Free Lobbies allow two groups of 12 players (24 players total) to group up and sync together. The map is set to random and you are still using the 3 lights, 3 mediums, 3 heavies, 3 assaults system also referred to as 3/3/3/3.
Premium lobbies allow for much more user control over the lobby settings. You are able to select game mode, the map, tonnage rules, if you are playing with full teams, match time and even lock the view mode. This lobby does not have to follow the 3/3/3/3 rule and can accommodate anywhere from 2 players all the way up to 24.
So unless we have 24, we can't have a SimHQ-only night in a free room. We'll need to go premium with one player on each team. I guess that won't affect us much. I'm curious to see how the balanced drop classes will change gameplay.
A couple of interesting things in the patch notes:
The following configuration variables have been exposed for tuning in your user.cfg file. To add these to your user.cfg file navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Piranha Games\MechWarrior Online (or your custom installation location) and if it doesn't exist, create a file user.cfg containing these settings as desired. Don't forget to set the value desired.
They have already turned off 3/3/3/3. Not sure when the hotfix is inbound.
that's predictable.
When 75% of the players are running Victors or Highlanders and the other 25% are running CTF-3D, what did they think was going to happen?
I guess it was worth than that. People were trying to drop in lights and mediums and not getting matches. PGI stated there was a bug causing the problem. Must have been a new bug introduced after the public test. 3/3/3/3 was working fine then...
Joining rounds as a medium (H-4P) has worked fine for me this afternoon.
I think they put in a temporary hotfix that took away the Assault|Conquest|Skirmish game type option to resolve the bug and made the 3/3/3/3 work fine.
I bought 7 days since it's on sale for less than buying 3 days right now. Not too happy that I can't choose my game type for public matches now. I always run assault when I PUG.
Joining rounds as a medium (H-4P) has worked fine for me this afternoon.
I think they put in a temporary hotfix that took away the Assault|Conquest|Skirmish game type option to resolve the bug and made the 3/3/3/3 work fine.
Nice to see less assaults in the rounds.
The loss of the ability to choose what type of match is a known bug that they couldn't fix before patch day.
Sometime around 1 they turned 3333 off. I've seen nothing in the forums saying they turned it back on.
If they didn't have any kind of balance function working, and we did see more than 3 assaults per team several times, it was still interesting to see the variety of mechs out there tonight. Maybe people took it on themselves to try something different? It was pretty nice in general. Not a perfect 3/3/3/3, but pretty well balanced teams, even if not by design.
As for SRM's, Kludger said he couldn't wait to tell you all about them.
that's predictable.