141 replies to this topic

[The Basilisk]

I think a basic problem with MWO is that this game is by its very nature very focused on a relatively smal fanbase.
I.e. the former MW - players or Battletech fans. At the moment, i mean as long as this game is not feature complete, there are little chances of attracting other than MW player or even people outside the Battletech Universe.

I tryed to get some of my StarTrek Online Fleet companions into MWO ( 8 by number actually tried it ) but all of them gave up after some hours.

Reasons:
-- Its too hard to learn / no Tutorials
( NO !!! Short videos are NOT tutorials but they are regarded as lame joke by some of my friends )
-- There is no single player campaign
-- There are no quick matches against bots
-- There is nothing around (in the game) regarding lore or why one should fight / no Intros no background not even a trailer screen or intro vid

So why gooing to "open beta" anyway.
There is no reason for some one who isn't already in the game to want to play it.
See I realy realy tried to get some people I know to play this game.
But even with my gentle hand trying to guide them through the kinks presented to new player by this game not even one wants to put up with it.
So why not focus on the already established player base and get more team options in.
Wouldn't it be more logical to hold the already playing people in the game, bring them more closely together and form some kind of hard core ?
As far as I watched the general progress of the game the basic problems with mech warfare start to melt and the new large map is an other step in the right direction.
Given the time this game will be great.
If and just if it doesn't get casualized ( this won't work anyway because there is not enoughgaudy blinki stuff ) and the already established player base is sworn in and glued together.

[Syllogy]

The Basilisk, on 21 February 2013 - 02:12 AM, said:

Reasons:
-- Its too hard to learn / no Tutorials
( NO !!! Short videos are NOT tutorials but they are regarded as lame joke by some of my friends )
-- There is no single player campaign
-- There are no quick matches against bots
-- There is nothing around (in the game) regarding lore or why one should fight / no Intros no background not even a trailer screen or intro vid

Tutorials: http://mwomercs.com/...raining-grounds

Show me a Free to Play game with a Single Player campaign

Show me a Free to Play game with Bots

All the lore you could ever want: http://en.wikipedia....ttleTech_novels

Not to be a hardcase, but Battletech fans are probably some of the most fiercely loyal fans in any SciFi genre. I've seen Battletech Fans make Trekkies (and "Trekkers") cry like girlscouts with broken nails.

This is a fanbase that ressurected, and kept alive MechWarrior 4 for nearly a decade just for the sake of having a computer game to play, and also created an entire Crysis Total Conversion mod for the same reason.

Trying to dumb down Mechwarrior for the "common gamer" is what caused Microsoft's "MechAssault" series to crash and burn in complete embarassment. The same mistake has not been made since, and it's that vigilance that has kept the IP alive.

In all fairness, if your friends find that the MWO Learning Curve is too high and that they want a Tutorial, Single Player Campaign, Bots, and some Lore, then they should start off with Mechwarrior 4. Once they get a handle on that, then maybe they can graduate to MWO.

Edited by Syllogy, 21 February 2013 - 06:29 AM.

[Dusty Sandals]

Thanks for the update. You all at PGI have been rather good about these last few days. Here's to better MM to come. Cheers!

Edited by Dusty Sandals, 21 February 2013 - 06:57 AM.

[Mao of DC]

The Basilisk, on 21 February 2013 - 02:12 AM, said:

-- There is nothing around (in the game) regarding lore or why one should fight / no Intros no background not even a trailer screen or intro vid

Syllogy, on 21 February 2013 - 06:10 AM, said:

All the lore you could ever want: http://en.wikipedia....ttleTech_novels

Here is a better place to get a quick overview for the history of the Battletech universe. : http://www.sarna.net/wiki/History

Edited by Mao of DC, 21 February 2013 - 07:05 AM.

[Michael Costanza]

I want Inner Sphere-wide scenarios where what the players do lead to conquering/defending planets.

I want the game to have definite winners and losers, where a House Kurita can actually win or lose the Succession War. Then, everything resets for another try.

Personally, I don't care much about ELO as long as the team mech weights are similar... but if there is true Inner Sphere warfare, there should be situations where a defending team or invasion force is outnumbered..

[Xenroth]

Matchmaking is currently broken, even with old matchmaking! I just had a PuG where we had 3 Ravens in the enemy team and 0 Lights in our team ... missed to make a screenshot

[Ashvins]

So I thought you all were going to roll back to Phase 2, in game it seems that you removed matchmaking all together. I just finished a match where the heaviest mech we had was a CTF-2X where the other team was sporting 4 Atlases 2 Stalkers and 2 mediums.

At the very least get us phase 1 back now so at least tonnages will be equal.

[Xenroth]

Thontor, on 21 February 2013 - 07:46 AM, said:

working as intended actually

Then they did a step backwards in matchmaking ...

[DragonsFire]

I've noticed the same as Thontor has. While weights certainly aren't matched up, the disparity is being made up for in pilot skill in those particular weights. The majority of my solo rounds now have all come down to relatively close affairs, with only 3-4 steamrolls of 8-1 or 8-1. It's encouraging to see to say the least.

[Yemo]

Syllogy, on 21 February 2013 - 06:10 AM, said:

Tutorials: http://mwomercs.com/...raining-grounds

Show me a Free to Play game with a Single Player campaign

War Thunder

Syllogy, on 21 February 2013 - 06:10 AM, said:

Show me a Free to Play game with Bots

War Thunder

? Show me a Free to Play game with 1 storage server and multiple play servers, ie 1 community and good ping.

War Thunder

? Show me a Free to Play game with good ingame tutorials.

War Thunder

War Thunder has problems of its own, but nothing as unnecessary stupid as these...

[Xenroth]

Thontor, on 21 February 2013 - 08:07 AM, said:

You would think so, but my experience tells otherwise. The extra tonnage is not a guaranteed win... and matches have been closer and more exciting than ever when launching solo. I usually pilot mediums, enjoying a Trebuchet lately, so its pretty often I'm on the side with less tonnage. And yet I'm still winning about 50% since matchmaking 3 was reimplemented. Which is exactly what you would expect if the system is working.

Yes, I still think so. If they want to improve the matchmaking they have to balance the tonnage and the skill levels! Because tonnage still matters if the enemy team has 2 hunchbacks and you have 2 SRM abuse Catapults or 2 Cataphracts or 2 Atlases for those 2 Hunchs guess who it will be ... in like 80% of the matches it wount be the team with the Hunchbacks.

In my game it was the team with the 3 Ravens, because I played Alpine on Conquest ...

Edit: Ah and by the way, my games are about 80% steamroll games now where 1 team simply stomps the other, only have a few games with 8-4 and even less games with 8-6 or 8-7

Edited by Xenroth, 21 February 2013 - 08:20 AM.

[BloodMadjai]

This is VERY broken still guys. Six assaults, a heavy and a medium vs all mediums and lights? Players of equal skill sounds great!!! BUT, balance the tonnage as well as figure in the ELO please. In its current state there are A LOT of irate players out there. Thank you.

[Nyr Vonn]

WOW, just when I think the DEV's couldn't screw this game up anymore, they prove me wrong. ELO is broken, you can't just use player skill you have to match tonnage also otherwise we all might as well run Assualts allday long. I wish I had money then I wouldn't be at the mercy of people who only want to profit from an idea instead of putting out a product worth paying for. It might be time to go back to EVEonline.

[Ashvins]

So If i'm reading what Matthew Craig posted correctly Matchmaking is back online and working as intended. Well I can tell you that even with equal skill players there has to be weight class balancing. At current on the live servers you are getting 6 assaults 2 med vs 4 light 4 med matches. I don't care how much you think ELO is working as intended I'm telling you it's broke as hell without weight class balancing.

Most of the time it seems to be working ok but on occasion you get matches with 600 ton's vs 200 tonns, and if your getting same skill players on both sides guess who's going to win.

Matchmaking is still broken, someone from PGI needs to address this, in the past 5 hrs i've seen 1 match that was weight balanced, and tbh I'm sick of it. We either faceroll our opponents or get facerolled. This is NOT FUN, which is why I play this game, to have fun.

Roll back matchmaking again and FIX IT RIGHT THIS TIME, then re-introduce it with weight balance and skill balance.

[Deathlike]

I think some people underestimate how much a smaller mech can still do a lot of damage under the right circumstances so I think there's a point where mismatches in tonnage is not as important. Of course, sometimes the lopsidedness in tonnage does become an actual factor.

Better off to see how this goes before criticizing it altogether.

On the other hand, poor teamplay or poor battlefield awareness is what usually does in most teams. I think lopsided wins/losses are happening far less, which is generally the goal on the new system.

Edited by Deathlike, 21 February 2013 - 02:16 PM.

[DeaconW]

Deathlike, on 21 February 2013 - 02:16 PM, said:

I think some people underestimate how much a smaller mech can still do a lot of damage under the right circumstances so I think there's a point where mismatches in tonnage is not as important. Of course, sometimes the lopsidedness in tonnage does become an actual factor.

Better off to see how this goes before criticizing it altogether.

On the other hand, poor teamplay or poor battlefield awareness is what usually does in most teams. I think lopsided wins/losses are happening far less, which is generally the goal on the new system.

Dude, 600 tons vs 400 tons of supposedly equally skilled players....evidently everyone but you realize how that is going to turn out...

Edited by DeaconW, 21 February 2013 - 02:35 PM.

[LackofCertainty]

DeaconW, on 21 February 2013 - 02:31 PM, said:

Dude, 600 tons vs 400 tons of equally skilled players....evidently everyone but you realize how that is going to turn out...

You're under the assumption that they're equally skilled, though. Once the matchmaker has more data collected, it should turn out that the team with lower tonnage also has the better pilots.

Something to keep in mind.

Edit:
Granted, people are having MM issues at the moment, but Craig's post addresses that. Please read his post (as has already been linked) before continuing to rage.

Edited by LackofCertainty, 21 February 2013 - 02:36 PM.

[Mao of DC]

In my Raven 3L I average 250 damage a match, the most I have done was ~700. Lights CAN do some damage.

[DeaconW]

LackofCertainty, on 21 February 2013 - 02:35 PM, said:

...before continuing to rage.

Rage? Really? I was just pointing out the issue...

[Deathlike]

Before the ELO system, I accumulated like 400-500+ damage in a cic (all of them, minus the 3C).. I doubt I'd be able to repeat that as often anymore with them.

You can have an veteran (OP) Raven 3L pilot go against a semi-competent (or incompetent) Atlas DC and have the Raven pilot literally run circles around him (if not win outright). As the probability of seeing that with the current ELO system is small now, but this was virtually commonplace without ELO. This is not a great example, but this is the kind of thing that still happens.

I think people love to underestimate their opponent... and then be surprised when they lose/die.

Edited by Deathlike, 21 February 2013 - 02:51 PM.