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[East Indy]

So, in the third segment of NGNG's interview with Bryan Ekman, the latest design state for team-matching in pickup matches was revealed.

Matching will be determined by weight-class. Players (singly or in groups up to three) enter the matchmaking system selecting one class — assault, heavy, medium, or light — which they apparently have a Leopard's-worth of eligible 'Mechs to choose from. According to Ekman, in the lobby, each team is assigned three of each class within set ELO tolerances.

That will look like this:

WEIGHT-CLASS	AVERAGE
Assault	90
Assault	90
Assault	90
Heavy	67.5
Heavy	67.5
Heavy	67.5
Medium	47.5
Medium	47.5
Medium	47.5
Light	27.5
Light	27.5
Light	27.5
TEAM AVERAGE -->	58.12

Bombadil was optimistic about the tradeoff between matching and search-time, noting even 5-minute wait times. While those are quite common in some games, I wonder if multiple configurations of weight-class assignments can make life easier for both PGI and players, but without resulting in lopsided matches.

Configuration B

Spoiler

WEIGHT-CLASS	AVERAGE
Assault	90
Assault	90
Heavy	67.5
Heavy	67.5
Heavy	67.5
Heavy	67.5
Medium	47.5
Medium	47.5
Medium	47.5
Medium	47.5
Light	27.5
Light	27.5
TEAM AVERAGE -->	57.92

Configuration C

Spoiler

WEIGHT-CLASS	AVERAGE
Assault	90
Assault	90
Assault	90
Assault	90
Heavy	67.5
Heavy	67.5
Medium	47.5
Medium	47.5
Light	27.5
Light	27.5
Light	27.5
Light	27.5
TEAM AVERAGE -->	58.33

Configuration D

Spoiler

WEIGHT-CLASS	AVERAGE
Assault	90
Assault	90
Heavy	67.5
Heavy	67.5
Heavy	67.5
Medium	47.5
Medium	47.5
Medium	47.5
Medium	47.5
Medium	47.5
Medium	27.5
Light	27.5
TEAM AVERAGE -->	57.91

Configuration E

Spoiler

WEIGHT-CLASS	AVERAGE
Assault	90
Heavy	67.5
Heavy	67.5
Heavy	67.5
Heavy	67.5
Heavy	67.5
Heavy	67.5
Medium	47.5
Medium	47.5
Medium	47.5
Light	27.5
Light	27.5
TEAM AVERAGE -->	57.70

For reference, consider randomly assembled teams we see today whose average tonnage is 70 or more!

Edited by East Indy, 02 April 2014 - 02:56 PM.

[HammerSwarm]

Not only does your suggestion make sense it's probably definitely better, but it doesn't work with lobbies.

I hate the idea of locking it in to 3 classes, because HELLO MIN MAX the awesome sucks enough already, Why black jack when you can shadow-hawk, why locust when you can raven, etc. etc. etc. You're looking at tonnage range of 360 to 795. That's not balanced.

Goodbye Dragon! Toodles Victor/Awesome! Sucks to your Cicada!