864 replies to this topic

[Lukoi Banacek]

csebal, on 18 June 2018 - 10:05 AM, said:

Dude, after having my integrity and motives - thus my character - assaulted in over a dozen posts, you really do not want to know what I think of certain people, including the moderators I wrote this morning about this thread. I think I was pretty mild in my wording up there, if I get the cane for it, so be it.. at least *something* happens. I stand by what I wrote. If the cap fits, wear it.. if it doesn't, then its not about you.

I didn't assume it was about me at all. Merely that you were being hypocritical to put it mildly. At least you're aware you're getting riled up and can hopefully get back to debate without the unneeded name calling.

[Grus]

Lukoi Banacek, on 18 June 2018 - 09:53 AM, said:

why is that funny? I've played 310 since the last list. What's funny about the #?

The fact that he's "only" played a few hundred and wants sweeping changes to a game mode is want I find very humorous.

[Lukoi Banacek]

Grus, on 18 June 2018 - 10:21 AM, said:

The fact that he's "only" played a few hundred and wants sweeping changes to a game mode is want I find very humorous.

Ah fair enough

[Haipyng]

Lukoi Banacek, on 18 June 2018 - 09:49 AM, said:

I've taken my philosophy and ethics courses in college and for my masters. I'm well aware of where the slippery slope argument falls on the spectrum here. That's not the point at all. In this particular case, it's not invalid to play on the fear that has been demonstrated in the past. If there's evidence that Y and/or Z will happen, then it's not a fear, it's a prediction. Thus, the slippery slope argument is absolutely valid here. Dismissing it because it's characterized in philosophy and ethics circles with strawmen and red herring just shows over simplification.

I don't follow you, "demonstrated in the past"... When has PGI added 2s and 3s to the queue before? Why would they add 4s when that went so badly? All they have ever done is stepped down groups and out of QP all all together at 4 mans.

It's all opinions. My belief that 2 mans are not going to seriously impact QP, versus your belief that it will. Nobody has hard facts. We can sit and remain immobile while things go on as they have, ignore the issues presented and let the game wither away, or we talk about the problem and try something to help. I am not married to the idea, if someone else has better ideas, I'd love to hear it. I am just more in favor of doing something than saying it's a lost cause and MWO is doomed anyway.

We just have to agree to disagree.

There is rarely ever a tidal wave on anything. There just isn't the numbers of players to make it so. 8v8 was put forth by a Dev and was placed on the front page of the site. I am not going to generate the same interest in the Suggested Features section, but if a Dev wants to put it forth like the 8V8 thread, that would be awesome.

[Lukoi Banacek]

Haipyng, on 18 June 2018 - 10:37 AM, said:

We just have to agree to disagree.

Absolutely.

My comment about demonstrated in the past referred to 4-mans in "open" queue in the past. It's not dissimilar to adding 2-mans into what we call solo queue now.

That being said, the crux of the discussion here on whether to add 2-mans, barring the simple differences in opinion on what will be the impact seem to rely on the argument that "we've gotta do something to change things for the better." We cannot even remotely agree that doing this would be for the better, and there's no indicators that it would be. Hence, why this change for change's sake?

People have long promoted issues with fixing the MM and PSR (which would in and of itself have effects in group queue, therefore opening things up for the 2 man and small group casual/new player experience this whole debate seems fixed on), that there is actual data to support. Instead of lobbying for a change for change's sake, that helps a very small % vice potentially negatively impacting a large portion of the player base (i.e. the solo queue apparently makes up the largest demographic playing this game), we should work to those ends.

PGI is a small studio, with a poor history in terms of iterative changes. I'd be much happier if they tackled the MM/PSR issues and the NPE over trying to code this band-aid suggestion that I fully expect would turn off more than it retains or attracts, especially given the age of the platform and the game.

[a le Roi]

Lukoi Banacek, on 18 June 2018 - 10:48 AM, said:

Absolutely.

My comment about demonstrated in the past referred to 4-mans in "open" queue in the past. It's not dissimilar to adding 2-mans into what we call solo queue now.

That being said, the crux of the discussion here on whether to add 2-mans, barring the simple differences in opinion on what will be the impact seem to rely on the argument that "we've gotta do something to change things for the better." We cannot even remotely agree that doing this would be for the better, and there's no indicators that it would be. Hence, why this change for change's sake?

The logic is it would make the game more approachable to new and casual players who play with a friend, which would help with player retention and thus help expand player population. In theory.

[TheBossOfYou]

a le Roi, on 18 June 2018 - 10:54 AM, said:

The logic is it would make the game more approachable to new and casual players who play with a friend, which would help with player retention and thus help expand player population. In theory.

There is no basis for that theory.

[Nightbird]

Yep, your plan and result are detached. It's as sound as an all pizza diet to better health.

[Haipyng]

Lukoi Banacek, on 18 June 2018 - 10:48 AM, said:

My comment about demonstrated in the past referred to 4-mans in "open" queue in the past. It's not dissimilar to adding 2-mans into what we call solo queue now.

Ah I was looking for a reason why we would fall down the slippery slope of not stopping at just two mans based on past experience.

Lukoi Banacek, on 18 June 2018 - 10:48 AM, said:

That being said, the crux of the discussion here on whether to add 2-mans, barring the simple differences in opinion on what will be the impact seem to rely on the argument that "we've gotta do something to change things for the better." We cannot even remotely agree that doing this would be for the better, and there's no indicators that it would be. Hence, why this change for change's sake?

At least in trying it we get some hard data and then there is no more opinion and conjecture. We know definitively what happens and use that to inform future decisions. Even run it on a PTS.

Lukoi Banacek, on 18 June 2018 - 10:48 AM, said:

People have long promoted issues with fixing the MM and PSR (which would in and of itself have effects in group queue, therefore opening things up for the 2 man and small group casual/new player experience this whole debate seems fixed on), that there is actual data to support. Instead of lobbying for a change for change's sake, that helps a very small % vice potentially negatively impacting a large portion of the player base (i.e. the solo queue apparently makes up the largest demographic playing this game), we should work to those ends.

PGI is a small studio, with a poor history in terms of iterative changes. I'd be much happier if they tackled the MM/PSR issues and the NPE over trying to code this band-aid suggestion that I fully expect would turn off more than it retains or attracts, especially given the age of the platform and the game.

MM changes have been an ask for a very long time. If it was in the realm of possibility we would hope they would have done it before now. Instead they put a bandaid on GP MM and tried to balance by tonnage, a solution that didn't seem to make anyone happy.

[Tatula]

Wow! 17 pages and still going. Seems to have enough opinions on this subject to warrant a vote. Someone put it up. Let 2-man into QP or not (not 3 or more. Just 2.).

[Lukoi Banacek]

Haipyng, on 18 June 2018 - 11:05 AM, said:

Ah I was looking for a reason why we would fall down the slippery slope of not stopping at just two mans based on past experience.

This very forum.

As to gathering hard data....PTS would be the smarter option rather than risk driving away players permanently in an experiment on live servers, but again, our niche population will make that unlikely and probably untenable/impractical. We have so many "buckets" as is, you're just asking for another carving into the existing population.

If they ever got around to incentivizing use of the of the PTS with rewards that went to your primary account, instead of asking people to participate simply for the social-science of it all, they'd have a much better vehicle imo, but that's yet another fix they need to make.

Again though, I want to point out, you're advocating for change for changes sake (just to gather hard data), while acknowledging they haven't addressed solidly promoted options in MM/PSR and instead have gone the band-aid route of tonnage limited group queues. It's a bit ironic to dismiss one band-aid and advocate for another imo, and that's what changing things just to see what might be in the realm of the possible, really is.

[Lukoi Banacek]

a le Roi, on 18 June 2018 - 10:54 AM, said:

The logic is it would make the game more approachable to new and casual players who play with a friend, which would help with player retention and thus help expand player population. In theory.

So....long before you were a player here, years ago in fact, this VERY argument was used when folks argued against keeping small groups in the open queue previously. That removing the 4-mans was going to kill the game and drive away players. Instead, splitting solo and groups entirely ended up being fairly well received.

Admittedly, 2-mans aren't as impactful as 4-mans, but the underlying premise doesn't change.

And again....making it so MM/PSR worked more accurately and more importantly, worked better in GROUP queue would be a fix that allows for 2-mans, and casuals etc to enjoy group queue without infringing on solo queue at all. But that's a much tougher fix to code, especially given our small population.

The band-aid proposal of 2-mans in solo queue at BEST, will have such little impact that we retain our current player base largely unharmed. Anything worse than a best result however, pisses people off and drives them from playing anymore at all (it's a long running game at this point, newer shinier things are out there) in numbers that will offset any minimal gain from the 2-man introduction.

History of this game alone indicates this is a losing proposition and not in PGI's best interest.

I get that you're a newer player, tired of being paired up against stronger opponents in group queue where tiers are largely irrelevant, with your buddy. But there are lot of games out there that don't cater to the purely casual. I play R6S as well and even their "casual" mode is incredibly frustrating at times for a soloist such as myself, let alone the ranked play (I find the latter to have better games tho, even though I suck at that game, because folks are at least trying to focus and play smart).

If you're not willing to go through the learning curve, adding 2-mans to solo queue likely won't help you anyway tbh.

[Haipyng]

Lukoi Banacek, on 18 June 2018 - 11:13 AM, said:

If they ever got around to incentivizing use of the of the PTS with rewards that went to your primary account, instead of asking people to participate simply for the social-science of it all, they'd have a much better vehicle imo, but that's yet another fix they need to make.

Agreed.

Lukoi Banacek, on 18 June 2018 - 11:13 AM, said:

Again though, I want to point out, you're advocating for change for changes sake (just to gather hard data), while acknowledging they haven't addressed solidly promoted options in MM/PSR and instead have gone the band-aid route of tonnage limited group queues. It's a bit ironic to dismiss one band-aid and advocate for another imo, and that's what changing things just to see what might be in the realm of the possible, really is.

That is sort of the problem with MWO. We have never gotten whole solutions to problems. We always get band-aids or no fix to glaring issues and after awhile that is all we are expecting to get. If we could get a truly fixed GP MM, great. They haven't delivered on that yet, not even attempted it, nor is it on the roadmap.

[Lukoi Banacek]

Haipyng, on 18 June 2018 - 11:25 AM, said:

That is sort of the problem with MWO. We have never gotten whole solutions to problems. We always get band-aids or no fix to glaring issues and after awhile that is all we are expecting to get. If we could get a truly fixed GP MM, great. They haven't delivered on that yet, not even attempted it, nor is it on the roadmap.

Right. On the upside, they've acknowledged there are issues. Which is why I'd prefer they 1) find a way to encourage people to use the PTS via something other than the altruistic donation of their time and 2) start PTS testing adjustments to the PSR/MM system rather than introduce more, ill-thought out band-aids.

[a le Roi]

Lukoi Banacek, on 18 June 2018 - 11:19 AM, said:

I get that you're a newer player, tired of being paired up against stronger opponents in group queue where tiers are largely irrelevant, with your buddy. But there are lot of games out there that don't cater to the purely casual. I play R6S as well and even their "casual" mode is incredibly frustrating at times for a soloist such as myself, let alone the ranked play (I find the latter to have better games tho, even though I suck at that game, because folks are at least trying to focus and play smart).

If you're not willing to go through the learning curve, adding 2-mans to solo queue likely won't help you anyway tbh.

While you may be right about the rest, getting my *** handed over to me is not what bothers me. I'd prefer playing FP over QP even though it involves a lot tougher opponents - if only the wait times weren't so massive.

GQ wait times are tolerable sometimes and I do enjoy playing it despite its impact on my stats (which I don't care about). Its attractiveness suffers when the wait time goes past 5 minutes and well into the 10+ minute territory. That's when being able to play QP with a friend would be most valuable.

Edited by a le Roi, 18 June 2018 - 11:41 AM.

[Haipyng]

Lukoi Banacek, on 18 June 2018 - 11:29 AM, said:

Right. On the upside, they've acknowledged there are issues. Which is why I'd prefer they 1) find a way to encourage people to use the PTS via something other than the altruistic donation of their time and 2) start PTS testing adjustments to the PSR/MM system rather than introduce more, ill-thought out band-aids.

I haven't seen where they have acknowledge issues with MatchMaker for either GP or QP. They have beem pretty historically silent on the issue.

[Lukoi Banacek]

a le Roi, on 18 June 2018 - 11:37 AM, said:

While you may be right about the rest, getting my *** handed over to me is not what bothers me. I'd prefer playing FP over QP even though it involves a lot tougher opponents - if only the wait times weren't so massive.

GQ wait times are tolerable sometimes and I do enjoy playing it despite its impact on my stats (which I don't care about). Its attractiveness suffers when the wait time goes past 5 minutes and well into the 10+ minute territory. That's when being able to play QP with a friend would be most valuable.

Hey, I agree. The game should be fun, stats be damned. With that in mind, many people feel it wouldn't be fun to face paired teams in solo queue when they are looking for a solo, or casual experience. So, while I get your equity is based on getting fun matches, that's not everyone's.

Given how against this premise folks were about a similar situation long ago, what's changed that folks should be forced to revert to some semblance of that? Your situation is probably a relatively small sample within the greater group of people that play solo. Why should they have to deal with 2-mans that might well be disruptive, or imbalancing, just to satisfy your urge for a quicker match with a buddy?

Especially when such an urge can be immediately met in the queue designed for it, group queue.

If you're NOT worried about tougher matches in Faction Warfare, but are concerned with the time it takes to get a drop, what's wrong with going to group queue?

Haipyng, on 18 June 2018 - 11:43 AM, said:

I haven't seen where they have acknowledge issues with MatchMaker for either GP or QP. They have beem pretty historically silent on the issue.

I'm not going to research comments here and on outreach where they've acknowledged that the MM needs tightening up etc....they JUST posted a thread from Chris about this exact issue of fixing values with the MM after who knows how many months of it being jacked up and allowing a more than two tier spread in queues. They haven't been silent on the issue of the MM at all man, that's just disingenuous to even say.

Now, they might not agree with my assessment of their MM/PSR by any means but they address it frequently enough. You can find those threads if you need reminding.

[a le Roi]

Lukoi Banacek, on 18 June 2018 - 11:48 AM, said:

Hey, I agree. The game should be fun, stats be damned. With that in mind, many people feel it wouldn't be fun to face paired teams in solo queue when they are looking for a solo, or casual experience. So, while I get your equity is based on getting fun matches, that's not everyone's.

Given how against this premise folks were about a similar situation long ago, what's changed that folks should be forced to revert to some semblance of that? Your situation is probably a relatively small sample within the greater group of people that play solo. Why should they have to deal with 2-mans that might well be disruptive, or imbalancing, just to satisfy your urge for a quicker match with a buddy?

Especially when such an urge can be immediately met in the queue designed for it, group queue.

If you're NOT worried about tougher matches in Faction Warfare, but are concerned with the time it takes to get a drop, what's wrong with going to group queue?

There wouldn't be an issue for me if not for the fact that Group Queue waiting times also get very long at times. Partly probably because, as others have pointed out, the GQ isn't tier-balanced and therefore it's extremely unwelcoming to many new and casual players. So the queue is depopulated from casual players and is therefore full of high-tier folks in large groups, and is therefore depopulated from casual players, ad infinitum.

To fix the wait times outside of peak hours it would need to draw in players from QP. Which would require using MM balancing in GQ, but that would require a larger pool of players in GQ.

The population of GQ might grow if the population of the entire game grew through the game being more accessible to newbies in (small) groups. Whatever the right way to fix it, unless it is done the game seems committed to a population death spiral. The game as it is caters well to solo players and to very competitive clan players, but not the middle ground of casual group players.

[Lukoi Banacek]

When do you play that the wait times are so long for GQ? The GQ and FP wait times are in no way similar unless you're playing from AP tbh. I'll be honest with you, I've not seen a ton of evidence that GQ has huge wait times in the NA/EU time frames at all. It's almost as fast as solo queue.

And the population *might* grow, but all of our history here points that will more likely shrink if you add groups to solo queue.

Making the game more accessible to newbies (something I'm a very strong proponent of, the "New Player Experience" aka NPE) doesn't necessarily need come at the cost of pissing off casuals in the solo queue and frankly why should it?

I play solo 90% of the time or more. I play there to play casually and enjoy myself. Why should I have to suffer to let in pairs in your example? And why wouldn't I get one of my like minded buddies (who is also at my skill level, plays competitive play, etc) and go in there and farm some soloists?

Your premise is reliant on this 2-man group being new players and their buddies, extreme casuals and their buddies, lower skill capped players and their buddies being the bulk of these 2-man teams. That's not what would happen. There would plenty of those, to be certain, but there'd also be absolute tons of super experienced, and sometimes very strong pilots now paired up with similar folk, romping and stomping in solo queue. People will complain about it and people will leave over it. It'll be the "last straw" for many of those folks, because the game is not new and shiny anymore.

Would it be as bad as when there were four mans? Assuredly not, but it'd definitely have a negative impact.

There are ways to improve the game for the NPE that don't involve shafting the solo queue, casual player base etc. I agree, preventing the continued death spiral of playerbase # is important, but what you're recommending will just hasten it.

[Haipyng]

Lukoi Banacek, on 18 June 2018 - 11:48 AM, said:

I'm not going to research comments here and on outreach where they've acknowledged that the MM needs tightening up etc....they JUST posted a thread from Chris about this exact issue of fixing values with the MM after who knows how many months of it being jacked up and allowing a more than two tier spread in queues. They haven't been silent on the issue of the MM at all man, that's just disingenuous to even say.

I asked because a search turned up a thread from Paul at the end of last month on Solo MM adjustments and one from Russ in Sept of 2015. There is plenty of discussion from everyone else on it. I call that being pretty silent and I'm not being disingenuous to say it, merely my take on it. I don't follow outside news sources like NGNG or this outreach site, so if they have been mentioning it there I don't know about it. You seemed to have known better. (shrug)