1579 replies to this topic

[Anomalocaris]

DAEDALOS513, on 19 May 2020 - 01:04 PM, said:

I quit the game way longer than 6 months.. i did log in on occasion to say what's up to friends but never played.. i tried dropping once or twice during that time to see how my non-gaming rig would do but it was unplayable.. I also may have logged in once at my brothers house.. hardly statistically significant.. the only thing you keep proving with your stats is how flawed and unreliable they are.. in every instance..but you can keep trying..

Yeah, ok, PGI is just making up those 245 games you played in September 2019 then (season 38), or that you started playing again in March (season 44).

I mean there's lots of stuff to legitimately argue but why do people pretend their stats are not their stats?

[Excessive Paranoia]

DAEDALOS513, on 19 May 2020 - 12:52 PM, said:

You are hardly the only one enjoying it. It's just that those the majority of those that come here and post their approval are never heard from again.. there are however a handful that are flooding the thread over and over, and over again, with their dissaproval of the change.. so to a casual passerby you would think you were the only one enjoying yourself.. you're not.

And just as many, if not more, people who haven't liked it have stopped by to voice their disapproval and then are never heard from again. That's just the nature of the forums... there are ~14,500 players, but only a small percentage of those ever post on the forums, and an even smaller percentage of the ones on the forum have been highly active on this thread. Heck, many people who have played the game for years have never even bothered to look at the forums more than a handful of times. As such, the conversation here can't be considered a representative sample in any way, which is unfortunate as this is exactly the kind of conversation that needs as many people as possible to voice their opinions.

[DAEDALOS513]

Anomalocaris, on 19 May 2020 - 04:10 PM, said:

Yeah, ok, PGI is just making up those 245 games you played in September 2019 then (season 38), or that you started playing again in March (season 44).

I mean there's lots of stuff to legitimately argue but why do people pretend their stats are not their stats?

Really? It honestly felt like i was away for way longer than that.. shows how much i love this 'damned' game I guess Does that include faction matches?

Excessive Paranoia, on 19 May 2020 - 04:16 PM, said:

And just as many, if not more, people who haven't liked it have stopped by to voice their disapproval and then are never heard from again. That's just the nature of the forums... there are ~14,500 players, but only a small percentage of those ever post on the forums, and an even smaller percentage of the ones on the forum have been highly active on this thread. Heck, many people who have played the game for years have never even bothered to look at the forums more than a handful of times. As such, the conversation here can't be considered a representative sample in any way, which is unfortunate as this is exactly the kind of conversation that needs as many people as possible to voice their opinions.

Then we'll have to take a look at steam charts for the last 3 months.. they are still on the rise.. a good sign so far, no?
https://steamcharts.com/app/342200#3m

Edited by DAEDALOS513, 19 May 2020 - 04:20 PM.

[Excessive Paranoia]

Anomalocaris, on 19 May 2020 - 04:10 PM, said:

Yeah, ok, PGI is just making up those 245 games you played in September 2019 then (season 38), or that you started playing again in March (season 44).

I mean there's lots of stuff to legitimately argue but why do people pretend their stats are not their stats?

They want you not to believe your lying eyes...

[Excessive Paranoia]

DAEDALOS513, on 19 May 2020 - 04:19 PM, said:

Really? It honestly felt like i was away for way longer than that.. shows how much i love this 'damned' game I guess


Then we'll have to take a look at steam charts for the last 3 months.. they are still on the rise.. a good sign so far, no?
https://steamcharts.com/app/342200#3m

What that shows me pretty clearly is that there was a background increase already going on for months prior to the test's implementation. It also shows that the background increase was in decline already when the patch dropped at the end of April. The fact that the last 30 days has the lowest increase of the past 3 months is pretty indicative of the fact that merging the queues did not actually bring that many people back into the game that weren't already coming into the game because of the current world situation. Had people been coming back because of the merge, you'd have expected the last 30 days to have an larger increase than either April or March.

What this also shows is that the numbers are in decline again. The first two weekends of the test did indeed have the highest concurrent player counts that the game had seen in almost a full year, but the third weekend of the test is back in line with the pre-merge numbers seen during the last event weekend on April 18th. Only time will tell which trend will continue, though I have a suspicion the factors in the world that were causing the upward trend over the last few months are starting to fade (lockdowns are being relaxed / lifted, people are going back to work, etc), which means that the overall trend will return to negative values sooner rather than later. The point though is that the merge doesn't seem to have made a lasting positive impact above the background increase that was already going on, and if people like Anomalocaris and I are correct, when we do return to declining numbers, the decline will be far faster if we have a merged queue than if we had a real solo queue.

[Anomalocaris]

Excessive Paranoia, on 19 May 2020 - 04:16 PM, said:

And just as many, if not more, people who haven't liked it have stopped by to voice their disapproval and then are never heard from again. That's just the nature of the forums... there are ~14,500 players, but only a small percentage of those ever post on the forums, and an even smaller percentage of the ones on the forum have been highly active on this thread. Heck, many people who have played the game for years have never even bothered to look at the forums more than a handful of times. As such, the conversation here can't be considered a representative sample in any way, which is unfortunate as this is exactly the kind of conversation that needs as many people as possible to voice their opinions.

And strangely enough, there are a lot of high level players who really opposed the merge who during the first week suddenly couldn't post here anymore. Very strange that. Didn't say anything mean or nasty AFAICT. Just suddenly stopped posting. Might have to go over to Reddit to find out why.

[Anomalocaris]

DAEDALOS513, on 19 May 2020 - 04:19 PM, said:

Really? It honestly felt like i was away for way longer than that.. shows how much i love this 'damned' game I guess Does that include faction matches?


Then we'll have to take a look at steam charts for the last 3 months.. they are still on the rise.. a good sign so far, no?
https://steamcharts.com/app/342200#3m

Does not include faction matches. Only group or solo play, as it has been forever AFAIK.

We can agree that rising player numbers is a good thing. Where we probably disagree is the why and how of it. Excessive Paranoia has done a good job with providing the basics of it. And we are trending down since the peak. Player numbers saw a nice jump when the merge queue went into effect. They trended up even higher the week after. Now we're back down where they were the first week during peak hours, and we're down to pre-merge levels during off-peak hours. Compared to the last pre-merge event weekend (4-18/19) peak numbers this last weekend were only up 2% on Saturday and 6% on Sunday.

Furthermore, if you look at average player numbers for the last 30 days we went as high as 520 a few days ago and now we're back down to 515, even though we are now getting rid of the lower numbers from early April in the rolling average. I suspect we'll be back to about 500 within the week, which is a 10% gain over last month, compared to the 21 and 19% gains we saw the previous months.

As a side bet, I'm also going to wager that PGI will run another event this week to try and juice participation numbers even further, but people are probably burned out by now.

[50 50]

Excessive Paranoia, on 19 May 2020 - 06:13 AM, said:

I think you've just put to words probably one of the most important points of this whole discussion... The solo queue is the last mode still populated enough to keep the game afloat... More importantly though, it was always going to be the last mode with a population because its the mode people have preferred from the beginning. Per PGI's own stats from all the way back in 2014, only 16% of all drops were groups.

Unfortunately so.
We might question why it was split in the first place if the % was so low and what other option might have worked better.
Perhaps we may still get that option now it's being revisited.

Excessive Paranoia, on 19 May 2020 - 06:13 AM, said:

I don't think we can say for sure without more data from PGI, but I do think its a safe bet that proportion only ever went down from that point. There might have been a bump after the Steam launch, but lets face it, group queue has been dead for years... Even before I left in 2017 you didn't stand much of a chance of getting matches quickly unless you were a 12-man and that often meant running into an opposing 12-man of comp players.

The decline in the player base, likely brought on by some of the changes that we have now adapted to (engine desync, skill tree etc), really made it difficult to get games and it becomes a self perpetuating problem.
You can't get a game so you play something else. The less people play the harder it gets to have a game and the more you play something else.
This lead to the situation of not bothering to launch in the queue unless you could get a 12 player group together or close to that. Getting a large enough group together is a lot easier for the units as that association has already been made.
To say they are 'comp groups' is not a good or accurate term to use.

Excessive Paranoia, on 19 May 2020 - 06:13 AM, said:

Fast forward to now and PGI have actually decided the best possible thing they could do for the game is to force group play into the last place people actually play the game. PGI's own statistics show that people in the solo queue have always been there primarily by choice, and now they're literally losing that choice. And what are people going to do when they lose the option to play solo queue for real... Choose to leave...

If the population was still expanding then it might have been a better option to allow the solo players to 'opt in' to the group queue as many have suggested.
At this stage though and given the age of the game, it's not a practical option.

Personally I don't see having small groups in the matches as the problem and we should not deny players of any level from being able to create a group.
The argument on allowing new players into the same match with veterans is a more pressing point along with a better PSR system.
It's just as important that a group of new tier 5 players be allowed to create their own group to play the game together with unskilled mechs etc.
But they should not be put into a match against a team that contains a group of players on completely the opposite side of the spectrum.
That is not a problem with having groups in the queue.

Excessive Paranoia, on 19 May 2020 - 06:13 AM, said:

Here's a thought btw... if groups want to play with each other so badly, but there aren't enough people dropping in that queue to even make an 8v8 work (BTW this is something that should have given PGI all the information they ever needed as to just how many people actually play group queue compared to how many people choose solo queue), then give groups a 4v4 mode to play. Anyone who's happy with the 4v4 +16 we have now should be perfectly happy trimming away all the dead weight complicating their play, and the not so great players who want to group, well... I'm sorry, but the solo queue shouldn't have to take a quad-ppc to the face just so you don't have to face comp lances in group queue...

EDIT/PS: If there aren't even enough people to make a 4v4 work, then really, all it shows is that PGI is willing to torch their own player base so that something like 1% of players can "play with their buddies"...

If it was only 16% of the player base, how was it ever going to be maintained?
We have to also add to that the fact that we ended up with 3 regional servers and allowed players to deselect which ones they wanted. This further divided the population.
Faction play, with scouting mode created 2 extra queues.
Solaris added 14.
This might have been sustainable if the population was increasing but sadly it's not.
Nor did those queues offer enough of a difference either in terms of depth or gameplay to really build the population on.
It is a shame to say that faction play has actually lost depth and function and while I appreciate the efforts from the staff at PGI to write those little stories to give a reason for the conflicts, overall the mode has shrunk to a fraction of it's earlier function.

Horseman, on 19 May 2020 - 08:46 AM, said:

It was a 4v4 mode that was rather more involved - and more unique - than just "blow up the other side" or "take and hold a pre-determined position".
I still remember those last-second hunts for the drop zone (or rushing for the DZ because your team got the objective but you're the last survivor). Good times.

If there was a queue for 4v4s, Scouting would be a shoe-in. Hell, with small teams even bloody Escort might actually make sense (both sides having less map control and less firepower to just delete the VIP with)

I queried a while back why we had scouting mode with only the one mission..... scouting.
Faction Play managed to expand from just Siege to include the other missions, though perhaps they needed special adaptations to make them fit better. For example: Incursion looked great on the surface but we quickly found flaws.
I too also queried what Escort mode might have been like in a 4v4 or even 8v8.
Sadly, we didn't get that chance except for private lobby perhaps? But did anyone ever try it?

I am completely against any sort of additional queues being added to the game, but completely support a change that allowed variable team sizes within the one queue.

Let's put it this way.
Whenever there is a restriction placed on the queue we see an increase in wait times and that has really been the goal of this merge.
To alleviate this you need one or both of either:
+ A greater number of players participating.
+ Something that counter acts the restriction.

So right at the moment, allowing small groups (and the max group size of 4 is good in my opinion. Single lance, single dropship etc. This has condensed 2 queues into one making it attractive for new and old players alike and has brought some players back to the game. Therefore:
+ Greater number of players in a single queue positively affects wait times.

However we can agree that we have a problem with the match maker putting new players in matches against vets.
The PSR issue. We can agree that something needs to be done here.
- Applying restrictions on the match maker to separate players according to skill negatively affects wait times.

We could remove the regional servers to return just to the NA server. The reason for this is that players can deselect a server which has created a way for players to divide themselves hurting their wait times in the process.
+ More players in the one spot improves wait times.

We could look at allowing matches with smaller teams in the one queue. Have long argued this point and don't know why it hasn't been talked about more.
That is:
1 Change the match maker to put a match together ever minute like it does in Faction Play.
2 Have the match make initially try and create a match of 12v12.
3 If a 12v12 is not possible, have the match maker try to create a match of 8v8.
4 If an 8v8 is not possible, have the match maker try to create a match of 4v4.
5 If a 4v4 is not possible, wait 1 minute and try again.
A couple of extra features would be good to go along with this. ie. How many people are in the queue, the team weight restrictions allowing 3/3/3/3 for a 12 player team, 2/2/2/2 for 8 player and 1/1/1/1 for 4 players. Keep the group limit of 4 and apply that 1/1/1/1 to the group.
Worry about map and mission selection options or any tweaks on mission variables later.
+ The game can support smaller numbers of players at any one point in time and still put them into a match. A positive for wait time and a positive for match variety.

To me, this is the single biggest thing that could be done for the game that would have a significant impact on wait times that could also work with other restrictions that may be needed.

[DAEDALOS513]

Excessive Paranoia, on 19 May 2020 - 04:41 PM, said:

What that shows me pretty clearly is that there was a background increase already going on for months prior to the test's implementation. It also shows that the background increase was in decline already when the patch dropped at the end of April. The fact that the last 30 days has the lowest increase of the past 3 months is pretty indicative of the fact that merging the queues did not actually bring that many people back into the game that weren't already coming into the game because of the current world situation. Had people been coming back because of the merge, you'd have expected the last 30 days to have an larger increase than either April or March.

What this also shows is that the numbers are in decline again. The first two weekends of the test did indeed have the highest concurrent player counts that the game had seen in almost a full year, but the third weekend of the test is back in line with the pre-merge numbers seen during the last event weekend on April 18th. Only time will tell which trend will continue, though I have a suspicion the factors in the world that were causing the upward trend over the last few months are starting to fade (lockdowns are being relaxed / lifted, people are going back to work, etc), which means that the overall trend will return to negative values sooner rather than later. The point though is that the merge doesn't seem to have made a lasting positive impact above the background increase that was already going on, and if people like Anomalocaris and I are correct, when we do return to declining numbers, the decline will be far faster if we have a merged queue than if we had a real solo queue.

The slope going up means population is steadily rising .. ie. current population is more than Aprils'; Aprils' is more than March's, etc..

[Anomalocaris]

50 50, on 19 May 2020 - 05:23 PM, said:

Personally I don't see having small groups in the matches as the problem and we should not deny players of any level from being able to create a group.
The argument on allowing new players into the same match with veterans is a more pressing point along with a better PSR system.
It's just as important that a group of new tier 5 players be allowed to create their own group to play the game together with unskilled mechs etc.
But they should not be put into a match against a team that contains a group of players on completely the opposite side of the spectrum.
That is not a problem with having groups in the queue.

Well, in reality, it is a problem with having groups in solo.

Let's try and agree on a point here first - Russ has said repeatedly that changing the PSR system really isn't in the cards in the foreseeable future. And Paul seems to love the damn thing because, hey, if it's your kid it ain't ugly, no matter how repulsive the little bugger is. Normally you just shrug your shoulders and walk away, but this kid is breaking all the mirrors here!!

Given that we will not get any sort of skill based ranking and an associated matchmaker, what are we left with?

Well, basically we're talking about random matchmaking. Simply take the first 24 players you find and drop them in a match. Sometimes you'll get 2-3 good guys on one team, sometimes they'll be split, but it's probably all we have left. We saw what happened post merge when all matchmaking restrictions were off. Short waits, but weird matches. We can return to tonnage matching and excluding newbies for a short period of time, but that's about it. It would be nice if they would at least divide the players up by avg match score or WLR, but I don't think even that's on the table.

So if we're doing a random matchmaker, then groups are absolutely the worst thing you can throw into the mix. Why? Because groups are not random. In fact, they tend to be the very opposite. Whether its a group of potatoes dropping in lore builds or a group of world champion comp teammates in full meta, we are skewing the randomness in one direction of the other. The lore potatoes hurt their team more than they would if dropped randomly into the mix. And the meta comps help their team disproportionately in the opposite direction.

At least in WOT and WOW (not that I think they have a great matchmaker, but Russ seems enamored with them) the teams are matched by ship class and level, so there is not an equipment discrepancy. In MWO, we don't even have that.

You can't expect a random matchmaker to work if you allow a non-random element to game the system (I say game as a way of saying breaking the mm protocols, rather than taking advantage of loopholes to benefit since guys like the lore potatoes really aren't benefitting....).

TL:DR - If you believe Russ and Paul, we will never get anything better than a random matchmaker, perhaps with tonnage/class matching. I tend to take people at their word when they tell me they're going to make a big mistake (hey y'all, watch this) so I'll believe what they've told us. If this is true, you'll never get any sort of balance by mixing groups and random solos. The matchmaking will gravitate toward domination (good or bad) by the fundamental abilities of the groups involved. This is a recipe for solo player disengagement and departure.

[Excessive Paranoia]

DAEDALOS513, on 19 May 2020 - 05:30 PM, said:

The slope going up means population is steadily rising .. ie. current population is more than Aprils'; Aprils' is more than March's, etc..

Yes, April's was more than March and so on, but that increase was slowing down already prior to the test. It appears to have peaked an is now at least flat, if not in decline. In fact, according to steam charts, the net peak player growth between April 18th and May 15th is only 17 in total. From what this data shows, the gradual increase from the preceding months appears to have fallen off completely, and that, while there was a big bump in the first weeks of the test, player numbers for the last 30 days are actually flat, or even beginning to decline off of the peak.

[50 50]

@Anomalocaris
It's a bit of a chicken vs the egg thing really isn't it.

I find it a ridiculous stance to take that the PSR/tier system can't be changed. A completely re-write and overhaul is probably not a practical thing to consider, but surely just a few tweaks to the existing thing is not that hard. We have to push for this.

However, as you are pointing out, having a completely random match maker means we can get high level players in the same match as the new ones and if they are in a group, you do get these one sided matches. That has certainly been shown by numerous players and it's not good for the game.

That suggest that with a working match maker/PSR that small groups in the queue is good. So the real crunch point is still around the match maker or lack of one. A problem that has been with us for many years now.

This little diagram was brought up in the other thread. Kudos to Tarl.

Tarl Cabot, on 19 May 2020 - 03:18 PM, said:

As for tier movement which uses PSR thresholds based on Matchscore, this is what it looks like. Nor since its inception PGI has yet to fiddle with it even a little bit. How blind can they be?

At a basic level this is probably an IF, THEN, ELSE statement in the code.
IF your team wins.
THEN Check Match Score.
IF Match score >= X AND =< Y THEN Adjust Tier

etc.

Personally I'd remove the difference between your team winning and losing and base the result only on individual performance then make it just as easy to lose tier as gain it with a middle ground to plateau.
That may not be the most ideal way to deal with it but surely it's just giving the kid a haircut and cleaning them up.

Otherwise, what's the alternative.
Remove the groups again?

We don't have the population to support the separate queue 24/7 anymore.
I'd argue that we don't have enough to support a pure solo queue 24/7 anymore.

[Anomalocaris]

50 50, on 19 May 2020 - 06:24 PM, said:

@Anomalocaris
It's a bit of a chicken vs the egg thing really isn't it.

Personally I'd remove the difference between your team winning and losing and base the result only on individual performance then make it just as easy to lose tier as gain it with a middle ground to plateau.
That may not be the most ideal way to deal with it but surely it's just giving the kid a haircut and cleaning them up.

Otherwise, what's the alternative.
Remove the groups again?

We don't have the population to support the separate queue 24/7 anymore.
I'd argue that we don't have enough to support a pure solo queue 24/7 anymore.

We agree that PSR and matchmaking are broken. But here's the rub, we (the player population) have been asking for an improvement in ranking and matchmaking balance forever. People have put together detailed proposals for reworking the MM. People have offered simple steps to improve things with minor, easy to make changes one at a time. A lot of the ideas are really good, logical and shouldn't take much programming at all. Yet, after all this time, the only response we get other than being completely ignored, is "it isn't in the cards".

We simply won't get it. Look at how Russ and Paul handled the merge. It was billed as an experiment. Do you believe that now? Given what we've seen from Russ on twitter as well as Paul's minor tweaks 3-4 days in, and absolutely nothing since then? These guys have a very low standard for "good enough" when it comes to work product.

As I see it, solo queue was the only queue left that could support its own weight. The 8v8 experiment did ok and FW has its moments. But merging the 2 queues really didn't make much sense unless you felt that the group queue was a critical component for player participation - a conclusion I assert is farcical on its face since on one was playing it anyway prior to the 8v8 revision.

If there is to be no improvement in player ranking and matchmaking (and I assert that Russ and Paul have been quite clear there won't be), then unmerging the queue is about the only option we have left. At a minimum you would need to drop it to 2 person groups only with a tonnage limit to restrict the amount of match breaking elements into the matchmaker. But I'm not sure even that would do any good. That Russ and Paul felt that queue time was the most important thing in this merge and then proceeded to turn off all tonnage and tier functions to game that was pretty ridiculous too.

[DAEDALOS513]

Excessive Paranoia, on 19 May 2020 - 05:57 PM, said:

Yes, April's was more than March and so on, but that increase was slowing down already prior to the test. It appears to have peaked an is now at least flat, if not in decline. In fact, according to steam charts, the net peak player growth between April 18th and May 15th is only 17 in total. From what this data shows, the gradual increase from the preceding months appears to have fallen off completely, and that, while there was a big bump in the first weeks of the test, player numbers for the last 30 days are actually flat, or even beginning to decline off of the peak.

I respect your detailed analyses of the chart but I like to keep things simple and just go on a month by month basis.. anything less and your guess is as good as mine as to why it's gone down a bit.. it could be that we haven't had an event in a while.. players need something to grind ALWAYS.. once they add an event it will get back on track I hope.. I'm truly saddened they didn't tweak anything for this past patch and I'm sure the chart will take a hit because of it.

Edited by DAEDALOS513, 19 May 2020 - 06:48 PM.

[50 50]

Damned if we do.
Damned if we don't.

Hello rock, meet hard place.
Hard place, this is rock.

[FRAGTAST1C]

DAEDALOS513, on 19 May 2020 - 12:57 PM, said:

To my eyes 5% is statistically insignificant especially when you consider drops are virtually instant.

Again, nobody cares about personal experience and our bad-data-taking-devices a.k.a "eyes". There are hours and hours and hours of actual footage from Twitch streams to gloss over and recognize that the stomps have increased. 3%, 4%, 5% from already a stompy environment is a significant amount. It's basic maths and logic that are completely unbiased.

[Kano111]

Noob here since about a month ago. Really enjoying it and want to get better at it. I have played about 120 quick matches and actually don't know what it was like before this matchmaking setup so I thought I would share a few thoughts. Most matches are one of these:

• Matches where there are definitely some team players involved, I listen to their comms and follow along to support them. Usually this results in a "stomp" and I feel great and get rewarded for playing on a winning team. I usually play pretty well too.

• Random mix, no comms and we get stomped, I will usually get left on an island, killed because the lance doesn't stick together and I have no idea who to follow along with. This results in a poor reward and wondering wtf just happened even if I am one of the last to go down and one the most damage dealing mechs in the squad I don't get much reward for playing reasonably well on a poor team.

As a new player, MWO seems like my perfect game, but the gap between experienced players and noobs is quite noticeable. I wonder is the random matchmaking helping to keep new players interested? I have had days where I am on the side for multiple games that gets stomped and I feel like there was zero chance of victory. Kind of like A grade players playing D grade in a basketball match or something.

Anyway, I enjoy it regardless.

[w4ldO]

50 50, on 19 May 2020 - 06:24 PM, said:

I find it a ridiculous stance to take that the PSR/tier system can't be changed. A completely re-write and overhaul is probably not a practical thing to consider, but surely just a few tweaks to the existing thing is not that hard. We have to push for this.

i'll lean myself out of the window here and say with my very very veeeery limited coding experience even i would be able to change the PSR mess from having ALL the problems into something that has only one problem.
depending on how spaghetti the code really is it would be a 15-30 minute coding endeavour.

[Excessive Paranoia]

50 50, on 19 May 2020 - 06:24 PM, said:

I find it a ridiculous stance to take that the PSR/tier system can't be changed. A completely re-write and overhaul is probably not a practical thing to consider, but surely just a few tweaks to the existing thing is not that hard. We have to push for this.

PSR / Tier system can't be changed for two reasons and only two reasons:

1: Doing so would require admitting that they'd committed 1000% to a broken system and then ignored everyone showing them in extreme detail how broken it was.

2: Doing so would require putting time and effort into a game that isn't paying them any money, so it would essentially be doing charity work to keep the servers alive even longer, which BTW, also costs them money.

The problem is very simple, MWO doesn't earn them money anymore, and because of that I really get the impression they think we should all just be thankful they've kept the servers on as long as they have. In their eyes we're all just entitled gamers because we want them to keep putting effort into the game without throwing money at them, so they will likely never do something like fix PSR because then they'd be gratifying our demands. The change we did get appears for all intents and purposes to be simply redirecting the play button to the group queue MM and then tweaking a few things about the groups to ensure that you only get the 4 grouped people per side. It probably took them 30 minutes or less to do and that's likely the only reason they bothered with it at all.

DAEDALOS513, on 19 May 2020 - 06:48 PM, said:

I respect your detailed analyses of the chart but I like to keep things simple and just go on a month by month basis.. anything less and your guess is as good as mine as to why it's gone down a bit.. it could be that we haven't had an event in a while.. players need something to grind ALWAYS.. once they add an event it will get back on track I hope.. I'm truly saddened they didn't tweak anything for this past patch and I'm sure the chart will take a hit because of it.

A fair point. Looking at shorter term data does allow for trends to be seen where none may exist, so we'll just have to see where things go from here. I also agree that its a big disappointment that they haven't tweaked it anymore since that first weekend, or at least haven't done so publicly. I have a feeling they were pretty active with it that first weekend, and I will be honest in admitting that there was a period of time there on that first weekend that things were actually almost bearable, but it felt like it came and went in just one night. My guess is that this is when Paul had dialed up the tonnage / tier restrictions to max so there was at least some small degree of balance in play. Since then, however, it really feels like they've almost completely opened up both valves as both tonnage and skill often seem extremely skewed in a match.

Edited by Excessive Paranoia, 20 May 2020 - 12:24 AM.

[FRAGTAST1C]

Kano111, on 19 May 2020 - 09:32 PM, said:

As a new player, MWO seems like my perfect game, but the gap between experienced players and noobs is quite noticeable. I wonder is the random matchmaking helping to keep new players interested? I have had days where I am on the side for multiple games that gets stomped and I feel like there was zero chance of victory. Kind of like A grade players playing D grade in a basketball match or something.

Anyway, I enjoy it regardless.

You've spent a month and seemingly are enjoying this game. Consider that statement after a few months of this and see if you still feel the same. I highly doubt you will even stay on, let alone start spending money on this game.

It's funny that a new player such as yourself have come to the realization that having new players in the same match as experienced players is terrible during the introductory phase but a few of those experienced players and the developers here consider this negligible and wave their hands at it by conjuring random numbers and expressing their "opinions" rather than facts.