142 replies to this topic

[D V Devnull]

To everyone thinking dropping down into 8v8 Mode is so great...

What does PGI then do about those "Ace Of Spades" & "Death Star" Achievements because they'll essentially become off-limits in Quick Play for the rest of MWO's lifetime? (Never think because there are still 8 Mechs on the field for each Team that any reasonable chance exists of killing them all in one Match being played!) Should they be made available in Faction Play somehow, so that we avoid losing more Achievements into the trash bucket? Or does this effectively become an attempt to hurt everyone by taking those off the table of things which can be earned?

I certainly do not wish upon others that they would never get Achievements like those in their lifetimes! I could only score my "Ace Of Spades" once by pure luck, and only because we had a 12v12 environment to play within! The only reason I'm not wearing that "Ace Of Spades" Achievement is because I feel like hitting "8 Kills In One Match" should be done at least twice before it's right to wear it!

~D. V. "wonders if Pro-8v8 folks understand knock-on effects to Achievements by making this permanent" Devnull



[Edit by the post's author for some missed important wording...]

Edited by D V Devnull, 04 August 2025 - 07:38 AM.

[a 5 year old with an Uzi]

1453 R, on 04 August 2025 - 07:08 AM, said:

Why is everyone always so utterly freaking ***mad over 8v8?

8v8 is categorically, inarguably, objectively a better game than 12v12, whichever way you split it. There's a reason comps have always played 8v8. Fewer guns means higher time to kill (a thing everybody claims to want) and way more room to make interesting plays or survive and learn from unforced errors. Individual efforts and ability matters far more, Murderballing is noticeably less effective (this is an undeniable positive), and each player contributes more completely to the outcome of the match. And if any of that bothers you then consider trying a little harder, rather than drinking three PBRs and smoking a joint prior to every drop of MWO. This is 'The Thinking Man's Shooter' after all, not the "Get liquored out the wazoo and see if I can tell which of the three blurred Atlases on my screen is real" shooter.

Quit demanding you get carried and start holding yourself to task when you get knocked out at sub-200 damage. Frankly the game should never have made the jump to 12v12, I honestly believe that mistake is a significant silent contributor to MWO's overall decline over the years.

There are arguments that this will exacerbate the impact of poor play on other players, groups on solos, mech balance and map/mode play. Whether the arguments have merit or not I don't know but the apple cart is being tipped and I am worried that further investment will be a bad bet, that play could get really frustrating for a while before adjustments are made (if they are made) if the arguments have merit and the change is made permanent... so I am not quick to discount any of this.

[Ilostmycactus]

I remember it was a negative experience for me the last time they did this however many months ago (tier 1 player). I'd rather they open the tiers up or work towards a server/lobby browser so you can just fill in an open match if you see it.

[1453 R]

a 5 year old with an Uzi, on 04 August 2025 - 08:11 AM, said:

There are arguments that this will exacerbate the impact of poor play on other players,

It will, but it will also exacerbate the impact of great play on other players. The PBR-and-weed jaggoff is worth ~130% of the team total he used to be, but the pilot who locks in and goes on a tear is also worth ~130% of the team total she used to be. On the whole it should average out, with the exception of some additional swinginess in matches due to a greater than normal concentration of PBR jackwits or Kali Allards on a given team. Which...it's MWO. Swinginess is practically the game's subtitle.

a 5 year old with an Uzi, on 04 August 2025 - 08:11 AM, said:

groups on solos,

I'd hoped you were better than giving credence to the oft-trumpeted idea that people dropping with their friends just absolutely RUINS the solo experience 4evar!!1! It's a dumb stupid ludicrous notion that has no bearing on reality, the vast majority of group drops are just buddies hanging out and playing MWO together. There is no bloody evidence that groups as a whole have any impact on the match's outcome; PGI simply moderates group numbers and limits as a PR milksop to cope with the fact that PBR jackwits have to have something to blame their endless string of sub-200 losses on and they have erroneously and maliciously settled on People With Friends as the thing to blame.

Groups are fine. Can we PLEASE dispense with this idea that everyone who decides to drop with their buddies is some sort of horrible malicious tyrant who exists solely to farm the poor innocent defenseless solos? Y'all have guns and armor, too. USE THEM. Shoot the enemy instead of chickendicking behind a rock for eight minutes every game and you'll be amazed what you can accomplish.

a 5 year old with an Uzi, on 04 August 2025 - 08:11 AM, said:

mech balance and map/mode play.

While worries about 'Mechs and maps tuned/designed for 12v12 not working as well in 8v8 are valid, I don't think the majority of the population is honestly skilled or competent enough for that to matter most of the time. I know I'm not. And it's also an option that bites both ways - outsized durability quirks on 'Mechs designed to account for twelve enemy 'Mechs' worth of gunfire instead of 8 are present on both sides of a match, and ammo counts intended for twelve enemy 'Mechs' worth of armor and durability will still be the norm in most cases. The smart play would be thinning out your ammo totals by a bit during the course of the event to get a bit more everything-else since you don't need to bring down an entire company by yourself anymore, but I guarantee almost no one will actually do so.

a 5 year old with an Uzi, on 04 August 2025 - 08:11 AM, said:

Whether the arguments have merit or not I don't know but the apple cart is being tipped and I am worried that further investment will be a bad bet, that play could get really frustrating for a while before adjustments are made (if they are made) if the arguments have merit and the change is made permanent... so I am not quick to discount any of this.

Fair enough (with the exception of the dumb complaints against groups that have never had a place in MWO), but this is also the way the game was initially designed and intended to run. And not the first time 8v8 has made a comeback. I do not think there's much risk of total disaster. The main issue will simply be PBR jackwits discovering that they can't count on getting carried while running around drunk off their chairs in a bone stock Succ Wars rustheap and complaining "I can't play the way I want to play anymore!" Which is false - they can still get drunk off their chairs and run around in a horrible 'Mech, they just earn what that gets them more often than they used to.

[lastchanceforaslowdance]

1453 R, on 04 August 2025 - 07:08 AM, said:

Why is everyone always so utterly freaking ***mad over 8v8?

8v8 is categorically, inarguably, objectively a better game than 12v12, whichever way you split it. .

Just because you use three words incorrectly doesn't make them any more correct. I prefer 12v12 because, as you alluded to, it softens any skill disparities in the match and more mechs=more chaos=more fun imo. And here is an actual objective statement: disconnects/network issues will have a much greater impact on 8v8 matches. It is something worth considering going forward. They have pauses in comp matches for this, good luck trying to make a QP lobby oblige.

Overall I understand and agree with most of the rest you wrote regarding groups, but the skill lecture isn't really helpful to the topic.

Edited by lastchanceforaslowdance, 04 August 2025 - 09:13 AM.

[Khalcruth]

lastchanceforaslowdance, on 03 August 2025 - 05:59 AM, said:

Not a huge fan of going 8v8 as it is too much of a different experience than 12v12, but I'm not going to quit the game over it or anything

Just to spitball, what about removing a tier? This would likely have same effect as opening gates, but maybe a softer landing.

saw these numbers on reddit, I'm not super great with stats but

• 
  
  Tier 1 - 11.75%
  
• 
  
  Tier 2 - 7.84%
  
• 
  
  Tier 3 - 18.76%
  
• 
  
  Tier 4 - 19.84% <- Middle of total population, move tier 4 players above median line into tier 3
  
• Tier 5 - 41.83% <- move all to tier 4

Retain the +/- 2 spread for matchmaking. This would increase pool for tiers 2 and 1 while retaining protection for cadets and low MS players from the players in tier 1


edit: formatting blah

I'd like to see those number adjusted for participation. For example, it really doesn't make sense to say 1000 players are in Tier 5 if 900 of them haven't played in a year.

[1453 R]

lastchanceforaslowdance, on 04 August 2025 - 09:10 AM, said:

Just because you use three words incorrectly doesn't make them any more correct. I prefer 12v12 because, as you alluded to, it softens any skill disparities in the match and more mechs=more chaos=more fun imo. And here is an actual objective statement: disconnects/network issues will have a much greater impact on 8v8 matches. It is something worth considering going forward. They have pauses in comp matches for this, good luck trying to make a QP lobby oblige.

Overall I understand and agree with most of the rest you wrote regarding groups, but the skill lecture isn't really helpful to the topic.

That's the thing. Even as a generally casual(ish) player who will never amount to anything, softening skill disparities sucks. I want to know that when I went on a tear and dealt a ton of damage and claimed a bunch of kills, it mattered. In 12v12 it normally doesn't - I can deal nine hundred damage and harvest three heads my personal damn self and it won't actually affect the outcome of the match much at all. Yes, that also means those times where I get too aggressive and push too hard into the enemy and die like a dingus at sub-200 damage also don't matter, but that's kinda the point - me dying like a doof should matter. The players playing the game should matter. in 12v12 they largely don't, The Blob evens all things out and your own contributions are basically meaningless, where in 8v8 your own abilities are in much sharper relief.

As well, more 'Mechs = more chaos = more dramatically less fun, because literally ANYTHING you try to do? You're facing down six enemy Banes who're all surgically conjoined in an impossible Murderblob. As a player who prefers lights, mediums, and fast heavies while playing the flanks and outriding, it's enormously frustrating to constantly be staring down the barrel of two and a half lances of assault 'Mechs no matter what because 12v12 encourages Murderblobbing so heavily the entire game is basically nothing but two icebergs studded with guns slowly grinding against each other like some kind of demented eldritch mating ritual.

Being able to range out on a short flank, find an unusual angle of attack, and then actually make a damned dent in the enemy is so much more fun than Murderblobs R Us. 8v8 games are an order of magnitude more mobile, being swift and maneuverable is actually an advantage in 8v8 where it's largely superfluous in 12v12. Back in Ye Olde Dayes of 8v8 being the standard, 'Mechs spread out far more than they do today. There was still a general blobbing-up of forces, of course, but it was often only half of a team, or even just two or three large 'Mechs supporting each other, rather than ten or eleven giant gunbarges all clumping together on either side of a hill while the one poor schmuck who remembers what the 'W' key is tries desperately find any way whatsoever to actually affect the match.

God I miss the days of 8v8 being standard. 12v12 is just an unpleasant mess.

[lastchanceforaslowdance]

Khalcruth, on 04 August 2025 - 09:34 AM, said:

I'd like to see those number adjusted for participation. For example, it really doesn't make sense to say 1000 players are in Tier 5 if 900 of them haven't played in a year.

I believe these numbers are pulled from active accounts, i.e at least 10 matches a month, though I am not certain. I pulled those specific ones from reddit but I feel like I have seen them posted here on the forums recently. Maybe someone else can clarify.

Also, I noticed OP said "widening" tier gates, not opening them completely like I first thought. Increasing the +/- 2 spread to 3 may essentially accomplish the same thing I suggested. But again, I'm not great with numbers.

1453 R, on 04 August 2025 - 10:06 AM, said:

-snip-

That hasn't been my experience, and I play mostly light tonnage as well, albeit in tier 1. That isn't to say I'm trying to dissuade you from your opinion though. I can certainly see why people would enjoy it more than 12v12.

I'm not hard lining against 8v8, if it has to happen then so be it. But OP was more or less presenting it as one of two options.

[BlueDevilspawn]

1. The tier percentages are from active players.... Tier 5 is even bigger when ALL accounts are accounted for.
2. There is plenty of data for no matchmaker drop performance from EQ. Nothing like seeing one of the best players drop 2k in a small lobby while someone else thrown into the lobby gets 100. If you think that QP matchmaker isn't "giving Tier 5s a chance" which I'm interpreting to mean "if everyone started at the same level again maybe some would rise to Tier 1" you are absolutely dreaming. It'll be a heck of a slaughter and the hackusations will fly as people can't understand why a world champ can possibly be so good. The ONE good thing MM does is it keeps the noobs or career T5s separate from T1s (groups notwithstanding).
3. As the announcement stated, one thing is being assessed - match search time. Group size changes are being reviewed (3 and 4) so that the data from current play may be assessed against each other.
4. The game objectively runs better in 8v8. This is simply not up for debate. Frames, loading times, host state rewind/hit reg, it simply performs better.
5. Yes the game is balanced for 12v12 now, but again, the only goal is to check on match search times. Should 8v8 become permanent, mechs would need to be rebalanced which imo means HP comes down since there's too much armor to chew through with 33% fewer players shooting at targets.

[1453 R]

lastchanceforaslowdance, on 04 August 2025 - 10:38 AM, said:

...
That hasn't been my experience, and I play mostly light tonnage as well, albeit in tier 1. That isn't to say I'm trying to dissuade you from your opinion though. I can certainly see why people would enjoy it more than 12v12.

I'm not hard lining against 8v8, if it has to happen then so be it. But OP was more or less presenting it as one of two options.

Widening tier buckets/eliminating tiers worsens matchmaking as a whole, with more players getting lost in the sauce in a game where people already kvetch endlessly about matchmaking and "skill gaps". It's also an unknown quantity in that eliminating a tier and reorganizing players into a different tier list has never been done before, whereas 8v8 has years of codework done already and is something they've done before. 8v8 is easier to implement, less likely to break or brick things, and if it relieves the problem then it makes for a higher overall match quality as well.

I'll admit, I have a snap bias against the idea of 'softening skill disparity' and other measures to allow people to be asleep at the wheel and still win games consistently. I hate the modern multiplayer game Thing of blaming your team for every loss and taking personal credit for every win, without ever critically analyzing your own gameplay or admitting that you dun biffed it when you did, in fact, biff it. I want the players' actions and choices to matter, and for people to own their losses as well as celebrate their wins.

[a 5 year old with an Uzi]

As far as groups - aside from my playtimes having me smack facefirst into FARM surprisingly often and seeing the occasional very frustrating scenario of "uncooperative 4 man decides to engage in wacky hijinks, double digit MS, makes team's life a little harder" I don't have much of a dog in that fight but it is probably going to have some impact either psychologically with players griping and backing away from the game, or mechanically. How drastic is hard to say but if Sean is expressing a degree of concern it might be a matter that requires tweaks to the way the combined queue will work going forward. I don't expect it to go away.

Should be noted that I have never played 8v8 in MM-affected queue. I have no idea what to expect from this on a personal performance level. I suspect it will be rough.

Edited by a 5 year old with an Uzi, 04 August 2025 - 12:30 PM.

[lastchanceforaslowdance]

1453 R, on 04 August 2025 - 11:43 AM, said:

Widening tier buckets/eliminating tiers worsens matchmaking as a whole, with more players getting lost in the sauce in a game where people already kvetch endlessly about matchmaking and "skill gaps". It's also an unknown quantity in that eliminating a tier and reorganizing players into a different tier list has never been done before, whereas 8v8 has years of codework done already and is something they've done before. 8v8 is easier to implement, less likely to break or brick things, and if it relieves the problem then it makes for a higher overall match quality as well.

Again, this is another thing I've read somewhere that I can't remember where, so my apologies (maybe someone could clarify again) but I'm pretty sure the tier gate widens already if a Tier 1 player/group is queued up for long enough and can't find a match. It's why a tier 1 player can pop up in a tier 4 lobby every once in awhile. So this would simply eliminate that extra step in the matchmaker to alleviate wait times.

And yea, the whole tier reorganization was a total spitball that I'm not even sure is possible. I do think, like bluedevilspawn said, that it is absolutely imperative to shield cadets/current tier 5 (cadets/new players in particular) from getting absolutely stomped.

Also, I hadn't considered the performance impact either, 8v8 does run and feels much better. But I still prefer 12v12.

Edited by lastchanceforaslowdance, 04 August 2025 - 01:14 PM.

[BlueDevilspawn]

lastchanceforaslowdance, on 04 August 2025 - 01:13 PM, said:

Again, this is another thing I've read somewhere that I can't remember where, so my apologies (maybe someone could clarify again) but I'm pretty sure the tier gate widens already if a Tier 1 player/group is queued up for long enough and can't find a match. It's why a tier 1 player can pop up in a tier 4 lobby every once in awhile. So this would simply eliminate that extra step in the matchmaker to alleviate wait times.

And yea, the whole tier reorganization was a total spitball that I'm not even sure is possible. I do think, like bluedevilspawn said, that it is absolutely imperative to shield cadets/current tier 5 from getting absolutely stomped.

Also, I hadn't considered the performance impact either, 8v8 does run and feels much better. But I still prefer 12v12.

You have to consider it from 2 angles though... From T1 down and from T5 up.
There are lengthening search times for all, but T5s still have the best chance of getting a low tier lobby and should be shielded from T1 as much as possible. T1 will likely wait long enough to be put into a mixed tier lobby, but at least it's not the default option.

[Ballistic Panicmode]

Got Aug 8 - 18 marked on my calendar. Good time to binge some movies I've missed.

Edited by Ballistic Panicmode, 04 August 2025 - 03:22 PM.

[Spirited Machine]

8v8 FP next, please?

[D V Devnull]

Spirited Machine, on 04 August 2025 - 04:34 PM, said:

8v8 FP next, please?

What? You actually WANT those super-powerful Units to get so angry that they become more curb-stompy in FP upon everyone else? No thanks!

~D. V. "No way on 8v8 FP because it would be a psychologic nightmare!" Devnull

[TestBacon]

Huh, I'm off on leave Aug 9-19 and you all pull this crap. During this big event no less. Not happy with it.

[FRAGTAST1C]

martian, on 01 August 2025 - 09:55 PM, said:

By the way, I can tell you one reason why " search times have been trending upwards" .

It is because of that stupid two phase Summer Loot bags event. Since the damage that I might do now would not count towards the Phase 02 damage goal, it is pointless for me to keep playing. Essentially, my efforts would be wasted. The only logical course of action is to ignore MWO for the next three weeks and start playing again AFTER that useless Phase 02 begins. I guess I am not alone who understands this simple principle.

And do you know what really smart players do? They have been ignoring MWO right from the start for the entire July and the most of August, waiting for that useless Phase 02 to begin, so both their Match Score and damage really count.

This entire problem is really a problem of your own making.

Exactly this.

Sapporo Joe, on 02 August 2025 - 03:25 AM, said:

8v8 with groups of 4? Is the game not unbalanced enough for you yet? Sweaties need to keep their group size to protect their precious Jarls it seems.

This, too.

PGI, maybe lower the frequency of the diabolical decision making, eh? I'm keen to come back to MWO and spend some cash on the Tourney Pack and Shadow Hawk IIC but now, I'm not so keen anymore.

[a 5 year old with an Uzi]

My main concern with getting the Shadow Hawk IIC is not being able to enjoy it for very long.

It will possibly be reassuring to see player turnout during 8v8 test remain solid throughout.

Edited by a 5 year old with an Uzi, 05 August 2025 - 11:47 AM.

[LavaDa1shi]

Awesome!

8v8 is more fun anyway in my opinion, I like having more agency over the match, not to mention performance and load times being better is nice as well.

Edited by LavaDa1shi, 05 August 2025 - 09:43 AM.