1 reply to this topic

[Gen Joe]

I really think that the Matchmaker is doing good job so far, but with the current "settings" he is killing the fun for small (2-4) and not well organized groups of friends smashing them against a 12-er Clan lance, well organized, sitting in Teamspeak and playing all together. At the end he splits this small groups and forces them to play solo, because of this frustrating games. So happen to me and my friends. We are not really bad players, but in 50-80% of the games we don't have the chance to play a nice (and a bit more fair) game. As result we all started to play solo and more and more other games.

I personally love Mechwarrior and wanted to buy the "Clan Wave II"-edition, but my motivation to do this is sunken with every game vs. 12-er lance and every game that I now "could not" play with my friends. So here my suggestions how to handle the situation:

1. We need 3 queues: solo, (2-4) lance and company. Although the company-queue my have long wait times, it isn't an option to satisfy those players for the price of frustrating/losing many others! Speaking of being satisfied: I don't understand how it can be satisfying for players to roll with 12-er lance over any combination of single lances. For me it is a shameful challenge, that would not satisfy me.

2. Because not everyone likes such a behavior of the matchmaker and to help to keep the wait times in the queues low, all players have the permanent, but fast changeable, settings option to signalize the matchmaker that they also want to be taken into account in other queues in following manner:

- solo players can choose to also be taken into account in the lance-queue, and (separate option) in the company-queue
- the same options of a lance creator will be taken for the whole lance, so he can sign in the lance to be taken into account in the company-queue
- the company leader should have the option to start with a non-full lance, that must not be filled from matchmaker, to show how strong they are

3. In company-queue with lances bigger than 8-10 the limits can maybe be dropped, because a well organized team can win with many tactics and mech compositions. So no need here to limit anything.

I think such settings could prevent that unorganized lances, only playing for a bit fun after work and to meet their friends in a shared game, also can have their fun and stay motivated in the game, while waiting times can be reduced in the queues.

The already proposed suggestions as fair distribution of ECM and Assaults are also welcome, as just a common start position of all players in solo matches as well, because that would help random players to play together.

Edited by Gen Joe, 26 September 2014 - 02:13 AM.

[Gen Joe]

Another approach to fix the matchmaker-lance-queue fast (hopefully only until you can implement the 3-queue approach) could be a workaround, where you add a compensation value for non-company-players in multiple lances vs. company-lance-players in 1-2 lances (for example lances of 2, 3, 3 and 4 players vs. company-lance of 8-10 players + 2-4 players lance) to your ELO-calculation, so that the multiple-lance-players must have ELO-value (= ELO + compensation value) higher then their counterparts on other side. Not so good players-lances could be put together with the company-lance. I don't know how high the compensation value should be (probably something about 20-35%), but this can be adjusted fast without a patch. You can see the statistics from such battles and could adjust this value up to the point, where these battles wins/loses are even. For matches between multiple lances vs. 6-8 players company lance + 2 lances to fill up, the compensation value could be lower, because of the smaller team superiority of the company lance.