111 replies to this topic

[80Bit]

Ok I agree with the comments that PUG players are, on average, less skilled than team players. That is a given since people who play in teams are in general more serious about the game and getting good at it. But I still feel that the biggest factor to people thinking that PUG players are bad in general is group on group encounters. When I am in a PUG and manage to round up 4-5 people to stay together, it turns into massive lopsided victory, even if some people in that group are overheating and shooting LRMS at 50 yards.

There are a lot of PUG players that would rip most premade players apart one on one, but that premade player is never going to be alone and the PUGer may not have a choice on the matter.

Of course, this is not a one on one game in any sense. Personal skill is well and good but it is team game and you can't judge the skill of individuals of a PUG by result of their team play. "Oh those PUGers got rolled, hahaha!" Yeah that's not necessarily because you are so much better than each one of them, it's because your team was better than their (unorganized scatters poorly configured) team.

[AvatarofWhat]

Pugastrius, on 30 November 2012 - 11:04 AM, said:

I think you are wildly over-estimating the potential K/D ratio of players if Pre-mades didn't exist.

I really don't think so. There is more to good players then good teamwork. Hell I've seen pugs grouped tighter then many premades moving with almost soldier-like coordination. Then they alpha strike their team-mate in the back because they can't aim. Coordination is not the biggest issue here.

[BoomDog]

I think of the difference between pre-mades and pugs as the difference between private and public schools. One gets to hand pick who they get to assure higher quality, the other has to deal with the short bus. Of course, that doesn't mean that there aren't any excellent pug players.

I think if they ever allow a solaris style duel system, many of the elitists will get a painful wake up call.

[Pugastrius]

Quote

Oh those PUGers got rolled, hahaha!" Yeah that's not necessarily because you are so much better than each one of them, it's because your team was better than their (unorganized scatters poorly configured) team.

This is exactly the point I am trying to make.

Quote

Pre-mades do exist. So do K/D ratios in the hundreds.
Wild hypotheticals are useless. As the game stands now, the average player is not average skilled.

All PG has to do to fix this is to make sure that if there is a team of 4 on one side, then there is a team of 4 on the other side. With that said, I highly suspect that after the 8v8 drops happen, you'll see those K/D ratios that are well above 1:1 plummet... fast (since you're removing the incredible advantage of focus fire and team work). So fast, that I suspect people will simply go back to groups of 4 so they can continue to stomp entire groups of pugs.

Edited by Pugastrius, 30 November 2012 - 11:17 AM.

[BellatorMonk]

I stopped reading after "terrible players". I have been playing mostly pug matches for days now. I can score 100-1.2k damage, have 0-7 kills and out of some 75 matches I have been on the winning side 1 out 10 times.

It's so bad that I can tell from the side I spawn on that I am in an all pug group 90% of the time and it's a loss. The 10% and 1 out 10 wins is only when there is a 4 man premade on the team.

There are always many factors as to why a team (pug or not) might suck. Every losing team I am on consists of trial mechs, sh*t builds on sh*t mechs, sh*t builds on good mechs, horrible player situational awareness and almost zero focus firing of targets. Let's not factor in the CTD's, intentional DCs or suciders, those were locked in losses.

That is the definition of a pug. I would swear I have yet to be in a match that is a full 8 on 8 pug, meaning no premades. Every match the enemy team consisted of at least one premade and the "pugside" has none.

I made it a point to ask in at least half the matches if there were any premades on my "pug" team and the answer was "no" or no response and guess what, despite having even 1-2 good players on the team (able to score 500+ and/or 4+ kills) the pug lost.

When the answer was "yes" the match was a win.

[Vlad Ward]

You're oversimplifying the issue.

If the people with K/D ratios in the hundreds start dying more, who do you think is killing them?

It's sure as hell not Average Joe PUG #425653.

Any decrease in the KDRs of the 100+ crowd will just correspond to an increase in the KDRs of the people who already have 3.0-10.0 KDRs.

Adjusting the K/D ratio of high-performing players does absolutely nothing to bridge the performance gap between high performance and low performance players.

[Pugastrius]

Quote

If the people with K/D ratios in the hundreds start dying more, who do you think is killing them?

Think you're thinking about this wrong... right now it looks like this:

4 players: (and current K/D ratios)

P1: 100
P2: 100
P3: 0
P4: 0

P1 & P2 are a Premade teams and P3 & 4 are obviously pugs...

Quote

Adjusting the K/D ratio of high-performing players does absolutely nothing to bridge the performance gap between high performance and low performance players.

That's only true if you assume P1 & P2 continue to participate in PuG matches.. but let's assume they don't since they'd rather drop with their full team of 8

When 8 v 8 comes out, P1 & P2 will now be fighting eachother. By definition their KD ratio has to average to 1:1, and P3 & P4 will now only be fighting eachother. So after some time K/D ratios will look like this:

P1: 1
P2: 1
P3: 1
P4: 1

Of course... P1 & P2 will likely get sick of losing more often and simply go back to a group of 4 and proceed back to the top scenario. (Hence my suggestion to pair up group sizes in PuGs also).

Edited by Pugastrius, 30 November 2012 - 11:41 AM.

[Vlad Ward]

Pugastrius, on 30 November 2012 - 11:39 AM, said:

Think you're thinking about this wrong... right now it looks like this:

4 players: (and current K/D ratios)

P1: 100
P2: 100
P3: 0
P4: 0

P1 & P2 are a Premade teams and P3 & 4 are obviously pugs... When 8 v 8 comes out, P1 & P2 will now be fighting eachother. By definition their KD ratio has to average to 1:1, and P3 & P4 will now only be fighting eachother. So after some time K/D ratios will look like this:

P1: 1
P2: 1
P3: 1
P4: 1

Of course... P1 & P2 will likely get sick of losing more often and simply go back to a group of 4 and proceed back to the top scenario.

No. Again, you're oversimplifying things. We're not looking at two extremes. We're looking at a gradient.

There are players out there with KDRs in the hundreds. There are also a bunch of players out there (Usually founders, forum posters, people in Merc Corps, etc) with KDRs in the 3.0-10.0 ratio.

Then there's the decent PUG players with KDRs in the 0.7-0.9 area.

Then there's everyone else.

Even that's a pretty simple look at it, but it demonstrates something important.

If you suddenly take the top two groups and separate them from the bottom two groups, the Average KDR of the groups won't just slide back to 1 without a stat reset.

If you start with a KDR of 100:500, or 0.2, and suddenly start playing people of equal skill levels and averaging 1 kill for every 1 death, it will be hundreds of kills before your KDR even starts to resemble 0.5. It will be thousands of kills before your KDR hits 0.99.

Likewise, up in the "Premade" sections, any player dropping from a 10.0 KDR to 1.0 is another player whose KDR soared. The general trends in KDRs are preserved, with KDR averages >>1.0 in the high skill sections and <<1.0 in the low skill sections.

The average player is just not average.

[LordBraxton]

Vlad Ward, on 30 November 2012 - 10:42 AM, said:

1 bad experience with PUG players in 10 matches is more than enough to ruin the experience for the average person and ruin their perception of every PUG.

That's the consequence of playing with completely random, faceless crowds of people that you'll probably never see again.

The only thing I disagree with here is that I see the same people all the time, and I only play a few matches a day because my current PC can't run the game since they messed it up with CRY3.4

Hell I even run into fellows from my regiment all the time, which to me means there are alot less ppl playing now than a few weeks ago.

[Pugastrius]

Quote

If you start with a KDR of 100:500, or 0.2, and suddenly start playing people of equal skill levels and averaging 1 kill for every 1 death, it will be hundreds of kills before your KDR even starts to resemble 0.5. It will be thousands of kills before your KDR hits 0.99.

I see what you're saying, you're looking at historical.. (which will trend toward 1:1 over time)

What I'm talking about is effective... meaning the number of Mechs they are likely to kill before their next death which will nearly immediately be pushed to 1:1 on both sides of the line.

Edited by Pugastrius, 30 November 2012 - 11:53 AM.

[Zeh]

LordBraxton, on 30 November 2012 - 11:50 AM, said:

The only thing I disagree with here is that I see the same people all the time, and I only play a few matches a day because my current PC can't run the game since they messed it up with CRY3.4

Hell I even run into fellows from my regiment all the time, which to me means there are alot less ppl playing now than a few weeks ago.

That's interesting, because I play solely on teamspeak, and out of the 350 or so games I've played, I can think of *2* games where I had previously played with someone in the game that wasn't on my team.

[Kill Dozer]

BellatorMonk, on 30 November 2012 - 11:25 AM, said:

I stopped reading after "terrible players". I have been playing mostly pug matches for days now. I can score 100-1.2k damage, have 0-7 kills and out of some 75 matches I have been on the winning side 1 out 10 times.

It's so bad that I can tell from the side I spawn on that I am in an all pug group 90% of the time and it's a loss. The 10% and 1 out 10 wins is only when there is a 4 man premade on the team.

There are always many factors as to why a team (pug or not) might suck. Every losing team I am on consists of trial mechs, sh*t builds on sh*t mechs, sh*t builds on good mechs, horrible player situational awareness and almost zero focus firing of targets. Let's not factor in the CTD's, intentional DCs or suciders, those were locked in losses.

That is the definition of a pug. I would swear I have yet to be in a match that is a full 8 on 8 pug, meaning no premades. Every match the enemy team consisted of at least one premade and the "pugside" has none.

I made it a point to ask in at least half the matches if there were any premades on my "pug" team and the answer was "no" or no response and guess what, despite having even 1-2 good players on the team (able to score 500+ and/or 4+ kills) the pug lost.

When the answer was "yes" the match was a win.

Pretty much sums up my experience as well.

Sadly I got so frustrated in a game recently I ended up swapping language with some of the guys on the team. They played a text book game of every possible mistake you could make and we got rolled in the first 4-5 minutes. It comes down to a fundamental difference in how this game is perceived, some of us see it as a "Mechwarrior combat simulator" and some see it as "stompy robot deathmatch first person shooter".

I just remind myself that's it's not their fault, it's PGI's fault. New/casual players shouldn't be forced to play with organized teams where they get roflstomped and likewise, organized teams should not be forced to play with new/casual players who have no concept of tactics and strategy and/or aren't on the same level competitively.

I continue to hope that PGI will come up with a game/server browser type setup with some match making options so the different groups can do whatever makes them most happy. And before any makes with the hotlinks yes, I am aware of the match making road map, its also been a dismal failure so far. A better plan than making new/pugs/pubs drop with or against a 4 man premade would have been to restrict premades to 8v8 only right out of the gate.

I still think that match making is going to make or break this game, players can tolerate bugs, they cant tolerate this level of hostility between different sections of the player base. I would venture to say that most of the casual/pro hostility leads to the majority of the "un-fun" games people have. I don't get mad because I lose a game, I get mad if I lose because some guys cant/wont follow simple directions and they throw the game away doing stupid stuff. Situational awareness, force multiplication, enfilade, defilade, "role warfare"... these things have meanings that most casual players don't/won't understand.

Whatever the case, I really hope PGI can get match making fixed soon, MWO has the potential to be great, it would be too bad for it to fail over as simple as that.

[Vlad Ward]

Pugastrius, on 30 November 2012 - 11:51 AM, said:

I see what you're saying, you're looking at historical.. (which will trend toward 1:1 over time)

What I'm talking about is effective... meaning the number of Mechs they are likely to kill before their next death which will nearly immediately be pushed to 1:1 on both sides of the line.

Well, yes. I have to look at historic.

Putting bad players in their own league and giving them an effective KDR of 1.0 just means they're "Averagely Bad". It doesn't mean they're actually average.

Edited by Vlad Ward, 30 November 2012 - 12:17 PM.

[Strikhedonia]

I like the PUGs. They're a valuable part of the game and essential to the game succeeding. I might get frustrated, my group might even steamroll a PUG from time to time, but without them this game would have no chance in being successful.

Here's to you PUGs. I'll drop with you anytime.

[KingNobody]

I agree with the previous post that the worst thing in this game is the PUG/premade hostility. Whether that is caused by the snide derision and undeserved self-importance of premade players, or the stubbornness and lack of skill of PUGs seems to be at the center of the debate.

I play STO and am a member of one of the largest fleets on the server, and that has taught me that tight communication, focused fire, and adherance to a plan is the primary deciding factor in whether or not a team wins or loses. It is rarely a question of individual player skill. I agree with previous posters that when this communication gap is removed (such as when c3 comms are changed to include all members of a team whether they are in a group or not) we will see a much more even playing field, and the difference between premade and PUG will become trivial. I believe that expansion of the c3 system is the ONLY fix required to solve this problem, and separate queues for PUGs and premades are unnecessary.


edit: more posts while I was writing this, when I say "previous post" it no longer refers to the immediately preceding post lol

Edited by KingNobody, 30 November 2012 - 12:29 PM.

[G4M3R]

K/D ratio is a meaningless stat in a game like MWO. K/D wildly depends on the role that you play. I'm a brawler. I'm more likely to get killed than someone else who's a scout in a faster mech. Sure I'll take down a few. But I'm okay dying if that means I disrupt the enemy enough to give my team a win.

What AvatarofWhat is saying (from my clan) is that PUGs are missing out on the learning from other players that are just as passionate about the game and work on their builds/tips. So their learning curve is steep without help. And it shows in battle.

[Beo Vulf]

80Bit, on 30 November 2012 - 10:36 AM, said:

After reading various posts, on various topics, I notice a common theme repeated (by team players) that I would like to debunk. I play matches while I work so I end up playing PUG games almost exclusively. After 200+ PUG matches since open beta start, I have found the following about PUG players.

Contrary to popular opinion, the average PUG player is not:

Argumentative.
Terrible at the game.
Unwilling to follow orders.
A suicide farmer.


And while your first thought may be "No way, they are those things, I see it all the time!", your conclusion is not correct.

This is because every PUG game you play, you will see 1-2 players that fits one of the criteria above. The other 6-7 people on the team are none of those things. But human nature causes us to notice and remember atypical things, they stand out to us. So as a PUG player, over time, even though you only encounter someone who suicide farms perhaps once in every three games (1 player in 24) you feel like you encounter it all the time.

And if you are a team player, you will get lots of kills and do great compared to the enemy PUGers and your PUG team mates, leading you to perhaps conclude they are terrible at the game, when in fact, the mere act of sticking with 3 other people will lead to a very lopsided victory almost independent of player skill.


I only felt like posting this because so many people in discussions seem to write off PUG players as "not really playing the game", and that they should thus not be considered when it comes to mech design, weapon balance and so on. The fact is, that as a free to play game, PUG players are actually the main players, and will become more so as time goes on. World of Tanks is a good example of this. While their are plenty of team players, the primary bulk of matches happen between PUGs.

MWO is a team game, but it is also a PUG team game, and everyone should understand that when talking about the game in general.

Agreed. I may only get 1 or 2 kills in a match but I all ways have at least 4 assists. Dam kill stealers (lol) jk. I go to school (college) and do not have of the time to team play so I pug. Most players are decent at working as a team. The ones I remember though are the ones that run around like a chicken with its head cut off firing at anything that moves.

[G4M3R]

Or a trial Awesome turning in a circle on the spot trying to PPC a Jenner that's running around him. Watched it for like 30 seconds and it made my eyes bleed.

[KharnZor]

Sarah McCallum, on 30 November 2012 - 12:20 PM, said:

I like the PUGs. They're a valuable part of the game and essential to the game succeeding. I might get frustrated, my group might even steamroll a PUG from time to time, but without them this game would have no chance in being successful.

Here's to you PUGs. I'll drop with you anytime.

This is the correct attitude to have.
The rest of you ragging on PUGS need to stop being so god damned arrogant. I PUG all the time since the 4 man premade garbage started, my KDR might not be what it was but its still pretty high and my win/loss is even.
Get over yourselves.

[LordBraxton]

Zeh, on 30 November 2012 - 11:52 AM, said:

That's interesting, because I play solely on teamspeak, and out of the 350 or so games I've played, I can think of *2* games where I had previously played with someone in the game that wasn't on my team.

Strange, I ran into my unit mates 3 out of 5 games last night, and run into the same names all the time.

It doesn't bother me, and that being said we have about 100 actives right now and I was playing during peak hours.