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GSF on Tulak Hord is dead!


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It seems that GSF on Tulak Hord is dead.

 

Today our team queued for 3 hours and nothing happened.

 

This problem is going on for two weeks now.

 

Some people might say that something must be broken, but It seems that a lot of German

players are just unhappy with what is going on in GSF PVP.

 

Some guys of my premade heard a lot of complains in the last time.

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It seems that GSF on Tulak Hord is dead.

 

Probably because some of the premades that normally queue took the night off, and without premades, GSF pops much less frequently.

 

Today our team queued for 3 hours and nothing happened.

 

That's unusual, but now that it's been a couple days, have you seen pops again?

 

This problem is going on for two weeks now.

 

Consider hopping over to Star Forge at some point if you are in queue f or a long time on TH and get no pops.

 

Some people might say that something must be broken, but It seems that a lot of German

players are just unhappy with what is going on in GSF PVP.

 

No, it's never anything like this. If you aren't getting many GSF pops, it's usually because not as many people are playing SWTOR on that server, at that time. Players never get happy about "what is going on in... PVP" and stop queueing pvp, especially not literally years after balance changes (sometimes a balance pass can cause players to quit).

 

Some guys of my premade heard a lot of complains in the last time.

 

About what? I'd be shocked if the German server had a substantially different experience than the other servers. Unless you have an immense amount of unpunished cheating or some serious technical issue, lower player count is GSF is preceded and caused by lower player count in SWTOR- at least everywhere I've ever looked. Eventually Bioware will make a patch and players will come back, like any MMO.

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  • 4 weeks later...

well duuuuh... premades killed the *********** GSF game on TH... if i know that the match is going to be 50:0 or 1000:100 in under 5 mínutes, i stop queing (and i coinsider myself above average)

If i get spawn-farmed constantly, i quit GSF... if the win/lose is oinly determined if you re being placed in the premade group or not, it s *********** boring... how ,many times i pleaded in the GSF channel to please not list as premade but as individuals because like that we d hopefully have some even matches... nada.

 

The GSF situation on TH was a few damn good pilots that grouped premade vs the rest who whether was about to become good or was a fledgeling pilot, but both of the latter got creamed everytime...

you simply CAN T have even / fun matches with 3 Gunships ( one of which flown by a certain pilot and his disciples) and 2 Bombers in the opponents team...

Most of the people wanted "pew-pew-lazor" pvp against each other... what we got was team ranked a la GSF... a select few dominating the game,then ruining the game becoming toxic when criticized, , then migrating to more active servers... thanks for nothing

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well duuuuh... premades killed the *********** GSF game on TH... if i know that the match is going to be 50:0 or 1000:100 in under 5 mínutes, i stop queing (and i coinsider myself above average)

If i get spawn-farmed constantly, i quit GSF... if the win/lose is oinly determined if you re being placed in the premade group or not, it s *********** boring... how ,many times i pleaded in the GSF channel to please not list as premade but as individuals because like that we d hopefully have some even matches... nada.

 

The GSF situation on TH was a few damn good pilots that grouped premade vs the rest who whether was about to become good or was a fledgeling pilot, but both of the latter got creamed everytime...

you simply CAN T have even / fun matches with 3 Gunships ( one of which flown by a certain pilot and his disciples) and 2 Bombers in the opponents team...

Most of the people wanted "pew-pew-lazor" pvp against each other... what we got was team ranked a la GSF... a select few dominating the game,then ruining the game becoming toxic when criticized, , then migrating to more active servers... thanks for nothing

 

Well, you're not wrong. Whatever justification people make for always flying in powerful premades, the fact is it kills the interest from newbies and kills the queue for average pilots. I'm happy to report that on Darth Malgus we have more or less stamped out the dominant premade mentality, and if there is one, we can readily make a counter group for it.

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Well, you're not wrong. Whatever justification people make for always flying in powerful premades, the fact is it kills the interest from newbies and kills the queue for average pilots. I'm happy to report that on Darth Malgus we have more or less stamped out the dominant premade mentality, and if there is one, we can readily make a counter group for it.

 

Not sure when you fly your ship on Darth Malgus, but at least 75% of my games is against dominant pre-mades. That mentality is still present and you will never be able to, as you say it, "stamp it out."

 

But honestly, the issue is not with the pre-made groups. The real issue is fantastically botched match maker. It doesn't matter for one little bit if you queue as a group or as solo; you end up against each other anyway. Which there is really only one party to blame for; Bioware. And this makes new pilots being rofl-stomped into nothing when they try a game of GSF. This in turn results in those new pilots never returning to GSF. And this also results in people like myself, to try it every now and then, but ultimately also exit a battle about half-way through because I got sick and tired of being spawn camped five matches in a row. And there have been plenty of posts like this throughout the years, but we're being skillfully ignored by the powers that be. And sorry to say so, but I don't see this changing any time soon. :mad::rolleyes:

 

Part of me is still wondering why I try GSF every now and then. I must be masochistic in some way. :p:eek:

Edited by Shariva
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Not sure when you fly your ship on Darth Malgus, but at least 75% of my games is against dominant pre-mades. That mentality is still present and you will never be able to, as you say it, "stamp it out."

 

But honestly, the issue is not with the pre-made groups. The real issue is fantastically botched match maker. It doesn't matter for one little bit if you queue as a group or as solo; you end up against each other anyway. Which there is really only one party to blame for; Bioware. And this makes new pilots being rofl-stomped into nothing when they try a game of GSF. This in turn results in those new pilots never returning to GSF. And this also results in people like myself, to try it every now and then, but ultimately also exit a battle about half-way through because I got sick and tired of being spawn camped five matches in a row. And there have been plenty of posts like this throughout the years, but we're being skillfully ignored by the powers that be. And sorry to say so, but I don't see this changing any time soon. :mad::rolleyes:

 

Part of me is still wondering why I try GSF every now and then. I must be masochistic in some way. :p:eek:

 

I'm stuck at home with chronic health issues off work and shielding because of COVID. I play a fair amount. You may know me as Luc Nodaro. And most of those stomp games youre in are just pure matchmaker fails, not premades. On pub side the regular pilots actively work to counter premades and encourage people to fly solo.

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I'm stuck at home with chronic health issues off work and shielding because of COVID.

 

Sorry to hear it, mate. I wish you a speedy recovery. :)

 

I play a fair amount. You may know me as Luc Nodaro. And most of those stomp games youre in are just pure matchmaker fails, not premades. On pub side the regular pilots actively work to counter premades and encourage people to fly solo.

 

Good to hear, but if I get defeated five times in a row with 50-3 or 1000-50 (I wish this was a joke), I refuse to believe it was simply a matchmaker fail. Especially when I go after a gunship and within three seconds I have 2 scouts and 2 strike fighters on my tail. That doesn't happen with a random group, that's coordinated play by a pre-made. Typing "I have company at satellite A", will get me killed for sure. Heck, with 3 ships trying to fight me I have hardly time to even type "A" to get a call for help out.

 

Five spawn camp battles is enough for me to believe there is something seriously wrong. As many before me and as done for many years now, I want Bioware to fix the match making. Groups queuing as such need to wait for another group to queue. Not being matched against a bunch of solo queuers because otherwise it takes to long. And if they queue as solo, divide them over the two groups. And as an added feature; if you're in a group, you should not be allowed to enter the solo queue. The game can detect if you're not in a group (I cannot enter the ops instance on the Gav Daragon alone), which means the opposite is definitely possible.

 

The one responsible and accountable for this problem is Bioware, not the players. The players should not be the ones to find a work around for it. Bioware should solve this problem.

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GSF being dead on your server isn't going to change, it will probably be dead on all servers soon too because Bioware/EA have no idea what they're doing.

 

The new crates/caches? rewards garbage.

You now need 10 wins/losses for the weekly, it's hard enough finding one match with 1-3hour ques.

And now they added a 15min debuff if you leave the match early, which means if you spend 3hours in que and get matched up against one of those pre mades you just wasted 3hours for 1/10 on your weekly, you're now forced to spend 10min getting beat up by a premade knowing you won't win. Or it's a deathmatch and you have a suicider on your team and you're stuck with them too, instead of fixing the vote kick system to get rid of these people, they punish those who don't want to waste time playing with them.

 

Just stop subbing, not giving them your money might slap them in the face for actual changes people want.

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GSF being dead on your server isn't going to change, it will probably be dead on all servers soon too because Bioware/EA have no idea what they're doing.

 

The new crates/caches? rewards garbage.

You now need 10 wins/losses for the weekly, it's hard enough finding one match with 1-3hour ques.

And now they added a 15min debuff if you leave the match early, which means if you spend 3hours in que and get matched up against one of those pre mades you just wasted 3hours for 1/10 on your weekly, you're now forced to spend 10min getting beat up by a premade knowing you won't win. Or it's a deathmatch and you have a suicider on your team and you're stuck with them too, instead of fixing the vote kick system to get rid of these people, they punish those who don't want to waste time playing with them.

 

Just stop subbing, not giving them your money might slap them in the face for actual changes people want.

 

Didn't know the deserter debuff was being implemented into GSF. They never mentioned that in the patch notes

 

Thx for that info. I haven't flown yet this week.

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Well, you're not wrong.

 

Yea he is, and so are you.

 

Whatever justification people make for always flying in powerful premades, the fact is it kills the interest from newbies and kills the queue for average pilots.

 

Frequently it makes everyone show up for the good games at whatever time the premade flies at.

 

Since this game was conceived- and really, since a couple decades before- I've been hearing that "X kills the queues". In GSF, that's "teams that can beat my team" or "teams that can beat just me alone". But the people claiming this never have any proof, and they are only ever speaking for themselves, while claiming to speak for everyone. Really, they aren't interested in figuring out what makes more or less queues, they just want something that they can argue against teams that can beat them.

 

Players like you have two goals when you repeat these kinds of made up facts.

 

1- Discourage premades from grouping

2- Encourage devs to ban premades

 

Both of these are your only goals. I hear people saying how there are no games and the queues are dead, in /gsf, while two games are going, and I'm in one. Unlike you, and all the other players just like you, I have stuck around and spammed /who on some nights when I know no premades are on. Guess what? Queues die at about the same time, often a bit earlier, when no premades are playing. So not only do premades not "kill queues", the queues aren't even dead.

 

I used to assume players like you were projecting your desire to not be beaten onto other players, and assuming everyone thought the same way you do. Now I'm convinced it's just a power play to try to demoralize actual teams from grouping, and to try to trick the devs into removing your competition by any means possible.

 

I'm happy to report that on Darth Malgus we have more or less stamped out the dominant premade mentality, and if there is one, we can readily make a counter group for it.

 

If the DM groups stopped grouping, I think I'd know. And you claim that your way to beat groups is by grouping. That part, at least, is correct.

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Frequently it makes everyone show up for the good games at whatever time the premade flies at.

 

Really.... You have any proof to substantiate your claim that people like to be spawn camped and/or being stomped into nothing?:rolleyes:

 

Since this game was conceived- and really, since a couple decades before- I've been hearing that "X kills the queues". In GSF, that's "teams that can beat my team" or "teams that can beat just me alone". But the people claiming this never have any proof, and they are only ever speaking for themselves, while claiming to speak for everyone. Really, they aren't interested in figuring out what makes more or less queues, they just want something that they can argue against teams that can beat them.

 

Again I say really.... You really think that a team of randomly thrown together players can compete with a pre-made group that has been flying together for a year? Because when I fly a battle, go after a gunship and have two scouts and two strike fighters on my tail within 5 seconds, it means I'm up against a pre-made. That type of coordination is never found in a randomly thrown together group.

But you seem to think pre-mades are not that good. That over time team cooperation doesn't improve and that pre-made teams are just randomly thrown together bunch of players. It would seem you just want to argue why pre-mades are not bad and I am sorely tempted to believe you are in one.

 

Players like you have two goals when you repeat these kinds of made up facts.

 

1- Discourage premades from grouping

2- Encourage devs to ban premades

 

In both these statements you are blatantly wrong. People are not discouraging pre-made groups. People are not encouraging the developers from banishing pre-made groups. These are two, by you, made up facts. People are arguing that pre-made groups should not be matched against a randomly thrown together group. That is what people like myself are arguing for. We are arguing that the match making for GSF is completely botched and that Bioware should take action on it. And because the match making is incredible flunky, the pre-made groups are enabled to do the spawn camping. And the result is that, especially new, pilots quit flying all together.

 

Both of these are your only goals. I hear people saying how there are no games and the queues are dead, in /gsf, while two games are going, and I'm in one. Unlike you, and all the other players just like you, I have stuck around and spammed /who on some nights when I know no premades are on. Guess what? Queues die at about the same time, often a bit earlier, when no premades are playing. So not only do premades not "kill queues", the queues aren't even dead.

 

I'm, again, seeing a lot of claims without any regard to evidence. Because I see people leaving the group when they get spawn camped or stomped into nothing. In that respect, pre-mades do kill the game. But it appears to me that that is the side you do not wish to see. After five battles of being stomped into nothing, I don't want to fly anymore either. I go do something else. And a lot of starting pilots give up long before that. Again, I very rarely see a bunch of loners do this.

 

I used to assume players like you were projecting your desire to not be beaten onto other players, and assuming everyone thought the same way you do. Now I'm convinced it's just a power play to try to demoralize actual teams from grouping, and to try to trick the devs into removing your competition by any means possible.

 

Wow..... just wow....:eek:

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Yea he is, and so are you.

 

 

 

Frequently it makes everyone show up for the good games at whatever time the premade flies at.

 

Since this game was conceived- and really, since a couple decades before- I've been hearing that "X kills the queues". In GSF, that's "teams that can beat my team" or "teams that can beat just me alone". But the people claiming this never have any proof, and they are only ever speaking for themselves, while claiming to speak for everyone. Really, they aren't interested in figuring out what makes more or less queues, they just want something that they can argue against teams that can beat them.

 

Players like you have two goals when you repeat these kinds of made up facts.

 

1- Discourage premades from grouping

2- Encourage devs to ban premades

 

Both of these are your only goals. I hear people saying how there are no games and the queues are dead, in /gsf, while two games are going, and I'm in one. Unlike you, and all the other players just like you, I have stuck around and spammed /who on some nights when I know no premades are on. Guess what? Queues die at about the same time, often a bit earlier, when no premades are playing. So not only do premades not "kill queues", the queues aren't even dead.

 

I used to assume players like you were projecting your desire to not be beaten onto other players, and assuming everyone thought the same way you do. Now I'm convinced it's just a power play to try to demoralize actual teams from grouping, and to try to trick the devs into removing your competition by any means possible.

 

 

 

If the DM groups stopped grouping, I think I'd know. And you claim that your way to beat groups is by grouping. That part, at least, is correct.

 

That's one heck of a lot of assumptions you've made there. But I'm not going to argue with you because ive had this arguement so many times it gets old. Its not like youre goign to agree with me or vice versa. But I will, say, when was the last time you flew on DM? I welcome you to come over, see what's really going on. Come solo if youre brave enough.

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Really.... You have any proof to substantiate your claim that people like to be spawn camped and/or being stomped into nothing?:rolleyes:

 

He didn't say that people like to be spawn camped or even that he likes to spawn camp people. Skilled pilots like competitive challenging games. Stomping into oblivion those players who still haven't figured out which end of the ship is supposed to be pointing forward is not all that fun. I'm a person attracted to premades. If I hear there's a premade stomping people in GSF, I'm more inclined to queue. Even if I don't join one myself. Sure, I might be thrown in with a bunch of unskilled players and get stomped, but at least it will be interesting.

 

Again I say really.... You really think that a team of randomly thrown together players can compete with a pre-made group that has been flying together for a year? Because when I fly a battle, go after a gunship and have two scouts and two strike fighters on my tail within 5 seconds, it means I'm up against a pre-made. That type of coordination is never found in a randomly thrown together group.

But you seem to think pre-mades are not that good. That over time team cooperation doesn't improve and that pre-made teams are just randomly thrown together bunch of players. It would seem you just want to argue why pre-mades are not bad and I am sorely tempted to believe you are in one.

 

It depends on the pool of players. If the matchmaker, which is profoundly stupid when it comes to balancing teams, is given enough good players to work with, then yeah, random aces vs. premade aces can be competitive. It won't normally get them to stop talking about whatever collectible card game they've been playing lately or whatever on voicechat though (premade voicechat coordination, if you ever get into a premade's voicechat, turns out to be largely mythical). It's not force precognition or voicechat that's responsible for "coordination." It's watching the minimap, watching the messages on screen, and knowing what the best tactics are that allow the really good players to be in the right place at the right time for maximum effect. A really good player will see the little red triangle that's your ship change heading toward an undefended satellite when you only spawned 2 seconds ago, and they'll boost across the map to meet you there and kill you while you're trying to line up on a turret. It's not magic, it's the minimap.

 

Verain's certainty on this comes from experience. He has seen premades lose to non-premade teams. Good players are good players, whether they're in a premade or not. The primary aim of the premade is to get in a match faster. The matchmaker LOOOOVES premades. So if you like GSF and don't want to wait forever for a match, the best thing to do is group up and queue. This is the primary factor driving premades. Trying to get the queue to pop.

 

There's not skill requirement or upgrade requirement to form a group. You can do it with 0 hours, 0 minutes, and 0 seconds of GSF playtime. It doesn't help people fly better, it doesn't make the matchmaker any less stupid than it is with a purely random queue, but it does make the matchmaker create matches in less time.

 

In both these statements you are blatantly wrong. People are not discouraging pre-made groups. People are not encouraging the developers from banishing pre-made groups. These are two, by you, made up facts. People are arguing that pre-made groups should not be matched against a randomly thrown together group. That is what people like myself are arguing for. We are arguing that the match making for GSF is completely botched and that Bioware should take action on it. And because the match making is incredible flunky, the pre-made groups are enabled to do the spawn camping. And the result is that, especially new, pilots quit flying all together.

 

You're sorta part right, and Verain's sorta part right on this. "I don't wanna fly against premades because I don't like losing, and I think premades are always going to kick my butt," is the driving factor behind your complaints. The problem is that at a high enough skill level ONE player can turn a match into a spawn-camped stomp fest. It's harder than it used to be, because ship balance is so improved, but it happens. What Verain wasn't saying, because he's said it so many times that I suspect that he's tired of saying it, is that with the player population of SWTOR, the level of GSF participation, and the low quality of the matchmaker, the sort of unbalanced matches that no one really likes are inevitable. The matchmaker needs the random queued people and the group queued people to make matches in a reasonable amount of time. Taking the premades out just slows things down, or even completely stops the queue for everyone.

 

In general, the premades try to coordinate so they can fly against other premades. It greatly increases the chances of both interesting games, and fast queue pops. Of course, the matchmaker will still be stupid sometimes and create two matches of grouped skilled players vs. ungrouped people in starter ships, but at least there's a chance of premade vs premade if you fly GSF by appointment. If really top end players just stopped flying as premades, it would probably increase the number of lopsided matches. The matchmaker doesn't do better if you split the groups up, it just goes slower. Premades on the other hand, say, "Ok, this is stupid. Why don't you three swap faction, and requeue. We'll drop queue until you do. Maybe we can get a decent match," with more frequency than you probably imagine they do.

 

Really the only known effective way of improving the matchmaking in GSF is increasing the number of premades. It works like this:

Lopsided matches are happening. Someone gets on a chat channel, probably /gsf in game, or a GSF Discord channel, and asks if anyone wants to shuffle around a bit for more balanced games. People shuffle around. If you're lucky, more balanced games result. One of the best ways to do it is to communicate and try to get less skilled players grouped with the more skilled players. That way no matter how badly the matchmaker screws up there's a reasonable chance of an at least partly balanced game. Those cranky evil ace premade pilots actually turn out to be generally pretty friendly and enthusiastic about grouping up with people. Even if those people are complete strangers that have never played GSF before. They can even facilitate it because they know who the deadly pilots are, and they're used to using communication tools to sort out better groupings. The only caveat about making that happen though, is that you have to ask them to do it. Their characters might have force telepathy, but they don't. They don't know that you'd like to group up to help make more even and faster popping matches unless you tell them.

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I'm not gonna reply to the entire post, Ramalina, as I think you have made some valid points. But I will reply to the following bit:

You're sorta part right, and Verain's sorta part right on this. "I don't wanna fly against premades because I don't like losing, and I think premades are always going to kick my butt," is the driving factor behind your complaints.

 

Here I am going to disagree with you. I never said I don't want to loose. I said I want to have fun flying. Winning or loosing; as long as it is a close match, I'm having fun. I don't need, nor want to be on the top of table regarding kills, assists or whatever. I want to have fun. And close matches are fun for me. Heck, going up against two or three ships is fun as well. I'm getting pretty good at circling an object and using all kinds of cover to break missile-lock.

However, being systematically spawn camped for five matches in a row is not fun. I can take that a few times, but after that, it is enough.

 

I still am not against pre-made groups, but let them fly against other pre-made groups. Basically, improve the match maker so pre-mades fly against pre-mades and randoms fly against randoms. The game has the logic to detect if you're not in an ops group. So it is possible to expand on that technique to make it so it can detect if you're in a group or not. This makes the match maker at least more intelligent then now.

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The thing is, the GSF matchmaker already detects groups. It prioritizes putting groups in games over single players. As a solo queued person you can get completely skipped for multiple matches in a row, where a player of comparable skill who is grouped in the same queue at the same time will get into multiple games in a row. It's known, it's tested. It's a big part of why the best players are so set on being in a group as often as possible.

 

The way you get good at GSF is by playing a lot, presumably because you like playing GSF. If you like to play GSF, you want to play GSF, not dance on a mission kiosk on Fleet for hours at a time. Once that sort of player discovers that queuing as a group can nearly double their chances of getting into the games that are happening, they're going to want to group up to queue for GSF. Depending on how populated the GSF queue is, grouping can be the difference between getting 3 or 4 games in an evening as part of a group vs. getting 1 or even 0 games if queued solo. In the current system for GSF, ideally everyone should be grouping for GSF.

 

Unfortunately, recoding the matchmaker would require a lot of time, a lot of expertise, and in legacy code that may not be clean or well documented possibly a lot of headaches. The payroll to fix it would be significant, the gain in income would be microscopic. We all wish the matchmaker was as smart as a five year old picking teams for a game on the playground, but realistically that's never going to happen.

 

I'd argue that some of the best GSF that has ever been played was on the closed PTS before the big GSF balance patch. Getting matches was a difficult scheduling feat, and communications were required to make matches happen. As a group of players, it was definitely possible to do much better than the matchmaker when it came to balancing teams. If enough players are communicating and grouping cleverly, it is possible to FORCE the matchmaker to create balanced teams most of the time. You need to have about, at a guess, 70% to 80% of the players queued as well planned groups in order to overcome the flaws of the matchmaker. A lower percentage of players well grouped still helps, but it seems like the matchmaker has a special talent for finding poor matchups. Or maybe it just has really bad luck with RNG. Forcing good matches has also been seen on live servers during community GSF special events. With enough groups to make 4 to 6 GSF games queued at the same time, it's possible to overwhelm the matchmaker's ability to make bad matches, provided all of those groups are relatively even in skill.

 

I know that there are some guild groups that fly more for the sake of things like conquest etc. rather than because they like GSF. The goal is to get in, get points, get out, and do it fast. For them, spawncamping is possibly a desired outcome, because it means less time playing GSF per unit of loot. If it's enthusiastic GSF players though, it's different. Go ahead and message them in game and ask if they'd be willing to group up in a way to improve balance. For making the queue pop, it doesn't matter who you're grouped with. So if there are enough newer players willing to group up, then for an ace there's very little downside to splitting into new and more balanced groups. More players, more groups, more matches add up to more fun for them in the long run. Maybe some new friends in game too. You never know if asking to group up will work, but it's pretty much always worth trying. Sure they might say no, but if they say yes the chances of more games and better games greatly increases. Sometimes being grouped even helps if you're losing, especially if you have some kind of voice chat. Talking, joking, being a team, while losing together is usually a lot more fun than solo queuing and losing by yourself.

 

It's the one situation where right now I can be sure that it's a good thing to be more social. Be as social as possible while queuing for GSF. Sometimes it works, and it can be a lot of fun when it does.

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The thing is, the GSF matchmaker already detects groups. It prioritizes putting groups in games over single players. As a solo queued person you can get completely skipped for multiple matches in a row, where a player of comparable skill who is grouped in the same queue at the same time will get into multiple games in a row. It's known, it's tested. It's a big part of why the best players are so set on being in a group as often as possible.

 

The way you get good at GSF is by playing a lot, presumably because you like playing GSF. If you like to play GSF, you want to play GSF, not dance on a mission kiosk on Fleet for hours at a time. Once that sort of player discovers that queuing as a group can nearly double their chances of getting into the games that are happening, they're going to want to group up to queue for GSF. Depending on how populated the GSF queue is, grouping can be the difference between getting 3 or 4 games in an evening as part of a group vs. getting 1 or even 0 games if queued solo. In the current system for GSF, ideally everyone should be grouping for GSF.

 

Unfortunately, recoding the matchmaker would require a lot of time, a lot of expertise, and in legacy code that may not be clean or well documented possibly a lot of headaches. The payroll to fix it would be significant, the gain in income would be microscopic. We all wish the matchmaker was as smart as a five year old picking teams for a game on the playground, but realistically that's never going to happen.

 

I'd argue that some of the best GSF that has ever been played was on the closed PTS before the big GSF balance patch. Getting matches was a difficult scheduling feat, and communications were required to make matches happen. As a group of players, it was definitely possible to do much better than the matchmaker when it came to balancing teams. If enough players are communicating and grouping cleverly, it is possible to FORCE the matchmaker to create balanced teams most of the time. You need to have about, at a guess, 70% to 80% of the players queued as well planned groups in order to overcome the flaws of the matchmaker. A lower percentage of players well grouped still helps, but it seems like the matchmaker has a special talent for finding poor matchups. Or maybe it just has really bad luck with RNG. Forcing good matches has also been seen on live servers during community GSF special events. With enough groups to make 4 to 6 GSF games queued at the same time, it's possible to overwhelm the matchmaker's ability to make bad matches, provided all of those groups are relatively even in skill.

 

I know that there are some guild groups that fly more for the sake of things like conquest etc. rather than because they like GSF. The goal is to get in, get points, get out, and do it fast. For them, spawncamping is possibly a desired outcome, because it means less time playing GSF per unit of loot. If it's enthusiastic GSF players though, it's different. Go ahead and message them in game and ask if they'd be willing to group up in a way to improve balance. For making the queue pop, it doesn't matter who you're grouped with. So if there are enough newer players willing to group up, then for an ace there's very little downside to splitting into new and more balanced groups. More players, more groups, more matches add up to more fun for them in the long run. Maybe some new friends in game too. You never know if asking to group up will work, but it's pretty much always worth trying. Sure they might say no, but if they say yes the chances of more games and better games greatly increases. Sometimes being grouped even helps if you're losing, especially if you have some kind of voice chat. Talking, joking, being a team, while losing together is usually a lot more fun than solo queuing and losing by yourself.

 

It's the one situation where right now I can be sure that it's a good thing to be more social. Be as social as possible while queuing for GSF. Sometimes it works, and it can be a lot of fun when it does.

 

Actually I believe the Matchmaker no longer Prioritizes Groups over solo players any longer. In the past it used to, however from my experience since 6.0 I've discovered I never get skipped as a solo player (or at least extremely rarely), but I'm consistently being skipped if I'm in a group of 2, 3, or 4.

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  • 2 months later...

Speaking of skilled pilots - I found myself today focusing on threat and distraction. I was attacking a dedicated gs pilot who had 2-3 people constantly defending. I could chase him/her halfway across the map and could still see the trail of red following.

 

Instead of trying to compete kill for kill against the stronger team, I grabbed the attention of the majority of the team's strength. I got the challenge of surviving as long as possible against a superior force AND got them to spend a lot less time killing the much easier targets on my team. My score looked horrible, but it turned out to be pretty fun and a lot closer than if I took the normal route. It doesn't mean much to have the highest or second highest kill count on the team when the opposing side nets 2-3 kills to your one.

 

Sometimes you want a relaxing match where you don't have to push to win. Most of the time for me, I still want a match to be close enough that my skill as an individual as well as my mistakes can very well dictate a win or loss.

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Yea he is, and so are you.

 

 

 

Frequently it makes everyone show up for the good games at whatever time the premade flies at.

 

Since this game was conceived- and really, since a couple decades before- I've been hearing that "X kills the queues". In GSF, that's "teams that can beat my team" or "teams that can beat just me alone". But the people claiming this never have any proof, and they are only ever speaking for themselves, while claiming to speak for everyone. Really, they aren't interested in figuring out what makes more or less queues, they just want something that they can argue against teams that can beat them.

 

Players like you have two goals when you repeat these kinds of made up facts.

 

1- Discourage premades from grouping

2- Encourage devs to ban premades

 

Both of these are your only goals. I hear people saying how there are no games and the queues are dead, in /gsf, while two games are going, and I'm in one. Unlike you, and all the other players just like you, I have stuck around and spammed /who on some nights when I know no premades are on. Guess what? Queues die at about the same time, often a bit earlier, when no premades are playing. So not only do premades not "kill queues", the queues aren't even dead.

 

I used to assume players like you were projecting your desire to not be beaten onto other players, and assuming everyone thought the same way you do. Now I'm convinced it's just a power play to try to demoralize actual teams from grouping, and to try to trick the devs into removing your competition by any means possible.

 

 

 

If the DM groups stopped grouping, I think I'd know. And you claim that your way to beat groups is by grouping. That part, at least, is correct.

 

I know this is a bit dated - but while I have access....

 

When I left, SS still had an active GSF population. 3 years or so later, its very erratic.

 

SF doesn't need premades to pop, it's the last reliable server for GSF. Don't think I've seen 2 games simultaneously since 3 years ago, but its technically possible given the map names (when doing the who search).

 

Virtually all of the notable players are LITERALLY people I played with 3 years ago. You'd think in that time there would be some fresh blood. Instead of growth, the population is in major decline.

 

GSF channel used to actually have chat - whether I'm on SS, SF or Malgus, its a ghost town now.

 

People don't like losing, but they especially don't like losing hopelessly. If that's not a fact someone's in denial.

 

Winning too easily is boring for SOME of us, but definitely not all of us.

 

Some people are happy to justify stacking the deck in their favor. Those same people tend to be dishonest about it. Frankly it wouldn't even be an issue if GSF didn't have a population problem. But mercilessly wrecking new players who don't even know they can boost with spacebar does not encourage player retention.

 

Since I've been back, aside from a few cases of being chased by multiple slicers across the map, it rarely feels like there is an actual "premade" -- when things get heavily one-sided its pretty likely to be matchmaker's fault.

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Finally GSF on Tulak Hord is completely dead!!!!:(:(:(

 

Our team had one match in five days!

 

Yes we could play on the U.S. or British server .

 

Actually I'm playing on these servers, but that doesn't help my toons or the other players on Tulak Hord.

 

Dear Bioware we need a solution for this problem.

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Speaking of skilled pilots - I found myself today focusing on threat and distraction. I was attacking a dedicated gs pilot who had 2-3 people constantly defending. I could chase him/her halfway across the map and could still see the trail of red following.

 

Instead of trying to compete kill for kill against the stronger team, I grabbed the attention of the majority of the team's strength. I got the challenge of surviving as long as possible against a superior force AND got them to spend a lot less time killing the much easier targets on my team. My score looked horrible, but it turned out to be pretty fun and a lot closer than if I took the normal route. It doesn't mean much to have the highest or second highest kill count on the team when the opposing side nets 2-3 kills to your one.

 

Sometimes you want a relaxing match where you don't have to push to win. Most of the time for me, I still want a match to be close enough that my skill as an individual as well as my mistakes can very well dictate a win or loss.

This actually the best way to deal with premades, yes your score will suffer, but it is still a fun time when you are dragging 4 ppl up/down and around the satellite, did it for 4 minutes straight at some point while my team was capping. Pre-mades are less dominant on TDM tho, as in they will still win but I have so far not encountered matches where the score ends 5-50, as I average 6 kills min per match :D. I was in matches that the team was just dominating the other, just purely because they put new pilots against vets tho.....17 kills 0 deaths that match, and we were in their spawn the whole time, and there was no premades...although that was a few months ago.

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