CQC CQC.

[Marc JX8P]

THIS WAS AWESOME! Didn't prepare at all - will have to do the tutorials later so I understand what the powerups and stuff all do, and will need to bind chaff to a key or button - but it's very cool and a great change of pace. Which now means I got two enormous time sinks - regular ED and CQC...

 

[Gavin Burke]

As a temporary measure, we could just create a forum thread saying something like 'CQC match at around 09:00' (using the gametime). That way people know about it and could react on it.

This kind of already exists, 9pm each Tuesday for Xbox, but that's one fixed exact time each week only, and I think also 12:00-18:00 UTC too.

Imagine though you bought a game that can ONLY be played online when you can find a few others, and only a couple only ever matchmake - you would return that game right?? That's the state I see CQC in... I would love it to be popular or filled with NPC's so I can practice combat outside of the games overkilling law and order system!

 

[Tataboj]

It's mario in space. Power Ups, really? Auto aim, really? add to that 5 minute wait times or longer and the same 20 people playing it and yeah, no thanks. A gimmick purely made to bring in the xbox crowd and has nothing to do with the game.

Hey, let's build a pew pew space ship game into a spaceship game about taking your time to do al lthe stuff in the galaxy - who were they marketing too? Which "crowd" did they think would pick this up? Obviosuly not the ED crowd because it's empty.

And now we have HoloMe lol

Auto aim? What? You do know we have gimballed weapons in the main game, right?

 

[Blian]

Auto aim? What? You do know we have gimballed weapons in the main game, right?

And turrets

 

[Moesis]

The reason you can't catch a game is because you currently have to choose between playing the main game and waiting in a static lobby. If they added the CQC lobby to the Multicrew menu so you could play the game while you waited for a match, then we'd have 24/7 CQC rounds across the globe. I mean all you need is 8 people with the itch out of millions of potential Elite players. All Frontier needs to do to make this a reality is lower the cost of entry by moving the waiting "room" to your cockpit.

Very true. It's that static lobby that's the real issue. The choice becomes stare at a static screen telling me it's searching with the goal and desire to play a game, or to skip the static screen part entirely and actually play a game. This could be done the way you've described it, it could be bots, hell even just letting us chat & spectate matches or play tutorial/challenge missions, while we wait would be an improvement. But until something is done about it, it's the way it is. At least there is discord, and there are matches, just those peak times aren't always convenient for all of us, so some of us are unfortunately left not being able partake in what is quite a fun deviation from the main game.

 

[Marc JX8P]

Have played a few times now, and it's always a blast and a fun diversion from the actual game (not that I don't enjoy that, I just think it's a good change of pace). The only downside is the fact that I have had the lobby hang a couple of times now which means either waiting very long or just going back to the main game. Still, will continue doing CQC. I'd agree with the idea of just plain starting a new game without letting people wait in the lobby - as said, one or two npcs could be put in the game if there's no human players at the time.

 

[Marc JX8P]

Loads of great games tonight, and even managed to win my first couple of matches (yeah, surprised me as well ). Lobby behaved and I'm kind of wondering whether it is related to the fact that I tried to change ships and loadouts between matches last time that I couldn't continue. In any case, solid now and great fun (if frustrating in places, but that's standard in multiplayer when you can't get into the flow).

 

[Scoopy Doopy]

Loads of great games tonight, and even managed to win my first couple of matches (yeah, surprised me as well ). Lobby behaved and I'm kind of wondering whether it is related to the fact that I tried to change ships and loadouts between matches last time that I couldn't continue. In any case, solid now and great fun (if frustrating in places, but that's standard in multiplayer when you can't get into the flow).

I am convinced that there are more players trying to connect than the matchmaker knows about. So many times I have waiting 40 minutes for a game and then, bang you are in a lobby with four people, the game starts and two seconds later there are eight in game. I waited two hours the other days and then, miraculously eight people connected at the same time.

Oh and congrats on your win tonight

 

[Winterwalker]

I'd love to see some major league prizes introduced into CQC. You might have things like 'best all time player', 'best newcomer kill ratio', 'most improved kill ratio', 'best team' .. but if maybe 6-10 champions, got paid millions of in-game credits, and winner profiles featured in Galnet, we'd have some real ED sports stars. That would be so so funny imo, I'd love to see it.

 

[Scoopy Doopy]

I'd love to see some major league prizes introduced into CQC. You might have things like 'best all time player', 'best newcomer kill ratio', 'most improved kill ratio', 'best team' .. but if maybe 6-10 champions, got paid millions of in-game credits, and winner profiles featured in Galnet, we'd have some real ED sports stars. That would be so so funny imo, I'd love to see it.

The difficulty here is with ratios. It is easy to get a high ratio if you want one. Kill loads of noobs and run away from good players. A few people do that. Going for the difficult targets and ignoring the noobs is way more fun but plays havoc with your k/d ratio.

They could change the ratios so that you increase for kills against those better than you and don't for kills against those lower than you I suppose but even that gets a bit skewed. Top players get targeted, often by several players at once, and only the one who shoots last gets the kill regardless of how much effort the others put in.

Still, your principle is good, particularly the sports stars bit!

 

[Marc JX8P]

It would be fun, but it would be important, I think, to keep CQC as it is now - relatively careless fun compared to the risks in the main game. Not that CQC isn't competitive now...

 

[Curtis R. Prophett]

The difficulty here is with ratios. It is easy to get a high ratio if you want one. Kill loads of noobs and run away from good players. A few people do that. Going for the difficult targets and ignoring the noobs is way more fun but plays havoc with your k/d ratio.

They could change the ratios so that you increase for kills against those better than you and don't for kills against those lower than you I suppose but even that gets a bit skewed. Top players get targeted, often by several players at once, and only the one who shoots last gets the kill regardless of how much effort the others put in.

Still, your principle is good, particularly the sports stars bit!

There is a hidden battle rating that the matchmaker uses to determine your true combat rank. The battle rating takes more factors into consideration than your kdr when determining player skill, and it is what the matchmaker uses to group players if we have a high enough volume online (never).

The following is speculation, but I would imagine that the battle rating gives extra weight to defeating pilots of higher rank and higher battle rating.

It would be interesting if they chose to surface that hidden stat, as it is much more of an indicator of skill than kdr.

 

[dutchy2000]

There is a hidden battle rating that the matchmaker uses to determine your true combat rank. The battle rating takes more factors into consideration than your kdr when determining player skill, and it is what the matchmaker uses to group players if we have a high enough volume online (never).

The following is speculation, but I would imagine that the battle rating gives extra weight to defeating pilots of higher rank and higher battle rating.

It would be interesting if they chose to surface that hidden stat, as it is much more of an indicator of skill than kdr.

Its actually not that hidden, if you look in the netlog, it will give you the id and the rating of each player in the lobby. Your only task is to correlate the id with an actual name, which the game obviously has. You can find your own id in the netlog as well.