I'd like to suggest something, that would enable the organized groups to avoid PUG's as well as playing 4v4 and 8v8 in an organized manner.
It would even allow stock only matches, no ECM matches, LRM only matches and all kind of weird drop layouts you cann possibly think of with 4v4 or 8v8.
And best of: It would not need any sync dropping anymore, would not need a heck of man hours on the development side and would also provide us with a LOT of fun drops while PGI hammers out the later "final" system while collecting nice data from those drops.
So how to work this magic you ask?
Here it comes:
In the social mode, you have tabs for friends, groups, invites and blocked users.
Here we add one more user list called Leaders.
This list is visible to anyone who is the leader of a 4 or 8 man group ( has the group lead in MWO ).
The group leaders of 4 man groups see all other 4 men leaders and the 8 see the other 8's.
Now, you can "invite" an other leader as you would do with a friend or group invite lets call it "invite to drop"
If the other leader accepts, the launchbutton for both group leaders will be disabled and as soon as all pilotes in both groups are ready, the 2 groups get matched against each other.
Both group leaders also have the opportunity to "cancel" an invite to drop.
The launchbutton is activated for both leaders again.
Because of the group leaders ability to negotiate drops through TS all kind of trainings, tournaments and stuff will be possible.
This would give a really big buff to the social aspect of the community without denying anyone of their fun by inventing new restrictions ( like the 4 players max. in mm phase 1 for example)
It would take nothing away, only provide new fun with small effort to make by PGI.
Lastly something about the "Oh god, they will farm money and XP and abuse it and waaahhhh the sky will fall down on us!!!"
The time needed to have 4 or 8 ppl online, logged in with TS AND MWO, mech rdy and pilot rdy and this on the opposite side as well... should make any farming pointless.
And, at least from my pov is the lesser evil than the need to sync drops just to have some fun outside the PUG queue.
Edited by grayson marik, 28 December 2012 - 08:14 AM.