1579 replies to this topic

[Excessive Paranoia]

Zulu211, on 14 May 2020 - 07:09 PM, said:

Their stats are suffering! The good players are playing in QP and it's damaging to egos.

I can't speak for others, but I don't care about stats. For a long time I didn't even show my tier in my forum profile, but there was a time before I stepped away from the game where if you didn't have that gold "1" under your name, anything you said would get dismissed or of hand because you weren't one of the "top" players. In fact, I've wished from the beginning that they would revamp PSR so that it would sort me to where I really belong, even if it's potato status. That said, the problems we've been highlighting are real and carry serious consequences if they aren't dealt with. Dismissing them out of hand because you're incensed by some off-hand comments in this thread is a mistake.

PS: Several times I've said that there is a correct way to implement this merge in a way that wouldn't lead to most of these issues, but that would require a lot more effort than PGI is likely willing to put into this. In that light, it's going to be better to just roll back this dumpster fire rather than force it through as is.

[Brauer]

Zulu211, on 14 May 2020 - 07:09 PM, said:

Their stats are suffering! The good players are playing in QP and it’s damaging to egos.

The opposite is happening. I'm on pace to put up my best wlr and kdr ever by a HUGE margin. But I am also playing less because there's a limit to how much one can farm the queue before boredom sits in, and I'm not personally interested in dropping solo into a group game mode.

I'm against the group/solo mash-up for two basic reasons.

1: I enjoyed casual drops into solo queue in the past and that has been taken away.
2: Any remote semblance of balance was thrown out the window when this change was implemented. It's gotten "better" in that I am no longer seeing cadets in my games unless they are in a group, but tonnage balance and skill balance have both gotten substantially worse.

Edited by Brauer, 14 May 2020 - 08:01 PM.

[Anomalocaris]

Zulu211, on 14 May 2020 - 07:09 PM, said:

You win. You’ve obviously tied quite a bit of your self worth in your stats. You’ve played 110 games this season. I didn’t even know there were seasons or that there were stats you’d concern yourself with looking up.

Congrats on having that really good medium mech you play the hell out of. No, seriously, you’re entitled to really proud. I admit it. I suck. I guess more than half the people on my team suck more because I’m doing more damage and getting more kills.

Actually I played 110 games last season. I haven't played this season because it sucks - IMO. I don't group drop anymore, which means I am automatically behind the 8-ball when dropping in a mixed queue. Whatever my contribution to a match will be _less_ when there are decent to strong groups playing. Not because my skill set has changed, but because groups are better than solos and they always will be. If you want to contribute at an equal or better level as you did in the old solo queue, you must group up in merge queue.

You seem to think that I am lording my stats over you. All I did was say that you are not average. If stating simple facts based upon measured numbers insults you, that is not my problem. You should note that in this entire thread and the several others related to this merge, I don't think I've ever mentioned my stats (wait, I do think I mentioned that I might have passed Daedalos since the last time I played with him, so there you go). I don't write about how good I am. In part because I think my stats are a little inflated, having faced some of the best players in the game and come off much worse for wear than my stats would suggest. In fact, I usually refer to the 1%ers, the top players in the game who are far better than me, because they have reached a level of skill and in-game knowledge that few others have (and I don't have that knowledge either). These guys have won world championships in the game, they have outstanding stats, they can 1v1 pretty much anyone, and they are phenomenal players in groups. I couldn't hold a candle to any of the top 100-200 players in the game. Some of them can be really abrasive. I dislike a number of them and disagree with them on any range of things. But I respect their ability and when they have input on game function I listen closely.

But when a phenomenal player like, say, Magic Pain Glove finds that he can't maintain his WLR playing solo in the merge queue, and yet his WLR doubles, triples or even more when he plays in groups, it demonstrates just how disruptive mixing groups into solo has become. Guys like this are the ones I pay attention to because we all aspire to get better in some way, and he's in a place most of us could only hope to get to. If the mixed queue screws with his game play that much, it affects us all, even if some of us don't realize it yet.

[John Bronco]

I hate the inevitably of the 4 man group. You get the T5 group, you lose. You get the T1 group, you good. You get the side with cadets (????) you lose. You get the side with 0 assaults against 5 assaults, you lose.

If they can't balance all this out, and it certainly seems they can't, at least limit it to groups of 2. Seems like the only compromise at this point.

[Excessive Paranoia]

Nearly Dead, on 14 May 2020 - 06:10 PM, said:

I think PGI/Russ has made it clear what the future of MWO is.

Next stop, combined group/solo 8v8. Then 6v6? Only two reasons to do a game, for love or money. It isn't making money and the love seems kind of thin.

I can only stand to play two or three matches at a time now. Yesterday I looked forward to the sun coming out so the grass would dry and I could quit playing and go mow.

Anybody know if Steam has a lawn maintenance simulator?

Apparently you are 100% correct:
https://twitter.com/...164387300302849

"Well that sounded pretty rude - I am simply comparing pre separation to post separation in a few ways. Honestly there isn't much reason to dive deeper as the pop simply won't support the separate queues any longer. It's this or perhaps going to smaller group sizes." (Quoted in message as tweets previously linked in this thread disappeared at least once)

Basically, they've decided that the population isn't enough to support split queues, which may be true, but the tone of the message is clear... "We think its better, so there isn't much reason to talk about it anymore"

[Knight Captain Morgan]

Z Paradox, on 14 May 2020 - 04:03 PM, said:

we dont want you to stop playing, we want option to not play vs group drops or play with them...

PGI could just add option for "solo" and/or "group" next to quick play and same to group drop: add groups and/or add solo players. that way we could play solo vs solos or group vs group or mix of all...

If you give the solo pugs the option of not getting farmed by premades that’s what they’ll do. If you don’t give premades solo pugs that they can roflstomp, they won’t play. Only by forcing the solo pugs to be canon fodder will you enable group play... at least for a few weeks until the solo pugs quit and the new group que looks exactly like the old group que

[GrindcoreJoe]

Knight Captain Morgan, on 15 May 2020 - 04:44 AM, said:

If you don’t give premades solo pugs that they can roflstomp, they won’t play.

WTF??? I want to drop with >1< Friend and dont want to murder the Helpless.

We tried to drop together before this change. We waited for 1 Hour and then gave
up. That sucked!

I dont understand why all the People are so pissed off. At least they try to make
anything better.

[shameless]

As someone who's largely been a solo player since the end of Fun, it does kinda suck playing against multiple groups. To be fair, my stats suck. I run what I want, and that generally isn't anything approaching meta. I do well enough most of the time. Yeah sometimes those "Wrong place, wrong time" under 100 damage matches happen, especially when running a light. I've been here since the closed Beta, and I'll be here until it shuts down.

Going to 8v8 might seem nice, and yes, it was early on. The maps were alot smaller back then too.

I think if they're going to keep the queues merged, then they need to take a look at the tonnage alotted at each group size tier.

[Knight Captain Morgan]

GrindcoreJoe, on 15 May 2020 - 05:17 AM, said:

WTF??? I want to drop with &gt;1&lt; Friend and dont want to murder the Helpless.

We tried to drop together before this change. We waited for 1 Hour and then gave
up. That sucked!

I dont understand why all the People are so pissed off. At least they try to make
anything better.

Then I recommend enjoying it while it lasts. Forcing the conditions of old group que and faction war onto the solo que will only make the solo que resemble the old group que and faction war. If PGI really wanted to combine brackets to let people play with their >1< friend I can think of about 7 brackets in the 1v1 and 2v2 portion of the game that could be merged

[Anomalocaris]

GrindcoreJoe, on 15 May 2020 - 05:17 AM, said:

WTF??? I want to drop with >1< Friend and dont want to murder the Helpless.

We tried to drop together before this change. We waited for 1 Hour and then gave
up. That sucked!

I dont understand why all the People are so pissed off. At least they try to make
anything better.

It's not about you and your casual friend. Had they actually done groups of 2 and maintained any sort of matchmaking, even a hardcore merge hater like me would have had to reach to criticize. I wouldn't have liked it, but I suspect the impact would have been an order of magnitude less than what we got.

And what we got was groups of 4 high skilled players rolling through the solo pugs. I don't see how anyone can think that's going to be good for long term solo player participation regardless of whether you like dropping with your friends or not.

[Zulu211]

Anomalocaris, on 15 May 2020 - 05:37 AM, said:

It's not about you and your casual friend. Had they actually done groups of 2 and maintained any sort of matchmaking, even a hardcore merge hater like me would have had to reach to criticize. I wouldn't have liked it, but I suspect the impact would have been an order of magnitude less than what we got.

And what we got was groups of 4 high skilled players rolling through the solo pugs. I don't see how anyone can think that's going to be good for long term solo player participation regardless of whether you like dropping with your friends or not.

Dude, you made the mistake of being a stat ***** and announcing yourself as such. You've played about 100 games. So far, I'm having trouble understanding why you care so much about a game you dont play.

[John Bronco]

The average player plays about 100 games a month. We're only halfway through so far. 100 at this point is quite a lot.

[Anomalocaris]

Zulu211, on 15 May 2020 - 07:07 AM, said:

Dude, you made the mistake of being a stat ***** and announcing yourself as such. You've played about 100 games. So far, I'm having trouble understanding why you care so much about a game you dont play.

Lol, ok. You said you were average, I said you weren't - because you aren't. I was even kind enough to state (although I shouldn't need to), that average or not, you're entitled to your opinion - you like the merge and that counts for something. But you're not the average player, you're just not. If that triggers you, I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do, you'll have to work through that on your own.

[Brauer]

Zulu211, on 15 May 2020 - 07:07 AM, said:

Dude, you made the mistake of being a stat ***** and announcing yourself as such. You've played about 100 games. So far, I'm having trouble understanding why you care so much about a game you dont play.

What's your cut-off for QP playtime to have an opinion? I normally play between 130 and 300 QP matches a month (with this month potentially being on the low end - only 55 matches so far) as well as a decent chunk of faction warfare, and last year quite a bit of private lobbies for comp.

I understand being skeptical of people that haven't played the game in months or years, but 100-300 matches is a pretty normal amount to play in a month.

[Anomalocaris]

It doesn't really matter Brauer. The simple fact here is that someone tried to represent themselves as average, but they aren't - the rest is fluff. I'd say the same thing to you if you tried to represent yourself as an average player. You aren't. But I suspect you wouldn't get triggered if I did that.

[Kin3ticX]

It might be a good idea to show who is in a group world of warships style so players have more information.

[General Solo]

Zulu211, on 15 May 2020 - 07:07 AM, said:

Dude, you made the mistake of being a stat ***** and announcing yourself as such. You've played about 100 games. So far, I'm having trouble understanding why you care so much about a game you dont play.

Understanding isn't every ones strong suit and is no crime.
Carry on

Kin3ticX, on 15 May 2020 - 07:35 AM, said:

It might be a good idea to show who is in a group world of warships style so players have more information.

I think that will make little difference to most players who are not 90% plus.
So 9 outta 10 players.
A match maker would help 100% of players, but I'm talking to the wind as far as PGI is concerned, I'm sure.

[Brauer]

OZHomerOZ, on 15 May 2020 - 07:42 AM, said:

I think that will make little difference to most players who are not 90% plus.
So 9 outta 10 players.
A match maker would help 100% of players, but I'm talking to the wind as far as PGI is concerned, I'm sure.

Yep, it's quite telling imo that they've stopped engaging here and aren't discussing any "tweaks" they're making to the matchmaker to better balance tonnage, groups, etc.. I'd be happy to be proven wrong (and hope that I am), but right now it feels like what we see is what we get, and the merge will be permanent simply to satisfy people who wanted to drop as groups but avoid FW.

[Anomalocaris]

I think they made a few tweaks, complaints dropped a bit and peak player numbers were still up over pre-merge so they declared it a success. I suspect we'll see participation numbers start to drop next week (they already appear a little down heading into the weekend, but 2 days does not make a trend), but overall they'll still be 5-10% higher than pre-merge so I don't think Russ and Paul will move.

What that ignores though is (1) a lot of people are still under the impression this is temporary (2) player numbers were trending up prior to the merge.

Time will tell.

[DAEDALOS513]

Knight Captain Morgan, on 15 May 2020 - 04:44 AM, said:

If you give the solo pugs the option of not getting farmed by premades that’s what they’ll do. If you don’t give premades solo pugs that they can roflstomp, they won’t play. Only by forcing the solo pugs to be canon fodder will you enable group play... at least for a few weeks until the solo pugs quit and the new group que looks exactly like the old group que

You do realize that the other half of the solo pugs are winning right? Combine this with the fact that, if you do lose one match, drops are INSTANT and you also realize that the situation isn't as dire as some of you keep making it out to be.