8 replies to this topic

[Kaptein Jostein]

Hi,

I'm new to MWO, and after 20 or so battles I brought a friend into the game. After he finished his tutorials and got a couple of battles in the trial mech, we desided to join forces.

After some fideling we managed to make a group and selected our mechs, the matchmaker started searching for games but... nothing. Searching. And serching.

I'm getting the feeling that we are doing something wrong. Is this a case of 12 or nothing? Is the ques just really that long? Are we not supposed to play together with friends?

Please help me understand this

[Eisenhorne]

OK, so here's how this works. If you're by yourself, you play in the solo queue. It's where most people play. If you play in a group, you go into group queue. Group queue only takes groups, so the matchmaker makes groups of 12 from people in group queue, and looks to make matches for the largest groups first. 2 man groups seem to take the longest to get matches for, and there are a few reasons for this -

1) You can only get a match if your team adds up to 12 players. 10 man groups are pretty rare (since you take massive tonnage penalties in group queue for larger groups) so you can really only ever find a match in a situation where two groups have a sum total of 10 people in them, or there are no larger groups.

2) There are a lot of 2 man groups. Lots of people want to play with a single other friend instead of in a large group. So the few games that have room for a 2 man group will take one, and the other 2 man groups just wait.

3) Larger groups get priority. PGI will try to place a 6 man group before it places three 2 man groups, even if the 2 man groups have been waiting longer.

All this means is that it's best to be in a group of ~4-5 to play quick play, that seems to be the sweet spot where you have fairly quick matches, and plenty of tonnage.

There's also a FP event going on right now, so groups are playing Faction Play instead of quick play, further increasing queue times for it.

[Xeno Phalcon]

Technically speaking you are not doing something wrong at all, people grouped up are put into a different queue than solo players in Quickplay - and MWO dosnt have a very strong playerbase to begin with so by playing with a friend you are forced to wait longer to find opponents, I would recommend Solaris 2v2s even though I.....generally dont recommend solaris or factionplay period , its just the best option on hand.

The problem is exasperated by the Faction Play event going on right now, which has the usual population shaved down by a few hundred on average.

[Jables McBarty]

Kaptein Jostein, on 08 November 2018 - 07:00 AM, said:

Hi,

I'm new to MWO, and after 20 or so battles I brought a friend into the game. After he finished his tutorials and got a couple of battles in the trial mech, we desided to join forces.

After some fideling we managed to make a group and selected our mechs, the matchmaker started searching for games but... nothing. Searching. And serching.

I'm getting the feeling that we are doing something wrong. Is this a case of 12 or nothing? Is the ques just really that long? Are we not supposed to play together with friends?

Please help me understand this

If you haven't tried private lobbies, you can play 1v1 against your friend. Info on that in this other recent thread:
https://mwomercs.com...group-training/

Seconding what Xeno said about Solaris, you can also do 1v1 with your friend in Solaris. You'll run the risk of facing a stranger, but if the queue is at 0, wait until the timer hits 5 seconds and both hit "Launch" and you'll probably end up facing each other. My friend and I do this often when we want to play but don't feel like bringing our A game to Group Queue.

[Tarl Cabot]

The one thing not touched out is the time of day also, where the largest portion of the playerbase is US state side. Your time stamp was around 7am pst, 9am cst, 10am est

[Koniving]

I've found that there's a sweet spot for the best time to find matches too. Late at night on EST nights when most people in the EST time zone would be in bed...is about barren. Mid day when a lot of older people have some free time and nothing better to do... lots of activity. During events... kinda slim pickings and otherwise fine.

If you happen to jump to 2 friends plus yourself, it gets a lot easier. But there are other ways to get around it. If the two of you started around the same time it should be easy to sync-drop (launch at the same time) and end up together. This gets harder as your accounts get older though as your skill differences begin to show in game and get you separated.

This game used to allow groups of 2 to 4 players into solo queue and I really think it should allow groups of 2 at least.
This said.. Faction play has no such restrictions whatsoever so if you and your friend enter together, you're in there with solo players, with big groups, little groups, etc.

[MechaBattler]

This is why they should allow 2s in quick play. Even if it's just 1 team per side. They're worried that it'll lead to more one sided matches. But the matchmaker is already churning out one sided matches. How much worse could it get?

[Tarl Cabot]

MechaBattler, on 13 November 2018 - 11:38 AM, said:

This is why they should allow 2s in quick play. Even if it's just 1 team per side. They're worried that it'll lead to more one sided matches. But the matchmaker is already churning out one sided matches. How much worse could it get?

I agree but PGI would fubar it from Uranus and back. They likely not set it to take highest Tier of the duo, would NOT restrict it to one duo per side nor set appropriate weight restrictions, or at least where the duo could not drop with same weight class nor set it so the duo could not OPT OUT of group, only opt into non-group queue so they would be eligible to drop into either queue, which ever one grabs them first. And prevent said duo from dropping into ANY OTHER matches if they d/c from a queue except for the one they were in, ie to provide an extreme penalty for dc in the group queue. No other queues, even if they disband the group to go to their separate ways, ie FP, Solaris, etc. until the match they were end has finished up.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 13 November 2018 - 05:57 PM.