EDIT: What the hell? How did this pop up in "recent posts"? I swear I wasn't necroing, I think there's a forum bug. I saw this as a recent post or popular topic or something. The back button is just taking me back to the suggestions forum.
EDIT2: Sorry, found it. I came here from this post
http://mwomercs.com/...57#entry1870857 Didn't look at the age of the thread.
Sorry, but no. This is way too deep for matchmaking. I'm not exaggerating when I say this will turn off a
lot of new players. It might seem cool for tournament play, but take a hint from LoL and DotA2 and think about why they made their draft modes an
option.
First of all, you're giving people too much information before the match has actually started. You
will see people drop out in the lobby if they don't like how the teams stack up, and then the whole thing will collapse as everyone would rather follow them than play an uneven game or wait for it to become 7v7. Allowing other people to fill the spot of a leaver
sounds like a good idea, but you will have to sit in that lobby and wait, and hope they don't leave as well. I'm guessing you don't play many custom games in RTS, or WoW, but it's pretty common that if even person leaves, more than half the group jumps straight to the conclusion that the group will fall apart (self-fulfilling prophecy) and leaves immediately rather than waiting for a single slot to be filled. Even if people stay, it's a lot of sitting and waiting instead of playing. Players are far more likely to stay after a disconnect if they are already in the game playing. At that point they are already invested and engaged in the match, so it feels like there's more to lose than simply dropping out of a lobby. The current system puts them straight into the game, so even if a player disconnects immediately, the rest are likely to play the game out.
If you want to stop people from scattering before a game, the only thing you could really do that would be even a little fair is tie up their mech until the game is done. However, that will not motivate people to stay. They will either requeue with another mech or get frustrated and quit the game entirely. You will also not weed out disconnectors this way, you will only make the problem worse for legit players, as they will have to wait for a replacement or deal with everyone scattering rather than just playing out a 7v8 (which 7s still have a good chance of winning). Likewise, this won't help much against botters either. If the bot can't ready itself then the hackers will just make a new bot that can. If people try to turing test it, they're just going to end up wasting a lot of time. When people go ahead and ready with the bot, they will be even angrier than with the current system because what the hell? Isn't the reason we put up with this hassle to stop botters? What you should be pushing for is better bot and AFK detection and a more aggressive effort to ban repeat offenders.
Secondly, the tonnage thing alone will kill the public matchmaking game. Again, I am
not exaggerating, and I am
not speaking figuratively. The population will
vanish if you put such a feature into matchmaking. Nobody wants to be told what they can or can't play because of what a bunch of randoms picked. The
second somebody is prevented from choosing the mech they want because of their own team, you have just lost an Atlas worth of public opinion with them. That could work in premade games with people you know, but not matchmaking. The game already balances team weights automatically, that work doesn't need to be put on the players.
This could work as an
option for organizing premade games, though I still disagree with the weight restrictions no matter how you try to sell it. If the teams or game organizers wish to have such restrictions, you can provide the information and let them self-enforce it. The whole point of ready systems is to make sure there is a consensus before the game starts, building it in only restricts people and provides no benefit in return. None of this should be anywhere near matchmaking. Maybe you like the idea of sitting in lobbies all day waiting for "even" games to start, but the system already matches weight classes, and I don't feel any doubt that the majority of players would hate being asked to wait on other people to be allowed to start playing, especially when there is no benefit to such a system at all. You have detailed your idea, but you haven't explained how it makes the game
better.
In short, this is what you are proposing, straight from your post and caps locked for emphasis:
- TEAM MINIMUM AND MAXIMUM DROP WIGHT
- EVERY
- CANNOT
- WILL NOT START
- BOTH
- NO PLAYER
Edited by TheBaron, 11 February 2013 - 06:35 PM.
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