36 replies to this topic

[Vlad Ward]

ELO is awesome because I can have matches like this and still have a ton of fun:

[MischiefSC]

Ophidian, on 22 February 2013 - 08:20 PM, said:

Ok, I think I understand your logic, but that still leaves me with the issue with dropping with sub-par teams in the mean time. Because who actually wants to lose continuously for long periods of time just to make a game work?

Unless you're advising me to join those who DC immediately, which I simply will not do.

Really, if they wanted to do this to us, they should have at least wiped all stats so that everyone started on level ground. I thought they said they were going to do that?

The point is to play with people less skilled with you. Group with some newer players, get some friends to join. Don't worry so much about win/loss, play with some new builds or mechs in the same weight class you normally play in. The point isn't to get curb-stomped - it's to win/lose about 50% while grouped with less experienced folks. This'll drag your ELO down further.

Or are you saying the problem is that you're dropping with people who are too incompetent? It may be the same solution in its way; I'm noticing a lot of people who are clearly out of their league but are not inexperienced. Expect these people to get crushed down into their proper place. Are you doing well but still losing because your teammates are dense or are you just running into well organized teams of steamrolling death?

[Ophidian]

MischiefSC, on 22 February 2013 - 08:25 PM, said:

The point is to play with people less skilled with you. Group with some newer players, get some friends to join. Don't worry so much about win/loss, play with some new builds or mechs in the same weight class you normally play in. The point isn't to get curb-stomped - it's to win/lose about 50% while grouped with less experienced folks. This'll drag your ELO down further.

Or are you saying the problem is that you're dropping with people who are too incompetent? It may be the same solution in its way; I'm noticing a lot of people who are clearly out of their league but are not inexperienced. Expect these people to get crushed down into their proper place. Are you doing well but still losing because your teammates are dense or are you just running into well organized teams of steamrolling death?

It's kind of both, really. I don't know if they're incompetent, but rather that they are plain suicidal or playing to lose. I don't really understand how the two sides can be so polarized in this fashion.

I'll keep trying, but it can be extremely frustrating at times. This should been better implemented.
Perhaps what makes this even more irritating is the fact that it is going on during a c-bill boosting event. I've been waiting all this time to really put my hero Flame to good use to farm cbills, and now I can't even get much due to pugstomping.

Edited by Ophidian, 22 February 2013 - 08:41 PM.

[Lynx7725]

MischiefSC, on 22 February 2013 - 08:22 PM, said:

Play longer. Whatever method of playing (for you grouping) that's not matching right you need to play a bunch and it sounds like lose a bunch with your friends so that it lowers your Elo score. The problem is that your team is playing at a level above their skill. It might be you and one of the others who are dragging the average up while the other two are dead weight when you play as a team. If it's bumping you into the range of competitive teams then yeah - you need to have a lower team average or you're going to get hammered. Elo can and will fix it just that changes in score are slow. Be patient with it and realize that you will eventually settle out at a 50/50 point where it's a solid and enjoyable challenge just about every game.

Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, we normally have a good heavy guy who knows how to make use of his mech, we get a guy who yells "BANANAS!" and go charging off somewhere with an AC20, then you get me who's not the greatest in the world and another friend who scores 25 damage in an Awesome (he's working on that one but he's also been complimented as the most annoying Spider ever...). So yeah, it definitely feels like we were over our heads going into fights that the current ELO scores toss us into.

The issue is that it's likely never to resolve. Why? My perspective is that since we both PUG and group, the guy that's good will continue to have a good ELO score because he plays PUG and do well there, while myself and the rest are likely to stagnate unless we really skill up. So when we group, the combined ELO score will still likely be higher than what is actually representative. So we'll still end up getting into games that we will be in over our heads.

So will we end up in a situation where we tell the good guy "Hey look you're too good for us, we don't want you in our group now"? Or the least performing "Hey look you're not pulling your weight, we won't play with you any more"? Neither feels correct, really.

The other aspect is, there are days that a group might just want to pew-pew for fun and games, and nights when everyone is just trying to be murderous Black Widows. My concern is that the ELO system is (implicitly and perhaps unintentionally) pushing for a more Black-Widow gaming style, in which case when we want to pew-pew, MWO won't be the game we want to start.

The thing that might make a difference is the banding that the matchmaker applies. If the banding is relatively insensitive, say, the matchmaker will try to set up a match that has an ELO difference of 100, then curbstomps will happen. If the banding is hypersensitive (ELO difference of 10), then the wait for games might be very long. This needs a period of tuning, so we just have to be patient.

Personally, I think the ELO system needs a bit more transparency. I'm not in favour of full disclosure because there are people who will game the system just to get kicks out of it, but I'd like to know the factors that impact on my ELO score. Is Mech variant a factor? Mech weight? Weapons choice? etc? That way, at least when I'm in a group I can select something appropriate that doesn't get us into too high an ELO band, so that we all can have fun and not curbstomped by some uber group.

[MischiefSC]

Lynx7725, on 22 February 2013 - 08:47 PM, said:

Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, we normally have a good heavy guy who knows how to make use of his mech, we get a guy who yells "BANANAS!" and go charging off somewhere with an AC20, then you get me who's not the greatest in the world and another friend who scores 25 damage in an Awesome (he's working on that one but he's also been complimented as the most annoying Spider ever...). So yeah, it definitely feels like we were over our heads going into fights that the current ELO scores toss us into.

The issue is that it's likely never to resolve. Why? My perspective is that since we both PUG and group, the guy that's good will continue to have a good ELO score because he plays PUG and do well there, while myself and the rest are likely to stagnate unless we really skill up. So when we group, the combined ELO score will still likely be higher than what is actually representative. So we'll still end up getting into games that we will be in over our heads.

So will we end up in a situation where we tell the good guy "Hey look you're too good for us, we don't want you in our group now"? Or the least performing "Hey look you're not pulling your weight, we won't play with you any more"? Neither feels correct, really.

The other aspect is, there are days that a group might just want to pew-pew for fun and games, and nights when everyone is just trying to be murderous Black Widows. My concern is that the ELO system is (implicitly and perhaps unintentionally) pushing for a more Black-Widow gaming style, in which case when we want to pew-pew, MWO won't be the game we want to start.

The thing that might make a difference is the banding that the matchmaker applies. If the banding is relatively insensitive, say, the matchmaker will try to set up a match that has an ELO difference of 100, then curbstomps will happen. If the banding is hypersensitive (ELO difference of 10), then the wait for games might be very long. This needs a period of tuning, so we just have to be patient.

Personally, I think the ELO system needs a bit more transparency. I'm not in favour of full disclosure because there are people who will game the system just to get kicks out of it, but I'd like to know the factors that impact on my ELO score. Is Mech variant a factor? Mech weight? Weapons choice? etc? That way, at least when I'm in a group I can select something appropriate that doesn't get us into too high an ELO band, so that we all can have fun and not curbstomped by some uber group.

Good questions and good concerns.

Let me start by saying I've got no more clue about how Elo works than anyone else. This is just my speculation based on what the Devs have made public.

The game is great for pew pew pew, the problem is that you can't be guaranteed of still winning in pewpewpew matches. It's going to reward skilled and organized play. It HAS to.

Your problem though isn't the crappy guy, it's the really good guy, Fortunately though there's a solution for you to. It's tied to the answer to the last paragraph.

We know that Elo is different for each mech weight class. So if your friend is very good with an Assault mech then when you group have him pilot a Medium or Light. Whatever he sucks the most in. It'll take his Elo for that weight class into account. He is the issue; he's buffing your Elo into a range well outside your two ******** friends ability to perform.

Does that make sense? You don't need to ditch your two goofy friends you need to gimp your really skilled one. He's the one putting you into games you shouldn't play in. If he and you are dragging your friends up into the competitive team play range then yeah. You're going to get eaten alive.

Down in the regular and skilled pug range you don't get much in the way of competitive teams it's mostly just skilled pugs and it's a hell of a lot of fun. Every match is a proper bloodbath. Even when one side only has 1 or 2 losses the survivors are generally only held together by hope and bailing wire. It's a lot of fun.

Give it a try, see if it helps.

[Star Captain Obvious Kerensky]

Elo is not really meant to apply with a team game With random players. When there is enough players in the queue the elo matchmaker works as intended. Other times it is Taking the average of an elite player and a novice, putting them on the same team and expecting a balanced match against two average players. Unfortunately human skill and coordination does not work that way.

4 High elo player on a 4 man premade team are going to crush four Equally high but Uncoordinated pug players most of the time.

Eventually the top elo bracket is nothing but elite 4man premades, its fun, but at that level of involvement you may as well do 8 man games.

[Lynx7725]

MischiefSC, on 22 February 2013 - 08:56 PM, said:

You don't need to ditch your two goofy friends you need to gimp your really skilled one. He's the one putting you into games you shouldn't play in. If he and you are dragging your friends up into the competitive team play range then yeah. You're going to get eaten alive.

Heh. Don't get me wrong as I understand what you are saying. It's just that.. eh, it sounds like we need to play a meta game about group composition before we get into a game in which the group shoots things. A bit too Inception-ish for me man.

It's just that it seems -- and this is from a certain perspective only, of course -- that a good player is sort of being punished for wanting to stick with a mech/ weight class that he is happy or familiar with, if he is being grouped with others not in his ELO range. Worse, he is indirectly punishing his teammates too, by pulling them up into fights they are way over their heads in. I'm fairly sure this isn't the intent of the implementation, but may just end up as a consequence.

End of it all, there's a whiff that the game is putting itself in front of the players. A sense that the game expect its players to only play by certain rules, beyond which it's a cliff -- you step off and bounce all the way down to the bottom (happened to me on Alpine incidentally... great way to avoid LRMs BTW). Not sure how true that is honestly. I am honestly willing to give the ELO system time to bed in, just that right now is the "rocky start" portion of things.. that's why it's a Beta, I suppose.

Don't get me wrong, I think ELO is good for certain ranking, but the basic concepts (when I explored it previously for an unrelated project) doesn't seem to apply here very well. It may be as Eldragon says, it doesn't apply well to semi-random groups, as the ELO system simply has no way to determine if a "fluid" group is well-coordinated or just a random bunch of target boards.

[MischiefSC]

Lynx7725, on 22 February 2013 - 09:17 PM, said:

Heh. Don't get me wrong as I understand what you are saying. It's just that.. eh, it sounds like we need to play a meta game about group composition before we get into a game in which the group shoots things. A bit too Inception-ish for me man.

It's just that it seems -- and this is from a certain perspective only, of course -- that a good player is sort of being punished for wanting to stick with a mech/ weight class that he is happy or familiar with, if he is being grouped with others not in his ELO range. Worse, he is indirectly punishing his teammates too, by pulling them up into fights they are way over their heads in. I'm fairly sure this isn't the intent of the implementation, but may just end up as a consequence.

End of it all, there's a whiff that the game is putting itself in front of the players. A sense that the game expect its players to only play by certain rules, beyond which it's a cliff -- you step off and bounce all the way down to the bottom (happened to me on Alpine incidentally... great way to avoid LRMs BTW). Not sure how true that is honestly. I am honestly willing to give the ELO system time to bed in, just that right now is the "rocky start" portion of things.. that's why it's a Beta, I suppose.

Don't get me wrong, I think ELO is good for certain ranking, but the basic concepts (when I explored it previously for an unrelated project) doesn't seem to apply here very well. It may be as Eldragon says, it doesn't apply well to semi-random groups, as the ELO system simply has no way to determine if a "fluid" group is well-coordinated or just a random bunch of target boards.

I absolutely get what you're saying but what it's really doing is protecting other players. If you guys dropped in lower Elo you and your skilled friend would be absolutely STOMPING the people that your two other friends could beat.

This should be perfectly clear - Elo is there to protect new and average players from elite or even just very skilled players. It's not there just to keep games fun and balanced but to eliminate pug stomping - which it has. If you're getting stomped it's because you're no newbie pug OR you spend a lot of time playing with people well above your skill level.

You're stuck in a frustrating situation and I totally get that. The problem though is that you're trying to group hugely separate Elo scores. In order to prevent high end players from dropping with a couple of friends with alt accounts for a nice 4 man pug stomp 'like back in the days' what happens instead is those newbie friends end up playing in Elitesville.

There isn't an easy fix. Either your two bad friends need to get better First, get the one out of the Awesome. Get him an Atlas - it's terribly forgiving. D-DC, AC20, 2LLs and 3xSRM6. 320 standard engine and Endo. He'll live longer, do more damage, amble up to fights and explode in peoples faces until they drag him down like wolves on a buffalo. An Awesome is an artists mech. The other guy needs a C1 splatcat. You can run off and be a ****** in one and still spread the havoc around.

Otherwise... well, you unfortunately are in the margins because of your situation. Something's got to change though because unless you group all the time it's not going to change on its own.

[Arrson]

Stoicblitzer, on 22 February 2013 - 06:44 PM, said:

elo started churning after feb 5 patch. all w/l before that don't count.and i feel your pain but there are more good matches than before. you gotta admit that.

not a chance. I have had very few good matches since the patch.

[Ophidian]

Like I said before, I don't understand why they didn't just wipe out everyone's stats and had everyone start from zero. It seems to me like it would have solved a lot of problems.

I suppose because they think some people want to keep their scores?

[Ghost_19Hz]

Let me preface by saying the fun part is killing enemy mechs and winning.

First, team based ELO in an environment where your team is never the same people is flawed right now and may be impossible to successfully implement. Now,

Any ELO should improve the experience of the "lesser skilled" players as they will have an increased chance to win, closer to 50% which is higher than what they would normally experience.

Any ELO should reduce the experience of the "more skilled" players as they will have an increased chance to lose, closer to 50%, which is lower than what they would normally experience.

Any ELO shouldn't change much of the experience for the "average" player as they will have the same chance to win/lose, close to their already 50%, which is what they would normally experience anyway.

So, that means if you are good at this game, ELO will make it less fun for you, unless you are in the top 1%. If you are bad, it will make it more fun, esp. if you are near the bottom 1%.

Which begs the question, improve new player experience at the cost of veteran players? Sure yes, if we want a revolving door policy for customers. B/C lets be honest, the players you are "protecting" the noobs from with ELO are far and few between, so why do it?

[slayerkdm]

I only PUG, my win/loss hovers constantly at 50/50, as it should. Just like WOT, you simply cannot hope for a big win % if you are pugging. That being said, you cant blame it all on your teammates. If you talke to them like you do express yourself here, I doubt they care to listen.

This game is a pretty fun distraction, if you are looking for a game where you can by time or great skill rise among the ranks, Im not sure this is it for you.

Gl.

[MischiefSC]

PythonCPT, on 22 February 2013 - 10:28 PM, said:

Let me preface by saying the fun part is killing enemy mechs and winning.

First, team based ELO in an environment where your team is never the same people is flawed right now and may be impossible to successfully implement. Now,

Any ELO should improve the experience of the "lesser skilled" players as they will have an increased chance to win, closer to 50% which is higher than what they would normally experience.

Any ELO should reduce the experience of the "more skilled" players as they will have an increased chance to lose, closer to 50%, which is lower than what they would normally experience.

Any ELO shouldn't change much of the experience for the "average" player as they will have the same chance to win/lose, close to their already 50%, which is what they would normally experience anyway.

So, that means if you are good at this game, ELO will make it less fun for you, unless you are in the top 1%. If you are bad, it will make it more fun, esp. if you are near the bottom 1%.

Which begs the question, improve new player experience at the cost of veteran players? Sure yes, if we want a revolving door policy for customers. B/C lets be honest, the players you are "protecting" the noobs from with ELO are far and few between, so why do it?

The only way it makes the game 'less fun' for veteran players is if their fun is in beating less skilled players.

Veterans should be dropping against people of comparable skill so they get a challenging match.

So if what you're looking for is winning against less skilled people then no, Elo is not going to make the game enjoyable for you. Nor should it since making the game fun for you involves making it less fun for everyone else.

[Fooooo]

If you didn't play much if at all when they started the seeding, and still havent played much, then you are most likely starting from the stock elo.

Which I think is 1300 ??

All new players who create accounts, or players playing a class for the first time (they didnt use them when pre-seeding was going on etc) will start in this tier afaik. (You will see players spraying lasers upon spawn, asking questions only a new player would, getting shot in the back at spawn, and generally noobishness )

Once you play more, if you werent a new player , you should get out of this teir easily.


If you played a lot during the pre-seeding (solo) then your elo should be somewhat close to where it should be....generally....that could mean you are playing against premades, or your still at the bottom....

If you grouped a lot during the pre-seeding you will most likely be starting in the higher teirs, which would mean better opponents and possibly facing more 4 - 8 mans.

Edited by Fooooo, 22 February 2013 - 11:17 PM.

[Ophidian]

After a crapload of fights, it seems to have equalized. Skills seem to be more on-par with peers. Thanks.

[Death Mallet]

Ophidian, on 22 February 2013 - 07:32 PM, said:

I don't know if it's ELO. I don't know if it's PPCs with less heat.

What I do know is that before this point, I would at least get a kill each match. Usually 3. Sometimes even 5. That's not bragging, that's just averages.
Since this patch, I have had a total of zero kills. Zero. You understand? We're talking 30-40 games.

And I die in seconds now, and I mean that without exaggeration. Is this how its going to be until my kill/death or win/loss ratio equalizes? Because that's going to take a long time and I don't think I want to deal with that.

What is it? Am I just getting thrown up against higher skilled premades now? Sure seems to be, given all the Founders and faction tags on the opposing teams. Could it be that, for whatever reason, the game keeps slapping me on teams with players who disconnect, go afk, or just have some deep seated need to die in the first 30 seconds? Could be, given how frequently that happens, but don't ask me how THAT works. Could it be pure bad luck? Yes. Sure could be. But it's highly improbable that luck suddenly chose to kick me up the backside right after the patch. That's unlikely to be coincidence.

Sorry, raging slightly at the moment. Hopefully it'll pass.

I play nothing but solo, and I've been doing fine. I hate to say it dude, but I think you just suck.

Playing in a team has been propping you up because a team of bad players that can at least communicate will beat a team of decent players who don't communicate every time.

Stick to your premades, and leave the Lone Wolfing to the people who can handle it.

[Ophidian]

Death Mallet, on 23 February 2013 - 11:37 PM, said:

I play nothing but solo, and I've been doing fine. I hate to say it dude, but I think you just suck.

Playing in a team has been propping you up because a team of bad players that can at least communicate will beat a team of decent players who don't communicate every time.

Stick to your premades, and leave the Lone Wolfing to the people who can handle it.

I'm back to 3 kills a match. You don't read.