I had a couple holy shit the matchmaker is completely useless moments in the last couple days. 1. In a random PUG, didn't look at the names at all before the match starts. Within a couple minutes a shadowhawk just runs across enemy lines and just stops right in front of my triple UAC5 jager completely unaware of me and another couple heavies, I instantly annihilate him with a couple bursts to his backside. Then I see the name flash, it was a friend of mine who has been only been playing a couple weeks. Now I'm not the best pilot but I tend to do pretty well and probably average 400+ damage with no problem, this friend of mine has a great game when he breaks a 100 at this point in his career. If the matchmaker worked properly we should almost never be in a game together unless we dropped together, and I know he dropped alone so it wasn't like he was getting dragged up with better pilots. Win Loss record shouldn't mean anything toward this goal, and there should be some other measurement of skills making the decision. Beginners should be dropping with mostly other beginners/bad pilots until they get a bit better. The game is hard enough at first for most people as it is. The matchmaker just makes it that much harder. 2. Why is weight balancing still so bad? I dropped last night with a friend of mine both in stalkers, we had one Atlas with us, 1 heavy and the rest were mediums and lights. The other side had 10 assaults, including a premade of DDC's. So if there are 13 assaults in the fight you would think at the very least it could divide them up into 7-6 and do the same with each weight class, so its not so unbalance. And this seems to happen way to often.
TBH I maintain to this day that whichever team has the most organised and professional 4 man will win. Weight isn't that relevant if you're all in complimenting mechs, lance volleying and being intelligent. Problem comes in when you get organised lances vs pugs or multiple organised lances vs 1 and pugs ... or worse like one battle last night 2 lances off the comstar na comms vs one 3 man (4th man dc'd) and pugs.... just a miracle we got 6 kills as 8 people (+tag along pugs) being called on one target wasn't fun. Twelve man I have no problem with that but its 12 on coms vs 12 then.... Edit: Forgot to say that actually normally match making doesn't bother me I just accept and roll on trying to do the best I can. Most of my irritations will be resolved by the move to 1 lance + pugs on each side, 3/3/3/3 is the icing on the cake. The problem I see is filling the matches, particularly when new mechs are introduced.
To be honest, I kinda felt it had to be coming. PGI is rushing things out of the gate because they're late, do some weird server things in the middle and in the end everything is half done. I guess I'll not be playing for another couple of days until they fix those servers (which don't work after a 12 hour maintenance mind you).
10+ defeats in a row? 2+ ecm teams vs 0 ecm teams? 8+ teamdrops vs a bunches of brainless monkeys? getting >70% hot maps on energy builds / city maps on lrm builds / dimmed sight maps on balistic builds? how is that supposed to be a turnoff!!!! I really wonder who thought on naming this joke "matchmaking"... "ridiculous slotmachine" is what it acutally is. Always thought it cant get worse than on World of Tanks with its rigged "we keep every player between 40 and 60% winrate"-system but obviously it can
Not really had that tbh but hopefully you're exaggerating for effect. If you're not then try to synch up with some of us and we'll try to help your win/loss ratio. BTW imo ECM is fairly meaningless unless mass LRM's on the other side and then they probably have tag's anyway. Maps can't agree with you as I like being forced to not always have "the" build for that map.
Sadly the only point I was infact exaggerating is the map thing (because I encountered it today)... All others I feel are highly recurring: The defeat streak is a thing I usually encounter atleast once per day randomly on any mech I try to do the first win (while I virtually never win the first game I play on each given mech) The ECM disbalance is a thing I notice constantly, probably because I like LRM boats alot, usually drop solo and therefore pay more attention to it because it greatly affects (=constantly ruins) my games. And one team getting totally rolled is a general problem... I think about 80% of my games end either 0/1/2 to 11/12 or the other way round. While I do find myself more often on the losing side lately, winning games this way isnt a thing I call "fun", either. Just a quick recap on my gaming experience today: Had about 1,5 hours time for playing, wanted to do two first wins (I am already trying to settle my "goals" as low as possible to avoid getting frustrated) and started with my currently prefered mech, the AWS-8R (4x LRM15+A with 1620 Ammo, TAG)... First game was on Caustic (which I generally see as quite a good map for this build) => monkey team, got rolled 2-11 (one afk/disconnect), but atleast dished out some damage (~600) Second game was on Island Metropolis (totally bullshit map for this build because of high buildings and especially the two level structure in the middle) => close defeat, very low damage because most of the fight took part in the "LRM immune" lower level/tunnel Third game was again Island Metropolis => tried to fight from the island, instantly got rolled by two lights because "teammates" did the lemming train, went on but not over the ridge and got rolled there aswell, solid 0-12! Forth game was Canyon Network (imho best map for this built and a very good/balanced map in general) => zero ECM and no TAG (besides my own) on my team, three ECM and atleast 3 LRM boats on enemy team, due to the lack of targets was already annoyed as hell, tried to fight, again no ECM while enemy had atleast one, lost for no obvious reason in a nearly 15 minutes long match where I died quite early (resulting in long waiting time). Sixth game same map again, took a quick look around, noticed again no ECM on my team, pressed escape and quited to desktop. Thanks for your offer to drop with you and others here around but besides the fact that I am from Germany (and most of you probably from somewhere in the US, resulting in problems with time zone and language) the "real problem" is that I work as a management assistant in retail business (means: talking and appointments are 90% of my day already) and therefore just dont want to plan and/or communicate while gaming for relaxing in my free time... A simple game mode restricted to solo drops and where tonnage & ECM is (atleast roughly) equaled on both sides would probably solve most of my problems - but I guess this is too much to ask for
the simple fact is that this game doesn't have the playerbase. While pgi are completely inept in decision-making, this is one thing I have to cut them some slack on. There aren't enough people playing to balance skill/tonnage/ecm even reasonably well, not to mention having all three perfectly in sync. They can't even get 1 of the three matched, after all.
There are some guys from Germany, or at least Europe here, too... I'm from Germany too, and am also playing this game casually in my free time, so, fell free to link up if you like.
Yeah our unit is European too though I have to admit we're mostly awol in ESO/Wildstar atm. Can always drop on to the Comstar NA server and look right at the bottom for Zulu-6 and grab me as even when doing other stuff I'm sitting there most evenings. Its usually not a problem for me to drop what I'm doing and help. I understand exactly where you're coming from as some nights things just get plain grim and its a struggle not to rage quit, but then you get nights like yesterday when I doubled 5 mechs in 5 matches - all solo and with very different teams. Some times I look at the teams and instantly pick out lances I know and think.... joy. But even those you can turn around sometimes. I'm honest enough to say I don't care at all about CW but I'm REALLY looking forward to one lance and 3/3/3/3 per side though finding drops quickly might be a nightmare. PS: Just saying I love terra therma in brawler builds or lights.
I think that this game has the playerbase to put together SOME good matches. What it doesn't have the player base to do is to make a good match, destroy that good match, and then try to make another good match with what's available (more than ever with 12s). A standing lobby system - where you play against the same well matched people until they've got to go or have had enough - would seem to be more reliable.
I do agree on all of that with you! The thing is I dont demand that stuff perfectly matched but they could atleast do some matching or better as much matching as possible with the given playerbase at the given time E.g if there is a lance of 4 players with 2 ECM mechs in it, dont put the solo drop ECM mech on that side aswell and leave the other with zero ECM or if there is a lance with 500 tons dont put another 500 lance on the same side and let them play vs. 600 tons of solo droppers in total. Currently it feels that matchmaking is just completely random, leading to really frustrating matches. I also dont understand why they introduced 12vs12 for a rather low populated game at all... The bigger the number of players/mechs per match the more "imbalance" is possible and the more the contribution of the single player gets insignificant. If I play a great game in a 6vs6 match atleast 1/6 of my team was great. If I play a great game in a 12vs12 match 1/12 of my team was great. Same goes other way round. Having impact on the game, positive aswell as negative, always feels better, atleast for me. (WoT is 15vs15 and it often feels like it doesnt really matter for the outcome if you take part in the battle or just idle) @all others Currently I still take a break from the game but when I come back in a week or two I will probably team up with some of you, thanks
