186 replies to this topic

[mrmikeasaltydoubloonluvin1stmate]

Period.

If they are the slightest bit talented they come in and destroy the enemy team.

They are on discord and that provides an added level of coordination.

It shouldn't be allowed.

Especially if you find yourself going up against them several matches in a row.

I play for fun and to relax.

Not to get gaussed in the head at 1000 meters without even knowing where it came from.

You want to group up?

Fine.

PGI is gracious enough to provide a place for all the groups to get together and bump heads.

Its called Faction Warfare.

Try it.

Thank you for your time.

mrmike5234

[Stefan the Usurper Amaris]

In a game like this, coordination is needed. Besides, with a name like mine, i get singled out lol, doesnt bother me >.> I get a good chuckle when someone says "i dont trust this Amaris guy..."

[Saved By The Bell]

Yeah, I hate groups too.

But nothing will change, so you have to improve yourself somehow.

[ThreeStooges]

I've seen 4 mans ruin qp games having droped with lots. When I see certain unit tags with 3-4 members I know if the match is going to be lost or won before the load countdown even finishes. Plenty of 3-4mans just yolo to their death making the match 0-4 while the other 8 have to either get stomped yet again or really get their s--- togeather in a hurry and play as a team to have any chance at all to win.

I've also had the reverse happen where one of the 4 uses voip/team chat to take charge and lead the 8 solos to a win but this happens far less and very few in-between in qp. If anyone really wants to play as a team and be in a team they will be 1. in a unit 2.playing fraction not qp. 3. both 1 and 2.

[John Bronco]

There's no putting the soup genie back in the bottle.

It is time for 1/1/1/1.

[ScrapIron Prime]

If we take groups out of quick play, then people will lose much of their ability to play with friends. That will reduce the population further... and reduced population is the whole reason groups are in quick play in the first place. At this point its necessary.

Take comfort in the fact that MOST groups are not match-killers. There are units that are, of course, but because of the way a team falls apart the more mechs it loses, a 12-5 victory is not a sign of a one-sided game.

[Bud Crue]

John Bronco, on 02 January 2022 - 08:40 AM, said:

There's no putting the soup genie back in the bottle.

It is time for 1/1/1/1.

I could get behind this. Is it doable at this point though? That is, does PGI have the ability/know how anymore to create a system where a group can't ready up until each member of the group (from a 2 man to a 4 man) is in a different weight class of mech? I'd be down with that if they could manage it.

[Heavy Money]

Ah, its time for this thread again I see.

[pbiggz]

less than 1000 concurrent users at peak hours

[Verilligo]

Heavy Money, on 02 January 2022 - 11:32 AM, said:

Ah, its time for this thread again I see.

The complaint is an accurate one. Now 90% of the time, it doesn't actually work that way, people group up and they're just as terrible in a group as they are individually. But this thread has started out mentioning specifically skilled players grouping up and demolishing people. And that does happen. Like watch any of the recent gameplay footage on D A T A's Youtube channel, he'll group up with one more JGx player and they'll hang off in the rear or otherwise doing something completely different from the rest of the team and absolutely clean house. Now D A T A alone is a terror of a player, anyone that's seen him in action can attest to that. But there have also been games on said channel where, if he did not have the backup he had, he would have lost the match.

It's not just him, of course, he's just one of the more visible and talented people in the game. And I'm sure there's a whole host of matches that he didn't upload that went completely pear-shaped. But this is what happens when you allow 99.8 percentile players to mix with 75 percentile or worse players. The chance of it happening? Is 10% at worst. The remaining 90% of the time you'll have normal matches unless you manage to accidentally sync your queue. But the 10% of the time where it happens feels memorably terrible.

Separating solo and group queue out again is not a good option, either, for all the reasons everyone puts forward. But the game's matchmaking is simply inadequate at properly matching players of equal skill with each other. I just don't see how you go about improving it with the current size of the playerbase and without impacting the time it takes for the top players to even get a fight at all.

[Heavy Money]

Verilligo, on 02 January 2022 - 05:59 PM, said:

The complaint is an accurate one. Now 90% of the time, it doesn't actually work that way, people group up and they're just as terrible in a group as they are individually. But this thread has started out mentioning specifically skilled players grouping up and demolishing people. And that does happen. Like watch any of the recent gameplay footage on D A T A's Youtube channel, he'll group up with one more JGx player and they'll hang off in the rear or otherwise doing something completely different from the rest of the team and absolutely clean house. Now D A T A alone is a terror of a player, anyone that's seen him in action can attest to that. But there have also been games on said channel where, if he did not have the backup he had, he would have lost the match.

It's not just him, of course, he's just one of the more visible and talented people in the game. And I'm sure there's a whole host of matches that he didn't upload that went completely pear-shaped. But this is what happens when you allow 99.8 percentile players to mix with 75 percentile or worse players. The chance of it happening? Is 10% at worst. The remaining 90% of the time you'll have normal matches unless you manage to accidentally sync your queue. But the 10% of the time where it happens feels memorably terrible.

Separating solo and group queue out again is not a good option, either, for all the reasons everyone puts forward. But the game's matchmaking is simply inadequate at properly matching players of equal skill with each other. I just don't see how you go about improving it with the current size of the playerbase and without impacting the time it takes for the top players to even get a fight at all.

You've summed it up pretty well. It can't really be solved. But generally speaking, the phenomenon likely isn't as bad as people think. There's a lot of confirmation bias. "Uhhg, another match where we lost and that group is on the other team. Must be because of that group" is a common sentiment. We see people come here complaining about specific premades, then when we look them up we find they have negative W:L, or W:L even worse than the person complaining. There's simply not enough JGx players for the amount people complain about groups.

So imo the proper response to these sorts of things is "Yes, there are issues, and there isn't a simple fix. But are you sure you aren't attributing more impact to groups than you ought to be?"

I've had tons of games that were memorably terrible and weren't against groups at all, even when I'm playing in a group of top few % players. There's lots of ways things can go badly, and its easy to blame them on a few bogeymen issues.

[Brother Frank]

Hi I'm one of those players who is usually in a group with 3 friends.

I also have around a 30% winrate.

[Prime Target]

mrmikeasaltydoubloonluvin1stmate, on 02 January 2022 - 07:39 AM, said:

Period.
...

You have VOIP. You can coordinate with your team same way.
I play solo and most of the time premade die same as any other players. Zero problems vs regular players. Fun fact that they often play their own game and that separating team and bring loose to them.

Edited by Prime Target, 02 January 2022 - 09:06 PM.

[PocketYoda]

Agreed 1000% op.. Hasn't changed the people on the forums and youtubers have the devs ears it wont change.

Edited by Nomad Tech, 02 January 2022 - 09:16 PM.

[GoodTry]

Heavy Money, on 02 January 2022 - 07:08 PM, said:

You've summed it up pretty well. It can't really be solved. . . .

I disagree - it is fixable if they devoted some engineering resources to it. They need secondary match balancing. That's it. Right now it seems to ignore players in groups and balances everyone else by tier (or by PSR, depending on who you ask). But in so many unbalanced matches, a human looking at the players list could re-arrange people to make a balanced match while leaving the groups where they are. They just don't have a system in place that properly considers the players in groups when balancing the teams in a match.

[Heavy Money]

GoodTry, on 02 January 2022 - 09:47 PM, said:

I disagree - it is fixable if they devoted some engineering resources to it. They need secondary match balancing. That's it. Right now it seems to ignore players in groups and balances everyone else by tier (or by PSR, depending on who you ask). But in so many unbalanced matches, a human looking at the players list could re-arrange people to make a balanced match while leaving the groups where they are. They just don't have a system in place that properly considers the players in groups when balancing the teams in a match.

More attention to the MM would certainly be good. Right now groups PSR is averaged. This can mean that groups involving t5 and t1 players can pull t1 players down into games they wouldn't normally be in, and vice versa for the t5 players. This is not ideal. It might be better if the group averaged PSR, but couldn't end up in a match below what the highest PSR would be put in or something.

But this still likely won't solve the largest problem which is that players have different skill levels, good players will beat others repeatedly, and we don't have enough population to match the top few % only against each other, and there really are some power teams out there who will just roll everyone repeatedly.

Edited by Heavy Money, 02 January 2022 - 09:56 PM.

[Prime Target]

Heavy Money, on 02 January 2022 - 09:56 PM, said:

More attention to the MM would certainly be good. Right now groups PSR is averaged. This can mean that groups involving t5 and t1 players can pull t1 players down into games they wouldn't normally be in, and vice versa for the t5 players. This is not ideal. It might be better if the group averaged PSR, but couldn't end up in a match below what the highest PSR would be put in or something.

But this still likely won't solve the largest problem which is that players have different skill levels, good players will beat others repeatedly, and we don't have enough population to match the top few % only against each other, and there really are some power teams out there who will just roll everyone repeatedly.

It's not true. Tier one always play with tier 1-3 even if the rest of the group is tier 5.

Edited by Prime Target, 02 January 2022 - 10:07 PM.

[Heavy Money]

Prime Target, on 02 January 2022 - 10:07 PM, said:

It's not true. Tier one always play with tier 1-3 even if the rest of the group is tier 5.

Afaik t1 can get put into t3 matches and t5 also into t3 matches even when solo dropping, its just very rare. With groups it will happen more. When I group with my t5 friends, I regularly see cadets. So if there is some mechanism like you say, its not solving the problem.

[Prime Target]

Heavy Money, on 02 January 2022 - 10:10 PM, said:

Afaik t1 can get put into t3 matches and t5 also into t3 matches even when solo dropping, its just very rare. With groups it will happen more. When I group with my t5 friends, I regularly see cadets. So if there is some mechanism like you say, its not solving the problem.

How do you know that they cadets?

[Heavy Money]

Prime Target, on 02 January 2022 - 10:29 PM, said:

How do you know that they cadets?

They have the Cadet icon on the score board. Its a C with a green background.