Alreech, on 03 May 2020 - 04:52 AM, said:
You liked playing in a small group, and now don't like playing solo because of groups on the other side?
I liked to play in a small group too, wasn't possible for almost a year due long waiting times in matchmaker.
Faction Warfare was an alternative for that, an while it's much better because you can use dropdecks to choose your Mech fitting for the map and the respawns allowing you to risk light Mechs as scouts it has his problems.
Like many of the maps being to small for 12 vs 12 with 4 respawns or the same lack of teamwork & communication between groups on the same team.
IMHO PGI should improve the ways for Solo players to group up, and reduce the group sizes to 1 - 4.
Improving ad hoc grouping would be for example adding VOIP to groups.
Reducing group size to 4 would allow to set up 4 vs 4, 8 vs 8 & 12 vs 12 matches depending on the numbers of groups in the Queue.
More but smaller groups would also allow to use a "Group Tier" calculated from the Tiers of the Players in the Group to balance group play.
Right, I'm presently not in a group (I think I'd enjoy it again if I were set up for it, and could do so with people who had the patience to put up with someone such as myself, who hasn't had much experience playing in groups, and isn't really an experienced gamer. I'm a strangely streaky player, it seems... there are matches in which I appear to do quite well, and matches in which I am on the bottom of the scoreboard). I was confirming comments made earlier in the thread that were saying the present state of mixed group/solo quick-play is going to make the playing experience unpleasant and drive a lot of people away (I'm finding myself in the position of one of those people who were anticipated by prior posts, who feels that the present state of play, for most of the past few days, has gone beyond being "no fun," to simply downright unpleasant. It's that rare, occasional gem of a match that keeps me around for now. When I was reading other posts earlier on in this thread saying, basically, "this is what's going to happen... the casual player is going to be driven away by this, because they're going to be repeatedly harvested as easy kills by people dropping together. It's happened before, and the player base is going to suffer," I thought, yes... bingo... because while the game has felt frustrating at times in the past, for a variety of reasons, this present situation feels like it's often just pointless to even try playing. That sentiment was anticipated by others previously in the thread, and so I felt rather validated when reading those posts/comments. I'm saying, "yup, you got that right... and I'm representative of that player base that you were talking about, who feels like it is generally just no fun right now." And I'm someone who didn't mind taking my semi-stock Centurion into matches with clan mechs and other higher end mechs, because when I did well in a match, I felt like I'd earned it, and that was fun. But the imbalances have been adding up. It's not just high level players being mixed in with average (or even somewhat good/decent) players... it's not just competition level gamer-builds being mixed in with the somewhat more universe-realistic or semi-stock "builds," that many of us might prefer to try and play, and perhaps it's not necessarily simply a matter of group/coordinated players dropping in against solo-cue casuals who just want to try and have some fun. But... when those things (and maybe others I'm not seeing) add up (synergistically, I might add)... well, that *might* be why we're seeing what seems like even more matches in which one side gets steamrolled by the other, *but* even in the matches that aren't 12-0 or some other relatively one-sided number, even when the matches appear more even (perhaps there was a fairly competitive 4-player group on both sides, for example), there's still an element of solo-cue players getting "harvested" as I think one prior commenter put it. So, the score might be more even, but the *play experience* is imbalanced. A bit of a very old complaint that I suppose I could add to the list (hey, while I'm at it, why not, right?) is what appears to be the relative crippling of higher tonnage mechs (and the relative boosting/enabling of lights, especially compared to what someone familiar with the universe/lore would expect) in order to make lights more "balanced" and appear playable, resulting in what some of us long-time Battletech/Mechwarrior fans find silly -- after all, in our lore-laden minds, light mechs are cheap and abundant, and *shouldn't* be able to keep parity with heavier, much more expensive equipment (I mean, why bother spending the money on heavies and assaults at all then?) but that's a whole new discussion. ;-) Now, a scoring system that gave value to light players by awarding what they did *per ton* (a multiplier for their match score?) might have been a good idea... and I do appreciate the points awarded for things like scouting and even lance in formation.
I did try faction play one day. Twice. Two matches, both on the same map. I realize it isn't a very good sample size, but.... What I encountered was simply far too many players (on my own team) without the patience for someone new to faction play. There were too many of these people in my two faction-play matches for it to be worth bothering. I have a decent enough sense of personal self worth to let it go... water off a duck's back, as they say. But it wasn't worth the ruffled feathers and upset attitudes of people who couldn't endure someone bringing LRMs into a faction match on their first day of trying it, or leading with the wrong mech in their drop deck, etc. Granted, there were a couple people who communicated those kinds of things in a constructive way, and others who curbed their frustration enough to be civil. But my overall experience was one that communicated to me a sense of "not worth my time." Maybe I'll try it again some time.
Sounds like you've got good ideas. I can't really speak to most of it though. I like the voice chat option that's presently incorporated into the game (like I mentioned before, we had to use Teamspeak when I was with a group a few years ago), but I'm not set up with a mic to use it now, which I suppose is a hurdle to my own game play... but... the comm feature by pressing "E" seems a great compromise, and really, I'd be a fan of keeping the comms generally clear anyway, and overall I'm happy to do my part in that. I think that in order for there to reliably be effective coordination, voice comm is important, but only goes so far. Just because you have a 4 person team that *can* communicate enough to coordinate doesn't mean that they will be effective in doing so. If you've got 4 decent/average players who work well together and have a good method for doing so, I think they'll probably beat four talented individuals who don't.
Thanks for the reply and the comments. Sorry for splitting my reply across two posts/comments... I haven't been much of a forums poster either! ;-) If you or anyone else wants to cue up with me, I'd be happy to give it a go, just so long as whoever it may be understands that I'm not on a mic, and I haven't been a serious or experienced gamer. I may need to be walked through some things. I'm happy to take direction -- which I suppose is another thing that's gotten me in hot water in the quick-play pick up games, hahah... someone calling for the team says, "go now," and too few of us do it, resulting in a trouncing! Ha.