63 replies to this topic

[Nightcrept]

Good day fellow MechWarriors.



Sorry ahead of time for the ramble. It's early here.
I just wanted to give an explanation of what I perceive has happened to create the illusion of pre-mades ran wild. First, like many of you I have played many MMO's, lead multiple groups in MMO's and moderated a few MMO forums.

I am a pug exclusively for now.

I play approx 5-10 hrs a day.



Over the last few days I had gotten very frustrated with the game myself and thought about quitting. This was due to the amount of frustrating loses I was experiencing.

But i had such a wonderful experience with the original PC versions of the game and in closed beta that I decided to calm down and figure out what was happening.

This is what I discovered.


Pre-mades:

The amount of pre-mades I actually ran into was at the most 1 out of 3 games. They sometimes unfortunately seem to run in series. So you may get 2 or 3 pre-mades back to back and then none for awhile.

So while being on the caustic board and topping over the crater to see eight mechs evenly spaced on the g3 ridge all with LRMS in the air about to hit you is frustrating. It doesn't happen often enough to explain the amount of frustrating extremely uneven loses I was seeing.

But after being steam rolled by the few pre-mades I did find I was sensitive to it.




New Players vs Beta Vets:


Experience. Period. These I call vet-mades. The old beta vets have already played around with most if not all of the set-ups to know what works for them and their individual play style and have the experience to be deadly. Newer players have neither.

This creates what I call vet-made teams. This is when a team randomly has a larger amount of vet players (with their experience and established builds). The result is the appearance of a pre-made in deadly efficiency vs the team with more inexperienced players and their unbalanced builds.




Suicide Artists, Afk's, Disconnects.


Unfortunately, all of these seem to have increased since the start of open beta. And in many games I was discovering that we had multiples of these. The result is generally a steam roll of your team. I do not know how to stop any of these for the simple reason that they all happen naturally as well as maliciously. Suiciders can also be new players not knowing any better, Afk's can be due to kids setting the house on fire etc etc, DC's are caused by bugs (I bug out a few times a hr). But they all add to the perception of pre-mades ran wild and frustration.





So in conclusion these are the factors leading to the appearance of pre-mades gone wild:

1. The few Pre-made pug-stomps make you sensitive to them compounding the other issues.

2. Vet-mades happen due to the random nature and learning curve of the game.

3. Suicide Artists.

4. Afkers.

5. Disconnects.



So all of these issues taken together give the appearance of Pre-mades everywhere. But in reality it is many problems leading to frustrating lopsided losses.

But this is open BETA. Emphasis on the BETA. If they aren't fixed then cry. Till then bite a pillow, kick the cat, beat on your cross-eyed neighbor or something....lol.

But have faith that our dev team will work to fix these issues best they can.

Edited by Nightcrept, 31 October 2012 - 05:45 AM.

[Redshift2k5]

This week is a bit rough, but matchmaking changes are coming next week! Changes to remove farming and AFKers and Disconnects are coming soon, too

[Krivvan]

This is actually a lot more accurate and comprehensive than I expected.

[Kekrebos]

A very accurate and well thought out post. My experiences are very similar to this. It probably wouldn't be so bad with the actual premades if they weren't so rude to other players... but the internet is the internet, and morons are still morons.

[Toe Cutter]

Good post. PUG play is most frustrating due to afk'ers and disconnects. Premades are an annoyance but less so in my opinion.

[Kriegs]

Krivvan, on 31 October 2012 - 06:07 AM, said:

This is actually a lot more accurate and comprehensive than I expected.

Indeed, I think the Op hit the nail on the head.

I have been in ALOT of matches where more then 1/2 my team that got stomped were in trial mechs, where as the opposing team had custom or founder mech(0exp vs 150+exp).Might have been a premade, chances are they were not, just vets or founders with the experience and sense to use some form of tactics.

[Riktor Voshek]

I'm really suffering from this as well. I don't feel I've got significantly worse since Closed Beta, but I've had a hellish run of games this week, 2/16 W/L so far. Not the biggest sample pool, I'll grant you, but if I hadn't played the more even games of CB there's no bloody way I'd be hanging around at the moment!

[Ghosth]

I run a lot in daytime, normally I see 5-8 groups on the TS server, perhaps 1 more on the new NA server. Prime time you can double that.

Plus you have all those house groups, merc clans, etc.

So you have 15 known groups 120 people prime time, out of how many?
Even if there were 45 groups running full groups, the numbers still don't add up to much over 500.

Average players online for the same time slot was 2500 give or take a few, thats before they took away our ability to see how many are online.

If we have even doubled our numbers, thats 1 team in 10 that is an actual premade, 8 guys all on voice talking and working together.

Personally I can't wait for a lobby or other system where groups can drop against groups. Because Pugs are still going to be getting stomped, and they won't have anyone to complain about. The tears should be epic.

[Toe Cutter]

Rallog, on 31 October 2012 - 06:11 AM, said:

A very accurate and well thought out post. My experiences are very similar to this. It probably wouldn't be so bad with the actual premades if they weren't so rude to other players... but the internet is the internet, and morons are still morons.

I have not seen a lot of this in my experience. One premade group last night was bad but 4-5 others identified as premade, gave web sites, and were generally encouraging. I hope that is the way it is going as a rule. I can't stand would be heroes mocking those who have little chance of winning. Don't get me wrong, I'll in no way take it easy on an opponent once they get in the ring but an opponent is a fellow enthusiast of a game and I want them around for a long time.

[EDMW CSN]

Match make is coming soon™

Ghosth, on 31 October 2012 - 06:22 AM, said:

Personally I can't wait for a lobby or other system where groups can drop against groups. Because Pugs are still going to be getting stomped, and they won't have anyone to complain about. The tears should be epic.

They will complain that Founders and their pimped rides have an unfair advantage. It's a cycle really.
In any F2P game, someone will be called a paytard and another will be called a free loader.

Edited by EDMW CSN, 31 October 2012 - 06:32 AM.

[meteorol]

The way the matchmaker puts together mechs on the teams can also often lead to a really brutal stomp.

I don't want to start a trail mech debate here, but the trail awesome (which seem to be picked pretty often by new players because it's the heaviest trailmech) is no matchup for a thought over minmaxed Atlas.

I have been in a few matches with 2-4 trail awesomes being matched against 2-4 atlas.
Needless to say, the trail awesomes were brutally murdered within seconds.

[Vila deVere]

Redshift2k5, on 31 October 2012 - 05:50 AM, said:

This week is a bit rough, but matchmaking changes are coming next week! Changes to remove farming and AFKers and Disconnects are coming soon, too

I bet the matchmaking doesn't really change things much.

That is, until a skill/experience based matchmaker kicks in. But the game REALLY needs is an in-game incentive for noobs, experienced solo players, and teams to self-segregate. Hopefully CW will offer that.

[Jetfire]

Yeah, this is very true. If you drop in a group with 2-3 more founders than the other side, it will likely be a slaughter just from the experience factor. I have been teaching my friend to play and you sometimes forget how much you had to learn to be an effective pilot.

[stjobe]

I've run across two - yes two - premades since open beta started: One was only identified as a premade by a "GG from DHB" (Death's Hand Brigade) after they roundly thrashed us (8-1, I got the only kill) - no smack talk, no boasting. The other one was 6 people from Clan Widowmaker (IIRC) that dropped with me and another PUG, and they were nothing but courteous to us and the other team, giving their recruitment info and answering questions; They started the match by asking if anyone was new to the game, and I got a "well played stjobe" as we chased away and killed the enemy scout at the start of the match.

Something that I've been thinking about though is if this (smack-talking and unhelpfulness) is more an American thing? I play only EU evenings (which would be middle of the day in the US), and I seldom see any smack-talk and/or asshattery. Perhaps the gaming culture is different between the US and the EU, or perhaps there's just more of the Americans so there's proportionally more of the ... less well-behaved players?

Perhaps I'm just lucky. Either way, the only confirmed pre-mades I've come across have been nothing but courteous and helpful.

Most of the times an 8-0 win is just a slightly coordinated PUG beating a non-coordinated PUG.

[Culler]

When the only way we have to identify most premades or PUGs is how they act in-game I think it leads to the perception that some groups are actually premades when they're just PUGs sticking together or playing defensively. Then we call PUGs groups that split up and don't act cohesively, but I've been in some premades that might as well have been PUGs for all the unit cohesiveness. Sometimes a premade will try a risking strategy that involves lance-splitting and sometimes that strategy will fail depending on timing but from their opponents perspective they see a group that didn't stick together and got picked off. I've been in premades that got stomped by what I'm pretty sure were PUGs, just because our pilots were really bad.

If we call every unorganized group a PUG and every organized group a premade, we're not actually entirely accurate and it bloats the perception of the problem. A PUG is more likely to be disorganized and a premade is more likely to be organized, but a PUG often roflstomps another PUG just because they have a greater randomly allocated proportion of veteran players with custom mechs instead of trials. It doesn't take a lot for an edge to snowball into a roflstomp once you're up a few mechs.

[Kraven Kor]

Heck even having a single disconnect or AFK is a huge disadvantage, especially if it is a heavy or assault that is missing - or your only scout or something.

[Skaulic]

My experiece tells me that I'm facing Pre-mades as a Founder PUG'er roughly 2/5 of the time (UK Daytime). Ive stopped playing peak times (UK evening) as the amount of pre-mades makes for an experience devoid of fun for a solo dropper. When I see a team comprised of nearly all Founders it's a bit of a give-away. I've never dropped with more than 4 founders in all the games Ive played since OB started and never saw teams full of founders previous to OB. Saying its a rarity to encounter pre-mades is simply not true.

Agree with previous comment about incentive to self segregate. As it is, too many simply want easy mode wins no matter what the cost to the general population now and in the future.

[RumRunner151]

There is a bit more of an explanation needed IMO.

OP has listed factors which contribute to the effect, but not the direct cause of the effect.

In this game numbers are important. Gaining a 2 to 3 mechs advantage due to any of the reasons the OP listed is likely to cause a lopsided victory.

So you get 1 Disconnect, 1 Suicide/AFK, and just One guy overcommits and gets killed and you are looking at a 1-7 or 0-8 scenario most likely.

If Beta Vets or Pre-mads get a couple of early kills...maybe Matchmaker messed up and only dropped your side w/7 to begin with....expect a roflstomp.

[BigJim]

stjobe, on 31 October 2012 - 06:43 AM, said:

I've run across two - yes two - premades since open beta started:

IDD - I've only run across one, Area 51 iirc.

Oh, I also ran across a lone guy from my own unit pugging, while I was in a group - So we legged him, stripped his arms, both side-torsos, and then left him and capped.
That was just being mean-girls though..

Edited by BigJim, 31 October 2012 - 06:55 AM.

[Sarevos]

Trial mechs and experience is the reason for MOST of the stomping

Raven- 81 kph SLOW for a scout, heavily armed but this means nothing when you can fire those weapons all of twice before you evaporate under sustained fire from a custom moving 129kph

Centurion- .... you know its not particularly bad... just not good either... it doesnt really have the fire power to kill anything unless you spam o in some sort of "quick time event"-esque "press o to not die" fury nor the armor to standup toe to toe with any custom and its SLOW

Dragon- fine if you want a fast heavy that pokes mechs and does no damage the clipped gimped raven does more single target damage but the amount of armor and its relatively high speed makes it a pretty big annoyance with the screenshake-o-matic on its arm i guess this one is OK but a streak Catapult will put you down faster than you can blink

Awesome- is pretty much the best of these in terms of sustained fire power it is a fire support mech and seems to be well equipped for that role despite only having 2 tons of Lrm ammo if you play well and have good aim its quite effective the problem is an atlas can do its job better and FASTER despite being 20 tons heavier. crawling at a snails pace of 48kph while having no ams means if you so much as look out from behind cover the slow acceleration will prevent you from slowing down and reversing fast enough to re enter cover even if you began doing so the moment you saw the lrms launch at 800m forced to take the full barrage this wouldnt be a problem for the most part as its just "one of those things you cant change" except an awesome carries the same value as an atlas in matchmaking currently and the atlas will always win toe to toe having more direct fire weaponry than you and carrying more armor having a higher speed and able to carry larger launchers than you.

since OB i grinded my way to 5 mill before i decided that enough was enough and flat out paid real money for my cat, mind you in CB i grinded EVERYTHING out in trials and **** if i was going to do that again...