It SHOULD work, this crappy system is NOT the best option and heres why. We do have a small community yes, dedicated players yes, handful of skilled players yes, we know who is good, who is bad, who put in hard work and who is getting better, we can automatically tell who is new or newer to the game because we play the same people. When you put that wall up, you will have the the divide line of your skill lobby[ which is not based on how many hours you play this game]. New players WILL care cause if they get candy ass whooped and we dropping peoples elbows on them every game it won't be fun and they will leave making the community even smaller, but it also isnt fun for "vets" since were labled that lol, us having to carrying every game. IMO i would much rather be in a lobby where the other 5 people on my team are capable of doing what I can do instead of relying on 1 person.
The game would be more tactical. Every server should become available instead of having to wait but if that wall is up we dont have to worry about joining a new player based lobby. You have to think the amount of time some players put in isnt about being competitive, some play for fun, some play to try, others competitive.
Build that trump wall and It will make a greater Hawkurica
The current MMR system doesn't work because it fails in a spectacular fashion when the player count drops below a given threshold. And unless things have changed, the MM still MMR-panics and places high MMR gamers into servers that they'd otherwise be blocked from (fox in the hen house syndrome). Of course, if RLD removed this "feature" effectively walling rookies and vets off from each other, smurfing would probably be a big thing again.. if they continue with what we have, player turnover is likely to continue on at its current rate as well.
Like I pointed out in my post, I don't think walling new and old players off from each other based on some arbitrary metric, be it time played or rank achieved is really a solution. I can understand concept well enough, but I think the end result would still be the same if not worse than the current system.
The current system we have today, without the "wall" is the best crappy option I was referring to.
If it were up to me, I'd release a server binary to the public, only hold on to the actual server-list servers (think WON) and in-game store, rip that craptastic MMR system out of Hawken and slap on a working server browser that allows sorting (i.e. by ping), and keeping a fav. server list while retaining the friends list. Stupid simple and old school, no MMR restrictions or controlled "skill environments" to coddle players. You could have COMP servers, newb servers (which vets would probably flock too like any online game out there 
... ) and everything in-between. Too bad this game is likely too far gone for that to ever work...
Your point is accurate, but introducting a delay is also the intent. The surprise noobs are in for when they first play against veterans will be much larger if it's before they hit level 15 or 30 or whatever. Delaying that exposure sgives them more time to develop skills and unlock mechs so that when they're pitted against veterans, they don't misintrepret the skill gap to be a result of P2W or poor balance. People tend to avoid what they don't understand. We need to give them a chance to settle in before really sticking it to them.
It'd be like exposing 3rd graders to calculus in their education curriculum. Something that unfamiliar and imposing can be disheartening. On the other hand, if the learning curve is more gradual then fewer students (or players) will feel overwhelmed. We don't have the population to do a smooth learning curve, but that doesn't mean that we don't have some stop-gap options like level segregation at our disposal.
That's what I'd see the intent being, but I've seen this tried in NS2, and it didn't work. People got accustomed to a certain level of play / player community, and as soon as they reached that threashold, they were dumped into the general population with all the elite players to be slaughtered. A few stayed, most apparently left. That game is now only doing slightly better than Hawken despite its VERY dedicated long time community members and price discounting from bargain-bin prices to bargain-bin on !!clearance!! (of which, the player count boosts are getting smaller and smaller).
Though, let's say RLD walled new players off from the general population in Hawken completely, how long do you keep new players in the "kiddie pool"? How do you ease them into the much more competitive environment with the long-time Hawken "vets"? If you dump them into the general queue "cold turkey" you're still going to get P2W and hackusations, and they'll only have more hours to their name to think they're more justified in their accusations as if it mattered to anyone else.
If you're not careful, the proposed system would be more like passing a student from one grade to the next even if they fail everything all the while. Or worse, have them skip from 3rd grade all the way to college, regardless of any form of proficiency or lack thereof.
.. what happens to the people in the regular queue while the first batch of new players are still working their way out of the walled-garden for new players cutting off the flow of new players into said regular queue? What happens if people start cycling through accounts to STAY there? I'm thinking there will be some similarities between this solution and the previously tried hard limits to MMR ranges.
Edited by ATX22, 28 October 2016 - 08:01 PM.
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