208 replies to this topic

[Sahoj]

The ELO ratings is going to do a lot to remedy this.

New players are going to have largely unequipped/bad/trial mechs - Low Elo
Veteran Pugs are going to have mastered/upgraded Mechs - Med Elo
Premade Exclusive players are typically going to have higher win rates/mastered/upgraded mechs - High Elo.

The Veteran Pugs are probably going to see the worst of it - they better they do, the more premades they'll fight. The worse they do, the more trial mechs/newbies they get to farm on.

[Inviticus]

4man premades really have no place fighting an unorganized group. Not only does it ruin the experience for the group comprised of solo que players, it diminishes the skill sharpening of the premade and creates a toxic situation all around.

PGI would do well to separate PuGs from premades by either offering a solo only queue, mutch better MM so that the two teams have an equal composition of premades, or both. Whatever the solution, the game needs to change and fast. It cannot hold on to enough new players.

[Joseph Mallan]

So by never facing teams better than you, skill stagnates and you never get better, never grow as a player.

[Armorpiercer M82]

Joseph Mallan, on 15 January 2013 - 05:57 AM, said:

Really! Talking with your team is Cheating? Seriously?

so for slower.....

1 team = 8 PUGS
2 team = 4 premades + 4 random

see ? this is griefing/unbalance team play since 1 second of the round. and its wrong.

[Inviticus]

Joseph Mallan, on 15 January 2013 - 06:08 AM, said:

So by never facing teams better than you, skill stagnates and you never get better, never grow as a player.

I would say that new players not staying beyond their first few matches because a 4man can easily faceroll and win against a random pug a far worse situation. PGI won't be able to keep the lights on.

Separating pure pugs and premades will only help the game survive.

[Armorpiercer M82]

Nightfire, on 15 January 2013 - 05:55 AM, said:

Troll is troll is troll.
SIxsixsix, all I ever see from you on the forums is this. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over ...

saying truth is trolling here ? im realy tired of you fanbois.

[Inviticus]

Kunae, on 15 January 2013 - 06:12 AM, said:

You truly have no clue how the actual world works, I see.

I pity any organization that might, someday, put you into a position of authority.

Elaborate your nonsensical insult and how real life has any relevence to a video game meant for fun and entertainment.

[Ilwrath]

Joseph Mallan, on 15 January 2013 - 06:08 AM, said:

So by never facing teams better than you, skill stagnates and you never get better, never grow as a player.

This is a valid point. Think about all those premades that avoid the 8 man que for some easier pug stomping in the ordinary que. They will never grow! The horror!

Lets hope Phase 3 somehow fixes that. We just cannot get into a situation where skill is lost forever!

[Kahoumono]

If they had in-game voice then that would alleviate some of the problem. Pre-mades aren't the issue, not being able to communicate easily is the issue.

[Scandinavian Jawbreaker]

ELO system should fix some of these problems especially prime time with high population. And please, stop demonizing 4-man groups since not all of them are "pro pugstomping farmers" as you would like to see them as. I like playing with my friends and there are alot of skilled players "Pugging" who are not grouped. Some of them even have the ability to communicate through the chat and come up with a plan that either is a success or it fails. Last night we had such player who suggested ambush trap and it worked. "PUGs" working together. Like I said, organized > disorganized.

[Apoc1138]

IV Amen, on 15 January 2013 - 06:20 AM, said:

Like I said, organized > disorganized.

this plus 1000... I have been in pugs and steamrolled the other team, I've been in plenty of 4 mans in new mechs (to me) and/or new players / australian players etc. and gotten totally rolled

the common denominator is that organised experienced players in optimised builds will win and disorganised players will not

whether you are using voicecomms or not is largely irrellevant

[Joseph Mallan]

No... I don't see it. Griefing is when the team gloats and poke fun at you cause you are losing to them. I run in 2-4 man groups, which I win between 40%-70% depending on how many teammates are with me. We even get beaten by good teams of 8 PUGs.

Unbalanced... Do you know for sure your side doesn't have a 4 man on it? I can rarely tell if my team has 4 PUGs or another 4 man. Tel-tails are that the four team mates run in 4 different directions, don't group fire, or sometimes scatter when more than one enemy engages me. I can tell when the OpFor might be Premade by whether they are moving together, and massing fire, or consist of 4 Ravens. I don't know if you have read any of my posts (how couldn't you!) But you may notice I don't complain about facing Murders, 8 mans, 4 mans or 2 four man teams. I will face all challenges that I can.

I have been since closed beta when the PUGs were still crying about groups and I was a lone PUG. Some matches you are the Dragoons others you are the Wilson's Hussars (Wilson's wimps).

i remember a match when I was a PUG. a player announced that they were a team (didn't say how big) So we stuck together and got slaughtered. I made a comment that the other team seemed to be better than us. The player commented yeah, sometimes they are! No whine Just acceptance of the loss.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 15 January 2013 - 06:28 AM.

[BFalcon]

D34K, on 15 January 2013 - 12:30 AM, said:

Typical evening of trying to find 8 man premades at Euro primetime...

"Match not found..."

"Match not found..."

"Match not found..."

"Match not found..."

"Match not found..."

"Match not found..."

"Match not found..."

"Match not found..."

"Match not found..."

"Match not found..."

"Match not found..."

"Match not found..."

Stop whining, at least pubbies can get a game!

Can pretty much back this up... that or you see the same teams over and over...

A lot of players in premades like to play the 4-man version simply because of the chassis balancing which isn't present in the 8vs8 model... there it's not uncommon to bump into "cheese teams" such as the multi-Raven + Atlas-DC teams where you can't even use any locking weapons or see your enemies most of the time. And if you adjust to combat THEM, you get to meet the all-Light team who just caps you, or the All-DC team who stomps you. I'm not complaining about this, although I'd like to see some kind of BV system to balance both chassis and ECM modules (not to limit teams, but to adjust rewards for the ratio fielded - so an all-Atlas team might actually lose money while a balanced team would earn more).

The falsehood about "premades being ever-present" is just that - we've had excellent fights in the past where we've actually checked for premades in our pug teams and got a negative result, yet everyone's worked well together and gone on to won against completely incompetant players - I've also seen games where we've had a premade 4-man and some pugs and gotten thrashed by a well-run team of randoms coming the other way. A 4-man can only go so far in co-ordinating with each other - true it's better than purely random, but why do people insist on going purely pug when there's a TS server waiting for drop-in premades to be assembled where you CAN talk to each other?

And please stop talking about the in-game VoIP - that C3 was a pain in the behind - nice enough to have the option of automatic game joining, but it was just getting in the way, as a seperate program.

[SI The Joker]

Armorpiercer M82, on 15 January 2013 - 05:49 AM, said:

giving premades vs pugs only as it is now, is a griefing/cheating mechnism, that PGI allowed. What a company !

You owe me napkins. I spat coffee when I read this, I laughed so hard.

Joseph Mallan, on 15 January 2013 - 05:57 AM, said:

Really! Talking with your team is Cheating? Seriously?

Of course it is, Joseph. You have to understand who you are likely dealing with. These are likely players who received participation trophies and ribbons their whole lives even though they didn't actually win any events or contests. So now, when presented with a scenario where one just can't didn't win... it blows up their psyche. A blow to the psyche = forum post every single time.

Inviticus, on 15 January 2013 - 06:06 AM, said:

4man premades really have no place fighting an unorganized group. Not only does it ruin the experience for the group comprised of solo que players, it diminishes the skill sharpening of the premade and creates a toxic situation all around.

PGI would do well to separate PuGs from premades by either offering a solo only queue, mutch better MM so that the two teams have an equal composition of premades, or both. Whatever the solution, the game needs to change and fast. It cannot hold on to enough new players.

A few weeks ago, the argument was "8 man premades have no business fighting 4 man premades". You do realize that, correct?



Do you folks really think that all these "4 man" teams are "premade" in that they are a cohesive unit? You do realize that's totally incorrect for the majority of the time, right? Joining the Comstar teamspeak will present you with 20 dropships... many of which are filled with 4 people who joined the "looking for group" channel and formed up a.... DUM DUM DUMMMM pickup group to play.

The ONLY advantage that these players have is voice communications. That's it! In the instances where you fight against a cohesive team of players (Clan or house or whatever) they tend to have much stronger strategies and skills... but even that can be overcome.

If you haven't tried voice communications yet, the only person ruining this game for you - is you. That's the bottom line. If you want to be anti-social, that's fine... but please don't blame your unhappiness with your decision on people who play this game for not only the fun, but the social aspect as well.



That said, I'll also say that I think the in-game UI could use an improvement to help people who have not found/used voice comms yet and in those instances where it's tough to find which target is primary.

Commander has ability to designate a targeted mech as "primary" by pressing LEFT CTRL-D on the keyboard. This changes the square around the mech to another color signifying its primary target status. When another player targets the mech, they see the different color and know straight away that the mech is "primary". To be clear it wouldn't be intended to draw a full-time square around the mech... only if a player has the mech targeted (or can target the mech) will they see the primary target status.


EDITED: Changed "Can't" to "Didn't" - MUCH more fitting - thank you Joseph Mallan!

Edited by SI The Joker, 15 January 2013 - 06:34 AM.

[FrDrake]

Armorpiercer M82, on 15 January 2013 - 06:12 AM, said:

saying truth is trolling here ? im realy tired of you fanbois.

A bad player will lose to a premade just as easily as to a pug. Last week I was with 2 friends and we got matched up with a 4 man premade two times in a row on the same team. The first game was such a blowout that the 4 man group actually TKd each other so that it was 1 pug, my 3, and 1 of their 4man at 50% armor against the 8 from the other team.

Do you want to guess the results, the only mechs that died on our side were the 3 that got TKd at the beginning and one that we TKd for fun at the end at the urging of the 3 that had died from the original 4 man.

If 8 mechs are going to lose to 3 people at what point can you blame the pugs losing to them just being bad and saying that the ELO matchmaker will fix it?

[Joseph Mallan]

SI The Joker, on 15 January 2013 - 06:28 AM, said:

Of course it is, Joseph. You have to understand who you are likely dealing with. These are likely players who received participation trophies and ribbons their whole lives even though they didn't actually win any events or contests. So now, when presented with a scenario where one just can't doesn't win... it blows up their psyche. A blow to the psyche = forum post every single time.

I fixed this. It isn't that they can't win, they just didn't win. The way you wrote it sounded like premades are invincible, and I know that just isn't true!

[Apoc1138]

D34K, on 15 January 2013 - 12:30 AM, said:

Typical evening of trying to find 8 man premades at Euro primetime...

"Match not found..."

Stop whining, at least pubbies can get a game!

not my experience, I normally play around 9-12pm euro time and occaisionally get not found, but never more than once on each attempt and in over 1 hour of matches (6 matches in a row) we never played the same team twice
it happens pretty rarely in my experience

what are you calling prime time?

[BFalcon]

Joseph Mallan, on 15 January 2013 - 06:26 AM, said:

No... I don't see it. Griefing is when the team gloats and poke fun at you cause you are losing to them. I run in 2-4 man groups, which I win between 40%-70% depending on how many teammates are with me. We even get beaten by good teams of 8 PUGs.

Unbalanced... Do you know for sure your side doesn't have a 4 man on it? I can rarely tell if my team has 4 PUGs or another 4 man. Tel-tails are that the four team mates run in 4 different directions, don't group fire, or sometimes scatter when more than one enemy engages me. I can tell when the OpFor might be Premade by whether they are moving together, and massing fire, or consist of 4 Ravens. I don't know if you have read any of my posts (how couldn't you!) But you may notice I don't complain about facing Murders, 8 mans, 4 mans or 2 four man teams. I will face all challenges that I can.

I have been since closed beta when the PUGs were still crying about groups and I was a lone PUG. Some matches you are the Dragoons others you are the Wilson's Hussars (Wilson's wimps).

i remember a match when I was a PUG. a player announced that they were a team (didn't say how big) So we stuck together and got slaughtered. I made a comment that the other team seemed to be better than us. The player commented yeah, sometimes they are! No whine Just acceptance of the loss.

Well said - I get completely disheartened by the constant whining on the forums about premades when it's not that big a deal.

As for spotting premades - I've seen pugs operating much like a bunch of metallic, well armed, geese - in that where the lead mech heads, the others will follow their lead, including what to shoot at. They tend to work fairly well, tbh... and I knew they were mainly pugs because a few were pilots I knew from various units who tended not to public-premade, just go premade in our units. Another thing is that a premade of rookies might have an advantage, but they might not actually manage to overcome their inexperience's disadvantage, so premades aren't an "I win" button.

As for sync-dropping, I've only ever seen that done with 8-mans when we wanted to face off against each other. The odds of any 4-man getting on the same team as another, specific, 4-man is pretty remote - just hoping to get in the same GAME as them is enough of a challenge, statistically, unless the servers are just about empty.

[ROFLwaffle49]

Most of the time I'm guilty of being a premade, for which I don't really feel guilty at all. But when I do play by myself I still win most games, The reason is I take the command position and literally tell everyone what to do and when. Its not premades that beat you. Its anyone actually working as a team.

[SlXSlXSlX]

Except this time, your so called noob, has actually gotten pretty good at the game now. As an X-wot unicum- European clan *** kicker... i did eventually get the hang of it. I use two accounts now. Neither is XLSXLSXLS. It has been gifted to a friend to entice him to play. Technically, its still his, but he has not used it much. Heres the 2 accnts I now run in. Note I do whatever my lone-wolf a s s has to do to win. Even if that means sacking myself for that win. (Note my wot survival %, prob close to these ones. I value the teams objective "to win", more than my own personal kdr.)




176 / 623Kills / Death

3,275,481C-Bills

231,423XP


355 / 456Wins / Losses
[color=#AA0000]
0.28[/color]


One of two.
________________________

and the one i am currently grinding.....

163 / 527
Kills / Death

1,528,275C-Bills

193,284XP


283 / 394Wins / Losses
[color=#AA0000]
0.31[/color]
[color=#AA0000]
[/color]

So, its not the winning thing, its the principle of the matter. Its seeing people on ts throwing games for one another. Its about new players, and whether they stay. But sure, attack the op poster, not his argument. Pretty sad, but definately typical of these forums.