1579 replies to this topic

[Dionnsai]

Nearly Dead, on 10 May 2020 - 06:44 AM, said:

Why don't they just make group queue 4 v 4 and give each team 8 vinyl blow up doll mechs so they have something to stomp?

Because the vinyl blow up dolls wouldn't just mindlessly Nascar?

DAEDALOS513, on 12 May 2020 - 09:26 AM, said:

Sounds good.. any theory why they haven't broached the subject over the years?

Imagine the anger when most of the Tier 1 pilots realize they barely have the skill to stay in Tier 3-4?

[DAEDALOS513]

Dionnsai, on 12 May 2020 - 09:32 AM, said:

Because the vinyl blow up dolls wouldn't just mindlessly Nascar?



Imagine the anger when most of the Tier 1 pilots realize they barely have the skill to stay in Tier 3-4?

Making tier 1 hard to achieve would actually give some purpose to the game.. a reason to grind.. something this game lacks.

[Knight Captain Morgan]

4 weeks = 28 days. It is day 15, so past the half way mark for conventional math or only 3% complete according to Russ math.

Edited by Knight Captain Morgan, 12 May 2020 - 09:42 AM.

[Dionnsai]

DAEDALOS513, on 12 May 2020 - 09:34 AM, said:

Making tier 1 hard to achieve would actually give some purpose to the game.. a reason to grind.. something this game lacks.

While I sort of agree with the point you're trying to make, the whole point is that it shouldn't be something you can "grind".

Tiers should be only a measure of player ability. Currently you can do exactly that though, grind your way to tier 1. If it was a measure of pilot skill, you would never be able to just grind your way to the top, you would have to actually learn how to play better.

[wasder undapants]

Dionnsai, on 12 May 2020 - 09:32 AM, said:

Imagine the anger when most of the Tier 1 pilots realize they barely have the skill to stay in Tier 3-4?

Yep, thats probably me but I think this is what we need. Surely any arguments over a tier reset just mean pilots are scared that they may actually have to play against their own skill level for once... Scary thought eh?

[Excessive Paranoia]

I've been trying to give the new queue a chance and playing a few matches over the last couple of days. My experience so far is abysmal...

- Out of ~10 matches 90% were 12-4 stomps or worse
- Tonnage balancing still doesn't appear to exist
- Tier balancing still doesn't appear to exist
- Match quality is still FUBAR
- Most of the better groups try to communicate, but because its a solo queue mentality still, most people don't listen and Nascar anyway
- The only pro is that matches fired off almost instantly

I think I'll stop trying to give the system the benefit of the doubt and just hope that it gets rolled back at the end of the test, or at the very least that PGI realize that if they want to do this, they have to do it the correct way by addressing real balancing with the MM. I honestly could care less if matches take 1-3 min to get into if the matches are balanced and enjoyable. Instant matches don't amount to anything if they end just as quickly as they begin because of drastic imbalances.

On a side note, I've experienced a new side effect of this system... When a group decides they don't like the map / mode, they quit together. I just had a conquest match on polar (yes its a terrible combination, but it is what it is) and the group on our team, which consisted of two Atlas and a misc mech I didn't pay attention to, all quit at the beginning, leaving us 3 down from the beginning of the match. Had this been a solo queue match, one of them might still have quit, but likely the others wouldn't have dropped out since they'd have had no association.

EDIT / PS: BTW, GG PGI... I was one one the people who might have actually spent some money on MC had this not been shoved down my throat. I was excited to return to the game last month after years away and there are a number of hero mechs I would have been interested in getting, but there is a 0% chance that I'm going to invest more money into the game if I don't have a reasonable expectation of decent match quality.

Edited by Excessive Paranoia, 12 May 2020 - 04:52 PM.

[50 50]

I'm enjoying the change either grouped up or running solo.
It's simply nice to play a game that I have enjoyed for 5+ years.

Personally I might ask to further test the group and team options on different tonnages or go back to using the 3/3/3/3 weight class restrictions.
I do not believe we need to limit the group sizes further but applying a 1/1/1/1 limitation to the group to fit within the 3/3/3/3 would shake it up a bit and force both diversity and equal mech weight classes on both teams.
We needed the group tonnage for group queue as it was impossible to fit groups of different sizes and use the 3/3/3/3 to build a team.
With a merge, this should no longer be necessary as the combination of solo players with the group make it a lot easier to build the team.
Would like to ask if we could at least test this out.

There has been plenty of suggestions on the matching of players by tier/PSR.
We do need something done here not only in creating that separation so that we don't see matches including both tier 5s and tier 1s but also changing the calculation on how we gain and more importantly lose ranks.
Firstly need to remove the bonus for if the team wins, leave it purely based on personal achievement and effectiveness.
Also make sure that the calculation brackets for losing tier are the equivalent of the gain.
We should not be able to have 10, 20, 30 games in a row where we perform well under the rest of the players in those matches and not lose points in our tier.
We then need time to let this settle.

[Nearly Dead]

Me too. Garage needs cleaned out because Lowes is delivering a new workbench Tuesday. Time I stopped wasting time on gaming.

[Horseman]

DAEDALOS513, on 12 May 2020 - 09:26 AM, said:

Sounds good.. any theory why they haven't broached the subject over the years?

Actually, yes - way back at the very beginning they proclaimed PSR did exactly what is intended, by separating the beginners from more experienced pilots and that it was intended to have all pilots eventually float to Tier 1.
Now they get to see the long-term consequences, and those ain't pretty.

[MeanMachinE]

Anomalocaris, on 11 May 2020 - 04:17 AM, said:

TBH, a lot of the positive comments about subjective match quality are coming from folks whose knowledge of the game is still a little, shall we say, undercooked?

I must say that this certainly does not hold water. I could basically argue the same about those who don't like the change. And fortunately it seems that there is only a small minority against the change.

Before the queue change the solo matches were 99% nascar. If you did not bring a fast brawler to a match, you most likely were preparing for a loss. That was the only way a player could basically make any impact on the team performance in a match as a whole. It was really tiresome to level up mechs in QP when all games were basically the same. Now at least the tactics are more flexible and you can play with many different mechs and builds and still have decent matches. Sure one person cannot affect the outcome of a match too much, but that situation has not changed, and it should not. Teamplay for the win

This game has many niche pockets to understand. All these pockets have basically their own meta's and tactics. Merging the solo and group QP metas has really made a good change in refreshing the QP meta. PGI has done this many times with different changes in the past already, which has it's pros and cons. By now most of us have become accustomed that things will change. For once the change is for the better, which I am really glad. That is also the reason I want to come to the forums to comment this change as a positive thing, which I have not usually not been able to do. The worst change in my opinion happened when the skill tree was introduced and engine decoupling happened. Before that the game balance was pretty much perfect.

As a last note, it seems that behind most of the commenting is (again) the broken matchmaker. I am not getting my hopes up that they would do anything to it. If they do, I would hope that they would help the new players so that they could learn the basics before being matched against the veterans. Not sure if this changes that much as many play with alternate accounts, but it would not hurt.

[Rioting Baboon]

Dear Paul and PGI team

First off, THANK YOU! My brother and I have started playing again, simply because we can now drop as a group.

I have tried the group queue dropping with friends and I've also played solo as a rando. Personally, I think you are making the right decision here in combining the queue.

I play this game mainly to play with my brother and with friends I've made whilst playing this game.

It sucked that we had to roll the dice on sync drops and often end up on opposite teams or in different lances. Thank you for making it so that we could play together in a group.

We (my brother and I) gave faction warfare a try and we did pretty ok there too either as a rando group of 2 (more often) or joining a larger team of players (when we got the chance). We found Faction Play quite stressful and not something that could be done regularly whenever we played. Some days we just wanted to kick back and quickplay and the sync drops were ruining the fun of that.

We both still do play the game separately in the solo queue. We both agree that we haven't noticed a significant change in how quickplay is done. Yes, sometimes we come upon a well coordinated team, but the truth is, the chances of running into a team like that were still quite high when the group queue was separate.

We're here to cheer you on. We hope you guys keep this change and make minor tweaks to it based on the data you harvest from this trial. You guys probably see a bigger picture than what my brother and I do but we do hope you keep this.

Once again, THANK YOU!

[Nearly Dead]

From what I see it comes down to this.

Combine the queues or close the doors because of too few players to support solo and group queues.

Combining the queues pleases some players and displeases some players. It sounds like more group queue players approve of the change. I am uncertain about the solo queue players but I as a solo pug hate it most of the time and can tolerate it in limited amounts.

If any large number of players leave you are back at square one, not enough players to support even one queue.

So, it would seem to me that investing in some work to make the present combined queue better for everyone would be a good investment.

Balance the actual skill of the players and put the mechs back in some reasonable balance.

[The Teddy Bear]

I would assume, every time you drop solo you will get yourself in a bad position every time you click the play button.

[Anomalocaris]

MeanMachinE, on 13 May 2020 - 03:31 AM, said:

I must say that this certainly does not hold water. I could basically argue the same about those who don't like the change. And fortunately it seems that there is only a small minority against the change.

Before the queue change the solo matches were 99% nascar. If you did not bring a fast brawler to a match, you most likely were preparing for a loss.

You couldn't be more wrong. Huge number of comments unhappy with this change. And claiming matches are 99% NASCAR is completely unsupported. And brawling was not the meta before the merge unless you'd like to present some evidence of such. I'll be waiting.

[50 50]

Anomalocaris, on 13 May 2020 - 02:43 PM, said:

You couldn't be more wrong. Huge number of comments unhappy with this change. And claiming matches are 99% NASCAR is completely unsupported. And brawling was not the meta before the merge unless you'd like to present some evidence of such. I'll be waiting.

You would have to say that prior to the merge we had a steady stream of threads about NASCAR.

[Anomalocaris]

50 50, on 13 May 2020 - 02:54 PM, said:

You would have to say that prior to the merge we had a steady stream of threads about NASCAR.

Doesn't mean it happened in 99% of games. A statement like that is so wrong that to call it hyperbole would be understating it IMO. I still see plenty of slow assault pilots complaining about NASCAR, but usually when I see that in game, it's because they don't know where the W key is. Watch any good player in an Assault, even a 48kph build, and you'll typically find them at the front of any push (NASCAR or not).

NASCAR is a thing, but it is not an every match thing. Not even close. Simply selecting Conquest (not my favorite mode, but used as an example) tends to curtail NASCAR if its going to happen, if that's your concern.

Edited by Anomalocaris, 13 May 2020 - 03:01 PM.

[Excessive Paranoia]

Nearly Dead, on 13 May 2020 - 01:46 PM, said:

From what I see it comes down to this.

Combine the queues or close the doors because of too few players to support solo and group queues.

Combining the queues pleases some players and displeases some players. It sounds like more group queue players approve of the change. I am uncertain about the solo queue players but I as a solo pug hate it most of the time and can tolerate it in limited amounts.

If any large number of players leave you are back at square one, not enough players to support even one queue.

So, it would seem to me that investing in some work to make the present combined queue better for everyone would be a good investment.

Balance the actual skill of the players and put the mechs back in some reasonable balance.

One place where you're wrong is that there weren't enough players to support the solo queue. I only recently came back to the game after years away, but in the 2ish weeks I played prior to the test, I was getting solo queue matches at all hours of the day within a couple of minutes. The test is not about trying to bolster the solo queue population, but rather trying to find a way to include groups in the game again because the group queue is dead. Predictably, yes, people who play in groups love the idea as it not only gives them a chance to drop regularly with their friends, but because of the way groups function, also gives them a chance to be the masters of the battlefield instead of just another solo pleb. The problem is that this all comes at the expense of the solo queue experience. Sure there are a few isolated voices claiming to be solo players who are happy about the change, but it seems like the vast majority of the complaints are coming from solo players like myself who don't play with a group and therefore only stand to suffer from the change.

I'm still predicting that if this is made permanent without substantial changes to the matchmaker and PSR system, the merge is going to lead to the exodus of many, many solo queue players. I'm also not holding my breath that these changes are in the cards at all... Its pretty clear that PGI will only put time and effort into MWO if they absolutely have to, and rewriting the PSR system and MM are just too large of tasks to justify in the current state of the game. Most likely what we'll see is PGI claiming the test was a resounding success because matches happened faster and groups can finally play again, and what we have right now will be made permanent without any substantial changes. Basically, if you aren't happy with the game as it is right now, there is a solid chance that you'll never be happy with it again...

Edited by Excessive Paranoia, 13 May 2020 - 04:55 PM.

[DAEDALOS513]

Anomalocaris, on 13 May 2020 - 03:01 PM, said:

Doesn't mean it happened in 99% of games. A statement like that is so wrong that to call it hyperbole would be understating it IMO. I still see plenty of slow assault pilots complaining about NASCAR, but usually when I see that in game, it's because they don't know where the W key is. Watch any good player in an Assault, even a 48kph build, and you'll typically find them at the front of any push (NASCAR or not).

NASCAR is a thing, but it is not an every match thing. Not even close. Simply selecting Conquest (not my favorite mode, but used as an example) tends to curtail NASCAR if its going to happen, if that's your concern.

Nascar happened a lot more before, now it happens a lot less.. is that acceptable for you?

[John Bronco]

If Nascar happened 90% of the time before, it seems about 75% now. So slightly better.

[Brauer]

BlaizerP, on 13 May 2020 - 07:48 PM, said:

If Nascar happened 90% of the time before, it seems about 75% now. So slightly better.

I see attempted Nascar pretty much every game now. The difference is a group can take a power position and murder the opposition on their first lap around the track.