1579 replies to this topic

[Spare Knight]

Larsh, on 04 May 2020 - 07:54 AM, said:

Both might be a bad idea, as that a person could have the potential to input items twice from two different sources.

Also, I did think about more than one question, but I thought one might be the least time consuming. Having more than one could work well, but that all comes down to how much time does a person want to commit on filling it out.

You would only need to email out the notification of the merging of queues. The survey could still be in game, just as you showed.

[Thorqemada]

Einherier96, on 04 May 2020 - 05:13 AM, said:

And i will put real money down that the influx of people will far outweight people like you leaving. and in contrast to people like you, groups of friends that are coming back into the game have a higher chance to rope in additional players if they find it fun to play the game as a group. hate to be the arse, but you are a minority that does not that much to keep a game alive, and a part of the community that could propably be cut off easily. So far mwo sees a constant 700+ players on steam on the weekend every hour of the day (saw it from 3pm european time to 3 am), numbers which couldn't even be reached on top hours on weekends with events (best spikes are normaly around 600 at peak hours only, otherwise 300-400), so we see an influx of players that validate cutting parts of the community off for the greater good of the game.

And to your 1%percentile 4 player group, see the post above, chances are miniscule and not relevant to be facing these people on a regular basis)

Simple Question:
Why then did the Group Queue not work, or FW or PRIVATE MATCHES?

PS:

Edited by Thorqemada, 04 May 2020 - 08:00 AM.

[SolahmaWarrior]

Excessive Paranoia, on 04 May 2020 - 05:59 AM, said:

You're missing a very important point here: Even if you're not paying money, your very presence in matches provides the content necessary to entertain those that are happy enough to spend money.

No, I totally get that. However, from Russ' own mouth, development of new Mech Packs were stopped because they were not profitable, haven't been for going on 3 years now (he said it last summer during the MW5 Q&As. They also anounced that MWO has been scaled back to "Maintenance mode", 9 or so months ago.

That being said, and having watched player numbers drop significantly over the last 2-3 years, this "Test" by PGI leads to the following possibilities:
1. Enough new money has come in that PGI has found it profitable to make these changes (less likely, to be honest)
or
2. The financial burden that is MWO is too significant to maintain without a quick influx of new, willing to spend money, players.

We already know, again from Russ' mouth that PGI would love to tap into the Fornite player base, and part of the reason they went Epic exclusive (yes, I know they got a huge sign-on bonus), MWO is free advertisement for MW5, as evidenced by all of the anouncements of patches, etc, popping up when you log into MWO. So, it helps them out for luring players to MW5, which costs money, period and is profit.

Bottom line in business, whether F2P or not, is profitability. If you aren't making money, you're losing money. Right now, PGI is losing money on MWO.

[Larsh]

Spare Knight, on 04 May 2020 - 07:56 AM, said:

You would only need to email out the notification of the merging of queues. The survey could still be in game, just as you showed.

Yea that could work. Place one source for said survey, then notify via email and social media.

[FRAGTAST1C]

Larsh, on 04 May 2020 - 07:09 AM, said:

I wouldn't even use email. I'd place it in game since that is a guarantee to see it. Something like one of these three:....
*snip*

While the idea is good, it's better to use factual evidence to make changes to the game rather than the voting system based on opinions and personal feelings/experience, 'cause we all know what happens when [Redacted] vote now, don't we?

[Einherier96]

Thorqemada, on 04 May 2020 - 07:56 AM, said:

Simple Question:
Why then did the Group Queue not work, or FW or PRIVATE MATCHES?

group queue? it stopped working years ago, when people said its dead, started synch dropping, and people who cannot fill a full team group were forced to either wait an hour or to synch drop. also fw is not newbie or casual friendly. same goes for private matches


Also, while ia gree with the video that you should not only look at numbers, you alsos houldn't look at forums. forums have their own bias, due to the fact that they cater to a minority of the community, and especially people who are either having a casual approach or are having strong social ties will usually be missunderrepresented.

Edited by Einherier96, 04 May 2020 - 08:06 AM.

[Einherier96]

Spare Knight, on 04 May 2020 - 07:56 AM, said:

You would only need to email out the notification of the merging of queues. The survey could still be in game, just as you showed.

liking that idea, definetly a good solution.

[Larsh]

FRAGTAST1C, on 04 May 2020 - 08:02 AM, said:

While the idea is good, it's better to use factual evidence to make changes to the game rather than the voting system based on opinions and personal feelings/experience, 'cause we all know what happens when [Redacted] vote now, don't we?

Oh yea, in no ways is this to remove the data that is being compiled.

The forums should still exist so the playbase can hash out their experiences, and PGI can then collect whatever data they are using to base this off of still. I think what a survey would accomplish is to measure the harder to measure stat of "how do we feel".

Edit:
Would also allow a voice to those that don't like to stop at the forums, and other social media sources.

And yea, people may vote to muddy it up, but hopefully since the playerbase isn't too large, those individuals wouldn't be as prominent to change an end result.

Also, +10 internet points on that zinger in your comment

Edited by GM Patience, 04 May 2020 - 03:58 PM.

[Einherier96]

FRAGTAST1C, on 04 May 2020 - 08:02 AM, said:

While the idea is good, it's better to use factual evidence to make changes to the game rather than the voting system based on opinions and personal feelings/experience, 'cause we all know what happens when [Redacted] vote now, don't we?

it needs to be a mixture of both, to eliminate all bias as best as possible. factual numbers need to pulled in to see where and if there is personal bias involved.

[Thorqemada]

Einherier96, on 04 May 2020 - 08:02 AM, said:

group queue? it stopped working years ago, when people said its dead, started synch dropping, and people who cannot fill a full team group were forced to either wait an hour or to synch drop. also fw is not newbie or casual friendly. same goes for private matches


Also, while ia gree with the video that you should not only look at numbers, you alsos houldn't look at forums. forums have their own bias, due to the fact that they cater to a minority of the community, and especially people who are either having a casual approach or are having strong social ties will usually be missunderrepresented.

I definitively agree that a look at the "Whole Picture" is the right approach!

[Anomalocaris]

Einherier96, on 04 May 2020 - 07:48 AM, said:

Okay, first of all, tiers atm are disabled, and i am advocating for disabling them permamently. 12.5% chance to get stomped by a top tier group is still not that bad for a casual approach to the game. and even if i get stomped, ti doesn't mean that it can't be fun for people. i personally for example enjoy going against all the odds stacked against me, and seeing how far i can push against these odds. games where my team lost the most badly where sometimes the ones i enjoyed the most, in my eyes there is nothing greater then to have a last stand with two three teammates going off in a blaze of glory. is that true for everyone? no, propably not. does this forum represent the community? no, totally not. this forum is a bubble of a small percentage of the community that uses it, So if people mind this certain inbalance or not will only be shown in the numbers at the end of the day.

Secondly, and most annoyingly, you are still going with the perfect numbers for a 4 man team, which will not be able to hold up. smaller groups of two and three will take up a significant number of the group spots, will thus put your numbers even lower. (and if 4 players really turns out to be a problem, you can allways cut the number down to three, like wows does, which is also a health shooter which functions in a 12vs12 mode with different weight classes).

What needs to be fixed is the total amount of assault mechs for example, there needs to be a max number per match, but for stuff like that you need a bigger playerbase for the mm to work with.



so you are talking **** about a restaurant you never ate at before cause you think the food there sucks? nice for showing your true colours, thanks i guess. and if you would go afk games played hunting, i bet my left arse that its easy for pg to check the amount of reports that you got in that time and to exclude you from the survey

[Redacted] You really think newbies getting stomped by high level groups on average every 8 matches is good for the game?

And going to smaller groups means you'll have even more stompy top level teams, not less. The math does not favor you here even if you don't understand it.

The mistake all you ******* make is thinking that "oh, it'll be different". We had group queue, we have solaris, we have faction warfare, we have comp play. Thinking that mixing group queue into solo queue is going to make things better is wishful thinking. It's like putting a red shirt in with your whites and some bleach and then being shocked when everything comes out pink...

As I said about ghost dropping, I wouldn't do that, because that would be a **** move, and unlike you and Larsh, I'm not trying to push people out of the game. But having played group queue, I know exactly what this dish tastes like - far better than you I'd wager which is why I'm against it. And the increased stomps and the incredible win rates from top players on streams simply proves me right.

But hey, there were an extra 20-30 players on line this weekend vs. a month ago, never mind the double xp event or anything. Sooooo worth it.

[DAEDALOS513]

Einherier96, on 04 May 2020 - 07:48 AM, said:

Okay, first of all, tiers atm are disabled, and i am advocating for disabling them permamently. 12.5% chance to get stomped by a top tier group is still not that bad for a casual approach to the game. and even if i get stomped, ti doesn't mean that it can't be fun for people. I personally for example enjoy going against all the odds stacked against me, and seeing how far i can push against these odds. games where my team lost the most badly where sometimes the ones i enjoyed the most, in my eyes there is nothing greater then to have a last stand with two three teammates going off in a blaze of glory.

Now you're are speaking my language. I've always said it's not about the win but about how you play the game.. there's always someone better out there, it's up to you to do your best and improve by learning from your mistakes..

Edited by DAEDALOS513, 04 May 2020 - 08:34 AM.

[Nesutizale]

Larsh, on 04 May 2020 - 07:22 AM, said:

Hard to say, and that is our dilemma here. This change, and forum, has brought to light the differing views of what MWO means to the different player bases. Some will say that a match was acceptable, while some will say that is wasn't. So if people want definite stats to give them conscience, that may be harder said than done. But, with a dwindling playerbase, and still on a decline, it's hard to say if GQ and SQ will need to merged in the end to survive.

Anyone here have a psych degree so we psychoanalyze of thoughts? haha.

About the psych analyses...you can pretty much do that yourself. There are two test you can run to find out what kind of player you are and those are partialy also used in game development as well as psychologial studies.

On is the Bartel test -> https://matthewbarr.co.uk/bartle/
and the other is from Quantic -> https://apps.quantic...t/gamerprofile/

PGI could use this knowledge about players and their behavior and either create the game around a certain type of player OR they can look what kind of players they have and then design the game to further strengthen the game in that direction.


Beside that I think you need both, players opinions as well as the data and then take look at what it tells you.
For example when people loose more games but report that they have more fun and more people returning....that could be a hint that people have greater enjoyment of playing in small teams then they have the urge to win.

On the other hand if you see a lot more stomps when small teams are present and your playerbase reports that the games are overall not enjoyable, then small groups don't seam to work.

Both cases are oversimplified. Surely you have to look into those caes much more detailed like what kind of makeup had the groups, when did they play (timezone), what was those teams W/L rate over the day and so on.

Still I wouldn't dismiss opionions completely even if you know that a good number of those voices are just emotional and not objective.

VonBruinwald, on 04 May 2020 - 07:10 AM, said:

Is there a ratio at where we say an unfair game is acceptable. At what point are we ok with 1/x?

Do the contributors even matter, matchmaking, group stomping or hacks... should we even care about the contributors ratios as long as it doesn't exceed the sum?

Idealy you would have no stomps and perfect balance without cheaters but that is a dream. So you have to set a point, as developer, where you say "That is acceptable".

What is acceptable is very different for each person.Try to get the number as low as you can without blocking the MM from making any kind of matches...that should be the goal.

[Einherier96]

Anomalocaris, on 04 May 2020 - 08:27 AM, said:

[Redacted]. You really think newbies getting stomped by high level groups on average every 8 matches is good for the game?

And going to smaller groups means you'll have even more stompy top level teams, not less. The math does not favor you here even if you don't understand it.

The mistake all you ******* make is thinking that "oh, it'll be different". We had group queue, we have solaris, we have faction warfare, we have comp play. Thinking that mixing group queue into solo queue is going to make things better is wishful thinking. It's like putting a red shirt in with your whites and some bleach and then being shocked when everything comes out pink...

As I said about ghost dropping, I wouldn't do that, because that would be a **** move, and unlike you and Larsh, I'm not trying to push people out of the game. But having played group queue, I know exactly what this dish tastes like - far better than you I'd wager which is why I'm against it. And the increased stomps and the incredible win rates from top players on streams simply proves me right.

But hey, there were an extra 20-30 players on line this weekend vs. a month ago, never mind the double xp event or anything. Sooooo worth it.

Nah mate, the difference is, we see it as an possibility for change, sure, for positive change, but as a possiblity to change things. you see it as a danger to your own enjoyment, and that alone.

Newbies will get stomped anyways. they will get stomped by smurfs (or by casuals like me who hold their tier at 3 to be able to play with their friends once a year when i was able to push them over the trauma that is synch dropping), or they will get stomped when they die through to the higher tiers, cause the lower tiers, or former game experience teached them the wrong things (sniper mentalitiy for example). Difference would be, that we would open up for those newbies for the social parts of a community, that likes interacting with players, and helping newbies, and you will normaly find people like those easily in each community, but the hurdles in this game to find someone to teach you (that means you need to go out of your way to do research to find a group that is willing to teach you/a player that is willing to teach you), the fact that this person needs a smurf to play with you and help you improving are too high for casual players. If you are really interested (which i guess due to behavior is not the case, but just in case), i advise you to look up bartles taxonomy about player types, and maybe some additional information about how games need to hold a balance between them. mwo has a small community (especially here at the forums) of achievers (which would be people like brauer), a small part of killers (which are the evil arses that would actually comp stomp others when they are the top yada yada percent while going all out on meta, and neither enough explorers (or in this case it would rather be players with a more casual approach, that term is a little bit too old and mmo sided to be used 1:1 here), and social people to rope new players in to increase the player count, or even remotly hold it.

This game needs change, or it will be put on ice, and we won't be able to see another mechwarrior game with proper multiplayer until half life 3...until another decade

Edited by GM Patience, 04 May 2020 - 04:03 PM.

[Alreech]

Anomalocaris, on 03 May 2020 - 06:13 PM, said:

People like me who just wanna play solo without being forced to drop with pre-mades? That would seem rather short sighted.

People like me who have gotten so sick of alreech's b.s. ("just play merged queue and do your own thing if you wanna drop solo" is one of the most pedantic and condescending pieces of b.s. he's written) and light into him? Could understand that a little more.

But I happen to like SoloQ as it was. I'm better than average but not an elite player, and I try and get better each season (think I'm near my skill cap).

PGI mad Solaris especially for competetive players what want to play solo.
But it's easier to climb Tiers in Solo Quickplay there the lack of coordination "benefits good" players", right ?

Edited by Alreech, 04 May 2020 - 09:11 AM.

[Magic Pain Glove]

I like the survey idea + ( number of matches ) requirement . But I doubt PGI will spend coding time implementing a polling system like that in game. Especially when we understand that it took for group queue to completely die out before their hand was forced to do something about it . And for Russ to play/watch a bit of WoT to get some ideas from other games ...

So , what would be the acceptable results for keeping vs reverting the changes ? 50 / 50 Would mean that you would still lose/displease a fairly sizable proportion of the playerbase over time. We also never got the same opportunity to vote for or against the 8v8 group queue system either.

50% of my group experience have been stomps ,I even posted footage of it . "Tightening up the tiers " , has improved the experience somewhat since I am not getting as many cadets as I did at the earlier stages of testing ( but with the broken tier system still in place this can only go so far ... ) . My average win loss ratio in game ( everyone can check on the leaderboard atm , even your Russ , even tho you dont understand why separating solo vs grouped WLR in your statistics matters much ) at the time of this comment has increased and is well over 5 . Unless I reluctantly start solo dropping again its probably gonna stay there as its relatively easy to wipe less coordinated groups even when pugs decide to do something dumb in the match .

I mean hell even NuttyRat ( nothing against you Nutty ) has over 5 WLR at the time of this comment . Yondu was dropping groups exclusively and at the time of this comment has 23 WL with 0 losses . Go watch his last stream and see how competitive the matches were . justcallmeASH would have had the same results if he didnt tell his unit mates to deliberately sync with him so they can fight each other. The truth is most of the matches WILL NOT BE contested without intentional syncdrops.

So the amount of stomps have increased and groups are controlling the stomps resulting in worse solo experience . Most of the groups are on discord and from what I see (from streams and in game ) rarely bother to coordinate with pugs . And in my experience , contested matches don't happen as often as simple one sided uncontested stomps. Once again it comes down to cost/benefit analysis .

Does PGI think they will retain / gain back more players with the current changes they are implementing ? Its indisputable that solo players are the majority in most games ( I can even link some stats , if someone wants to dispute this ) so I am not sure that removing the benefits of the solo queue are a good trade off in the long run. Considering that now we both have both higher tonnage and higher player skill mismatch , with the group queue ruleset in place when it comes to matchmaker . And to make matters worse without a proper group and player metrics in place to balance it out .

What makes me giggle is that players like me or ash and some others who can farm the queue quite casually with the current system in place who are also against the change ( worried about the solo experience ) are being attacked by people telling us we are "toxic comp players" who have "ulterior motives" and want to keep the fellow "cashuuuls" down . They even established a thing called "the cult of ASH" LMAO .

Second thing that makes me giggle is that some people think this is a "Casual" vs "Competitive" divide . Despite what they think some people in the "Competitive" community are quite happy with the Industrial Farming Simulator that's been put in place with the new merged queue system .

I am slowly becoming numb to the changes and if people are fine with industrialized agriculture and pre-determined matches , who am I to argue .

[Spare Knight]

Einherier96, on 04 May 2020 - 08:39 AM, said:

Newbies will get stomped anyways. they will get stomped by smurfs (or by casuals like me who hold their tier at 3 to be able to play with their friends once a year when i was able to push them over the trauma that is synch dropping), or they will get stomped when they die through to the higher tiers, cause the lower tiers, or former game experience teached them the wrong things (sniper mentalitiy for example).

So, how do you "hold your tier at 3" and how does that make you any different from smurfing? [Redacted]

[East Indy]

Played a little last night with the "tightened" matchmaker. I won't lie; it was enjoyable because my teams won most, and I was able to reach typical matchscores regardless of outcome.

That said, it was because I could leverage my ability -- and the match didn't feel predetermined due to imbalance -- that things felt better. Frankly, in several of the games if I didn't know the test was going on I'd have assumed players were sync-dropping. Felt closer to Solo. Not a bad thing.

[Nesutizale]

When I think about the gamer types of bartel....I doubt we can bring together the solo player who fall mostly into the "killer" and "archiver" type with the explorers and socials. They are on a bit of a different end of the spectrum, also no one is completly one or the other but that aside.

The more importend question would be, when we can't bring those two groups together, how could we improve group Q so much that the small groups will again find their way over there?

[Einherier96]

Magic Pain Glove, on 04 May 2020 - 09:00 AM, said:

I like the survey idea + ( number of matches ) requirement . But I doubt PGI will spend coding time implementing a polling system like that in game. Especially when we understand that it took for group queue to completely die out before their hand was forced to do something about it . And for Russ to play/watch a bit of WoT to get some ideas from other games ...

So , what would be the acceptable results for keeping vs reverting the changes ? 50 / 50 Would mean that you would still lose/displease a fairly sizable proportion of the playerbase over time. We also never got the same opportunity to vote for or against the 8v8 group queue system either.

50% of my group experience have been stomps ,I even posted footage of it . "Tightening up the tiers " , has improved the experience somewhat since I am not getting as many cadets as I did at the earlier stages of testing ( but with the broken tier system still in place this can only go so far ... ) . My average win loss ratio in game ( everyone can check on the leaderboard atm , even your Russ , even tho you dont understand why separating solo vs grouped WLR in your statistics matters much ) at the time of this comment has increased and is well over 5 . Unless I reluctantly start solo dropping again its probably gonna stay there as its relatively easy to wipe less coordinated groups even when pugs decide to do something dumb in the match .

I mean hell even NuttyRat ( nothing against you Nutty ) has over 5 WLR at the time of this comment . Yondu was dropping groups exclusively and at the time of this comment has 23 WL with 0 losses . Go watch his last stream and see how competitive the matches were . justcallmeASH would have had the same results if he didnt tell his unit mates to deliberately sync with him so they can fight each other. The truth is most of the matches WILL NOT BE contested without intentional syncdrops.

So the amount of stomps have increased and groups are controlling the stomps resulting in worse solo experience . Most of the groups are on discord and from what I see (from streams and in game ) rarely bother to coordinate with pugs . And in my experience , contested matches don't happen as often as simple one sided uncontested stomps. Once again it comes down to cost/benefit analysis .

Does PGI think they will retain / gain back more players with the current changes they are implementing ? Its indisputable that solo players are the majority in most games ( I can even link some stats , if someone wants to dispute this ) so I am not sure that removing the benefits of the solo queue are a good trade off in the long run. Considering that now we both have both higher tonnage and higher player skill mismatch , with the group queue ruleset in place when it comes to matchmaker . And to make matters worse without a proper group and player metrics in place to balance it out .

What makes me giggle is that players like me or ash and some others who can farm the queue quite casually with the current system in place who are also against the change ( worried about the solo experience ) are being attacked by people telling us we are "toxic comp players" who have "ulterior motives" and want to keep the fellow "cashuuuls" down . They even established a thing called "the cult of ASH" LMAO .

Second thing that makes me giggle is that some people think this is a "Casual" vs "Competitive" divide . Despite what they think some people in the "Competitive" community are quite happy with the Industrial Farming Simulator that's been put in place with the new merged queue system .

I am slowly becoming numb to the changes and if people are fine with industrialized agriculture and pre-determined matches , who am I to argue .

just out of pure curiosity. when do you think it will get boring for these people to easily stomp others? surely, some enjoy it, but i will play the wild guess that most people who are able to stomp a big portion of the community by themselves will be bored of not having a challenge after a while. you can only giggle so long before doing the same old comp stomp gets boring. trying to look at the start of a test of something and then declaring results is a pretty close minded mindset, don't you agree?

also, you are stuck in the same mindset as brauer. for some people it doesn't matter if they loose, the question is how we played in the match, how we loosed. I can loose all day long if i go out of the match in a blaze of glory (note, that does not mean that i need to have done extremly well, i would like to live up to my own standard in the round for sure, but i don't mind dying as a tanking shield for my teammates, only to see the push crumble hilariously because of whatever reason, or simply dying as one of the last ones tucked in a corner trying to take one of the enemies with me, or dying in a hilarious joke build that is somehow somewhat working or funny).
Not everyone is a achiever, you should try to broaden your horizon a bit.