28 replies to this topic

[Poisoner]

I had an interesting in game conversation about this. Did making a different match maker for eight man groups really do any good? I ask this because, lets face it, trolls are gonna troll. People who suck are gonna suck.

[Bren McGuire]

It should have, but when you can get an 80-95+ win ratio as a 4 man vs newbies and solo players with the added bonus that ECM fries their weapons, radar and comms, vs losing 90% of matches vs the top teams, what would you pick?.

PGI need to do some more work.

[CrashieJ]

4 v 4

done

[idle crow]

Yes it did some good as those looking to be in a competitive 8 man environment que 8 mans.

[xRatas]

They should match 4-man teams only against other 4-man teams, so that there are two full lances on both sides. And maybe throw those every now and then against 8-man team, if it has been too long in the row.

Only 2-3 player groups would then go to PUG row.

Would fix quite a few problems, feel free to invent what it would break... : )

Edit, to summarize:
8-man vs 8-man or 8-man vs 2 4-mans
2 4-mans vs 2 4-mans or 2 4-mans vs 8-man
2/3-man vs 2/3-man filled with random loners on both sides

Should cause motivation to play 8-man teams more, 4-mans would get serious opponents, farmers would still have possibility to farm, but with lesser effect in games they play. Loners would meet more loners.

Experience has shown, that 2 man can not usually make difference in PUG row, 3 can, but it is not that easy. 4 simply roll the other team if not matched against equally good group on the other team.

Edited by xRatas, 12 February 2013 - 11:21 PM.

[Soulscour]

Yes the matchups are much better without the the 8mans vs pug teams. People try to get around it with sync drops but its generally a more competitive gaming environment. I dont see what anyone got out of those imbalanced teams other than a false sense of achievement. Pairing off 8man vs 8man also showed just how far these groups will go to win the game as we saw heavy atlas DDCs and ecm light teams. You still see people who only run splatcats and ecm ravens or other imbalanced builds in pug games but its easier to deal with when theres usually just four players.

[One Medic Army]

Soulscour, on 12 February 2013 - 11:21 PM, said:

Yes the matchups are much better without the the 8mans vs pug teams. People try to get around it with sync drops but its generally a more competitive gaming environment. I dont see what anyone got out of those imbalanced teams other than a false sense of achievement. Pairing off 8man vs 8man also showed just how far these groups will go to win the game as we saw heavy atlas DDCs and ecm light teams. You still see people who only run splatcats and ecm ravens or other imbalanced builds in pug games but its easier to deal with when theres usually just four players.

Running an 8man of Commandos back before Streaks got buffed/fixed was hilarious though.

[Zylo]

xRatas, on 12 February 2013 - 11:11 PM, said:

They should match 4-man teams only against other 4-man teams, so that there are two full lances on both sides. And maybe throw those every now and then against 8-man team, if it has been too long in the row.

Only 2-3 player groups would then go to PUG row.

Would fix quite a few problems, feel free to invent what it would break... : )

If 2x 4-man teams had a chance to drop against 8-man teams the players who currently sync-drop 2x 4-man groups into a game would just sync-drop as 2x 3-man groups instead and avoid having to deal with any 8-man teams. Players running 4-man groups for fun would just switch to 3-man groups or would start sync-dropping to make sure the game was ruined for the pug players.

The small groups of 2 and 3 as well as all the lone wolf players would still complain about the 3+3 sync-drops. Nothing would change other than the size of the groups players complain about.


The best option is to just remove group size limits. Let groups form any size they want and match them against a similar size group and fill any empty spaces with lone wolf players. I suspect phase 3 might do this as well as using Elo ratings to find matches.

[Soulscour]

One Medic Army, on 12 February 2013 - 11:23 PM, said:

Running an 8man of Commandos back before Streaks got buffed/fixed was hilarious though.

Ha. I'm surprised you could find 8 people in one place that would all have a commando.

[One Medic Army]

Soulscour, on 12 February 2013 - 11:26 PM, said:

Ha. I'm surprised you could find 8 people in one place that would all have a commando.

It was closed beta, tripping existed, and we all had a fun time with 8v8 light mech dogfights.
Helped that everyone got like 10-20k MC to start off with for some of the CB testing.

[xRatas]

Zylo, on 12 February 2013 - 11:24 PM, said:

If 2x 4-man teams had a chance to drop against 8-man teams the players who currently sync-drop 2x 4-man groups into a game would just sync-drop as 2x 3-man groups instead and avoid having to deal with any 8-man teams. Players running 4-man groups for fun would just switch to 3-man groups or would start sync-dropping to make sure the game was ruined for the pug players.

The small groups of 2 and 3 as well as all the lone wolf players would still complain about the 3+3 sync-drops. Nothing would change other than the size of the groups players complain about.


The best option is to just remove group size limits. Let groups form any size they want and match them against a similar size group and fill any empty spaces with lone wolf players. I suspect phase 3 might do this as well as using Elo ratings to find matches.

Ah, the sync drops. I always forget how low can people go. (My suggestion caught that though, as I suggested 2-3 man is always filled with loners. Never 2 of them in same team.) Not sure how common those are in reality though. Have rolled the enemy team in 8-0 numbers dozens of times with just 4 of us.

[Vassago Rain]

No.
We're at most 40 people who still play 8 manz. Everybody else is doing ghetto stomping in normal 4 manz, or synching for 8 man ghetto stomping.

xRatas, on 12 February 2013 - 11:32 PM, said:

Ah, the sync drops. I always forget how low can people go. (My suggestion caught that though, as I suggested 2-3 man is always filled with loners. Never 2 of them in same team.) Not sure how common those are in reality though. Have rolled the enemy team in 8-0 numbers dozens of times with just 4 of us.

I ran into two last night. Got a good laugh out of it, too. One group was dumb enough to advertize their supercool guild.

[xRatas]

Vassago Rain, on 12 February 2013 - 11:34 PM, said:

I ran into two last night. Got a good laugh out of it, too. One group was dumb enough to advertize their supercool guild.

Out of curiosity, how do you guys recognize what is a sync dropped group? No group tags in game, and same faction tag certainly does not mean a sync drop. So unless they say so, how would you know? On another topic, someone just said he yells that just for fun, when playing alone.

8-0 does not tell that either. In this game, first 2 casualties often start an unstopable landslide, so 8-0 or 8-1 are quite common results anyway.

I've not been able to recognize them so far, so would like to know how to improve my perception on that.

Edited by xRatas, 12 February 2013 - 11:49 PM.

[Zylo]

xRatas, on 12 February 2013 - 11:32 PM, said:

Ah, the sync drops. I always forget how low can people go. (My suggestion caught that though, as I suggested 2-3 man is always filled with loners. Never 2 of them in same team.) Not sure how common those are in reality though. Have rolled the enemy team in 8-0 numbers dozens of times with just 4 of us.

I see that now, I guess you were editing after I clicked quote. Limiting pug games to a single group on each team would prevent this type of sync-drop.

I think the end result would be 8-man drops being about the same as they are now, sometimes you find matches easy enough, other times you can't.

Groups of 3 would probably increase to the point that nearly every pug game would have a group of 3 on each team which would at least be balanced. Most players wouldn't risk playing in a group of 4 with the chance of going up against a group of 8.

[Vassago Rain]

xRatas, on 12 February 2013 - 11:45 PM, said:

Out of curiosity, how do you guys recognize what is a sync dropped group? No group tags in game, and same faction tag certainly does not mean a sync drop. So unless they say so, how would you know? On another topic, someone just said he yells that just for fun, when playing alone.

It's easy. You recognize the names, and who they run with. They're usually all loaded with goldtags, and have the same faction symbol.

Many will use macros to spam their clan homepage, or the ever-classic POWER DOWN OR BE DESTROYED. This game isn't exactly huge, you know.

You can also tell from the mechs...

[arkanis]

Yes, it certainly did good. It served to illustrate that having a private queue free of the pug scum, premades prefer to steamroll pugs. That's understandable, nobody wants to be the worst man in his team so they play safe and stomp pugs to make them feel powerful again.

Edited by arkanis, 12 February 2013 - 11:55 PM.

[Thelamon]

Hi Vassago,

this is an interesting topic. I actually consider the 8 vs. 8 matches as "the real deal" and all the PUG (with a TS Group of max 4 players) as mere practice.

Unfortunately my group (being real life friends with kids and family etc.) is to small to go out for 8-mans very often hence we have Monday scheduled as our 8-man day.

And we found quite a bunch of different 8 man groups lately whereas a few weeks ago you would play the same 3-4 teams for the whole evening.

Conclusion:
Having a separate 8 vs 8 mode is a good choice - for once you enter you know that you are going to play the real game.
(Thats when donning team colours, sacrificing everything for the team and even spectating and cheering till the very end become so much more fun.)

Best Thela

PS
Our biggiest grief with casual pugging is, that once you hit 5 players you always have to split up your your friends into separate groups.
The next level of matchmaking should include stacking equal sized pugs of any number to each side and filling up with Lone-Wolfs (maybe even qualified lone wolf - eg - excluding trial drivers and players with less than 50 games played.)

[xRatas]

Zylo, on 12 February 2013 - 11:45 PM, said:

I see that now, I guess you were editing after I clicked quote. Limiting pug games to a single group on each team would prevent this type of sync-drop.

I agree I'm quilty for that, my thoughts are always just halfway finished when I first press submit.

Not sure if it would make people to go down to 3-man teams, but like I said, I find it hard to believe so many do sync drops either. So most likely I'm just too blue-eyed when I believe someone would actually like some challenge.

@Vassago Rain:
Ah, Yes. My name memory sucks so it's quite possible for someone else to memorize the names.

[Zylo]

arkanis, on 12 February 2013 - 11:53 PM, said:

Yes, it certainly did good. It served to illustrate that having a private queue free of the pug scum, premades prefer to steamroll pugs. That's understandable, nobody wants to be the worst man in his team so they play safe and stomp pugs to make them feel powerful again.

C-bill and XP gains are potentially far greater when a group of 4 is potentially competing with 4 new players for all the kill credit. 8-man drops aren't usually a very efficient way of gaining C-bills or XP, especially when the matchmaker says "Failed to find a match".

I don't expect match rewards are ever going to change, so players interested in C-bill and XP gains won't bother with 8-man drops as long as 4-man drops yield better C-bill and XP gains. I don't think it has as much to do with just wanting easy wins compared to just wanting easy C-bills.

[Wraith05]

xRatas, on 13 February 2013 - 12:02 AM, said:

I agree I'm quilty for that, my thoughts are always just halfway finished when I first press submit.

Not sure if it would make people to go down to 3-man teams, but like I said, I find it hard to believe so many do sync drops either. So most likely I'm just too blue-eyed when I believe someone would actually like some challenge.

@Vassago Rain:
Ah, Yes. My name memory sucks so it's quite possible for someone else to memorize the names.

The challenge aspect isn't really the issue. At least not for me. I like a challenge, I like close matches and fighting all kinds of people. I just don't feel I get those in 8 mans. Nor would I get those in any kind of forced premade only system.

I pick up group, and by that I mean I usually get on TS3 comstar server and join strangers to play with. I do this for the same reason a lot of people pug. I don't want the heavy commmitment to a specific group of friends (I am in a clan but with very lax rules).

Another reason I pick up group is I don't want the 100% serious "you must run X build" like I experienced when raiding in WoW. And the 8v8/premade only option kinda forces that if you want to be competative and have those close matches.

I'd much rather get on, talk to some people while I play and have a small bit of teamwork so I don't feel like I am fighting alone. It isn't about the Pug stomping, and i'm sorry if you feel that is what i'm doing. I'd rather see the close hard fought matches for wins or losses.