All right lets continue to reorient this wayward train.
4v4 Pub stompings are a problem, and I often would prefer to be playing 2v2. If you are reading this and we just kicked the crap out of a novice lobby 4v4 then my vote what to do next is almost always 2v2 matches (sometimes I just want to Crazy King, but don't be surprised if I join the enemy and try and drag some of you with me). Okay so sometimes I want a good 4v4 match though and I want to fly with at least a couple of communicative allies. Often I will join these things are part of the doomed opposition (especially crazy king where one well positioned squid can make the enemies life miserable). Sometimes I'm not in the mood.
For me the fun part of 4v4 is often the increased difficulty of commanding and controlling 4 ships at once. I've had great games with low level ally pilots against stacked lobbies just because those allies, while noobish were willing to listen and position their ships (and the stacked side of stacked lobbies never see that first engagement coming). A partial solution to this problem might be for more experienced folks to embrace this challenge.
Unfortunately I can see a few reason why more don't. Some players are asses, and I think more novice players are asses because the co-operative element of GoI tends to filter out uncooperative players. There is a correlation between being an ass, and being uncooperative. Being an ass leads to being uncooperative, being uncooperative leads to poorly positioned and run ships, poorly positioned and run ships lead to defeat, defeat leads to going back to first person shooters. Something, something, dark side.
That said other novice players don't have the importance of communication drilled into them and they don't understand why they are losing. I would like better tutorials, especially ones that made it clear losing and not working as part of a team are basically homologous. That said if you think that will be a magic bullet you are dreaming, but I don't think anyone here is so deluded. This is a complex problem which will need lots of small complex solutions.
At the moment new players think they are losing to experienced pilots with a ship full of novices because that pilot is somehow magically making the ship better. Experienced pilots make a difference, but they aren't magic, they are just keeping their crews informed and managing expectations sensibly. The 40+ next to the name don't make the ship turn no faster.
I don't think it is an obligation (if you don't want to go through the patient process of teaching different folks effectively then don't), but some players are very good at getting the novices up to speed, when they are willing to listen. I also judge these teachers by how effectively that can work with varied raw materials. Some players I know will generally do badly with a random selection of novice players. They can only teach certain types of folk. Others seem able to work with almost anyone. Kamoba would be an example of a pilot I still consider a threat even with a novice crew I don't recognize.
I don't think the problem is the matchmaker either, I think the matchmaker just doesn't and cannot solve the problem of balancing vet heavy matches.
Certainly this is true for my experiences. I have half the regulars friended now and I never get invited to a lobby I couldn't see anyway. If I wanted to ignore matchmaker and do things the way they were before I can. Nothing has really changed for me. I also suspect that while matchmaker utterly fails when faced with vets it is very successful with novice players, especially during sales when it probably helps with player retention. You cant balance 8 of the 12 veteran players online with the remaining 4 already in a match however hard you try, but you can balance 600 novices.
I don't think by and large vets intentionally go pub stomping, at least not often. Experienced players always seem happy when the matchmaker actually gives up a lobby with 16 experienced folks. It is like Christmas, in that it is fun and only comes once a year. Rest of the time you just do what you can. The problem there isn't much I can do. If I have a lobby where my allies are new but polite (perhaps even asking for advice), one of the other ships is responsive to suggestions and the third ship is crewed by morons who react to players saying things like "you probably don't want two gunners" with "shut up your teh ghey" then I already know the match outcome and there is nothing anyone, not me, or matchmaker or Kevin Bacon can do to fix it. Whatever team they are on will get crushed.
As to Rowho's point about pubstomping for XP. I really don't know anyone who does that, maybe there are some, his claim just requires one to exist so I can believe that. I always observe other reasons for this kind of behaviour. I think vets pub stomp because they want to play with their friends and are sick of uncommunicative allies, of players that don't play as a team. 4v4 is very bad for this because if there are 2-3 open slots I know odds are very good one of those open slots is going to be filled either by someone who is silent, or someone who is an abusive ass. Rowho, you and I have intentionally balanced such lobbies in the past and we suffered exactly this fate.
As for how to deal with novice players who are asses. I'm pretty sure trolling them is not the answer. If someone gets abusive I might join your enemy and aim to make the next game quick and brutal, but I'm not about to intentionally sabotage you as your ally. First it wastes my time and second that would be a breach of the community standard, and for a good reason.
Some have said playing with novices is never fun. This may be true for them, but I have lots of fun with new players. I've had frustrating times too. We all have different objectives when we play the game, and I think we are all a bit prone to assume those objectives are universal. They are not. I get a kick out of teaching a new player how to engi the main deck of a pyra. Some folks get frustrated the first time someone hits the main engine from the poop deck. Neither experience / reaction is invalid, but how we go about obtaining or avoiding those experiences matters.
As to my philosophy with the novices. They are like a car, no wait, this isn't Slashdot. I like to think there are two different approaches and you need a bit of both. You need to treat people like people with aims and desires and goals. And you need to treat them like cogs in a machine. You are trying to let everyone be their own type of cog that will work well together.
No wait, I have a better one. Novice players are like metaphors, and you need to torture them until...
No wait, that is definitely wrong.
