Lots of Numbers: Twilight's Tide Event Scenarios

[ShadowWar]

The main goal was therefore to create a functional matchmaking basis that only needs to be finetuned in the end.

I speak for myself, but also anecdotally others who have I have spoke with about this, but that statement is not helpful. What are the goals of a "functional matchmaking"? Non-information responses like this don't do a lot to tell me what to expect or assuage concerns. I'm not saying this to be argumentative, merely to point out that if you were trying to convey helpful information, it didn't come across.

Unfortunately, mere posts of dissatisfaction do not help, except that they reflect the mood that we are all familiar with.

This entire thread was created with hard numbers to display a problem that the player base wasn't even sure the development team was aware of, or were willing to acknowledge as a problem. If we, as a player base, knew what the goal was for SCs and their place in the game going forward, we could give better feedback or at the least stand up for what we believe they should be if there is a disagreement. It feels very disingenuous to be told to posts are unhelpful when the basics of the conversation aren't even understood by both parties.

[Nameless]

The thing is that adding more barriers and idle debuff were quite opposite to what the community was wanting/asking/proposing.
So that why you got such backlash, cos you do exactly what community didnt want to be done. And that was stated on the millions of topics posted before the changes.

The sad true is that adding barriers and idle in fact lower scen frequency and made less fights after first wipe. So again what is the end goal to these changes? Can someone stay behind these changes at all?

[CountTalabecland]

These are pretty damning numbers.

If this were a company, I feel like whoever has been making these changes to scenarios would lose their job.

The devs need to fix this asap and revert their changes to quitter/warcamp/guards at the very least.

This game has been going downhill since 2020-2021 when they practically removed cities by scheduling them, everything since then has just piled on.

[lumpi33]

I can only speak for myself and my personal perception here:

Please be assured that the development team is working hard on a practical solution for clean and fair matchmaking. Good results take time and internal testing. Please be patient. Nobody benefits from a revision if it doesn't work in the end. The main goal was therefore to create a functional matchmaking basis that only needs to be finetuned in the end. And it is precisely this good basis that needed so much time because it has to get good.

A lot of feedback from the community has been collected, discussed and played through. There are currently various approaches, all of which have their own advantages and disadvantages, which can lead to problems in times of low population. e.g. unreasonable waiting times or hopeless pairings. Personally, I am grateful for any further thoughtful suggestions, ideally with a precise description of what and where and how. Unfortunately, mere posts of dissatisfaction do not help, except that they reflect the mood that we are all familiar with.

Good to have a dev here!

I can only repeat what I have been saying already.

The key to fun scenarios is randomness and some kind of auto comp building because:
- Only when you get different enemies and/or comps with every pop then the cards are mixed new again and you have a theoretical chance of winning. That was for me the major fun aspect when doing scenarios back on live. You just queued and never knew how the round would be. Some you won, some you lost. That's fun and balanced from my point of view.
- Only when you have some form of auto comp building with at least 1 tank, 1 healer and 1 dps per 6 man group a pop makes sense. Playing without at least one of each kind in every 6 man isn't fun and the chances of being stomped increase a lot. So, I wouldn't be too strict on the comps but would at least make sure that each 6 man group has 1 tank (max 3), 1 dps (max 3) and 1 healer (max 3).

Now how can this be done? In order to reach this goal something has to be sacrificed.
- Id say it would be best for the majority to just get rid of group queuing. Almost every aspect in the game is group based and therefore there is more than enough group content. The scenarios should be a place for everyone, not only premades, to go and have quick action and fun. It is of super high importance that scenarios are working for new players in order to keep them playing. They should have the priority. In order to reach that premades have to go.
- When group queuing is gone, you can put all players in the same pool for queueing which increases the pop rate. Which is another good aspect to get rid of the solo and group scenario splitting.
- Remove the barriers and add guards again. When one side is stronger and pushes the other side to the spawn then there should be a chance that they wipe there so that the weaker side can get momentum again. Being spawn camped is not fun.
- Revert the scenario objectives to how they were. Don't make scenarios just a stupid zerg fest from one BO to the next. Smart enemies should have the option to go behind their lines and capture back to break up their blob. For example praag or gromril crossing. Let people take back the already captured flags behind their front line again.
- Do something about against the queue abusing by queuing at the same time over discord. Either pop two scenarios at the same time to do mixing or give every queue player a random position in the queue. So if lets say 12 players are waiting and 6 queue up within short time then this 6 might end in position 1, 5, 9, 12, 15, 18. So yeah, some of them might instantly get a new pop while others have to wait. Overall it should be fair. Sometimes you get quick pops, sometimes you have to wait longer. Something like that.

When you stick to the group queuing you will not reach the goals specified here and it will most likely fail again. I wouldn't even allow 2 man groups. Imaging 2 coordinated sov players like for example Teefz and one of his healing buddies. They would create huge imbalances. When you prevent group queuing as a whole they might land in the same scenario sometimes but not always and the different round times and randomness in the queue will keep them apart.

Id rather get rid of the specific map queuing to have higher pops like for discordant or just ignore their map selection when pop rate slows down. It's better to get a random map than no map.

Cheers.

[Akalukz]

The above, but add in a group scenario similar to the discordant, but for groups only (2+)

[Rydiak]

Heh, what's funny is if solo-queuers were excluded from the group queue SCs (e.g. if you had to be in a party of 2+ to queue anything outside of discordant) the quality of group queue would probably go up overnight with no other changes such as a fancy matchmaker.

[Tisaya]

Heh, what's funny is if solo-queuers were excluded from the group queue SCs (e.g. if you had to be in a party of 2+ to queue anything outside of discordant) the quality of group queue would probably go up overnight with no other changes such as a fancy matchmaker.

But then the group scenarios would be completely dead, because premades only play them to increase their e-pens by killing pugs.

[Speedyluck]

Heh, what's funny is if solo-queuers were excluded from the group queue SCs (e.g. if you had to be in a party of 2+ to queue anything outside of discordant) the quality of group queue would probably go up overnight with no other changes such as a fancy matchmaker.

we alrdy have that its called grp ranked and its dead.

[Rydiak]

I disagree. Premades play them because you need to queue them in order to enter SCs with a party. If people really wanted to abuse other players they would just coordinate queuing for Discordant and farm solo players there. Many people enjoy SCs, but many people also don't enjoy A) being farmed with no chance at winning or B) farming players that have no chance of winning, and thus create boring spawn-camp games (which been have exacerbated by the new barriers).

Premade is also used as a buzzword. A form of derogatory term for players who have the audacity to dare use /LFG to find other players to form a party with. You don't need a matchmaker to do what players should be using /LFG for.

[Rydiak]

Heh, what's funny is if solo-queuers were excluded from the group queue SCs (e.g. if you had to be in a party of 2+ to queue anything outside of discordant) the quality of group queue would probably go up overnight with no other changes such as a fancy matchmaker.

we alrdy have that its called grp ranked and its dead.

You can't queue group ranked queue with only 2 players.