Friday, October 12, 2012

A Tale of Two Lances

So tonight was going to be an easy night, hang out on MW:O, hope for a fix to the Atlas problem (which is hilarious as far as I am concerned), maybe write a post about heat mechanics, drink a glass of wine, and get to catch up on some well needed sleep.

The folks at PGI did not enjoy this plan apparently. In an amazing one two punch they release a patch that all but fixes much of the issues that have come up since the last patch, and a outpouring of information for the community. To top it all off, the distributed it TO THE PLAYERS, as opposed to some random news outlet, website, or create some crazy Valve level ARG to hunt down the information needed to stay current with this game.

PGI's news tried to come through as a "fix all your woes" post, clearly demonstrating their commitment to their players. They used this post, which was initially released only to beta testers, to announce the delay of the open beta. This is huge, delaying a game is never an easy choice, and they had worked so hard on their hype engine these last few weeks. First they lifted the NDA, then before anyone could react they had the PC Gamer issue that sung their praises. Many people were confused that the magazine was giving out trinkets and skins, but no closed beta passes and then BAM OPEN BETA ANNOUNCEMENT on the same day the magazine hits shelves. All of the dominoes were in line to skate them to an amazing launch open beta, nothing could stop them.

But then something did, the fan base rose up and cried out how silly of an idea this is. It wasn't so much the lag (they fixed it quickly enough to have it stable for release). It was the public, unified outcry from the player base (although I wrote a piece saying they were ready, even I wrote that mostly to spur discussion, not because I felt it was 100% true). The player base caused not just the game development team, but also the business guys to concede on several fronts all at once. This is huge! This is news! This should be a news article all in its own! So why wasn't it?

Nestled into the seeming parade of player appeasement announcements they address one of the most controversial topics on the MW:O forums (well, they DID gloss over goss kitties again). The announcement of the new "matchmaking system" which should really be called the new group making system. What could possibly be so controversial that they would have to wrap it in all of this player love?


The developers at PGI are all veteran game players. Many of us were or still are competitive gamers and truly know the feeling of a great match played between two equally matched teams.

The next 3 stages of planned releases for Match Making involve the following:

Phase 1:

Reduce the maximum # of players in a group to 4. This means when players form a group, they will only be able to add 3 people. When that group launches, they will be put in a bucket. The match maker will then fill the rest of the 8 player team with 4 PUGs or any partial groups that are looking for a match at that moment. The same will happen for the other team. Matches will still be 8v8 but instead of playing against 8 people in an organized premade, you will see a max of 4.

Now before you light your pitchforks, we know that this does not address all the issues and that 8-player groups are the mainstay of community and organized team-play. This is why we move to Phase 2 VERY soon after Phase 1.

Phase 2:

Players will be able to convert their 4-player group to an 8-player group similarly to how World of Warcraft’s group to raid conversion works. With a click of a button, a group leader can convert a 4-player group to 8-players and invite 4 more players to the group. There is a limitation to this however. If the group leader decides to convert to an 8-player group, they MUST have 8 players in order to launch. (i.e. you cannot launch a game with 5,6 or 7 players). In addition to that, your 8-player group will be matched to another 8-player group ONLY. This does reduce the change of finding a match quickly but at the same time 8-players teams will finally be matched to other 8-player teams exclusively.

At some future date we will also want to include the ability to challenge a specific 8-player team to a match in a competitive/eSport manner. But as stated, this will be coming at a later date.

Phase 3:

We have been examining the various ranking systems in other games/structured tournament play etc. This includes ELO, TrueSkill and others. Our current plan is to use a hybrid system that uses the mentality of ELO with a weighting system that we’ve determined that drives down to player effectiveness/skill in a match. In order for this to work properly, we will need to do heavy pre-release testing before it goes live to the community and hence the amount of time to get it implemented.

We currently cannot go into detail as to how this system will work because we are not going to over-promise something that may change during implementation. We will try to keep you as up to date on this as possible.

What? Really? You are going to nerf teamwork? There is no reason for this!

Well, yes and no. In the Battletech universe a "Lance" is four mechs. and teams can be comprised of multiple Lances. This, by the way is the rational of jumping from 8v8 to 12v12 etc. Each Lance is a team in themselves, you may have your scout lance, or your LRM lance etc. So in a way having a team of 4 instead of a team of 8 does start to make sense. Really the only problem I see is a delay between phase one and phase two. Personally I think that phase one is "what we have ready for testing" and phase two is "what we were trying to get happening in the first place"

Honestly, I like this idea more the more I think about it, but I think they should go one further. A group, or Lance can comprise of up to four players. Once a lance hits four, the Lance commander is given the option to combine with another Lance of four. This means you end up with two merged groups of four, not one group of eight. If you give each one a leader, and the ability to make their own marks on the maps, communication, etc. you start to have the ability to function more like an actual military unit.

So lets say Pyrodante forms a Lance and gets three other players. Pyro leads his group, so he then invites a second Lance to join. Pyrodante is now the "Drop Commander" and the "Lance Commander", and can send commands to his Lance, the other Lance commander, and everyone. Meanwhile the Lance Commander for Bravo Lance can issue his orders to his Lance. Chain of command is established.

Creating a modular Lance system allows all sizes of battles as well, 12v12 is just three groups of four, and 8v8 is just two Lances. This provides an expandable system with shared communication and clear command structure. Could be cool.

The only glaring problem is this partial implementation. No one likes to be told they can't drop with their buddies, especially when you combine that with the frustration of having your buddies replaced by someone who may end up being a total failure. I think that letting us know where you are going is enough for now. Get it ready and release it all at once to us. Please don't replace a borked system that angers a segment of the player base with a second borked system that angers the other segment of the player base. All that will do is further the animosity between to two groups.

One last note, although this announcement was made at the same time as the emergency patch, this was not included in the patch. In fact, so far there is no direct indication of when ANY of this will be implemented. The assumption is they are going to release it on Tuesday, but with Open Beta delayed, I would like to see them reign it back in and just finish phase two, but hey Keep Calm and Continue Testing right?

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