[Koniving]

It would help to encourage dropping with "friends" in a queue that is as against having a friend as...a game can get.

Back in the day we could do small groups of 4 players.

Now 4 players in a team of 8 is a HUGE advantage...

But 4 players in a team of 12... is about half that advantage.

I wouldn't be opposed to the matchmaker allowing teams of no more than 4 players to join, or two teams of 2, or a team of 3 and a 'good player' (when pit against a group of 4 on the other side). So long as it tried its best to match the groups up, too, so that if my team had a 4 man, theirs did, and if mine had two teams of two mans, that theirs would as well or the best equivalent.

[Johnny Z]

A show at the end where the winning mechs are shown would be great, a few games do this. Also maybe players can give a thumbs up to a player on their team or something.

[Jackal Noble]

That's just racist!

[Alexandra Hekmatyar]

Samial, on 01 April 2018 - 04:25 AM, said:

You already have a whitelist its called friends..

Hold on a second!

[Shifty McSwift]

Deathlike, on 01 April 2018 - 12:41 PM, said:

It would primarily "exploit" the idea that grouping with good players gets you better results.

Honestly, if people just grouped up, it would solve more things (outside of juggling tonnage).

The inadvertent problem is that it would make solo queue more like group queue... and when you consider the complaints bad players have with "competence" and "teamwork"... well, I don't think you can solve the "intelligence" factor (or lack thereof).

Also, there's probably not enough people to realistically whitelist to be helpful considering the playerbase. You are better off adding friends, grouping up, and/or join a unit.

Yes and that is kind of half the point, while you may whitelist (or whitelist request) every good player you come across, there is no guarantee they will whitelist back, and without the confirmation on both sides, they will not be in the same whitelist lobby.

And yes it pushes likeminded people together and allows a player to choose who he wants most to play with, and modify his list to suit as he goes, and will likely have an effect of not only getting good players to whitelist eachother and play together, but push toward a desire to engage in teamwork/communication more thoroughly in the QP modes.

[Deathlike]

Shifty McSwift, on 01 April 2018 - 01:24 PM, said:

Yes and that is kind of half the point, while you may whitelist (or whitelist request) every good player you come across, there is no guarantee they will whitelist back, and without the confirmation on both sides, they will not be in the same whitelist lobby.

And yes it pushes likeminded people together and allows a player to choose who he wants most to play with, and modify his list to suit as he goes, and will likely have an effect of not only getting good players to whitelist eachother and play together, but push toward a desire to engage in teamwork/communication more thoroughly in the QP modes.

Here's a tangent...

Back when PGI wanted to upgrade their UI (to version 2.0, which didn't exactly come with fanfare due to terribad UI/UX controls for mechlabbing), one of the conceptual additions to the friends list was a small list of people that you've just played with.

Lostech - Look Towards The Bottom:
https://mwomercs.com...c/117053-ui-20/

Imagine if PGI actually went through the stuff they claimed that they would do, but didn't.

The funny thing is that even the dead AOL Instant Messenger had better messaging functionality than MWO (like MWO is not even remotely on par with modern UI/UX interfaces in games when it comes to the social window - it's just minimally viable).

Edited by Deathlike, 01 April 2018 - 01:44 PM.

[Asym]

Deathlike, on 01 April 2018 - 12:41 PM, said:

It would primarily "exploit" the idea that grouping with good players gets you better results.

Honestly, if people just grouped up, it would solve more things (outside of juggling tonnage).

The inadvertent problem is that it would make solo queue more like group queue... and when you consider the complaints bad players have with "competence" and "teamwork"... well, I don't think you can solve the "intelligence" factor (or lack thereof).

Also, there's probably not enough people to realistically whitelist to be helpful considering the playerbase. You are better off adding friends, grouping up, and/or join a unit.

OK, it's not often that I get moved to respond but, this is an exception....

We did group up. We did take advice before we grouped up. We did "train with teams and had trials"... Then, the teams left because the play became so toxic and so bizzare... The game left us; and then, they, the teams, left the game.

Bad players aren't bad: they are customers. Just like the elite players. One group is no more important than the other... But, it seems, "better players" think because they score better they are better, well, that's really silly........ Some people just don't take the game "seriously", don't study the quasi-technical made up facts because "they aren't relevant" because this is just a game and played for the fun of it....! That doesn't make them any less equal.....in fact, look where we are now: low player population because the "serious players" took their concept of "fun" and ran off an awful lot of people.....was that smart?

Intelligence? It's a freaking silly robot game lad. We have doctors, lawyers, soldiers, merchants, students, teachers and hundreds of significantly educated people playing.... So, pray tell, what are your qualifications to determine "Intelligence", "Skill", or any other metric???

Sorry, we need to start MWO again somehow.... To reset what the startegic goals are....they were never meant to be Leaderboards or statistics. They were suppose to be based in "communities" of players working together.....fighting for worlds. Alas, Solaris is what we are reaping from the years of effort before......what does that say about the community if PGI is implementing a 1x1/2x2 game mode instead of fixing Faction Play that is all about teams???

Food for thought. It takes a lot of "bad players" to make a game successful for the few "good" players games produce. Since there are always more new, novice, and average players than the top 10 percent...... Otherwise, the game folds or changes their format from teams to individuals.....so, where are we?

Edited by Asym, 01 April 2018 - 02:14 PM.