1911 replies to this topic

[TheCaptainJZ]

Cimarb, on 17 April 2014 - 08:09 AM, said:

Is it bad that I am catching up to Niko on the "posts per day" metric?... I'm not sure whether I should be sad that I am on the forums that much, or sad that he isn't...

As a mod, he didn't need to post much, just clean up other people's posts.

[Evil Ed]

Mawai, on 16 April 2014 - 06:28 AM, said:

The matchmaker should be designed so that the wright class composition is a specifiable parameter. It starts off at 3/3/3/3 as long as queue times are under 2 or 3 minutes for the worst case. When the queue time hits the limit it adjusts to
3/2/3/4 or similar where the most abundant mech requires more and the least abundant less. It then continues (adapting as needed) until queue times are less than 1 minute (or some lower bound) at which point it switches back to 3/3/3/3.

I agree, and would even take it a step further - let the players pick what distributions they want to play.

Sketchy thoughts:

Quote

Add different weight distributions. For example, I’m borrowing this from the excellent MRBC league, four different distributions (lights/mediums/heavies/assaults): 8/4/0/0, 4/4/4/0, 2/4/4/2, 2/0/4/6 (no need to discuss the distributions and the number of them, they only serve as examples).


The matchmaker will now have an opportunity to balance the matches with respect to the mech selection of the players. If the player base prefers lights: create more 8/4/0/0- and 4/4/4/0-matches. If the players run assaults: increase the number of 2/0/4/6-matches.
Add these options to the launch window (where we select game mode), if a player don’t want to participate in the superheavy distribution the player can deselect this one, etc. - lots of opportunities for players to create their own experience. The players selections, elo and current selected mech are compared to live matchmaking data and an estimated queuing time (with warnings if needed) is presented. The player can now balance selections with individual acceptable queuing time. If a player have very specific selections - prepare to wait.
The matchmaker and players will have opportunities to cut queuing times and players still pilot the mechs they want to. Players that run any/any is the true asset in this model, they help the matchmaker get matches started by cutting queuing times and should be encouraged to do so. Give them a small MC/C-bill/XP-bonus. (Award: Versatile mech-jockey!). Being the nice guy that helps the matchmaker get a few hundred matches started is worth MC equal to the price of colour in my opinion...
Want to spice it up further? Add an option to accept asymmetric weight matching. With that we can have the perfect weight balanced matches for the players who wants that, create an option for us who like going hard mode not knowing what we are up against (and smashing 200 tons heavier teams!) and also make it even easier for the matchmaker to get a match started. Still - no one can complain about weight difference: Just deselect asymmetric weight matching...

And I have had that upside down guy in the top left corner for ages so it's not an easter thing...

Edited by Evil Ed, 17 April 2014 - 11:04 AM.

[Heffay]

TheCaptainJZ, on 17 April 2014 - 09:59 AM, said:

As a mod, he didn't need to post much, just clean up other people's posts.

He's not a mod though, he's the community manager. The cleaning up part is handled by a different team.

[Hellen Wheels]

GalaxyBluestar, on 16 April 2014 - 12:51 AM, said:

I think he's refering to this...

Rumor has it that this icon indicates that a particular session has been modified in some way. I can attest that my Omicron file has, from time to time, indicated that I was playing under a different build (e.g., 1.280 when 1.179 was the "official" build.)

I suspect that this icon indicates that a beta is in progress, and / or that a mech is under surveillance.

Just my 2 pfennigs. YMMV.

-H-

[Bilbo]

Hellen Wheels, on 17 April 2014 - 01:06 PM, said:

Rumor has it that this icon indicates that a particular session has been modified in some way. I can attest that my Omicron file has, from time to time, indicated that I was playing under a different build (e.g., 1.280 when 1.179 was the "official" build.)

I suspect that this icon indicates that a beta is in progress, and / or that a mech is under surveillance.

Just my 2 pfennigs. YMMV.

-H-

Big Brother is watching us!!!!!

[Heffay]

Bilbo, on 17 April 2014 - 01:09 PM, said:

Big Brother is watching us!!!!!

Big Brother must be bored out of his mind then.

[Hellen Wheels]

Evil Ed, on 17 April 2014 - 11:02 AM, said:

And I have had that upside down guy in the top left corner for ages so it's not an easter thing...

You're the Norwegian test case. You should feel honored.

[IronChance]

Evil Ed, on 17 April 2014 - 11:02 AM, said:

...

And I have had that upside down guy in the top left corner for ages so it's not an easter thing...

I'll bite the bullet and assume you are being sincere in not knowing what this means.

"Easter Egg" is a English-language software development term that is a euphemism for a piece of art or code that was put into the game by an artist or programmer that was never approved by production/design.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Heffay, on 17 April 2014 - 12:55 PM, said:

He's not a mod though, he's the community manager. The cleaning up part is handled by a different team.

I meant, back when he was only a mod.

Edit to clarify better.

Edited by TheCaptainJZ, 17 April 2014 - 01:45 PM.

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

Chronojam, on 17 April 2014 - 08:38 AM, said:

... eye-rolling you'll see whenever NGNG comes up.

As a fan and follower of any information source for MWO (other than twitter ... I don't tweet), I appreciate what Sean and Daeron have done and are trying to do, as representatives of the casual community. I've been listening to them from almost the start, and even after they took the contract with IGP, their tone hasn't changed that much. They voice their opinion without making it personal and remain generally positive, sometimes to a fault.

The biggest differences between NGNG and other sources are the tone and the target audience ...
- Re: tone: I miss VCRS and Kong Kast for the humor and pointed wit, but they occasionally reminded me of a MSNBC or FOX News commentary show ... echo chambers ... I can understand why people who are amateurs at PR would avoid the harsh criticism in these venues.
- Re: audience: The only other regular source (other than articles on themittani and other sites) I know of right now is ROFLwaffle and Siriothrax's War Room, which is focused almost exclusively on the competitive community. While NGNG has apparently been reaching out to the competitive players, they appear to be trying to appeal to the broadest audience possible.

Quote

... VOIP integration, "Just use the NGNG TeamSpeak" has been presented as a viable alternative.

The only partnerships that I can see that have made PGI and IGP's jobs easier are nVidia and NGNG. CryEngine appears to have created more problems and delays than it has solved. C3 was apparently an ugly baby that was (appropriately or not) smothered in the crib.

Quote

... launch event tournament had to rely on the NGNG TeamSpeak server due to a lack of integrated VOIP, and the actual casting/presentation was similarly cringeworthy at times. ...

Yeah ... as much fun as it was watching the launch event with my team mates (via twitch and TS3), it was pretty clear that PGI and IGP were learning as they muddled through it.

Quote

... softball questions and fail to pursue satisfying answers to important questions.

Sean strikes me as someone who is pretty good at building and maintaining relationships. He seems to avoid burning bridges over disagreements, which makes sense. Unfortunately, respects "soon", "can't talk about it", or "we're working on it" as satisfactory answers too often.

Quote

... treated them like the only game in town; tying back to communication problems, this exclusivity can be a problem especially as it was compounded historically by the lack of transcript availability.

Re: only game in town - see PR amateurs above. Also, Sean has worked hard to build and maintain his relationship with IGP and PGI ... I have no idea if any others have done so. WOL's reputation as trolls, alleged links/overlaps with Goon Swarm, etc. probably didn't help VCRS get any exclusive interviews with the Devs.

Re: transcripts - As Peiper has learned over the past months, putting together an accurate transcript is a lot of work (I don't remember seeing a transcript of the VCRS podcasts, but I could be wrong).

Quote

... "NGNG Presents: NGNG Asks The Devs" ...

I like Daeron, but when I heard his voice in the first VLOG, I knew this would be an issue. While the information that comes out in these VLOGs is really what's most important, they really should have gotten someone else to intro / narrate. I think PGI and IGP just see him as a guy who has a smooth voice and some video / sound editing skills (and they're right), but some in the community sees things differently. They see him as a "shill" for PGI and IGP, which I think is only half true ... as far as I know, he is being paid for his work, but he has (and voices) his own opinions.

The Devs need to be much more open about where the VLOG topics and questions come from. While ATD posts had their flaws, at least we knew they were reading the questions we submitted.

[Ordate]

Hellen Wheels, on 17 April 2014 - 01:06 PM, said:

Rumor has it that this icon indicates that a particular session has been modified in some way. I can attest that my Omicron file has, from time to time, indicated that I was playing under a different build (e.g., 1.280 when 1.179 was the "official" build.)

I suspect that this icon indicates that a beta is in progress, and / or that a mech is under surveillance.

Just my 2 pfennigs. YMMV.

-H-

Traditionally that is an icon to denote de-sync. Think it is the case here also. Seems to pop up when you would likely be changing servers. Aka going from say the matchmaker to the game server etc.

[sabujo]

I just would like to thank Karl for all this time spent answering the communities concerns. It is really a breath of fresh and gives hope on the project. Most appreciated. Keep up the excellent work.

[Mawai]

Hi Karl,

I would like to offer a big thanks to the wonderful answers you have put in this thread ... from my perspective it is truly a breath of fresh air and most appreciated.

Earlier in the thread I asked the question quoted below on clarifying the statistics that Paul published in his Command center post. If you don't have the answer or for some reason aren't allowed to clarify the situation that's fine ... but I thought I would ask

Mawai, on 15 April 2014 - 05:42 AM, said:

In the interest of clarity ... I have another question (thank you for the reply to my previous one ... I can now drop the subject of the launch module until I see how it works out ).

Statistics: Everyone loves statistics.

In Paul's post about the number of solo and group players he said that 84% of launches are solo and 16% are groups. Is a launch a single player? Or is a "launch" a single request to the matchmaker such that a group represents one launch since they have to be kept together through the matchmaking process? If launches are all individual players then the number of folks in groups is quite small. If launches are matchmaker requests and groups are considered one launch then the number of folks dropping in groups is more like 33% of the player base.

In my experience, there seems to be significantly more than 16% of players dropping in groups. Often matches seem to have one or more groups on both teams (this can vary a lot by time of day as well). The 33% figure would more closely fit my personal experience so I just wanted to know what the definition of "launch" was in Paul's statistics.

[Ilithi Dragon]

I am curious to know if there are any additional plans in the works to deal with the persistent pinpoint-alpha meta? I have some suggestions of my own (which I made here), but I would like to know if PGI is looking at doing anything more than, or different from what has already been done to counter that?

[Hammerhai]

Illithid Dragon and others, Forgive me for piping up here, but Karl is to do with the server back end, and has no say over design. Also bear in mind apparently the design pipeline does take feed from the forums but is so long and involved that generally we do not hear about it and are not likely to. Like evarrrrr. So let's keep it reasonably on topic

Way I understand it the usual system (touched on by Karl or Egomane) has multiple review opportunities by all stakeholders and an idea may be dropped at any stage of the review process, so no, we are not likely to know. Ever. One idea that actually came from the forums was the 3pv drone btw, I think.

Meanwhile, HAPPY EASTER EVERYBODY, especially the guys running the servers for us when they could be doing better things like being with family. Thank you, we know you, even if we don't know you by name.

To ask Illithi's question another way: Can the server handle even more collisions, such as a burst fire Auto cannon would cause in combat. Would the HSR go belly up?

I have a feeling this was asked, so feel free to ignore if so, thank you once again, Karl

[Tekadept]

Hammerhai, on 18 April 2014 - 11:36 AM, said:

Meanwhile, HAPPY EASTER EVERYBODY, especially the guys running the servers for us when they could be doing better things like being with family. Thank you, we know you, even if we don't know you by name.

That does bring up a good question, how is monitoring of the servers outside of work hours handled? do you have somebody on a shift to monitor the servers/backend, or is it more of an "on call" situation? do you outsource that part of it to the data centre?

[Roadbeer]

I know back in the day, when I was sysadmin for a dial-up ISP, that the servers would page me when something went wrong. I'm sure the technology is much grander now.

EDIT:
Yes, I just used the words Pager and Dial-up in a sentence without being ironic.

Edited by Roadbeer, 18 April 2014 - 04:40 PM.

[Heffay]

Roadbeer, on 18 April 2014 - 04:39 PM, said:

I know back in the day, when I was sysadmin for a dial-up ISP, that the servers would page me when something went wrong. I'm sure the technology is much grander now.

EDIT:
Yes, I just used the words Pager and Dial-up in a sentence without being ironic.

This is actually my specialization: monitoring. There are some pretty cool technologies out there, but the biggest challenge is to avoid false positives. If you're going to page someone at 3 in the morning, you damn well better be sure that there is a reason for it. The answer whenever a customer asks "Can you let me know if this happens" is always yes, but it's rarely a good idea.

Oh man.... so much to say about this topic. I'm interested in knowing what kind of monitoring PGI (& IGP, since they run the datacenter?) has.

[Not Bob]

I guess I got a bit of a question, about a really odd weapon: Flamers.

My question is, will there be a reduction of heat on the user end of the flamer, or an increase of heat exchange on the mech you are firing on? (Get it? Firing? HA! )

The reason why I ask this question, myself and a couple of guys in my unit love to run "troll" builds, usually in the form of FireStarters or Jenners with 4 flamers, 2 ML or 4 Flamers 4MG. And while we killed 2 people in a match with it in the end, we spend most the time coordinating who is gonna keep on flaming the guy, rather then spent actually flaming the guy.

So really, I just want to know if the Flamer will become something like the small laser (Not used often, but not worthless), so we can actually run it, and do something, rather than just be annoying.

(If you need clarification of what I'm asking, let me know, lol)

[Karl Berg]

Hobo Dan, on 17 April 2014 - 06:16 AM, said:

I have a pretty simple question (IMO). When will we see the FOV slider in the in game options?

Not sure if this is planned right now. I can definitely tell you one of the concerns would be the performance impact, as small changes to FOV can have huge impacts on view frustum, and our dominating performance concern is D3D draw call overhead right now. There's a big difference between allowing something, and providing full access for something. In our case, it's easy for us to leave the FOV setting open to tweaks at the cvar level and say 'use at your own risk', but fully exposing this through the UI would require a whole new level of support for this feature; and we're extremely swamped with feature work at this time.