57 replies to this topic

[Wildstreak]

Telemachus -Salt Wife Salt Life-, on 20 September 2021 - 06:29 PM, said:

For example that free warhammer I just got in the event, I'm probably gonna level it in faction play instead of quickplay because I don't think dropping an unlevelled mech in quickplay is feasible anymore cause of going up against 4 man groups while dropping solo.

There's 9 builds on Grim's that could work at different ranges, scroll down the list and find the 6Rs.

I did the 2UAC + 4ML, works good enough even with no nodes unlocked just a bit hot for now but still puts out enough damage.

[pbiggz]

Telemachus -Salt Wife Salt Life-, on 20 September 2021 - 06:29 PM, said:

Iunno man, I used to use solo queue to level mechs before, and now when I drop solo I gotta drop real mechs in queue to actually help carry. Then when I drop with in a small group and we are all in like two heavies and an assault, I definitely see the combined carry potential affecting the matches.

For example that free warhammer I just got in the event, I'm probably gonna level it in faction play instead of quickplay because I don't think dropping an unlevelled mech in quickplay is feasible anymore cause of going up against 4 man groups while dropping solo.

I am not calling for buckets at all. I know the population cannot support it. I am straight up saying groups in quickplay queue should be eliminated.

I am not the game developer and I don't have an answer for the "well what to do with groups and people that wanna play groups". I know not everyone wants to faction play, which is where my group content takes place. Not everyone wants to make private lobbies and play either cause private lobbies don't give cbills (I don't think, I don't do that stuff). But the current system is definitely a less fun quickplay experience. Maybe PGI just needs to give cbills for private lobby games too if groups wanna play competitively against other groups. But the fact that the solo experience is now the solo versus 4 man group or two experience is just terrible.

I basically always play meta mechs, but sometimes I like to just try new/random builds. I can see people who just wanna play around with their derpy mech builds having a worse experience than me because the regular queue now requires you to play a meta, fully skilled build to have a decent chance at having a good (read cbills, contributing, good match score) experience.

Yeah man back when you and I were running with the DERP boys the matchmaker was using ELO, we're using PSR now, and we're post-reset. I think what you're experiencing is better matches against people who are more capable of clubbing you if you don't pay attention.

[Magic Pain Glove]

I think this is a very well thought out idea and I see no downsides to it . PGI should work on implementing this as soon as they can and I think people should ask Larsh to make a video about how amazing it is once its implemented.

I do however disagree that there needs to be any restrictions on the groups that decide to bring 8-12 people. After all you want to spend quality time with your friends and the worst thing one can do ( that will definitely hamper fun ) is place restrictions on what mechs you can bring.

You should also try to use twitter as much as you can and tweet at developers relentlessly on how much you want 12 mans in the game since it worked out so well the previous time.

[Brauer]

Magic Pain Glove, on 25 September 2021 - 08:38 PM, said:

I think this is a very well thought out idea and I see no downsides to it . PGI should work on implementing this as soon as they can and I think people should ask Larsh to make a video about how amazing it is once its implemented.

I do however disagree that there needs to be any restrictions on the groups that decide to bring 8-12 people. After all you want to spend quality time with your friends and the worst thing one can do ( that will definitely hamper fun ) is place restrictions on what mechs you can bring.

You should also try to use twitter as much as you can and tweet at developers relentlessly on how much you want 12 mans in the game since it worked out so well the previous time.

/s I assume? XD

[Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie]

Brauer, on 26 September 2021 - 04:57 AM, said:

/s I assume? XD

why he would never..!
I assume

[Magic Pain Glove]

I am not so sure even I know anymore. Also /s ruins the fun . lel

[LordNothing]

Vamboozle, on 17 September 2021 - 05:02 AM, said:

The day they scrap the 4 man limit on QP is the day I’d give up.

I play for fun (hence QP) and my heart already sinks a little when I see one side with a 4 group and the other not as it usually signals a one sided match (usually not always).

I’d suggest setting up different queues for people who want to play in or with bigger groups but that just splits the player base further.

So a no from me.

there are enough people who would leave the game for the opposite reason to seriously damage the player pool. what does the game the most good? the game needs all kinds of players, because that builds population possibly to a point where viable matchmaking becomes a thing. while that may never happen, its certainly something to work on.

i can see a system where you can bring a group of arbitrary size, but you must also wait for another team of similar size (plus or minus 2 players). these players might go to a holding queue where it waits for teams, and once those are matched, then that game gets moved into the main queue so the remaining slots be populated with pugs and the game launched. the main queue will try to pick pugs that move the teams closer in skill balance but it is unlikely to close a wide spread.

if you want to lazy foo drop, it might cost you some wait time and teams wont be skill matched as well as a pug drop. but if you coordinate with other teams, you can sync drop and get games faster. a pure pug team will only ever drop against a maximum of a 2-man team. more than that and they will have a team close to what the other team has. this is similar to the lance for lance rule i proposed for fp matchmaking, but more granular. i think to make it easier to swallow for pugs, make it possible to grind faction trees in qp.

ultimately mingling pugs and teams is good for unit building and exposing pugs to tactics significantly deeper than nascar.

Edited by LordNothing, 30 September 2021 - 10:36 PM.

[pbiggz]

LordNothing, on 30 September 2021 - 10:32 PM, said:

there are enough people who would leave the game for the opposite reason to seriously damage the player pool.

Citations very much needed, and pointing to steam charts and smirking doesn't count. This is one of the primary points of the solos only brigade and it does not hold up to scrutiny. Population has been going up with a functional consolidated queue. The idea that we stand to lose more just by simply letting people play together when they want is laughable.

LordNothing, on 30 September 2021 - 10:32 PM, said:

what does the game the most good? the game needs all kinds of players, because that builds population possibly to a point where viable matchmaking becomes a thing. while that may never happen, its certainly something to work on.

It especially needs players not committed to being victims because they aren't willing to learn how the game works.

LordNothing, on 30 September 2021 - 10:32 PM, said:

i can see a system where you can bring a group of arbitrary size, but you must also wait for another team of similar size (plus or minus 2 players). these players might go to a holding queue where it waits for teams, and once those are matched, then that game gets moved into the main queue so the remaining slots be populated with pugs and the game launched. the main queue will try to pick pugs that move the teams closer in skill balance but it is unlikely to close a wide spread.

This is how the queue works now. If a 4 man is in the queue, you won't match unless another 4 man with an acceptable PSR average enters to be matched against. Pretty much every time someone comes in here to scream about the groups ruining their matches, screenshots show that there were 4 mans on each side. Its impossible to tell with certainty, but we can be fairly confident this is how it works.

LordNothing, on 30 September 2021 - 10:32 PM, said:

if you want to lazy foo drop, it might cost you some wait time and teams wont be skill matched as well as a pug drop. but if you coordinate with other teams, you can sync drop and get games faster. a pure pug team will only ever drop against a maximum of a 2-man team. more than that and they will have a team close to what the other team has. this is similar to the lance for lance rule i proposed for fp matchmaking, but more granular. i think to make it easier to swallow for pugs, make it possible to grind faction trees in qp.

Sync dropping is not to be encouraged. If players are sync dropping it means some part of the match maker has broken down and is no longer serving its purpose.

LordNothing, on 30 September 2021 - 10:32 PM, said:

ultimately mingling pugs and teams is good for unit building and exposing pugs to tactics significantly deeper than nascar.

Very much agreed, though solo warriors will dispute this dramatically.

[Tarl Cabot]

Quote

This is how the queue works now. If a 4 man is in the queue, you won't match unless another 4 man with an acceptable PSR average enters to be matched against. Pretty much every time someone comes in here to scream about the groups ruining their matches, screenshots show that there were 4 mans on each side. Its impossible to tell with certainty, but we can be fairly confident this is how it works.

Hmm, iie, If there is a 4-man on one team, the other team may have a 4-man, 3-man, 3+2-man, 2+2-man, or 2-man. Only thing I have not located at the time of this post, is if there is only 1 group available, does it actually hold up that drop, or does the values open up enough to where both sides are filled up then dropped into combat.

Not really complaining about QP being mixed, though I believe it should be reduced to max 3, allow only 2+2-man on a side, and remove tonnage limits and make it max 1 weight class/group. At the moment, and was also one of the issues during Elo days, PGI not adding an indicator of who was actually grouped up for that drop.

https://mwomercs.com...es-4-week-test/

Quote

How the combined public queue will work:
- All matches will remain 12v12.
- Max group size will be restricted to 4 players. All group sizes of 2,3 and 4 are valid group sizes.
- When the Match Maker builds a 12-player team, it will ensure that there is no more than one 4 player group or as close as possible (2 player + 2 player for example) per team and all remaining slots will be filled with solo players.

[pbiggz]

Tarl Cabot, on 01 October 2021 - 06:28 AM, said:

Hmm, iie, If there is a 4-man on one team, the other team may have a 4-man, 3-man, 3+2-man, 2+2-man, or 2-man. Only thing I have not located at the time of this post, is if there is only 1 group available, does it actually hold up that drop, or does the values open up enough to where both sides are filled up then dropped into combat.

Not really complaining about QP being mixed, though I believe it should be reduced to max 3, allow only 2+2-man on a side, and remove tonnage limits and make it max 1 weight class/group. At the moment, and was also one of the issues during Elo days, PGI not adding an indicator of who was actually grouped up for that drop.

https://mwomercs.com...es-4-week-test/

I stand corrected, but its still very conservative on what groups are allowed so the spirit of my argument i think still stands.

[LordNothing]

pbiggz, on 01 October 2021 - 05:26 AM, said:

Citations very much needed, and pointing to steam charts and smirking doesn't count. This is one of the primary points of the solos only brigade and it does not hold up to scrutiny. Population has been going up with a functional consolidated queue. The idea that we stand to lose more just by simply letting people play together when they want is laughable.



It especially needs players not committed to being victims because they aren't willing to learn how the game works.



This is how the queue works now. If a 4 man is in the queue, you won't match unless another 4 man with an acceptable PSR average enters to be matched against. Pretty much every time someone comes in here to scream about the groups ruining their matches, screenshots show that there were 4 mans on each side. Its impossible to tell with certainty, but we can be fairly confident this is how it works.



Sync dropping is not to be encouraged. If players are sync dropping it means some part of the match maker has broken down and is no longer serving its purpose.



Very much agreed, though solo warriors will dispute this dramatically.

id really love to see hard data from pgi about solo vs group player ratios. i think surveys have been compiled with regards to this, but those pale in data quality to what pgi likely has.

i think there is a huge subset of strictly solo players, with the group players playing solo sometimes (to level mechs, or simply because a group fails to materialize during a play session), and perhaps a tiny subset of exclusive group players. but without hard data i really cant back up that hypothesis.

i think both sides in this game need to make (and have made) sacrifices if the population is to grow. things like an all inclusive match maker and endgame content for everyone. allowing the pug/group divide to widen is not doing anything for the game.

players playing the victim is always an issue. modern society doesn't really help much, makes them soft or unable to deal with even the slightest of hardship. you kind of have to filter that out when making decisions about the mm. i dont think that its because they dont want to learn how the game works, the devil is in the details in that reguard, and a lot of people, even myself, have old knowledge or fuzzy assumptions about how things work mixed in with actual useful information. things that worked before just stop working, or perhaps they never worked and i was doing something else (playing this game is habitual at this point and muscle memory usually trumps any attempt at abstract though). no one seems to be in any hurry to populate the official game wiki with up to date information about how mechanics work in any significant detail (and that includes matchmaking). forums are ill suited to that task. i think its sort of like with fishing, those who know, dont tell, and those that dont know simply wont shut up. but the salt comes from somewhere and maybe for every victim there is probibly someone gaming the system against them, for they are easy targets and thus make the best prey.

sync dropping is ok if its going to go through the match maker provided the mm is equipped to handle it. in this case you are syncing up in order to drop large teams with large teams. the match maker i describe would allow larger teams to drop and the sync dropping is simply to overcome the delays involved, not to game the system. say i got a group of 7 and you got a group of 9 (as per the +/- 2 rule), we simply arrange to drop at the same time so that the mm will catch both of us and hopefully spawn a match with both groups. another advantage is that small groups of 2 or fewer players can drop against a pug team. i like to think that the role of the 2-man group is to help introduce new players to the game, and should not be counted as a team 100% of the time. again the +/- 2 rule would mean those 2-mans could drop against a whole lance of team players about as frequently as against all pugs (assuming equal proportions).

Edited by LordNothing, 01 October 2021 - 05:56 PM.

[KodiakGW]

pbiggz, on 01 October 2021 - 05:26 AM, said:

It especially needs players not committed to being victims because they aren't willing to learn how the game works.

And exactly how does the game work, according to you? Is it that to enjoy it I need to always group up with people and play as a team? I can never go solo and expect an even match except occasionally?

You called me a person who thinks he is a victim on another thread. Nope, just don't like to run into a four man groups of top tier players, using current maximum tonnage, multiple times when trying out mechs that might have been made better by the Cauldron changes. So, I'm just supposed to be happy taking lumps, or barely able to get in a decent amount of damage in an unleveled mech over and over again? Not fun for me. Now, punching mechs is fun. Last night I found a Cyclops attacking my dropship. Swung in behind him and punched his spine out. THAT was fun.

Maybe some people just don't like to play the game the way YOU want to play it. But, I guess anyone who doesn't want to play it that way is a victim in your mind. The numbers seem to say you are right. With all the positive changes being made, we are seeing those player number keep on going up, up, up!

...oh, wait...

https://leaderboard.isengrim.org/stats

What I do find really interesting are the people who claim the SoupQ is so great, but have not played any games (at least with their main account) for months. I would figure someone who spent so much time saying that keeping SoupQ as is, so much time making posts on these forums, would at least get 10 games in every month over..say...the last 4 months.

I'm supporting the game from this developer that I enjoy. I've even just helped convince an XBox user I don't know to buy the Heroes DLC. I would figure that SoupQ supporters would help support the Cauldron's efforts, to make positive changes to a game, by putting in a few games to keep the numbers up. But, I guess that is just me. I would play the game my opinions help make, and convince others to come play. Current SoupQ is not what I want to play ever again, and it certainly looks like I'm not alone.

[pbiggz]

KodiakGW, on 02 October 2021 - 08:41 AM, said:

stuff

Pointing at a steam chart trending downwards and smirking doesn't turn into the own you think it is. believe it or not, other things were happening that effected population. You aren't a prophet and you still aren't a victim. A downward trend on a graph isn't your magic ace in the hole that lets you think your personal (and extremely toxic) views on this game are vindicated.

As for the rest of your stuff, im no longer interested in engaging with it. You don't like how me or my friends play the game and you are clearly just here to pick fights.

Edited by pbiggz, 02 October 2021 - 09:15 AM.

[justcallme A S H]

KodiakGW, on 02 October 2021 - 08:41 AM, said:

multiple times when trying out mechs that might have been made better by the Cauldron changes.

KodiakGW, on 02 October 2021 - 08:41 AM, said:

What I do find really interesting are the people who claim the SoupQ is so great, but have not played any games (at least with their main account) for months.

To be fair you've not played more than 10 games since April this year.

Post April there have been 4-5 massive, massive patches.

There have been so many changes its impossible to be trying out mechs that have had adjustments with that low play time.

You can't really have a go at others if you're in the same boat

[pattonesque]

KodiakGW, on 02 October 2021 - 08:41 AM, said:

Maybe some people just don't like to play the game the way YOU want to play it. But, I guess anyone who doesn't want to play it that way is a victim in your mind. The numbers seem to say you are right. With all the positive changes being made, we are seeing those player number keep on going up, up, up!

...oh, wait...

https://leaderboard.isengrim.org/stats

I'd like you to please be honest here and look at player trends historically. In every year except 2018 player population declined from August to September. A more accurate way to address this is that September numbers have been the highest they've been since September 2018.

[KodiakGW]

pbiggz, on 02 October 2021 - 09:13 AM, said:

Pointing at a steam chart...

Umm, that is Jarls list. Provided to us graciously by Scurro to analyze trends and see if things are progressing in the right direction after changes are made. As for your comment about me picking fights....:

justcallme A S H, on 02 October 2021 - 11:37 AM, said:

To be fair you've not played more than 10 games since April this year.

Post April there have been 4-5 massive, massive patches.

There have been so many changes its impossible to be trying out mechs that have had adjustments with that low play time.

You can't really have a go at others if you're in the same boat

And I've already explained why I haven't played since April, after one of the first weapon changes. It was a conversation that of which you actively participated and quoted me. I just did a quick scan of the patch notes from May to September. None of them addressed with my issue about the current SoupQ. Since nothing has changed with SoupQ since last time I played, then there is no reason for me to reinstall the game.

Believe me, I'd like to thank the person who got PGI to make the changes to the Hellspawn. I'm really jonesing to get in one of those. But, I remember my prior play experience, and see posts from other players experiencing the same thing that was dismissed as "antidotal evidence." Nothing has changed about SoupQ since the last time I played. So, I forget about it, and get my mech fix from MW5 and the great mods being put out by the mod community. Besides, I'm sure I'd be hunted by all the people who don't like what I'm saying, even though I'm trying to make suggestions to help keep player numbers numbers from heading in the opposite direction than they should be with all the massive good changes.

I also hate hypocrisy. So anyone who says SoupQ is fine and defends it, while not putting in any games is going to get it from me. You made your bed, now lie in it. Don't like playing what you are saying should stay the same, then time to stop talking and let other ideas get implemented. As I already said, if one....ONE....of the things I suggested were implemented, I would be back. In the meantime, I'll get my mech fix elsewhere. And, as I already said, it looks like I'm not alone.

Now excuse me while I get back to giving mechs kidney shots.

pattonesque, on 02 October 2021 - 12:31 PM, said:

I'd like you to please be honest here and look at player trends historically. In every year except 2018 player population declined from August to September. A more accurate way to address this is that September numbers have been the highest they've been since September 2018.

And below what they were in December 2020, BEFORE any patches were made. That is just honest facts.

[justcallme A S H]

KodiakGW, on 02 October 2021 - 01:02 PM, said:

I just did a quick scan of the patch notes from May to September. None of them addressed with my issue about the current SoupQ.

You commented quite specifically

KodiakGW, on 02 October 2021 - 08:41 AM, said:

multiple times when trying out mechs that might have been made better by the Cauldron changes.

That had only really happed in the last 5 months to a significant degree.

Do not try and drag the Q merger into this.

[LordNothing]

im still parsing the cauldron changes thus far. i think ive only scratched the surface as far as optimizing builds for the changes. i figure thats something that will take me months to get a grasp on, especially with more coming patches.