1579 replies to this topic

[Monkey Lover]

Played all night in a group of 3 and 4. Most were good games. I saw teams on both sides.There was only 1, 12-0 match.

I loved being able to find fast matches. I hope we stay with this change.

[Sjorpha]

Excessive Paranoia, on 03 May 2020 - 10:22 PM, said:

This is one place where you're definitely wrong... PGI (and for that matter essentially no Dev anywhere) doesn't care how much complaining players do as long as they are playing. To them, players who continue to play, but complain constantly are still players who continue to play, and at the end of the day, thats the metric they care about the most. Sure they might revert the changes if the complaints reach a certain level, but a far more likely scenario is that they'll write people like you and me off as a "vocal minority" and leave the changes in place. On the other hand, if 50% of the player based stops playing over this, its a statistic that they almost literally cannot twist into a positive (I say almost because I'm 100% sure they'll try), and would likely be forced to roll back the changes. I'm sorry to say, but the only opinion of ours that matters in this situation is the one we express with our feet as we walk away.

And they would be correct to do so, player numbers increasing or decreasing is a much better indication of player satisfaction than forum posts.

[wasder Unplugged]

Thank you developers!! dropping with friends has been more exhilarating than the solo grind. we have been waiting for a trial on this and so far enjoying the experience. Sure it at times more competitive, but that seems to be balanced with player performance and tiers. Either way if you are just dropping to have fun,this is a better way forward for a community orientated unit team game. Most of us are committed beta users and hope this expands the numbers that do like to play with friends as well.

Edited by wasder Unplugged, 04 May 2020 - 01:46 AM.

[Nesutizale]

Sjorpha, on 04 May 2020 - 12:48 AM, said:

And they would be correct to do so, player numbers increasing or decreasing is a much better indication of player satisfaction than forum posts.

Indeed, the number of people posting here is quite low. Let it be 20 different people? Hell lets say a hundret different people. Jarls list says there are ~14.000 people playing. Then 100 people posting here would be 0,7 % of the playerbase and even those are split 50/50 it seams of beeing positiv or negativ about the change.

And when we look at the number of players who can realy dominate a game, going by their average matchscore...lets say we start with people who average in the 400+ matchschore then its 98 people. Again 0,7% of players that are going to be a problem.

Lets even widen that to matchscores of 300...then its 6% of the total players.
Will you have a chance to encounter a 4man team of this 6% ? Yes. Are they the majority of players you will encounter? No.
Most games and even groups will most likely be from the group of people that have an average matchscore of 176 - 250 making up 66% of the players.

I would say that most of these 66% are players who don't meta much. Who, even in teams, are not super coordinated and maybe try to manipulate the map vote only a little bit.

Most of the concernce about team beeing overpowering realy start to become a problem the closer you are to the 0,7 - 6 % group of players. Would the game be entirely around those players I definitly would say never ever allow those to group up. They are scarry enough on their own, we don't need 4 of them coordinating but they are a minority.

So where do you want to place your focus on 6% of the players or the 66% of players?
My guess, when it comes to PGI, would be that they focus on the 66% of players.

[mgto]

FRAGTAST1C, on 04 May 2020 - 02:59 AM, said:

[Redacted]This "majority-minority" talk doesn't help. Do you want mixed tiers, nonsensical team balance, etc., to be the norm for the sake of decreased time taken to get into a match?

100% Yes!

[Nesutizale]

Looking at the how the skill level is spread is importend because the less skilled players are, the less importend is if they are grouping or not.

Bunch of T5 grouping up will have much less of an effect overall then a group of T1s grouping up... also we need to drop the Tier / PSR system but that is another matter. For keeping it simple I will use Tiers.

So when most of your players are in the middle, as its normal, then you have to look at those and how they are playing. Do groups of T3 players realy have that much of an impact on the game?
I say that have more impact as a group but its still in a range of going 50/50. They can still be dorks or are starting to get the deeper mechanics and how to use them. They are definitly not T1 players.

So when, don't know, lets say 80% of the games played per day can go 50/50 win or loose because of a group beeing part of it then this is acceptable in my opinion.

What I would implement is the following:
- Use Matchscore as a basis instead of PSR
- When grouping take the highest matchscore of the group and add 50 points to that score and call it a "groupscore"
- Use that groupscore to find matching groups for the enemy team
- The higher the groupscore is the tighter the matchmaking gets

For example when the groupscore is around 100 you are matched with people +/- 100
When your groupscore is around 200 you are matched in the range of +/- 50
and so on....all numbers are just made up but I think you get the point.

I think that way you can have small groups and solos in the same Q and balance out the advantage of small groups.

[SolahmaWarrior]

Excessive Paranoia, on 03 May 2020 - 10:22 PM, said:

This is one place where you're definitely wrong... PGI (and for that matter essentially no Dev anywhere) doesn't care how much complaining players do as long as they are playing. To them, players who continue to play, but complain constantly are still players who continue to play, and at the end of the day, thats the metric they care about the most. Sure they might revert the changes if the complaints reach a certain level, but a far more likely scenario is that they'll write people like you and me off as a "vocal minority" and leave the changes in place. On the other hand, if 50% of the player based stops playing over this, its a statistic that they almost literally cannot twist into a positive (I say almost because I'm 100% sure they'll try), and would likely be forced to roll back the changes. I'm sorry to say, but the only opinion of ours that matters in this situation is the one we express with our feet as we walk away.

The only fault in the logic above, is complaining players don't spend money. Happy players do spend money. I fall into that vocal minority and haven't spent a dime in over a year. No reason to as I play pretty casually and generally in spurts. I play other games more than MWO and I have spent money on those in the last year. Why? Because I am a happy player in those games.

PGI has already stated that there isn't enough money coming in to justify any new Mech Packs/designs. Keeping the majority of the player base unhappy isn't going to change that... If the monetary stats tank too much, as a business model, there'll be no justification in keeping the servers running. I have not seen anything from Russ to indicate that that is a concern (ie rectifying this issue) and MW5 can only carry the dead weight, monetarily, of MWO for so long.

[Spare Knight]

SolahmaWarrior, on 04 May 2020 - 03:44 AM, said:

The only fault in the logic above, is complaining players don't spend money. Happy players do spend money. I fall into that vocal minority and haven't spent a dime in over a year. No reason to as I play pretty casually and generally in spurts. I play other games more than MWO and I have spent money on those in the last year. Why? Because I am a happy player in those games.

PGI has already stated that there isn't enough money coming in to justify any new Mech Packs/designs. Keeping the majority of the player base unhappy isn't going to change that... If the monetary stats tank too much, as a business model, there'll be no justification in keeping the servers running. I have not seen anything from Russ to indicate that that is a concern (ie rectifying this issue) and MW5 can only carry the dead weight, monetarily, of MWO for so long.

I started playing late Sept 2019 and I have spent money on this game. I even pre-purchased MW5 with no intention of installing it, just to support the game. Seeing where we are right now, I regret doing so, because if this all fails and the servers go away, that money is gone with it. I want to see it maintained for as long as possible. Just look at CS:GO. As old as it is, the player base is huge. Quick matches. Lots of excitement. What's not to like?

Why do I like this game so much? Unlike playing against A.I. in single player games, this is more unpredictable. You never really know what the other player is going to do. I think that is why most of us are here.

[Nearly Dead]

As a solo QP player I am in game a lot less now because it is too annoying. Because of that there is no reason for me to convert XP, buy colors, etc. I am not interested in buying any new mechs right now. Two weeks ago I put together some mechs into drop decks and knew I needed some different mechs so I was looking at Grimmechs etc to find what I should buy. That is no longer even a consideration now. I could be playing now. Before the change I would have been in game, not on the forums.

It was absurd to throw out BOTH mech balance AND skill balance in the name of wait time.

My concern is that there are not enough players left to build a team that is balanced in terms of skill and playing enough variety of mech weights. When I am waiting to drop I often see 0% 40% 60% 0% in the mech weights for long seconds, and it often drops with one of the numbers below 10%. With groups of 4 dropping (sometimes with sync droppers added) with matching mechs there is no semblance of balance anymore. When a group of 4 (or unofficially 5 or 6, which I have seen) drops with matching assault mechs, but assault mechs were only 25% of the total mechs in the pool, what happens? All assaults drop on one team, zero drop on the other team. Now add the experience of 4-6 players who care enough to have matching meta build mechs, form a unit, have their own comm channel, and play together over a long time. Those are not casual players. Letting them drop as a unit, in matching meta mechs, in QP, is contrary to any definition of sportsmanship.


I am getting a bit worried that PGI suffers from what I call "Management by Convenient Metrics".

If it is easy to measure something like wait time, that assumes a high level of importance since managers only want to discuss numbers. Things like customer satisfaction and other hard to measure but vital measures get ignored as long as there is something, anything, that is easy to quantify that they can take to meetings and base decisions on. The answer is to find ways to measure what is truly important, even if those measurements are hard to capture, and use them to offset the weight given to stuff that is easy to measure.

Who is spending money in game? If there are 5000 unit players and 5000 casual players and the grouped up players spend more money, does that justify driving away the 5000 casual players? Depends, without those players, do matches happen? If not, then eventually no one is going to spend any money because no matches = no game. Seems like the answer would be to define what kind of player spends money and make it more attractive and easier for players to become like that. IE, in groups, with drop decks ($), painted in matching paint schemes ($). Not by making casual play hell, by making group play, or something like it, better for average players.

[Einherier96]

The statical chances for ''a 90 percentile group will just pugstomp everyone'' are vastly overstated here. Lets do the maths roughly and quickly, and go with the numbers that someone else thre into the thread from a few years ago, and say that around 20% of the community are willing to play in a group, so we would see a group propably around every 5 matches on average. now add to that that they need to be propably, and lets be generous here and not go over the abysmall chance that its really a 4 man group of 1percentiles, but lets say, we are getting a 4 man (which will most likely not be the most common group size, 2-3 people have been more prominent in my experience so far) of 80 percentiles going, so 20% of the community of an allready small pool of 20% of the whole community pool (lets be nice here, and say that people with a higher pecentile like to play as a group more often, and push them up to 40%). That pushes your statistical chance to have such a group roughly (because lets not start adding in chances that it is really a 4 man group and not a 2 or 3 player group in, then it will get even more messy), to rounded up every 13 matches. chances that you will be in their team and not on the recieving end of the stomp are around 50% as well, so it will go up to one comp stomp every 26 matches in the best! scenario if there is a 4 man group, 2-3 player groups are non existent and not part of the matchmaking pool. Honestly? Nobody would care about getting roflstomped every 26 matches. And people with a non competitve mindset even less.

And i remind you, these stats are only applicable if every single one of these comp stomp groups are bringing the cheese. And trust me, people aren't. Brauer listed what is fun for him. I would like to offer things that are fun for me, a pretty casual player, and that mostly don't corrolate with what he finds fun.

Winning? Not rlly, its an afterthought.
Playing the game, especially with friends, and just having a blast is fun. Sticking a locust full of srm to see how far i can take a literall glass canon is fun. Putting in the maximum amount of daca daca or missiles onto my urbies is fun. Brauer is stuck in his 90percentile mindset. And before someone points out, you are not one of the 90percent. sure, atrm, I am not. But i got onto 91% in one season quite easily, but honestly, it wasn't fun for me, and I don't wanna play ''good mechs'' or meta builds, i mostly wanna have fun, so me and my buddies for example would completly drop out of the groups that are perfectly building their group synergy up and comp stomp with meta builds. and many other will as well. People here are acting like every single match will have a 1 percentile comp stomp group that does nothing but bring meta stuff onto the table. Every other casual game (lets admit it, mwo is not a comp game at the end of the day, but on the casual end of the spectrum) is able to have a mixed queue and newbies and veterans playing together without the game breaking down.

If what Brauer said is right, and group queue is dead and unwanted anyways, then the chances of groups comp stomping is slim, and the problem of having them in every single match is vastly overstated here. Most players, even the groups are on average, average. and thats it.


Also brauer, to disabling the tiers and the newbie experience, lets cut it short: mwo is a game, that goes against many things you usually have learned over the years if you play games regulary (for example that a lot fo range or damage means that your job is to sit back and deal damage, in mwo you are still required to let go of the dps or sniper mindset and to share armor), and it does an even worse job teaching those who are not really into gaming to learn its habbit. I don't want people to explain everything to a newbie in one match. that would be information overkill. And would turn people off. But you also need to understand that a vast majority of people won't read dozens of guides, wikis and forum posts before they start and learn a game. Most people who come into a game wanna have fun with their friends, they will improve over time (if they aren't learning the wrong things like they are doing at t5-4 atm, which is to sit back and rack those damage numbers up cause thats the only indication they have for progress and no one can correct them on that), or they will be teached by their friends, which is neither reliable possible with synchdropping (it is simply not fun to now know the game well, have your friend in the enemy team stomping you while you try to figure **** out), or the tier list, cause it is annoying to have a smurf account just to play with your friends who are new to the game (on the topic of smurf accounts, you will find a lot of people with either a f2p smurf, or people with friends who have been playing the game for a long time and have friends who are not in their tier range. Also honestly? i am sick having to hold tier 3 constantly cause otherwise i would be out of tier range to play with my buddies who are t5 and 4 cause they were put off by the synch dropping and allways having one guy in the enemy team stuck there alone while the rest has fun, hoping for them to come back into the game one day for some matches.

So far i only had positive feedback from the people in the matches, I saw and heard a lots of smaller groups, ususally 2-3 people coming back into the game, glad that they can finaly play reliably with their friends.

[Einherier96]

Anomalocaris, on 03 May 2020 - 06:13 PM, said:

People like me who just wanna play solo without being forced to drop with pre-mades? That would seem rather short sighted.

People like me who have gotten so sick of alreech's b.s. ("just play merged queue and do your own thing if you wanna drop solo" is one of the most pedantic and condescending pieces of b.s. he's written) and light into him? Could understand that a little more.

But I happen to like SoloQ as it was. I'm better than average but not an elite player, and I try and get better each season (think I'm near my skill cap). And people telling me to just deal with it because group queue is important so, sorry, we gotta ruin your solo games doesn't fly. You want to fix group queue, fix it. Wanna ruin my solo drops, I'm going to fight you on it. And if you do keep this merge, I'm out, its just that simple. But instead of worrying, or not worrying about me, you ought to think about general population health over the next 3-6 months. Because if you keep the merged queue, regardless of tonnage of even modest improvements in the matchmaker, I will put real money down that you're going to continue to lose players at the same rate (or more likely an increased rate) as the game has been for the last year - quarantine bump notwithstanding. Groups >> Solos if the skill levels are equal, let alone when the group is composed of 4 1%ers. Thus the group will always have an advantage, which means solos will quickly learn when they really don't matter in a match. And no one wants to be irrelevant.

And i will put real money down that the influx of people will far outweight people like you leaving. and in contrast to people like you, groups of friends that are coming back into the game have a higher chance to rope in additional players if they find it fun to play the game as a group. hate to be the arse, but you are a minority that does not that much to keep a game alive, and a part of the community that could propably be cut off easily. So far mwo sees a constant 700+ players on steam on the weekend every hour of the day (saw it from 3pm european time to 3 am), numbers which couldn't even be reached on top hours on weekends with events (best spikes are normaly around 600 at peak hours only, otherwise 300-400), so we see an influx of players that validate cutting parts of the community off for the greater good of the game.

And to your 1%percentile 4 player group, see the post above, chances are miniscule and not relevant to be facing these people on a regular basis)

Edited by Einherier96, 04 May 2020 - 05:18 AM.

[Spare Knight]

Einherier96, on 04 May 2020 - 05:08 AM, said:

The statical chances for ''a 90 percentile group will just pugstomp everyone'' are vastly overstated here. Lets do the maths roughly and quickly, and go with the numbers that someone else thre into the thread from a few years ago, and say that around 20% of the community are willing to play in a group, so we would see a group propably around every 5 matches on average. now add to that that they need to be propably, and lets be generous here and not go over the abysmall chance that its really a 4 man group of 1percentiles, but lets say, we are getting a 4 man (which will most likely not be the most common group size, 2-3 people have been more prominent in my experience so far) of 80 percentiles going, so 20% of the community of an allready small pool of 20% of the whole community pool (lets be nice here, and say that people with a higher pecentile like to play as a group more often, and push them up to 40%). That pushes your statistical chance to have such a group roughly (because lets not start adding in chances that it is really a 4 man group and not a 2 or 3 player group in, then it will get even more messy), to rounded up every 13 matches. chances that you will be in their team and not on the recieving end of the stomp are around 50% as well, so it will go up to one comp stomp every 26 matches in the best! scenario if there is a 4 man group, 2-3 player groups are non existent and not part of the matchmaking pool. Honestly? Nobody would care about getting roflstomped every 26 matches. And people with a non competitve mindset even less.

I played a lot this weekend and I can tell you that I saw more of this than just 1 in 26 games. There was plenty of seal clubbing going on. I don't think you realize how many of these groups there are. There is not just one that you might run across once in a while.

[Einherier96]

Spare Knight, on 04 May 2020 - 05:30 AM, said:

I played a lot this weekend and I can tell you that I saw more of this than just 1 in 26 games. There was plenty of seal clubbing going on. I don't think you realize how many of these groups there are. There is not just one that you might run across once in a while.

and appearently you are not able to get the math. this calculation allready includes the possibility to meed a random 4 man 80percentile group, not a single specific one. the chance to meet a single specific group out of the pool is even slimmer. Also don't forget, subjective bias is a thing, and neither your experience this weekend nor mine are representive numbers cause we are both having a subjective bias. I had the exact opposite of your experience, I won't call yours wrong or a lie, but we are both statisticly irrelevant. Whats important is the numbers. (and it is also quite easy to tweak a mm into giving you certain percentage chance to not meet a group. I would advise you to read upon wargamings recently released topic about the matchmaking of wows, a game that neither has a tier system for player experience nor seperated single and group player queues, and how they handle such things as distribution, in short you could take over their way of giving the mm a bias opon your match history to not meet groups, and lets say it will statisticly cap your matches with groups inside by around 40%, which should, if we trust brauer and others here who claim that group queue is dead cause nobody wants to play in groups anyways, easily be achievable cause there wouldn't be that many groups).

Also another train fo thought for you: obviously you will see more groups at the start of the test and more comp stomping, competitive players especially in the early stage of the test which is atm, will use the new opened up possibility to play in groups, and the same goes for people who are coming back into the game for the test since it caters to them wanting to play as groups. we will need to look at the numbers at the end of the 4 week test period to see where the amount of groups have finaly settled down, and i bet my left butt cheek that the amount of comp stomp groups of competitive or fp players grouping up to stomp in qp will die down as well. the start of something is almost allways a mess of people having laughs with either meta stomping others or fitting meme teams into everything, that is in the bigger picture still not that relevant though since such things tend to die down a bit and normalize into normal parameters.

Edited by Einherier96, 04 May 2020 - 05:54 AM.

[Excessive Paranoia]

SolahmaWarrior, on 04 May 2020 - 03:44 AM, said:

The only fault in the logic above, is complaining players don't spend money. Happy players do spend money. I fall into that vocal minority and haven't spent a dime in over a year. No reason to as I play pretty casually and generally in spurts. I play other games more than MWO and I have spent money on those in the last year. Why? Because I am a happy player in those games.

PGI has already stated that there isn't enough money coming in to justify any new Mech Packs/designs. Keeping the majority of the player base unhappy isn't going to change that... If the monetary stats tank too much, as a business model, there'll be no justification in keeping the servers running. I have not seen anything from Russ to indicate that that is a concern (ie rectifying this issue) and MW5 can only carry the dead weight, monetarily, of MWO for so long.

You're missing a very important point here: Even if you're not paying money, your very presence in matches provides the content necessary to entertain those that are happy enough to spend money. Its one of the core concepts in free to play business modelling, you can only expect to convert a percentage of your player base into paying customers, so in order to get utility out of the rest, you create an environment where their very presence contributes "content" to the game. MWO, being a 12v12 multiplayer shooter, capitalizes on this in the extreme since each individual match would literally fail to exist if there weren't at least 24 players to put together. Even if only one player in every match pays money, without the other 23, there is no game for them to play, and therefore, no money to be made.

This is why total concurrent players is probably the single most important metric for PGI... the more players in the game, the more matches that fire off every day, and the more potential income available from the percentage of players who do still buy mech packs or MC. As a result, playing the game at all, even if you're trying to lodge some kind of weak protest by not paying anymore, is still highly beneficial for the game as a whole, as your presence is directly facilitating its continued success. This is also why the only real way to communicate to PGI that the merge is a mistake is to exercise some self control and refuse to login for the next few weeks. If enough people actually were to do this, the entire system would suffer (fewer players means lower match quantity and quality... if thats even possible at this point... which in turn reduces the potential for conversion of free players into paying players), and hopefully enough to indicate to PGI that the player base doesn't actually want this change as its currently implemented.

As an aside, I'm under ZERO illusions that the above will actually happen. Gamers tend to fall into some mix of being obstinate ("I don't like the change, but personally I like the game so I'm going to keep playing"), apathetic ("I only play a couple of matches a day, so I don't care, even if they aren't great matches"), or downright lacking of self-control (People who hate the changes, but who will still go on to play 500 matches this month because its the game they play...), so while some might actually leave out of genuine disgust, the likelihood is that a large portion of those who don't like the change will keep playing and as a result, the server populations will stay relatively steady, PGI will take those numbers as a sign that the change, while wildly unpopular with a "vocal minority", is a net positive thanks the the faster matchmaker and the ability for small groups to actually play (nobody actually cared about match quality anyway, right?.....right?), and it will be here to stay.

Edited by Excessive Paranoia, 04 May 2020 - 06:19 AM.

[VonBruinwald]

Double posting in official thread:

Quote

My experience so far:

• Games are a lot more stompy. If there's a competitive group on one side they're wiping the other team. Have yet to play a game where there's competitive groups on both sides.
  
• There's less nascar because the group players tend to act as anchors and/or directing the puggers.
  
• Random dropzones is actually a good thing, less predictable starting movements, has lead to fighting in different areas of the maps.
  
• Tonnage balance needs reigning in, I'm likeing the discrepancy but there are times where it is excessive. Group players need theirs tightening as this often appears to cause a noticable discrepancy.
  
• Seeing a lot of 3-mans, and played several games with group players totalling 5 and one with 6. Possibility of an exploit where units could sync-drop more than 4 players on a single team. Tweaking matchmaker to only permit groups of 2 or 4 should fix this.

Not sure if it's better than sync-dropping, games are certainly more interesting. The problem is still with the competitive teams who wipe, which was the same issue with sync-dropping, only now it's more common.

[Nesutizale]

Currently listed active players 14.000+ // People with matchscores over 400 = 0,7% // Over 300 = 6%
The chances meeting them is slim from the mathematical point.

What my guess is that those few share the same timewindow of play. For example I have meet non of those groups on a saturday between 13h - 21h EU time...or they didn't play to their full potential cause nothing was sticking out like the 4 man dakka parade that was mentioned earlier.

What would be interesting to know is how many top players are online at any given 3 hours timewindow. I think that is a basis that could be used to see how often you would roughly meet them.

[Spare Knight]

Einherier96, on 04 May 2020 - 05:53 AM, said:

and appearently you are not able to get the math.

I get the math.

You don't need to have a group of 4 tier 1 players with AMS of over 300 to do some serious seal clubbing. You only need one leader and 3 average players that competently follow orders and give feedback as to what they are seeing, so the leader can make adjustments to the plan. Or one good player in a narc raven and three lrm boats.

[Spare Knight]

When you look at a top unit, not all of their members have an average match score of 350+. In fact, only a few do. They just have good strategies and are used to working as a team. They built that cohesion in Faction Play. Drop them into QP against solo players and they are devastation unleashed.

[Einherier96]

Spare Knight, on 04 May 2020 - 06:19 AM, said:

I get the math.

You don't need to have a group of 4 tier 1 players with AMS of over 300 to do some serious seal clubbing. You only need one leader and 3 average players that competently follow orders and give feedback as to what they are seeing, so the leader can make adjustments to the plan. Or one good player in a narc raven and three lrm boats.

true, but chances are slim that groups will actually build something like that. most groups on average are just average players, having fun. and one group every 10, even every 5 groups having a lurm narc setup will not be relevant to the whole thing, because that would still mean that you would get such a group every 10 matches, or every 20 matches getting clubbed by souch a group. and that is assuming that even every 5th group is a four man narc group.
Also with 350+ or even 300+ you are still at the 80percentile and are thus allready taken into the mathematical equation i put up above, so nothing changes on the 26 matches you will have until you meet such a group on average

[Haneblade]

I'm loving this test! I played quick play with 2 friends last Saturday. We played countless matches and it was awesome. Couldn't play before because of waiting times were too long, now matches starts instantly! Great!