You might be surprised at how unsatisfying it is to repeatedly roflstomp, and how bad the roflstomp plan is for the community as a whole. Sure, you and your buddies have fun for one game, but what incentive do the players you roflstomp have to continue playing? Good matchmaking is important specifically to prevent grabbing your friends and just roflstomping over and over because that's how you drive people from your game.cashto wrote:QUOTE (cashto @ Mar 20 2018, 02:24 PM) I think the cure is worse than the disease here. Even in Halo you can do an XBox party with your friends and roflstomp whoever you want. Playing with friends (and against enemies) is part of the fun of the game.
That being said, you'll find that I actually specifically mentioned party systems. I do want to choose to fly with SumV occasionally. I don't want every game to be a "follow-the-leader" style where everyone just follows the "good players" over and over again because they realize they can just voob it up and boxset or whomever will carry them. The beset system would be something like they have in Overwatch, League of Legends, Starcraft, Dota, etc. etc. etc. (like I said) in which you can queue up as a group or individually and let the system decide who your teammates and opponents are.
Now, if you want to discuss the flaws of that system, well here are a few for you to chew on. First, such a system breeds toxicity: I'm going to play in such a way that nearly every game everyone I play with is at about my level. That means that when something goes wrong, it's very easy for me to blame it on someone else. After all, we're losing a game of League, I'm not doing horribly, and we're all at the same skill level (in theory), so it just must be that you suck. Second, such a system almost preempts the use of lobbies, which really does a great job of killing any sense of community you can build.
I think the majority of players would agree that the main reason they come back to Allegiance isn't because the gameplay is unique (though it is) or because they're really good at Allegiance (most aren't), but because they have friends they enjoy playing with. I would be far less inclined to play this game if, for example, you and sumv stopped playing. A large part of the experience, for me, is flying with, for, and against people I respect and enjoy talking to. But if this were a League of Legends style matchmaking system, we'd have no place where we could get to know each other as people in addition to as pilots. Memes like "I call on the entire Allegiance community to come together and tell Cashto to go $#@! himself" aren't possible if our only connections with each other are fleeting, 45 minute games. Some people like to criticize that the Allegiance lobby is often a glorified IRC channel, but to be quite frank, that's almost exactly the entire reason most of us are still here.
QUOTE This is a terrible metric. Hour long games are more reflective of how the cores are designed, what factions are being played, and whether either team has a will to win or whether they just enjoy whoring. Arguably, hour long games are the cancer that kills allegiance, as everyone winds up exhausted at the end and not willing to play another game, or unwilling to join a game in progress they won't see to the end. Basically, any game that ends to a bomb rush is by definition not a balanced game?[/quote]
I'm always down for suggestions to fit a whole Allegiance game inn 30-45 minutes. So far every time I've used those suggestions the community has thrown a gigantic hissy fit which makes me feel pretty
about accepting suggestions from the community in general (and especially from certain "vets").
