1579 replies to this topic

[Knight Captain Morgan]

Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood, on 03 May 2020 - 05:25 AM, said:

The main difference with small groups being allowed in is MWO finally having some way to introduce friends into the game that has been sorely lacking since its introduction.

This could also be accomplished by limiting group size to 2 and max group tonnage to 120. This is where you some up with other excuses for why you think premades should be allowed to farm PUGS with no more solo que for PUGS to have a chance at enjoying the game. ou could also always drop with frineds in old group que or faction war but the same reasons those modes became so unpopular will now just migrate over to the new quick play mode.

Edited by Knight Captain Morgan, 03 May 2020 - 05:38 AM.

[Anomalocaris]

Figured I'd try to pull a little data for my own edification this morning. You're welcome to take it or leave it. PGI has lots more than what I scraped, but I was curious as to whether someone's expressed attitude about the merge correlated with any changes to their in game performance metrics, namely WLR, AMS, KDR, etc. This is not a random sample. It is composed of people who self selected by posting their opinions in the forum. I'm not saying it represents the population as a whole, just those of us who post in the brown sea.

So I went through a lot of pages in this thread and pulled the names of people who commented positively or negatively about the change, starting 24 hrs after the implementation of the merge. I marked them as either positive, negative or neutral based upon their commentary. I then pulled their current season 46 stats from PGI. I only included people who had played more than 10 games so far this season so their stats would show. Obviously that eliminated persons like myself from the measurement.

Additionally I pulled their lifetime stats and season 45 stats from Jarls list. In the case of the couple people who had been listed as retired prior to season 46, their lifetime stats were copied into the season 45 column. Season 46 stats were pulled at approximately 8am EST from PGI and clearly will change as the season goes on. I do recognize that the merge occurred right at the end of season 45 so those stats can be slightly contaminated.

What did I find?

- Commenters who have played more than 10 matches in season 46 were 50% positive, 9% neutral and 41% negative
- WLR was up 9.1% for the sample group
- KDR was down 6.9%
- AMS was down 3.1%
- 33% of the sample had negatively correlated WLR and AMS changes, meaning that the sign change of these two stats was different (e.g. WLR went up while AMS went down).
-50% of the sample had negatively correlated opinions and WLR changes. This basically means that someone with a negative opinion had a positive change in their WLR, or vice versa
-There were several outliers with huge changes in their performance. The biggest was DAEDALOS513 with a 111% improvement in WLR from season 45. The largest negative WLR change was -35.7% (we won't name anyone here as that might violate name and shame terms).
-Lifetime WLR for the sample was 1.16
-Lifetime AMS was 248, so the sample is clearly better than the average for the population as a whole

Take aways.

-One limitation of this sample is that it does not weight by number of games played. That said, overall WLR changes must ultimately end up at zero since win/loss is a zero sum equation (excluding the exceedingly rare draws).

-The large number of negative correlations between opinions of the merge and performance in game was surprising. I expected that many people who liked the idea were being driven by improved in game performance and people who didn't like it were suffering more losses, poorer performance, etc (or at least these were expectations). And while that was the case for some persons, there were many examples of people with great increases in performance but poor opinions of change (biggest change in WLR for a player with a negative opinion of the change was 78.4%, 3rd best in the sample, yet he was quite critical of the merge). And there were a number of people who were effusive in their praise of the change but suffered big drops in performance (worst was -32% WLR and -48% KDR despite being very supportive of merge). I don't know if these performance changes will change opinion, or if the opinions are more ideological than reward driven and thus more fixed.

-WLR being up while KDR and AMS have gone down for the sample suggests to me that the sample population is being carried more by players not represented in the sample. There could be other explanations, but that's the one that pops up for me.

[Nesutizale]

Haveing fun and haveing good stats do not allways relate to each other. Sure winning is fun but its not so for everyone and it goes both ways I think.

People who now won a lot might not like it because they found it was to easy for them to win. Other might not mind a loos because they still had a fun match with a friend. I think that roughly is what happens here.

Still I think this is mostly a matchmaker problem. Sync drops and pure luck can bring uneven teams together even before the inclusion of small teams droppping and not evey small team is good.
It was also possible before to have small teams on one side without a group on the other before.

Edited by Nesutizale, 03 May 2020 - 05:56 AM.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Knight Captain Morgan, on 03 May 2020 - 05:36 AM, said:

This could also be accomplished by limiting group size to 2 and max group tonnage to 120. This is where you some up with other excuses for why you think premades should be allowed to farm PUGS with no more solo que for PUGS to have a chance at enjoying the game. ou could also always drop with frineds in old group que or faction war but the same reasons those modes became so unpopular will now just migrate over to the new quick play mode.

No excuses here since I don't see this as premades being allowed to farm PUGS. Both sides get 4 people who are squaded up, it isn't the old beta excuse for matchmaker where an 8 man premade gets put into a group fighting 8 randoms. Essentially you have a 4 man to counter the enemy 4 man on your own team, its no different than having 1 man on your team to counter the other enemy 1 man, if they're going to stomp they're going to stomp.

60 tons split between 2 players seems fine but is somewhat restrictive for people with multiple friends where a 3-4 size squad would be nice, the tonnage limit doesn't really mean much either way since a coordinated 4 man would be able to make use of even a pack of wolfhounds to inflict high damage, it mostly hurts people who aren't being so meta by limiting new players who only have a few mechs to the point they'd have to use trials or grind out a new mech to group up.

[Knight Captain Morgan]

Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood, on 03 May 2020 - 06:05 AM, said:

No excuses here since I don't see this as premades being allowed to farm PUGS. Both sides get 4 people who are squaded up, it isn't the old beta excuse for matchmaker where an 8 man premade gets put into a group fighting 8 randoms. Essentially you have a 4 man to counter the enemy 4 man on your own team, its no different than having 1 man on your team to counter the other enemy 1 man, if they're going to stomp they're going to stomp.

60 tons split between 2 players seems fine but is somewhat restrictive for people with multiple friends where a 3-4 size squad would be nice, the tonnage limit doesn't really mean much either way since a coordinated 4 man would be able to make use of even a pack of wolfhounds to inflict high damage, it mostly hurts people who aren't being so meta by limiting new players who only have a few mechs to the point they'd have to use trials or grind out a new mech to group up.

Again, all this was achieved via old group que or faction war. There are reasons those modes became so unpopular. Removing the solo que doesn't fix those reasons, just transfers them to the new quick play.

[Nesutizale]

Tonnage limit should be there to prevent everyone running around with 100t mechs in a 4 man group. I think that is okay.

I still think beside a PSR rework we should have a Battlevalue (or similar) for mechs taken into concideration when matchmaking.

Knight Captain Morgan, on 03 May 2020 - 06:11 AM, said:

Again, all this was achieved via old group que or faction war. There are reasons those modes became so unpopular. Removing the solo que doesn't fix those reasons, just transfers them to the new quick play.

Group Q was unpopular because it basicly asked for 8 people teams or you get stomped and extreme waitting times. FP never was what it was supposed to be and so people also lost interest.
Solo Q also allways had groups in them by chance, now they are there too but need a matchmaking that takes that into better consideration.

[Anomalocaris]

Nesutizale, on 03 May 2020 - 06:14 AM, said:

Solo Q also allways had groups in them by chance, now they are there too but need a matchmaking that takes that into better consideration.

Any groups in solo were breaking ToS, even though PGI never really enforced it. But sync dropping was clearly marked as against ToS in comments from PGI reps in forums.

Now solo players have no recourse. Form a group or suffer. That's why many of us think its a bad idea. I don't ever expect we'll get a good skill based matchmaker because Russ just said as much in his twitter feed. He thinks MWO matchmaker delivers as good as any competitive game does given population size. I'm not sure whether that comment, or Paul's expectation of the merge making matches "more competitive" is more laughable.

[Alreech]

Anomalocaris, on 03 May 2020 - 06:18 AM, said:

Any groups in solo were breaking ToS, even though PGI never really enforced it. But sync dropping was clearly marked as against ToS in comments from PGI reps in forums.

It's not only synch dropping.

Sometimes the magic happens and the players of a lance or even the whole team worked together like a group.
Some Solo players also cheated by using the ingame VOIP or even the Lance & Squadleader Menues to coordinate the Lance or the team.
PGI plz nerf

[So Much For Subtlety]

Anomalocaris, on 03 May 2020 - 05:41 AM, said:

-WLR being up while KDR and AMS have gone down for the sample suggests to me that the sample population is being carried more by players not represented in the sample. There could be other explanations, but that's the one that pops up for me.

Thanks for the research, very interesting.

Personally, I dont think opinion here is guided by reward or even ideology, but rather personal preferences of what one considers fun in the context of MWO. That is really the issue here. What Im sure we can all agree on is that this implementation is poor (weight classes, tiers...). What we disagree on is whether the changes are desirable per se, and whether the trade offs of enabling casual group play are worth it.

[Anomalocaris]

Alreech, on 03 May 2020 - 06:23 AM, said:

It's not only synch dropping.

Sometimes the magic happens and the players of a lance or even the whole team worked together like a group.
Some Solo players also cheated by using the ingame VOIP or even the Lance & Squadleader Menues to coordinate the Lance or the team.
PGI plz nerf

You are the king of non-sequitur commentary. 24 randoms have the opportunity to try and work together. Pre-made groups of 4 by definition come in working together. If skill is equal, the pre-made will always have an advantage. All the other stuff you've been spewing is irrelevant. Groups > solos

[Nesutizale]

Kay never noticed that sync drops are against the ToS. Its so common that I allways thought it was ok and PGI never doing anything against it reinforced that.

As for solos beeing forced to team up....you realised that 12v12 is allready a teamgame right? I mean its not solaris 1v1 its 12v12 and it hardly dosn't matter of you know the next guy or not those random 12 or the 4+8 have to play together as a team anyway or else they get stomped.
Every time, even before this, when you dropped the group that had better team coordination was winning because teamplay.

Now with the 4 people (at max) that are coodinating I have had more overall coordination for the entire team then when everyone was on its solo ego trip. Frankly I stopped playing not so long ago because solo Q was terrible !
Everyone going random directions or nascar all the time again and again.

Now I have seen very little of that behavior. There was more grouping around the few teams, more people takeing command, more coordination and it didn't matter if I dropped solo over the week or together with a friend yesterday.

Where I see the real problem is that we don't have a good matchmaker and population to make it work.
Personaly I would prefere 3 man groups and a reset of the PSR along with a rework or complete replacement of that system.
Seriously I am nearly Tier 1 without even giveing a **** if I play good or not and I am a BAD player. I think I should be more in the middle ground, T3 maybe?
Sadly, as you said, Russ seams to be convinced that the PSR is fine....and that is the real problem.

[Nesutizale]

Anomalocaris, on 03 May 2020 - 06:33 AM, said:

You are the king of non-sequitur commentary. 24 randoms have the opportunity to try and work together. Pre-made groups of 4 by definition come in working together. If skill is equal, the pre-made will always have an advantage. All the other stuff you've been spewing is irrelevant. Groups > solos

He has a point with using viop and commands giveing an advantage. When you have a group of 12 randoms that use viop and follow commands they can beat any 4+8 group where 8 people are running around like chicken.
That is if we say all 24 people are of similar skill. if you have 4 T1 and 20 T5...well that is something else.

Edited by Nesutizale, 03 May 2020 - 06:39 AM.

[Anomalocaris]

Nesutizale, on 03 May 2020 - 06:34 AM, said:

As for solos beeing forced to team up....you realised that 12v12 is allready a teamgame right? I mean its not solaris 1v1 its 12v12 and it hardly dosn't matter of you know the next guy or not those random 12 or the 4+8 have to play together as a team anyway or else they get stomped.
Every time, even before this, when you dropped the group that had better team coordination was winning because teamplay.

You've missed a key difference here but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that it was unintentional.

A pre-made group has the ability to:

1. Select complimentary builds, whether that is a narc scout + missile boats, or simply a deck of 4 of the same mech for maximum concentrated effect at the selected range of engagement (such as the RFL-IIC lances some of the top groups were running).
2. Agree upon a general course of action and refine that as map selection is made (not to mention grouping their vote to improve map/mode selection in their favor).
3. Come in to the match with knowledge and confidence in the skill of their teammates and that those teammates will stick to a plan and support them in a pinch.

Sometimes these things happen randomly with solos, but for any group with any sort of skill/experience, they are a foregone conclusion.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Knight Captain Morgan, on 03 May 2020 - 06:11 AM, said:

Again, all this was achieved via old group que or faction war. There are reasons those modes became so unpopular. Removing the solo que doesn't fix those reasons, just transfers them to the new quick play.

No, it never ever did that. Nesutizale explains it perfectly, but just to add on. Old group queue demands you have a full 8/12 man to play or else you are risking going up against a 12 man unprepared. Faction play does the same. The reasons faction play became unpopular was a mishandling of what it was supposed to be and an overall mishandling of group and solo players since it openly allowed full 12 man premades to fight 12 man solo teams.

What the test here does is not that at all, what the test is doing is having a 4 man premade vs a 4 man premade with both sides having 8 random players with them. I'm not sure about you, but fighting a 12 man premade as a group of solos wasn't the same as fighting a group of solos as a group of solos while a couple 4 man squads duke it out.

Anomalocaris, on 03 May 2020 - 06:40 AM, said:

You've missed a key difference here but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that it was unintentional.

A pre-made group has the ability to:

1. Select complimentary builds, whether that is a narc scout + missile boats, or simply a deck of 4 of the same mech for maximum concentrated effect at the selected range of engagement (such as the RFL-IIC lances some of the top groups were running).
2. Agree upon a general course of action and refine that as map selection is made (not to mention grouping their vote to improve map/mode selection in their favor).
3. Come in to the match with knowledge and confidence in the skill of their teammates and that those teammates will stick to a plan and support them in a pinch.

Sometimes these things happen randomly with solos, but for any group with any sort of skill/experience, they are a foregone conclusion.

I'm just confused a bit, why are we considering it as a group vs solos here when both teams get a group?

Edited by Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood, 03 May 2020 - 06:45 AM.

[Einherier96]

The amount if whining here is amazing. It feels like people are neither willing or able to group together to group drop with the new system.

Honestly, i never got why this game seperated solo and group queues anyways. Every game besides mwo only divides solo and group queue in their ranked game modes, in normal modes it is widely accepted that the enemy having premade groups in their teams is just another element of the game, and another challenge to overcome. Its not like you cannot coordinate with your random mates the same way, its just that many players don't wanna do it, for various reasons. You folks should maybe chill for a second, and think about wether you wanna have fun in the game by playing it, or if you just get a kick out of stomping someone but totally hate loosing, and if its the right game for ya.

Allright, now to the flat feedback without the sass. So far, I played in a 2 player and 3 player premade group, and we had a lot of fun. Minimal tonnage is a small sad point for me, since there is no more 3 locuts group, to see who can get more damage done with two tons of srm ammo on his srm locust, but if you look at the bigger picture, the minimal tonnage is a great way to prohibit a bigger coordinated ultra light mech swarm. no zerg rush here. And our 3 man urbie group is still allowed which is enough meme fun for me. Maximum Tonnage also felt good, it enables a two player group to play two coordinated 100tonner, or a group with three players to either form a good heavy lance or a two assault and one support mech group which is a pretty sweet deal.

Also did i mention that i can finaly play with buddies without having to chance it and to beat each others face in half of the time? Its great to no longer have that one guy in your group stuck in the enemy team, though i admit from time to time it was nice to beat your friends when synch dropping, this way is definetly better for literally everyone who has some friends to play the game with, but not a big enough group to play with a full premade team

[Alreech]

Anomalocaris, on 03 May 2020 - 06:33 AM, said:

24 randoms have the opportunity to try and work together. Pre-made groups of 4 by definition come in working together. If skill is equal, the pre-made will always have an advantage. All the other stuff you've been spewing is irrelevant. Groups > solos

Your conclusion: get the groups out of MWO, because most players dont want working together "thats the reason why group queue died".
My conclusion: improve grouping up to get more players into working together.

[Weeny Machine]

DAEDALOS513, on 02 May 2020 - 06:04 PM, said:

Over the last couple days I can't help but smile every time a NEW person comes on to say how much they are enjoying the new 'soup' queue (solo + group). The change has undeniably brought new life to MWO and hopefully is a sign of greater things to come.

Ok I'll crawl back into my cave and continue watching from afar..

And still you don't get it.

It is quite likely that you and the other group players will have as long fun as the normal solo queuers will turn around and leave. Sooner or later you will have your group queue back (it is just called QP now) and maybe it is equally dead then.

[ERSmurf]

Anomalocaris, on 03 May 2020 - 05:41 AM, said:

Figured I'd try to pull a little data for my own edification this morning. You're welcome to take it or leave it. PGI has lots more than what I scraped, but I was curious as to whether someone's expressed attitude about the merge correlated with any changes to their in game performance metrics, namely WLR, AMS, KDR, etc. This is not a random sample. It is composed of people who self selected by posting their opinions in the forum. I'm not saying it represents the population as a whole, just those of us who post in the brown sea.

So I went through a lot of pages in this thread and pulled the names of people who commented positively or negatively about the change, starting 24 hrs after the implementation of the merge. I marked them as either positive, negative or neutral based upon their commentary. I then pulled their current season 46 stats from PGI. I only included people who had played more than 10 games so far this season so their stats would show. Obviously that eliminated persons like myself from the measurement.

Additionally I pulled their lifetime stats and season 45 stats from Jarls list. In the case of the couple people who had been listed as retired prior to season 46, their lifetime stats were copied into the season 45 column. Season 46 stats were pulled at approximately 8am EST from PGI and clearly will change as the season goes on. I do recognize that the merge occurred right at the end of season 45 so those stats can be slightly contaminated.

What did I find?

- Commenters who have played more than 10 matches in season 46 were 50% positive, 9% neutral and 41% negative
- WLR was up 9.1% for the sample group
- KDR was down 6.9%
- AMS was down 3.1%
- 33% of the sample had negatively correlated WLR and AMS changes, meaning that the sign change of these two stats was different (e.g. WLR went up while AMS went down).
-50% of the sample had negatively correlated opinions and WLR changes. This basically means that someone with a negative opinion had a positive change in their WLR, or vice versa
-There were several outliers with huge changes in their performance. The biggest was DAEDALOS513 with a 111% improvement in WLR from season 45. The largest negative WLR change was -35.7% (we won't name anyone here as that might violate name and shame terms).
-Lifetime WLR for the sample was 1.16
-Lifetime AMS was 248, so the sample is clearly better than the average for the population as a whole

Take aways.

-One limitation of this sample is that it does not weight by number of games played. That said, overall WLR changes must ultimately end up at zero since win/loss is a zero sum equation (excluding the exceedingly rare draws).

-The large number of negative correlations between opinions of the merge and performance in game was surprising. I expected that many people who liked the idea were being driven by improved in game performance and people who didn't like it were suffering more losses, poorer performance, etc (or at least these were expectations). And while that was the case for some persons, there were many examples of people with great increases in performance but poor opinions of change (biggest change in WLR for a player with a negative opinion of the change was 78.4%, 3rd best in the sample, yet he was quite critical of the merge). And there were a number of people who were effusive in their praise of the change but suffered big drops in performance (worst was -32% WLR and -48% KDR despite being very supportive of merge). I don't know if these performance changes will change opinion, or if the opinions are more ideological than reward driven and thus more fixed.

-WLR being up while KDR and AMS have gone down for the sample suggests to me that the sample population is being carried more by players not represented in the sample. There could be other explanations, but that's the one that pops up for me.

@Anomalocaris: Lots of interesting notes. I do have one question and I do apologize in advance, if it seems stupid, but please allow me explain.

Are you absolutely sure about wins and losses zeroing out? I am asking this, because there have been players in those old matches that no longer play and new players, who do not have old data to compare with, but still affect the current season one way or another. And players, who have too low total numbers of matches in either or both, but who still played, lost, won or tied.

Additionally, some people never or rarely play solo, so they effectively never face certain other players as opponents, while people like me, who almost always play alone or with friends, who play extremely little end up on both sides of matches. As an example of someone, who on the other hand plays a lot, I see fairly often and who is far above my skill level and in Tiers... RWTumbleweed has been in all five possible situations with my main account (ERescue) over the years... Tie, lose with, win with, lose against and win against.

I will add a few more notes of more generic kind. I am probably the lowest ability player, who posts at least sometimes on this forum (both my old and new account are solidly in Tier 5, though this newer account is not quite a close to the bottom (so far)). I have now played somewhat over 30 matches over the past about 3,5 days on my new account and my personal experience is as follows:

- I have only suffered one 0-12 defeat (today) and seen no 12-0 win (that I know of, I missed end results of couple of matches due to being AFK at the time).

- My wait times at least FEEL a LOT shorter than before the change.

- Cadet silencing of the VOIP felt restrictive and at least three times I died alone despite being close to other friendlies, because I was not able to call on nearby units for help.

- I would have to check closely, but I think my win / loss ratio on my new account is significantly better (at least so far) than the one on the older. Even so, I lose somewhat more games than I win.

- Cadet numbers seem to have dropped a lot in just a few days. On Thursday one match actually had EIGHT of us and SIX on one team...

I am going to continue playing now and check on this thread later on.

@All: Good luck and FUN games for everyone, I hope!

[DemonRaziel]

Personally, I haven't seen too many changes to the games' dynamics compared to last month, or the beginning of the year and I play 99% of the time solo.

So not sure why we're once starting the Forum Community Warfare. I fully understand that extremly uneven matches with sides composed of players with vastly different skill levels is no fun for anyone but masochists and the members of the Seal Clubbing Clubs, but...
Did you guys not have stomps and lopsided matches in solo queue before the merge? Because I've seen everything from 12-0 to 0-12 and everything in between including cap wins and this weekend hasn't been any different, really.

In my opinion, having small casual groups drop with the predominantly casual solo players is less of a problem than having them drop with the largely competitive crowd where they simply don't belong. At least with the low wait times, if one drop was a krapshoot, you won't have to wait too long for another shot.

That being said, there should absolutely also be a platform for the competitive crowd to have their fun, but... isn't there?

[Nesutizale]

Anomalocaris, on 03 May 2020 - 06:40 AM, said:

You've missed a key difference here but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that it was unintentional.

A pre-made group has the ability to:

1. Select complimentary builds, whether that is a narc scout + missile boats, or simply a deck of 4 of the same mech for maximum concentrated effect at the selected range of engagement (such as the RFL-IIC lances some of the top groups were running).
2. Agree upon a general course of action and refine that as map selection is made (not to mention grouping their vote to improve map/mode selection in their favor).
3. Come in to the match with knowledge and confidence in the skill of their teammates and that those teammates will stick to a plan and support them in a pinch.

Sometimes these things happen randomly with solos, but for any group with any sort of skill/experience, they are a foregone conclusion.

1. I agree, that is an advantage. Still I have seen, in the current plays, that 12 man can still counter this when all are working together. Its rare, I give you that but then...bringing more teamplay into a team based game is good IMO.
Here I would be realy interested in seeing the data on how often this will happen because in about half a day of play yesterday I only encountered such a group maybe twice and we countered them once/won the game.
So that isn't realy representative.

2. In a group you only have one vote for the map, you don't get several votes for the map so grouping up is more a drawback then an advantage. Also lets be real...people vote for the same maps every time so you can either vote for that map too or just play "how to I increase my counter".

3. I think that point becomes only realy importend for bigger groups of 8 or 12 in factionplay or competetive play with highly skilled players. When you have 4 man T5 groups that are confident in themself and their teammates it more likely mean they will run together into the enemys line of fire then doing anything importend.

Again I think skill matchmaking is the underling problem.
All your points become more valid the higher skilled the players are. The less skilled the less importend is it because

1. Less skilled players don't know what works together
3. They are more likely overconfident and walk to their death.