849 replies to this topic

[RRAMIREZ]

D V Devnull, on 03 June 2020 - 10:39 PM, said:

Have any of you noticed the Queue Times getting annoyingly long? Have any of you noticed the Matches getting unusually tougher?

Nothing special about queue times on my side.

Considering tougher games, I wouldn't say they're tougher, but it seams to me the dynamic changed during the last week.
I had to change the mechs I usually drop in to perform as usual. Took me some matches to figure it out :
- more wolf packs
- more long range assault holding a power position (as Brauer described)
giving some troubles to my mid-range medium/heavy classic dropping mechs.
(ECM arrasser suits better for me in this configuration)


Considering stomps, I don't really know. I don't play enough games to have a real idea.
ps: but I do see stomps for sure, win or loss

Edited by RRAMIREZ, 04 June 2020 - 04:14 AM.

[Nearly Dead]

Spent the day setting up a new workbench and bandsaw in the garage. After supper last night (US EST) I played a bit on several different mechs. Wait times were up enough to be noticeable, enough that I went back to waiting to see the class balance level out and %s blip before clicking to join. Not sure if that works or not but it feels like it does. Maybe superstition too.

Had some decent games but also had way too many stomps. Some of them were horrendous, 0-12, 12-1 etc. In one I scored the only kill on our team and the highest damage. In an Arctic Wolf! Some of the assaults in that match went down with damage scores <100. I think the only reason I lived long enough to get a kill was worst swordsman syndrome, I was running around, being unpredictable, and probably doing stupid things.

I don't see any way to balance the game with groups included. Maybe it will sort itself out as the weakest players leave the game and the rest adapt and "git gud". If there are enough group players maybe they will balance out the solo players who leave and there will be enough to run the hash queue for a while longer. But I don't think it is a long term solution.

[Whiskiz]

Interesting (good) time to be coming back, great to hear things like this are still being worked on and it isn't quite in full swing maintenance mode yet.

Why i personally left was not quite because of this problem but it does lead into it.

I left due to being so heavily penalized for playing with others (massive weight penalties) to the point of not even bothering to look at heavies and assaults and even heavier mediums when coming back each time to check things out, since i won't get to play them anyway (being unable to use them outside of solo or tiny group play.)

I believe the excessive multiplayer penalizing is because of imbalanced pro-premades going against pugs and whatever else - while casual, rando unit-mate premades suffer because of that. Regardless, penalizing multiplayer in a multiplayer game "is a bold move cotton"

So anyway the suggestion of putting the "top 1%" or all the competitive players in Tier 1, mostly by themselves and having wait times a couple minutes if need be before "opening the valve" would help, while then relaxing the premade weight limits once things balance out better.

Because there being a group of people playing in a premade together, does not automatically make them a pro team in need of nerfing into the ground to balance things out..

Until then hopefully the medium and light i have lined up will keep me interested for long enough this time, while i should maybe stick to clan warfare once i get back into the swing of things - if i don't get bored before i'm able to join a unit and get back there again.

Edited by Whiskiz, 04 June 2020 - 06:36 AM.

[Knight Captain Morgan]

OneTeamPlayer, on 04 June 2020 - 02:06 AM, said:

No and no. A vast majority of my matches are still kicking off in a short amount of time and a vast majority of my matches are still stomps win or lose.

I recently returned and was enjoying the game before the group change, trying to enjoy during the group addition, but something has changed in the past two weeks that is causing stomp after stomp after stomp and I'm not the only one because when i ask over voice comms in-game most other people open up with agreement that they have been in stomp after stomp for their game session as well.

Winning 12 to 1 isn't more fun than losing 1 to 12, most players don't want feast or famine- we want nail biters where we're watching the last few mech huddle together in a desperate one arm-ed fight to the very end with honest good fights all around because we actually had a good fight.

If that were true, the competitive farm teams in faction war would not have expended so much effort to queue dodge each other. Nor would the premades have abandoned faction war after they drove off all the solo pugs. Nor would the have demanded that PGI delete the solo queue to force all the seals back into the clubbing grounds.

The premades have no interest in competitive nail biters. They just want to get their LOLZ off by roflstomping pugs.

Edited by Knight Captain Morgan, 04 June 2020 - 06:21 AM.

[Brauer]

Whiskiz, on 04 June 2020 - 06:00 AM, said:

Interesting (good) time to be coming back, great to hear things like this are still being worked on and it isn't quite in full swing maintenance mode yet.

Why i personally left was not quite because of this problem but it does lead into it.

I left due to being so heavily penalized for playing with others (massive weight penalties) to the point of not even bothering to look at heavies and assaults and even heavier mediums when coming back each time to check things out, since i won't get to play them anyway (being unable to use them outside of clan warfare, tiny groups or playing a multiplayer game single player.)

I believe the excessive multiplayer penalizing is because of imbalanced pro-premades going against pugs and whatever else - while casual, rando unit-mate premades suffer because of that. Regardless, penalizing multiplayer in a multiplayer game "is a bold move cotton"

So anyway the suggestion of putting the "top 1%" or all the competitive players in Tier 1, mostly by themselves and having wait times a couple minutes if need be before "opening the valve" would help, while then relaxing the premade weight limits once things balance out better, to stop penalizing multiplayer in a multiplayer game would help to improve things even further. Unless it's already changed since a few years ago.

Until then hopefully the medium and light i have lined up will keep me interested for long enough this time, while i should maybe stick to clan warfare once i get back into the swing of things - if i don't get bored before i'm able to join a unit and get back there again.

There isn't much penalty to going heavy right now. In a 3 person group you can easily run two assaults and a heavy, or even 3 assaults iirc. In a four player group you can run two assaults, a small medium, and a light, or a bunch of heavies, or one assault a few heavies and a medium. That's really not much of a constraint unless you're only interested in running a four person anni wall or something.

I actually didn't run lights at all in QP last month because I was usually the one taking up any remaining tonnage and playing whackamole. I probably ran a Blood Asp A more often than anything else last month and it didn't severely restrict our options.

[Whiskiz]

Brauer, on 04 June 2020 - 06:26 AM, said:

There isn't much penalty to going heavy right now. In a 3 person group you can easily run two assaults and a heavy, or even 3 assaults iirc. In a four player group you can run two assaults, a small medium, and a light, or a bunch of heavies, or one assault a few heavies and a medium. That's really not much of a constraint unless you're only interested in running a four person anni wall or something.

I actually didn't run lights at all in QP last month because I was usually the one taking up any remaining tonnage and playing whackamole. I probably ran a Blood Asp A more often than anything else last month and it didn't severely restrict our options.

I did specify outside of solo or tiny groups.

What if you're in a decently sized unit that can field 6man teams, or a full team, or anything inbetween beyond the first couple of people?

I think it was last time i checked things out, i joined a new unit and went to play with them but there was a larger sized group and i had to downsize my mech and i wasn't really used to lighter mechs and had nothing prepared to that effect.

I even started this game as a heavy only player, it's what i enjoyed but i had to start learning and maining light/medium because of the weight penalties. Figured no point in playing and practicing heavy/assault when you're not guaranteed the ability to be able to use them when it counts.

Edited by Whiskiz, 04 June 2020 - 06:47 AM.

[Brauer]

Knight Captain Morgan, on 04 June 2020 - 06:17 AM, said:

If that were true, the competitive farm teams in faction war would not have expended so much effort to queue dodge each other. Nor would the premades have abandoned faction war after they drove off all the solo pugs. Nor would the have demanded that PGI delete the solo queue to force all the seals back into the clubbing grounds.

The premades have no interest in competitive nail biters. They just want to get their LOLZ off by roflstomping pugs.

Truly good teams don't queue dodge. Only teams that win by dint of pulling together a 10-12 person group queue dodge in FW.

[Brauer]

Whiskiz, on 04 June 2020 - 06:40 AM, said:

I did specify outside of solo or tiny groups.

What if you're in a decently sized unit that can field 6man teams, or a full team, or anything inbetween beyond the first couple of people?

Well you can't field a 6 or a 12 in the new mashed up queue. So either break your groups up into 3s and 4s, or go to FW where you can field a full 12 with no penalties of any sort. Since the maximum group size in QP is 4 and you can run a 3 or 4 person group without particularly large tonnage restrictions I don't see your problem. The problem as I see it with QP as it stands is 1) the matchmaker is garbage and does essentially nothing to balance teams, and 2) having groups in QP means that the QP meta is to get a 3 or 4 person group of strong players and roflstomp the queue which severely impacts the solo experience.

[Whiskiz]

Oh. Snap.

Can't balance pro premades vs casual premades?

Get rid of most of it altogether, most of the multiplayer in a multiplayer game.

Was it really that hard?

I guess the mass multiplayer is still there, just in faction warfare.

Either up to 4man or exactly 12man.

Interesting.

Guess that's also one way of solving the heavy premade penalties lol.

Edited by Whiskiz, 04 June 2020 - 07:36 AM.

[OneTeamPlayer]

Knight Captain Morgan, on 04 June 2020 - 06:17 AM, said:

If that were true, the competitive farm teams in faction war would not have expended so much effort to queue dodge each other. Nor would the premades have abandoned faction war after they drove off all the solo pugs. Nor would the have demanded that PGI delete the solo queue to force all the seals back into the clubbing grounds.

The premades have no interest in competitive nail biters. They just want to get their LOLZ off by roflstomping pugs.

I don't know what premades have to do with me saying we want nail biters, mostly because i've never played in group queue (even now that group queue is open i still don't play group with the nice folk on my friends list). I guess I should say solo queue player play solo because we want to challenge ourselves in a competitive environment- there is no possibility queue dodging for solo players.

I personally have literally 0 group queue games on this my account because i like the challenges inherent in solo queue. When I was in lower tier I loved being a drop commander as people in those tiers weren't too good at the game to coordinate with other players (leading to better matches and a lot of wins without stomps).

I will note that with the group queue merge there is actually less chance of being able to be a drop caller because 4 people in the team will likely not be listening to comms, or if they are they absolutely won't listen to anyone not in their group (yeah, pugs don't listen either, i get it- but solo players are near 70% more likely to listen to a good plan because they're likely to actually be on in-game comms rather than discord or TS3).

Nothing about the group merge has made my experience better as a solo player, and by all metrics i call fun the change has only made my experience worse. I'm honestly only still here because i'm hoping the PSR reset will lead to a positive change for those of us playing the game by ourselves.

If PGI doesn't figure this out, however, the solo queue is going to look like the FW and Group queues look.

By the time people leave again, it's going to be too late for any sort of revival so those of you "trolling" the queue like the player i saw proudly showing a video of them extending the game to slowly strip a player of all armor and limbs are going to end up with a game free of a decent segment of its current population which will lead to a game with zero population as the servers shut down from lack of any sufficient income.

Edited by OneTeamPlayer, 04 June 2020 - 08:05 AM.