77 replies to this topic

[Kotis77]

VeeOt Dragon, on 18 July 2023 - 04:50 AM, said:

as for alt accounts i wish there was a way they could ban those or prevent them. i rarely see a say t3 player (even a long time t3 like myself) on the forums talk about making an alt (unless it is an alt account itself). its always t1s. it always stinks of seal clubbing to me and hurts the new player experience. (would you like to play a game where when you first start some player on either your team or the other kills over half the other team themselves. if its on your team you barely got to do anything if on the other well probably the same with the added negative of losing as well). now and again you get someone who does an alt for a reason other than easy kills and damage numbers but its rare.

btw this is just free to play games and human nature, cant stop it. every f2p games got smurfs/alts

[Risen Trash]

I love watching everyone's rhetorical gymnastics on this.

It's really this simple:

* People who stack drop and seal club think its fine. ("I mean, it sucks but there's nothing we can do!")

* People who drop solo feel their quality-of-play diminish, complain, and are told to shut up. A few will join groups (good for them, but exacerbating the problem); most will just go play something else that's actually fun (which is the real problem that is killing this game).

So people are leaving, and the mm has no choice but to put ever bigger and better teams against ever more-outmatched solo players. It's a death spiral. Sadly, those group players will go knives out to keep it, like an addict happily pushing a needle through gangrene.

We used to have a queue just for groups to drop in. Groups wouldn't use it. They hated it because when serious 12-deep teams dropped, they rolled the **** out of teams cobbled together from those smaller groups and -lol- "it wasn't fair! It wasn't fun!"

Anyway, because everyone loves a world where **** rolls downhill and the little guys get stepped on so much that they want it in their gaming experience, the smaller groups that couldn't cut it against large groups complained until their smaller groups were allowed to drop into the -lol- "solo" queue, where they now happily club down solos the way 12-deep teams rolled them in the group queue, unironically telling solos to "quit crying" and "git gud" all the way.

And the real kicker, to me anyway, is that the death spiral ends when all the frustrated solos have left and the solo queue is nothing but groups. Then the group players will be happy, right? Because finally they'll get to play fair matches against other groups, just like they keep saying they want, right? Wrong. When there's no solo's left to troll n' roll, then they'll leave and go play something else just like the solos did. They'll ditch the game like they ditched group queue.

And that is how the MWO world ends. F*@king fin.

I put that.

[crazytimes IIC]

VeeOt Dragon, on 18 July 2023 - 04:50 AM, said:

as for alt accounts i wish there was a way they could ban those or prevent them. i rarely see a say t3 player (even a long time t3 like myself) on the forums talk about making an alt (unless it is an alt account itself). its always t1s. it always stinks of seal clubbing to me and hurts the new player experience. (would you like to play a game where when you first start some player on either your team or the other kills over half the other team themselves. if its on your team you barely got to do anything if on the other well probably the same with the added negative of losing as well). now and again you get someone who does an alt for a reason other than easy kills and damage numbers but its rare.

It's okay, it only takes a decent player a few trial mech matches to get out of 5, and at well Under 100 matches I was into 3 and back to "omg all tier 1" mm according to the people who insist on blaming MM for their refusal to get better. If I get a chance to play today this will into 2.

You know what absolutely ruins the new player experience? All the people in stealth mechs abusing people who don't know game mechanics. From my very first match- sometimes 5 or 6 stealth mechs in a match. Saw a group with 3 stealth Ravens in one tier 4 match. Easy to stay low tiers, but ruin new player experience in stealth mechs. Really hard to stay low tier if you take decent builds and don't bully people who don't understand mechanics.

But hey, blame all the evil alts for your results.

[VeeOt Dragon]

meh i know why i am t3 because, 1 i don't play meta builds because i find them boring, 2 i have hand tremors so some days hitting the broad side of a Union drop ship is a pain, and 3 i don't play nearly as often as i once did. i will go weeks even months sometimes these days without play. one tends to lose some of their skill when they go a while without playing a game. i'm not saying i was ever some elite top notch player. sort of just a middle of the road type who just plays for fun and doesn't feel like i have to be in the top 1% to have fun. though i would like to play matches against those with equal skill or close (so T3s with perhaps one or two t2s or t4s tossed in if numbers are low but with current population numbers you can't really have that all the time.). if i go up in Tier thats fine, if i go down it sort of sucks but still fine. its honestly not something i pay attentioon to or care about as long as i feel i had balanced matchs (i don't have to win every match or stomp the other team to have fun. my favorite matches are the close ones that end with two badly damaged mechs going at it)

as for the stealth groups thats also likely t1 players in alts seal clubbing and griefing because thats what gets their jollies off.

Edited by VeeOt Dragon, 18 July 2023 - 06:53 PM.

[pbiggz]

Why do you guys all think "people are leaving"?

Because they aren't. You made that up so you could strawman a bunch of people for playing the game a way you personally don't like.

https://steamcharts.com/app/342200#All

From 2021 to now, that's basically, as far as graphs are concerned, a straight line, and thats just steam player numbers, so its an undercount.

Y'all need to stop making **** up.

[Kotis77]

pbiggz, on 19 July 2023 - 06:46 AM, said:

Why do you guys all think "people are leaving"?

Because they aren't. You made that up so you could strawman a bunch of people for playing the game a way you personally don't like.

https://steamcharts.com/app/342200#All

From 2021 to now, that's basically, as far as graphs are concerned, a straight line, and thats just steam player numbers, so its an undercount.

Y'all need to stop making **** up.

steamcharts dont tell the whole story.

https://leaderboard.isengrim.org/stats

personally i would look at games played by season. if game is popping its should go up. and pgi shouldnt need to put biggest bribes ever.

why dont you play the game? see hows it going in the game? just want to be forumwarrior?

[pbiggz]

Jarls list definitely isn't a full, or nearly comprehensive picture.

[Haipyng]

crazytimes, on 13 July 2023 - 05:45 PM, said:

So you want skill, and weight, and Loadout to be balanced? Seems easy. Can't imagine why it hasn't been done already. Groups? We balancing them still? What if one group had a LRM mech in it? Just wait for the next group with a LRM mech? What if that player is slightly less skilled then then the other groups LRM player?

I'm happy with random MM. In the long run the potatoes all balance out.

The current version of MM is as good as it gets with the population. The wait time safeties often dump T-5 with T-1. Leave that as is, as there is no help for it. I am saying that it should make another pass once it has picked its initial 24 players. Groups will have to be scored as an average. It will eliminate the oddball stomps and help make each game a little more of a challenge. The Random Long Range Vs Short Range or all LRM stacks will be cut back on. MM has been hated for a decade, some tweaks are welcome.

[Kotis77]

what is? steamcharts that show maybe 50% players that log in? play FP or scrims for comp or build mechs or just be afk

jarls is at least somekind of measure of QP

if you want the whole picture you got work at pgi

[Kamiko Kross]

An6ryMan69, on 17 July 2023 - 11:32 AM, said:

This subject keeps coming up because it needs to.

The matchmaker is the biggest problem the game has, period.

The argument that we need to have a brutally useless matchmaker because we have low player numbers is WRONG.

It is the brutal matchmaker that is causing the game to hemorrhage players.

I used to play regularly with my son, who has completely given up on this game, due to groups and elite players being dropped against weak players.

Myself, I had MWO seasons where I spent time in the top 10 list for total wins, due to the obscene number of matches I played; now I play very little other than showing up to grind out event rewards (if at all) in the hopes that one day I might care again about goodies in the game.

There NEEDS to be a separation between weak-avergage-strong players and solo's and groups. Period.

This is currently game where a premade group of "Ace of Spades" titled players can jump on a lone solo cadet FFS... and guys sit around and defend it, while wondering about our dwindling player base!

Wake up people....

Making enemies of people who group up-which is what you are supposed to do in online games is a huge mistake. The shift to a solo only queue helped most of my friend's list empty.
The super solo attitude towards social play has reaped the current rewards.
I remember when FP was still, a thing, I used to group up with a few Kuritan units-our groups were always a mix/match of small groups and solos. We did alright, we were on comms and tried. We won and we lost. Sometimes the solos just wouldn't listen and f'd it up for everyone. Eventually the super solos became more and more like that. Eventually we thought why bother?
The solo queue only made the playerbase WORSE. Most players now only think of themselves in game, what kills and damage/score can I get? Can I use that guy as a shield? If I outrun him-they'll shoot him instead of me etc. Everyone wanting the guy next to them to expose first, so they can get a free risk-free shot off...

The playerbase is causing the player loss. Some of my friends have left because of the cautious hyper camping timid playstyle of the majority, some because of the above reasons-the rest? Because of the rise of the me,myself and I super solos.

If you have no group-that's on YOU.
Getting rolled by premades? That's on YOU.
Not good at the game? That's on YOU.

If YOU want to super solo in a MULTIPLAYER game designed from ground up to be played TOGETHER WITH OTHERS, again that is on YOU.

See the pattern?

[VeeOt Dragon]

there was once something called Group Que but apparently there were not enough players interested in it to keep it alive. hence why it was rolled into QP when they had to consolidate things.

some people don't have a ton of friends or friends interested in MWO (lets be frank here MWO isn't exactly a main stream game. it has a rather limited fan base in general for this type of game) so some people just solo. some people just don't know many people or care to get to know some randos online. oh i don't mind playing with folks and coordinating or hell just shooting the **** during match (or rather up until battle coms are needed) but i don't want to bother taking the extra time and effort to find folks i like then get them to get online, then group up (there are very few human beings in this world worth that kind of effort). thats a LOT of wasted time i could spend playing the actual game. most of the time i drop in, play maybe half a dozen games then drop out.

now i don't really mind groups in QP if the MM handled them properly or if T1s didn't use it as a way to artificially drop their tier so they can club seals as a group. as a T3 player i don't mind going against a T1 now and again but going into a match with a 4 man group of comp T1s and knowing its gonna be a stomp just makes me want to put the game up for a bit. (not all groups are this way but there are certain units when you see that tag in a 4 man row you know its gonna be a bad game. doesn't matter if they are your team or the other. its either going to be an insanely boring win or getting stomped on without a chance (even worse for that poor cadet you see thats on your team because the MM fudged up again.)

[Risen Trash]

Kamiko Kross, on 19 July 2023 - 12:28 PM, said:

Making enemies of people who group up-which is what you are supposed to do in online games is a huge mistake.

Making enemies of anyone with whom you play in a 10-year-old cry engine game on self-described development life-support is a huge mistake. That includes filthy solo casuals.

Your "1337" speech was a great blast from the past, though! Took me on the way-back machine to better times, when the game had a big-enough population that we could tell people to go play something else if they didn't like playing the way we thought the game should be played. When the population could support groups having their own queue to play only against other groups, just like they've always wanted, and never had to drop with a solo ever again. Gee, where did that go and why?

To the OP's point, as the valves-open "off hours" grow ever longer and conversely the "peak hours" where the pop is large enough for the MM to work correctly shrink ever shorter, I can't help but catch a "careful what you wish for" vibe, now.

It's sad we didn't use those heady days to welcome players and create the kind of community more people would stick around for. It's sad that PGI under-delivered on a lot of the promised features never supplied the community tools to help us grow ourselves. There are a lot of reasons this game just doesn't draw the numbers it used to, but this kind of talk from a corner of the community insisting it should be treated as the whole? It didn't help..

[pbiggz]

the check engine light, on 19 July 2023 - 03:40 PM, said:

As I read this I am consistently reminded of just how much the playerbase actually dislikes each other.

It's kind of wild.

Part of this playerbase enjoys playing and practicing at a competitive online shooter, which, as a matter of fact, is what this game is. The other part wishes this game was a gritty multiplayer rpg version of mechwarrior 2 mercs and they have never gotten over the fact that this is not what this game was and its never what its going to be.

There is also a casual vs competitive dichotomy which doesn't really exist because i've met many a casual and a comp guy who were perfectly pleasant and played together fine, but the people who subscribe to it think its all but sacred; the competitive mindset doesnt need any explanation at all, but the casual one does; mechdad is basically a counterculture. Its predominantly older men, who hate younger people and hate competitive gaming; given that, practice, is an anathema; the reason you see so many mechdads making threads about how bad LRMs are is because they assume performance is an entitlement, not something that comes with practice. By extension, anyone who DOES practice is basically indistinguishable from a cheater to them. So not only is being bad at a game, THE POINT, its also bad to be good at the game.

Im not a comp guy, but mechdad brain is terminally poisoned; fanatically possessive, exclusionary, and cliquey. Mechdads think they own this game, so if you play it a way they don't like, you're as good as a griefer or a cheater, and their whole view of the game is that they, being the owners of the game, get to make that distinction, and you don't.

I don't agree with a lot of competitive playstyle, it doesn't work for me and i think their view on the game is a bit too limited, but if you had to ask me where a lot of the hate in this playerbase comes from, i'll point straight at the mechdads. If you gave them mod powers they'd ban the other team any time they lost.

Edited by pbiggz, 19 July 2023 - 06:36 PM.

[RickySpanish]

pbiggz, on 19 July 2023 - 06:35 PM, said:

Part of this playerbase enjoys playing and practicing at a competitive online shooter, which, as a matter of fact, is what this game is. The other part wishes this game was a gritty multiplayer rpg version of mechwarrior 2 mercs and they have never gotten over the fact that this is not what this game was and its never what its going to be.

There is also a casual vs competitive dichotomy which doesn't really exist because i've met many a casual and a comp guy who were perfectly pleasant and played together fine, but the people who subscribe to it think its all but sacred; the competitive mindset doesnt need any explanation at all, but the casual one does; mechdad is basically a counterculture. Its predominantly older men, who hate younger people and hate competitive gaming; given that, practice, is an anathema; the reason you see so many mechdads making threads about how bad LRMs are is because they assume performance is an entitlement, not something that comes with practice. By extension, anyone who DOES practice is basically indistinguishable from a cheater to them. So not only is being bad at a game, THE POINT, its also bad to be good at the game.

Im not a comp guy, but mechdad brain is terminally poisoned; fanatically possessive, exclusionary, and cliquey. Mechdads think they own this game, so if you play it a way they don't like, you're as good as a griefer or a cheater, and their whole view of the game is that they, being the owners of the game, get to make that distinction, and you don't.

I don't agree with a lot of competitive playstyle, it doesn't work for me and i think their view on the game is a bit too limited, but if you had to ask me where a lot of the hate in this playerbase comes from, i'll point straight at the mechdads. If you gave them mod powers they'd ban the other team any time they lost.

You... you haven't played many online games, have you? If you think 'Mechdad syndrome' is somehow born of old guys and 'Mechs, instead of just bad players finding excuses for why they lost. This kind of mindset exists absolutely everywhere, it's not exclusive to lore nerds, even in MWO.

[pbiggz]

RickySpanish, on 19 July 2023 - 08:33 PM, said:

If you think 'Mechdad syndrome' is somehow born of old guys and 'Mechs, instead of just bad players finding excuses for why they lost. This kind of mindset exists absolutely everywhere, it's not exclusive to lore nerds, even in MWO.

Nowhere did I say this was exclusive to MWO, but mechdad culture is a very particular microcosm of bad players.

[VeeOt Dragon]

honestly i seem more bitching about LRM from T1 comp players than from your average casual player or at least bitching that they need to be nerfed or removed every time the subject comes up.

from the evidence of the game's current state we can be pretty positive that the Comp group is a minority. if it wasn't than Competitive que would still be a thing. i'm not saying this diminishes the view of said groups just that they need to realize that they are also not the be all end all of MWO. just because someone is of some group or other doesn't give that one group more say than another. it also seems that at least here in the Forum the T1s seem to be the ones the most often to think that they are the only ones that should have any say in anything (its hard to be super sure since many keep their Tier hidden).

[badpiggy]

VeeOt Dragon, on 20 July 2023 - 05:43 PM, said:

from the evidence of the game's current state we can be pretty positive that the Comp group is a minority. if it wasn't than Competitive que would still be a thing.

Comp queue is a yearly thing. It’ll be back in like a month.

* just checked, the tab appears this coming patch (July 25th) for rostering and the queue opens august 15th.

Edited by badpiggy, 21 July 2023 - 04:48 AM.

[C E Dwyer]

Populations don't improve match makers.

This topic is in war thunder, world of tanks, world of warships. I suspect overwatch and others, but I don't play those. you'd have thought with those kind of populations thing would be bettr, but they're not..

mostly because people say they'd be prepared to wait longer for better match making, the reality is not the case

[crazytimes]

VeeOt Dragon, on 20 July 2023 - 05:43 PM, said:

honestly i seem more bitching about LRM from T1 comp players than from your average casual player or at least bitching that they need to be nerfed or removed every time the subject comes up.

from the evidence of the game's current state we can be pretty positive that the Comp group is a minority. if it wasn't than Competitive que would still be a thing. i'm not saying this diminishes the view of said groups just that they need to realize that they are also not the be all end all of MWO. just because someone is of some group or other doesn't give that one group more say than another. it also seems that at least here in the Forum the T1s seem to be the ones the most often to think that they are the only ones that should have any say in anything (its hard to be super sure since many keep their Tier hidden).

Dropped a few matches with you this week.

All you did was apologise about how your medical issues prevent you from playing well and proceeded to demonstrate it. I find it interesting you only post on the forums about how every other player and group is the problem holding you back, yet claim in match that you are too ill to play.

Which is it? Is MM broken and personally targetting you and your play styles or is there more to your story?

[VeeOt Dragon]

that was a bad day likely, gets frustrating for me when i feel like i'm not doing up to par. some days are better than others. most days i manage just fine.

also i have never said any group was holding me back at all. my mistakes and performance are mine. i honestly get mad at myself sometimes when i can't seem to do decent (according to my own scale of things) but you just have those days. thing is there are groups within the game that seem to delight in making life miserable for others (you have that in ever game) it just seems that many congregate into certain areas.

(mostly when the tremors start acting up i switch to LRM mechs, unless i get stuck in one of those anti-LRM maps (solaris and the Marric maps) i tend to do rather well in them. then again i don't know the exact matches you played with me on because i rarely bother remembering people's handles on games (i remember unit tags more often but now days i don't pay attention to that as much as i used to)

the MM is broken though any fix is impossible with the low population. as a T3 player i understand i will be playing against all tiers but a T5 should never have to be in the same match with a T1. (though when you go against the same comp unit over and over during a day one starts to wonder if the MM does indeed have it out for you but its just how the dice roll)

badpiggy, on 21 July 2023 - 04:30 AM, said:

Comp queue is a yearly thing. It’ll be back in like a month.

* just checked, the tab appears this coming patch (July 25th) for rostering and the queue opens august 15th.

i could have sworn it used to be a year round thing, my mistake on that. like i said its an area i never paid much attention to as its not my thing same with group que. i did private lobbies back in the day when i used to play with Snugglestime a good bit but haven't since he stopped playing. did the odd group drop with him and the discord group as well (those were mostly for kicks like the time we did a few matches with the whole team running Trial Trebuchets)