255 replies to this topic

[Hauser]

Kadix, on 31 October 2012 - 03:32 AM, said:

People are leaving...am I'm one of them.

I'm sorry, but this isn't worth it. The matchmaking is horrible. I think I'm something like 0 in 10 so far. MWO has potential as a very casual game for me, but the lack of decent matchmaking isn't worth it. I don't have the time to get involved in a guild and run regular pre-made raids, and getting *** raped every moring in a couple matches before I go to work just isn't a fun way to spend my time.

I'm a long time fan of pen && paper batteltech, and the other battletech computer games, but there are just too many problems with MWO. Hopefully matchmaking will improve to the point that this game is worth playing.

Hey Kadix, I'm sorry to hear you feel like leaving. Before you go though, I think you (and everybody else) should give joining a premade a try. You don't actually have to join a clan for this.

You see the premades you can find on this Teamspeak server are actually just pickup groups of random people. The only difference between a regular game is that these folks are on a TS server and play a number of matches together.

This is not as fast as joining a random team but as things go they tend to be pretty fast still. You also have a hand in this yourself. For example you can ask people to play 3 or 5 games before hitting mechlab.

I hope you find this experience better.

[Krivvan]

Bluten, on 31 October 2012 - 03:43 AM, said:

8-0 is proof. You're lucky if your team gets even 1 kill vs one. Pug vs pug half a team will die. Premade however will be 0 or 1
This is because they are using voice chat and focus fire based on names and targets. They will cut down your numbers fast and once its 5vs8, you've already lost.

8-0 games were common before groups even existed. Anyone who played in the beta before groups can attest to this.

Edited by Krivvan, 31 October 2012 - 03:57 AM.

[Johnny Morgan]

Matchmaking needs to provide a seamless 'Premade' setup that people are currently doing through TS.

If the game can deliver the same experience as using Teamspeak and forming a premade *without* having to do it manually...instant win for the devs.

I just started getting into premades the last few days..... I cannot stress this enough... COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GAMING EXPERIENCE. You really really want to link up on TS, it's a different game.

Highland Dragoon Guards ran a tight game, it was incredibly fun to be part of their team.

The devs should be looking at the TS premade groups and trying to figure out how to recreate that same experience and communication flow naturally in the game.

Assign me to a lance, enable VC (default should be receive=on, transmit=disabled). Very few people need to speak but everyone needs to listen. Those that are cool with VC can turn on transmit, those that arent get to listen.

Edited by Johnny Morgan, 31 October 2012 - 04:18 AM.

[AlexEss]

People always leave... some come back.. others take their place, it is called churn or churn rate once you start putting it together and is something every biz deals with. You simply can not please everybody and if people leave during an open beta the odds of them leaving any way was pretty high. Life goes on and things either get better or worse.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Garth Erlam, on 30 October 2012 - 03:14 PM, said:

We are taking steps to fix this (Phase 1 will be soon, in fact) but a lot of this is player perception. I play outside of groups 99% of the time, and in the last two weeks I've played against a grand total of two premades. Today I played 20 matches just to see; got zero.

It can be frustrating to lose like that, sure, but what people often forget is they're losing because they literally do zero group work. No-one uses C3, no-one even uses text chat. Then they get picked apart one by one. I managed to get a random group of guys to talk and we beat an actual premade (one of those two I faced) because a lot of the guys there were great players, they just needed a good leader.

And no, I don't mean yelling at people who don't listen to you

Not to burst the bubble, but phase 1 matchmaking means nothing, the same people will still be here complaining they got stomped by 4 man premades all night and its not fair.
Phase 1 solves absolutely no problems, because 4 communicative adults on VOIP will still heavily influence the outcome of a game.

You better off, just devoting more time to getting phase 2, and fully fledged team orientated matchmaking out the door.
Your focusing on the problem from the wrong angle, segregate the trial mechs so they can't be matched against anything other than trial mechs.

Your fighting a losing battle in trying to please lone wolf players, what are you guys going to do in community warfare? when lonewolf players will come up against teams of premades in varying sizes?

Just because teams get hosed 8-0 8-1 8-2 does not mean they are being matched against pre mades, there are just a very high number of new players and also really bad players.

Edited by DV McKenna, 31 October 2012 - 04:04 AM.

[Honsau]

Like some of you have said, a lot of this is new players vs. closed beta testers. When half your team is trying to figure out what button fires their guns and weather to shoot at the blue guys or the red guys, you are going to get torn apart. As the experiance and equipment gap closes not as many of these pugs will be push overs.

[Max Liao]

Yesterday the PUG team I was on was owning the other team, I think we won 8-2. After the score was 4-0 someone started complaining about how we were a premade. Myself and a couple of others stated that we weren't in any groups, we solo queued and were just playing well together. Of course the other team didn't agree and accused us of lying, but while they were doing that we were shooting them. Whatever.

Getting owned doesn't necessarily mean premade - (because you're so super awesome that you could never lose to anyone that's not fully coordinated on VoIP, right?) - It could mean you, your team, and/or your tactics/positioning suck. It could also simply be bad luck ... it happens.

[Em3r4ld]

Reducing the team number to 4 is just going to put off people who are trying to start clans for this. We need a solution which works for everyone.

I introduced 3 players to the game in the last two days and all of them are enjoying it so far... but if they make groups smaller so we can't all play together it's going to end up where we have to split up and it'll ruin the community experience: which will be the long-term life of the game.

You win some, you lose some. Can't expect to win all the time. I'm sure people soloing aren't getting matched against groups of 8 every game they play...

Edited by Em3r4ld, 31 October 2012 - 04:10 AM.

[xxx WreckinBallRaj xxx]

Tokra, on 31 October 2012 - 03:47 AM, said:

So we have the choice between losing you and losing 100th new player that dont want to get stumped? Let me think,....

Bye.

^ This right here. The amount we lose due to crying kids that just want autowins is NOTHING compared to the lost revenue they are going to take without doing something about it. Most premades will just queue with 4 and continue to win anyway. Only bottom of the barrel brats will leave over it.

Honsau, on 31 October 2012 - 04:06 AM, said:

Like some of you have said, a lot of this is new players vs. closed beta testers. When half your team is trying to figure out what button fires their guns and weather to shoot at the blue guys or the red guys, you are going to get torn apart. As the experiance and equipment gap closes not as many of these pugs will be push overs.

That won't mean much once they have all quit. Also, pugs vs premades will ALWAYS be bad. You could wait 2 months and it will still be bad. It might be 80% lose rate instead of 85% but it will still be unacceptable.

[Joseph Mallan]

Honsau, The weapons thing is a problem in game... but Red Shirts are always dying first! That was a no-brainer

[Greyfyl]

AlexEss, on 31 October 2012 - 03:58 AM, said:

People always leave... some come back.. others take their place, it is called churn or churn rate once you start putting it together and is something every biz deals with. You simply can not please everybody and if people leave during an open beta the odds of them leaving any way was pretty high. Life goes on and things either get better or worse.

I hope to god you are never a business owner or even in management at any level with that type of reasoning. Oh wait this is the internets - this is where you tell me you own Apple and Microsoft.

[Hauser]

Em3r4ld, on 31 October 2012 - 04:07 AM, said:

Reducing the team number to 4 is just going to put off people who are trying to start clans for this. We need a solution which works for everyone.

No worries, 8 vs 8 matching will be implemented later on.

[Yokaiko]

Greyfyl, on 31 October 2012 - 04:11 AM, said:

I hope to god you are never a business owner or even in management at any level with that type of reasoning. Oh wait this is the internets - this is where you tell me you own Apple and Microsoft.

No, but I work at a fortune 100 company and a 15% churn rate is considered optimal. Cheaper to higher a kid straight out of college then a keep a 35 year developer and pay him for his time.

...and when layoffs roll around don't be 55 and at the top of your pay scale.

[Congzilla]

Everyone is leaving? That makes it hard for me to explain why eight people gave joined cReddit Bulldog Company 2 in the past two days and why has our mumble participation more than doubled since open beta? Oh that is right, we are actually playing a team based game as a team.

[Sagoth]

Learning curve in this game is slightly more steeper than most of the games out there and as such it seems to cause bit of crying. Yes it's drag to lose to a group who seems to be premade (due to apaprent xp gains on end of fight stats) but most of the time it's just because they have better mechs. Just got Jenner and i can tell you that 1 on 1 against trial mechs you dont have a change even tho i can't play. Not that i can kill you but just had fight this morning where 2 trial Awesomes and Dragon couldn't kill me and that annoyance helped us win as it tied 3 of their mechs into useless fight.

Point being that you NEED to upgrade your mech and that initial grind is well worth it as you kinda learn stuff while doing it. (like not shooting LRM at 100 meter/feet/we range or going in close combat with full missile ammo). I can imagine how much more fun it'll be on groups but you can get quite a lot of fun out of this even soloing if don't go solo in battlefield AFTER you get out of trial mech.

Small disclaimer in case Jenner is just fotm due to being op that game experience may change after the nerf.

[Dahmer]

Garth Erlam, on 30 October 2012 - 03:14 PM, said:

[i]No-one uses C3

Using C3 (in the way it is incorporated now) would make it NOT a PUG at that point as you only get to use it if you're in a group already or you have pre-coordinated on C3 and then grouped up...so still not a PUG. If C3 was integrated so the team you end up on gets dumped into a temporary channel so you can use voice then it would be a point. Chat is good for the first 30 seconds of a match. After that the only people with time on their hands to chat are the dead ones.

It's truly luck of the draw as it stands now. I'm not saying the issue is with groups, it's with dumping everyone from zero skill to master in the same bucket, then drawing 16 names to fill a game. Making a solo queue or even a "trial only" queue will not combat the issue as you will still have that wide disparity of skill levels. I've tried going PUG only some nights and will get teams of people that somehow manage to cover each other, move in groups and not do stupid stuff. Then there's the matches where we scatter to the wind and go at the other team one at a time. After the 8th or 9th round of that I say screw it and get on TS as the odds of winning at that point go up astronomically.

...and so begins the eternal struggle of random gameplay; how do you match players up? Usually it envolves a convoluted mess of various data points that are still skewed by the overall team play.

[Tekerton]

Dorado, on 30 October 2012 - 08:03 PM, said:

You are totally arguing up the wrong tree mate. I am a founder and I am not blind. The paint job on my mech means exactly **** in a mech fight.

The only problem with trial mechs versus a customized mech tailored to the playstyle of the pilot is that they are setup with tabletop Battletech in mind. That being not enough ammo and too much heat (because RoF and heat dissipation do not match tabletop). With basic team tactics, trigger discipline, and being mindful of both my ammo count and heat level, I will fight you just as hard and just as good in a trial mech as one I built. It may take my team a bit longer to core you because of heat or ammo but it can be done.

The upside of earning the c-bills for your first mech by having to learn the ropes in a trial mech is that you pay zero repair costs and don't have to buy your own ammo to reload. How much more of a free ride do you need while learning the ropes?

Brilliant post. I'd "Like" it twice if I could. The last paragraph is a Grand Slam.

[Yokaiko]

Because repairing an Atlas for 30k from 85% armor and 90% cheapo ammo isn't where you want to start.

Trials may suck, but they give you a basis to work with.

[Lin Shai]

Bluten, on 31 October 2012 - 03:43 AM, said:

8-0 is proof. You're lucky if your team gets even 1 kill vs one. Pug vs pug half a team will die. Premade however will be 0 or 1
This is because they are using voice chat and focus fire based on names and targets. They will cut down your numbers fast and once its 5vs8, you've already lost.

And here you see the complete and utter ^%&^%@! that this whole "PUGs always get killed by pre-mades" myth is built on.

No, when you lose 0-8 it's not the pre-made boogyman.

Do you know how many PUGs I've played where my PUG steamrolled the other 8-0? Guess what? Your team was horribad. Most PUG teams are. All it takes is you having more rambos/bad players and/or new players than the other and it goes downhill in a hurry.

And if you're losing every game 0-8 ... perhaps you should think about why that is. When I'm PUGing that is literally rarely if ever the case. Hell, even in the rare instance that I'm actually playing against a pre-made team, I can usually take one of them with me unless my entire PUG has gone rambo and wandered off to die somewhere. Find an atlas on your team. Shoot whatever it's shooting at.

Edited by Lin Shai, 31 October 2012 - 06:22 AM.

[Shaddock]

If I cant play with my friends in a group, then they shouldnt have made an MMO, which they did, so I should be able to play in groups.