This one is rough, fellas. Original Patch Notes here. I hate giving less than glowing reviews to PGI, but I have to be honest. Hence the roughness of my normally tender caresses.
So I'm going to make it short and sweet. The rolling out of this patch and integration of the Launch module has utterly failed. I don't normally list things directly from the patch notes but you have to look at this.
Matchmaker for Public Matches
The new match maker brings a new Mech weight class restriction to team building:
- The Rule of Threes (3-3-3-3): Inside of a public match there must be no more than 3 of a given weight class.
- 3 Lights, 3 Mediums, 3 Heavies, and 3 Assaults.
- The matchmaker will fill public matches according to this rule.
- When balancing teams based on weight class, the match maker also tries to prioritize tonnage when matching to keep tonnage close to each other on each team.
- ELO is quietly factored in to better match players with similar statistical skill levels against one another wherever possible.
- Public matches still contain exactly 24 players in any case.
- Players can now cancel from Searching for a match.
Group Launching
When it comes to groups a few restrictions apply:
- Groups can only be 2 – 4 players or 12 players.
- For launching into a public game a group needs to stay within the rule of only 3 'Mechs per Class.
- The Rule of Threes (3-3-3-3) also applies for 12 player groups.
- Private matches are not affected by the 'Mech class regulations.
- When it comes to groups, the matchmaker assigns these first.
- There cannot be more than one group on a team.
- (Known Issue: Currently it is possible to have more than one group on a team.)
- The system tries to match the groups on both teams as close as possible depending on availability.
- After the group's missing spots are filled up with solo players, maintaining the 3-3-3-3 rule.
- 12 player groups always play against 12 player groups while following the 3-3-3-3 rule.
The lines marked in red are items that do not work, or were removed from implementation after some serious problems. The blue items are working normally, and the entries not marked are those we haven't tested (more on that in a moment). Scary, isn't it?
This entire patch has been more detrimental to the game than the entire LRM fiasco. Now we are only further restricted in our 4-man drops (which is all we really get) and we can no longer sync drop unless it's 1 lance vs. 1 lance. We can't run a full lance of light or medium 'mechs. This is ridiculous.
Plenty has already been said in the Official Feedback Thread. All I'm going to say here is that PGI is going down the wrong road here. I could say more, but why bother ranting? Instead I'll talk about our little group.
House Liao is a small faction in MWO. We make up a tiny percentage, and we've been doing good community work reaching out to the various units that make up our honored House. However, we are a diverse people, and anyone reading this can simply glance at our Chronosync Uplinks and they can see how spread out over the world we are. We have upwards of 35 active pilots, but time zones being what they are it's hard to get 12 together at once. Frequently, we are at 9 or 10 - just shy of the magic number of 12.
This patch was supposed to bring us the Launch Module they promised, but instead of giving us more options and the ability to drop with more of our group it has reduced that capacity. This has been a major blow to our community building and we've seen a large dropoff in play this last week.
I'm going to skip all the goofy bugs as well. You can check those in the Patch Notes. So we'll get right to the other big deal this patch - Private Matches.
So, we can now do Private Matches if we have Premium Time. You get the options to do a smaller drop, and can invite everyone, yadda yadda yadda. I can't really speak to this because we haven't tried it at all, and I'll tell you why.
Without PGI's oversight, the Private Matches are useless to us. We have players, but we're not ready for a league - we can barely get 12 players together to do a 12 man public drop. We always have players online, but the time difference is a nightmare. So, Private Matches would only be good for us to challenge other specific units (to an under-manned match) or simply to practice.
All the features of the Private Matches are NEAR USELESS to us (except for practice), and it also costs the equivalent of any other subscription based MMO (~$14.99 US). I got news for you PGI - MWO does not offer the content that other MMO's do for that price.
How asanine of you to "offer" us this, PGI. It is patently NOT what we want, and it's not even what you told us we were going to get. You don't have to take my word for it, though - check out the Private Match Official Feedback Thread.
Private Matches (and a Training Mode) should be free. End of story, end of what you think. Renting a server is one thing, but paying for every match is not on the table When we pay $30 for one 'mech and another $5 for a pug on it's dashboard.
No one cares about the rest of this patch. If you want to know what bugs they swapped, take a look at the notes. This is a colossal setback for MWO and the community. Today there will be another patch, a week later - presumably to correct some of these issues. I think PGI is going to have to alter it's long term goals if it wants to succeed.
I'm going to leave you with a list of things we need, in the order we need them. Don't worry about what you think you need to do, PGI - just do this. We'll be straight, I promise.
- Tonnage Limits (3/3/3/3 is stupid and contradicts 30 years of Battletech).
- Ability to Drop with 2-11 men. NO REALLY.
- Training Drops
- Community Warfare (even if it's just a league, you morons).
- Faction Loyalty Rewards.
- Team Building Events
It's not rocket science, it's computer science. I do know something about this. I don't know what the holdups are, but I'll wager it's a developer incongruity (or worse, incompetence) rather than any limitation of hardware. After all, we've been playing games like this for something like 20 years now.
The only real excuse is that PGI wants us to pay a monthly subscription, and will insist they "can't do what they want to" with the game until they have that steady cash flow. Never mind they have pretty much just been fluffing us for the past year.
We've laid our money down, PGI. It's your turn now. Put up or shut up.
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