34 replies to this topic

[_Casper_]

The so called soup q is no fun at all. Groups of 4 players have so much impact on matches that the experience for solo players is ruined imo. That applies to top tier players as well as to players on the other spectrum of the skill continuum. There is no place to go for solo players to have a fair chance of a good experience with MWO.

Most of the time you can judge by the names at the start screen how the outcome of the match will be. Some streamers show their win/loss ratio even on screen and it is ridiculous. Ofc some have a good ratio because of their own skill but they group up with other strong players. For most of the time i see plenty of Jarls 99% players grouping up with other high skill players. And even mixed groups have a better chance of doing well for obvious reasons. It is not their fault. I totally get that it is more fun to play with other good players or friends than with a pug.

I am convinced that groups mixed with solo players make it ultimately impossible for the matchmaker to create halfway fair teams.

That is why I wish we could get a 8vs8 group q and a solo q without any groups at all. I personalöy prefer to wait a little longer and have a good match than to stomp or get stomped in most of the matches.

[PocketYoda]

I agree honestly too many are exploiting it daily.

[EnochsBook]

A game where it takes too long to find a match when you want to drop with your friends is an awful experience. This is a multiplayer game, it's in the best interest of PGI to make sure that group play is as seamless as possible.

Samial, on 24 March 2021 - 03:12 AM, said:

I agree honestly too many are exploiting it daily.

What do you mean by exploiting?

[Alexander of Macedon]

_Casper_, on 24 March 2021 - 02:51 AM, said:

Groups of 4 players have so much impact on matches that the experience for solo players is ruined imo.

I agree with these words, but not in the way you mean them.






Hmm yes these organized groups definitely had a noteworthy impact on the matches they were in.

[Baron Kit]

Do not. There's not enough people playing YET to support that. if world of tanks and every other game can have combined ques with a bigger pop then this with a smaller pop can handle it.

maybe looking to limit it to 3 would be better but do not take away the ability to play with your friends quickly it hurts the game bad every time.

[Anomalocaris]

Alexander of Macedon, on 24 March 2021 - 01:55 PM, said:

I agree with these words, but not in the way you mean them.

Hmm yes these organized groups definitely had a noteworthy impact on the matches they were in.

Yep, they aggregated a bunch of subpar players together on the same team instead of splitting them between the two. And they underperformed and hurt their team. The problem, as the OP points out, isn't whether a group is good or bad. Both are bad for matchmaking balance - because like tends to group with like, and the matchmaker doesn't compensate for overly good or bad groups.

Baron Kit, on 24 March 2021 - 02:09 PM, said:

Do not. There's not enough people playing YET to support that. if world of tanks and every other game can have combined ques with a bigger pop then this with a smaller pop can handle it.

maybe looking to limit it to 3 would be better but do not take away the ability to play with your friends quickly it hurts the game bad every time.

Hurts the game? You mean like how player population dropped nearly 20% in the 4 months after merge queue became permanent? Only to recover when PGI announced they were going to start working on the game again?

The population now is where it was 2 years ago, and that was fine for a separate queue. Especially if you do an 8v8 group queue, which was very well received in testing. Keep 2 mans in solo if you like, just so someone can show a noob the ropes without facing good groups, but that's it IMO.

[Alexander of Macedon]

Anomalocaris, on 24 March 2021 - 03:42 PM, said:

Yep, they aggregated a bunch of subpar players together on the same team instead of splitting them between the two. And they underperformed and hurt their team.

In each of those cases the group reflected a fairly average image of the performance on the team they were on. This is likewise true for groups that put up good numbers.

Anomalocaris, on 24 March 2021 - 03:42 PM, said:

The problem, as the OP points out, isn't whether a group is good or bad. Both are bad for matchmaking balance - because like tends to group with like, and the matchmaker doesn't compensate for overly good or bad groups.

This isn't even slightly supported by what OP said. It was the same straightforward whining about good players dropping together or good players dropping with their not-so-good friends. Because that's what it always is. Just like it's always the fault of the map vote, or the weapon meta, or LRMs, or arty, or...

The truth of the matter is that MWO matches are not won, they're lost. You need four people all putting up hard-carry scores to have a hope of supporting a really ****** team, and even then that can easily be insufficient if the rest of the team dies fast enough. The snowball starts sooner and builds faster in MWO than basically any other game due to how length TTK makes it difficult for numerically disadvantaged groups to pull back kills. Good groups working together as part of a pub team can help build a snowball faster but can rarely do much to stop one.

Leaving aside this weird assumption that everyone who joins a unit and drops into soup queue with other unit members is somehow a top 0.001% comp player (because they're not -- most of the people in T1-3 matches are barely better than T3-5), groups that are organized to drop with their own voice comms are usually going to ignore in-game comms.

That's a killer, since the most effective way to stomp soup queue matches is to convince a team full of randoms to do something even slightly tactically sound. It doesn't even have to create a snowball, just keep enough targets alive for the competent players to get kills. A group of 3-4, no matter how good, is not going to carry a 12v12 against an even slightly organized group of pubs unless they're in in-game comms talking to the rest of their team, and a lot of them aren't.

The tl;dr is that the whole "group drops into soup queue = unfair" boogeyman has no basis in reality. A group of 12 pubs with someone volunteering to dropcall, or even just 2-3 people doing target and positioning callouts, is going to be just as effective as a group of 8-9 pubs doing the same while the unit drop of 3-4 do their own thing.

Had a match a couple days ago that was a perfect example of this. Domination on Arctic City, we got forced into mass rushing the circle because we had no lights and the timer was down to <20s before anyone got there. Three of the enemy team were HLas vom Hellbringers camped on the south side doing lots of damage but they didn't support the rest of their team (who were largely disorganized and only succeeded early due to that lucky break of getting lots of free shots). Despite losing people early and being stuck in a bad position people on our team worked cohesively, pulled it back, and that group of three ended up getting chased down and killed by six or seven of us after we wiped the rest of their team. Groups don't change match outcomes, they just make them more obvious. That makes them an obvious target for people who don't know how to read the flow of a match even though forcing solo drops only wouldn't change things.

Bear in mind as well that I've played the game solo for five or six years, never been in a unit, never dropped as anything but a solo pub even into FP. The only place where unit drops matter is in full 12v12 faction play matches where it's 12 guys from a unit with meta clan decks all in a call together vs. 12 randos with whatever random IS deck they could throw together who might not even get a dropcaller.

And I'll say this too: removing group drops will hurt the player population even more. A lot of people only still play because they can play with friends. 99% of groups dropping in QP are not doing it to try to pubstomp, they're doing it because they can't handle the mental side of knowing that matches are largely coinflips that you have little power to affect and being with friends helps soften that.

[PocketYoda]

EnochsBook, on 24 March 2021 - 03:31 AM, said:

A game where it takes too long to find a match when you want to drop with your friends is an awful experience. This is a multiplayer game, it's in the best interest of PGI to make sure that group play is as seamless as possible.


What do you mean by exploiting?

If you add tier 1s and a tier 4 or 5 they all fight tier 4 or 5s hence the exploit.. so you have top tier players smashing new customers because they can game the matchmaker.

If tier 1s make a alt account they fight cadets and tier 5s.. its less of an issue unless 4 of them team up and do it.

Alexander of Macedon, on 24 March 2021 - 01:55 PM, said:

I agree with these words, but not in the way you mean them.






Hmm yes these organized groups definitely had a noteworthy impact on the matches they were in.

It depends on the tier of groups vs the people they are stomping..

Edited by Samial, 24 March 2021 - 05:16 PM.

[ScrapIron Prime]

Who are all these Tier 1 players who are supposedly making alt accounts just so they can crush people? Without all their stuff?

In all seriousness though, splitting the queues or making a separate 8v8 queue would reduce the available population for drops even further, resulting in, as has been posted above, longer wait times for matches. Not in favor of it.

MWO, my favorite bot game, is online nearly 9 years after it came out of beta. That's a success. Short of doubling the cooldown on a light gauss rifle, I'm not going to nitpick... and they rolled that one back.

[Rosarius]

Samial, on 24 March 2021 - 05:15 PM, said:

If you add tier 1s and a tier 4 or 5 they all fight tier 4 or 5s hence the exploit.. so you have top tier players smashing new customers because they can game the matchmaker.

That's an oversimplified version of how the matchmaker works *AT BEST*

A group composing of a T1, T4, and T5 will probably be placed at T3 (possibly T4, depending on how much PSR the T4 player has). At such a level, that group can potentially match with any tier. So yes, that T1 could match with a cadet in T5, but there is equal chance that the T4 and T5 players will be dragged up into a match with a few T1 players on red team.

I belong to a casual unit and have witnessed this first person. One match we're fighting with and against cadets, the next has a red team with EmP and JGx tags. I would hardly call a coin toss an exploit!

PGI have specified their exact stance on alternate accounts, if you have a problem with this I suggest emailing PGI directly with your concerns. https://mwomercs.com...ltiple-accounts

cmndctrl, on 24 March 2021 - 06:09 PM, said:

treating new players to this combined queue is certainly not doing player count any favors. look at the posted screenshots. how many games u gonna stick around for when its a 0/12 wipe

Stomps regularly happen in T1 my dude, and I can tell you it is probably no less frustrating than if it were to happen in any other tier.

That's... not how it works at all...

While it's not totally clear from PGI exactly how the matchmaker deals with groups, it does seem that it tries to take the average of the group mostly into account. So a group composing of a T1, a T2, a T4, and a T5 will likely be matched on the assumption that the group is entirely made up of T3s. T1 and T2 will be dragged down and T4 and T5 will be dragged up. At T3 you can LITTERALLY match with anyone of any tier level so while it might seem unfair that a T1 in a group can face off against a T5, the opposite is also true. A T5 person in a group can be dragged into a match full of solo T1s. From there it all depends on how many people in the right skill brackets can pulled together to make a match. Unfair... sometimes. Exploit... No

[Rosarius]

cmndctrl, on 24 March 2021 - 07:43 PM, said:

sorry but you are tier one and claim to be a casual and i have played against you, certainly nothing casual about it. try dropping completely solo for 10 games and let us know how it went.

i got over 2500 hours as a solo pilot and struggle to stay within 10% inside tier 2.

i will say this absolutely certainty and it is a major issue with the current matchmaking system incorporating groups: stomps only happen when you have a number of experienced players up against new players.

Ad hominem eh?

Well I've never played at a competitive level (unless you count Solaris 1v1s), so by my definition that makes me a casual player. My unit, Golden Foxes, are a casual unit who do not have any criteria on recruits, nor do we have mandated, regular training sessions. We also DO NOT STAT SHAME AND SEGREGATE OUR FELLOW UNIT MEMBERS. Again, by our definition this makes us a casual unit.

Now... I do play solo quite a bit. Being self employed has it's perks such as blocking out an hour so I can play with my unit mates during NA primetime, however the bulk of my time is usually spent during East Australian prime time alone while most of the people I would group up with are sleeping.

I managed to max out the tier bar after around 300 matches (MPG did it in less than 90 btw, so this isn't even a feat to be proud of), mostly solo, mostly in unskilled mechs. When I drop these days I always use a roulette wheel (blatantly stolen from b33f) to select my mechs to keep things interesting. You can check it out https://wheelofnames.com/j73-bsa . My tier bar does drop a bit at times when I have a losing streak, but I still manage to keep it full for the most part.

Stomps do not ONLY happen because of a skill/experience gap. Stomps can happen because of bad spawns. Because of bad decisions and mistakes made. Because a group decides to "meme" . Stomps are just as common in T1 than ANY OTHER tier.

That's not to say that soup queue and the matchmaker ISN'T broken, but is isn't nearly as broken as what you are suggesting. Groups can swing a win OR loss, depending on the quality of the group

[Laser Kiwi]

I mostly play solo, it's not hard.

[_Casper_]

Laser Kiwi, on 24 March 2021 - 09:31 PM, said:

I mostly play solo, it's not hard.

haha, jarl's list says you are retired since june 2020

I do not say it is hard but it is less fun than a pure solo q cause there are too many stomps and matches that are decided before the first shot is fired due to groups making the matchmaking impossible. There will always be stomps cause there are dynamics like snowballing etc. but groups (good ones and bad ones) have way too much negativ impact of solo players experience in my opinion. And again i do not blame the players but i wish we had a place for groups AND solo players in MWO. At the time the qs got merged there was no problem with wait times at least in solo q. I cannot speak about the group q cause i almost never played it.

Edited by _Casper_, 24 March 2021 - 11:55 PM.

[YouKnowNothing]

Rosarius, on 24 March 2021 - 08:40 PM, said:

Stomps do not ONLY happen because of a skill/experience gap. Stomps can happen because of bad spawns. Because of bad decisions and mistakes made. Because a group decides to "meme" . Stomps are just as common in T1 than ANY OTHER tier.

I have a smurf in T2 and one in T4. I've played all 3 accounts this month in the chase after lootbags. I can also attest to stomps happening just as often across the whole Tier range. They happen for different reasons in different tiers, but they do happen just as often.

[Gagis]

cmndctrl, on 24 March 2021 - 07:43 PM, said:

stomps only happen when you have a number of experienced players up against new players.

This statement is absolutely false. Most stomps happen when one team gains slight advantage and manages to hold on to it long enough for the match to snowball from there.

For example, team A has 2 mechs wander off alone and get killed early. The rest of the match is 12v10 which is already an overwhelming advantage and every kill from there on will make it more overwhelming. Team B is likely to win with a score like 12-2 even if both teams had evenly skilled players at the start. You see this happen even in high level competitive play where all it takes is a misplay or two for one team to get steamrolled even if they were the better team on paper.

The more skilled players those teams have, the more likely the match is to snowball as teams are less and less likely to fumble and lose their momentum.

In low tier matches snowball effects can stop when team B also makes mistakes. The most even matches that end with one or two players alive from both teams are ones where both teams did really badly, mistakes piled up and no one had the skill to take advantage of all those mistakes. Even matches are often consequences of races to the bottom where anyone but the last survivors had a terrible time.

The mixed queue may make the snowball slightly more likely to start rolling one way or the other, but it is FAR from being the main mechanism that causes it, only an extra nudge.

Edited by Gagis, 25 March 2021 - 02:07 AM.

[HenryFA]

no

I can play with my friends, FINALLY

[PocketYoda]

ScrapIron Prime, on 24 March 2021 - 05:26 PM, said:

Who are all these Tier 1 players who are supposedly making alt accounts just so they can crush people? Without all their stuff?

In all seriousness though, splitting the queues or making a separate 8v8 queue would reduce the available population for drops even further, resulting in, as has been posted above, longer wait times for matches. Not in favor of it.

MWO, my favorite bot game, is online nearly 9 years after it came out of beta. That's a success. Short of doubling the cooldown on a light gauss rifle, I'm not going to nitpick... and they rolled that one back.

WFZ, CDU and some Russian Units i've seen in the last few weeks but their are a lot of others.

Rosarius, on 24 March 2021 - 08:40 PM, said:

Ad hominem eh?

Well I've never played at a competitive level (unless you count Solaris 1v1s), so by my definition that makes me a casual player. My unit, Golden Foxes, are a casual unit who do not have any criteria on recruits, nor do we have mandated, regular training sessions. We also DO NOT STAT SHAME AND SEGREGATE OUR FELLOW UNIT MEMBERS. Again, by our definition this makes us a casual unit.

Now... I do play solo quite a bit. Being self employed has it's perks such as blocking out an hour so I can play with my unit mates during NA primetime, however the bulk of my time is usually spent during East Australian prime time alone while most of the people I would group up with are sleeping.

I managed to max out the tier bar after around 300 matches (MPG did it in less than 90 btw, so this isn't even a feat to be proud of), mostly solo, mostly in unskilled mechs. When I drop these days I always use a roulette wheel (blatantly stolen from b33f) to select my mechs to keep things interesting. You can check it out https://wheelofnames.com/j73-bsa . My tier bar does drop a bit at times when I have a losing streak, but I still manage to keep it full for the most part.

Stomps do not ONLY happen because of a skill/experience gap. Stomps can happen because of bad spawns. Because of bad decisions and mistakes made. Because a group decides to "meme" . Stomps are just as common in T1 than ANY OTHER tier.

That's not to say that soup queue and the matchmaker ISN'T broken, but is isn't nearly as broken as what you are suggesting. Groups can swing a win OR loss, depending on the quality of the group

Even terrible tier 1s are at a competitive level compared to tiers 5 and 4..

Gagis, on 25 March 2021 - 02:05 AM, said:

This statement is absolutely false. Most stomps happen when one team gains slight advantage and manages to hold on to it long enough for the match to snowball from there.

For example, team A has 2 mechs wander off alone and get killed early. The rest of the match is 12v10 which is already an overwhelming advantage and every kill from there on will make it more overwhelming. Team B is likely to win with a score like 12-2 even if both teams had evenly skilled players at the start. You see this happen even in high level competitive play where all it takes is a misplay or two for one team to get steamrolled even if they were the better team on paper.

The more skilled players those teams have, the more likely the match is to snowball as teams are less and less likely to fumble and lose their momentum.

In low tier matches snowball effects can stop when team B also makes mistakes. The most even matches that end with one or two players alive from both teams are ones where both teams did really badly, mistakes piled up and no one had the skill to take advantage of all those mistakes. Even matches are often consequences of races to the bottom where anyone but the last survivors had a terrible time.

The mixed queue may make the snowball slightly more likely to start rolling one way or the other, but it is FAR from being the main mechanism that causes it, only an extra nudge.

Stomps happen all the time yes but there are even levels of stomps.. I'm fine with stomps happening but when top tier people wipe lowers in less than 5 mins its not a great entertainment game..and abuse them over chat at the same time.

Also when even amounts of player are matched in a similar skill set stomps happen less frequently.. Still happens generally slower paced but no where near as much.

Edited by Samial, 25 March 2021 - 04:41 AM.

[pbiggz]

oh good this old dead horse again

[Zigmund Freud]

cmndctrl, on 24 March 2021 - 06:09 PM, said:

lots of good information here, just want to say THANK YOU to those who posted. keep these threads coming. soup queue will be better again hopefully SOON



treating new players to this combined queue is certainly not doing player count any favors. look at the posted screenshots. how many games u gonna stick around for when its a 0/12 wipe

Neither would it help when new players try to drop with their similarly skilled friends in a 2-3 people group, wait for 10 minutes to drop, only to get obliterated by real tryhard groups in group queue.

Most fun I had in MWO was, unsurprisingly, when casually playing with 1-2 friends. It worked in soup queue, but in separated group queue it was either getting obliterated, or getting carried by friendly sweatlords so hard that we barely got to fire our weapons before everybody on the red team was destroyed. It was incredibly frustrating. And it especially hurts when one of your friends decide to try this MWO you keep talking about, but you know that if you play together, instead of showing them around, it will worsen their experience, since you'll have to go to group queue.

As for stomps, they always happened, solo or soup queue. I even counted stomps on sticky note near my keyboard since they announced that soup will be introduced, and didn't find drastic difference. Anecdotal and not real stats, but that's my experience.

I agree with posters above though, 4 people groups might be too big, reducing to 3 would be better.


Streamers are a bit different question. They often can change the game by simply being good players with good microphones who are active in voice and herd the pugs into semi coherent unit. But if they are sad enough to go smurfing to pad their W/L, they will be able to face newer players in solo queue just as well.

[Dozer6]

This thread is a testament to why psr rating means absolutely nothing...