271 replies to this topic

[Sandpit]

http://mwomercs.com/...00#entry3489502

ok so I was told to start a new thread since the official thread was closed.

I'd like to continue the conversation regarding the new MM here since we can no longer post in the official thread.


So what is the status of the new MM as of right now?
What do you feel needs to be done for, about, or to the new MM?

[Bilbo]

It has been completely rewritten and is in testing according to the latest vlog. Should be here next patch.

[Sandpit]

Ok but what is different about it? What adjustments do you feel should be made?

[Bilbo]

It's a ground up rebuild with the restrictions in mind. Karl says there are release valves built in to prevent the problems they had for previous releases. Until it hits production and we see how it works, there's not much more to discuss.

[Sandpit]

There's still 3/3/3/3
implications for cw
impacts on units
alternative suggestions
etc.

This is the "new" feedback thread since the official one is closed now

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

Sandpit, on 20 June 2014 - 12:58 PM, said:

Ok but what is different about it? What adjustments do you feel should be made?

Impossible to tell until we see it live.

Given the ground-up rework, I expect the underlying logic will be fundamentally different, so we could see a very different practical experience than we've been having heretofore.

[Pygar]

Darn, I thought this thread was going to have an announcement about the new matchmaker.

My only feedback is I just hope they can finally get the 3 rule working- not only do I think it will be a good balance for the game, but I went out of my way to make sure I had useful mechs in all weight classes that I could fly in the last few months.

Edited by Pygar, 20 June 2014 - 01:19 PM.

[Sandpit]

The %'s I saw this morning would disagree. I think it was about 10% lights and meds and the other 90 was split between heavies and assaults.

[Roland]

Will they let arbitrarilly sized groups play?

[MischiefSC]

3/3/3/3 is a brilliant solution to a number of problems.

For one, it puts a hard limit in place on force escalation. People get ganked by bigger, better armed mechs so they bring a bigger, better armed mech.

For another it creates inherent limits to the viability of the big/slow/over-armed mechs be that the Stalker LRM boat or the Dire Wolf, well, anything. Between 3 and 6 mechs on the other team every match will be geared towards and eager to find and kill them.

Because of the above it creates a strong reward/motivation for pug teams to stick together. You only need to get trounced a couple of times because you left your heavies/assaults behind when the other team didn't to adapt your tactics.

Even for premades it serves a benefit. It allows them to build a 4man that can then more reliably fit into a group of 8 pugs. If they build the heavies and assaults they know the pugs will all be lights and with 3/3/3/3 there is a strong, consistent reward for pug lights who are supporting their teams. If they run lights/mediums they are in a much better position to get the pugs to go with their plan.

It rewards, or at least punishes way less, taking sub-peak builds and alternate tactical options. You know the other team isn't going to be 10 assaults and 2 spotter ravens and that the other team will have 3 or 4 lights and 3 or 4 mediums, so you can pack a light hunter or fast harasser and know you'll have adequate targets. You can risk moving into engagement range more readily because you know the other team isn't a row of assaults who will focus you down before you can get back to cover.

It minimizes LRMs and poptarts and light swarms and assault rolls.

We all have a laundry list of major weapon and equipment rebalances we'd love to see. The reality is though we're not going to see those lists get whittled down by any measurable amount for a long time. In the interim, 3/3/3/3 is a solid solution for suppressing the symptoms of that. It's a simple, predictable, easy and reliable system for balancing mech populations and thus firepower/build populations in every match and better equalizing teams.

I'm of the opinion that CW should be anything goes so long as it's faction specific mechs on each side. For pugging though, 3/3/3/3 is excellent.

[Jman5]

Sandpit, on 20 June 2014 - 01:36 PM, said:

The %'s I saw this morning would disagree. I think it was about 10% lights and meds and the other 90 was split between heavies and assaults.

The numbers fluctuate, but I agree that lights and mediums are clearly the least played.

I'm really looking forward to this getting back into the game because I am so sick of going up against masses of heavies and assaults every game.

[Sandpit]

Roland, on 20 June 2014 - 02:07 PM, said:

Will they let arbitrarilly sized groups play?

sure
as long as you pay for private matches
don't participate in cw
etc.

you can play any size group you want.

MischiefSC, on 20 June 2014 - 02:08 PM, said:

Even for premades it serves a benefit. It allows them to build a 4man that can then more reliably fit into a group of 8 pugs. If they build the heavies and assaults they know the pugs will all be lights and with 3/3/3/3 there is a strong, consistent reward for pug lights who are supporting their teams. If they run lights/mediums they are in a much better position to get the pugs to go with their plan.

I agree with a lot of what you said except this. The rule of 3 isn't going to affect 4mans like that. What it will affect is the ability for players to find matches and lock up the assaults and 1 heavy nearly every time they drop in a team. We'll see but I forsee some loooooooong wait times for those players. Although that doesn't seem to matter much given the past 6 months of "position at the time" regarding groups.

Jman5, on 20 June 2014 - 02:15 PM, said:

The numbers fluctuate, but I agree that lights and mediums are clearly the least played.

I'm really looking forward to this getting back into the game because I am so sick of going up against masses of heavies and assaults every game.

I have always said 3/3/3/3 would definitely be a good thing for seeing more variety in weight classes. it's not going to affect which mechs within those weight classes are taken but it will force a little more variety in weight classes

[Exilyth]

Only thing I'm a bit afraid of is that first three... having three spiders jump around on each side in a match... just the though makes my head spin.

Aside from that, it's nice that we'll finally get proper mm.

[MonkeyCheese]

I am all for whatever group sizes if

1. the 3/3/3/3 of the 3/4 thing comes as things were much better in the old days where if your team had 3 lights you could expect the other team to have the same.

2. We at least have some kind of quick text/audio system so pugs can say for example press v 1 and a text message displays saying "follow me" or v 2 for "I need help in my current grid" or say a player has alpha targeted and sends a message saying "attack my target"

That seems like a easier system to quickly implement compared to in game voice chat

[Pygar]

Sandpit, on 20 June 2014 - 02:45 PM, said:

I agree with a lot of what you said except this. The rule of 3 isn't going to affect 4mans like that. What it will affect is the ability for players to find matches and lock up the assaults and 1 heavy nearly every time they drop in a team. We'll see but I forsee some loooooooong wait times for those players. Although that doesn't seem to matter much given the past 6 months of "position at the time" regarding groups.

I have always thought that they should make 4 mans do 1/1/1/1, A: Theoretically 4 mans should be the most prepared to change mechs if needed and also the most likely to actually use the intended team roles. (which is a major reason to even do the 3 rule in the first place) and also B: letting 4 mans pick whatever is actually what the matchmaker has the hardest time with when trying to do the 3 rule.

Some people don't like this idea (both the 3 rule in general and the 4man 1/1/1/1 split) but the truth is, to have balance you have to have firm rules....letting people do whatever they want because: "Freedom!", is a major cause for many of the balancing headaches PGI has to deal with in MWO.

Edited by Pygar, 20 June 2014 - 03:03 PM.

[Sandpit]

Exilyth, on 20 June 2014 - 02:47 PM, said:

Only thing I'm a bit afraid of is that first three... having three spiders jump around on each side in a match... just the though makes my head spin.

Aside from that, it's nice that we'll finally get proper mm.

Now here's what I touched on in my last post.

Make no mistakes, you're not going to see a better variety in chassis, just a better spread of weight classes. You'll see the same mechs you do now, you'll just see 3 of them every match. Sure there's going to be outliers like yours truly that drive non-meta mechs, but you'll see the same mechs you see now in the various weight classes. The rule of 3 will do NOTHING to help variety in the chassis taken.

Pygar, on 20 June 2014 - 03:01 PM, said:

I have always thought that they should make 4 mans do 1/1/1/1, A: Theoretically 4 mans should be the most prepared to change mechs if needed and also the most likely to actually use the intended team roles. (which is a major reason to even do the 3 rule in the first place) and also B: letting 4 mans pick whatever is actually what the matchmaker has the hardest time with when trying to do the 3 rule.

Some people don't like this idea (both the 3 rule in general and the 4man 1/1/1/1 split) but the truth is, to have balance you have to have firm rules....letting people do whatever they want because: "Freedom!", is a major cause for many of the balancing headaches PGI has to deal with in MWO.

uhm no?
seriously?
groups should get shafted yet AGAIN? Why don't we just do away with groups at all if this is the direction they go. There's not much point and the more you limit (and this part isn't exclusive to groups) how your players can play, the less players you'll have.

I'm all for balance. I'm not all for restricting player choice even more. This is one of the main reasons I personally don't like the rule of 3.

[BLOOD WOLF]

The rule of 3 is not supposed to affect variety, as a matter of fact it should not. It is clearly a balance proposal but you can only do so much.

[DeathlyEyes]

Right now the current way the ELO system works is totally unacceptable. It tries to balance entire team ELOs often times using high ELO players to balance out low ELO players to make matches. This doesn't work. To make things worse the matchmaker doesn't take into account the tonnage the high ELO players are in. This means that someone with a high ELO could be expected to make up for low ELO players in high tonnage against a team of heavy tonnage above average ELO players. Personal experience shows that this leads to matches like this:




Not very fun. There is no way Apostal and I could make up for all the low ELO players on our team, especially in the light mechs we were in. We were the only 2 grouped and we ended up in Alpha lance against 2 known high ELO groups. This leads me to my suggestions.

Instead of using tonnage balancing the game should use a battle value system. This could take into account a mech's tonnage, armor, engine size, weapon types, weapon combinations and equipment. This would allow for some sorting based on if a mech is "meta" or not. Automatically battle value could be raised based off if a mech has a combination of PPC+AC+Jump Jets. For example a meta multiplier of .25 could be applied if a mech is a heavy/assault, has jump jets and has 2 PPCs. So the battle value could be calculated by doing (mech BV)+((meta multiplier)(mech BV)). This would then start to seperate meta mechs from the rest.

The next step to solving the problem is to calculate a player's battle effectiveness. Just because a player has a high ELO in a mech doesn't mean he/she is going to be super effective on the battlefield in every mech. This would also open up more play options for players to use less optimized builds and not have to worry about someone not knowing what he/she is doing and dropping in a high BV mech, completely skewing the matchmaking. A players combat effectiveness could be calculated by a calculation such as (Mech BV)(.5)(ELO). This would give out a number that could more closely equate to how effective this player is on the battlefield allowing him/her to leave meta without fear that he/she's high ELO would be needing to making up for low ELO players playing in high BV mechs. This may become difficult at non peak hours so things might not be entirely perfect and need to be loosened up. This should help with peak hours and prevent matches from getting to ridiculous.

Finally edge case ELOs should be reset every month or with any major balance changes. The top 20% of all players should have their ELOs automatically reset to the 80th percentile to let them have a chance to be reorganized after any substantial meta changes. The same should be done with the bottom 20% as it will give them a chance to crawl out of low ELO. Their substandard builds could also become viable from the change and this would further mitigate the skewing of balance changes on the matchmaker.

The next change is how the matchmaker assembles teams. The matchmaker should try to match Combat Values of each party entering into the match. Each group should have a similar combat effectiveness level to one another so that one group isn't making up for a huge difference between another group.

Now these numbers are just examples of what could work. I do not have access to all the lovely statistics Paul has access to but I do have experience with the issues at hand. These changes could drastically improve the game play experience for everyone.

Edited by SLDF DeathlyEyes, 20 June 2014 - 03:15 PM.

[Sandpit]

SLDF DeathlyEyes, on 20 June 2014 - 03:08 PM, said:

for length

group limits and the rule of 3 aren't going to change roflstomps though. You're going to see the same dynamics you do now. Neither of these are going to mitigate roflstomps. That's my biggest problem with these features. They're talked up as being implemented to help mitigate these types of games and they simply will not and cannot do that. That's one of the reasons you have so many jumping on the bandwagon for them.

They have been told by devs that this is going to give them a better game experience and help stop roflstomps. There is absolutely no way taking a player out of an assault and putting them in a medium or light is going to prevent them from being just as good and effective. It's not going to make them less accurate. Also, as I stated earlier, your 4mans are just going to take 3 assaults and a heavy most of the time anyhow so it doesn't it affect that.

Having an Elo for each mech instead of just each weight class is a better start at helping to solve the issue than either group limits and the rule of 3.

[JohnnyWayne]

Sandpit, on 20 June 2014 - 12:58 PM, said:

Ok but what is different about it? What adjustments do you feel should be made?

Long story short, it has triggers in it that makes it possible to remove certain locks for restrictions. So if not all criteria can be met, it will open a trigger so that the MM still works.