Week end Event, please stop premade !

[Vandoles]

Using discord is kind of against the definition of casual EXCEPT for people who actually want to chat to others. Personally I like gaming in quiet, with game sounds on or music. Not in an awkardly silent discord room with randoms. That's one definition of casual, people who play for fun and don't try as hard. Another is not having as much time. I'm not saying you're wrong, just specifying. And I don't want others brought down to my level - this sort of stuff was solved by every multiplayer game in existence by matchmaking. Because there's another aspect you're forgetting - if I play at my level, I also make it boring for others who want the other level.

If you're not trying hard, then be content with losing more frequently. That doesn't seem like an unexpected outcome.

The question for me is not about losing more frequently. The question is about what happens when you lose. I don't remember which game developer said it, think it was whoever made the sims, but he did say that the absolute core of a game must be that losing is as engaging as winning. War online has never had that, due to the mechanics of tanks and healing losing is a complete stomp in which you do not participate.

Now there's plenty of multiplayer games like this. If you've ever played shooters, if you meet someone noticeably more skilled than you, the game is utterly boring. What is the solution? Matchmaking. Separate people of different tiers and suddenly everyone participates and enjoys the game.

And finally, many of you here at the forums, by definition mostly the core players and not the casuals & newbies seem to always imply that the ones who have the problem is those that lose - I completely disagree. I believe it's equally boring for the winning side to go, wipe the floor with the enemies once then wait for their rewards. Do you not agree?

[Skullgrin]

The My Pillow guy is going hard on Fox News commercials in between the Tuck and Hannity. The My Pillow Egyptian Cotton Sheets are proven to increase your positioning positionimg in RoR after a good night sleep.

Here, I'll get you started, get a bunch of the High Elven members of Zaxxed together and act out a parody of this...


Click here to watch on YouTube


I can see it now, "Use Zaxxed, the Destro cleanser... Bum-A Bum-A Bum-Bum..."

[wargrimnir]

Using discord is kind of against the definition of casual EXCEPT for people who actually want to chat to others. Personally I like gaming in quiet, with game sounds on or music. Not in an awkardly silent discord room with randoms. That's one definition of casual, people who play for fun and don't try as hard. Another is not having as much time. I'm not saying you're wrong, just specifying. And I don't want others brought down to my level - this sort of stuff was solved by every multiplayer game in existence by matchmaking. Because there's another aspect you're forgetting - if I play at my level, I also make it boring for others who want the other level.

If you're not trying hard, then be content with losing more frequently. That doesn't seem like an unexpected outcome.

The question for me is not about losing more frequently. The question is about what happens when you lose. I don't remember which game developer said it, think it was whoever made the sims, but he did say that the absolute core of a game must be that losing is as engaging as winning. War online has never had that, due to the mechanics of tanks and healing losing is a complete stomp in which you do not participate.

Now there's plenty of multiplayer games like this. If you've ever played shooters, if you meet someone noticeably more skilled than you, the game is utterly boring. What is the solution? Matchmaking. Separate people of different tiers and suddenly everyone participates and enjoys the game.

And finally, many of you here at the forums, by definition mostly the core players and not the casuals & newbies seem to always imply that the ones who have the problem is those that lose - I completely disagree. I believe it's equally boring for the winning side to go, wipe the floor with the enemies once then wait for their rewards. Do you not agree?

They don't agree, even if they were to say they do. People who are invested in PvP don't care if the other team is completely demoralized, they're winning, so they're going to keep winning. In fact, having the other team give up and roll over is part of that winning. There's a feeling of superiority that you did so good in a videogame the other guys don't want to play anymore that keeps their dopamine flowing real thick. You're not going to stop them from queueing, you can only hope they let their guard down enough that you can steal a win from them occasionally.

We've offered matchmaking in the past, it was rejected, strongly, by quite a few more community members that what you might consider regulars. See the problem with ROR is population. You can't have matchmaking without people in the matches. We might have a hundred people doing a handful of 10-15 minute long scenarios at any give time. An online shooter might have a couple thousand people who are nameless, faceless, and factionless, which means you can throw them all together in the same pool. RoR has hard set factions that don't mix, so we actually have two pools of maybe 50 people in each, rather than a hundred. Matchmaking requires you have enough people in a queue that their gear/rank/win-rate can be compared and matched in a reasonable amount of time. So rather than a thousand homogeneous people in a shooter that can be intermixed, we have two much much smaller pools to work with, but we gave it a shot anyway. We started with a hard 5 minute window, that was deemed too long and also largely ineffective, while cutting a lot of players from the 5 minute windows as DPS specs are overpopulated and we were running a 2-2-2 group comp. No one wanted to wait longer than 5 minutes, and keeping the matchmaking in with less than 5 minutes only caused people to miss scenarios when playing overpopulated character archtypes. The vast majority of players wanted it to be removed, so we did.

Alternatives could have been slightly relaxed comps, but that doesn't change that the skill and gear levels are so varied you would end up fighting the same people more often. This means after the first couple of fights, you already know who is going to win, and that part where people come to stomp and dominate kicks back in, with the same complaints that matchmaking is broken. It wasn't broken, it was working, people just didn't want to see the real answer. If you come into a PvP game with a piss-poor attitude about getting that W, you're going to get the piss-poor results and end up a Loser.

Now these days, if you want to win you have the same options as anyone else. Build a better team. If you don't care about winning enough to do more than the people you're fighting, then you don't care about winning enough to regularly win. The pug scenario is the closest thing you'll get to hand-holding in this regard, but that suffers many of the same problems. People problems.

[Vandoles]

Spoiler:

If you're not trying hard, then be content with losing more frequently. That doesn't seem like an unexpected outcome.

The question for me is not about losing more frequently. The question is about what happens when you lose. I don't remember which game developer said it, think it was whoever made the sims, but he did say that the absolute core of a game must be that losing is as engaging as winning. War online has never had that, due to the mechanics of tanks and healing losing is a complete stomp in which you do not participate.

Now there's plenty of multiplayer games like this. If you've ever played shooters, if you meet someone noticeably more skilled than you, the game is utterly boring. What is the solution? Matchmaking. Separate people of different tiers and suddenly everyone participates and enjoys the game.

And finally, many of you here at the forums, by definition mostly the core players and not the casuals & newbies seem to always imply that the ones who have the problem is those that lose - I completely disagree. I believe it's equally boring for the winning side to go, wipe the floor with the enemies once then wait for their rewards. Do you not agree?

They don't agree, even if they were to say they do. People who are invested in PvP don't care if the other team is completely demoralized, they're winning, so they're going to keep winning. In fact, having the other team give up and roll over is part of that winning. There's a feeling of superiority that you did so good in a videogame the other guys don't want to play anymore that keeps their dopamine flowing real thick. You're not going to stop them from queueing, you can only hope they let their guard down enough that you can steal a win from them occasionally.

We've offered matchmaking in the past, it was rejected, strongly, by quite a few more community members that what you might consider regulars. See the problem with ROR is population. You can't have matchmaking without people in the matches. We might have a hundred people doing a handful of 10-15 minute long scenarios at any give time. An online shooter might have a couple thousand people who are nameless, faceless, and factionless, which means you can throw them all together in the same pool. RoR has hard set factions that don't mix, so we actually have two pools of maybe 50 people in each, rather than a hundred. Matchmaking requires you have enough people in a queue that their gear/rank/win-rate can be compared and matched in a reasonable amount of time. So rather than a thousand homogeneous people in a shooter that can be intermixed, we have two much much smaller pools to work with, but we gave it a shot anyway. We started with a hard 5 minute window, that was deemed too long and also largely ineffective, while cutting a lot of players from the 5 minute windows as DPS specs are overpopulated and we were running a 2-2-2 group comp. No one wanted to wait longer than 5 minutes, and keeping the matchmaking in with less than 5 minutes only caused people to miss scenarios when playing overpopulated character archtypes. The vast majority of players wanted it to be removed, so we did.

Alternatives could have been slightly relaxed comps, but that doesn't change that the skill and gear levels are so varied you would end up fighting the same people more often. This means after the first couple of fights, you already know who is going to win, and that part where people come to stomp and dominate kicks back in, with the same complaints that matchmaking is broken. It wasn't broken, it was working, people just didn't want to see the real answer. If you come into a PvP game with a piss-poor attitude about getting that W, you're going to get the piss-poor results and end up a Loser.

Now these days, if you want to win you have the same options as anyone else. Build a better team. If you don't care about winning enough to do more than the people you're fighting, then you don't care about winning enough to regularly win. The pug scenario is the closest thing you'll get to hand-holding in this regard, but that suffers many of the same problems. People problems.

Oh don't get me wrong, I completely understand the issue and what you're saying. I am well aware what the core community wants - but that's kind of the problem isn't it? A core community will always develop a game to be as exclusive as humanly possible, because its actual essence is composed of players who distinguish themselves. It also never ends - the core forms a core that forms a core that forms a core. It's always people, same thing as you guys keep saying in city, but you'll never change people's attitude. In the end it's a vicious circle, isn't it? Those who want to have fun and slack off slightly are discouraged against those that want to earn their dopamine to get through the day. This heavily discourages new players, especially due to the massive experience difference of an 8 year old game (see - other private servers of mmos), which in turn lowers the population, preventing a fix. For me the key here is quite simple - this IS an 8 year old game and will automatically decay, especially as regards to the core population. So to me sacrificing in favor of the casuals is the only possibly sustainable way - especially while you do great things to bring new players like twitch events. Let's never forget this game had 700k (or was it even 800k?) at launch. The interest is there and even if its halved or even gone down tenfold (doubt it, especially after Total War - Warhammer's success) it's still a huge crowd. Sure, you might say its aged, mmos have aged and I agree - but I still think there's more potential there.

Besides, at the end of the day matchmaking isn't limited to one system. There's progression, i.e. matchmaking of people in the same level of progression. There's ladder - and even then you have ladder and an elo system. There's also the player-choice matchmaking that many MMOs have employed to great success. If you offer enough alternative options, you can turn your people problems into a solution, as people gravitate naturally to where they fit best, ending up in similar situations. At the end of the day, you guys are currently attempting to fix a thoroughly broken game.

[Rapzel]

Obviously sh*tposting/trolling but let's go, I'll bite.

The question for me is not about losing more frequently. The question is about what happens when you lose. I don't remember which game developer said it, think it was whoever made the sims, but he did say that the absolute core of a game must be that losing is as engaging as winning. War online has never had that, due to the mechanics of tanks and healing losing is a complete stomp in which you do not participate.

The sims? Really, you're comparing something someone who developed a single player life simulator said, with a PvP focused MMORPG? You don't think there might be another context in that?
And when the **** did this game start to revolve around one specific weekend event scenario? I must have missed those patch notes during my 2 month break.

Now there's plenty of multiplayer games like this. If you've ever played shooters, if you meet someone noticeably more skilled than you, the game is utterly boring. What is the solution? Matchmaking. Separate people of different tiers and suddenly everyone participates and enjoys the game.

Okay and how do you think you get better?
Yea you play against more skilled players that teach you how to get better, you watch their plays, their movements, watch your mistakes figure out what you're doing wrong.
I've played shooters on a so called "high level" (there was no pros back then), competing for money and I can tell you, none of the professional teams sit in some MMR bracket and hope they'll get better before a tournament, you play scrims constantly, and you watch the games you guys got smashed in the face by another team and you really spend hours reviewing these games to learn.
I remember getting my behind kicked so hard by a 13 year old when I was 16, I got beaten so hard I still remember the games, you know what I did?
I kept getting beaten by him until I managed to correct the mistakes I did that he took advantage of and I started winning.

And finally, many of you here at the forums, by definition mostly the core players and not the casuals & newbies seem to always imply that the ones who have the problem is those that lose - I completely disagree. I believe it's equally boring for the winning side to go, wipe the floor with the enemies once then wait for their rewards. Do you not agree?

Problem is still; there's very few premades overall in SCs, but when ever one PUG gets stomped by another PUG, the winning PUG is obviously a "Try hard premade!".
And if you, God forbid, meet a premade WB in ORvR, with your PUG WB, should they not be allowed to attack you because it won't be fun for your PUG WB to just get stomped?
Or do we need to give these disgusting premade WB players their own shards, so that they can play their WB vs. WB ORvR alone, away from all the poor abused puggers?

[Vandoles]

Spoiler:

Obviously sh*tposting/trolling but let's go, I'll bite.

The question for me is not about losing more frequently. The question is about what happens when you lose. I don't remember which game developer said it, think it was whoever made the sims, but he did say that the absolute core of a game must be that losing is as engaging as winning. War online has never had that, due to the mechanics of tanks and healing losing is a complete stomp in which you do not participate.

The sims? Really, you're comparing something someone who developed a single player life simulator said, with a PvP focused MMORPG? You don't think there might be another context in that?
And when the **** did this game start to revolve around one specific weekend event scenario? I must have missed those patch notes during my 2 month break.

Now there's plenty of multiplayer games like this. If you've ever played shooters, if you meet someone noticeably more skilled than you, the game is utterly boring. What is the solution? Matchmaking. Separate people of different tiers and suddenly everyone participates and enjoys the game.

Okay and how do you think you get better?
Yea you play against more skilled players that teach you how to get better, you watch their plays, their movements, watch your mistakes figure out what you're doing wrong.
I've played shooters on a so called "high level" (there was no pros back then), competing for money and I can tell you, none of the professional teams sit in some MMR bracket and hope they'll get better before a tournament, you play scrims constantly, and you watch the games you guys got smashed in the face by another team and you really spend hours reviewing these games to learn.
I remember getting my behind kicked so hard by a 13 year old when I was 16, I got beaten so hard I still remember the games, you know what I did?
I kept getting beaten by him until I managed to correct the mistakes I did that he took advantage of and I started winning.

And finally, many of you here at the forums, by definition mostly the core players and not the casuals & newbies seem to always imply that the ones who have the problem is those that lose - I completely disagree. I believe it's equally boring for the winning side to go, wipe the floor with the enemies once then wait for their rewards. Do you not agree?

Problem is still; there's very few premades overall in SCs, but when ever one PUG gets stomped by another PUG, the winning PUG is obviously a "Try hard premade!".
And if you, God forbid, meet a premade WB in ORvR, with your PUG WB, should they not be allowed to attack you because it won't be fun for your PUG WB to just get stomped?
Or do we need to give these disgusting premade WB players their own shards, so that they can play their WB vs. WB ORvR alone, away from all the poor abused puggers?

Why so agressive against a different opinion? Yeh, that's what the guy who made the sims said, but it clearly goes beyond his own game. Why is Dark Souls as sucessful as it is? Because every time you die its pointless? Or because every time you die you get hit the boss a little bit more and a little better until eventually you take him down in one go? And yeh, you're giving me the example of how someone who literally played for money thinks. While I'm telling you that you represent a small amount of gamer mentality. You will never impose your way of thinking into others - you will simply drive them away elsewhere.

Anyway, the rest of what you said is pointlessly agressive and not worth attention. But it does do a magnificent job of proving me right in how casual players are seen and how a core community excludes.

[Rapzel]

Why so agressive against a different opinion? Yeh, that's what the guy who made the sims said, but it clearly goes beyond his own game. Why is Dark Souls as sucessful as it is? Because every time you die its pointless? Or because every time you die you get hit the boss a little bit more and a little better until eventually you take him down in one go? And yeh, you're giving me the example of how someone who literally played for money thinks. While I'm telling you that you represent a small amount of gamer mentality. You will never impose your way of thinking into others - you will simply drive them away elsewhere.

Anyway, the rest of what you said is pointlessly agressive and not worth attention. But it does do a magnificent job of proving me right in how casual players are seen and how a core community excludes.

There's no aggressiveness anywhere, but if we start talking about cars and you bring up your bike, I think I'm allowed to point out that you can't compare a bike and a car, just because their both vehicles.

Dark Souls is good because it forces you to get better, play better and improve, which is exactly what you want to remove from the weekend sc by banning out a portion of the population of skilled players.
Dark Souls is good because it doesn't have a difficulty slider, and it doesn't have the AI that is programmed to just stare at you while you beat up his best friend.
What's the pointless part in losing a SC?
You still get at least one emblem, you still get one of the games required for the weekend event, if you're lucky you might cap one of the BOs and even get one or two kills.
You're rewarded even for losing.
You don't even lose anything for dying in this game, except time, which makes Dark Souls way more hardcore.

Further on I bet that there's a lot of people that has been forced to summon help during O&S, because that's when the difficulty spikes in that game.
What you want to do is to remove the need to summon help during O&S and just nerf this boss so that everyone can finish the game without any struggle or need to get any better.

[Vandoles]

Spoiler:

Why so agressive against a different opinion? Yeh, that's what the guy who made the sims said, but it clearly goes beyond his own game. Why is Dark Souls as sucessful as it is? Because every time you die its pointless? Or because every time you die you get hit the boss a little bit more and a little better until eventually you take him down in one go? And yeh, you're giving me the example of how someone who literally played for money thinks. While I'm telling you that you represent a small amount of gamer mentality. You will never impose your way of thinking into others - you will simply drive them away elsewhere.

Anyway, the rest of what you said is pointlessly agressive and not worth attention. But it does do a magnificent job of proving me right in how casual players are seen and how a core community excludes.

There's no aggressiveness anywhere, but if we start talking about cars and you bring up your bike, I think I'm allowed to point out that you can't compare a bike and a car, just because their both vehicles.

Dark Souls is good because it forces you to get better, play better and improve, which is exactly what you want to remove from the weekend sc by banning out a portion of the population of skilled players.
Dark Souls is good because it doesn't have a difficulty slider, and it doesn't have the AI that is programmed to just stare at you while you beat up his best friend.
What's the pointless part in losing a SC?
You still get at least one emblem, you still get one of the games required for the weekend event, if you're lucky you might cap one of the BOs and even get one or two kills.
You're rewarded even for losing.
You don't even lose anything for dying in this game, except time, which makes Dark Souls way more hardcore.

Further on I bet that there's a lot of people that has been forced to summon help during O&S, because that's when the difficulty spikes in that game.
What you want to do is to remove the need to summon help during O&S and just nerf this boss so that everyone can finish the game without any struggle or need to get any better.

But I don't want any of that. I never said any of that. I went back and read my posts and I still can't see it. The reason I said agressiveness is because I dared suggest paying a little attention to the guy in it just for a little fun and you're accusing me of demanding this and that. I'm not doing so at all. I was discussing game philosophy.

[Rapzel]

And I don't want others brought down to my level - this sort of stuff was solved by every multiplayer game in existence by matchmaking. Because there's another aspect you're forgetting - if I play at my level, I also make it boring for others who want the other level.

The question for me is not about losing more frequently. The question is about what happens when you lose.

Separate people of different tiers and suddenly everyone participates and enjoys the game.

How is this not removing the difficulty for a medicore in the scenario? You want to separate the skilled players from the average and have them in their own brackets.
Which I see no benefits with.

1. There will be queues, queue times will increase significantly, for everyone, but most drastically for the best players, which leads to the next point

2. With queue times people will smurf, and there for it won't solve anything, because the skilled players also want to play the game.

3. Brackets introduce elitism, no matter what game there's mmr/elo it contains elitism, which will alienate even more players from playing scs and understanding what's so fun with playing in a 6 man.

4. We have ranked, ranked is the try hard scenario.
Every other game has a casual game mode that's unranked where you just jump in and play to warm up, mess around with your friends or try a new build. E.g Battlegrounds in WoW which doesn't need MMR brackets, so why would scenarios need them?
SC is the most casual you can play because it'll last 15 mins max and what do you lose if you need to /afk? You get a 10 min debuff and someone else gets your spot, compare to the 2 hr cities where no one replaces you if you need to leave and you will screw over up to 23 other people by leaving.
Several scs also have mechanics that makes sure that the SC isn't over until one team hits 500 points.

5. Melee engineer bracket, the trench where the worst players will end up, these players will need to suffer the queue times just as bad as the best players, where there's just clowns, smurfs and people trying to crawl out.
Do you deserve to not be placed with good players just because you're new or just because you get some bad teammates in your first SC games? When I used to play DPS more actively I daily got whispers from players asking about my build, mastery points and stats, and I tried to help them improve, just because we seem like asshats to the ones that just got stomped, it doesn't mean we are, we are usually quite friendly and helpful people that will answer the majority of your questions (there are obviously people who are asshats but they're a minority), and that communication is something that will be lost with brackets.

These things do not weigh up the fact that everyone gets their 7 day event item that gives them a total of 35 stats spread arbitrarily

[Vandoles]

Spoiler:

And I don't want others brought down to my level - this sort of stuff was solved by every multiplayer game in existence by matchmaking. Because there's another aspect you're forgetting - if I play at my level, I also make it boring for others who want the other level.

The question for me is not about losing more frequently. The question is about what happens when you lose.

Separate people of different tiers and suddenly everyone participates and enjoys the game.

How is this not removing the difficulty for a medicore in the scenario? You want to separate the skilled players from the average and have them in their own brackets.
Which I see no benefits with.

1. There will be queues, queue times will increase significantly, for everyone, but most drastically for the best players, which leads to the next point

2. With queue times people will smurf, and there for it won't solve anything, because the skilled players also want to play the game.

3. Brackets introduce elitism, no matter what game there's mmr/elo it contains elitism, which will alienate even more players from playing scs and understanding what's so fun with playing in a 6 man.

4. We have ranked, ranked is the try hard scenario.
Every other game has a casual game mode that's unranked where you just jump in and play to warm up, mess around with your friends or try a new build. E.g Battlegrounds in WoW which doesn't need MMR brackets, so why would scenarios need them?
SC is the most casual you can play because it'll last 15 mins max and what do you lose if you need to /afk? You get a 10 min debuff and someone else gets your spot, compare to the 2 hr cities where no one replaces you if you need to leave and you will screw over up to 23 other people by leaving.
Several scs also have mechanics that makes sure that the SC isn't over until one team hits 500 points.

5. Melee engineer bracket, the trench where the worst players will end up, these players will need to suffer the queue times just as bad as the best players, where there's just clowns, smurfs and people trying to crawl out.
Do you deserve to not be placed with good players just because you're new or just because you get some bad teammates in your first SC games? When I used to play DPS more actively I daily got whispers from players asking about my build, mastery points and stats, and I tried to help them improve, just because we seem like asshats to the ones that just got stomped, it doesn't mean we are, we are usually quite friendly and helpful people that will answer the majority of your questions (there are obviously people who are asshats but they're a minority), and that communication is something that will be lost with brackets.

These things do not weigh up the fact that everyone gets their 7 day event item that gives them a total of 35 stats spread arbitrarily

I was discussing matchmaking since grimnir engaged in talking about the problem - I wasn't wanting to separate anyone or do anything. If you read the post, I clearly said I recognize the problem and I agree. And if you also actually read my post you'll notice I spoke how there's alternatives to simple matchmaking and those brackets (which I still don't know where you got "brackets" from?) since you won't change how people think. Anyway this is going nowhere, you wanted to say what you said, you said it. I'll stop being casual's advocate before I eat another ban.