118 replies to this topic

[feeWAIVER]

I personally don't have a problem with Soup Queue.
I don't believe that removing 4mans from QP will create any hype for the game or grow the population.
Soup Queue truly is a compromise, and the only thing that could possibly net positive for the game would be another compromise.

To that effect, I recommend another Queue- yes another bucket- of 4v4 Solo Only.
They could open an Event Queue for a whole month that's nothing but '4v4 Solo Only' to help make the decision if a permanent 4v4 Bucket is sustainable.

Edited by feeWAIVER, 08 December 2022 - 06:17 PM.

[pbiggz]

Glymbol, on 08 December 2022 - 05:24 PM, said:

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.

The good old slippery slope fallacy. PGI can decide when and where to stop, whenever they like. Setting the group limit to 4 players does limit group play, but it also protects solo play. Its the compromise that allows the queue to serve the largest number of players. You're insinuating that i'd rather see the group limit go up, which is a lie. You can stop lying now, little man.

[fetzonk]

What exactly is the problem here? Losing against a team that has a coordinated premade lance? Chances are high that there is premade in your team too. That would be me and my two friends. We lose a lot and cause a lot of suffering with our lack of coordination and communication. Most of the time we chat about our daily lifes in the game. There are very few games where we can carry the team to a win.
Basically I think players like to point at something at the end of a lost game that is not their own fault (I am like this too). First thing to do is to search for a premade in the enemy squad and bam there it is: "the game is rigged". Well guess what? Me and my buddies were in your team, you just don't recognize it.
Matchmaking in mwo is pretty fair and the gameplay is quiet rewarding even when you lose. Try another shooter and watch the MM and faster TTK punish you after you are thrown into games with the regulars.
If we weren't able to play mwo as a team anymore (group queue wouldn't survive with this userbase) we would be off to another game. You won't miss us, I know....till you realize the massive drop of players and the endless queue times.

Edited by fetzonk, 09 December 2022 - 12:29 AM.

[Dr Wubs]

I can't emphasize enough how much I agree with this.

And I honestly don't care about population arguments.

Pre-mades were inflicted upon the rest of us by a bunch of people who run pre-mades.

This game is not purely about tier 1 people.

OR, have all the pre-mades drop in Tier 1.

If it's such a good idea, then the tier 1 people can have pre-mades.

The number of pre-mades farming tier 5 is extremely high, I have accounts at different tiers, and tier 5 is noticeably worse because of all the smurfing going on.

If you wanna smurf, go smurf the tier 1s, whose idea it was to have this setup in the first place.

You get your pre-made so that you can play with your friends and can coordinate better. That's an advantage. Go play your pre-made against good players instead of coming to farm the low people like a bunch of losers.

Edited by Dr Wubs, 09 December 2022 - 12:14 AM.

[Curccu]

Dr Wubs, on 09 December 2022 - 12:11 AM, said:

And I honestly don't care about population arguments.

Well you should it's what keeps servers online.

Dr Wubs, on 09 December 2022 - 12:11 AM, said:

Pre-mades were inflicted upon the rest of us by a bunch of people who run pre-mades.

I'm pretty sure PGI doesn't run pre-mades.

Dr Wubs, on 09 December 2022 - 12:11 AM, said:

This game is not purely about tier 1 people.

It most definitely is not, last official info about a Year ago kinda told us that there is less than 10% T1 players.

Dr Wubs, on 09 December 2022 - 12:11 AM, said:

OR, have all the pre-mades drop in Tier 1.

Doesn't work because not all groups are T1 equal if they would be... they would be T1 right?

Dr Wubs, on 09 December 2022 - 12:11 AM, said:

The number of pre-mades farming tier 5 is extremely high, I have accounts at different tiers, and tier 5 is noticeably worse because of all the smurfing going on.

Now what are you doing at tier 5 farming potatoes?

Dr Wubs, on 09 December 2022 - 12:11 AM, said:

You get your pre-made so that you can play with your friends and can coordinate better. That's an advantage. Go play your pre-made against good players instead of coming to farm the low people like a bunch of losers.

Yes I agree that real T1 players shouldn't make some alt account groups at T5

Edited by Curccu, 09 December 2022 - 01:04 AM.

[LordNothing]

pbiggz, on 08 December 2022 - 03:04 PM, said:

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.

team limits work quite well in qp. had we done that in fp it might not have died.

[Weeny Machine]

pbiggz, on 08 December 2022 - 04:21 PM, said:

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.



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

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



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.

And now go the next step and ask yourself: why was group queue dead when people really want to play with their friends?
Maybe now it dawns upon you...maybe...

[VeeOt Dragon]

yeah i don't have a huge problem with 4 mans in QP (well that is if the MM knew how to properly deal with them, something it doesn't do). anything more than a single 4 man per team though is a bit much.

now as for FP the constant 12 man pre-made stomp fests are one of the reason i don't play that game mode and haven't in YEARS. (well that and the overly toxic meta try hards that populate it). i honestly think limiting group sizes in FP would go a long way to bringing people back to it. i'm not saying to limit the number of total grouped players just the size of said group. instead of allowing full 12 man groups limit single group size to 4 but allow as many groups as can fit then filling the remainder with solos. so you could say have two 4 man groups with the remaining 4 filled with solos or a 4 man, a 3 man and a 2 man with again the rest solo. just put in a simpler match maker that all it does is do its best to put equal sized groups on each team (it will never be perfectly even but having an attempt made would be nice) no Tier or drop deck tonnage considerations just the group sizes.

[Gasboy]

Weeny Machine, on 04 December 2022 - 06:48 AM, said:

The fun gets killed off. I had a couple of matches again where the "pro premades" are out in force, fully staffed with the usual meta mechs playing glorified whack-a-mole across the whole map.

It is not about winning or losing. It is just dull to see either one or more groups sitting somewhere playing space-Verdun-mixed-with-Studio54-lightsow in their trenches and point their shiny lazors on anything that shows up. It is also boring to see the same damn meta crap mechs over and over and over again. ECM & Lazorzzz!

So, please give us a button to play only matches without premades.

You had that opportunity back when there was a solo queue.

If you can't beat them solo, why not join a clan and team up?

[pbiggz]

Weeny Machine, on 09 December 2022 - 08:14 AM, said:

And now go the next step and ask yourself: why was group queue dead when people really want to play with their friends?
Maybe now it dawns upon you...maybe...

This is not a gotcha, its just a giveaway that you didn't read any of the other responses.

As was mentioned before in this thread in multiple responses, the group queue had technical limitations; If a group of 12 joined the queue with 3 groups of 5, it would fail to make a match. If a group of 3 joined a gaggle of 4 mans, the 4 mans would form a match and the 3 would simply sit waiting forever. This dynamic played out repeatedly across the queue, meaning only a small number of groups could reliably find matches. Since solos couldn't be expected to join the group queue (an unrestricted group environment is bad for solos and I have never denied that), there weren't enough individual players to fill in gaps and keep the queue running.

This is in fact exactly what russ was alluding to; for a separate group queue to work, they'd need a degree of buy in from solos that would either damage the solo queue if forced, or would simply never happen if not.

There is no conspiracy. There is no silent majority that secretly hates group play, and there is no secret jGx cabal plotting to force groups upon you. All I see is people who wanted a PVE co-op mechwarrior game, got a competitive PVP game instead, and still haven't accepted that you can't curate your own competition to win more.

To restate the facts here, the first big death blow to the group queue was faction play; which was fantastic while it lasted, but had some critical issues (like being entirely hostile to solo players, and relying on a population level PGI couldn't maintain). Once faction play died out, those group players turned back to quickplay, and realized they couldn't play with friends; the group queue was just a spinning window simulator, and solo queue had a hard block on cooperating. The best they could do was sync drop.

If you actually know anything about game development, stopping friends from playing together in an explicitly multiplayer game is one of the cardinal sins. That is how the old group queue actually died.

Perhaps one day it will dawn on you that im not trying to trick you; im not out to get you, I want you to have fun, you don't seem to want me to have fun though.

Edited by pbiggz, 09 December 2022 - 10:20 AM.

[Glymbol]

pbiggz, on 08 December 2022 - 06:53 PM, said:

You're insinuating that i'd rather see the group limit go up, which is a lie. You can stop lying now, little man.

I am not insinuating anything, I am not lying. I am writing my opinion on the topic and on your arguments. Stop offending people please. It doesn't help the discussion or your arguments. Your "facts" are only your opinions. Your opinions are no better than other players' opinions.

[JuggernautXTR]

just played 4 matches, so far 3 losses to one win. was trying to figure out what i was doing wrong.......... when everyone scatters across the battlefeild thin as butter on bread your gonna get walked and no matter how hard i try i am gonna get whopped, and my player score is gonna take a hit. and this seems consistant everyday, I may not be the greatest player but i know better.
3/4 of my matches seems i get a scatter team.


this isn't solo play it's group play. it takes 6 shots from an ac 20 to drop a dire/atlas, how fast does it shoot.....not very
now put 6 members of a team on that dire/atlas and he drops in 10 seconds. i get these matches all the time or the other teams weight is huge advantage, same thing is going to happen when the "team" won't stick together and everyone goes off gallivanting across the map alone rofl stomp every time.
you absolutely have to stay grouped up or close enough proximity to the rest of the team to be effective.
no one is going to "win" a match alone.

Edited by JuggernautXTR, 09 December 2022 - 01:05 PM.

[Weeny Machine]

pbiggz, on 09 December 2022 - 10:19 AM, said:

This is not a gotcha, its just a giveaway that you didn't read any of the other responses.

As was mentioned before in this thread in multiple responses, the group queue had technical limitations; If a group of 12 joined the queue with 3 groups of 5, it would fail to make a match. If a group of 3 joined a gaggle of 4 mans, the 4 mans would form a match and the 3 would simply sit waiting forever. This dynamic played out repeatedly across the queue, meaning only a small number of groups could reliably find matches. Since solos couldn't be expected to join the group queue (an unrestricted group environment is bad for solos and I have never denied that), there weren't enough individual players to fill in gaps and keep the queue running.

This is in fact exactly what russ was alluding to; for a separate group queue to work, they'd need a degree of buy in from solos that would either damage the solo queue if forced, or would simply never happen if not.

There is no conspiracy. There is no silent majority that secretly hates group play, and there is no secret jGx cabal plotting to force groups upon you. All I see is people who wanted a PVE co-op mechwarrior game, got a competitive PVP game instead, and still haven't accepted that you can't curate your own competition to win more.

To restate the facts here, the first big death blow to the group queue was faction play; which was fantastic while it lasted, but had some critical issues (like being entirely hostile to solo players, and relying on a population level PGI couldn't maintain). Once faction play died out, those group players turned back to quickplay, and realized they couldn't play with friends; the group queue was just a spinning window simulator, and solo queue had a hard block on cooperating. The best they could do was sync drop.

If you actually know anything about game development, stopping friends from playing together in an explicitly multiplayer game is one of the cardinal sins. That is how the old group queue actually died.

Perhaps one day it will dawn on you that im not trying to trick you; im not out to get you, I want you to have fun, you don't seem to want me to have fun though.

Are you using your silly ad hominems or are you just nuts because you need to put words in my mouth?

The point is an easy one and you simply ignore it: premades in pug groups simply are no fun for apparent reasons. It even gets worse with a low player pool when a problematic MM also has to handle groups.

And you parrot the same argument again and again "we want to play with friends" and again ignore the fact that 4 vs 4 was dead. Holy strawman...
Or do you really want to imply that grouped play died because it was not 12 vs 12? Seriously?

The point is simple, though, and you should have learned that lesson from FP and 4 vs 4: better do no piss off the pugs. If they leave, you have nothing to fill up and fighting other premades...let's be honest: most of the premades are surly no keen on that or the aforementioned queue wouldn't be dead.

Edited by Weeny Machine, 09 December 2022 - 03:02 PM.

[Quintal Arwe]

Hypothetical Question.

I know its been said its not easy / possible to separate out groups in quick play at the moment. Could one of the three servers be devoted to it as an experiment for a month? I'm not sure everyone would run to it and deplete the main queue at this point a few years down the line from when the group queue was slushed in.

[pbiggz]

Weeny Machine, on 09 December 2022 - 02:52 PM, said:

Are you using your silly ad hominems or are you just nuts because you need to put words in my mouth?

You didn't read the rest of the thread. Thats not an insult. You just didn't read it. We talked about everything you said already.

Weeny Machine, on 09 December 2022 - 02:52 PM, said:

The point is an easy one and you simply ignore it: premades in pug groups simply are no fun for apparent reasons. It even gets worse with a low player pool when a problematic MM also has to handle groups.

You aren't having fun and you're looking for somewhere to put it. Try joining a unit. Try playing a different game for a bit, I know you've been talking about it already. I haven't played classic wrath of the lich king in weeks, it wasn't really fun for me, there are some in-game factors contributing to that i guess, sure, but for the most part I wasn't having fun with it, so i took a break, im trying out Final Fantasy Online with my partner instead.

Weeny Machine, on 09 December 2022 - 02:52 PM, said:

And you parrot the same argument again and again "we want to play with friends"

If im repeating something its because its important that you understand it.

Weeny Machine, on 09 December 2022 - 02:52 PM, said:

and again ignore the fact that 4 vs 4 was dead. Holy strawman...
Or do you really want to imply that grouped play died because it was not 12 vs 12? Seriously?

I think your facts are mixed up. The old group queue was 12v12. It was unrestricted group play. You could take any size group in. But even with lots of people playing, odd sized groups made it very difficult for the matchmaker to form matches. Think of it like a tetris board with pieces too big to fit the line. Its a simple technical issue for which the only solution was queue consolidation, especially when the population decline was factored in. Splitting up and squirreling away an already small population is bad stewardship.

Weeny Machine, on 09 December 2022 - 02:52 PM, said:

The point is simple, though, and you should have learned that lesson from FP and 4 vs 4:

There was no dedicated 4v4 group queue. Unless you're talking about scout mode? Which was cool, but suffered from the same issues FP did; it wasn't match-made, it was just a first in first out manual queue.

Weeny Machine, on 09 December 2022 - 02:52 PM, said:

better do no piss off the pugs. If they leave, you have nothing to fill up and fighting other premades...let's be honest: most of the premades are surly no keen on that or the aforementioned queue wouldn't be dead.

Nobody gets to play a dead game. If you think soft banning some of the most active players in the community will do anything except kill the game, im not sure what else I can tell you except you're wrong.

Glymbol, on 09 December 2022 - 12:24 PM, said:

I am not insinuating anything, I am not lying. I am writing my opinion on the topic and on your arguments. Stop offending people please. It doesn't help the discussion or your arguments. Your "facts" are only your opinions. Your opinions are no better than other players' opinions.

You are expressly insinuating that im trying to curate my opposition for the purposes of seal clubbing. You are doing this while expressing your "opinion" which is that you should be able to curate your opposition for the purposes of never facing any kind of challenge so you always win.

You can hold any opinion you like, but im well within my rights to tell you if its stupid, and it is.

[Flea King Fleappuccino]

The real problem is the absence of team balancing by skill. If we simply add team balancing, premades won't be an issue. Currently, premades only exacerbate an already existing imbalance, causing all those stomps with half a team doing DD match scores.

[Thorqemada]

Fact is that QP was the longest working most healthy Queue in the game.
Both specific large (with respawn) and large (no respawn) Group-Queues failed and had a rather short lifetime compared to QPQ.
There must be a reason, that both friends want to play with friends queues did not work and as far as i can guess the decisive difference between the Queues is the "friends" thing.

My best guess would be that friends wanted to play with friends (<- and read that very careful as it has a deeper sense in it!) but did not want play against friends of someone else!

MWO had a resurgence of Players bcs the C-issue and the fantasy that it may get reworked in any significant way.

It turns out giving the people, that are still to some degree content with the game, some influence for adjustments of the gameplay has limited influence on the pople that are already discontent with the game and burdening the last healthy Q with obviously, according to past experience, a not longterm working friends-environment will have its toll on it eventually.

In the end to me it looks like resettling the whales from their dry pond into the last puddle in the Sahara expecting the plankton to feed them and be convenient with it.

[pbiggz]

Thorqemada, on 10 December 2022 - 09:35 AM, said:

Fact is that QP was the longest working most healthy Queue in the game.
Both specific large (with respawn) and large (no respawn) Group-Queues failed and had a rather short lifetime compared to QPQ.
There must be a reason, that both friends want to play with friends queues did not work and as far as i can guess the decisive difference between the Queues is the "friends" thing.

This is disingenuous. Group Queue and FP both had technical constraints and both relied on large numbers of people playing in a game that frankly had population issues since at least 2015. Suggesting that the common thread between them is group play, and not the fact that there was simply nobody to fill the queues in larger, more complex game modes that were prone to technical issues, is misleading.

Thorqemada, on 10 December 2022 - 09:35 AM, said:

My best guess would be that friends wanted to play with friends (<- and read that very careful as it has a deeper sense in it!) but did not want play against friends of someone else!

There are two, and only two places where this is even close to true. In faction play, which was 12v12, not match-made, and essentially required continuous buy-in from large units, and in the old dedicated group queue, which was up to 12v12, and essentially failed to make matches due to group size issues;

I have not once claimed that playing against 12+ man groups as a solo or small group is fun, in fact, I have pointed out the merit in limiting group size to 4 multiple times. It is explicitly a compromise, but one that is necessary to ensure the existing queue functions well for everyone. You are politely restating the original accusation in this thread; that group players are interested in curating their competition for the purposes of pug stomping; this is false, and in fact, the intent to curate competition for their own ends is expressed in no clearer terms than in those who want groups removed so they can win more.

Thorqemada, on 10 December 2022 - 09:35 AM, said:

MWO had a resurgence of Players bcs the C-issue and the fantasy that it may get reworked in any significant way.

MWO had a resurgence because they handed over balance to the cauldron, and souped the queue; people could play with their friends again, and communicate with a player council that actually seemed responsive; the game felt alive, at least for a little.

Thorqemada, on 10 December 2022 - 09:35 AM, said:

It turns out giving the people, that are still to some degree content with the game, some influence for adjustments of the gameplay has limited influence on the pople that are already discontent with the game and burdening the last healthy Q with obviously, according to past experience, a not longterm working friends-environment will have its toll on it eventually.

Im not quite sure what you're saying here, but if you are suggesting having 4 mans in the queue is corrosive, you're wrong. I've explained multiple times why soft-banning the game's most active players is a recipe for self-inflicted death for this game.

Thorqemada, on 10 December 2022 - 09:35 AM, said:

In the end to me it looks like resettling the whales from their dry pond into the last puddle in the Sahara expecting the plankton to feed them and be convenient with it.

Is this a tortured metaphor intended to identify groups as whales and solos as plankton? Because if it is, that shows a powerful victim complex on your part, and a powerful failure to understand exactly what is at stake here. Either you have 4 mans in the queue, or you don't have any MWO to play at all. That's the choice.

Edited by pbiggz, 10 December 2022 - 10:56 AM.

[PocketYoda]

That would be an awesome Christmas gift op, less pre mades the better..

[VeeOt Dragon]

you know i wouldn't mind the groups in QP if the MM could actually handle them properly. sadly we barely have the population for the MM to work right without groups let alone to get it to work with them.

i'm ok with a single 4 person group per team though. i'm not a huge fan but understand why the did it and why it must continue. (well at least until PGI gets off their collective asses and do some actual advertising to bring in fresh blood)

FP will be dead soon as well and i mostly blame the 12 person pug stomper groups for that. no one wants to play a game mode where you wait almost an hour at times for a match only to get stomped by some elitist shitbags because you dropped solo or in a small group.