79 replies to this topic

[repete]

Hi all

I figured Gen was the best place for this, and (surprisingly to me at least) a search didn't seem to find an existing / similar thread.

Not surprisingly, given the parameters of 8v8 in matchmaking phase 2, there is (For players around my timezone at least) an increase in the number of failures to find a match, AND, when you do find a match, it is often the same team over and over. For example, last night at 1am NZ time, our ARMD drops had four or five drops in a row against a team from OMC, and then three drops in a row against Ryuken-Ni-Sorei (Some fun games. Thanks to all involved). In between these repeated drops there were many "failed to find match". Not necessarily saying playing against the same team time after time is bad. As a matter of fact, it made it feel more like a series of battles across a larger engagement, but can be frustrating if you're getting rolled game after game (Yeah, yeah. "Adapt. L2P. Blah, blah blah").

Anyway, to the actual point of the post: Any idea how on Earth PGI can implement any sort of tonnage matching / limit without then making the problem of "failed to find a match" worse? :-S

To some extent the problem of failing to find matches may be exacerbated by what I believe appears to be the current popularity of 4v4 given:

• The lower prevalence of four to eight D-DC Atlases dropping together
  
• ECM is a game changer. Well coordinated ECM (from my observation) will usually beat non-coordinated (Or no) ECM. And well coordinated ECM in 8v8 does make matches take longer. I'd expect the stats PGI are receiving would back this up.
  
• I've heard many say "4v4 is the way to play if you want to grind at the moment as the CPS (C-Bills Per Second) is generally higher", and this certainly matches my experience.

[Lefty Lucy]

Yep. Despite all the cries of "we don't care about our W/L record we just want to play with 8 of our friends"... well it turns out they really, really care about their W/L record.

[Belorion]

They just need to lengthen the time it searches a little.

[LaserAngel]

Terrifying news, my friends weren't able to find a match 3 times in a row.

[Odins Fist]

Lefty Lucy, on 11 December 2012 - 02:00 PM, said:

Yep. Despite all the cries of "we don't care about our W/L record we just want to play with 8 of our friends"... well it turns out they really, really care about their W/L record.

.
YUUUUUUUUUUUUP...!!!!

[Mack1]

Everyone knos they are PUG stomping, come on man, it's a brand new game, thousands of players, the 8 v 8 should be totally on fire yet it's dead. Now when you join the PUG games you see 4 man groups all sticking together in their custom mechs annhilating the newbies in their trial Mechs..

We all knew this would happen.

[Vlad Ward]

Lefty Lucy, on 11 December 2012 - 02:00 PM, said:

Yep. Despite all the cries of "we don't care about our W/L record we just want to play with 8 of our friends"... well it turns out they really, really care about their W/L record.

Eh. The people saying that were often the ones in real corps.

The people in real corps are still playing 8v8s.

It's the Comstar PUGs-on-VOIP who ended up with an overinflated ego during Phase 1 and promptly had their behinds handed to them once Phase 2 was introduced. They should have known it was coming, but I don't think any of them expected it to be that bad when the playing field was made even.

Honestly, I think half of the ECM complaints being lodged right now are really veiled Phase 2 complaints from teams who can't handle a real fight and need something to blame.

[Bubba Wilkins]

repete, on 11 December 2012 - 01:57 PM, said:

Hi all

I figured Gen was the best place for this, and (surprisingly to me at least) a search didn't seem to find an existing / similar thread.

Not surprisingly, given the parameters of 8v8 in matchmaking phase 2, there is (For players around my timezone at least) an increase in the number of failures to find a match, AND, when you do find a match, it is often the same team over and over. For example, last night at 1am NZ time, our ARMD drops had four or five drops in a row against a team from OMC, and then three drops in a row against Ryuken-Ni-Sorei (Some fun games. Thanks to all involved). In between these repeated drops there were many "failed to find match". Not necessarily saying playing against the same team time after time is bad. As a matter of fact, it made it feel more like a series of battles across a larger engagement, but can be frustrating if you're getting rolled game after game (Yeah, yeah. "Adapt. L2P. Blah, blah blah").

Anyway, to the actual point of the post: Any idea how on Earth PGI can implement any sort of tonnage matching / limit without then making the problem of "failed to find a match" worse? :-S

To some extent the problem of failing to find matches may be exacerbated by what I believe appears to be the current popularity of 4v4 given:

• The lower prevalence of four to eight D-DC Atlases dropping together
  
• ECM is a game changer. Well coordinated ECM (from my observation) will usually beat non-coordinated (Or no) ECM. And well coordinated ECM in 8v8 does make matches take longer. I'd expect the stats PGI are receiving would back this up.
  
• I've heard many say "4v4 is the way to play if you want to grind at the moment as the CPS (C-Bills Per Second) is generally higher", and this certainly matches my experience.

The answer to your question is no, this is as good as it gets until the player base increases. Any limitations placed on 8v8 now will just result in more "failed to find match" errors. The only possible improvement will result if premade's of any size are matched against other premades of any size and the remaining slots filled with Pugs w/ Tonnage rules in effect.

[Lefty Lucy]

Vlad Ward, on 11 December 2012 - 02:12 PM, said:

Eh. The people saying that were often the ones in real corps.

The people in real corps are still playing 8v8s.

It's the Comstar PUGs-on-VOIP who ended up with an overinflated ego during Phase 1 and promptly had their behinds handed to them once Phase 2 was introduced. They should have known it was coming, but I don't think any of them expected it to be that bad when the playing field was made even.

Honestly, I think half of the ECM complaints being lodged right now are really veiled Phase 2 complaints from teams who can't handle a real fight and need something to blame.

Like, I agree with you and I think that at least a portion of people who were complaining about phase 1 are playing 8s now, but at the same time I still see "real corps" sync-dropping with heavy-ECM builds in PUG queues.

[Odins Fist]

Lefty Lucy, on 11 December 2012 - 02:18 PM, said:

Like, I agree with you and I think that at least a portion of people who were complaining about phase 1 are playing 8s now, but at the same time I still see "real corps" sync-dropping with heavy-ECM builds in PUG queues.

.
YUP

[TruePoindexter]

Vlad Ward, on 11 December 2012 - 02:12 PM, said:

Eh. The people saying that were often the ones in real corps.

The people in real corps are still playing 8v8s.

It's the Comstar PUGs-on-VOIP who ended up with an overinflated ego during Phase 1 and promptly had their behinds handed to them once Phase 2 was introduced. They should have known it was coming, but I don't think any of them expected it to be that bad when the playing field was made even.

Honestly, I think half of the ECM complaints being lodged right now are really veiled Phase 2 complaints from teams who can't handle a real fight and need something to blame.

After doing 8 man myself I have to agree - a lot of those 8 man groups just were not in for nasty surprise they got. Then again I do think that most players out there think they're better than they really are.

[Lin Shai]

Lefty Lucy, on 11 December 2012 - 02:00 PM, said:

Yep. Despite all the cries of "we don't care about our W/L record we just want to play with 8 of our friends"... well it turns out they really, really care about their W/L record.

Or, they really don't like the broken 8v8 system PGI created.

• PUGs complain they don't want to play against people playing with friends because they always lose.
  
• Some teams say they don't want to have to conform to using speicific mechs because PGI in their wisdom removed weight matching with 8v8
  
• Another set of players doesn't want to play 8v8 at all, because they say they always lose (I have no actual knowledge of this, but lets suppose)

I'm sorry, why is it that one set of players is "wrong" or "right" here?



PGI's inability to create a working matchmaker is the problem, not the players.

Edited by Lin Shai, 11 December 2012 - 02:27 PM.

[One Medic Army]

Lefty Lucy, on 11 December 2012 - 02:00 PM, said:

Yep. Despite all the cries of "we don't care about our W/L record we just want to play with 8 of our friends"... well it turns out they really, really care about their W/L record.

Mainly I've personally been playing with just a couple friends, one who's new (like a week) into the game.
Also it might be the case that the hardcore 8man teams are driving out the PUGs w/comms 8mans from the various TS servers. Dunno, I've been out of town 2 weeks and played a couple hours since then.

[RumRunner151]

Lefty Lucy, on 11 December 2012 - 02:18 PM, said:

Like, I agree with you and I think that at least a portion of people who were complaining about phase 1 are playing 8s now, but at the same time I still see "real corps" sync-dropping with heavy-ECM builds in PUG queues.

Or you see the portion of our online members that is not divisible by 8 in the 4-man group drops.

[Vlad Ward]

Lefty Lucy, on 11 December 2012 - 02:18 PM, said:

Like, I agree with you and I think that at least a portion of people who were complaining about phase 1 are playing 8s now, but at the same time I still see "real corps" sync-dropping with heavy-ECM builds in PUG queues.

Oh yeah. I still see this on occasion when I pug. It's usually the larger corps that just want to farm bajillions of c-bills because they all need 30-40 different Mechs. That's inevitable, though. Even if it was a pug-only queue, they'd just sync 8 individuals together.

ECM is super effective against PUGs, but for many of the same reasons that vacuum cleaners are super effective against cats. The Low Signal message and lack of friendly positions on the map freaks people out, even though it's mostly harmless. It's the easiest way to divide and conquer them.

Hopefully, this will become less effective over the next few weeks as people become more used to the mechanic.

[Garnish]

I would love to see a 4-man premade paired up with 4 individual PUGs, versus another 4-man + 4 individual group. The sum total of each 8 man team being either Class or Weight matched.

Gives each side a core of organization, plus a much greater drop diversity than what is currently being seen in the MetaGame 8-mans.

<shrug> Just brainstorming really.

[Agent 0 Fortune]

Vlad Ward, on 11 December 2012 - 02:12 PM, said:

Honestly, I think half of the ECM complaints being lodged right now are really veiled Phase 2 complaints from teams who can't handle a real fight and need something to blame.

That is an interesting thought, and I partially agree. If ECM wasn’t introduced the exact same time as 8v8, it would be teams of Streak Cats dominating the playing field.

When 8v8 opened up the Public TS server was filled with 8-man PUG dropships. Now there are very few because a random group of 8 people cannot coordinate a solid ECM team and would rather go back to matchmaker balanced fights, rather than play against the same exact build every match.

Until we see some need for unit diversification or a forced matchmaker, non-unit players are not going to be interested in unbalanced 8v8 matches.

NOTE: a voip PUG teams vs. and ECM team is at an even greater disadvantage than the old premade vs. pug matchups. Not only does ECM outright negate a large number of weapon systems, it takes away the main advantage of voip, which is focused fire. Currently there is no incentive for your average player to join an 8-man team, and even House Units and Mercenary units are going to be turned off from constantly battling the exact same enemy team composition, especially if they don’t have to resources to field the only counter to ECM (that being more ECM).

[Riffleman]

The teams are back to sync dropping into pug games, because they cant hack real play. Until pgi plugs the hole on that exploit, your problem is only going to get worse. If it werent for name and shame policies I would be making threads ridiculing these pathetic wastes of space too. They know who they are, they will read this, and it will burn them up inside knowing its true, and that they are bad.

[Kraven Kor]

The deal with running up against the same groups has a bit of logic to it:

You drop against a group - you finish match at same time. Most likely, it takes approximately the same time to ready back up for both teams, so you drop again - and face the same team since they are "synched" with you and dropping at about the same time.

The last night I ran 8-mans we did have a few rematches, but there were at least 7 other unique 8-man groups I ran into that night.

Another night, we hit another FWLM team (two different teams, both FWLM) two matches in a row, as well.

[repete]

Bubba Wilkins, on 11 December 2012 - 02:18 PM, said:

The answer to your question is no, this is as good as it gets until the player base increases...

Another possibility I thought of (while sitting in a meeting) after asking was a waiting queue. Upon reflection, I suspect PGI might do something like this. You can see a queue of waiting 8v8 teams, with something like a BV or tonnage amount and you can either look to match someone in the queue and launch and you'll get paired up, or you can choose to launch with values that don't match anyone in the queue, and you'll get added to the queue.