344 replies to this topic

[Alan Hicks]

I'm just waiting for this combined queue nightmare to end. Used to be win some lose some, now is always a loss, just occasionally a win.

With the same people at charge of the game changes, PGI will always exceed at ruining their own game and making it even worse than before. Mech-Warrior here? Can't believe this will go for 5 more years. If this goes on, probably MWO will be shut down soon.

People only returned to enhance the seal clubbing, oh yes, that is so much fun !

[Thorqemada]

DAEDALOS513, on 07 May 2020 - 10:28 AM, said:

If you read through this thread you'll see there are many who not only reinstalled but also got their friends to start playing again.. and this hasn't happened for MWO in I can't remember how long .. if ever.

Honestly the matches can't get much more casual.. and if the casual you advocators are looking for means having your team wonder around a map aimlessly then that will drive more players away than what we have now.. or wait, maybe by casual you mean the insane nascar matches that solo'ers experienced in most matches (making assaults or any slow mech obsolete) prior to soup queue.. is that what you guys mean by bring back casual? Because that definitely will keep players playing, lol. You guys really need to take a step back from the table, count your cards and understand that although not perfect, what we have now is a NET POSITIVE for the game.

I stand by what i say and call it a false positive...

[General Solo]

DAEDALOS513, on 07 May 2020 - 10:34 AM, said:

I agree with you matches have gotten a bit boring for the upper tier players..but to alleviate this i drop in fun, non-meta.. to do this ofcourse you have to put your ego aside and brush off a loss or two..

Don't speak for others, it means little and is getting old.. they have their own voice..

PS. look at the steam charts for MWO and click on 3 month view..

So what about for new players and as you said in an earlier post "mediocre" players who are not in a higher level group like your own MJ12.

I care about the lower skilled and new players unlike some we know.
Is that a problem for you?
Because with out them who will pay PGI's bills, the 1%, maybe the 10%. or 50%, thats still 50% of customers your ignoring.

I can speak for others because I can read their posts on the forum and read their chat in game, you don't have it be a mind reader. Guess their concerns are easy to dismiss when you are in a top level group.

Like your Micheal Jordan 12 clan.

Edit: Forgot the Quote 5AM here.

Edited by OZHomerOZ, 07 May 2020 - 11:05 AM.

[Anomalocaris]

DAEDALOS513, on 07 May 2020 - 10:34 AM, said:

I agree with you matches have gotten a bit boring for the upper tier players..but to alleviate this i drop in fun, non-meta.. to do this ofcourse you have to put your ego aside and brush off a loss or two..

Don't speak for others, it means little and is getting old.. they have their own voice..

PS. look at the steam charts for MWO and click on 3 month view..

Population went up on steam for 2 months _before_ the merge. So there was already a positive trend due to Covid. As for subjective stories, I'm seeing just as many negative as positive. The negative guys mostly just say "this sucks" and that's it. The positive guys start talking about how its so great they can play with their friends, because getting curb stomped with your buddy makes it hurt a lot less.

Whoever inside PGI wanted this merge picked a time of (1) growing player base - although small and (2) Juiced the participation numbers by running back to back major reward events starting at the same time as the merge.

Go back and look at steam numbers and you'll see population jump every time there's a big event.

So if you really want to see whether or not you've got more players, you have to take both those things into account. Weird thing is, I don't know why someone inside PGI would want to juice numbers - they get to make the decisions anyway and Russ clearly wants this. Only thing I can think of is they're trying to convince the player base its good. But watch the numbers in a few months. If they keep the merge (and based upon Russ' language on twitter plus his unwillingness to share real game statistics, that's a foregone conclusion) they'll be on the same negative trend or worse as before Covid hit.

Just wish Russ and Paul hadn't lied about this being a "test", but that's par for the course.

OZHomerOZ, on 07 May 2020 - 11:00 AM, said:

So what about for new players and as you said in an earlier post "mediocre" players who are not in a higher level group like your own MJ12.

I care about the lower skilled and new players unlike some we know.
Is that a problem for you?
Because with out them who will pay PGI's bills, the 1%, maybe the 10%. or 50%, thats still 50% of customers your ignoring.

I can speak for others because I can read their posts on the forum and read their chat in game, you don't have it be a mind reader. Guess their concerns are easy to dismiss when you are in a top level group.

Like your Micheal Jordan 12 clan.

Funny thing half the top players in his clan are here or on streams talking about what a bad idea this is, so those elites clearly see something he can't.

[General Solo]

Anomalocaris, on 07 May 2020 - 11:05 AM, said:

Funny thing half the top players in his clan are here or on streams talking about what a bad idea this is, so those elites clearly see something he can't.

I know, right!

[DAEDALOS513]

Anomalocaris, on 07 May 2020 - 11:05 AM, said:

Funny thing half the top players in his clan are here or on streams talking about what a bad idea this is, so those elites clearly see something he can't.

Please don't exaggerate.. it makes your arguments weak. I counted about 2 or 3 from the unit that are for and 2 or 3 that are against that have come on the forums..

PS we have about 55 members in the unit (all great players).. they are free to feel any way they want about this new queue but know these forums are hardly indicative of how the majority of the unit feels.

The mwo population trend is continuing to rise beyond the covid increase..

Honestly this is getting tiring again.. it's the same handful of people posting over and over.. i'm going to head back into my cave and meditate on more important things. Something that has brought population up and interest in the game is not a bad thing no matter how many times you post and re-post your same point of view and try to speak for others.

Edited by DAEDALOS513, 07 May 2020 - 12:12 PM.

[Brauer]

DAEDALOS513, on 07 May 2020 - 07:20 AM, said:

Sorry, I kinda knew you were experienced to the game but I wanted to make a point and show you how silly it is to try to speak for others.. they can speak their own minds.. and guess what: many have saying this has been a huge improvement to the game.. yet you (and a few others) continue to speak for them saying they are wrong? Trust me, more disgruntled players than happy ones will come on the forums and vent their frustrations.. but even still, it seems the latter outweighs the former. You guys gotta get over it. Considering what PGI has to work with, they couldn't have made a better change. We can only hope they continue to tweak it in baby steps (like maybe max out group size at 3 but NOT touch the tonnage restrictions then).

I know this game can't lose more players but this change has increased population.. you want new players to play our game? Step one: make it so you can play with friends. PGI got it right when they made it possible to drop with a friend or two. Now they have to figure out step two..

There are enough new players to battle each other that many matches are exciting and fun, I rarely run into a 3 or 4man of good players. Besides, let's be realistic.. new players shouldn't expect to be 'good' or win many matches in the beginning; it's part of the learning curve for any game.. and if a new player doesn't understand this they will never get over mwo's steeper learning curve to begin with..

I would understand if you had complaints from your own point of view like the games are now more boring or too easy, but the players you keep advocating for, for the most part are enjoying themselves.. they can now drop with their friends, do you want to deny them that pleasure? Something we veterans took for granted over the years?

I just want to say that when I've come on here to point out what I see as negatives in this merge I have been pointing out both a concern for the experiences of solo players as a whole (including myself, check my stats I used to drop solo a fair bit - with this change I have not been dropping solo at all), and a concern for the state of matchmaking. We can disagree on that of course, but my concern is not just for less skilled players.

RE: the opinions of MJ12 players, it's perfectly normal for people within a unit to have different opinions on something like this. I know a few of us on both sides have posted here on either side, and I've spoken with other members who haven't posted here who are on either side of the issue. I really don't think that membership in this unit, or any disagreement among our members is relevant here. We're all giving our opinions as individuals and I'm glad we're having this dialogue.

Edited by Brauer, 07 May 2020 - 02:08 PM.

[Anomalocaris]

DAEDALOS513, on 07 May 2020 - 11:24 AM, said:

Please don't exaggerate.. it makes your arguments weak. I counted about 2 or 3 from the unit that are for and 2 or 3 that are against that have come on the forums..

PS we have about 55 members in the unit (all great players).. they are free to feel any way they want about this new queue but know these forums are hardly indicative of how the majority of the unit feels.

Honestly this is getting tiring again.. it's the same handful of people posting over and over.. i'm going to head back into my cave and meditate on more important things. Something that has brought population up and interest in the game is not a bad thing no matter how many times you post and re-post your same point of view and try to speak for others.

That's your take away? Not the "numbers were trending up before the merge" part?

Whatever. I did say top players. Out of the 25-30 you have that are listed as still active, I have seen Brauer and Derek here on forums, and I've watched ThunderKats and Texan Scrub Lord out pug stomping on various streams, so I'll stand by my comment. Sorry you're so tired with all the pug stomping, I'm still quite fresh.

[DAEDALOS513]

Anomalocaris, on 07 May 2020 - 12:00 PM, said:

That's your take away? Not the "numbers were trending up before the merge" part?

Meh they are still trending up.. and there are constant events so that plays little part in it..

[DAEDALOS513]

OZHomerOZ, on 07 May 2020 - 11:00 AM, said:

I care about the lower skilled and new players unlike some we know.
Is that a problem for you?
Because with out them who will pay PGI's bills, the 1%, maybe the 10%. or 50%, thats still 50% of customers your ignoring.

I can speak for others because I can read their posts on the forum and read their chat in game, you don't have it be a mind reader. Guess their concerns are easy to dismiss when you are in a top level group.

You speak for the 'lower skilled' because you care.. i see, that is very noble of you. But why do you only speak for the 'lower skilled' that fit your agenda? Why not speak for the many 'lower skilled' that are enjoying themselves in this new queue?[Redacted]

[CFC Conky]

Something I've discovered during this test is my performance in IS vs. Clan mechs.

This is no doubt very old news to most of you, but what the heck, here goes...

When I started playing MWO in 2017 the main topic of debate on the forums was the performance disparity between the IS and the Clans. At the time, the Clans were dominating FW and the salt was thick. Clans had more mobility, range and alpha strike, IS were tankier with cooler running weapons, yada, yada, yada. The discussions were spirited if not downright heated at times.

I run both types in my main account so to test the hypothisis I created two smurf accounts, one IS and one Clan. I play predominantly QP and was around pre- and post- the ahhh, ummm, errr, 'adjustments' to Clan mechs/weapons and frankly, I wasn't seeing a lot of difference, the stats on both accounts running nearly in lockstep.

That is until the merging of the queues and the G'Day Mate event. I've completed 11/12 of the challenges in each account and I found it took 1/3 more matches to do so on my IS account and the W/L and K/D stats are sub-1:1 for IS and ~1.2:1 for Clans. The presence of high-skill groups has been pretty much 50/50 for/against. I'm not a great player but my performance in both accounts has been fairly consistent (i.e. matching Jarl's curves) season over season so the difference was noticeable to me. I'm able to put out just that much more damage using Clan stuff that it makes up for the general squishiness of the mechs compared to IS rides.

Odd that it took so long for my stats to show it.

Probably doesn't mean a thing.

I still prefer IS mechs.

Good hunting,
CFC Conky

Edited by CFC Conky, 07 May 2020 - 01:22 PM.

[IshanDeston]

Anomalocaris, on 06 May 2020 - 03:55 PM, said:

"[color=inherit]Well that sounded pretty rude - I am simply comparing pre separation to post separation in a few ways. Honestly there isn't much reason to dive deeper as the pop simply won't support the separate queues any longer. It's this or perhaps going to smaller group sizes."[/color]

Why am I not surprised? So this farce is here to stay and we have been once again been lied to.

Larsh, on 06 May 2020 - 08:45 AM, said:

players would use proper communication channels to work as a team.

You'd think so... but 5 years of this game has taught me that i don't even need to bother dusting my mike off. The EU servers have a massive language barrier, with at least half the player base not willing or able to speak/understand english (or whatever the majority language of the team is, and mind you english isn't my native tongue either), and the US servers being filled with equal portions of "My way or the highway" players, that have no interest in following the lead of the pack, or want to be in charge themselves.

Mix in groups to this wonderful situation and you are adding a whole third of the team that might not even be listening to in game coms or share their plans with the team.

And apparently this is going to be the new normal... breakdown in communication and seal clubbing. Even if you were to put better matchmaking into the mix it wouldn't change a thing, because the only way you can guarantee communication between members of the team is having a premade full group that all speak the same language, or letting people solo drop willy nilly so both teams have an equal lack of coordination.

This change will hasten the demise of the game, once the general populace catches on that this isn't just a test that is over in 2 weeks... there is likely going to be a mass exodus.


People in groups have to drop in "non meta mechs" to keep it fun... just how long does anyone around here expect that to last? They can dial all the dials they want, the inherent issue is the mixing of ques. One que of players that want to communicate and one que of people that can't or won't communicate. And as soon as the population falls again, there will be even fewer "skilled" pilots that can wing it.

I've been doing the "non meta mechs" stuff for a while, ever since i had skilled the last meta mech i had available to me, and it only lasts you so long, before even that gets boring. Dropping in the worst mechs you can find and somehow finding a way to make them work... you'll eventually run out of those as well.. because at some point they will work and your opponents will not get any better, nor will your teams suddenly start to communicate more than they are doing right now. Chances are, they'll communicate less.

Spare Knight, on 06 May 2020 - 12:50 PM, said:

I recently uninstalled the Steam version and went with the PGI Launcher. Much better performance from what I can tell. Disclaimer: Did not run before and after tests. Just feel.

Yes, a lot of us are using the PG launcher exclusively, but that doesn't change that the Steam version provides us a measurable metric of at least 1/3 to 1/2 of the player base, depending on who you want to listen to.

And what we are seeing is, despite all the people posting about how they dragged their friends into the game since this change, the numbers have barely grown. That alone suggests that for everyone people dragged to the game, we probably lost equal amounts of players.

And the thing about dragging friends to the game, that only lasts so long. I had someone gift me Green Hell to play Co-op with, during the Lockdown, and it lasted a week... he played 20 hours and then one of the group was like "meh, i am bored, lets go play something else" and all 3 of them moved on to another game.

So just how long do you think all these new groups will stay? A month? Maybe... but i doubt they'll be here for more than 2. All those people that didn't care about the game enough to play it before the change will be gone again as soon as the novelty wears off.

Except, now that we have confirmation, at least as far as you want to take Russ' word as confirmation, that this change is likely to be permanent, instead of a test, we'll be down all the solo players that left as well.

Time will tell how this turns out. But we've said this was a bad idea.. we said it would likely end the game if they did that at this point... and its looking like it just might turn out to be true.

Let's hope not, but for me personally its a dim hope.

Edited by IshanDeston, 07 May 2020 - 01:59 PM.

[Brauer]

CFC Conky, on 07 May 2020 - 01:08 PM, said:

Something I've discovered during this test is my performance in IS vs. Clan mechs.

This is no doubt very old news to most of you, but what the heck, here goes...

When I started playing MWO in 2017 the main topic of debate on the forums was the performance disparity between the IS and the Clans. At the time, the Clans were dominating FW and the salt was thick. Clans had more mobility, range and alpha strike, IS were tankier with cooler running weapons, yada, yada, yada. The discussions were spirited if not downright heated at times.

I run both types in my main account so to test the hypothisis I created two smurf accounts, one IS and one Clan. I play predominantly QP and was around pre- and post- the ahhh, ummm, errr, 'adjustments' to Clan mechs/weapons and frankly, I wasn't seeing a lot of difference, the stats on both accounts running nearly in lockstep.

That is until the merging of the queues and the G'Day Mate event. I've completed 11/12 of the challenges in each account and I found it took 1/3 more matches to do so on my IS account and the W/L and K/D stats are sub-1:1 for IS and ~1.2:1 for Clans. The presence of high-skill groups has been pretty much 50/50 for/against. I'm not a great player but my performance in both accounts has been fairly consistent (i.e. matching Jarl's curves) season over season so the difference was noticeable to me. I'm able to put out just that much more damage using Clan stuff that it makes up for the general squishiness of the mechs compared to IS rides.

Odd that it took so long for my stats to show it.

Probably doesn't mean a thing.

I still prefer IS mechs.

Good hunting,
CFC Conky

The overall consensus among high level players as far as I am aware is that both sides have strong and weak performers, but that overall faction balance is pretty good, and if anything the IS is better off. IS dominate the light, medium, and assault brackets. The piranha and Veagle stand out as exceptions within those brackets, but overall clans only have an advantage in the heavy bracket imo. I do prefer a Blood Asp over my beloved Sleipnir in QP right now, but that's only because the JJ can mitigate some spawn issues.

[CFC Conky]

Brauer, on 07 May 2020 - 02:13 PM, said:

The overall consensus among high level players as far as I am aware is that both sides have strong and weak performers, but that overall faction balance is pretty good, and if anything the IS is better off. IS dominate the light, medium, and assault brackets. The piranha and Veagle stand out as exceptions within those brackets, but overall clans only have an advantage in the heavy bracket imo. I do prefer a Blood Asp over my beloved Sleipnir in QP right now, but that's only because the JJ can mitigate some spawn issues.

Indeed they do. I agree the balance is better than it was three years ago, not great if you loved your c-smpl builds or Yuuuuuge Alpha laser vom (can still be done on the HBK-IIC), but better for taters like me. The engine desync did a number on a lot of mechs too.

Good hunting,
CFC Conky

Edited by CFC Conky, 07 May 2020 - 03:13 PM.

[FRAGTAST1C]

DAEDALOS513, on 07 May 2020 - 07:20 AM, said:

I know this game can't lose more players but this change has increased population.. you want new players to play our game? Step one: make it so you can play with friends. PGI got it right when they made it possible to drop with a friend or two. Now they have to figure out step two..

There are enough new players to battle each other that many matches are exciting and fun, I rarely run into a 3 or 4man of good players. Besides, let's be realistic.. new players shouldn't expect to be 'good' or win many matches in the beginning; it's part of the learning curve for any game.. and if a new player doesn't understand this they will never get over mwo's steeper learning curve to begin with..

Step Two is the most important part which could've been solved had they had a proper MM instead of opening the flood-gates. What did you think was going to happen?

You rarely run into the best groups 'cause the MM isn't checking for skill. It isn't checking if the other team has a group or not. Heck, it's not checking for ANYTHING except if both teams have 12 people. That's all it is doing. I often wonder why MJ12s can't be on the opposing team of Beef's squad. Why doesn't that happen? The time between these two teams getting a match is about 2-5 mins. Yet, both groups continuously get put in different matches. That isn't how this should work. The same applies to all top groups in the current solo queue. If the MM was implemented properly, then these groups would meet each other on the opposing ends majority of the time. Instead, right now that isn't happening.

Putting new players on the opposing team of MJ12 to kill isn't something that should be expected either, just like new players shouldn't expect to be 'good' or win many matches in the beginning; it's part of the learning curve for any game.

[John Bronco]

TBH I don't know why anyone would drop solo with this merged queue crap.

I've spent an evening playing with
a:) Cadets
b:) Groups that may as well have been cadets
c:) The usual high-skill death squad on the other team
d:) A team of LRM boats happily smashing the win button from Zimbabwe (why are indirect locks without a TAG or NARC even a thing in this game?)

or....
e.) The usual PSR matchmaking fail where there are are no groups (afaict) but 4 90%+ pilots in a game and they all magically end up on the same team.

Fix PSR. Fix the game.

[General Solo]

DAEDALOS513, on 07 May 2020 - 12:28 PM, said:

You speak for the 'lower skilled' because you care.. i see, that is very noble of you. But why do you only speak for the 'lower skilled' that fit your agenda? Why not speak for the many 'lower skilled' that are enjoying themselves in this new queue?[Redacted]

So thats your opinion!
Fascinating!
Because you are talking for them for the many 'lower skilled' that are enjoying themselves in this new queue? Is that not obvious, you just posted it?

Agenda? Haha.

Sure my agenda for a working match maker that matches players of similar skill is well known.

As for your agenda, I can only guess, but my guess you want to play with your friends in solo queue that get you easy wins at the expense of the many low skill solo's and the games longevity.
Come on faction warfare died twice and group que once already, can't you detect a pattern, well I can.

And for your guess as to what I am thinking, which is wrong, which is not surprising.
You assumed what I was thinking, instead of asking , actually to me it sounds more like gas lighting and hubris.

Edited by GM Patience, 08 May 2020 - 01:16 PM.

[Horseman]

Dee Eight, on 08 May 2020 - 03:55 AM, said:

[redacted]

[redacted]

[mod]Quote cleanup and removed off-topic discussion.
Please stay on-topic, guys[/mod]

Edited by Ekson Valdez, 12 May 2020 - 01:14 AM.

[Magic Pain Glove]

I think discussing this any further is a bit pointless . Russ already made up his mind . Their "data" is in and at this point they will only be fiddling around with the group size and tonnages (if even that). But I doubt they will go lower than 4. This was never meant to be a test , we knew stuff was not gonna be reverted or even tweaked sufficiently to the point of being passable.

If they really wanted to shove it down our throats they could have at least improved the Group/Solo metrics ( even within the confines of Tier system) so that we get more balanced matches . Like if there is a sweaty team on one side at least give other team good solo players to stand a chance instead of stacking one side. But NOPE . Minimum viable product strikes once again.

Welcome to Farming Simulator 2020. The only way I can see this NOT backfiring is if the lower tier population is huge and floodgates never open . So that at least lower tiers with beer league teams never get exposed to semi decent semi coordinated groups , while mass scale Industrial agriculture will continue to occur in all "Tier 1" matches.

Can we at least get people who support this clusterf*** of a change to pressure PGI to do something about the Tier system / PSR ?

Tweet

Quote

Well that sounded pretty rude - I am simply comparing pre separation to post separation in a few ways. Honestly there isn't much reason to dive deeper as the pop simply won't support the separate queues any longer. It's this or perhaps going to smaller group sizes.

I really like the pants on head PGI logic of :

"We wont let players opt in because we are afraid not many people will enjoy it . Instead we will force everyone to participate in group drops " .

IF YOUR ASSESSMENT IS THAT PEOPLE WILL NOT OPT IN WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THE REST OF THE QUEUE WILL EMBRACE GROUPS IN THEIR SOLO DROPS. FML ...

[Horseman]

Magic Pain Glove, on 08 May 2020 - 06:21 AM, said:

If they really wanted to shove it down our throats they could have at least improved the Group/Solo metrics ( even within the confines of Tier system) so that we get more balanced matches . Like if there is a sweaty team on one side at least give other team good solo players to stand a chance instead of stacking one side. But NOPE . Minimum viable product strikes once again.

Welcome to Farming Simulator 2020. The only way I can see this NOT backfiring is if the lower tier population is huge and floodgates never open . So that at least lower tiers with beer league teams never get exposed to semi decent semi coordinated groups , while mass scale Industrial agriculture will continue to occur in all "Tier 1" matches.

Can we at least get people who support this clusterf*** of a change to pressure PGI to do something about the Tier system / PSR ?...

This. Whatever Paul tries to do to fix the matchmaker is going to be useless if its' metric for evaluating pilot strength is "cucumber" (AKA Pilot "Skill" Rating)

Edited by Horseman, 08 May 2020 - 06:36 AM.