57 replies to this topic

[AnimePops]

I have not played in a few weeks due to life. I tried this weekend and came back to zero in que on every division!? That sucks. I liked this mode and now it's already dead even on a weekend? Good grief..... Guess I have to strip down all my solaris builds and ignore mechs that suck in regular que.

[The Basilisk]

What did you expect?
The only effin selling point of MWO in comparision to its predecessors where big multiplayer mech battles....and we got stuck early on with 12 vs 12....and now they go all out to 1 on 1 ....
OLOLOLOLOLOLLL

[Popcat]

I still like it.

[mad kat]

I like it but I can't help but feel is the last desperate grab of a dying game. Seriously though it uses elo and geuss what, matches are most of the time pretty damn close except for the last player I just saw in it which had a 95/15 win loss ratio. Hmmm his dragon was bloody good though.

But yeah I've just had two timers reset even though there were players in the queue. One queue with 7 other players in and I had to wait for the timer to restart?.

Yep if it can only muster 20 players on a weekend night across all divisions all over the world I'd say it's dead. Which is a shame as it's the most fun part of MWO.

Edited by mad kat, 03 June 2018 - 02:18 PM.

[Marius Evander]

Solaris 1v1 is the most fun I have had in MWO in almost a year, we get up to 28 in a single 1v1 div queue when RJBASS, Nuttyrat, Starwolfe and others do it on stream, and when they dont I can get a game every 6 minutes 24/7.

Having said that it is very sad to see how small the numbers playing it are, and the 3 minute wait timer where you cant do anything else at same time is not helping(except when the game bugs out and lets me go into mech lab while in queue (so it is POSSIBLE!!!)). Need 1 minute queue timer, but with a ssr raquirement of within 200 1st minute, within 300 2nd minute and anything at 3rd minute, if it cant find you someone else in the "anything phase 3rd minute" it finds someone at 2nd minute or failing that 1st minute.

If you get left out of matches it checks all divisions for someone else left out of matches and asks you if you are willing to go to their div instead.

If you get left out of matches it does not make you sit in queue for the next 3 minutes but REMEMBERS that you got left out last time you queued and prioritises you for a match next time you queue.

[d00mchild]

solaris is great, generally. they only should shorten the gamecycle from 3min to 1min or less. i dont wait 3min, or even 7min for 40sec match... and sort out the divisions. i had too much "hey ill take my favorite heavy *queing* fighting a 6 ac2assault/something else out of weight); and get stomped :$"-moments. i will not play solaris until they sort that out. too much frustration for my taste. i loved solaris in the first weeks because the general thing is great. the most fun matches i had, were the same chassi and a almst similar loadout. cause only if the tools are very close too same, it will be about who is the better pilot. not that rock paper scissor bullcrap. like kingcrab beats orion beats stormcrow beats kingcrab etc. and your just lucky if u picked the right chassi.
they just have to sort it out. then ill be back.

[RickySpanish]

I gave up playing it because the MM is having so much trouble finding games. I'm either fighting 1800 Elo players and getting smooshed by meta 'Mechs, or fighting potatoes who in some cases literally can't land a single shot in a full fight. As there are so few people in the "mid" Elo range playing, I find that I can't get many close matches at all and consequently, there's little enjoyment in it. I'd need to invest heavily into meta 'Mechs to climb the ladder and the rewards and bad matches don't justify the effort.

[Glowingwalrus]

I also liked the concept of this game mode and maybe units could agree to trial each other on it more because it is often DEAD. the idea could work and there was apparently a fair amount of matchmaking algorithms put into it but it is useless as the player base is way too low. its hard enough to even see another player especially in high divisions let alone be matched with a player of similar skill and that makes it frustrating and therefore abandoned; exacerbating the problem of no fair competition. i really don't see how pgi can make its divisions populated, maybe a cross play when mw5 comes out? seems unrealistic though

[Marius Evander]

Not having a QP event 1st weekend of solaris would have helped. Having people play 10 games for initial ssr placememt of 1200 1500 or 1800 would have helped.

Having a solaris event next month will help.

Solaris is not dead. As long as you are willing to be the one sitting in queues not looking for someone else queueing i get a game every 6 mins at worst IN THE QUIET hours. I will admit they are not always close matches but Merata Kell and I have been having some good back and 4ths and he is playing mechs no one else does. The meta is not as small as you think.

Not having a QP event 1st weekend of solaris would have helped. Having people play 10 games for initial ssr placememt of 1300 1500 or 1700 would have helped.

Having a solaris event next month will help.

Solaris is not dead. As long as you are willing to be the one sitting in queues not looking for someone else queueing i get a game every 6 mins at worst IN THE QUIET hours. I will admit they are not always close matches but Merata Kell and I have been having some good back and 4ths and he is playing mechs no one else does. The meta is not as small as you think.

Edited by Cadoazreal, 18 June 2018 - 10:29 PM.

[The Lighthouse]

Cadoazreal, on 18 June 2018 - 10:28 PM, said:

Not having a QP event 1st weekend of solaris would have helped. Having people play 10 games for initial ssr placememt of 1200 1500 or 1800 would have helped.

Having a solaris event next month will help.

Solaris is not dead. As long as you are willing to be the one sitting in queues not looking for someone else queueing i get a game every 6 mins at worst IN THE QUIET hours. I will admit they are not always close matches but Merata Kell and I have been having some good back and 4ths and he is playing mechs no one else does. The meta is not as small as you think.

Not having a QP event 1st weekend of solaris would have helped. Having people play 10 games for initial ssr placememt of 1300 1500 or 1700 would have helped.

Having a solaris event next month will help.

Solaris is not dead. As long as you are willing to be the one sitting in queues not looking for someone else queueing i get a game every 6 mins at worst IN THE QUIET hours. I will admit they are not always close matches but Merata Kell and I have been having some good back and 4ths and he is playing mechs no one else does. The meta is not as small as you think.

No, it is not gonna be helpful. We already tried this tactic on FP, with great failures.

Shoving a half-baked, half-broken and unbalanced mode into general players' mouths will only cause people to hate FP more, will increase general frustrations which cause people to leave the game instead. What will happen is we have some population during the event period, goes back empty as soon as event is over, with even less population, just like what happened at FP.

Unless PGI fixes fundamental issues of Solaris mode, such event only bring grief, frustration and burn-out to people, and they are never good things to have.

[Xeno Phalcon]

Cadoazreal, on 18 June 2018 - 10:28 PM, said:

Solaris is not dead. As long as you are willing to be the one sitting in queues not looking for someone else queueing i get a game every 6 mins at worst IN THE QUIET hours

Solaris is definately on its last leg much like faction play its taken a back seat to quickplay, only reason solaris seems lightly less dead is because the que dosnt need to pull together two teams.

Only way people will bother with a solaris event is if the rewards are absurdly juicy like, play ten games get a assault mech or 500mc juicy and that wont improve the modes longevity it will just be a small boost to participation then everyones back to QP.

[Marius Evander]

The Lighthouse, on 19 June 2018 - 03:04 AM, said:

No, it is not gonna be helpful. We already tried this tactic on FP, with great failures.

Shoving a half-baked, half-broken and unbalanced mode into general players' mouths

I am sure a few more people play FP because of FP events got them into it, the biggest failure of FP events is it is easier and quicker to do them in scouting mode.

no one has to do the event, if they aren't having fun dont do it, but it will entice people to give it a try who weren't and hopefully a larger player pool will give more close matches which increases the number playing it / having fun, when RJbass, nuttyrat and majestic stream solaris and we get 28 people queueing we get close games and have more fun.

[The Lighthouse]

Cadoazreal, on 19 June 2018 - 04:51 AM, said:

I am sure a few more people play FP because of FP events got them into it, the biggest failure of FP events is it is easier and quicker to do them in scouting mode.

no one has to do the event, if they aren't having fun dont do it, but it will entice people to give it a try who weren't and hopefully a larger player pool will give more close matches which increases the number playing it / having fun, when RJbass, nuttyrat and majestic stream solaris and we get 28 people queueing we get close games and have more fun.

Seriously it is not. Trust me.

Precisely because of what you said, once PGI tried a FP event without scouting (basically, objectives were impossible without playing Invasions), and it got a huge backlash and loss of players. That was the time when I lost so many people playing this game. They got burned out and frustrated by getting stomped by organized teams, saying "well, I am done with this game for now", and that "for now" became "forever" to too many of them. The forum was full of cries and whines.

PGI was forced to adjust the event in the middle of the progress so Scouting could be counted, but I have to tell you, it is not just people not playing FP even further; we actively lost players for the entire game.

Thing is, Solaris is EVEN MORE BRUTUAL than FP Invasion mode. When I was still playing Solaris I saw way too many people with scores like 1-47 and I even met a person who could not get a single win with 60 games! There are so many people who are not good at this game, but without them this game won't be sustainable at all. Last thing I want is any further loss of players, and game-mode specific events tend to do that with added frustrations and getting hopelessly burned-out effect

I am sorry, but just... just no.

[lazorbeamz]

Not really S7 is very nice to play from time to time.

You can even go medium and win against the assaults which is hardly possible in QP or FP because in QP there are huge assault/heavy blobs which delete you on sight and in FP everyone goes heavy first and medium/light last.

Ive been playing my arctic wolf lately. Very nice when(if) you bring down that lb40 anh.
S7 is also a great way to gauge your build competitiveness and your skills. It is an eye opener and it removes illusions about weapons and mechs.

Edited by lazorbeamz, 19 June 2018 - 06:52 AM.

[Agent of Change]

Sadly i started to get into Solaris right before it tanked in population, but it was to be expected. I submit the following baked in reasons why Solaris was always going to fail

1. Being 1v1 Solaris Only rewards super optimized mechs because given the opportunity to customize you need to focus on damage forward and kill your enemy before he kills you as fast as possible. This Results in a microcosm that amplifies the short TTK problem.

2. The rewards are crap. The time to payout are laughable compared to QP. Unless you could earn close to what you earn in QP per hour it's never going to keep people in the queue who want to continue getting mechs and customizing builds. (probably the biggest issue for most players)

3. The tiers are semi-arbitrary and it's not the worst way to set up up something like this but it's certainly not an ideal way. It's 7 buckets all decided by Mech performance in QP, and the buckets themselves do not take into account in anyway personal skill level. So you end up with a potential player base split 7 ways and throwing newbs in with Sharks.

4. The nature of the current Weapon balance and heat means that optimal mechs are very few and you will only see in general not only a handful of chassis in each division but a handful of specific builds as well. See point 1 in part but also this leads to a lack of variety and a barrier to entry unless you already own an "optimal mech" (mostly this can only be fixed by a decent adn comprehensivere-balancing of weapons and heat but hey I'm not holding my breath)


Basically this all adds up to an environment that Vets who want to progress are going to abandon becasue they can't get paid and new players will quickly abandon because they get eaten alive by Optimal builds, on Optimal chassis, in every division, for no real reward worth the time... and that's in an ideal situation when you can get a match as soon as you hit launch.

I mean they could address the issues by primarily increasing the rewards per match so that the cbills per hour becomes equivalent to QP for a competent player, reduce the number of divisions to better ensure players for matches and help ensure it's less likely new players get matches against high skill players. More radically they could restrict builds in ways that they don't in QP and FW even so far as just doing Stock battles, there isn't much else that can be done about the "Optimal mech/build" issue short of re-balancing and i haven't seen that done well yet.

Edited by Agent of Change, 19 June 2018 - 07:12 AM.

[DoctorJest]

d00mchild, on 03 June 2018 - 05:03 PM, said:

h"hey ill take my favorite heavy *queing* fighting a 6 ac2assault/something else out of weight); and get stomped :$"-moments. i will not play solaris until they sort that out. too much frustration for my taste

Played four games (I returned to MWO BECAUSE of Solaris) and had that happen every time.

Gave up.

[SmokedJag]

I think the best possible change would be to make it 2 of 3 falls (each round paying like 80% of what a match does now). Possibly make it so Round 2 and 3 are fought on different maps although I don't know how that would work technically.

Hiding spots in the spawns in Steiner also should be removed as they encourage unfair play. No other map is turtling with your back to a wall at spawn viable.

[Eisenhorne]

SmokedJag, on 19 June 2018 - 11:55 AM, said:

I think the best possible change would be to make it 2 of 3 falls (each round paying like 80% of what a match does now). Possibly make it so Round 2 and 3 are fought on different maps although I don't know how that would work technically.

Round 1 is the map neither player vetoed. Map 2 is the last map that was vetoed. Map 3 is the second to last map that was vetoed.

This would definitely help, since as it is right now if I want to play a single game of S7 (that lasts ~2 minutes normally) I'm looking at 5x that in matchmaking time, vetoing time, loading time, etc. That's insane.

[Marius Evander]

Played 30 games of Division 2 lat night, did not see ONE ballistic 2's king crab, was all people having fun in atlai, kodiaks and Mad iic's was fun.

[lazorbeamz]

You dont really outdps a DPS king crab in div 2. Not even kodiak can do it. I think you really need a medium or light and some special tactics. Problem is all the mediums in div 2 are somewhat slow and do not break a 100 kph speed limit. Lights do not have alpha strike and can not defeat a wall camper assault. I think ACW-1 could defeat said king crab regularly but it is one division higher.

Edited by lazorbeamz, 19 June 2018 - 11:30 PM.