1579 replies to this topic

[Anomalocaris]

DAEDALOS513, on 15 May 2020 - 09:49 AM, said:

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.

Winning without contributing/mattering/doing much of anything. That's fun? Can't count how many drops I've watched on streams where 8 solo pugs do half the damage of the 4-man group. But hey, their WLR benefits so they can feel good, so it's ok when they get rolled the next game by the same group. It all evens out in the end

You're fundamentally missing the issue IMO. Most people would rather lose a close game where they did something meaningful than win a 12-4 game where 4 guys carried them while they barely broke 200 dmg.

[DAEDALOS513]

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.

Because some people can't see the forest for the trees.

[Kin3ticX]

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

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



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.

I don't think there will ever be a matchmaker. We are not even all playing the same game. We have people running tryhard builds, meme builds, larping builds, etc, and all of them are in the same queue. I just want people to be able to see whether boths sides have roughly equal numbers of grouped players in the aftermath of a rickroll.

Edited by Kin3ticX, 15 May 2020 - 11:57 AM.

[Nearly Dead]

I haven't played today, but yesterday drops were happening within seconds, (and I have my filter set to US Server only to try to get as many matches with team comms in use as possible). If that is the case, I wonder what would happen if they kept the queues combined but set the MM to drop a four man as soon as a second four man was available to drop against them, and kept dropping solo (and two man group) matches until that happened. Then whatever solo players were in queue at the time would drop in the game with the two groups to fill out the match.

Faster than group only queue and less destructive to the solo queue that what is happening now.

[Excessive Paranoia]

shameless, on 15 May 2020 - 05:30 AM, said:

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.

Forcing the whole game to go 8v8 so you can have groups added in is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Think of it this way, if 4-man groups are allowed into an 8v8 match, the other 4 solo players will have an even worse time of it than they do currently. At least with 8v4, the 8 can sometimes accidentally win out over the coordinated 4, make it even and you're just deleting the enjoyment for a full half of the participants in every match....

Also, its pretty clear that tonnage limits aren't worth the electrons they're printed with when you've got a coordinated 4-man of high skill players in the mix. Give them all Fleas and they'll still top the damage / score for the match.

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

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.

There are studies which have researched at length humans inability to choose a better long-term reward over the worse short-term reward. This is a perfect example of this... All of these people who "just want to drop with a buddy" are only looking at the immediate term reward that they will get to drop with their friend for a few weeks. What they are failing to realize is is the not only will this drive off the solo players as we've been trying to tell them, but that its also unlikely that these same people looking to drop with their buddies will stay invested into the game for the long term. Most likely, they'll drop with their buddies for a few weeks and then get bored and move on to play something else, leaving behind them not only a reduced population from the lack of solo players, but a reduced population from a declining number of group players.

Honestly, if this goes through as-is, I'd be surprised if we still have a game to play 12 months from now...

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.

I don't like piling on you here, but you've clearly got no idea what you're talking about at this point. You're angry and seeing red and not thinking clearly anymore. Anomalocaris has not even played 10 games this month. Do you know how I know? Because when you search their name in the in-game leaderboard, there is no entry. The only way you show up on that list is if you've played AT LEAST 10 MATCHES in the current season (1 month, started on May 1st). You're sitting here trying to claim that they've played 100+ matches in the test and so therefore they are lying, meanwhile there is objective proof that they have not...

Brauer, on 15 May 2020 - 08:58 AM, said:

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.

They've also stopped engaging on Twitter. Seems like they've gotten the results they wanted and that is that. The sad thing is, if I'm to believe what I've read in the Twitter replies, they are claiming that stomps are down, but they don't even consider a 12-4 match to be a stomp... So by their logic as long as your team kills at least 4 of the other team, its considered a "high quality" match, and the fact that there are only 5% more stomps by their definition thanks to this merge, then its a success without enough negative impact to justify altering it anymore...

Anomalocaris, on 15 May 2020 - 09:46 AM, said:

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.

This exactly...

There's been a slightly higher influx of players (over the background increase) who've come back to play a few games with their friends, but even that trend is already starting to fall off it seems. Likely many of them came back, got stomped into oblivion a few times, and then are on their way back out the door without so much as a peep on the forums. And yeah, when people who don't pay attention to the forums realize that the change isn't going back, they'll start leaving as well.

Nearly Dead, on 15 May 2020 - 01:24 PM, said:

I haven't played today, but yesterday drops were happening within seconds, (and I have my filter set to US Server only to try to get as many matches with team comms in use as possible). If that is the case, I wonder what would happen if they kept the queues combined but set the MM to drop a four man as soon as a second four man was available to drop against them, and kept dropping solo (and two man group) matches until that happened. Then whatever solo players were in queue at the time would drop in the game with the two groups to fill out the match.

Faster than group only queue and less destructive to the solo queue that what is happening now.

The problem here is that means a 4-man could end up waiting minutes for a match (oh the humanity...), which would put them into a situation where they can't have matches as fast as everyone else. Its pretty clear by the tone PGI have taken that this would be wholly unacceptable. IDK why, but at some point along the way (meaning between when I started gaming and today), players have gone from wanting a quality experience, even if they had to wait for it, to wanting an immediate experience, even if it was a dumpster fire that also burned down the rest of the world... (EDIT: This BTW is the #1 reason I've gotten whenever I question why games like WoWS etc don't have player skill balancing... people almost without fail would rather wait 30s to get into a match where there is zero skill balance and you stand a solid chance of just getting deleted by 1%ers, than wait 120s to be placed into a match where you've got a high probability of being relatively useful to your team, even if you're a potato. The #2 reason was that you apparently can't improve your skills if you don't play with / against the best players. IDK about anyone else, but the only thing I learn when getting deleted in a few seconds is that clicking "play", is often a waste of time...)

Edited by Excessive Paranoia, 15 May 2020 - 02:52 PM.

[The Teddy Bear]

DAEDALOS513, on 15 May 2020 - 10:03 AM, said:

Because some people can't see the forest for the trees.

And some people can not see the trees, just because the forest is blocking their view....

[Zulu211]

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

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



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.

I undersntand quite fine. Stat ****** are whining. Stat ****** are definitely invested in maintaining some sense of superiority and obviously feel entitled to their one sense of what average is as defined by some other website. I dont care about scores as the game rewards things that are counter productive. I am indeed an average player as defined by the damage done which, oddly enough isn't tracked in a game like this. [redacted]
It appears the decisions have been made and I am pleased with the outcome. Perhaps you awesome elite players will adjust and thrive. Enjoy your mech.

Edited by Ekson Valdez, 18 May 2020 - 10:56 PM.

[Tarl Cabot]

BlaizerP, on 14 May 2020 - 08:28 PM, said:

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.

For grouped players, remove the tonnage restricts and put in weight class restriction - group can only have 1 of each weight class.... then I would also go for max 3 instead of 4....AND Tier redistribution with a modified PSR set at higher thresholds. I would even go for adding 1-2 thresholds. Or if they are not willing to do the tier redistribution, then at least the modified PSR threshold change so those players who shouldnt be tier one could actually get moved down.

[Nearly Dead]

I realize that I am only one player out of 14000, but the game is no longer enjoyable for me and I won't be playing it nearly as much and certainly will not be spending any money on it.

I liked the feeling of winning some, losing some and getting a little better each month. I had reached the 50% mark on the Jarl's List, learned what kinds of mechs to play in order to contribute, built two half assed drop decks out of what I had bought already and was going to buy mech packs and GSP packs to bring them up to snuff to try FW. I don't see that happening now, I think spending more money here would be like shipping a bag of cash across the Atlantic on the Titanic.

[The Teddy Bear]

Tarl Cabot, on 15 May 2020 - 04:22 PM, said:

For grouped players, remove the tonnage restricts and put in weight class restriction - group can only have 1 of each weight class.... then I would also go for max 3 instead of 4....AND Tier redistribution with a modified PSR set at higher thresholds. I would even go for adding 1-2 thresholds. Or if they are not willing to do the tier redistribution, then at least the modified PSR threshold change so those players who shouldnt be tier one could actually get moved down.

I would assume anyone that have ever tried to played factions or group que enough times, and you have felt power from a group and the weakness from a solo group going up against a coordinated team would absolutely bring this down to max 2man teams. Funny thing is that the impact from teams is not even tested out yet. The triangle do not involve teams, the most powerful component in the game??? Oh, well that is kind of funny isn´t?

Edited by The Teddy Bear, 15 May 2020 - 04:50 PM.

[Excessive Paranoia]

Nearly Dead, on 15 May 2020 - 04:37 PM, said:

I realize that I am only one player out of 14000, but the game is no longer enjoyable for me and I won't be playing it nearly as much and certainly will not be spending any money on it.

I liked the feeling of winning some, losing some and getting a little better each month. I had reached the 50% mark on the Jarl's List, learned what kinds of mechs to play in order to contribute, built two half assed drop decks out of what I had bought already and was going to buy mech packs and GSP packs to bring them up to snuff to try FW. I don't see that happening now, I think spending more money here would be like shipping a bag of cash across the Atlantic on the Titanic.

I think unfortunately that this is the key point... years of mismanagement and bad decisions, up to and including this one, have led MWO to be a game that's always been in decline, which then compounds upon itself in that many people don't want to spend money on a game they don't think is going to last, or if it lasts, its not going to look anything like the game you're enjoying at the moment. Its kinda sad to look back on the game over the years and see clearly with 20/20 hindsight every step of the way where PGI doing literally the opposite of what they did would have grown the player base instead of shrinking it...

[ThingsSureAreGettingSerious]

either way, THANK YOU

[Anomalocaris]

I'm average damnit, and no one better say otherwise!

Dirty stet pedders all of you!

Now where did I put my precious.....

[Brain Cancer]

Zulu211, on 14 May 2020 - 12:52 PM, said:

Well, Since we ARE comparing [redacted]. I guess I should have only run one particular type of mech so my stats would look better. Congrats on really working those mediums.

Running one or a dozen different chassis doesn't change the stats, actually.

Quite simply, you've just pushed up into the range of an slightly-below-average player as your W/L is a smidgen below 1 and your K/D has been gradually improving, but is still below 1 (and with a 20% survival rate, that means those 4/5 games where you die, you're not taking one with you more often than not).

But you're improving. There's no shame in progress, keep at it. The point where you get yourself to 1 and 1 is a milestone. If you start rising past that, you're going to start clutching games and carrying your team a bit. That's also a point of pride.

Edited by Ekson Valdez, 17 May 2020 - 11:12 PM.

[Brain Cancer]

Zulu211, on 14 May 2020 - 02:26 PM, said:

I should've known SOMEBODY would be placing entirely too much self worth on fine tuning their play to the stats and feel compelled to whip it out as soon as the chance came up.

I've been sufficiently smacked down. I now vow to have less fun, do less damage (or more) and play strictly toward the higher scores. I'm inspired.

Does anybody even track average damage? Here comes my own stat site www.damage.mwo.epeen.com

It's just a very straightforward way of showing how much you're contributing to a team in the long term. Not being able to actually kill things in a game that's about killing giant robots generally means your "fun" is generally going to make your team more miserable for having to have you along for the ride, and if games are a calvacade of you-stompings with double digit damage and low match scores on your part...look in the mirror. Part of why your games feel bad is because something isn't clicking on your end of the keyboard.

And it's not even a matter of "not having fun" to have decent stats. FFS, I ran almost nothing but missile boats throughout my MWO piloting time. Lock on missile systems are rarely "optimized", and I didn't even have metabuilds like the oft-mentioned ATM Vapor Eagles. Try lurmboating Orion IICs (and not even the minmaxing LRM80 kind). Streak ACW's when I felt like tormenting enemy lights. Mixed LRM/ATM Supernovas!

But I got good at what I had fun playing. The two are never incompatible, and as a result I not only enjoyed playing, but never felt like I wasn't contributing unless I actually DID play badly and made mistakes. Believe me, playing well isn't tryharding, AND it's more fun than looking at the end screen and realizing you helped make 11 other people's day that much worse at the end of a 12-1 stomp.

[Brain Cancer]

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.

Honestly, people are quite good at self-denial about how flailing around in circles while mostly hitting rocks is "I know how to play" until even a modestly skilled and organized trio or quartet of players shows up, tears them a new set of orifices, and they're staring at an end screen full of double-digit scores wondering why the game barely took three minutes.

A lot of these aren't even "OMG, a comp-level quartet showed up and curbstomped us". It's that solo queue was a chaotic, often self-defeating mess of gameplay where it was every man for himself until this change, whereupon simple things like a lance capable of calling and hitting the same target consistently keeps hitting that like firing a Gauss Rifle into a bowl of soup.

Many of these "high skilled players" aren't actually highly skilled, something you can check in about two seconds with Jarl's list open and a screenshot for the names. They're just no longer being throttled as much by poorly skilled players and an utter lack of co-ordination by their "team". It means average players can see carry-game-player stats, carry-game-player stats become frequently dominating-player ones, and players who could dominate in solo queue become forces of nature. Friendship is magi Teamwork is OP. Their stats WILL go up during this stage of soup queue, but that's not so much they're getting better, it's that the negative effects of "carry or die" have been lessened considerably with even a few people you can rely to play with you, versus randomly scatter, shoot you in the back, or kamikaze the enemy team because apparently, Polar Highlands has driven them into madness.

[Constalation]

Well I finally got around to playing with a friend. Only Duos. If you look at my stats the last two weeks, those should mostly be matches in a group of two.(+ a few solos) We had some serious fun with stupid tactics, actual tactics (including a match where we just both went LRM MDDs and splattered rockets everywhere), light ambushing, etc etc.

I don't know the site used for stat checking but if it helps:

Mechs most used these days in order of my iffy memory -

HUNCHBACK IIC HBK-IIC-B

BLOOD ASP BAS-B (I bought it literally a few hours before the 50% off sale)

MAD DOG MDD-PRIME

CIPHER (Piranha)

K-9 (Urbanmech)

It's been a blast of fun and while I understand the complaints that people have made; (since we've encountered a couple of serious stomps from both ends). I do hope this SoupQueue stays in one form or another with Opt-In, tighter players number restrictions or some other balancing form. (That is ontop of some tonnage balancing)

Edited by Constalation, 16 May 2020 - 02:05 AM.

[Horseman]

Excessive Paranoia, on 15 May 2020 - 02:13 PM, said:

I don't like piling on you here, but you've clearly got no idea what you're talking about at this point. You're angry and seeing red and not thinking clearly anymore. Anomalocaris has not even played 10 games this month. Do you know how I know? Because when you search their name in the in-game leaderboard, there is no entry. The only way you show up on that list is if you've played AT LEAST 10 MATCHES in the current season (1 month, started on May 1st). You're sitting here trying to claim that they've played 100+ matches in the test and so therefore they are lying, meanwhile there is objective proof that they have not...

If I'm reading it right, he actually went from attacking Anomalocaris for only playing 100 games last season to claiming Ano only played 100 games total:

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

You've played about 100 games. So far, I'm having trouble understanding why you care so much about a game you dont play.

Something that is objectively false: https://leaderboard....?u=Anomalocaris

Excessive Paranoia, on 15 May 2020 - 02:13 PM, said:

The #2 reason was that you apparently can't improve your skills if you don't play with / against the best players. IDK about anyone else, but the only thing I learn when getting deleted in a few seconds is that clicking "play", is often a waste of time...

And that reason is bunk, you can't improve your skills if the skill gap is too large to understand what those players are even doing.

Zulu211, on 15 May 2020 - 04:00 PM, said:

I am indeed an average player as defined by the damage done which, oddly enough isn't tracked in a game like this. That in and of itself should make even the most insecure stt ***** wonder why.

It is tracked. As I have already told you, damage done accounts for majority of your match score.

Zulu211, on 15 May 2020 - 04:00 PM, said:

I dont care about scores

You care about your damage, ergo you care abotu scores. QED.

Zulu211, on 15 May 2020 - 04:00 PM, said:

as the game rewards things that are counter productive.

Name them.

Zulu211, on 15 May 2020 - 04:00 PM, said:

Stat ****** are definitely invested in maintaining some sense of superiority and obviously feel entitled to their one sense of what average is as defined by some other website.

An average player is not defined by average performance in individual matches. They are defined by average performance across their matches. Average Win/Loss of 1.0. Average K/D of 1.0 Average match score of 223.

Now let's review your results.
Sub-average in W/L, K/D and in match score.
Since match score is - as I've told you multiple times - mainly decided by damage, this means your damage is below average.
Your AMS for last season is 160, which means that on average you did roughly 100 damage per match less than the average player.

Anomalocaris, on 15 May 2020 - 06:07 PM, said:

I'm average damnit, and no one better say otherwise!
Dirty stet pedders all of you!
Now where did I put my precious.....

.... Lurm Direwhale?

Edited by Horseman, 16 May 2020 - 02:29 AM.

[Excessive Paranoia]

Horseman, on 16 May 2020 - 02:21 AM, said:

If I'm reading it right, he actually went from attacking Anomalocaris for only playing 100 games last season to claiming Ano only played 100 games total:

IDK, the way I've been reading Zulu's comments up to this point, it seems like they are accusing Anomalocaris of lying about not playing during the test, claiming that because Jarl's shows the most recent entry at 110, but misconstruing that to be a current value, while the in-game leaderboard, which is the only real-time info I think we have, doesn't even have an entry for Anomalocaris because they clearly haven't played at least 10 matches this month.

[Blackhorse11Cav]

Chaotic_Harmony, on 14 May 2020 - 07:35 AM, said:

We've literally killed people before they can do any damage, and done so multiple times in a match. A good 90% of the "stomps" that PGI is measuring that we've had were my group doing more than the entirety of the enemy team.

THIS SHOULD NOT HAPPEN. EVER.


But yet it does, and it's done with VERY little actual effort on our part. Please for the love of god restrict groups to 2 players. If people want to group up larger, they can sync drop.

Yeah, Really? The likelihood of what you describe happening on a "regular" basis is nowhere near any of my experience. My experiences in solo vs groups is more like what you see here, than what you describe.

Edited by Blackhorse11Cav, 16 May 2020 - 02:03 PM.