8 replies to this topic

[Bistrorider]

Yesterday I was thinkink about how to heal the group launch. I have simple solution. Right now we can put any mech class without limitation to GL. Only limitation is tonnage. As far as I know group must meet another group, or smaller groups to launch. And that is the cause why it's not working anymore. Waiting for match takes eternity. How about other options? My idea is to add option with 4 players GL. Restricted to 1 mech per class but without group vs. group restriction and tonnage limitation. And restricted to one group per team only. Of course theoretically team with sucha group have bigger chances to win. But this solution will make GL quick and easy for anyone. So then we would have 12 vs. 12 and one 4 players group for every sucha team.

Also idea for another option. Two players group launch. (Like play with friend or something). Restricted to 2 different classes and one group per team and without group vs. group restriction. Question is: Does sucha group should be able to meet 4 players group in same team? I think not.

12 players group may be left for Faction Play only and deleted from Quick Play. But in FP there also should be option for 4 players group and 2 players group.

Also sucha group should be highlighted on match players list. Colored brackets for every player from the group or something. Even if the enemy team will not have sucha group, they will at least know, that adversary has it. That will help to adapt the team without group to match conditions.

What you think?

Edited by Bistrorider, 03 September 2019 - 01:44 AM.

[Aidan Crenshaw]

The groundhogs are restless...
Sorry, bistrorider, I know you're enthusiastic and all, but we had exactly these threads before with the same suggestions. Several times. Nothing has come out of it. And nothing will. Groups have to use FP play now or syncdrops in SQ. That might mean to bring a full deck of trials to the "endgame", but that's how it is.

[Bistrorider]

Aidan Crenshaw, on 03 September 2019 - 03:54 AM, said:

The groundhogs are restless...
Sorry, bistrorider, I know you're enthusiastic and all, but we had exactly these threads before with the same suggestions. Several times. Nothing has come out of it. And nothing will.

Why?

Edited by Bistrorider, 03 September 2019 - 07:33 AM.

[50 50]

Not exactly sure I follow what you are suggesting, however.....

Small groups of 2 - 4 players allowed in solo queue to make up part of the 12 player team might be an option but has met with some pretty stern resistance from members of the community.
Initially there was no group queue and groups of any size did drop in solo queue. It was split because a large co-ordinated group would steamroll pretty much anything else and was discouraging for all the solo players.
The advantage in recombining the queue (and limiting group size and how many groups would be allowed in a team) is that it condenses the population and should theoretically allow more frequent matches..... ie. less waiting.

The other side of that suggestion is to allow solo players to opt into the group queue and leave the solo queue alone. This is a pretty good idea but I fear that due to the low numbers of players it will simply have no affect. I also think there may be some technical issues for the match maker to monitor both queues and then move a player between them.... so not sure this is even feasible.

Adding a 4 player or 2 player queue at this point, particularly given the reduced number of players, is not a practical option as it divides the population further and will further impact wait times. We really need to avoid that.

Another suggestion (And a bit of a personal favourite I might add) is giving the queues flexible team sizes and is something that in my opinion needs to be applied to quick play and faction play. That is to put a change in the match maker so that if it can't put together a match of 12v12 that it will attempt 8v8 and then 4v4 simply for the purpose of getting players into games. For that to work effectively it may be best to enforce a 2 or 4 player limit on groups (no 3 player groups.... either drop 1 or pick 1 up) so that there is a simple building block to use that ensures a group can get into any size team.

Something that has maybe only been suggested a couple of times but has not had a lot of exposure is to do something more with the Scouting queue. It may work quite well to remove the Light/Medium mech limit on this queue and add all the other missions and maps to the cycle. As a strict 4v4 mode this would give a huge boost to the variety of options in that queue.
Unfortunately, it is still a segregation of players and doesn't really help the quick play group queue at all. It is also governed by whatever event is going on in Faction Play at the time which means it may not even be available.
Of course, there is the thought that if there was flexibility in the team sizes which could allow for a 4v4 match that Scouting as an extra mission could be a thing for quick play.

Little bit of history regarding the groups as well.
Initially when it was just the one queue the entire team composition had to follow the weight class limit of 3/3/3/3 (light, medium, heavy, assault) mechs.
This was also true for groups where players in a group had to fit that jigsaw.
This created a problem for the match maker which was continually trying to put together teams of 3/3/3/3, particularly after the queues were split. So for group queue the suggestion was made to simplify it to a tonnage value instead so the match maker didn't have that extra component to work with and helped to speed up the process.
That's why we have tonnage limits in groups.

Lastly, due to what has been going on for the last couple of years, as you will have noticed, there is not much work going into MWO presently which means any hopes we might have for some changes are slim to none.
Whether this changes after the release of MW5 is unknown.
I would certainly like to think that MWO has many years left in it as it is certainly a very good game.
We will have to wait and see.

[Bistrorider]

Thanks for explanations. Hard topic to crack. Mean group launch. Right now we are only limited to number/tons. And with small group you can wait forever. I feel like it's hard to touch it anyway right now. But I would opt for small groups launch, but there is always a question of balance in match maker and like group vs. non group team. Even when it's 4 players group.

[50 50]

If the group limit is set by tonnage then everyone has the same opportunity to meet that tonnage when they form the group.
Should they chose not to then it is at least a personal and hopefully communicated decision.

I feel there would be greater benefit from building some flexibility into the match maker to cater for smaller teams as it achieves several goals.

1. Wait times. A match maker capable of starting a battle of 4v4, 8v8 or 12v12 should mean that when the number of players in the queues fluctuates we can still get matches. I suspect many would be far happier to get a 4v4 game after waiting a few seconds instead of sitting there waiting for a 12v12 for an hour.

2. Generating more games. This holds true for Faction and Quick Play. Simply being able to get games encourages playing more. The more people play, the more players will be in the queue and we can expect the team sizes to vary depending on timezones etc. I do wonder what might have been had Faction Play allowed smaller matches when we could pick which planet we wanted to queue up on.

3. Variety. It's the spice of life. Team sizes greatly alter how the games play out and feel. If we don't know from one match to the next how big the teams will be, it takes the planning for the group to a different level and will give players a different experience every time they ready up. That's pretty important for the overall longevity of the game combined with maps and missions.

(PS. I call the different modes like Conquest, Assault etc missions because we use the word 'mode' to also describe Quick Play vs Scouting vs Invasion)

[Raptor007]

The "groundhogs are restless" because this very basic feature of a multiplayer game -- playing with your friends -- has been utterly broken for months.

Something needs to change. Merging the queues is the obvious easy fix, even if that means you might have to worry about a few players working together in quickplay. Just limit the group size to prevent stomps and let the big groups go to faction play, assuming big groups are even playing anymore.

[Bistrorider]

50 50, on 04 September 2019 - 04:26 AM, said:

If the group limit is set by tonnage then everyone has the same opportunity to meet that tonnage when they form the group.
Should they chose not to then it is at least a personal and hopefully communicated decision.

I feel there would be greater benefit from building some flexibility into the match maker to cater for smaller teams as it achieves several goals.

1. Wait times. A match maker capable of starting a battle of 4v4, 8v8 or 12v12 should mean that when the number of players in the queues fluctuates we can still get matches. I suspect many would be far happier to get a 4v4 game after waiting a few seconds instead of sitting there waiting for a 12v12 for an hour.

So maybe all we need is more options in group play? In theory it still works. Tonnage limit also gives flexibility, but others options restricted to something may help to find a match and may vary the game experience. Like you're saying: 4v4, 8v8, 12v12 options. But also maybe a lance drop (classic BattleTech lance is: 1 light, 1 medium, 2 heavy mechs, so 1 assault instead of heavy still gives a "real" lance). Maybe also a free drop option, restricted to tonnage and game mode of 4v4 or else, and other: lance drop option, restricted to one, two or three classical lances or something like that?

Edited by Bistrorider, 07 September 2019 - 12:29 AM.

[50 50]

If the quick play queues were to be merged, then changing the group limit back to the weight class limit would be something to consider but it did have it's own problems.
From memory when it was only 1 queue the groups did have to conform to that weight class limit but they were not strictly limited to a 1/1/1/1 setup. They could for example have a group of four players with 3 assaults and 1 heavy and then the match maker would have to try and work with that in an attempt to still make a team of 3/3/3/3 of each weight class.
The match maker was forced into it's own Tetris nightmare to try and build a match.

When the queues were split, the group queue still followed the 3/3/3/3 which highlighted that this approach was not great when a small group could try and absorb all of one of the weight classes. It's also impractical to enforce a weight class particularly on small groups.

But that is why the tonnage limit was brought in as it allowed the game to simply specify a minimum and maximum tonnage according to the group size and then the match maker only needed to build a match according to the number of players.
It was still a bit awkward in that a group could be anywhere from 2 to 10, 12 players (no groups of 11) which meant there could be all sorts of group sizes to combine into that single 12v12 match. It was/is still a game of Tetris for the match maker.

I would think that the next logical step would be to only allow groups of 2 or 4 players so that is becomes very easy to put two teams together using only even numbers and a consistent building block based on the lances.
However, in addition to that, the match maker must allow for smaller team sizes so that matches can still occur when the population in the queue is low. If there are only 8 players online then having a 4v4 game is better than no game at all.

Bistrorider, on 07 September 2019 - 12:27 AM, said:

So maybe all we need is more options in group play? In theory it still works. Tonnage limit also gives flexibility, but others options restricted to something may help to find a match and may vary the game experience. Like you're saying: 4v4, 8v8, 12v12 options. But also maybe a lance drop (classic BattleTech lance is: 1 light, 1 medium, 2 heavy mechs, so 1 assault instead of heavy still gives a "real" lance). Maybe also a free drop option, restricted to tonnage and game mode of 4v4 or else, and other: lance drop option, restricted to one, two or three classical lances or something like that?

You can kind of achieve the 'classic' lances using the tonnage limit on the group as it will force some variations in mechs taken according to what players want to take without strictly enforcing it. Again, the problem is in the groups of 2 and how to enforce a weight class limit so that it fits in with a certain type of classic lance. It's not really practical and because there were enough players out there that wanted to pair up with a friend and only drop as a 2 player group, the limit for the 2 player group was adjusted to they could pretty much pick any mech. (ie. min 40, max 200 sort of thing)
In theory, this would allow a 12v12 match of nothing but 100 ton mechs.

To cater for these sorts of combinations when looking at modular groups or 2 or 4 there might need to be some additional features in the match maker.
One option might be to try and use the average tonnage of a lance (either 2+2 or 4) to determine it's classification as either a light, medium, heavy or assault lance. That is, total lance tonnage divided by 4 will fit somewhere into one of those weight categories.
The match maker could then try and build a match by putting lances of the same category on opposite teams. ie. The average tonnage in your lance makes it a medium lance. The match maker will try and find another medium lance to put on the other team.
The second thought it not to worry about that and simply put two teams up against each other and maybe have some sort of handicap bonus as a payout according to the tonnage difference. That way you still get matches as quickly as possible, but if you happen to have a medium lance of 200 tons come up against an assault lance of 400 tons there is some sort of payout bonus.
Call it danger money, compensation or a difficulty modifier.

To return to your 'classic' lance idea, maybe just have that as a mission bonus. You had a lance of 1 light, 1 medium and 2 heavies. Your lance fits in with the 'classic' medium or heavy lance (depending on average tonnage) you get a 'classic' bonus at the end. Nice way to link it back to the board game without imposing a restriction on the players.

Either way, the objective must be how to get matches as quickly and as often as possible.