1579 replies to this topic

[Excessive Paranoia]

Anomalocaris, on 17 May 2020 - 03:11 PM, said:

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Go check steamcharts. You can only look at hourly data for the last month, so the last event weekend is already off the charts. I did archive the data though for my own purposes at the end of this test.

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[color=#222222]But what you can see is that we saw a jump in players the first weekend this went into effect. They went up even further the next weekend. This weekend they're actually slightly below the first merge weekend both in peaks and averages. In fact, some player numbers this weekend have been below the last pre-merge event weekend which was 4/17-4/18. The event juicing can only help so much, and people are probably starting to get a feel for the ups and downs of the merge. If we continue to see a drop during this week it won't be a good sign, but its too early to tell at this point. Not that I think PGI will change direction. They're going to point to any player increase as a sign of success, even though avg. player numbers per month have been increasing at a steady rate starting in March. The trend for May looks right in line with the gains in March and April, suggesting that the merge didn't really do anything for participation.[/color]

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I've been following steamcharts as well, but the problem with steam numbers that has plagued us forever is that we have never been given clear numbers as to how many people play through steam vs how many play through the PGI client. We've tried to use these numbers in the past for various arguments and the response from PGI has always been something along the lines of "not many people play through steam, we know that there are lots more playing through the PGI client, but we're not actually ever going to tell you how many there are". Sure we could easily argue that steam numbers are representative of the overall trend, but that always gets pushback and/or ignored.

Another interesting takeaway from the numbers is that the month-on-month increases are actually decreasing... 21.74% in March, 18.74% in April, and though we're only halfway through May, the bump from incoming for the test appears to have already passed and the current average increase is only 15.41%. If the number holds, a reasonable person would see that the merge did literally nothing to attract higher numbers beyond the background increases that were going on. The problem, unfortunately, is that PGI are not reasonable people, so they'll find some way to read these numbers that backs their position no matter the cost.

Ultimately, I agree with you, even if the numbers are objectively bad, they won't change course. Russ has made it pretty clear in his tweets that this is essentially the only viable option in their minds (never mind the possibility of just not having a group queue, or maybe having the group queue just be 4v4), so we now have the soup queue and if we don't like it, I guess we can go kick rocks... Honestly, right now I'm actually racking my brain trying to find even a single time in the last 8 years that I've seen anyone at PGI accept responsibility for a bad decision and realize that reversing course was the better option. I don't actually think its ever happened, instead when things go wrong, they turtle and then eventually double-down on their position or changes...

[Anomalocaris]

Excessive Paranoia, on 17 May 2020 - 03:27 PM, said:

I've been following steamcharts as well, but the problem with steam numbers that has plagued us forever is that we have never been given clear numbers as to how many people play through steam vs how many play through the PGI client.

Basically agree (Russ was quoting client players at about twice steam numbers on some early tweets post merge, but I've heard a 50/50 split years ago), but I find it hard to believe the percentage contribution of Steam would change much with the changes. Oh PGI will tell us it does if they don't like the numbers, but "trust me" really doesn't work anymore for them, does it?

[Anomalocaris]

Just as an addition here. Peak numbers yesterday were almost spot on what they were on April 18th. 754 yesterday, 758 on 4/18. Avg numbers are still higher now, but still, not an encouraging trend if it continues through the week. I guess the real question is, how big do the gains have to be to justify the reduction in game quality? An answer I doubt we will ever see.

[TheFourthAlly]

Are matches lasting shorter now? I get the impression there's a lot of 1-2min walk to find enemy team, 1 min in which 5 or so on one team basically evaporate and then another minute or so of mopping up by the already victorious.

At any stage a mech or so on the winning team might die as well, but really, it's done and hardly does a match count down beyond 10 minutes.

Not sure it's that great. When I see it happen to my team, I'm either part of that rolled early 5-6, or on the other flank where the fight is not happening, after wich I get focused down soon enough anyway. Or, I'm (accidentaly) on the winning team, barely getting a few shots in before all the reds are dead. Either way, I'm not really playing this game, just spending most of the in match time walking to where the enemy might be. On smaller maps, there just less walking, but still not much shooting when this happens.

Just a personal observation from the last two weekends and a bit of playing during the week. There were a few games I was allowed to survive long enough do a bit of damage and get into some fights. That's when I like this game.

[Anomalocaris]

TheFourthAlly, on 17 May 2020 - 03:49 PM, said:

Are matches lasting shorter now? I get the impression there's a lot of 1-2min walk to find enemy team, 1 min in which 5 or so on one team basically evaporate and then another minute or so of mopping up by the already victorious.

At any stage a mech or so on the winning team might die as well, but really, it's done and hardly does a match count down beyond 10 minutes.

Not sure it's that great. When I see it happen to my team, I'm either part of that rolled early 5-6, or on the other flank where the fight is not happening, after wich I get focused down soon enough anyway. Or, I'm (accidentaly) on the winning team, barely getting a few shots in before all the reds are dead. Either way, I'm not really playing this game, just spending most of the in match time walking to where the enemy might be. On smaller maps, there just less walking, but still not much shooting when this happens.

Just a personal observation from the last two weekends and a bit of playing during the week. There were a few games I was allowed to survive long enough do a bit of damage and get into some fights. That's when I like this game.

Obviously this is only anecdotal. Not everyone is experiencing what you are. That said, the experience you just relayed is something that many of us were concerned about, especially for newer players, and those still working their way up the learning curve. The part that particularly bothers me is feeling like you can't contribute much even in a win. People will get invested in the game when they feel like their play is important.

[Brain Cancer]

Excessive Paranoia, on 17 May 2020 - 02:45 PM, said:

Right, because that's the epitome of enjoyable gameplay... chasing the local group around hunting for kills and damage like dogs begging for table scraps...

You call it that, I call it using the best distraction in the game to murder everything in sight, set up perfect shots and secure kills en masse. It's what happened to me in group queue back in the day- the highest-skill players would inevitably grab enemy attention, and I'd be sitting there with nearly every missile salvo on-target unless they died before I got them there.

Teamwork makes players more powerful. Tap into it, even indirectly. Lay down the covering fire on whatever's slowing the lance down. Finish things off. Cover their six and swat annoying squirrels who think it's chow time. A group of even four-and-a-half is more effective thant four.

[TheFourthAlly]

I'm in Melbourne, Austrlaia, so my timezone is off compared to most of the population that is left here.

I mean, I came to this game from playing stuff like Warthunder and World of Tanks, where I was missing the option to actually do damage or anyting. Underpowered gun, ammo, matched against stronk tanks in WOT or total RNG on what damage you're allowed to do in WT (+ the spawncamping in those days).

Here, I like, and still do, that any weapon does some damage to any opponent. And you get to fiddle with your gear, which is really great. The rest is mostly about positioning, aiming, minding your surroundings and having some knowledge about your weapons and those of the opposition. I suck at those, but at least it's my fault. But if I get matched with or against people who outclass me by quite a bit on those metrics, I'm basically back to doing SFA in lots of matches. Filthy casual that I am, I'd just move on really.

[Excessive Paranoia]

Anomalocaris, on 17 May 2020 - 03:33 PM, said:

Basically agree (Russ was quoting client players at about twice steam numbers on some early tweets post merge, but I've heard a 50/50 split years ago), but I find it hard to believe the percentage contribution of Steam would change much with the changes. Oh PGI will tell us it does if they don't like the numbers, but "trust me" really doesn't work anymore for them, does it?

Perhaps at the beginning when new players were directed into the game via steam (there was a point where it was actually on the front page...) there was a time when a 50/50 distribution was a real thing. Over time though I'm sure most of those who started with steam moved over to the PGI client thanks to various bugs that the steam version always seem to suffer from. At this point I'd guess that the majority play through the PGI client, but since we can only get total numbers of monthly players from PGI's API, there's not really a way to see how many people are actually online at any one time... For all we know 90% of the players are actually launching through the Steam client and we really only have about 800 online at peak hours...

Anomalocaris, on 17 May 2020 - 03:44 PM, said:

Just as an addition here. Peak numbers yesterday were almost spot on what they were on April 18th. 754 yesterday, 758 on 4/18. Avg numbers are still higher now, but still, not an encouraging trend if it continues through the week. I guess the real question is, how big do the gains have to be to justify the reduction in game quality? An answer I doubt we will ever see.

I think the better question is how big the losses would have to be for them to accept that they made a mistake. Its pretty clear to me that PGI consider some pretty abysmal matches (anything better than 12-4) to be "quality", so wondering how big the gains have to be to justify the loss in quality is wasted brain power when PGI don't actually think that the quality is reduced by any appreciable amount.

Anomalocaris, on 17 May 2020 - 04:02 PM, said:

Obviously this is only anecdotal. Not everyone is experiencing what you are. That said, the experience you just relayed is something that many of us were concerned about, especially for newer players, and those still working their way up the learning curve. The part that particularly bothers me is feeling like you can't contribute much even in a win. People will get invested in the game when they feel like their play is important.

Still anecdotal, but I can personally confirm what TheFourthAlly is saying... More often than not now matches take less time to get resolved than they took to begin. What's actually surprised me is just how quickly a team can fold under pressure now. I've had it happen more than a few times where I've glanced at the kill counter and it was 1-0 only to look back at it 30 seconds later and its 7-0...

Brain Cancer, on 17 May 2020 - 04:14 PM, said:

You call it that, I call it using the best distraction in the game to murder everything in sight, set up perfect shots and secure kills en masse. It's what happened to me in group queue back in the day- the highest-skill players would inevitably grab enemy attention, and I'd be sitting there with nearly every missile salvo on-target unless they died before I got them there.

Teamwork makes players more powerful. Tap into it, even indirectly. Lay down the covering fire on whatever's slowing the lance down. Finish things off. Cover their six and swat annoying squirrels who think it's chow time. A group of even four-and-a-half is more effective thant four.

And its what I do... As I've mentioned a couple of posts ago, I'm used to being a solo player in a group environment because for years I'd drop with a disparate group of people in FW and GQ and its just better to have the skills to support what other people have decided to do rather than try to force them into a different strategy. Even so, I value match quality above all else (I'd rather have a 0% win rate where every match was amazingly fun than a 100% win rate where everything was a stomp), so the current state of things just isn't acceptable to me. Sure I can still rank in the top 25%+ scores of the match, but doing so by shouldering a 4-man comp team and just trying to farm damage or cover their six while they do the "real" work leads to poor match quality for me.

Edited by Excessive Paranoia, 17 May 2020 - 04:46 PM.

[Excessive Paranoia]

TheFourthAlly, on 17 May 2020 - 04:22 PM, said:

I'm in Melbourne, Austrlaia, so my timezone is off compared to most of the population that is left here.

I mean, I came to this game from playing stuff like Warthunder and World of Tanks, where I was missing the option to actually do damage or anyting. Underpowered gun, ammo, matched against stronk tanks in WOT or total RNG on what damage you're allowed to do in WT (+ the spawncamping in those days).

Here, I like, and still do, that any weapon does some damage to any opponent. And you get to fiddle with your gear, which is really great. The rest is mostly about positioning, aiming, minding your surroundings and having some knowledge about your weapons and those of the opposition. I suck at those, but at least it's my fault. But if I get matched with or against people who outclass me by quite a bit on those metrics, I'm basically back to doing SFA in lots of matches. Filthy casual that I am, I'd just move on really.

This is exactly what people like Anomalocaris and I are trying to warn about. Sure the merge might be great for groups like GOON or 228 who finally get a chance to drop together and because its in the solo queue, they can farm win rate and KDR like its going out of style, but for people like you and me, who actually care deeply about match quality and who have an innate desire to feel like we're impacting the match, its an abject failure. The question at this point isn't if people like us will leave if this is made permanent, but rather when people like us will leave if this is made permanent.

Edited by Excessive Paranoia, 17 May 2020 - 04:40 PM.

[Nearly Dead]

I took a few days off but decided to play a little this afternoon/evening. (EST US) Very uneven games. 12-3 or 3-12 or worse with only one game that was 12-5. I tried my AC-2 Jagermech, but quickly changed to my Arctic Wolf with AMTs to try and accomplish something. Did OK, top score on one, caught in a canyon with two heavies on another and died early, but overall did OK.

If tonight is going to be typical, I don't see myself enjoying the game. Some of the wins made me feel cheap and of course losing when your team only manages to kill a couple of players, if that, never feels good.

Have they said what the server restart on Tuesday is about? I hope it is to adjust the MM or PSR system.

[DAEDALOS513]

Blackhorse11Cav, on 16 May 2020 - 07:10 PM, said:

See, ya, no. by your own admission, you have stopped playing despite having no clue how the group play is working. You have to be in it for the whole time to really see its plusses and minuses and to speak from an informed position, yet you admit outright you quit playing because of the merge. INTERESTING. OK, so, you are unwilling to even try this change. OK. Point made. you are intractable and refuse to see anything but your own myopic, ill informed, poorly thought out point of view. Hey, no worries. It's a free world. Do as you please. Just don't pretend to be some major subject matter expert. Admit you are nothing more than joe blow and that your views are based on nothing more than guesswork and conjecture. Caveat your opinions with that and you are on the way to intellectual honesty.

Isn't it a bit silly?

[ShooterMcGavin80]

I had to sign off tonight after four stomps in a row to the hands of 4-mans running meta builds.

It is hard skilling up my weird non-meta mechs when you have to deal with that. And I'm sure it is not fun for the puggles that were on my team either.

I was running a 4-man of tier one players, but we were just messing around trying different builds of non-skilled up, non-meta mechs. This is what MWO non-comp dropping should be about. But it is basically unplayable when you have groups of top 1% guys running meta blasters. Forces you to run max tonnage and bring meta builds.

Edited by ShooterMcGavin80, 17 May 2020 - 06:23 PM.

[Z Paradox]

Excessive Paranoia, on 17 May 2020 - 03:27 PM, said:

Honestly, right now I'm actually racking my brain trying to find even a single time in the last 8 years that I've seen anyone at PGI accept responsibility for a bad decision and realize that reversing course was the better option. I don't actually think its ever happened, instead when things go wrong, they turtle and then eventually double-down on their position or changes...

Just one

[color=#FFE04D]Matt Newman[/color]

[Anomalocaris]

DAEDALOS513, on 17 May 2020 - 06:14 PM, said:

Isn't it a bit silly?

You're one of the worst of the bunch. You've been farming pugs to the extent that you've increased your WLR by 33% while talking about how good for the game this merge is. I've seen you group dropping plenty on streams. You've been around long enough, played enough group and dropped with enough top players to know better. These other guys at least have the excuse of ignorance born of inexperience.

That you want to chime in with petty statements like this is just indicative of your hypocrisy on the whole issue. I'm well aware of what's going on in merge queue. The facts are indisputable. The only question you have to answer is - "Does allowing group drops justify the decreased match quality?" So does it? Cause the match quality is lower, by PGI's stomp count and by the tonnage imbalances that were never seen in SoloQ prior to the merge. So does adding group drops justify reduced quality? Yes or no?

[DAEDALOS513]

Excessive Paranoia, on 16 May 2020 - 07:36 PM, said:

A well founded educated guess based on available facts is a much more valid assumption than "I can't see it therefore it must not exist"... Clinging to the low probability that the matchmaker is failing to at least put a group in both teams in some ridiculously high number of matches because it reinforces your position is disingenuous at best and more likely delusional. If the situation were reversed and we had some actual evidence that the matchmaker was actually doing as you say, then maybe you'd have a more valid point, but the situation just doesn't bear that out. The fact is that the only two pieces of information we have are that the matchmaker tries to put a group, or groups, into both teams and that groups don't have to have the same unit tag. Based on this, it's far more likely that matches with a clear group on one team have a less clear group on the other team than it would be for every match like that to have only one group in the entire match. Failing to realize this indicates to me that you're more interested in being right than living in reality.

Reality is this game has a low population so it's very conceivable that one side can have no groups. But you do you.. u know what they say about assumers..

[Constalation]

Anomalocaris, on 17 May 2020 - 06:30 PM, said:

You're one of the worst of the bunch. You've been farming pugs to the extent that you've increased your WLR by 33% while talking about how good for the game this merge is. I've seen you group dropping plenty on streams. You've been around long enough, played enough group and dropped with enough top players to know better. These other guys at least have the excuse of ignorance born of inexperience.

That you want to chime in with petty statements like this is just indicative of your hypocrisy on the whole issue. I'm well aware of what's going on in merge queue. The facts are indisputable. The only question you have to answer is - "Does allowing group drops justify the decreased match quality?" So does it? Cause the match quality is lower, by PGI's stomp count and by the tonnage imbalances that were never seen in SoloQ prior to the merge. So does adding group drops justify reduced quality? Yes or no?

So suddenly DAEDALOS513 is not allowed to play the game? PGI set up SoupQueue. If someone skilled and capable of stomping wants to prove something to PGI, they have the right to do it. PGI set up this new queue and if it is abuse-able, then it is on PGI to actually fix it. Unlike you, they are creating Data that PGI can look at, Data that we can look at. Plenty of people in this thread have said something along the lines of "Play games and stomp hard so PGI/Players understand why this is a bad idea". Unlike you, these players are creating tangible information which can actually be used.

Edit: In fact, there is a significant amount of precedent that shows massed complaints and public outcry is the only way some devs will reverse something. If you want to reverse this SoupQueue, you should join DAEDALOS513. Start stomping extra hard so that more players will begin to complain about match balance.

Edited by Constalation, 17 May 2020 - 06:41 PM.

[Nearly Dead]

Tonight was better than the last couple of weeks. I would rather see 12-8 games than 12-3 games but it is what it is.

At least people were talking. Some of the games had outstanding coordination and focus. I got a couple of kills and saw mechs I had worn down killed by others in very fast games. Beats peeking and poking for two or three minutes trying to wear down one mech.

[Excessive Paranoia]

Nearly Dead, on 17 May 2020 - 07:28 PM, said:

Tonight was better than the last couple of weeks. I would rather see 12-8 games than 12-3 games but it is what it is.

At least people were talking. Some of the games had outstanding coordination and focus. I got a couple of kills and saw mechs I had worn down killed by others in very fast games. Beats peeking and poking for two or three minutes trying to wear down one mech.

Glad you're actually getting decent results... I just tried to drop 5 times... all 5 games were 12-3 or worse. I'm done for the night...

But hey, on a positive note, match quality is within 3% of pre-merge levels! /s

Edited by Excessive Paranoia, 17 May 2020 - 08:14 PM.

[Anomalocaris]

Constalation, on 17 May 2020 - 06:36 PM, said:

So suddenly DAEDALOS513 is not allowed to play the game? PGI set up SoupQueue. If someone skilled and capable of stomping wants to prove something to PGI, they have the right to do it. PGI set up this new queue and if it is abuse-able, then it is on PGI to actually fix it. Unlike you, they are creating Data that PGI can look at, Data that we can look at. Plenty of people in this thread have said something along the lines of "Play games and stomp hard so PGI/Players understand why this is a bad idea". Unlike you, these players are creating tangible information which can actually be used.

Edit: In fact, there is a significant amount of precedent that shows massed complaints and public outcry is the only way some devs will reverse something. If you want to reverse this SoupQueue, you should join DAEDALOS513. Start stomping extra hard so that more players will begin to complain about match balance.

If you're not actually going to read the posts and pay attention to what PGI is actually saying, I can't really have a conversation with you. Daedalos can do WTF he wants. But he's being hypocritical because while he stomps pugs he's saying this is a good change for the game. Pretty simply concept there, you follow?

As for playing, PGI has already come out and said they feel good about the balance of these changes. Yes, stomps are up and tonnage balance is out the window, but Russ and Paul like what they've done. The only thing they're going to look at from now on is player numbers. If they don't drop, they're not going to change. They've haven't uttered a word or made a change in nearly 2 weeks since some tweaks the first weekend after this was implemented. Russ even got offended when someone asked him to define match quality on twitter. Based on past history he probably blocked that person. Then he said "based on population sizes, there's no point in diving any deeper. It's either this or maybe smaller group sizes". Let me put that out there again - "there's no point in diving any deeper" was his response to the question of how do you define match quality. He doesn't care.

If you keep playing this merge queue and numbers stay at the levels they're at now (somewhat higher than the last event weekend numbers pre-merge), all you're going to get is Paul posting that the experiment is done, it's a success and enjoy your queue. And then people are going to get tired of getting stomped and leave, making it worse than before. That's my opinion, but I'd wager real money on it happening. The trend since last week is already down. Watch the numbers this week and see if it continues.

[Einsel]

I dunno about the complicated discussions, and I'm sure that people in the long-time playing/meta/pro-solo tiers will certainly feel differently than I.

All I know is that, as a non-poster (actually, guess this is my first post, so hopefully a fresh opinion/outlook) and as primarily a for-fun player rather than a competitive player, this change is bringing both me and all of my friends back. We don't take the wins/losses thing too seriously, we just liked to play a fun video game, but we all quit when it became impossible to find matches as a group of 2+.

Nice to be playing the game again after a lengthy hiatus, especially since it's literally one of only three games my friends are willing to play with me. We tried MW5: Mercenaries, but we prefer MWO.

Edit: My friends' comments:
-"I think they lost a lot of players when they did that queuing system. MWO was either playing solo, or nothing."
-"Mechs? We're playing again?!?!?!?!"

Edited by Einsel, 17 May 2020 - 10:38 PM.