Locking in with friends

As a random suggestion, I actually found that I enjoyed the way Global Agenda handled this issue. It is by no means perfect, and at first I found it slightly annoying, but in the long run I saw the benefit of it.

In Global Agenda, the public games are randomized similar to MNC. However, you were allowed to hook up with a single friend, and play together on the same team that way. To me, this seemed perfectly fair, as 2 players out of a whole team are not going to greatly unbalance and stack things beyond reason. It also kept the games fairly balanced, as clans would not come in and essentially take over, or people constantly team swap just to pad stats.

Again, it's not a great solution, especially if you want to play with more than one other person, but it seemed a decent compromise in GA, and I had little complaint at the time with it.

Personally, I am not fussed either way as I am used to both ways by now. I enjoy the challenge of playing against organized groups and specifically with friends, but I also find it relaxing to not watch massive team swapping happen for general, random public games.

The easy solution is to just give the admins or the hosts control over the settings. Let them choose to randomize or allow the choosing of teams. Let them decide if they want to allow voting to randomize teams. The servers with the most popular settings will be more popular. This is just how PC shooters work and I think it works well. If you force the splitting of teams, it will kill community and teamwork.

This is all that needs to happen. I have nothing against the inclusion of random servers. People join random games on first person shooter all the time. People put up dedicated servers, and random people join and play. That's great. The problem is that there is NO way that I can consistently play with my friends. There just isn't a way to do that, and that fact is what stops MNC from being a game that anyone interested in gaming for competition could care about.

My ideal for this game would be to have a ranking and matchmaking system just like the other MOBA games. If this game had a solid matchmaking system (and you don't have to have centrally-hosted servers for this, other games just assign it to a player), and would match up players based on their rank, this game would not only see more consistent matches in terms of player skill, but it would also allow the more competitive players to get better by playing better people. DotA does it, League of Legends does it, Starcraft 2 does it. Street Fighter 4 and Blazblue do it. Surely MNC is a deep enough game to rank players and let them fight similarly ranked players.

The frustrating thing about it is that there is a lot of depth possible in this game that simply isn't allowed because of the random assignment. I would LOVE to see video of high-end matches between coordinated, familiar teams. A spectator mode would be great. Replays would be great. The sky is the limit in terms of cool stuff this game could have to support a competitive scene. Maybe even establishing team colors for your club tag.

Until it is possible to choose to play with your friends though, nothing else matters to a competitive team or competitive scene, and MNC is just a distraction.



For a game called Monday Night Combat, with a parody league logo and gameplay that is purely in the spirit of competition, I would expect some level of support for competition and coordinated teams.

If Uber has no plans to ever support a real, persistent competitive scene, I would like to know that now.

All that Starcraft 2 ranking and matchmaking system costs money to develop. So we run dedicated servers and we do what we want. That's the benefit of servers. The developer provides the platform but we do what we want with it.

My favorite part about playing online FPS games is playing with friends. We aren't a super-skilled bunch that is going to always win games, but just being able count on each other and knowing that we will all at least try to coordinate is what makes this sort of game enjoyable for us. I'm certainly going to play this game myself (and I already bought it) but I'm going to have real trouble suggesting it to my friends that haven't bought it yet if we are going to be stuck against each other so often (I've played about ~10 games with friends, and I haven't been on a team with one of them yet, lol).

I would love to be able to play on the same team as my friends.

I would love the teams to be scrambled (but still be able to play with a friend) if the matches become one sided as they often do right now... there needs to be an auto balance or third party auto balance because, quite frankly, its retarded because it stays unbalanced until sufficient amount of people leave or ragequit. One team will just keep steam rolling the other for hours when you get a bad team.

At the very least a change team button and a vote tool to scramble teams.

No scramble button, no random teams, no nuttin'!

We host dedicated servers so WE can do what we want. I will never play on a server that scrambles up my friends. That's the benefit of dedicated servers.

if that randomizied team ups realy implanted in gold version, sadly this game will flop like other "i dont want to call titles" shooter and the developer learn from this fail and change it in the futher/upcoming titles.....

best regards

My solution,
Have matches with "X" paired buddies only be matched up in games where the other team has "X" paired buddies as well on the other team. X can be any number.

Adding the option to play with preset teams would be a great QoL addition. The current randomizer is garbage btw.

The ability to play with friends is essential. People who play with friends stick around longer. I think with the way the game is set-up now, players should be able to form groups of up to 6, then simply create a setting to allow servers to control maximum group size. Scrim servers can still do organized 6v6 games, but people can also set up pub servers with no grouping or a low max group size if they are worried about stacking.

Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but people think a group of players playing against a bunch of randoms is competitive? No, that's not true. The only truly competitive play is in league format where you are matched up against teams of similar skill. I'm not against people playing together, but MNC is in Beta, they have mentioned (iirc) that their biggest concern is the UI. They have also mentioned that they are working on allowing people to play together.

However, locking in with friends and steamrolling DOES NOT correspond to competition. Playing a group of randoms takes absolutely zero skill when you are a semi-competitive player. PC is a little different than 360 in that, in my opinion, the skill level is much broader. You have much worse and sometimes much better players, and for all different reasons. Playing on a group with coordinated people and friends you know very well against an absolutely random group of players is not competition. It's a pubstomp. I would very much prefer that PC didn't become like the 360 version, as playing by yourself is nearly impossible.

When you are playing a competitive game or a semi-competitive game you should host it yourself (on a dedicated server, unded servers give host too much favor) and play against teams or in pugs. This is how competitive PC gaming has existed for 15 years, before Xbox Live and PSN consolized everything.

I hate analogies for getting points across, but take this for example: A pro football team will not go to a random game in the park and expect to get competition. The same holds true to a bunch of good players "locking in" with each other and steamrolling in pubs.

It's the only true way to play competitively. That being said, the simple ability to switch teams or select ONE "balance buddy" is more than enough in my opinion. Game balance should take precedence over someones desire to steamroll, always.

You can't have competitive play if there is no way to organize teams. You need to be able to have your team of six face another team of six from the league. Otherwise it would be like if before your two football teams played a competitive match, they scrambled all the players randomly, it wouldn't matter who was on your roster in the first place.

Not everyone cares about super hardcore serious business competitive play. I don't, and my friends don't. We just want to play -together- and have some fun. We don't care about being super coordinated or even winning. Just fun. It's not fun being forced to fight eachother.

There's very little difference. PUGs require competitive features, and anything that isn't one is just a pug by a different name or random people joining the server.

DoW II gives an idea though: For those who are on your friends list, it should be made publically visible in lobbies and such if A) they're friends and B) they decided to "link". Thing is, Uberent NEEDS to remove the lobby count-down feature for anything like this to be implemented. To be honest, I think the countdown is too much of a console feature rather than a PC feature. Especially when it doesn't actually deal with the problem it's supposed to fix: AFKs or late-joiners not taking part in the early game of a match.

If you change it to start after a short countdown after 80% ready, then you could put in a "link" feature so people can see who's trying to stack teams. If links show up as 3 or more people, it could be considered a pubstomp and players would have to either vote to accept it or break the link. They can break the link into smaller link groups that can be swapped places with other friends, so if you have four friends on a server, you can have them split into two groups of two on either team, and choose to swap places between arenas if you're in one of those groups. In the case of a 3 link that is broken, then one of the members is randomly chosen to choose which of the two to link with, or forfeit their link. Four is always broken into two groups and shuffled if voted against. Links should probably not exceed four, since you may as well arrange a PUG. Multiple link groups can exist in the same lobby. Links can only be established if you've been a friend for more than a day on Steam, perhaps. It could be dodgy and abusable if otherwise, with people suddenly linking up to avoid their dream team from breaking up. Links of two should probably not cause a problem, however anyone who links may have to forfeit their vote if a partner is being called out for a votekick to make it harder for them to grief with some minor "insurance".

Not once did I say anything about not allowing people to change teams or play together. I just object to locking in for "competitive" reasons as they are fallacious.

You could say I'm a bit more liberal and that I believe that people should always be able to choose what teams they are on, but if teams are stacked a scramble should be enforced. The one issue with MNC is that 2-3 man stacks are much more noticeable with only 6 players per team.

I'd rather not have people dictate who my friends are and whether or not I can play with them. If you don't like friends playing together go find another server.

If you want super serious business then find or make a server that allows you to set 6v6 or whatever you want to do and don't punish people who don't think like you.

That's a very poor argument, I could say the same to you.

I'd rather not have people stack teams and ruin my game. If you like ruining peoples game then go find another server.

If you want to steamroll the other team then find or make a server that automatically locks people you want on your team and don't punish people who don't think like you.

The issue here is that both sides must be accommodated. You would like to be able to play with your friends no matter what, even if it is causing the game to become a snorefest, either through constantly steamrolling or being constantly steamrolled. I would like the game to be balanced and fun for all, even if it means my friend has to be on the other team for a round of two.

My way accommodates both sides of the issue to a moderate extent and has worked in games before it for quite a few years.

Which one sounds more reasonable to you?

Let the server admins decide since opinions differ very much. And yes, I'm aware you could use the same arguement because if I'm on a server where I can't play with a friend (The most common cause right now being that there's not enough slots open)I find another server because I'm not a lazy brat who thinks everything should be catered to me and me only.

Sometimes me and my friends even switch to the other team if it's a steam roll or boring. or we'll just find another server. It's not like it's difficult to do.

Heaven forbid you lose in a server you don't pay for.