172 replies to this topic

[Wid1046]

pbiggz, on 05 May 2021 - 10:05 AM, said:

That's anecdotal at best, and also not the topic of this thread. This old trope needs to be buried deep, because its a conspiracy theory that at worst will motivate people to ask PGI to make this game worse.

How will getting a proper group queue back make the game worse? Also, this thread is about the population of the game, so I think suggestions regarding how to sustain that growth as well as improvements that we can make due to that growth are on topic.

Wid1046, on 05 May 2021 - 07:24 AM, said:

[redacted]

We need to get group queue back and I think Krasnopesky's suggestions are likely to be the best and fastest way to get group queue back with reasonable wait times. 8v8 with maximum group sizes of 4 will make matchmaking easier, and I for one would be open to dropping as a solo in group queue if there was a C-Bill boost associated with it. His idea to have maximum wait times and then toss the group into solo anyway if it takes too long is also fine since having a group in solo queue would be the exception, not the rule.

[Vlad Ward]

Wid1046, on 05 May 2021 - 10:16 AM, said:

How will getting a proper group queue back make the game worse? Also, this thread is about the population of the game, so I think suggestions regarding how to sustain that growth as well as improvements that we can make due to that growth are on topic.

Eh. I appreciate Krasno's proposal, but I personally don't like the idea of split queues to begin with. I'd rather empower teams to effectively coordinate than cordon off or nerf folks who want to drop together.

The simplest path to that is to identify what makes a group of 4 so much more powerful than 4 individuals and grant that functionality to everyone.

Example: Groups are strong because groups can coordinate their Mechs and loadouts prior to the match. LRMs and Spotters can drop together, Cannon and Laser boats can ensure they have complimentary ranges, etc. By allowing players to use Select Mech after the MM has picked teams, you give everyone the same capability.

Some people will still insist on ignoring their team and doing their own thing and that's okay. That's what Tier 5 is for.

Edited by Vlad Ward, 05 May 2021 - 10:25 AM.

[Wid1046]

Vlad Ward, on 05 May 2021 - 10:24 AM, said:

The simplest path to that is to identify what makes a group of 4 so much more powerful than 4 individuals and grant that functionality to everyone.

Part of the problem is that groups aren't always 'so much more powerful'. There's about a 50-50 chance of them being great, or being boat-anchors, so if one team gets a great group and the other team gets a dud, then there isn't much that the solos dropping with the dud group can do to turn things around. This is a game that can snowball easily, so while one bad player can be compensated for, you probably can't do the same with four on your team. This makes the games in soup queue a lot more stompy than they were before.

Vlad Ward, on 05 May 2021 - 10:24 AM, said:

[redacted]
Some people will still insist on ignoring their team and doing their own thing and that's okay. That's what Tier 5 is for.

This is another part of the reason why solos typically don't like playing with groups is that if you don't follow them you're pretty much guaranteed to lose. They make up about a third of the team and almost always ignore any calls made by someone not in their group, so you either have to do what they want to do or lose. These groups play as though they consider themselves as being 'the team' and everyone else as just also being there.

This is also made worse as groups tend to talk to one another on steam or discord and won't communicate with the rest of the team. They typically not only ignore calls by people outside their group, but won't even tell the rest of the team what their plan is.

I'm not trying to **** on groups and I sometimes play as part of a group, but they do have an overall negative effect on solo players. When I'm playing solo I'd rather drop with other solos and when I'm in a group I'd rather drop with other groups. (I would be open to sometimes dropping as a solo in group queue if there were a C-bill bonus though.)

Vlad Ward, on 05 May 2021 - 10:24 AM, said:

Eh. I appreciate Krasno's proposal, but I personally don't like the idea of split queues to begin with. I'd rather empower teams to effectively coordinate than cordon off or nerf folks who want to drop together.

Why don't you want your group to play in a group queue? Also, how would a separate group queue be a nerf?

[pbiggz]

Wid1046, on 05 May 2021 - 11:29 AM, said:

Part of the problem is that groups aren't always 'so much more powerful'. There's about a 50-50 chance of them being great, or being boat-anchors, so if one team gets a great group and the other team gets a dud, then there isn't much that the solos dropping with the dud group can do to turn things around. This is a game that can snowball easily, so while one bad player can be compensated for, you probably can't do the same with four on your team. This makes the games in soup queue a lot more stompy than they were before.

So you concede that groups dont always mean an instant win.

Wid1046, on 05 May 2021 - 11:29 AM, said:

This is another part of the reason why solos typically don't like playing with groups is that if you don't follow them you're pretty much guaranteed to lose. They make up about a third of the team and almost always ignore any calls made by someone not in their group, so you either have to do what they want to do or lose. These groups play as though they consider themselves as being 'the team' and everyone else as just also being there.

This is true with or without groups. If you dont stick with the team you lose.

Wid1046, on 05 May 2021 - 11:29 AM, said:

This is also made worse as groups tend to talk to one another on steam or discord and won't communicate with the rest of the team. They typically not only ignore calls by people outside their group, but won't even tell the rest of the team what their plan is.

Then the group deserves to lose too. Thats what tier 5 is for.

Wid1046, on 05 May 2021 - 11:29 AM, said:

I'm not trying to **** on groups and I sometimes play as part of a group, but they do have an overall negative effect on solo players. When I'm playing solo I'd rather drop with other solos and when I'm in a group I'd rather drop with other groups. (I would be open to sometimes dropping as a solo in group queue if there were a C-bill bonus though.)

People quitting en-masse because they can't play with their friends anymore has a much worse effect on the queue.

Wid1046, on 05 May 2021 - 11:29 AM, said:

Why don't you want your group to play in a group queue? Also, how would a separate group queue be a nerf?

Remember when it took a half hour to get a match? Pepperridge farms remembers.

Additionally, the vast majority of groups are not full 8 or 12 mans. They're groups of 3-5 guys who just want to shoot some robots. A dedicated group queue means you're group of 3-5 guys gets matched with another group of guys, and against a solid 12 man. The group only queue heavily favoured full 12 mans, which is why people took to sync dropping just to try to play with their friends. The vast majority of the groups you fear are just those groups of 3-5 guys.

Punishing all groups just because you think you'll have to face an EmP 12 man if you don't is how you kill a game. We have done this song and dance before. Now pop is up 140% and people are demanding that pgi repeat exactly what killed the game again.

[Wid1046]

pbiggz, on 05 May 2021 - 11:41 AM, said:

[redacted]

Remember when it took a half hour to get a match? Pepperridge farms remembers.

Additionally, the vast majority of groups are not full 8 or 12 mans. They're groups of 3-5 guys who just want to shoot some robots. A dedicated group queue means you're group of 3-5 guys gets matched with another group of guys, and against a solid 12 man. The group only queue heavily favoured full 12 mans, which is why people took to sync dropping just to try to play with their friends. The vast majority of the groups you fear are just those groups of 3-5 guys.

Punishing all groups just because you think you'll have to face an EmP 12 man if you don't is how you kill a game. We have done this song and dance before. Now pop is up 140% and people are demanding that pgi repeat exactly what killed the game again.

You obviously didn't read either of my above posts where I talked about Kras' proposal for a new group queue, so I'll point out a couple ways in which his proposal will be different than what you fear.

Wait times:
Wait times will be made shorter through four main means:
1) 8v8 instead of 12v12 in order to speed up matchmaking
2) Limiting group sizes to a maximum of 4 to speed up matchmaking
3) Allowing solo players to opt-in to be placed in group queue matches (there would be a C-bill incentive to playing in a group queue match as a solo player, and solo players would still normally be put into solo matches any time when they are not needed by the group queue matchmaker)
4) There would be a 5 minute maximum wait time before any groups that have been waiting that long are placed into a solo queue match anyway (groups being in solo queue would be the exception, not the rule)

Facing EmP 12 mans:
You won't need to face an EmP 12 man for the following reasons:
1) Groups will be limited to a maximum of 4 players
2) The matches will be 8v8 for group queue

I encourage you to listen to Kras' interview on NGNG.

[Anomalocaris]

pbiggz, on 05 May 2021 - 11:41 AM, said:

So you concede that groups dont always mean an instant win.



This is true with or without groups. If you dont stick with the team you lose.

Then the group deserves to lose too. Thats what tier 5 is for.

People quitting en-masse because they can't play with their friends anymore has a much worse effect on the queue.

Remember when it took a half hour to get a match? Pepperridge farms remembers.

Additionally, the vast majority of groups are not full 8 or 12 mans. They're groups of 3-5 guys who just want to shoot some robots. A dedicated group queue means you're group of 3-5 guys gets matched with another group of guys, and against a solid 12 man. The group only queue heavily favoured full 12 mans, which is why people took to sync dropping just to try to play with their friends. The vast majority of the groups you fear are just those groups of 3-5 guys.

Punishing all groups just because you think you'll have to face an EmP 12 man if you don't is how you kill a game. We have done this song and dance before. Now pop is up 140% and people are demanding that pgi repeat exactly what killed the game again.

Wow dude, did you just gaslight this thread or what?

No one, including the poster you responded ever said that groups mean an instant win. In fact it has been specifically said that the bigger problem is the potato groups that increase the chances of a poor match.

And the proposal here is to do an 8v8 group queue with maximum 4-man groups - so this discussion of 12mans is irrelevant. That also means that you won't get a full team of EmP or jGX. If there's any semblance of a matchmaker two 4 mans from one of those units would almost always end up on opposite sides of the match. By limiting group sizes to what we have in soup queue, we have the potential for better matchmaking than the old group queue could achieve.

And to state that splitting queues is what killed the population is just a flat out lie and you should b***h slap yourself for even thinking about typing it. The very fact that the population dropped for 3 of the 4 months after the queue merge last year should put paid to the idea that merging is what stopped the population loss. And we had split queues during very healthy times of population on this game.

A lot of us don't want to play with groups. It's a different dynamic and its not fun for many people. We had split queues for what, 6 years? And it worked fine. It's time to look at ways to satisfy both solo and group players to grow the population and the current soup queue is not doing it.

[pbiggz]

Anomalocaris, on 05 May 2021 - 12:35 PM, said:

Wow dude, did you just gaslight this thread or what?

No one, including the poster you responded ever said that groups mean an instant win. In fact it has been specifically said that the bigger problem is the potato groups that increase the chances of a poor match.

Any time groups are brought up, the evidence presented is 100% anecdotal. You guys talk about how groups feel, then pull up separate numbers on stomps and try to correlate them. Thats lying with statistics.

Anomalocaris, on 05 May 2021 - 12:35 PM, said:

And the proposal here is to do an 8v8 group queue with maximum 4-man groups - so this discussion of 12mans is irrelevant. That also means that you won't get a full team of EmP or jGX. If there's any semblance of a matchmaker two 4 mans from one of those units would almost always end up on opposite sides of the match. By limiting group sizes to what we have in soup queue, we have the potential for better matchmaking than the old group queue could achieve.

12v12 was a mistake period. But I don't actually agree with Kraz's proposal. I don't think the queues should be split. No other game punishes people for playing together. It is completely off the wall that such a vocal portion of this community thinks this makes sense for a game that is finally starting to grow again.

Anomalocaris, on 05 May 2021 - 12:35 PM, said:

And to state that splitting queues is what killed the population is just a flat out lie and you should b***h slap yourself for even thinking about typing it. The very fact that the population dropped for 3 of the 4 months after the queue merge last year should put paid to the idea that merging is what stopped the population loss. And we had split queues during very healthy times of population on this game.

I never said its what solely killed the game, but ash and others broke down in detail in this thread where the pop drops happened, and its easy to see how an arbitrarily segregated queue would contribute to that decline.

justcallme A S H, on 21 April 2021 - 10:15 PM, said:

If you don't recall why the population dropped - well - Let's me help you remember. Up until Mid 2016 GroupQ was bustling along. Low wait times all the time, even in Oceanic.

2016 - The start of the slope
June 2016 - Mech rescale. Mechs got fat. Really fat. This was a huge point of contention, most players were unhappy as their mechs and TTK went down the toilet. It was an atrocious time for the game and many players quit. 1,000s.of players lost interest and left the game.

2017 - The deathbell rings
Skill Tree and Engine Desync. This was the straw that broke many who while unhappy about Rescale, stuck around. My own unit at the time - 54MR went from 120 active players to 30 within 2 months to July '17. The last slid away over the next couple months. You had MercStar, a 600-700 strong unit quite literally gone overnight. There was under 100 active within 3 months. It was a dark year for MWOs population. What was left of the higher end skill of the playerbase quits/leaves the game after Mechcon 2017.

People briefly came back May 2018 - Solaris City map launch. It then really fell on its face harder than ever.

You can plot these Events vs Population on the publicly available data. After Mech Rescale GroupQ took a sizeable hit. Wait times went up. After Skill Tree/Desync you could wait 30mins for a single GroupQ match. It was regular and I did it more times than I'd care to admit.

From mid 2019 till Feb 2020 wait times were regularly 15mins for a SOLO Quick Play drop. It got so.bad I simply stopped playing and streaming. I'd do Faction Play on a Sat afternoon (Friday NA evening) and that was it.

Now the Qs merged, population is up. Wait times are down and both continue to improve. If skill gap is the problem you claim - why isn't your prediction coming true? Why is the reverse happening?

The reverse is happening because skill gap isn't the reason it dropped in the first place. If you have proof that definitively proves me wrong - post it up. Otherwise stop the nonsense dude.

Gagis, on 21 April 2021 - 11:03 PM, said:

Long Tom and other ways FW failed to meet expectations also led many units to disband, reducing player numbers for GQ indirectly as well.

Splitting the queues did work for a while but it made queues and populations very fragile. Any major shock could kill player numbers and thats exactly what happened. Faction Warfare Phase 3 is universally panned. It kills most large units and those that remain have no interest in playing it. They go back to the group queue, which, by virtue of being separate from the solo queue, is heavily weighted towards matching you against large groups. Here, the EmP boogeyman as we know it is born, because anyone who did drop in group queue who wasn't in an organized 12 man slammed right into one. Very quickly, people realized it wasn't worth the trouble. Better to sync drop in the solo queue, or, play something else and not bother at all.

Anomalocaris, on 05 May 2021 - 12:35 PM, said:

A lot of us don't want to play with groups. It's a different dynamic and its not fun for many people. We had split queues for what, 6 years? And it worked fine. It's time to look at ways to satisfy both solo and group players to grow the population and the current soup queue is not doing it.

You always say this. "alot of you". the bulk of this community does not post on these forums, or participate in the discords. They're dudes who want to shoot mechs with their friends. You represent an extremely vocal minority that doesn't understand what its asking for, at exactly the juncture in which asking for it might kill the game.

Fact is, it doesn't matter if you dont like playing with groups. You cant stop people. Advocating for it is not fair, or reasonable. The solution to this problem is to put in pre-match lobbies where you can balance your loadouts based on your team and the map you're playing and not break up teams after each match so that dropping in quick play might as well be the same as dropping in a group.

What you're asking for is literally to punish people for wanting to play with their friends and you don't get to ask for that.

[FupDup]

Wid1046, on 05 May 2021 - 11:29 AM, said:

Part of the problem is that groups aren't always 'so much more powerful'. There's about a 50-50 chance of them being great, or being boat-anchors, so if one team gets a great group and the other team gets a dud, then there isn't much that the solos dropping with the dud group can do to turn things around. This is a game that can snowball easily, so while one bad player can be compensated for, you probably can't do the same with four on your team. This makes the games in soup queue a lot more stompy than they were before.

IMO, the advantage is that in a premade you have the ability to guarantee that several of your teammates will be competent and using competent builds. As a pug, it's completely random. Premades deal with less randomness. It's kind of like a card game where one player gets a totally random deck and the other player gets to manually pick a few of the cards that he gets.

In theory a good matchmaker would be able to get around this by ensuring that every player (pug or premade) is of relatively similar skill level, but we don't have a good matchmaker (and admittedly this game's niche population might not be enough to make it work).

[John Bronco]

Ok max group size in group queue is 4.

There I've fixed your problem.

[Absaint]

pbiggz, on 05 May 2021 - 01:20 PM, said:

What you're asking for is literally to punish people for wanting to play with their friends and you don't get to ask for that.

He might be right you know.

This game is clawing back from a coma, be very careful with things that might put it down again.

The ability for people to gather with a 1 or 3 friends and drop together easily in a minute or two probably had a bigger impact on the game than many of you imagine, and it was not a bad one.

[justcallme A S H]

Wid1046, on 05 May 2021 - 07:24 AM, said:

Groups fleeing group queue to do solo drops is still healthier for the game than having those same groups along with solos leave the game entirely to escape the same comp groups. And solos leave the game to escape from groups in general.

We need to get group queue back and I think Krasnopesky's suggestions are likely to be the best and fastest way to get group queue back with reasonable wait times. 8v8 with maximum group sizes of 4 will make matchmaking easier, and I for one would be open to dropping as a solo in group queue if there was a C-Bill boost associated with it. His idea to have maximum wait times and then toss the group into solo anyway if it takes too long is also fine since having a group in solo queue would be the exception, not the rule.

How do you know Solos are leaving because of groups?
How many players returned because they could play with friends again?
How many high skill groups are out there impacting game outcomes?
How many casual groups are out there just playing/shooting and not impacting games outcomes?


Can you answer any of those questions accurately? If you can't, you really cannot be saying anything of the above.
I don't believe at all there high skill groups are 9/10 matches like many people suggest is happening - it's just improbable. I mostly see just casual units playing as a group and not overly impacting their outcomes when I'm looking at Streamers and other screenshots from friends or if I'm dropping on an Alt in the more common tier - that is, Tier 3.

The idea of 8v8 OPT-IN was an idea a number of us were saying prior to the entire merger. Oddly enough it was mostly high skill players all saying the same thing at the same time and this was (at that time) with little coordination. No Cauldron discord, MWO Comp discord channels etc etc. People just 'felt' what would work.

[Roger Dabbit]

pbiggz, on 05 May 2021 - 11:41 AM, said:

So you concede that groups dont always mean an instant win.



This is true with or without groups. If you dont stick with the team you lose.



Then the group deserves to lose too. Thats what tier 5 is for.

Four people dictating the experience (sometimes for the objective worse) for eight others is bad math for maintaining and growing a population. If groups form and are siloing themselves or running awful tactics that waste their mechs, that's a detriment to more than just those 4 players' experiences. One third of the team is not just an "everybody gets a bad light player on their team sometimes who Leeroy Jenkins the enemy team" level inconvenience. If those folks are uncooperative or unresponsive to the rest of the team, it's a major disadvantage.

The numbers would favor the idea that solo players should take priority in that situation if our goal is to grow a population. This game isn't driven by Twitch streams of grouped players or a lucrative comp scene afaik.

If removing group queues also negatively affects those solo times, it becomes a different argument. Does anyone have the metrics to prove either way?

Edited by Roger Dabbit, 05 May 2021 - 02:39 PM.

[Wid1046]

pbiggz, on 05 May 2021 - 01:20 PM, said:

[redacted]
12v12 was a mistake period. But I don't actually agree with Kraz's proposal. I don't think the queues should be split. No other game punishes people for playing together. It is completely off the wall that such a vocal portion of this community thinks this makes sense for a game that is finally starting to grow again.
[redacted]
What you're asking for is literally to punish people for wanting to play with their friends and you don't get to ask for that.

I'll try asking again, why do you think separating out group queue like Kras is suggesting is punishing people? He has solutions both to preventing groups like EmP from performing the 12 man stomps you keep bringing up and solutions to prevent excessive wait times (they'd even be hard capped and put groups into solo queue if they wait more than 5 minutes). The only complaints that you bring up are ones that he has proposed solutions for. How would his form of a group queue be a punishment for groups?

[Vlad Ward]

Wid1046, on 05 May 2021 - 11:29 AM, said:

Part of the problem is that groups aren't always 'so much more powerful'. There's about a 50-50 chance of them being great, or being boat-anchors, so if one team gets a great group and the other team gets a dud, then there isn't much that the solos dropping with the dud group can do to turn things around. This is a game that can snowball easily, so while one bad player can be compensated for, you probably can't do the same with four on your team. This makes the games in soup queue a lot more stompy than they were before.

Having the potential to be powerful and choosing to take advantage of it are two different things. Hopefully everyone interested in the conversation already understands that. A group that chooses not to take advantage of the ability to coordinate builds isn't any worse for their team than an equivalent number of solo players with the same skill level and inclination towards listening to comms.

Wid1046, on 05 May 2021 - 11:29 AM, said:

This is another part of the reason why solos typically don't like playing with groups is that if you don't follow them you're pretty much guaranteed to lose. They make up about a third of the team and almost always ignore any calls made by someone not in their group, so you either have to do what they want to do or lose. These groups play as though they consider themselves as being 'the team' and everyone else as just also being there.

This is also made worse as groups tend to talk to one another on steam or discord and won't communicate with the rest of the team. They typically not only ignore calls by people outside their group, but won't even tell the rest of the team what their plan is.

I'm not trying to **** on groups and I sometimes play as part of a group, but they do have an overall negative effect on solo players. When I'm playing solo I'd rather drop with other solos and when I'm in a group I'd rather drop with other groups. (I would be open to sometimes dropping as a solo in group queue if there were a C-bill bonus though.)

You're talking about the cart being slow while I'm talking about buying a new horse. Player behavior is a direct response to the game mechanics. Players in a 4-man group have no knowledge of the builds on the rest of the team, therefore there's significantly more effort involved in coordinating with them than there is working internally. The best thing I see recommended is for groups to just tell the rest of the team what they're doing - the team can work off of that based on their individual strengths and weaknesses.

A group queue reduces the number of unknowns from 8 to 2. It's not "what the heck are all these solo's running?" It's "What are the other two groups doing?" This is the advantage of a group queue for group players.

You know what's even better than that, though? Reducing the number of unknowns to 0. Adding Select Mech functionality to the lobby post-team formation lets the entire team coordinate their builds together.

Imagine a world where you spawn into a lobby and say "Hey, anyone else running LRMs?" and other people say "Hey, I wasn't but that sounds fun!" or "I have a spotter I can run!" Then everyone in the LRM squad arranges themselves to drop in the same Lance. Crazy, right?

Wid1046, on 05 May 2021 - 11:29 AM, said:

Why don't you want your group to play in a group queue? Also, how would a separate group queue be a nerf?

Group matchmaker is by definition less granular than a solo MM. However PGI is handling it internally (median, mean PSR, some other metric), unless everyone in your group is in the same tight PSR band things will get a little wonky. When that becomes the case for every team in the match, the ability of the MM to construct good matches is significantly impaired.

On top of that, group matchmaking has a significantly higher population:quality ratio in general. You'd need a lot more players in the group queue than the solo queue to reach the same level of match quality.

The end result is a queue with a lot more stomps whose only redeeming feature is that it's not as fundamentally broken as the "Throw 24 players in 24 dropships and let them talk after the match has started" QP queue.

There's a meme running around that anyone opposed to an isolated Group queue is just afraid of EmP. Personally, I'm in the top 5%; I'm far more likely to be on the side doing the stomping. I'm rusty these days, but I've run comp against EmP, 228, and JGx before. I can still fire my guns when they end up on the red team. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to throw every casual pairing off to the meatgrinder.

Edited by Vlad Ward, 05 May 2021 - 03:36 PM.

[Wid1046]

justcallme A S H, on 05 May 2021 - 02:26 PM, said:

How do you know Solos are leaving because of groups?
How many players returned because they could play with friends again?
How many high skill groups are out there impacting game outcomes?
How many casual groups are out there just playing/shooting and not impacting games outcomes?


Can you answer any of those questions accurately? If you can't, you really cannot be saying anything of the above.
I don't believe at all there high skill groups are 9/10 matches like many people suggest is happening - it's just improbable. I mostly see just casual units playing as a group and not overly impacting their outcomes when I'm looking at Streamers and other screenshots from friends or if I'm dropping on an Alt in the more common tier - that is, Tier 3.

The idea of 8v8 OPT-IN was an idea a number of us were saying prior to the entire merger. Oddly enough it was mostly high skill players all saying the same thing at the same time and this was (at that time) with little coordination. No Cauldron discord, MWO Comp discord channels etc etc. People just 'felt' what would work.

I quoted you in my comment and based my statement on you comment.

justcallme A S H, on 04 May 2021 - 02:45 PM, said:

I agree with Vx on the casual groups leaving the Group Queue. I remember back in 2017 this happening regularly. You could have a few streamers on one monitor and within an hour they had stopped grouping and gone to SoloQ once better teams were on the field and 4-5 straight losses.

You stated that groups were bailing from group queue to go to solo queue. I pointed out that if what you were saying was true, then those same groups (as well as solo players) would now just bail from the game entirely to avoid those same groups.

So as for your statement "Can you answer any of those questions accurately? If you can't, you really cannot be saying anything of the above." You're the one that provided anecdotal evidence, are you suggesting that you should follow your own advice, or just people who disagree with you? No one has the statistics you asked for. Not even PGI can read the minds of people who leave the game, so maybe tone down the dismissiveness. People can have opinions that disagree with yours, the 'sit down, shut up, I'm the only person allowed to have an opinion' attitude of yours is both rude and makes you look bad. Please chill a little.

As for you implying that I think groups are always powerful, I'll just quote myself:

Wid1046, on 05 May 2021 - 11:29 AM, said:

Part of the problem is that groups aren't always 'so much more powerful'. There's about a 50-50 chance of them being great, or being boat-anchors, so if one team gets a great group and the other team gets a dud, then there isn't much that the solos dropping with the dud group can do to turn things around. This is a game that can snowball easily, so while one bad player can be compensated for, you probably can't do the same with four on your team. This makes the games in soup queue a lot more stompy than they were before.
[redacted]

[Leone]

Vlad Ward, on 05 May 2021 - 03:22 PM, said:

You know what's even better than that, though? Reducing the number of unknowns to 0. Adding Select Mech functionality to the lobby post-team formation lets the entire team coordinate their builds together.

Imagine a world where you spawn into a lobby and say "Hey, anyone else running LRMs?" and other people say "Hey, I wasn't but that sounds fun!" or "I have a spotter I can run!" Then everyone in the LRM squad arranges themselves to drop in the same Lance. Crazy, right?

That sounds suspiciously like Community Warfare... Can't say I disapprove of any of it bleeding into quickplay, though when I do drop quick play I usually just wanna get in and out quick as possible to test builds or nab event points and that would add to the between match dead time.

Wid1046, on 05 May 2021 - 04:15 PM, said:

You stated that groups were bailing from group queue to go to solo queue. I pointed out that if what you were saying was true, then those same groups (as well as solo players) would now just bail from the game entirely to avoid those same groups.

Removing all challenges to pander to a select few who hate challenge is probably the worst decision a developer could ever make. People play games to over come challenges.

~Leone.

Edited by Leone, 05 May 2021 - 04:22 PM.

[Nightbird]

To inject some numbers into this discussion, retention rates over the past 3 years shows that the people given the right amount of challenge are retained better than those over and under-challenged. Please continue.

https://mwomercs.com...th-in-business/

Not everyone agrees with my interpretation, etc etc etc, to avoid starting another fight.

[justcallme A S H]

Wid1046, on 05 May 2021 - 04:15 PM, said:

I quoted you in my comment and based my statement on you comment.

You did not address or answer one of my questions which directly related to things you are saying.

If you could answer them and show where the evidence is - it would further to help your argument. An argument which right now I've not seen a lot of evidence anywhere to support it in an overall scenario. Yes you might have had a specific experience but if that isn't translating to the majority... Well... Guess what I'm gonna say next on that one?

Of course same applies to me. My experience is not always representative of the overall either. Hence I make a purposeful choice to watch as many streamers from all Tiers, Grouped or not etc. I try to garner as much of an overall view as I can and at many times my view isn't representative of what is happening in a larger picture due to ant number of reasons.



Fact is GroupQ did die off for the reasons Vx and I outlined. We played GroupQ almost exclusively for months, often together... Until it of course kept dying off and we gave up. All the statements about the more casual streamers and casual groups in general giving up are also true. We had groups raging at us for PLAYING as a Group in GroupQ?!?!?!? I mean that sounds mad, yet it happened almost every time.

So saying splitting things leads to healthier population, I believe, is a much more detailed discussion not a lot are understanding or recognising.

FWIW, I was against it from the start and still am. However I cannot honestly look at it objectively and say that view is correct.

[justcallme A S H]

Wid1046, on 05 May 2021 - 04:15 PM, said:

You stated that groups were bailing from group queue to go to solo queue. I pointed out that if what you were saying was true, then those same groups (as well as solo players) would now just bail from the game entirely to avoid those same groups.

What I said does not translate to Solo players leaving the game. You've entirely made that one up of your own accord and I in no way said that.

That isn't happening if you watch the streamers (doing Solo sync drops), paying attention to player names in game, units dropping etc etc.
Of course it's not a exact science, happily state that.

[Khobai]

honestly groups have no place in solo queue.

groups screwed up their own queue. so how was it a good idea to let them screw up solo queue too?

the fact the game has more players now sounds like a good argument for removing groups from solo queue to me. because the reason that was given for combining the queues no longer exists since there are more players now than there were when the decision was made to combine the queues.


and the game has gotten an increase in players since february 2020 because of covid and everyone being stuck at home. tons of online games have seen their player bases increase as a result of covid. its not specific to MWO. stop trying to take credit for covid lmao.

although you can fairly attribute the new players gained in the last month or two to the recent patches. the patches have admittedly been more positive than negative, although far from perfect. Theyre not going to save the game in the long term. Its just temporary hype over the meta getting shook up but once that dies down the game will be just as dead as it was before. Because they still havent fixed any of the fundamental underlying issues with the game.

Edited by Khobai, 05 May 2021 - 05:50 PM.