Make CQC great Again.

[rootsrat]

If you're calling my idea "daft" you have no idea of the problem we're discussing.
The chief problem with CQC is matchmaking due to low population. Very simply, the more options you have the further you divide that population into smaller groups that make it increasingly harder to matchmake in a timely fashion. I don't want to see it cut, and I assume that currently the number of people queueing for Flag is so low as to be irrelevant, but if it wasn't then it should be cut.

An alternative solution would be to remove choice altogether and simply have a 'Quick Play' option that would match people and put them in a constant rotation of Solo/Team/Flag/Repeat. However, I'm trying to keep my suggestions "realistic". I guess it would be fairly straight-forward to add NPCs to Solo/Team and that would be a massive boost to CQC, but it would take additional work to get useful NPCs for Flag so putting it in rotation with the others probably wouldn't work.

The less choice there is, the more people are forced to play with chad try-hards. I am willing to bet this would have more detrimental effect on the participation.

You want to kill CQC completely? Because that's what your proposal would do.

I guarantee you that there would be a lot more people playing if we had a private match mode.

 

[Mr Lindsay]

I find the call for NPCs/Bots in what is supposed to be the pure Player versus Player experience slightly surreal.

Currently it is the Player vs Nobody experience.

I've spent many hours in matchmaking, and maybe an hour or so playing, to 'grind' up to Amateur. We'd need server data from FDev to run the numbers, but I expect that for years it's been functionally impossible to reach CQC Elite.

 

[Mr Lindsay]

The less choice there is, the more people are forced to play with chad try-hards. I am willing to bet this would have more detrimental effect on the participation.

You want to kill CQC completely? Because that's what your proposal would do.

I guarantee you that there would be a lot more people playing if we had a private match mode.

You're talking about nice-to-haves in a game that is functioning.

We're talking about how to salvage a game that is non-functioning.

 

[rootsrat]

Currently it is the Player vs Nobody experience.

View attachment 435990

I've spent many hours in matchmaking, and maybe an hour or so playing, to 'grind' up to Amateur. We'd need server data from FDev to run the numbers, but I expect that for years it's been functionally impossible to reach CQC Elite.

I'll tell you what it looks from our perspective.

I run a 400-people community. We organise CQC night. There are 20-30 people participating. We all go to CTF mode, as that's where the chads look last. We have an hour of good fun, with some randoms mixed into our crowd. Then a highly skilled player spots that there is a large group playing CQC. They call on their friends and join in. They steam-roll over all of us.

First match it's OK, 2nd it's OK, 3rd it's annoying, 4th it stops being fun whatsoever.

The 20-30 of us just decide to call it a night and what's left is those 3-4 highly skilled player now moaning there is nobody playing CQC.

Now consider this: if we could have a few hours undisturbed session every single week in private match, we could potentially train and get better. Learn the maps and get the skill. Learn the tactics, the ships, the equipment. Maybe in 2-3 months we'd be confident enough to move on to the ranked public matches and actually have a chance against the skilled players.

This is what would boost the numbers, not your imaginary "everyone will play deathmatch, becuase there is not other choice". Wrong, my friend - the other choice is not to play at all, because nobody likes to be steamrolled, CTF or no CTF.

And that's the true main issue of CQC.

We used tried to do CQC Tusday for a few months. The outcome was 100% the same. Every. Single. Week.

 

[Mr Lindsay]

And that's the true main issue of CQC.

Not even close. You've described a symptom that is caused by having low-population servers, ergo, it is not the cause of the low-population servers.
(Though of course it can be a factor that helps keep them low once the numbers have fallen off, as is common in many other old/unsuccessful games with only a handful of experts still playing.)

 

[rootsrat]

Not even close. You've described a symptom that is caused by having low-population servers, ergo, it is not the cause of the low-population servers.
(Though of course it can be a factor that helps keep them low once the numbers have fallen off, as is common in many other old/unsuccessful games with only a handful of experts still playing.)

Guess we'll have to agree to disagree then.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I find the call for NPCs/Bots in what is supposed to be the pure Player versus Player experience slightly surreal.

I think it would be good for training and unranked matches. For ranked, sure, PvP only, but CQC has a huge issue with player numbers. If people getting to grips with the game and practicing against bots it might encourage people then to play ranked matches, thereby helping the pure PvP numbers.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Not even close. You've described a symptom that is caused by having low-population servers, ergo, it is not the cause of the low-population servers.
(Though of course it can be a factor that helps keep them low once the numbers have fallen off, as is common in many other old/unsuccessful games with only a handful of experts still playing.)

Its a bit of chicken and the egg. People sometimes don't even try to get a game because not enough people playing and matchmaking takes ages.

I think someone said earlier the game doesn't have ranked matchmaking, but correct me if i'm wrong, but i think it had some sort of rudimentary ranked matchmaking, but when the number of players is low it simply can't apply it, as there's often not enough people to even get a full game going.

 

[Darth Ender]

I never play it because i see it as an entirely separate game, involving something that's not interesting to me. Wing commander did something similar like almost 20 years ago and it bombed then and it doesn't seem like fdev did any better.