150 replies to this topic

[Sandpit]

Desecrator, on 05 November 2012 - 01:20 PM, said:

Rofl, factual numbers ????

You mean the one quote where he played 20 games . ahahaha

20 games is real numbers to you ?

They have released nothing that even resembles factual numbers. You cant even stat something out in less than 1000 games

Wow, you are really grasping at straws. I played 20 games and hardly saw a premade, the mod said.. Yah, thats real numbers for ya

First off you CAN stat that out, it's just a poor sample size. It's also a factual number as opposed to your I THINK it was a premade. You are grasping sir simply because you don't have any factual numbers. You have: couldas, wouldas, might have beens, seemed like it was, acted like it could have been numbers but hey that's definitely a factual basis to take a sample size from.

[Henchman 24]

Taryys, on 05 November 2012 - 11:53 AM, said:

First, I think it should be pointed out that you are not going against premades as much as people may think they are.
Paul has already mentioned this. Getting a beat down does not mean premade.

So two nights ago when my small premade of 3 went up against 3 matches worth of solid founders...who advertised their homepages right before the last kill beats the odds then?

And yes, 3 separate groups of premades, I jotted down the urls quick for one of the guys in our premade so he could check them out.

These weren't loose groups, they were well coordinated teams, one wasn't as good as the other two...but still, when they full on admit it in game....it becomes kind of hard to swallow some of what Paul says sometimes.

Although I'm willing to just chalk it up to the kinder-code that is matchmaking in this game so far. For now.

[Lin Shai]

QuantumButler, on 05 November 2012 - 01:15 PM, said:

because premade groups with VoIP just have that big of an advantage, 4 man premade groups will pugstomp even more easily, since they'll never run into larger premades than themselves and only ever have to deal with pugs or same sized groups.

Put those same "pre-made" players in a group, don't give them VOIP. They still win. The minuscule amount you actually have to type into chat to coordinate in this game is all PUGs actually need to do.

Again, "pre-mades" aren't the problem. People who don't play as a team are. Nothing PGI does or can do is going to give those people the "I win" button they seem to be so desperately looking for. Nothing PGI can do will make it so a solo player who clicks on 'launch' doesn't wind up teamed with one or more of those people.

[Desecrator]

Sandpit, on 05 November 2012 - 01:24 PM, said:

First off you CAN stat that out, it's just a poor sample size. It's also a factual number as opposed to your I THINK it was a premade. You are grasping sir simply because you don't have any factual numbers. You have: couldas, wouldas, might have beens, seemed like it was, acted like it could have been numbers but hey that's definitely a factual basis to take a sample size from.

lol 20 games

Bilbo, on 05 November 2012 - 01:23 PM, said:

Perhaps you missed the part where I said lopsided matches were a regular occurance before groups were implemented. In other words, PuGs were Pugstomping long before the ability to group was in-game. PuG's will continue to pugstomp after the MM overhaul is complete. Once a team has lost 1-2 mechs without taking out 1-2 of their counterparts, the game is/was essentially over. There are rare occassions when the tide can be turned, but those are/were the exception and not the rule.

Then the game is already dead.

People dont pay to play a lopsided game

[QuantumButler]

Lin Shai, on 05 November 2012 - 01:25 PM, said:

Put those same "pre-made" players in a group, don't give them VOIP. They still win. The minuscule amount you actually have to type into chat to coordinate in this game is all PUGs actually need to do.

Again, "pre-mades" aren't the problem. People who don't play as a team are. Nothing PGI does or can do is going to give those people the "I win" button they seem to be so desperately looking for. Nothing PGI can do will make it so a solo player who clicks on 'launch' doesn't wind up teamed with one or more of those people.

And 90% of the playerbase refuses even this modicium of cooperation.

If that's enough to doom the game, mwo is already doomed.

[Prophet0027]

Seriously don't get the QQing about premade groups. Mechwarrior is about groups of mechs coordinating their attacks, it's about team work. I for one, pug exclusivley and you will never, ever, hear me complain when the team I am on gets roflstomppwnd. I know that being on a pug team means that the team work will be minimal, with AFKers and suicides and rambo's, but I still have fun and as long as I can do a lot of damage and get at least one kill, im ok with that. Maybe they will implement Solaris like I have heard people talk about, and there may be 1v1 and 2v2 matches, who knows. At this point in the games development, I just don't see the point in people getting all pissed off about premades, it makes no sense. I'm sure there are corps out there that don't have minimum play times and that don't take the game to seriously.

[tvih]

Taryys, on 05 November 2012 - 11:53 AM, said:

First, I think it should be pointed out that you are not going against premades as much as people may think they are.
Paul has already mentioned this. Getting a beat down does not mean premade.

Ah, but you see, if premades are so rare it's strange that being a PUG player I extremely rarely see wins of 8-0, or even 8-1 or 8-2 unless someone or more than one on the other side DC'd. Yet I'm in matches that end up in such 0-8 results quite frequently. And those losses are usually landslides in terms of speed too, if it's a win it usually takes much longer. In any case as a result despite having a well above average personal performance in terms of doing damage and KDR and other such meaningless stats, my W/L is well below 1.

Furthermore while I thought the latest patch was supposed to limit premades to 4 people, it didn't.

EDIT: This is not to say that one PUG can't "roflstomp" another one occasionally, but said roflstomping is happening much too frequently and one-sidedly to be a coincidence.

Edited by tvih, 05 November 2012 - 01:34 PM.

[Zeh]

Lin Shai, on 05 November 2012 - 01:25 PM, said:

Put those same "pre-made" players in a group, don't give them VOIP. They still win. The minuscule amount you actually have to type into chat to coordinate in this game is all PUGs actually need to do.

Again, "pre-mades" aren't the problem. People who don't play as a team are. Nothing PGI does or can do is going to give those people the "I win" button they seem to be so desperately looking for. Nothing PGI can do will make it so a solo player who clicks on 'launch' doesn't wind up teamed with one or more of those people.

Yes. Long story short, teamwork can never be defeated. It will never not be OP in this game. Teamwork or ****. Or lose and whine all day.. that's fine too.

Desecrator, on 05 November 2012 - 01:27 PM, said:

Then the game is already dead.

People dont pay to play a lopsided game

You don't understand the logic behind this I suppose? There's nothing wrong with the way the scores play out. The ONLY way you could have less lopsided games is to reduce the emphasis on teamwork. So that a solo person can take out another solo person before help arrives.

That sounds like an FPS. I play CS:GO Arms Race when I don't want to use teamwork. This game will never be what you want.

Lastly, whoever said they want this game to be an e-sport. Won't happen. Not mainstream enough. Thankfully. Mainstream stuff is for teenagers. (Blech)

[Imagine Dragons]

Jade Kitsune, on 05 November 2012 - 12:28 PM, said:

You're not getting the point.

PGI is making these huge, sweeping changes to appease the Lone wolf crowd, in a game that is supposed to be focused around teamwork.

They're breaking up teams [if only for a short time] in a way that is not conducive to the overall experience, because those of you who want to "Launch solo all day ere day" complained that you weren't special snowflake enough.

Well now guess what's going to happen, those premades you complained about, will be broken up a bit and spread out more, which means now you have MORE of a chance to run into 4 man premade groups... 4 guys on comms working together will still be too tough for you guys who were complaining.

Mark my words.

This game should work like Chromehounds... you HAVE to join a team to play. Or make your own.

You don't get it.

What we have now is the "Lone Wolf Experience"... what YOU, and the team players ultimately want is Community Warfare.

Because as of right now, there is no meta-game purpose for large group play, none.

There is a fear in regards to "What is the scope of the CW experience?"

Nobody wants a tacked on Internet Risk boardgame like WoT, however the fear is MWO's CW might just end up as it.

[Wildcat]

QuantumButler, on 05 November 2012 - 01:07 PM, said:

The problem has been "known" literally FOR MONTHS, EVER SINCE GROUPING WAS ADDED IN CLOSED BETA HOW FREAKING LONG DOES IT TAKE TO MATCH GROUPS ONLY AGAINST GROUPS?

I agree... this should have been fixed such a long time ago....


OPEN BETA is the time to Impress players, even if the Game is finished or NOT... this is where you want to get the most People to sign up and start Spending $$$ on their Game...

Right now, its doing more harm than good...

hanitora, on 05 November 2012 - 01:08 PM, said:

[/list]All of these are often used by pugs.and not even always necessarily intentional, while the one about trial mechs is not necessarily true about premades at all. Premades often have trial mechs in them. The rush to base one is actually a pretty good tactic to use as a pug and I believe it's gaining popularity. It's very simplistic and easy to execute without comms. You just run to a known point on map as a blob, anyone can understand.

You can tell when these Strategies and Tactics are executed with such efficiency that it can only be done with Voice Comms... you can not sit still for 5-10 seconds typing out commands while you are being fired upon, you need voice Comms to call for Support or to Execute certain Maneuvers... if you play with someone or a Team for a while, you will not need to communicate at times, since you will know what that player is going to do by second nature...

But for the most part, you cannot tell what damage another player in your Team has, and so you need to voice out your Status and position and what Support you need

Desecrator, on 05 November 2012 - 01:20 PM, said:

Rofl, factual numbers ????

You mean the one quote where he played 20 games . ahahaha

20 games is real numbers to you ?

They have released nothing that even resembles factual numbers. You cant even stat something out in less than 1000 games

Wow, you are really grasping at straws. I played 20 games and hardly saw a premade, the mod said.. Yah, thats real numbers for ya

that is not even enough numbers for an Average number.... A Real Test is about 100-500 matches, and even then you need to do Tests with this at various times of the Day....

For example... in Australia, from around 12 Midday to around 3-6PM AEST you will find the most concentration of Premade Teams playing and where you will lose anywhere from 12-20 games in a row...

Other times if the day it is not so Bad, since the Majority of the U.S. are Asleep or at Work... you will still see Preamade Teams, but not in the Great Concentration as you would in other times of the Day...

[Taryys]

There is too much coincidence in your post for it to not be true.
Do not equate getting your *** handed to you equating to premade.

tvih, on 05 November 2012 - 01:33 PM, said:

Ah, but you see, if premades are so rare it's strange that being a PUG player I extremely rarely see wins of 8-0, or even 8-1 or 8-2 unless someone or more than one on the other side DC'd. Yet I'm in matches that end up in such 0-8 results quite frequently. And those losses are usually landslides in terms of speed too, if it's a win it usually takes much longer. In any case as a result despite having a well above average personal performance in terms of doing damage and KDR and other such meaningless stats, my W/L is well below 1.

Furthermore while I thought the latest patch was supposed to limit premades to 4 people, it didn't.

EDIT: This is not to say that one PUG can't "roflstomp" another one occasionally, but said roflstomping is happening much too frequently and one-sidedly to be a coincidence.

[Valder]

Desecrator, on 05 November 2012 - 01:27 PM, said:

Then the game is already dead.

People dont pay to play a lopsided game

Actually, I've already sunk $120 into it. In fact, the vast majority of people that are spending money are competitive players. In a game where tactics are key, better tactics will always cause lopsided victories. It's NEVER going to be scored 7 to 8 every match you play.

I'll continue to sink money in, because I like that using tactics and strategy trumps in this game. I don't want to play Hello Kitty online where no one dies and everything is okay and no one QQ's their inability to get it together. I want to play MechWarrior where you stomp people's faces and make mince meat out of their cockpits... in a team... using tactics... where the better players with better tactics and technique come out ahead.

[KhazadNo]

The patch tomorrow will not fix much. They will just break up the 8 man teams into 4 man teams. The ownage will go on and we are just going to see twice as many premades.

The biggest problem with this premade PUG stomping is that I can not even play this game the way it is supposed to be played. If I try to use a custom mech(wich is a LOT more fun then the trial mechs) the repair cost will make sure I earn no money every time I run up against a premade. And god forbid I want to try to XL engines, FF armor or steel frames to match the firepower of the premade mechs. After repair and ammo you loose CBs and its gonna make you broke. What this does to the game is that we have puggers that either CBill farm with trial mechs(there is a disconnect fix comming here but still they are not) or run zombie mechs. I know it can be argued that zombie mechs arn't useless but it sure isnt what you want to have on your team when facing a "superior" enemy.

I know there are plans for MM. But the current solution, or lack there of, is ruining the game experience. A temporary fix to help PUGers could be to give them almost free repair so they can actually use their upgraded mechs until a working MM system is in place. Trying to get CBs for a new chassis or upgrades if you don't use trial mechs these days are close to impossible unless you are running with a premade.

[LogicSol]

Lin Shai, on 05 November 2012 - 12:49 PM, said:

It actually doesn't because of the timing issue involved. There's literally no way to predict this without having the analytical data to know the frequency of "pre-made" drops.

Your math is dependent on their being a near constant stream of "pre-mades" hitting the launch button at all times, so that when a PUGer hits the 'launch' button, there's one there waiting for them to "fill in". It also depends on a significantly high pre-made to PUG ratio that doesn't really exist.

What I predict is that while obviously as a PUG you have a better chance at playing with 'pre-mades' than today because of the size limit, what you're going to see is a lot of 4+4 vs. 8 PUG ... good for the +4, not so good for the 8.

And it's random chance as to which group a PUG winds up in. Overall I believe that the average PUGer is now going to be facing 4 competent players in customized mechs more often than they are actually facing a pre-made today, and the results will be ... ugly.

I don't think 4+4 v X matches are possible in phase one. My memory of the previous discussions was that separate premade groups won't be put on the same team until phase 2.

As for the math, It's assuming most "premade" teams are dropping with 6-8 players.
If you play against a premade in 1 out of 4 matches (taking a middle ground occurrence rate) having the team size without changing the number of team players will increase that to 1 in 2.
Out of four matches, there were 64 players slots. If the premade was an 8 player, you had a 0 in 64 chance of dropping on their team.
If they were a 7 player, a 1 in 64.
If they were a 6 player a 1 in 32.

Switching to 4 man teams, and a 1 in 2 occurrence rate you now have 32 slots, with 4 possible slots to land you in a premade team or 1 in 8 chance of being teamed with a premade on your side.

Yea its rough, and has all sorts of things I'm not taking into account, but you should still being seeing a roughly doubled premade encounter rate, as well as a roughly quadruple rate of solo dropping onto a premade team.

[Valder]

LogicSol, on 05 November 2012 - 01:39 PM, said:

I don't think 4+4 v X matches are possible in phase one. My memory of the previous discussions was that separate premade groups won't be put on the same team until phase 2.

As for the math, It's assuming most "premade" teams are dropping with 6-8 players.
If you play against a premade in 1 out of 4 matches (taking a middle ground occurrence rate) having the team size without changing the number of team players will increase that to 1 in 2.
Out of four matches, there were 64 players slots. If the premade was an 8 player, you had a 0 in 64 chance of dropping on their team.
If they were a 7 player, a 1 in 64.
If they were a 6 player a 1 in 32.

Switching to 4 man teams, and a 1 in 2 occurrence rate you now have 32 slots, with 4 possible slots to land you in a premade team or 1 in 8 chance of being teamed with a premade on your side.

Yea its rough, and has all sorts of things I'm not taking into account, but you should still being seeing a roughly doubled premade encounter rate, as well as a roughly quadruple rate of solo dropping onto a premade team.

Your math is invalid because we have no hard numbers for any of this.

[Sandpit]

Wildcat, on 05 November 2012 - 01:36 PM, said:

I agree... this should have been fixed such a long time ago....


OPEN BETA is the time to Impress players, even if the Game is finished or NOT... this is where you want to get the most People to sign up and start Spending $$$ on their Game...

Right now, its doing more harm than good...




You can tell when these Strategies and Tactics are executed with such efficiency that it can only be done with Voice Comms... you can not sit still for 5-10 seconds typing out commands while you are being fired upon, you need voice Comms to call for Support or to Execute certain Maneuvers... if you play with someone or a Team for a while, you will not need to communicate at times, since you will know what that player is going to do by second nature...

But for the most part, you cannot tell what damage another player in your Team has, and so you need to voice out your Status and position and what Support you need


that is not even enough numbers for an Average number.... A Real Test is about 100-500 matches, and even then you need to do Tests with this at various times of the Day....

For example... in Australia, from around 12 Midday to around 3-6PM AEST you will find the most concentration of Premade Teams playing and where you will lose anywhere from 12-20 games in a row...

Other times if the day it is not so Bad, since the Majority of the U.S. are Asleep or at Work... you will still see Preamade Teams, but not in the Great Concentration as you would in other times of the Day...

Your sample size does not affect the outcome. It does leave more room to conduct a larger sample size but let's take a look at something else.
20 games averaging 7 minutes each (about half of a full length match) = 140 minutes
140 minutes = just over 2 hours
2 hours is a good solid run and an exceptionally long time to invest in the game (according to all of the posts regarding the"grind" for new players being too long and 3-4 hours being too much investment to work at getting a custom mech) which means that even though it's only 20 matches it's a decent sample size.
What those of you arguing against sample size completely ignore is that I've seen SEVERAL posts in this thread talking about getting rolled by premades 8 times in a row. So given THAT statistic 20 matches should generate a lot more matches against premades.

[Solis Obscuri]

8 = massive?

[Jacmac]

Wildcat, on 05 November 2012 - 12:02 PM, said:

I dont care what Paul says, I know a Premade Team when I see one.... the Tactics in play by Premade Teams can easily be identified early in game...

I think there may be some semantics in this argument. There aren't actually a lot of totally 100% premade groups fighting so much as voice comm groups. There are a lot of voice comm groups, a very large percentage of the playerbase and I believe a growing percentage. I noticed this past weekend while playing in full 8-player groups for several hours that full 8-player groups always drop on one specific side for every map unless it is two 8-player groups dropping on the same map. For example on the caldera map, the 8-player group will always appear in the factory area. On the city/harbor map the 8-player group will always appear on the ship side of the map instead of the aircraft. On the snow map they will aways appear in the north east corner base. On the forest map they will always appear on the high ground base, nearest to the cave.

[Kell Draygo]

I don't even know why PGI is going through with the stupid Phase 1, 2, 3 process which will only **** everyone off. The easiest way is to have two queues. Other successful games have the same thing, one option that can be picked where premades and solo queue players are matched together if chosen. The other option is where when you join this queue, you cannot be in a group at all, from groups of 2 to 8. It's that simple. Then players, solo or groups who want to play a more 'team based game' can do so. Where as the lone wolves can lone wolf all day long and the best skilled players will contribute the most in that queue.

This phase 1, 2, 3 is a horrible idea where a much simpler solution is available and worked in great success in other games.

[Sandpit]

Jacmac, on 05 November 2012 - 01:43 PM, said:

I think there may be some semantics in this argument. There aren't actually a lot of totally 100% premade groups fighting so much as voice comm groups. There are a lot of voice comm groups, a very large percentage of the playerbase and I believe a growing percentage. I noticed this past weekend while playing in full 8-player groups for several hours that full 8-player groups always drop on one specific side for every map unless it is two 8-player groups dropping on the same map. For example on the caldera map, the 8-player group will always appear in the factory area. On the city/harbor map the 8-player group will always appear on the ship side of the map instead of the aircraft. On the snow map they will aways appear in the north east corner base. On the forest map they will always appear on the high ground base, nearest to the cave.

I think as the player base grows you'll see more premades simply because the majority DO want to play as a team and especially when CW gets implemented you'll see more and more getting in on working as a team. This just means one thing. Lone wolf style players will have few options to be competitive. Does this mean MWO is dead? No
It does, however, mean that this game isn't going to be a perfect fit for every game out there. Some people don't like PvP, some people don't want to play on a team and want to play PvE type scenarios. Those types of players aren't going to enjoy this game nearly as much and it just might not be for them in general