41 replies to this topic

[7 Nation Army]

When ELO was first introduced I started to notice that my matches were actually somewhat balanced. Bothe teams would duke it out and both teams would get a few kills, one slightly more than the other. This was great and I thought that the game was headed in a good direction as fasr as team skill balance.

However that changed quickly. Im not exactly sure where I sit ELO wise, but imlosing about 80% of my matches now where before I had a positive chance of winning.

I would consider myself a skilled player and fair player at that, almost always placing on the top half of the scoreboard with respectible scores. But as of late im almost always 1st or 2nd on my team with average damage. I am consistently getting paired with teamates that struggle to break the 150 damage mark under regular considtions.

Also, those nice balanced mathes I had earlier are a thing of the past. I would say that 75-85% of the matches I play are a complete stomp on one side or the other. As a semi-casual player I find this quite frustrating. My skill no longer seems to be a factor. Im not trying to brag but I feel as though I am out damaging my teamates consistently in smaller less offensive mechs that shouldnt be beating stalkers, atlases and LRM boats.

I would conplain about this but I know that lots of people and lots of my friends that are also high-skill players are feeling the same pinch.

I suppose the Idea behind the ELO matching is to bring everyone to a 1, make everyone equal so theres a 50-50 chance of winning/losing. I would have to say that this is infact contradictive and unfair. Purposly deciding the opponents based on skill is not the right way to go about balancing teams. The lack of weight matching is also a serious issue. It doent matter how good I am in my hunchback or centurion when I am faced against and atlas DDC or stalker.

The game was more evenly balanced when the teams were matched based soley on weight class. That is how tournamnets are organized becasue, its the fairest way to match teams. At the moment this game is discouraging skilled gameplay and rewarding low skill players by making things easy for them. This has become such a problem for some players that I have heard of people creating new accounts because it has become so difficult for them to win that they no longer have fun.

Nobody wants to win all the time but a good player should have the chance to prove himself in a random arena of opponents matched by weight.

I hope PGI is aware of this issue, im sure they have invested much time and money into the ELO "balancing" but maybe its not right for this game.

[Caboose30]

Right there with you buddy. About a third of the time we'll have a nice even match with really intense fighting. It's over fast, but it's always a close call, with one person left on one team or another. The rest of the time it's a full blown roflstomp, either my team getting mashed and the other team losing 0-2 mechs, or vice versa. When your entire team dies in a minute, it's frustrating. When the entire enemy team dies in a minute, it's boring. I think that the class-for-class rule needs to be put in along with ELO. That way the number of assaults or lights on a team is always mirrored by another team, and that will greatly even things out. In fact, take it one step further and go ECM-for-ECM. One team has four ECM mechs, the other team gets four too.

Also, I'm pretty sure I read that 8-man premades are being allowed to fight PUGs. I thought this was specifically and deliberately eliminated *months* ago because it was deemed unfair.. and now it's back? Limiting the skill level of your PUG and pitting them against an 8-man group that all have voice communication still isn't fair.

[Mechteric]

I think weight matching is the only real problem (of course ECM may fit in there as well, but I have a feeling that will get changed soon enough anyway).

As for "stomps" well lets just say those can happen even if the team's weights are balanced, it happens all the time in league gameplay where one team happens to get better positioning and acts on it appropriately.

[Syllogy]

7 Nation Army, on 27 March 2013 - 06:47 AM, said:

Nobody wants to win all the time

... I do...

[John MatriX82]

Weight matching is a big part of the problem, and gets more dreadful especially when you group play.

I do agree that in the first days of ELO, its perfomance was quite interesting, with several matches ending up in close wins or close losses.

However it's weeks and weeks that I either stomp the enemy team or I get stomped by the other team, roughly 4 times out of 5. The 5th part is made of challenging losses or wins. Of those 4 out of 5 times, let's say that there's a majority of teams stomping me with huge ECM majority and weight advantage that ranges from 100 to even 250 tons more.

The latter makes me feel that I always have to bring in heavies or assaults to make a difference, whenever I'm on mediums you can do all the wonders you want but if the other team brawls you with an Atlas and a Cataphract more in terms of weight (and often they have 2 atlases and 1 medium) skill isn't the main factor.

I can accept that a high ELO player in a medium might be paired up against a lower skill player bringing in a heavy, but imho some sort of battlevalue/weighting consideration should be used to improve the matchmaker.

Without mentioning disconnects or 8 vs 6 matches, that should be addressed by kicking in missing players also during the start-up sequence.

Edited by John MatriX82, 27 March 2013 - 07:52 AM.

[QuantumButler]

Another problem seems to be that, to quote someone else.


The worst part is: you only lose ELO when you're in "they will probably win" team and you lose. if you're in the weaker team you don't lose elo due to defeat and therefore you're stuck in this positive elohell. Forever.

So a lot of people who farmed up high elo via premades and etc who aren't really skilled enough to be where they are are just stuck in elo hell.

the ride never ends.

[Hauser]

QuantumButler, on 27 March 2013 - 07:56 AM, said:

Another problem seems to be that, to quote someone else.

The worst part is: you only lose ELO when you're in "they will probably win" team and you lose. if you're in the weaker team you don't lose elo due to defeat and therefore you're stuck in this positive elohell. Forever.

So a lot of people who farmed up high elo via premades and etc who aren't really skilled enough to be where they are are just stuck in elo hell.

the ride never ends.

I can't make heads or tails of this. Regardless of rating, there are four possible outcomes for your rating.

Case 1: Matchmaker expects team to win, team wins => No change in Elo.
Case 2: Matchmaker expects team to win, team loses => Elo rating adjusted down.
Case 3: Matchmaker expects team to lose, team wins => Elo rating adjusted up.
Case 4: Matchmaker expects team to lose, team loses => Elo rating not changed.

You can only get stuck if you're always in the better team and winning or if you're in the worse team and losing. Both seem about right but neither is what you described.

[Ransack]

My deal with ELO is, that I have no clue what my rank is. When I solo drop, I do OK. Not to many roll overs, for the most part competitive with the occasional steamroll one way or the other. As soon I group up though everything changes, and the steamrolls will increase or never happen depending on who I am grouped with. It leaves me wondering if I am getting pushed up or down a bracket when I'm teamed. Probably up, but I have no way of knowing. Pretty frustrating for me.

[SgtKinCaiD]

Hauser, you are stuck in it because the matchmaking make sure you get a 50/50 ratio of WL.

[Ransack]

Syllogy, on 27 March 2013 - 07:47 AM, said:

... I do...

Honesty


Refreshing

[WinnieTheWhor]

So here's what happens with ELO in most cases: your first ~300 matches are going to put you within about 100 points of where you ~should~ be, so it looks something like this

If the scale for ELO in MWO is 0-2000, where you lose or gain between 5-15 points a match, you'll end up leveling out in a range between those to values, like 1500-1600 assuming your skill level doesn't increase.

I believe this implementation of ELO is lossless as well, which means there's only so many points that can be earned.(You can never drop below zero or go above 2000, for example. Winning a game takes points from other players)

Once you settle, you should have a 50/50 win loss, give or take a few %.

HOWEVER:

If you win a bunch of matches in a row, it increases your ELO to a value higher than what you're used to, meaning more skilled players. So eventually what happens is, you lose a bunch of games, which sucks, but then you get into an environment where people are about the same skill as you and it breaks even.

[MadCat02]

ELO is never balanced . Look at LEAgue of legends . 3 years and match making still sucks

[WinnieTheWhor]

MadCat02, on 27 March 2013 - 09:33 AM, said:

ELO is never balanced . Look at LEAgue of legends . 3 years and match making still sucks

Someone is mad that they're not diamond.

[MuadXDib]

"Skill-balanced gameplay is unbalanced"

[MrWhite]

Perhaps take into account ECM and weight into the match maker? I really don't know, but what I do no is it is entirely possible to get paired with a team of 4 DDC's 2 Stalkers and 2 Raven 3L's with a mixed back of dragons and centurions. Also what seems to be going on is you can get matched with a team that all has an above average ELO if you have say 3 guys with a really high ELO but 5 guys who have been playing a week, because it will just average out... Usually it'll end in a quick stomp on one side or the other (usually on the side with the low ELO players) and a "GG"... how is that a good game? I think a good game is one where 6 or 7 people on both sides are watching two skilled players dual it out in the final minutes of the game, something close and exciting. Those are the ones I remember... I don't remember the stomps at all other then the jokes we crack over coms saying "wow their DDC only did 80 points of damage them guys got rolled"

When I first started playing this game during closed beta I got stomped ALOT, and to be frank the only thing that kept me coming back was that I'm a long time vet to the MW franchise, have been around since the Grand Council in Mech2... and I had just spent the cash on this founders package. A new player just picking up a F2P game and debating if he wants to toss 5 bucks at it to buy a couple mech bays isn't going to stick around they will get frustrated and look for the next F2P game to play and chances are they will not be back. The founders and hard core fan base of this game are not going to be enough to sustain it.

Edited by MrWhite, 27 March 2013 - 10:12 AM.

[focuspark]

'nuff said.

[Comassion]

We should leave ECM out of the matchmaker - the fact that a 1.5 ton piece of equipment is being discussed as something the matchmaker needs to take into account is just further evidence that it's not currently a well-balanced piece of equipment. We should construct the matchmaker with an eye towards the day when ECM is more or less worth 1.5 tons on a 'mech.

I definitely approve of the matchmaker using some form of weight balancing, perhaps more by straight tonnage than by weight class. I'd love to see more incentive to take a Commando over a Jenner, for instance.

[FromHell2k]

focuspark, on 27 March 2013 - 11:08 AM, said:

'nuff said.

...




B2T: http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__2114423

Same problem. Almost at least. Something is going terrible wrong with ELO

[focuspark]

FromHell2k, on 27 March 2013 - 11:12 AM, said:

...




B2T: http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__2114423

Same problem. Almost at least. Something is going terrible wrong with ELO

I'll bet the ELO worked perfectly, but unforutately ELO is designed for 1-on-1 scenarios, like Chess - not for team games. It the scenario where an 4 players with ELO score of 2000 get matched against 8 players with ELO score of 1000. The sums workout, but the match is unbalance because number of mechs matters more.

Also... we can't see the weight class of those mechs - knowing that help a little.

Edited by focuspark, 27 March 2013 - 12:31 PM.

[Mechteric]

FromHell2k, on 27 March 2013 - 11:12 AM, said:

...




B2T: http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__2114423

Same problem. Almost at least. Something is going terrible wrong with ELO

That there was almost certainly a 4 man group who removed Alpine from their rotation by modifying their game files. That's nothing to do with Elo and may even be bannable. Fortunately I think they will be making it impossible to do this next patch?

Edited by CapperDeluxe, 27 March 2013 - 12:34 PM.