118 replies to this topic

[Kroete]

JediPanther, on 04 December 2022 - 08:58 AM, said:

As much as I agree with you on that option the game population along with the cauldron's crappy meta means it won't happen. I had a 4 man running ecm subppcs just wreck a qp match. Not even five minutes long. I rage quit the rest of the night and spent my time playing other funner single player games.

No sense playing a game that just pisses you off or bores you to death.

Played less and less and only on my second account with lots of urbies und only some bigger mechs.
Couldron agenda is boring, premades are boring too, but only if you play their game.

You have a premade, thats meatshields to follow and gives you the opportunity to get as much kills with as less damage as possible,
an enemy premade is an opportunity to leg one or more of them and getting a red arrow and some whining.
Too much pug farmers, let them play with themselfs and do (play) something that is fun.

The real fun is tier 4/5, there is diversity and chaos and a lot less pug farmers, to get there just use a narc or rocketlauncher light or a spider and cap every match.

Edited by Kroete, 07 December 2022 - 08:09 AM.

[JediPanther]

Kroete, on 07 December 2022 - 08:00 AM, said:

Played less and less and only on my second account with lots of urbies und only some bigger mechs.
Couldron agenda is boring, premades are boring too, but only if you play their game.

You have a premade, thats meatshields to follow and gives you the opportunity to get as much kills with as less damage as possible,
an enemy premade is an opportunity to leg one or more of them and getting a red arrow and some whining.
Too much pug farmers, let them play with themselfs and do (play) something that is fun.

The real fun is tier 4/5, there is diversity and chaos and a lot less pug farmers, to get there just use a narc or rocketlauncher light or a spider and cap every match.

I didn't say I was in a pre made. Only earlier that one was in the drop running snub ppc ecm urbies and ruining that match. If you meant my old unit we hardly drop any more. As for those lights I've ran pretty much every possible build on my vast armada of lights as it is the class I use the most. Builds run the range of is-he-drunk to current meta.

Narc's cool down and snail velocity makes it go right into the trash pile. Five tons that can go for faster engine or more weapons. Even with a max missile and cool down nodes on the fastest lrm mech lights have still makes the narc have a cool down of five seconds to which many weapons fire twice in the time it takes to fire one narc. Just look at the basic cool down stats of the weapons before including quirks and nodes.

Sure I could use a 80%-100% capture light but i'm here to shoot other robots not stand in a square being a free target/kill.

[Tarteso]

pbiggz, on 06 December 2022 - 05:55 AM, said:

...a major chunk of which is represented by dudes who want to play with their friends. If you separate out group and solo queue you're essentially soft-banning a large chunk of the playerbase, who will go play something else in the absence of being able to play with their friends...

It's amazing to see this claim over and over with no proof. Let's make a test for 1-2 months and see what happens

[An6ryMan69]

I'm not super educated on the details of how QP match selection happens behind the scenes, but as someone who has personally been jumped by four identical stealth Phoenex Hawks working together, I do think giving up on improving the situation may be premature.

Would it help if groups were "ranked" higher by the system in terms of player tiers so they play against tougher opponents?

For example, as soon as a group of players hits the quickplay button, that group automatically gets bumped up two player tiers past the rating of the highest person in the group?

So if four x tier 4 or 5 players group up, they would be considered a Tier 2 entity for matchmaking purposes?

Maybe?

Edited by An6ryMan69, 07 December 2022 - 11:11 AM.

[sosegado]

An6ryMan69, on 07 December 2022 - 11:10 AM, said:

I'm not super educated on the details of how QP match selection happens behind the scenes, but as someone who has personally been jumped by four identical stealth Phoenex Hawks working together, I do think giving up on improving the situation may be premature.

Would it help if groups were "ranked" higher by the system in terms of player tiers so they play against tougher opponents?

For example, as soon as a group of players hits the quickplay button, that group automatically gets bumped up two player tiers past the rating of the highest person in the group?

So if four x tier 4 or 5 players group up, they would be considered a Tier 2 entity for matchmaking purposes?

Maybe?

This is such a great idea imho that i wish I could like it more than once!

[pbiggz]

Tarteso, on 07 December 2022 - 11:09 AM, said:

It's amazing to see this claim over and over with no proof. Let's make a test for 1-2 months and see what happens

And how would you test it? Because jarls list doesn't tell you anything meaningful here, and unless you work for PGI you have no access to real numbers.

[SFC174]

pbiggz, on 07 December 2022 - 12:16 PM, said:

And how would you test it? Because jarls list doesn't tell you anything meaningful here, and unless you work for PGI you have no access to real numbers.

Same way they always test. Make the change and see what the population does. They did it for soup queue. And its more helpful than making unfounded assertions. Right or wrong he'd at least know what works.

[sycocys]

An6ryMan69, on 07 December 2022 - 11:10 AM, said:

I'm not super educated on the details of how QP match selection happens behind the scenes, but as someone who has personally been jumped by four identical stealth Phoenex Hawks working together, I do think giving up on improving the situation may be premature.

Would it help if groups were "ranked" higher by the system in terms of player tiers so they play against tougher opponents?

For example, as soon as a group of players hits the quickplay button, that group automatically gets bumped up two player tiers past the rating of the highest person in the group?

So if four x tier 4 or 5 players group up, they would be considered a Tier 2 entity for matchmaking purposes?

Maybe?

Not really the worst idea.

[Wid1046]

An6ryMan69, on 07 December 2022 - 11:10 AM, said:

I'm not super educated on the details of how QP match selection happens behind the scenes, but as someone who has personally been jumped by four identical stealth Phoenex Hawks working together, I do think giving up on improving the situation may be premature.

Would it help if groups were "ranked" higher by the system in terms of player tiers so they play against tougher opponents?

For example, as soon as a group of players hits the quickplay button, that group automatically gets bumped up two player tiers past the rating of the highest person in the group?

So if four x tier 4 or 5 players group up, they would be considered a Tier 2 entity for matchmaking purposes?

Maybe?

That won't necessarily fix things. Groups have a major impact on the team, but it isn't always for the better. If you have a terrible group on your team you'll likely lose and if the enemy team has a terrible group then you'll likely win. Groups increase the stomp rate, but not always due to playing well.

I would rather have groups on the enemy team than on my team since solos are at least more likely to communicate with the team and work together. Groups often are on their own voice channel and do their own thing. Whether 'their own thing' is playing well or feeding varies from group to group. Groups have a bad impact on match quality, but it isn't the only problem with PGI's matchmaker.

I quit playing back in February since I lost hope that PGI would do anything to improve match quality. It looks like nothing has really changed.

[pbiggz]

SFC174, on 07 December 2022 - 04:19 PM, said:

Same way they always test. Make the change and see what the population does. They did it for soup queue. And its more helpful than making unfounded assertions. Right or wrong he'd at least know what works.

They consolidated the queues because, by their own admission, the queues wouldnt work if they didn't. Period. This was not an experiment on a live game and if you think that's a good thing to do without very careful planning then you know little about game development.

They had a choice between two queues, where some players would be excluded, and one queue where all players would be included and they chose the inclusive queue. People who have issues with that are just happy to admit they want the game to be exclusionary in their favour.

[Curccu]

An6ryMan69, on 07 December 2022 - 11:10 AM, said:

I'm not super educated on the details of how QP match selection happens behind the scenes, but as someone who has personally been jumped by four identical stealth Phoenex Hawks working together, I do think giving up on improving the situation may be premature.

Would it help if groups were "ranked" higher by the system in terms of player tiers so they play against tougher opponents?

For example, as soon as a group of players hits the quickplay button, that group automatically gets bumped up two player tiers past the rating of the highest person in the group?

So if four x tier 4 or 5 players group up, they would be considered a Tier 2 entity for matchmaking purposes?

Maybe?

If I have understood correctly 90% of groups in "solo" queue QQ threads are about some high tier1 (98-99 percentile) group is stomping hard. With this small population MM has pretty much impossible task to find something that can be considered equally good to opposing side (And once again T1 is T1 but IMO there is largest difference of skill in any tier between lowest skilled player and highest skilled player in that tier.) It is not fun for most people to be opposing side of that kind of force and I can understand that.

But hardly people QQ that group of T4-5s stomp them hard because they simply do not have capability to do that or they would not be at tier 4 or 5 anymore.
If MM would considers that kind of group to be tier 2 they get stomped hard because they are not capable of doing their part that MM expects of them to do, grouped or not.
Real issue are those high T1 groups and what does this do to them? rise them to tier -2?

Overall idea is good, to rise groups tier a bit but not that brutally as you exampled IMO. And this does nothing to the real problem aka T1 groups.

[pbiggz]

Curccu, on 08 December 2022 - 01:11 AM, said:

If I have understood correctly 90% of groups in "solo" queue QQ threads are about some high tier1 (98-99 percentile) group is stomping hard. With this small population MM has pretty much impossible task to find something that can be considered equally good to opposing side (And once again T1 is T1 but IMO there is largest difference of skill in any tier between lowest skilled player and highest skilled player in that tier.) It is not fun for most people to be opposing side of that kind of force and I can understand that.

But hardly people QQ that group of T4-5s stomp them hard because they simply do not have capability to do that or they would not be at tier 4 or 5 anymore.
If MM would considers that kind of group to be tier 2 they get stomped hard because they are not capable of doing their part that MM expects of them to do, grouped or not.
Real issue are those high T1 groups and what does this do to them? rise them to tier -2?

Overall idea is good, to rise groups tier a bit but not that brutally as you exampled IMO. And this does nothing to the real problem aka T1 groups.

There is nothing to be done about T1 groups. Some people are better at the game than you or me. It frankly doesn't feel good to just get lacquered by D A T A but any intervention will basically soft ban them at best, which is unacceptable, or make all groups more likely to face them, which is also unacceptable, since the vast majority of groups are not D A T A's t1 abuse squad.

This is a competitive game, and i don't mean that in the sweaty sense, but the simple sense; for you to win, someone else has to lose, and for someone else to win, you have to lose. If the response to sometimes losing is to ban, nerf, or otherwise remove the people that won, so the loser has no competition, they're looking to play a single player game with cheats, not a competitive multiplayer game.

Edited by pbiggz, 08 December 2022 - 05:51 AM.

[sosegado]

Curccu, on 08 December 2022 - 01:11 AM, said:

.......But hardly people QQ that group of T4-5s stomp them hard because they simply do not have capability to do that or they would not be at tier 4 or 5 anymore.
If MM would considers that kind of group to be tier 2 they get stomped hard because they are not capable of doing their part that MM expects of them to do, grouped or not.......

Overall idea is good, to rise groups tier a bit but not that brutally as you exampled IMO. And this does nothing to the real problem aka T1 groups.

To badly quote a Marvel movie, "When you choose to drop in a group it sends a signal to the community that you are ready for a higher form of War!"

Edited by Stab Wound, 08 December 2022 - 07:55 AM.

[An6ryMan69]

Curccu, on 08 December 2022 - 01:11 AM, said:

If I have understood correctly 90% of groups in "solo" queue QQ threads are about some high tier1 (98-99 percentile) group is stomping hard. With this small population MM has pretty much impossible task to find something that can be considered equally good to opposing side (And once again T1 is T1 but IMO there is largest difference of skill in any tier between lowest skilled player and highest skilled player in that tier.) It is not fun for most people to be opposing side of that kind of force and I can understand that.

But hardly people QQ that group of T4-5s stomp them hard because they simply do not have capability to do that or they would not be at tier 4 or 5 anymore.
If MM would considers that kind of group to be tier 2 they get stomped hard because they are not capable of doing their part that MM expects of them to do, grouped or not.
Real issue are those high T1 groups and what does this do to them? rise them to tier -2?

Overall idea is good, to rise groups tier a bit but not that brutally as you exampled IMO. And this does nothing to the real problem aka T1 groups.

Well, as long as people keep considering ways to improve the quickplay situation and to (hopefully) mitigate how much a group can throw off a match, then that's something.

I don't actually think two tiers is a really big bump, if the matchmaker started to consider groups as a single entity.

I'm pretty sure right now as a Tier 3 player I run into Tier 1 players semi-regularly, and honestly, I think a single Tier 1 player in the mix does not unbalance a match as much as a four man group if Tier 3 players. Your experience may vary of course.

As has been correctly mentioned, whole groups of Tier 1 players, well, not sure what can be done about that. Hopefully they get bored of seal clubbing and move on, I suppose. It's probably pretty unfulfilling for a group like that to turn my mech into a shotgunned beer can anyway.

See y'all on the battlefield.

Edited by An6ryMan69, 08 December 2022 - 09:03 AM.

[pbiggz]

An6ryMan69, on 08 December 2022 - 09:01 AM, said:

Well, as long as people keep considering ways to improve the quickplay situation and to (hopefully) mitigate how much a group can throw off a match, then that's something.

I don't actually think two tiers is a really big bump, if the matchmaker started to consider groups as a single entity.

I'm pretty sure right now as a Tier 3 player I run into Tier 1 players semi-regularly, and honestly, I think a single Tier 1 player in the mix does not unbalance a match as much as a four man group if Tier 3 players. Your experience may vary of course.

As has been correctly mentioned, whole groups of Tier 1 players, well, not sure what can be done about that. Hopefully they get bored of seal clubbing and move on, I suppose. It's probably pretty unfulfilling for a group like that to turn my mech into a shotgunned beer can anyway.

See y'all on the battlefield.

I understand why you're saying this, but you understand this is pure anecdote right?

[LordNothing]

pbiggz, on 08 December 2022 - 05:50 AM, said:

There is nothing to be done about T1 groups. Some people are better at the game than you or me. It frankly doesn't feel good to just get lacquered by D A T A but any intervention will basically soft ban them at best, which is unacceptable, or make all groups more likely to face them, which is also unacceptable, since the vast majority of groups are not D A T A's t1 abuse squad.

This is a competitive game, and i don't mean that in the sweaty sense, but the simple sense; for you to win, someone else has to lose, and for someone else to win, you have to lose. If the response to sometimes losing is to ban, nerf, or otherwise remove the people that won, so the loser has no competition, they're looking to play a single player game with cheats, not a competitive multiplayer game.

bad players who would remove the good players are no better than the good (and i use that term loosely) players who intentionally gerrymander the queue so that they never face a competitive foe. the only real difference is the former is impossible, and the latter is somehow tolerated (and has become a major contributing factor to the ultimate failure of fp).

[pbiggz]

LordNothing, on 08 December 2022 - 02:11 PM, said:

bad players who would remove the good players are no better than the good (and i use that term loosely) players who intentionally gerrymander the queue so that they never face a competitive foe. the only real difference is the former is impossible, and the latter is somehow tolerated (and has become a major contributing factor to the ultimate failure of fp).

Nobody's gerrymandering quickplay. This is the only way quickplay works. When it comes to faction play I absolutely agree with you, and the fact that PGI's fix was to simply tack a disclaimer to the gamemode is pretty sad.

[SFC174]

pbiggz, on 07 December 2022 - 09:19 PM, said:

They consolidated the queues because, by their own admission, the queues wouldnt work if they didn't. Period. This was not an experiment on a live game and if you think that's a good thing to do without very careful planning then you know little about game development.

They had a choice between two queues, where some players would be excluded, and one queue where all players would be included and they chose the inclusive queue. People who have issues with that are just happy to admit they want the game to be exclusionary in their favour.

No one is excluded. At least no more than soup queue excludes players that don't want to play with pre-mades. Why do you make this stuff up? Russ pitched soup queue as an experiment when they did it, and then announced they had no plans to go back halfway through - population went down after they implemented, which suggests that they should've thought about reverting it. Again, this stuff is all searchable on the forums. You're welcome to your opinion, but at least check the facts before you posture as though you have special knowledge on the subject.

[pbiggz]

SFC174, on 08 December 2022 - 03:56 PM, said:

No one is excluded. At least no more than soup queue excludes players that don't want to play with pre-mades. Why do you make this stuff up?

People who liked to play with their friends couldn't before soup queue. The group queue was dead, it simply did not find matches which meant if you wanted to play with your friends you had no place to go. Sure, you could play solo, but what if some people only wanted to play with friends? What if being in a unit was the main draw towards the game, as it was for me, and many others? The answer is simple; you didn't play. You left. You found something else to play with your friends because if you were a group player, you had nowhere to go.

This is the definition of being excluded.

Your desire to curate your own competition represents a far lower priority than making the game playable and accessible for all who would like to play it, how they would like to play it. Despite your protests, there's no way to argue your way around this. You, a T5, would like some people removed from the game so you can move up in tiers without the fear (which I can only assume others have impressed upon you) that you'll be pug stomped by D A T A; a thing that has happened to me, maybe, 3 times, and only while I was myself, playing in a group.

Your vision for the game is deeply exclusionary and you know it.

SFC174, on 08 December 2022 - 03:56 PM, said:

Russ pitched soup queue as an experiment when they did it, and then announced they had no plans to go back halfway through - population went down after they implemented, which suggests that they should've thought about reverting it. Again, this stuff is all searchable on the forums. You're welcome to your opinion, but at least check the facts before you posture as though you have special knowledge on the subject.

https://twitter.com/...713082436149250

Reposted since you didn't bother reading the tweet where he explicitly states

Quote

People will just have to trust us that opt in group queue is simple not an option - you would need massive amounts of player choice opt in available at all time's

So to repeat what I have already stated above, and has been stated by the President of Piranha Games; there is no technical way to make a separate group queue viable; either group queue is empty, or solo queue is cannibalized to make the group queue whole.

Soup queue is already a compromise, the 4 person group limit is, by all standards, rather stringent, but necessary to keep the queue functional for the largest number of people.

https://leaderboard.isengrim.org/stats

In addition to that, linking the drop in players that followed without acknowledging that numbers more or less spiked upwards from season 50 to 58 seems disingenuous, especially when drops in population can come from multiple sources, like it being the middle of summer, during a COVID lull, when everyone thought they were going back to work. I have about as much evidence that was the cause as you have proof that it was soup queue; all anecdotal, so don't pass it off like its a silver bullet.

Edited by pbiggz, 08 December 2022 - 04:23 PM.

[Glymbol]

Following your logic PGI is soft banning people who want to play groups over 4, 12 man group for example. So better let them play in QP with12 man premade.