36 replies to this topic

[senaiboy]

There seems to be a rise in new players recently - evident from the Trial mechs they are using and the clueless piloting

Issue is, why are they being placed against experienced players? I was just in a match where a PPC Stalker basically obliterated 4 Cataphract-4Xs (trial mechs I presume). I know the Stalker is a good player because he turned around instantly when I fired at him and his aim was very good (my Blackjack got shot running at 70kph and jumpjetting after being exposed for only 2 seconds while trying to flank him).

I guess it's due to a lack of players, anyone else seeing this?

Edited by senaiboy, 08 June 2013 - 09:20 AM.

[MacKerris]

yes

though any reason players might give for it would be purely guessing.

[Stormwolf]

I'm probably saying this for the trillionth time, but we really need a stock mode. New players in trial mechs get slaughtered by min maxed rides while fans of the setting can't run around in canon builds and be viable.

[Snowcrow]

Stormwolf, on 08 June 2013 - 09:29 AM, said:

I'm probably saying this for the trillionth time, but we really need a stock mode. New players in trial mechs get slaughtered by min maxed rides while fans of the setting can't run around in canon builds and be viable.

I don't think that would be the best option.
I don't get why they can't just give the trail mechs good loadouts. At least give them double heat sinks!

[senaiboy]

Snowcrow, on 08 June 2013 - 10:00 AM, said:

I don't think that would be the best option.
I don't get why they can't just give the trail mechs good loadouts. At least give them double heat sinks!

Might just confuse new players when they buy a new mech and find they can't put in as many weapons, it's too hot etc. because the stock mech is not upgraded.

That said I read somewhere that the devs are coming up with something that will do away with this 'trial mechs' thingy. Can't remember what it was now.

[Deathlike]

The only think that I could come up with that the regular player base is not playing as much (nothing new, therefore less of a reason to play) thus more from the newbie pool are being collected to be added to a match.

This is actually a bigger problem, and somewhat related to the current heavy/assault based meta.

I don't think it would get better unless something drastic is done.

On the other hand, the newbie ELO reduction is very minimal, from the basic math used.

UI 2.0 should address the newbie/trial issue... but I'm not entirely confident with that.

Edited by Deathlike, 08 June 2013 - 11:41 AM.

[Stormwolf]

Snowcrow, on 08 June 2013 - 10:00 AM, said:

I don't think that would be the best option.
I don't get why they can't just give the trail mechs good loadouts. At least give them double heat sinks!

Trial mechs are based on the canon loadouts from the setting: http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=485

The problem here is that designs from TRO3039 and TRO3050 are from different tech bases (with TRO3050 being more advanced here). Some designs are straight up replacement models for others, for instance the CN9-A was phased out and replaced with the CN9-D. The Raven RVN-3L replaced all other Raven variants since they are just prototypes . MWO does not filter here and just randomly mixes designs.

All these loadouts have detailed histories and are in no way optimized due to limitations in their production runs. Customization is possible in very limited ways, in the canon less then 1% has a custom ride. Quite the opposite of MWO.

Now there were mechs that allowed for customization, they are called OmniMechs. MWO only has BattleMechs but no OmniMechs in its current selection of designs.

The MWO devs ofcourse caved in here since past games allowed customization on mechs that shouldn't have any such options. The game would have worked better in this regard if it was placed in 3058 or later since we would have so much more options for customization and stronger stock builds.

[MonkeyCheese]

senaiboy, on 08 June 2013 - 10:15 AM, said:

That said I read somewhere that the devs are coming up with something that will do away with this 'trial mechs' thingy. Can't remember what it was now.

They said they are going to eventually have tutorials and when you complete them you are gifted your first mech

[Wieland]

MonkeyCheese, on 09 June 2013 - 01:12 AM, said:

They said they are going to eventually have tutorials and when you complete them you are gifted your first mech

A Flea.

[sh4rpedge]

Wieland, on 09 June 2013 - 01:22 AM, said:

A Flea.

I lol'd

[Wieland]

senaiboy, on 08 June 2013 - 09:19 AM, said:

There seems to be a rise in new players recently - evident from the Trial mechs they are using and the clueless piloting

Issue is, why are they being placed against experienced players? I was just in a match where a PPC Stalker basically obliterated 4 Cataphract-4Xs (trial mechs I presume). I know the Stalker is a good player because he turned around instantly when I fired at him and his aim was very good (my Blackjack got shot running at 70kph and jumpjetting after being exposed for only 2 seconds while trying to flank him).

I guess it's due to a lack of players, anyone else seeing this?

Have this alot. I think the whole ELO system is bugged beyond hell.

[Nik Reaper]

Lately the searching for game time has gone up, so it's reasonable to presume that the matchmaker is widening the search tolerance for similar ELO as there are less higher elo players online at that time.

This is a serious problem for the average and above average players as this means that there aren't enough good players to match them to even if the match maker did it's job well.

If we had enough players of higher ratings all the time it would be good to have elo brackets so that they don't mix, much like the league of legends now have a division system, but on the other hand even with the mass of people that play LoL for higher players that stream the waiting time for just 9 others ( we will soon need 23 others of similar elo ) is from 5 to 25 min...

[HarmAssassin]

Some of you seem to have missed what the Devs have said about ELO. The purpose of ELO isn't to put you with players of equal skill to your own, the purpose of ELO is to lower your win/loss and kill/death ratios to 50/50.

The higher your skill level, the worse your teammates will be to help lower your win/loss ratio.

It isn't seeking to put 16 people of similar skill into the same game. It is looking to take those with high win/loss and kill/death ratios into games that lower their stats. Similarly it takes those with horrible win/loss and kill/death ratios and puts them into games meant to raise their stats - so that everyone's stats average out to 50/50.

More than one Dev has stated this, and it is easily found both here in the forums and in other media.

What they should be doing is only dropping new players with other new players. Then dropping everyone else into weight class balanced games. The good players will do well, the average players will do average, and the horrible players will not do so well - but it rewards those that play well or use the best tactics and teamwork.

Instead they've chosen a system that tries to buff or nerf every player to a 50/50 average of wins/losses. How many people do you think are gonna stick around if the best they can hope for in the way of personal stats is 50/50?

because that is exactly what the devs have said they are trying to do with ELO.

Edited by HarmAssassin, 09 June 2013 - 01:45 PM.

[senaiboy]

I must have missed those posts by the Devs, I thought the point of ELO was to get a group of players with similar skills to play together. The threads in Command Chair suggested the same - would appreciate if you could point out the posts you meant.

http://mwomercs.com/...-making-update/

Matthew Craig said:

How does the match maker compose a teams Elo rating, is it average rating or closest to a target?

It's closest to a target value, so the match maker starts trying to make a match for an Elo of say 1300 and will pull in players to those teams closest to those values; however, as mentioned earlier within growing thresholds and those curves will be tuned.

http://mwomercs.com/...79-matchmaking/

Omid Kiarostami said:

Summary:
Phase 3 incorporates a variation of Elo and is undergoing testing against the telemetry data the servers have been providing us. Below is how Elo calculations are being processed and giving us an indication of how Match Making Phase 3 will match players of relatively even skill against one another.

http://mwomercs.com/...ted-april-19th/

Paul Inouye said:

So, how will this affect things? Well, without going into the details of how Elo works, this significantly improves our ability to match similarly skilled players.

The whole point of ELO is to avoid the issue in the OP, new players being matched against elite players, which is why they start with a much lower ELO for the first x number of matches. In addition to that, I have to say the weight balance is off as well, so it's not the weight matching that's affecting it.

Edited by senaiboy, 09 June 2013 - 02:17 PM.

[Jabilo]

HarmAssassin, on 09 June 2013 - 01:39 PM, said:

snip

This is misinformation.

The matchmaker attempts to put players of equal skill level together.

If you are playing in games with players of equal skill, then over time you will statistically have a win lose ratio close to 50/50 (that's the plan anyway).

You will only be matched with players outside of your bracket when required to start a match within a given time frame.

Yes, there are problems with the matchmaker that is mixing players with different skill levels in certain games.

I was in a game tonight and saw some legendary founders,

Another guy says "what's the button for night vision?".

However it is not the intention of the matchmaker to deliberately match players of uneven skill.

Edited by Jabilo, 09 June 2013 - 03:17 PM.

[drinniol]

Maybe these 'elite' players aren't all that elite and are in the lower Elo bracket? I'm no uber player but I've had kill streaks where I've taken out 6 mechs just through good fortune.

[senaiboy]

Agreed, without individual ELO available to us, there's no way for us to be sure. Also, the Devs have the ability to adjust the matching tolerance on the fly, so the matchmaking bias can change day-to-day or even hour-to-hour.

I just wonder if the player population has indeed dropped that considerably for me to be matched against players who just started (in some matches). It's not that fun to kill trial mechs piloted by new players knowing you have a min-maxed build, and I'm just worried it might put new players off when they die within the first few minutes of a match.

Actually, it might be the other way, that there are not enough new players to be matched against each other and they ended up being placed against the higher ELO players.

Edited by senaiboy, 09 June 2013 - 03:51 PM.

[Dude42]

senaiboy, on 09 June 2013 - 03:50 PM, said:

Agreed, without individual ELO available to us, there's no way for us to be sure. Also, the Devs have the ability to adjust the matching tolerance on the fly, so the matchmaking bias can change day-to-day or even hour-to-hour.

I just wonder if the player population has indeed dropped that considerably for me to be matched against players who just started (in some matches). It's not that fun to kill trial mechs piloted by new players knowing you have a min-maxed build, and I'm just worried it might put new players off when they die within the first few minutes of a match.

Actually, it might be the other way, that there are not enough new players to be matched against each other and they ended up being placed against the higher ELO players.

What I find much more frustrating, is getting 6 kills, doing 800+ damage, and losing because not only did everyone else die without getting a kill(or even breaking 100 dmg...), but because the last guy left on your team is a stock Atlas with locked arms.

That's some rage inducing stuff. Especially the 4th or 5th time it happens in a night.

It always seems to occurs after a winstreak. My teammates get worse. If matchmaking works as they advertise, my teammates would get better after a win streak.


Other things that happen a lot. 4-man premade is on enemy team, we get steamrolled 8:0, next game, the 4-man premade is on my team, and we stomp 8:0, and it seesaws with me being teamswitched every other game.

Why can't we have a SC2/LoL rating system at least, if they don't want to show actual EOL, with bronze, silver, ect. Then it would be obvious when matchmaker was messing with you.

Edit: And another thing, you don't have 1 ELO per weight class, because of the hundreds(literally) of times that I switch mech chassis classes(I play many different weight mechs) and drop again with the exact same people from the previous game, with the same mechs they were using before. I find it hard to believe that my Commandos would be in the same ELO bracket as my Atlai, seeing as how after a few hundred games with my Atlases my W/L is a little over 2, and with my lights, its about 0.9. Just saying.

Edited by Dude42, 09 June 2013 - 04:50 PM.

[ShinVector]

HarmAssassin, on 09 June 2013 - 01:39 PM, said:

Some of you seem to have missed what the Devs have said about ELO. The purpose of ELO isn't to put you with players of equal skill to your own, the purpose of ELO is to lower your win/loss and kill/death ratios to 50/50.

The higher your skill level, the worse your teammates will be to help lower your win/loss ratio.

It isn't seeking to put 16 people of similar skill into the same game. It is looking to take those with high win/loss and kill/death ratios into games that lower their stats. Similarly it takes those with horrible win/loss and kill/death ratios and puts them into games meant to raise their stats - so that everyone's stats average out to 50/50.

More than one Dev has stated this, and it is easily found both here in the forums and in other media.

What they should be doing is only dropping new players with other new players. Then dropping everyone else into weight class balanced games. The good players will do well, the average players will do average, and the horrible players will not do so well - but it rewards those that play well or use the best tactics and teamwork.

Instead they've chosen a system that tries to buff or nerf every player to a 50/50 average of wins/losses. How many people do you think are gonna stick around if the best they can hope for in the way of personal stats is 50/50?

because that is exactly what the devs have said they are trying to do with ELO.

Generally correct but I disagree on the KD ratio part.
ELO has nothing to do with KD ratio it should only care about WL ratio.

Higher WL ratio simply means higher ELO and that means they going to you up against tougher match-ups...
I see this as problem until 12 man comes in though... lol...

Edited by ShinVector, 10 June 2013 - 05:43 AM.

[Milt]

this also could be happening from a lack of population. im not playing atm and id imagine quite a few others are not also. the elo can only work within its current pool of queue'd players