1579 replies to this topic

[Anomalocaris]

Just watched Yondu again with a 3 man WHK PPC drop on Polar. His 3-man did 2500 dmg and 8 kills. Remainder of his team did 1400 dmg (one guy broke 400 dmg besides his crew). Game was 12-1.

GGclose, amirite?

Even if you were on the winning team, your usefulness in the match was mainly as armor and bait.

[Zirconium Kaze]

Alreech, on 28 April 2020 - 01:22 AM, said:

It's also time to get of all that stupid Battletech stuff like Armor, Internal Structure and Heat.
How about regenerating Shields like in Halo?
Also all Mechs should be faster, no Weapons need ammo, ect...
Get rid of the big teams of 12 players, and of the big maps.

MWO should become a highly competetive Shooter like Unreal Tournament or Quake, with skill and not stuff like Mech builds being important.

I believe this game takes more skill than shooters like unreal tournament or quake. Even in a one v one setting.

[Brain Cancer]

Brownie, on 28 April 2020 - 08:55 AM, said:

This is literally the best idea you've ever had for this game. I have been waiting YEARS for this. I have an entire friends list of people who quit this game because we could NEVER get into a match together.

I can FINALLY play with my friends now. I'm not worried about having a few matches where I get put up against teams and I lose. I will GLADLY take that trade for the fact that I can play with my friends now and the fact that this will bring THOUSANDS of new players to this dead game.

Bless your heart, you poor fool.

Did you never hear of the group queue? Where you could play with your friends? You DID know you can do that, RIGHT?

Or was it because group queue kept kicking you in the crotch until you permamently spoke with a squeak and two octaves higher?

If the latter, guess what?

Those people are now going to do the same in solo queue and you will be their sweet potato farm.

If the former, you really, REALLY were missing the point of a game mode called "group". Or even community warfare.

[DAEDALOS513]

Brauer, on 28 April 2020 - 12:05 PM, said:

If you're allowing players from different tiers to play in the same match artificially inflating the effective HP of players based on tiers is quite unfair imo and does not encourage learning as it provides players with an artificial advantage.

Inflating armor and structure values will benefit higher skill players because it gives them more time to influence a match. Sure it will give less capable players more time to run around in a match, but in reality it will make them less competitive, and it will actually encourage bad habits by not punishing them as quickly and decisively.

I personally think the armor vs. firepower balance isn't too bad at the moment. I largely enjoy the match-ups that exist between lights, mediums, heavies, and assaults right now. I bet there could be some tweaks here and there, but I think making it much harder to one-shot lights will lead to less satisfying balance overall. I could see, for example, adding some agility to underperforming mechs to help make them more survivable.

What I'd like to see is the removal of the ST loss heat spike, and rebalancing some weapons (like making SPL on both sides more relevant, making streaks more evenly powerful across the board rather than just being insta-death for lights, nerfing lock-ons a bit, maybe balancing some ineffective weapons like RAC5, LBX5, AC20s so they have more of a niche, reducing the heat of LAMS so that it ever makes sense to bring it, etc.).

Yes, this 'artificial advantage' is called a handicap or a crutch.. something commonly used for the benefit of new players until they get their sea (mech?) legs. You say they will lose out on learning but how much 'learning' can happen when you die within the first minute of a match?

Armour values would be even more inflated for the newer players tiers 5-2.. than for tier 1's. You're right, they will have more time to run around and this sure beats getting insta-cored (which is pretty much a death sentence) or insta-dead right at the start of a match.

Once a players gets to tier 1, the armor values for a light will revert to what it is now.. don't worry, you will still get your chance to one-shot lights.. maybe you didn't read my post fully?

Sure add agility, but this won't prevent one-shot kills/cores.. which is what I'm trying to prevent.
Matches currently end too quickly, too often.. this leads to unmemorable matches.. the matches that I remember are the nail-biters, the ones that least more than 4-5 minutes..

Weapon tuning is another option but it's a far more complicated endeavour than simply boosting armor values. PGI is not going to be heading down that rats nest anytime soon.

Edited by DAEDALOS513, 28 April 2020 - 12:41 PM.

[Alreech]

Sniper09121986, on 28 April 2020 - 10:41 AM, said:

The craziest thing in all this is that PGI has just recently purchased an MW licence extension for five more years. If THIS is the way they go about MWO already, then I fail to see the rationale behind that decision since all the DLC's for MW5 are obviously not going to sell that long.

Not crazy at all.
MW5 for the new X-Box & Clan DLCs...

[DAEDALOS513]

Brain Cancer, on 28 April 2020 - 12:19 PM, said:

Bless your heart, you poor fool.
Did you never hear of the group queue? Where you could play with your friends? You DID know you can do that, RIGHT?
Or was it because group queue kept kicking you in the crotch until you permamently spoke with a squeak and two octaves Higher?
If the latter, guess what?
Those people are now going to do the same in solo queue and you will be their sweet potato farm.
If the former, you really, REALLY were missing the point of a game mode called "group". Or even community warfare.

Are you not hearing what countless players are saying? They haven't been able to drop group queue with a friend for the longest time, group queue was dead... there was NO place for casuals to drop with a buddy...not until now! CW was not a viable option because of units dropping there. I read multiple accounts about how people are actually reinstalling the game because of this. These players don't care if they get stomped every now and then, They just want the ability to drop WITH... A... FRIEND.

[Grumpy Old Man]

I will keep tracking this thread to find out how the patch turns out. But right now I am kinda happy I can only play on Saturdays to Mondays... Matches have mostly been annoying for a good while... This will sure switch up things, waiting to find out whether it is for the better or worse... But I am not optimistic...

[Brain Cancer]

DAEDALOS513, on 28 April 2020 - 09:48 AM, said:

One thing I would like PGI to implement next.. an increase in armour values across the board, weighed more heavily for newer players, and weighed more heavily towards the bigger mechs. This would decrease TTK and be more forgiving against getting one-shot killed or cored.

Translation: I should be able to spray my guns more against people before they kill me, and bad players should get damage shields so we can farm them for even more damage with our spray.

Quote

Matches right now feel more like mini-skirmishes rather than actual battles. Matches are rushed and end too quickly.. once a team is up 3 kills the match is usually decided. Adding more armour will change the dynamic of matches by being more forgiving to mistakes: players will have a better chance of getting back to their team and not insta-dying due to being left behind or moving out of position... and assaults will FEEL LIKE ASSAULTS! (#makeassaultsgreatagain). The big change: there will hopefully be some actual trading at the start of the match rather than all out nascar right off the bat..

Translation: I also want to make all non-energy weapons feel bad because now they'll have to expend even more obscene amounts of ammo to kill something, because I totally didn't think this through in terms of something silly like math.

Quote

I didn't do any math or anything but maybe something like this:

Ha! He really didn't do the math!

Quote

Tier 3-5: all mechs get four 4 times the armour
Tier 2: all mechs get 3 times the armour
Tier 1: Assaults get 4x armour, Heavies get 3x armour, Mediums get 2x armour and Lights remain as is now.

Translation: I want all these guys to take obscene amounts of damage but didn't even think about what it takes to generate said obscene amounts of damage. Maybe I need to drop the lurmboat to 32kph so I can add another three-four tons of ammo.

Quote

As much as I love piloting a light mech, a single light influences the match way too much and this is wrong. It should take a pack of 3 to influence a match as much as one light does now.

Thoughts?

Lights thrive only when they are ignored, and bad pilots have an assault-weight fetish.

[Dee Eight]

So I can only assume the matchmaker has been turned off completely because I'm seeing some folks who are new to forums and had Tier 5 tags but they're dropping matches to my Tier 1 & 2 accounts, not to mention that there doesn't seem to be any effort to balance even weight classes of mechs per team. One match had a unit drop of top-100 player group as a 4some... they were in a medium, assault and 2 heavies...and their 8 solos were all medium thru assault. Our team...if it even had a group... was 3 lights, 3 mediums, 1 heavy and 5 assaults.

Of course PGI has made no effort to say they were going to make "more competitive matches" by throwing out any sort of matching other than sorting 8 to 10 random solos and random mechs with a group (which itself does have a specific tonnage limit) as each team. I suspect there might not have been the enthusiam by some of the people in love with the concept had they explained that from the start. It also seems that if one team gets a group, there's no guarantee the other team also will get a group. There have definitely been some matches where its clear only one team got a group. Also having matches where units are grouping and syncing... Just had five of same unit on one team. Fortunately for me they were terrible and on the other side (and collectively managed less than 750 damage in total). I'm collecting end game match result screen caps in case PGI needs evidence of the fiasco's occurring (because you know they love to claim they cannot duplicate well known errors and bugs until you show off videos and images for everyone to see).

And as for the group tonnages... they're too high... 3 man group can all drop assaults together and skewer the dynamics against another team. Just did a match like that... enemy team 6 assaults... my team 2 assaults. For group queue this was perfectly normal and I knew that having used group queue... but to solo queue people who never used it... this is a rude awakening to be logging into. Another game with 3 man group... 5 assaults our team... 2 their team.

Stomps...these are happening more frequently... My normal kdr average (for a month) is between 1 and 2...without any sort of sorting happening now... heh...we're going to need to remember Mayl 2020 as the month some kdr's went up...and some went down (just as we had to remember when they changed the AvMatScore formula a few years ago to account for AMS and other team supporting activities).

[Mawai]

Frankenst3in, on 27 April 2020 - 12:09 PM, said:

I suspect some people think this will revitalize the grouped population, but I think this will kill the solo population. Seems counterproductive to the continuation of this game. Having already done this years ago, I know what to expect, and won't be playing most likely. You will either be the farmer or the crops. Spoiler alert, if you aren't already sure you and your buddies will be the farmers, you are the crops.

When they did this years ago it was 8v8 and allowed for 8-man groups vs 8 solos. It didn't usually turn out so well for the solos.

Their latest suggestion is 12v12 with at most 4 people on each team in groups. I think your farmers vs the crops analogy is significantly exaggerated for the suggested game configuration. Whether it will work better or not, I have no idea. PGI has never been very good with their matchmaker and PSR as a rating system is unreliable at best and useless a the other extreme.

However, I might see if I can fit in a game or two over the next few weeks to see if the change makes any real difference.

[Brauer]

DAEDALOS513, on 28 April 2020 - 12:20 PM, said:

Yes, this 'artificial advantage' is called a handicap or a crutch.. something commonly used for the benefit of new players until they get their sea (mech?) legs. You say they will lose out on learning but how much 'learning' can happen when you die within the first minute of a match?

Armour values would be even more inflated for the newer players tiers 5-2.. than for tier 1's. Yes they will have more time to run around and this sure beats getting insta-cored (which is pretty much a death sentence) right at the start of a match.

Once a players gets to tier 1, the armor values for a light will revert to what it is now.. don't worry, you will still get your chance to one-shot lights.. maybe you didn't read my post fully?

Sure add agility, but this won't prevent one-shot kills/cores.. which is what I'm trying to prevent.
Matches currently end too quickly, too often.. this leads to unmemorable matches.. the matches that I remember are the nail-biters, the ones that least more than 4-5 minutes..

Weapon tuning is another option but it's a far more complicated endeavour than simply boosting armor values. PGI is not going to be heading down that rats nest anytime soon.

I think being in Tier 5 should be enough to keep new players out of the deep end of the pool when they start. This game has a lot of misunderstood mechanics, so I don't think adding this one will be particularly helpful. I think a functional PSR system that actually sorted by ability would be a much better way to help ensure people get matches appropriate for their skill level. I know that's quite separate from your idea, I'm just saying I understand that something should be done.

I also actually think getting one-shot or insta-cored is a great learning opportunity. My first couple of mechs were an Adder and a Stormcrow. Being relatively fragile helped me learn to use cover and keep moving. Playing other lights later on pushed that lesson even more, and I was one-shot plenty as I learned. Every time I get one-shot or insta-cored I get annoyed, but only because I wasn't on the ball enough to avoid getting wrecked.

More recently I learned just how brutal an expert ERLL trader can be when scrimming JGx and other top teams. I don't think new players should learn the game by getting curb-stomped by the likes of EmP and JGx, but a functional PSR would expose players to ever better opponents as they develop their skills and until they either reach the top of the game or stagnate/reach their maximum performance.

I know that it's quite unlikely that PGI will touch weapon balance, much less improve it, but it's worth bringing up imo.

[Zirconium Kaze]

Brain Cancer, on 28 April 2020 - 12:19 PM, said:

Bless your heart, you poor fool.

Did you never hear of the group queue? Where you could play with your friends? You DID know you can do that, RIGHT?

Or was it because group queue kept kicking you in the crotch until you permamently spoke with a squeak and two octaves higher?

If the latter, guess what?

Those people are now going to do the same in solo queue and you will be their sweet potato farm.

If the former, you really, REALLY were missing the point of a game mode called "group". Or even community warfare.

I had a rl friend who tried this game and quit because we couldn't get a match in the group que. We tried on different days and multiple times. Usually waiting 10+ minutes and one time was like 20+. Not a single game. He literally gave up on this game at that point since the original purpose was to play with one another and not sync drop to dice roll if we end up fighting against each other.

[spannerturner]

I've played a dozen matches so far and they are all the same. What used to be somewhat coordinated efforts by each team, even with the dreaded NASCAR effect, has devolved into a pre-school playground. Everyone is running around with no real plans, no teamwork in mind, just utter chaos.

The game is just not enjoyable now. Even when you got stomped last week, there was a sense of cohesion to the team. Now, there is none of that. I'll give it another shot in a week or so to see if things have improved... If things don't, I'll wait until the test is over. If you keep this format, then I'm out. This will kill the experience for a lot of your veteran players.

[Brain Cancer]

Anomalocaris, on 28 April 2020 - 10:19 AM, said:

Yeah, lights shouldn't have the combat capacity of assaults, but the way the game is structured, PGI had to make them viable or face the idea of virtually no one playing them.

Speaking of War Thunder, there's a lovely little Swedish light tank that mounts something like a 150mm recoiless rifle. fm/43-44. BR 1.7. 10 tons.

It can regularly get the God Mode achievement for killing something 5+ BR above it, being basically the Urbie of WT. But truth is, the higher in BR in War Thunder you go (pretty much BR = higher tech), the more likely it is that a light tank will be able to penetrate and kill a heavier tank, simply because weapons got better.

And here we are in a game set in a sci-fi 31st Century or something. Go figure.

[Dee Eight]

Brauer, on 28 April 2020 - 12:48 PM, said:

I think being in Tier 5 should be enough to keep new players out of the deep end of the pool when they start.

Except that's not the case because under this month long test it seems, they've thrown tier matching out the window (kinda have to to enable groups to form).... its so obvious I'm surprised no one else saw that move coming in the past two days and might have told PGI this is a really bad idea to inflict on solo queue players.

[Brain Cancer]

DAEDALOS513, on 28 April 2020 - 12:30 PM, said:

Are you not hearing what countless players are saying? They haven't been able to drop group queue with a friend for the longest time, group queue was dead... there was NO place for casuals to drop with a buddy...not until now! CW was not a viable option because of units dropping there. I read multiple accounts about how people are actually reinstalling the game because of this. These players don't care if they get stomped every now and then, They just want the ability to drop WITH... A... FRIEND.

Then wouldn't that be an indication that the influences group play put on the majority of the playerbase is a negative?

I mean, look at the stats being already described here on the thread. If you want casuals dropping with a buddy?

2-mans and that's all folks. That's the minimum amount of disruption in the solo queue and people can play with a friend if they wanna.

[dario03]

DAEDALOS513, on 28 April 2020 - 11:06 AM, said:

You can't compare this game to TT.. not sure why people still insist on doing so.. the similarities end with the name.

Yes, and adding armour adds to survivability..

Increasing armour also is more forgiving as it would decrease one-shot kills and one-shot getting cored.. on top of that, until you reach tier 1, you are even more heavily armoured than tier 1's..

It's not perfect but it's an easy step in the right direction, no?

No.
The T2 to T1 jump doesn't make sense, why did assaults go back up and lights dropped so much?
Why are you drastically buffing the strongest class and leaving the weakest one the same in T1?
Especially after boosting them equally in every other tier?
A slight handicap I could see but 3x armor on a T2 light but no boost to T1?
Also, alt accounts.

Edited by dario03, 28 April 2020 - 01:05 PM.

[East Indy]

So the matchmaker keeps group weight classes out of the solo calculation, eh? Tricky. Sounds like initial tonnage limits are too generous -- 175, 190, 200 are probably a lot closer to what they need to be to fudge it.

If 8-man comp and FP are still running, this should be more about playing with buddies.

[DAEDALOS513]

Brain Cancer, on 28 April 2020 - 12:59 PM, said:

Then wouldn't that be an indication that the influences group play put on the majority of the playerbase is a negative?

I mean, look at the stats being already described here on the thread. If you want casuals dropping with a buddy?

2-mans and that's all folks. That's the minimum amount of disruption in the solo queue and people can play with a friend if they wanna.

Meh, I played about 10 solo matches so far.. matches have been pretty enjoyable.. maybe 2 of them were stomps.. matches are a bit more organized and more coms are definitely being used.. but you know what the big difference is? I'm getting insta-drops in group queue.. amazing.. a huge plus!

Your max 2-man idea might be a viable second test after this one has run it's course!

Edited by DAEDALOS513, 28 April 2020 - 01:05 PM.

[Brauer]

Dee Eight, on 28 April 2020 - 12:58 PM, said:

Except that's not the case because under this month long test it seems, they've thrown tier matching out the window (kinda have to to enable groups to form).... its so obvious I'm surprised no one else saw that move coming in the past two days and might have told PGI this is a really bad idea to inflict on solo queue players.

I think you misunderstand me. I don't know if the MM has thrown tiers out the window, or if some circumstances (like a T1 in a group with cadets/T5s) are making it appear so. I haven't played with the new system yet, I am more describing how I think PSR SHOULD work, not how it did work before the patch, or does work today.