28 replies to this topic

[Bobdolemite]

When this qeue merging started I was HIGHLY dubious. in the 8v8 days before the queues were separated stacked groups with bad attitudes stomped 8 - 1 with ipugnity, trolling people the whole way through. IMO this was a frustrating time for MWO, I welcomed the change to a solo only queue (and was rather vocal on the forums about the issue)

I think that for a long time it worked, matches were more or less balanced and indivudal performance seemed to play a HUGE role in successful matches. In 2020 though, playerbase is an issue and the matchmaker needed to be addressed. Despite my misgivings I did not come to the forums to cry foul or quit the game. Instead I gave it a chance. The first couple weeks of this test were...... really bad. Matchmaking was awful, Tonnage was not balanced, lance configurations and spawns were broken beyond belief.

I experienced those same back to back stomps from back in the day (though 12 -1 these days) that had almost killed my love for the game. I reduced my playtime but kept on playing for those one in a million gem matches where everything falls into place.

As bad as it was, I noticed that after a couple more weeks things started to turn around (for me at least). Flash forward to the last week or two and I have noticed a huge improvement in match quality. Most of the matches I have played are close, many of them 12 - 11 nailbiters.

This may not be a popular opinion, but whatever they are doing seems to be working. I am back to playing a lot of MWO and most of the time I am not dissapointed, many many good matches lately. I hope the success continues as right now I am having a lot of fun again.

Not looking forward to the PSR reset (should it happen) but I will give it a chance too. I think I just have old nightmares about the types of teams you get in tier 4 and 5 *shudder*.

The only negative thing I want to bring up is communication. Communication has always been an issue in MWO but from 2018-2020 I noticed that in most matches maybe a third of the team or more had comms and actively used them. As soon as the group qeue was merged this decreased dramatically. I am getting 1-3 people with comms per match if I am lucky (the more groups there are the worse it is). If I had to guess this is probably due to groups using third party comms and not the in game stuff.

I dont know if there is a good way to do this, but I encourage group players to still communicate with their teams. I have seen plenty of games with high profile 4 mans lose simply due to lack of communication outside their group. Despite what some people might believe, some pugs do actually listen and contribute =P So let us know your plans and we can derp our way into a helpful position.

To PGI, Nice work! There has been positive change in MWO and thats not something I have seen on a long while.

[Brauer]

Bobdolemite, on 01 June 2020 - 11:00 AM, said:

When this qeue merging started I was HIGHLY dubious. in the 8v8 days before the queues were separated stacked groups with bad attitudes stomped 8 - 1 with ipugnity, trolling people the whole way through. IMO this was a frustrating time for MWO, I welcomed the change to a solo only queue (and was rather vocal on the forums about the issue)

I think that for a long time it worked, matches were more or less balanced and indivudal performance seemed to play a HUGE role in successful matches. In 2020 though, playerbase is an issue and the matchmaker needed to be addressed. Despite my misgivings I did not come to the forums to cry foul or quit the game. Instead I gave it a chance. The first couple weeks of this test were...... really bad. Matchmaking was awful, Tonnage was not balanced, lance configurations and spawns were broken beyond belief.

I experienced those same back to back stomps from back in the day (though 12 -1 these days) that had almost killed my love for the game. I reduced my playtime but kept on playing for those one in a million gem matches where everything falls into place.

As bad as it was, I noticed that after a couple more weeks things started to turn around (for me at least). Flash forward to the last week or two and I have noticed a huge improvement in match quality. Most of the matches I have played are close, many of them 12 - 11 nailbiters.

This may not be a popular opinion, but whatever they are doing seems to be working. I am back to playing a lot of MWO and most of the time I am not dissapointed, many many good matches lately. I hope the success continues as right now I am having a lot of fun again.

Not looking forward to the PSR reset (should it happen) but I will give it a chance too. I think I just have old nightmares about the types of teams you get in tier 4 and 5 *shudder*.

The only negative thing I want to bring up is communication. Communication has always been an issue in MWO but from 2018-2020 I noticed that in most matches maybe a third of the team or more had comms and actively used them. As soon as the group qeue was merged this decreased dramatically. I am getting 1-3 people with comms per match if I am lucky (the more groups there are the worse it is). If I had to guess this is probably due to groups using third party comms and not the in game stuff.

I dont know if there is a good way to do this, but I encourage group players to still communicate with their teams. I have seen plenty of games with high profile 4 mans lose simply due to lack of communication outside their group. Despite what some people might believe, some pugs do actually listen and contribute =P So let us know your plans and we can derp our way into a helpful position.

To PGI, Nice work! There has been positive change in MWO and thats not something I have seen on a long while.

I'm glad you feel there's an improvement. I haven't noticed any improvement in the matchmaker myself, and matchmaking still seems to be quite loose (though not quite as wide open as in early May).

Regarding in game voip and groups, in May I only dropped into QP as part of a group and we were always on discord. From where I'm sitting if you are in a group in-game voip is not very useful. First off, people don't tend to listen even if you proactively call out a solid strat. I made those calls a fair amount when the new mashed together queue was fresh and new. If you tell people the power position you want the team to take they are just as likely as ever to either NASCAR super wide and leave you hanging, or cower behind a hill somewhere. In that case it's better to not even say a thing as you won't mistakenly think your team is going to help with your called for strat.

I do still call out when the team urgently needs to respond to something, but that also shows little effect on player behavior.

No matter the calls I still see braindead nascar with pretty much the same frequency as before. The difference now is that if you bring a decent group you can halt the nascar from a power position with just 3-4 mechs.

I don't know which 4 mans you are seeing lose with any frequency due to lack of communication, but imo if you have four solid players and work together you should easily win 90 percent of matches no matter what your team does. Successfully wrangling the other 8 players on your team isn't likely to increase your win percentage by any significant amount.

[Bobdolemite]

I understand why you think that, there are a lot of people who dont listen. But I have had many matches where good communication happened and we won. Those 8 other players at the very least offer other targets for the enemy team, shared armor, shared intel, AMS / ECM, and perhaps if your lucky some dps.

In an otherwise balanced match I dont think any 4 man can carry the entire game by themselves. If matchmaking is bad sure, but with groups and competent players on both teams?

The best matches I can remember have occured with regular communication between most of the team, and a relatively even spread on the score and damage at the end round (even in the sense that all contributed)

IMO ignoring most of the players on your team is a great way to lose a game, its the mentallity that birthed Nascar in the first place. And yes Nascar and other poop tactics are still very common, most of my OP is refferencing match making, and match quality not necesarilly tactics in the game (that 12 - 11 could have been ugly, but balanced).

I wont pretend that competent 4 mans lose with "regularity" but I do know that active coms, letting people know when your pushing / distracting, sharing intel about enemy movements, and team play in general increase the effectiveness of any team.

[Brauer]

Bobdolemite, on 01 June 2020 - 12:09 PM, said:

I understand why you think that, there are a lot of people who dont listen. But I have had many matches where good communication happened and we won. Those 8 other players at the very least offer other targets for the enemy team, shared armor, shared intel, AMS / ECM, and perhaps if your lucky some dps.

In an otherwise balanced match I dont think any 4 man can carry the entire game by themselves. If matchmaking is bad sure, but with groups and competent players on both teams?

The best matches I can remember have occured with regular communication between most of the team, and a relatively even spread on the score and damage at the end round (even in the sense that all contributed)

IMO ignoring most of the players on your team is a great way to lose a game, its the mentallity that birthed Nascar in the first place. And yes Nascar and other poop tactics are still very common, most of my OP is refferencing match making, and match quality not necesarilly tactics in the game (that 12 - 11 could have been ugly, but balanced).

I wont pretend that competent 4 mans lose with "regularity" but I do know that active coms, letting people know when your pushing / distracting, sharing intel about enemy movements, and team play in general increase the effectiveness of any team.

By my estimation when in a group I've only run into a decent enemy group about 10% of the time, being relatively generous in the definition of "good".

My main point is that when you've had correct calls ignored enough times and when the percentage of matches where the team actually listens is low enough you just stop pretending that the rest of the team is likely to follow good calls and focus instead on coordinating within the group that will and on performing well.

[Nearly Dead]

I have only played for around 1500 hours, so grain of salt, ok? But I have seen too many matches where we were down two or even three (iirc one) and someone stepped up and took charge and started calling and we turned it around and won. In one particular match on HPG, long before the merge, the MM put 12 players with unit tags in the red team and we had none. Somebody started calling and we won that one. When I saw the lineup I was sure we were going to get skunked. I have also seen where hyper aggressive units on the red team tried to just murderball us and got slaughtered because of a good commander on our team who held us together and got people focused.

Games with a good, positive, coach type commander are more fun, the team works better and we win more often. If you get one of those jerks who only says two things all game, "we are too spread out" and "don't nascar" and then ******* about the team for two minutes after the defeat, that is another thing, (and it isn't a commander).

I hated the first weeks of the merge. It forced me to play in unfun mechs that are focused strictly on doing solo damage, the games went mostly silent and most of them were stomps or even skunks. Then it changed a little and got a little better. Right now I am hating the game because of the constant stomps. Too many units come in and won't even speak when addressed by name. Too many matches are dominated by 4-6 light and medium mechs who just move in a mass like a bush hog. (And oddly, they always seem to arrive CCW on our left flank about two to three minutes into the match.)

The game is no longer enjoyable for me and I am just waiting to see if PGI actually does anything helpful, or if the number of players remaining is so small that it won't even be possible for an average player to get away from the top 3%ers.

For those who are enjoying it, I am glad for you and hope that there are enough of you to keep it going. When MW games stopped being made I missed them, I would be sad to see the game go away.

[Bud Crue]

Bobdolemite, on 01 June 2020 - 11:00 AM, said:

This may not be a popular opinion, but whatever they are doing seems to be working.

It may or may not be "working" whatever that means in this context (I suspect Covid is as much responsible for the recent spike in players as any changes that PGI has instituted), but I for one think the mixed queue, frankly sucks.

I have always approached GQ as a place to go play the game with my friends in a more casual environment than what CW provides. Some nights we were up against significantly superior teams, some nights we weren't. But we could always just play however we wanted and we never felt like we were ruining other peoples experience because of whatever goofiness/lack of skill we exhibited. With the death of the queue, we are more often than not still forced to sync drop to be able to play in the same match, albeit on different sides (typically 4 v 4 nowadays with the extras syncing as solos). Because of the presumption that those dropping in groups are supposed to be better/communicating/leading/etc. I feel like I can't play what I like, and am nearly obligated to play meta builds on max tonnage mechs,else be called out for ruining someone's game because me and mine failed to optimize our drop weight, builds, etc.

I find this to be boring, monotonous and not particularly fun. 8v8 GQ was brilliant for its short life, and having that back would be, in my view, ideal, short of going to the old 12 v12 GQ but with individuals being able to opt in; of course Russ/Paul say that no one wants to play with groups so that isn't an option. Oh the irony.

[JediPanther]

Posting to the fourms has become more fun than playing the game for me at least. I have a lot of space bucks and heroes but no desire currently to play the game. The merger just showed how bad pop has become.

[MrXanthios]

I have seen many names I haven't seen for an unbelievably long time coming back in groups of 2,3,4 good players to pump up stats and farm the merged q completely undisturbed.

[Zirconium Kaze]

I literally have not noticed a change since before they were merged compared to now. I still see stomps, I still see 6-12, and I still see nail biters. Some days there's a mix, others days are full of stomps.

This game has a snowball affect and once you lose some players, the snowball starts rolling. Stomps will be forever a thing and they are here to stay. All I can do is give advice. If you creep a hill and see 5 assaults with their guns all pointed towards you, don't charge forward. If you're behind the hill creeper and see fireworks ignite on his hull, don't push forward. And please know your team and enemy. If you see you have the entire enemy team of assaults surrounded through 4 points of entry but neglect that most your team are mediums and lights, you will lose that push unless the players on the enemy team are new or something. And don't push choke points where you all funnel into a small space where numbers mean nothing. Shoot, all the combat that takes place in 300 was at a choke point lol.

[Sjorpha]

I think the merged queue is clearly much more chaotic and less balanced, especially when very strong groups are in the mix.

But I also think the ability to play casually with one or two friends is worth it, I usually don't enjoy playing games alone for very long.

I really hope they can mitigate the imbalance a bit with the planned psr changes, as well as reducing the sometimes big tonnage imbalances.

But personally I would still prefer the mixed queue even if it remains this imbalanced/chaotic. I'm just having more fun in it than I ever had in solo queue. Both when I solo and when I group up.

I can see why some people don't like it though, especially if they always drop solo. I can also see it being rough for bad players who are in tier 1 when they shouldn't. But you can't please everyone, and hopefully the incorrect tiers get sorted with the incoming changes.

[LordNothing]

i kind of like the mixed queue. it should have been done a long time ago. one lance of coordinated players IS NOT enough to throw team balance that far out of whack. if anything most of the teams ive seen have been bad. thing is people still remember the fp fiasco. where pgi let extremely coordinated and highly skilled teams roll over skittles, repeatedly, unchecked, ad nauseum, until everyone either joined a team, fled to qp, or sucked it up. all while creating a toxic divide between unit players and pugs that lasted for years. this is where the distrust of the combined queue comes from.

its a little too late now, but once we get zero sum and tier reset, and keep the one lance restriction, we should do the same for fp. that might bring it back from the dead. the one lance restriction might be a little too severe for fp. maybe allow 2 and dedicate charly lance to pugs. or maybe a lance for lance system, where the mm will try to load up each team with the same number of lances, so 12 man games would still be possible provided there are enough lances in the queue to cover both teams. if you sync drop with 2 other lances of your unit the game might try to pair them up only if there is another 12 man. but if the mm decides you have too much skill for the opponent, it can split you up. or maybe just have direct unit vs unit challenges to fulfil the 12 man players, though i have a feeling thats not why some of them played fp.

its sad that pgi only now figured out that these things can make or break a game.

Edited by LordNothing, 05 June 2020 - 03:01 AM.

[jss78]

I've long favoured putting small groups in the solo queue -- too bad they did it so late.

This tends to be an unpopular opinion, but IMO balance in a quickplay/random queue isn't all important. It needs to be reasonable, but this is not a competitive game mode so other factors can and should be considered.

I think MWO has long made a bad call in making it very unattractive to play in small groups (1 or 2 friends). This tends to be a major part of the player volume in games where it's properly supported.

I always felt the ideal system to serve EVERYBODY is to put small groups (2's or 3's depending on what the balance issues look like) in the solo queue. And then have full teams play vs. other full teams (and they should never play against anything but another full team). Standard solution in many games -- works fine.

[Tier5 Kerensky]

I'm fairly sure in May I only played in real QP queue. Now I've played few games in this combo queue today and yesterday, and I think the biggest thing is it's significantly harded to win as playing solo. What I dislike the most, is getting into alpha lance with an assult. In some maps, I can't advance normally because of the spawns ect.

But yeah, I can see it had to be done. There are some games where Im fairly sure it's 100% solo players, but sometimes you see a good group of maybe 4, and they dominate, and next game you fight againts them as well...

I look forward to the PSR reset thing, out of curiosity. But to be honest, the end is near. Just like many others, I play extremely little anymore.

[East Indy]

Zirconium Kaze, on 01 June 2020 - 07:50 PM, said:

I literally have not noticed a change since before they were merged compared to now. I still see stomps, I still see 6-12, and I still see nail biters. Some days there's a mix, others days are full of stomps.

I agree, and that's at least a testament to how workable mixed queues are.

[R Valentine]

LordNothing, on 05 June 2020 - 02:55 AM, said:

i kind of like the mixed queue. it should have been done a long time ago. one lance of coordinated players IS NOT enough to throw team balance that far out of whack.

Yes, that's why the top 2-3%ers went from W/L ratios of 2-3 to W/L ratios of 5-8. Because one lance of coordinate players IS NOT enough to throw team balance that far out of whack as long as you smoke tremendous crack. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

[LordNothing]

Kiran Yagami, on 07 June 2020 - 10:03 AM, said:

Yes, that's why the top 2-3%ers went from W/L ratios of 2-3 to W/L ratios of 5-8. Because one lance of coordinate players IS NOT enough to throw team balance that far out of whack as long as you smoke tremendous crack. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

thing about top 2-3%ers is that they make up only 2-3% of the population. you arent going to run into them enough for it to matter. also when we get zero sum the mm is going to look at their skill and stick them with a bunch of tater pugs.

and they probably went up because of how potato people have been playing lately.

Edited by LordNothing, 07 June 2020 - 12:22 PM.

[Brauer]

LordNothing, on 07 June 2020 - 12:19 PM, said:

thing about top 2-3%ers is that they make up only 2-3% of the population. you arent going to run into them enough for it to matter. also when we get zero sum the mm is going to look at their skill and stick them with a bunch of tater pugs.

and they probably went up because of how potato people have been playing lately.

Top players who take the time to coordinate are winning 90+ percent of their matches simply because it is relatively easy to stack wins while in a group for three to four players.

It's a bit ridiculous to claim that such a huge change is not due to the large change made to the game itself but rather somehow because the whole playerbase decided to throw matches against good groups super hard for over aonth.

Edited by Brauer, 07 June 2020 - 08:16 PM.

[LordNothing]

Brauer, on 07 June 2020 - 01:13 PM, said:

Top players are who take the time to coordinate are winning 90+ percent of their matches simply because it is relatively easy to stack wins while in a group for three to four players.

It's a bit ridiculous to claim that such a huge change is not due to the large change made to the game itself but rather somehow because the whole playerbase decided to throw matches against good groups super hard for over aonth.

lets see what zero sum does before jumping to premature conclusions. i think it will balance out. you think qp is bad, you should have played fp circa long tom. this is a cake walk.

Edited by LordNothing, 07 June 2020 - 08:04 PM.

[Brauer]

LordNothing, on 07 June 2020 - 08:04 PM, said:

lets see what zero sum does before jumping to premature conclusions. i think it will balance out. you think qp is bad, you should have played fp circa long tom. this is a cake walk.

I'm not drawing any premature conclusions. You said top players may have seen their WLRs skyrocket because the playerbase suddenly decided to get extra bad. I didn't make one claim about the impact of a PSR reset or new PSR formula in that post.

I wasn't even playing this game when long tom happened, but yes that was a disaster. This has also been pretty damn bad. The matchmaker with groups in the mix seems to be basically nonexistent. Tonight me and a few friends got matched up with two Div A comp players, so not only did we have 5 group players on our side but we also had a completely stacked team. A matchmaker that is worth anything would not allow that.

Edited by Brauer, 08 June 2020 - 12:54 PM.

[Anomalocaris]

LordNothing, on 07 June 2020 - 12:19 PM, said:

thing about top 2-3%ers is that they make up only 2-3% of the population. you arent going to run into them enough for it to matter. also when we get zero sum the mm is going to look at their skill and stick them with a bunch of tater pugs.

and they probably went up because of how potato people have been playing lately.

Think a little deeper on that one though.

First, let's just say that there are 100 players playing. And those 3 elite players decide to group up. That means of the 4 matches that could kick off at any given point (and it's probably more like 3 given mechlab, etc.) those elites will be in one of them.

That means you've got a 25-33% chance of having that matchmaker breaking team in your game. In which case, you're either along for the ride or you're going to get rolled. Pretty bad odds of having a crap game, isn't it?

And we haven't even considered that those elite players probably have a pretty high participation rate. Jarl's indicates that high match score players tend to average more games/season than low match score players (not really hard to believe if you think about it). Which means that as a percentage of the population actually playing at any given time, those elites are probably a larger percentage. So maybe you've got 2 elite teams dropping for every 100 players, with only a 1 in 4 chance they'll be on the same team (I know, in reality maybe it's 2 elite teams for every 150 players, or 3 for every 250, just saying its not going to make your odds of avoiding the game breakers better).