297 replies to this topic

[Aeromaxout]

With the player base as it is, this is a bold move PGI. Might work, might backfire. I for one remember the days of 8v8 and no real form of proper match making. The biggest difference between now and then is that we now have VoIP. Used to have to type plans in whilst moving (which I've noticed that now my mech comes to a stop every time I open chat up (pls fix)) and sometimes whilst under fire! It was doable, but now we can just talk instead of typing. If players are willing to cooperate then a scramble of pugs can defeat a proper group. Not an easy task, but it is possible. Done it myself back when we had the glitch that would put a 12man vs 12pug prior to VoIP.

Also, please let low tiers be able to volunteer to play with the top tiers. Good chance to experience higher skill gameplay. Best way to grow is to go against the best. That is my experience anyways.

[FRAGTAST1C]

Before you guys (re: PGI) go ahead with this idea of merging GQ with solos, can you please help us understand how you're valuing the threat level of a group?

Consider this instance with your MM.

1. You say that the MM will put groups into separate teams as much as possible. But there isn't a restriction to how many groups can be in the same QP match, yes?

2. Now, imagine EMP, MJ12, JGx, EON and other top comp teams are having 4-man groups going. Alongside their groups, there are casual groups going as well. The MM will look at the first group and sees EMP. So, it puts EMP into the 1st team. Then the MM sees a normal group which gets placed in Team 2. Next, it sees JGx. Will the MM put JGx in Team 1 or Team 2? Do you see how badly thought out the implementation is?

Your tier system is extremely bad and nothing is being done to change it. Have you even considered the fact that just 'cause someone is Tier 1, doesn't mean they're automatically on the same level as players from JGx for e.g.,?

Consider identifying the threat level of players/groups first before you start merging GQ with solos 'cause even with 4-man, it's going to end up in a stomp in favour of the comp team. What do you think is gonna happen next? We already have eejits complaining constantly that groups are stomping everyone in FW. You think you won't get any complaints like that?

[Aeromaxout]

Fragtast1c,

On one hand, you are correct that the MM hasn't been very effective at it's job of aligning good matchups; thus the need to reevaluate how "threat levels" are assessed.

On the other hand we went a good long while before we had a match maker that attempted to do any balancing. As a player who has never been near top rank, it was loads of fun back then. Perhaps a bit short when your raven turns a corner and gets K.O.ed by 6 Atlases, but the surprise was half the fun.

PGI,
You can't make everyone happy, so do what seems to be the best move to keep the game moving along.

[LordNothing]

i dont think id have problems with small groups, though it would be nice if psr was made symmetrical and each tier represented 1/5 of the population.

though to be fair ive had plenty of games with a large number of unit players on one side, yet didn't seem to make much of a difference in the outcome. also with a good chance of the other team also having a 4 man would level things out. i think id have restrictions over a 4-man of a certain skill level dropping without a group on the other side or simply tweak the composition of solos such that a skilled 4-man would have to carry a bunch of taters in lieu of an equally skilled 4 man on the other side.

Edited by LordNothing, 23 April 2020 - 12:11 PM.

[IanDresarie]

justcallme A S H, on 21 April 2020 - 01:07 PM, said:

Of course it's being taken totally out of context, WLR and KDR wasn't the actual discussion, it just came up as a side discussion from someone that doesn't understand the gravity of this change.. But you know, try to justify you argument however you can, right?

The someone would be me. And that question was hardly unrelated as the answer to it gave me a very solid idea on what kind of person and MW:O player you are, even without reading you comments here. And yeah, W/L and KDR wasn't a focus on this discussion here, that doesn't mean it's not relevant seeing how people are boasting about being able to solo-carry 4+ hours on their own *cough* or about their 10+ W/L ratio *cough*

What I can see again in this thread is: There is a very vocal minority in this game who doesn't really understand that the majority play MW:O for fun and not to win. And that those hardcore player, who, i admit, can carry a game occasionally on their own, aren't as highly numbered as you might think.

[IanDresarie]

To come back to the topic at hand, if anyone at PGi si still readin to this point.
I believe the change Paul suggested is a great idea!
BUT: There are clearly concerns, so we need a test.
And it HAS to be a prolonged test.
2 Days won't cut it. 2 weeks might still be too short.
I think it should be tested for a month. (the old patch cycle) First few days will be rough, with certain people from this thread ganging up to 'proof' their opinion and therefore affecting the results. So the test needs to be long enough for them to grow tired and the whole thing providing reliable and statistically relevant numbers. we need an average that actually has meaning and a short test simply can't provide that.

So I will yet again voice my support of the original suggestion and vote to give it a proper shot!

Edited by IanDresarie, 23 April 2020 - 01:49 PM.

[Anomalocaris]

IanDresarie, on 23 April 2020 - 01:11 PM, said:

The someone would be me. And that question was hardly unrelated as the answer to it gave me a very solid idea on what kind of person and MW:O player you are, even without reading you comments here. And yeah, W/L and KDR wasn't a focus on this discussion here, that doesn't mean it's not relevant seeing how people are boasting about being able to solo-carry 4+ hours on their own *cough* or about their 10+ W/L ratio *cough*

What I can see again in this thread is: There is a very vocal minority in this game who doesn't really understand that the majority play MW:O for fun and not to win. And that those hardcore player, who, i admit, can carry a game occasionally on their own, aren't as highly numbered as you might think.

It's not boasting if its true.....

I don't particularly get along with Ash. But that doesn't mean he's not right here. Someone else pointed it out, but go look at the Jarl's list scores for the guys warning you of seal clubbing and a sh*t game experience for the average player if you mix queues. Then go look at the scores for the guys who are excited about it. There's a huge disparity. The guys giving you the warning are the same guys that are going to devastate the average players if you mix queues. Hell, they already stomp people when they play solo alone, but you have a shot at taking them out if you work together. 3-4 of them coordinating are going to be nigh unbeatable unless another 1%er team gets matched against them. I look at it as a challenge when I see top players on the opposing team (and I'm not exactly horrible), but TBH, if I see 4 guys of Ash's level on the opposing team vs. randoms on my side, I'm thinking I might as well disco and try again.

Winning is fun. Close games are fun. Getting curb stomped is not. The third option is going to happen a lot more mixing queues. And even if you're on the team with the unicorn team, guess what, you're not going to contribute much cause they'll mow through the opposition so fast you won't have much of an opportunity.

Edited by Anomalocaris, 23 April 2020 - 01:52 PM.

[Andrzej Lechrenski]

Anomalocaris, on 23 April 2020 - 01:50 PM, said:

It's not boasting if its true.....

I don't particularly get along with Ash. But that doesn't mean he's not right here. Someone else pointed it out, but go look at the Jarl's list scores for the guys warning you of seal clubbing and a sh*t game experience for the average player if you mix queues. Then go look at the scores for the guys who are excited about it. There's a huge disparity. The guys giving you the warning are the same guys that are going to devastate the average players if you mix queues. Hell, they already stomp people when they play solo alone, but you have a shot at taking them out if you work together. 3-4 of them coordinating are going to be nigh unbeatable unless another 1%er team gets matched against them. I look at it as a challenge when I see top players on the opposing team (and I'm not exactly horrible), but TBH, if I see 4 guys of Ash's level on the opposing team vs. randoms on my side, I'm thinking I might as well disco and try again.

Winning is fun. Close games are fun. Getting curb stomped is not. The third option is going to happen a lot more mixing queues. And even if you're on the team with the unicorn team, guess what, you're not going to contribute much cause they'll mow through the opposition so fast you won't have much of an opportunity.

You are forgetting the ulterior motive of the doomsayers: they want to stay in their large groups and dominate group queue on the few hours of the week it may still exist, instead of being split up and at the mercy of solo queue. Take what they say cautiously, especially because they know how easy it is to frighten the community with their 'awesome' power.

Regardless, matchmaker being what it is, there are plenty of 12-0 stomps in solo queue already and there are thousands of combinations of ways the potato farm already finds to snatch frustration from the jaws of fun. But there are only a few dozen players like the dreaded forum lording Jarl's queens.

Part of the reason the meta of this game got screw in the first place is because people wet their pants in fear of "a top tier player" handing their *** to them once in a while. Look at what happened to the entirety of clan mechs (let alone engine scaling in general) just because people were worried about try-hards in Kodiaks with quad gauss. It ended up being *less* fun for everyone.

Right now we have the choice to do something that makes this game *more* fun for a change: playing with our friends. Let's not let this chance slip us by out of fear.

[John Bronco]

You can play with your friends, but if your friends are the casual sort, you will absolutely get stomped harder and more frequently than today, in a game mode where people already complain about too many stomps.

Is the trade-off worth it? Tough to say.

[Stormpaw]

Andrzej Lechrenski, on 23 April 2020 - 05:45 PM, said:

You are forgetting the ulterior motive of the doomsayers: they want to stay in their large groups and dominate group queue on the few hours of the week it may still exist, instead of being split up and at the mercy of solo queue. Take what they say cautiously, especially because they know how easy it is to frighten the community with their 'awesome' power.

Regardless, matchmaker being what it is, there are plenty of 12-0 stomps in solo queue already and there are thousands of combinations of ways the potato farm already finds to snatch frustration from the jaws of fun. But there are only a few dozen players like the dreaded forum lording Jarl's queens.

Part of the reason the meta of this game got screw in the first place is because people wet their pants in fear of "a top tier player" handing their *** to them once in a while. Look at what happened to the entirety of clan mechs (let alone engine scaling in general) just because people were worried about try-hards in Kodiaks with quad gauss. It ended up being *less* fun for everyone.

Right now we have the choice to do something that makes this game *more* fun for a change: playing with our friends. Let's not let this chance slip us by out of fear.

all those 1% meta tryhards are obviously afraid of the solo que, let the gates open to playing with friends, it will be .....fun

[CatznDogz]

Just another request for group queue counter so we can see if there are groups in queue.
Thanks!

[IshanDeston]

Larsh, on 23 April 2020 - 06:08 AM, said:

Ok, I can see your point, and I'm not going to derail this forum discussion on player nuances and play styles. But, where in this post is a reasoning on how to fix the current issue of not being able to find other groups in GQ?

(S)He does not need to provide a means to fix the Group Que issue, when pointing out why putting solo players into group que is a bad idea and potentially harmful to the game as a whole. I realize (s)he provided a suggestion, but (s)he didn't need to.

Putting Group Que into Solo Que is likely going to kill this game at this point in time.

[justcallme A S H]

Oh wow now we have people talking about respawns and 4v4 in QP?

Lol... Come on. At least be realistic. That's NEVER going to happen and would be an absolute waste of dev time. Thankfully PGI ain't crazy enough to go down that route.

[Andrzej Lechrenski]

Stormpaw, on 23 April 2020 - 07:33 PM, said:

all those 1% meta tryhards are obviously afraid of the solo que, let the gates open to playing with friends, it will be .....fun

Yup, they never play solo queue already and there are certainly never any 12-0 stomps. Nope. Never.

Status quo without the ability to take advantage of the fact that this is multiplayer game = perfection.

I totally agree with you: let's get all "NERF THE CLANS!!!" about this opportunity to do something positive. That never hurt us before.

[PotatoCrunch]

Honestly, I wouldn’t mind getting stomped once every 3-5 games (unlikely that I’ll get matched against a really good group multiple times in a row) if it means that I can play with my friends. It feels like an okay trade off to me. It’s been really hard to get anyone I know to play this game, and the few that I have managed to convince can’t play with me because the previous status quo made it very difficult for us to find a game in an acceptable amount of time. It was hard enough to convince the first person I got to play this game to keep playing this game because of the queue times and amount of info to learn as a new player, it’s not easy for other people to join to play with their friends.

I get the whole schtick of “ah we top players are gonna dumpster everyone,” and sure, that makes sense, you’re the top players. If you’re afraid of it scaring away people, I think that’s more of a match making issue than a combined queue issue. There are groups that are only “above average” or “average,” not every one is a pug stomper.

I almost hate to say this because this will come off as a bit rude, I think that if the top players truly, genuinely wanted to grow the game, they wouldn’t go to form pug stomping groups with the (from what I interpret) sole intention to stomp as many people as possible, I can’t tell if you guys are joking. Of course, even I think that’s probably unreasonable for the top players: if you wanted to win, you’d play with the best. And top players are at the top for a reason.

If people are afraid of groups stomping pugs, then how do we fix the issue of being unable to practically play with friends? We can’t just leave it alone.

I personally think 12v12 is the way to go over 8v8, it’s easier to implement and it’s just more fun to have more people to shoot. The variety of games is interesting too, where sometimes you’ll have 8 assaults on each team. I’m probably repeating myself, I don’t like 8v8 group queue because well organized groups seem to have a much larger impact there than 12v12. I agree with IanDresarie about the suggestion made by PGI to be tested for a month.

The game is fun, I like it, but if I can’t play with my friends when we’re available to play with each other, I’d rather play another game with them. And I really like this game, even though there are quite a bit of faults, it’s still really fun, and it sucks so much that it’s hard to share this fun with people new to Mechwarriors.

Edited by PotatoCrunch, 24 April 2020 - 05:01 AM.

[Kroete]

Paul Inouye, on 20 April 2020 - 03:06 PM, said:

An Alternative
We have another option available too an this is very minimal in terms of development cost:

Leave it as it currently is.
- 8v8 Group Queue
- Max group size 8
- New UI requirement to hard-code prevent 7-man groups from being created
- New XP/CBill/Reward payout re-balance

Did you remember why you removed groups from pug play?
Did you remember why you removed 4 man groups from pug play after groups where removed?

So leave it as it is and give soloplayers the option to play in groupplay?

Merging solos and groups would only bring a short term solution,
after enoughs stomps and farms you will have the same problem again,
but not much pugs left ...

Edited by Kroete, 24 April 2020 - 05:36 AM.

[Larsh]

So with all the run around in the recent pages of multiple ideas, I think it is just best to resort to the main focus that Paul placed back on page one. I'm not going to summarize since we already know what is being suggested.

At this point, I think we need to evaluate the player base a bit, and dig a little bit into what everyone thinks of our current state. This is going to take some time to get out of each other's bubble of influence, and I'm am trying my hardest to do this myself so I don't sound like I'm bitching, or looking down at anyone.

Just to give some perspective, because I'll admit, I rarely come to the forums unless there are large changes being announced that could fundamentally change the play style of MWO. In this case, the devs want to fix the issue where group queue really can't live on with it's current state. I'm a casual player, so I am in favor of what is being proposed. I like playing in groups. Playing with friends is a better experience that going it solo. Myself, and other casual players, come to MWO to play for fun. We don't care if we win or lose. We want to experiment with builds and try to explore the mechanics to discover other ways to play. That is where our enjoyment really stems from.

In the game's current position, myself and other casuals already get stomped from time to time. Changing the way groups are formed really isn't going to change that for us. But, as a casual player, we go in ahead of time with that mindset. We are already mentally prepared for a stomp. It's when we do come out with a win against the odds where we feel some excitement.
Sometimes the fun of the game isn't getting that win either. It's the comradery of playing as a group, and having fun either way.

This is the basis that I posted about placing aside the idea of stomps a few pages back, and we need to focus on the game mechanics instead so group queue can live again. For those naysayers that are saying that stomps will happen, you need to realize that stomps already exist. For some of the casuals that you think are going to get upset, we don't mind as we are always prepared already. We just want play with our mates again.

For the players that have more experience, and lead most stomps, what do you have to lose if this change takes place? And I really mean "you", as in yourself, in that last question. I'm not looking for projection on what you think other players are going to lose. I'm not trying to be a jerk, or trying to be decisive. I'm truly looking for input, as I would almost see this as a win for you as well.

Edited by Larsh, 24 April 2020 - 07:03 AM.

[Alreech]

justcallme A S H, on 23 April 2020 - 09:20 PM, said:

Oh wow now we have people talking about respawns and 4v4 in QP?

Lol... Come on. At least be realistic. That's NEVER going to happen and would be an absolute waste of dev time. Thankfully PGI ain't crazy enough to go down that route.

LOL.
It did never happen, and that's the reason many players left the game.
2012 then MWO started the hype was the Dropship mode, as on of the Devs defined it:

Quote

But if I made myself focus on a gameplay feature, I would have to say Dropship mode. This is a mode where the player can choose to fill a small dropship with four Battlemechs and take them all into a special battle. The result is a limited respawn game mode that lasts much longer and requires a lot of strategy by teammates. This mode is, of course, a part of Community Warfare.

I took almost 2 years until PGI introduced the possibility to respawn and choose your Mechs for the Map.(because choosing a spawn point & one of your Mechs from a menue like in any other shooter is to simple for MWO...)
During those 2 years players either adopted to the "last man standing get all the kills" playstile of Quickplay or left the game.

Instead of scrapping the quickplay PGI kept it, splitting the playerbase the first time.
Following splits: "Scouting" "Competetive Queue", Solaris...

PGI designed and sold MWO as a tactical team shooter, but failed to build in a sensible lobby for players to organise.
Wanna play in a group with players of your faction? Sorry, no faction Lobby in the game, go to 3rd Party Websites to meet potential other players of your faction...

Edited by Alreech, 24 April 2020 - 06:06 AM.

[Nearly Dead]

There are players in this game who despise ordinary "potatoes", "pugs", "meat shields" "idiots" etc. and are not shy about expressing it in game. I think these kinds of players would delight in having 4 vs 4 games with pug filler.

I say do it, but make an option for solo players to opt out of games that include preformed groups so that you can clearly see how the population is faring, not just thru the forums, but so that players can vote in game in tangible, measurable terms how they like it. I expect that would have a cost in terms of wait time so it would be a significant vote, not something people would do unless they were really unhappy with the gameplay.

If enough people pay in higher wait times to avoid playing with premade groups, well that tells you that the change is not going well and you can look for plan C or D or whatever. Obviously it might also affect the wait time of the group play teams, so there is that cost as well. If only a small minority opt out then in the future, after study and discussion, you could eliminate the option.

But based on listening in team chat and observing some of the players in game, I think quite a few people will be unhappy with the game experience of dropping with formed groups.

Knowing people, the preformed unit will consider themselves to be the team and the rest of the players who happen to have blue icons to be something else. Inconveniences or possibly an occasionally useful adjunct, but NOT teammates. Legion vs auxiliaries. They might be necessary and sometimes useful, but never to be trusted or relied on.

[RockmachinE]

A few good solo players can completely skew the game already let alone an entire comp lance. Even in soloq you can look at the player list and often times know the outcome before the game even starts....in the days when the queues were combined this was more or less the rule, you'd know ahead of time how the match was going to go based on who dropped. And I remember the refreshing feeling you would get when you'd get into a match without groups.

Having said all of that the game is already on its last legs so whatever we do won't have a huge impact on its longevity. Might as well have some fun and do crazy stuff with it before it goes.

I'm against it, but honestly do whatever just for the sake of seeing what happens.

Edited by Louis Brofist, 24 April 2020 - 06:44 AM.