10 replies to this topic

[Sir Roland MXIII]

Sources from the Official Response to Community Concerns - OCT 12/2012 thread in Announcements, here:
http://mwomercs.com/...rns-oct-122012/

Beorning mentioned this first, relaying it from a team mate who came up with it originally, but this is the version as I saw it:

vijil, on 12 October 2012 - 08:32 PM, said:

Overall, great. I speak as a PUG but even if I was a premade player this would be great.

Perhaps however a better way to do groups:
_______
A: Groups of 4 or less are allowed in the pool with PUGs, Ideally with a similar group on the other side, but this would not be a requirement. The idea here being to expose new players to team tactics. Class matching would still apply.

B: Groups of 5 or more will have to play other groups of 5 or more, with a warning that it may not be fair numbers wise OR allow a few pugs to even the numbers if the team is happy to do so, but still always 2 groups of at least 5 facing each other. NO class matching here. Want to try out 8 jenners vs 8 atlas? Go for it. Premades should be allowed to find their own effective combinations.
_______
[edit: Ninja'd to the same basic idea. Great minds think alike!]

So I thought, since I myself think this idea from Beorning and Vijil might be more universally appreciated, that I'd start a poll about it. That said, PGI most likely has their own reasons for wanting to update the MatchMaker as they presented it in the topic above, so this may be a moot point. However feedback, ideas, and suggestions never hurt anyone.

So, Ladies and Gentlemen, have at it.

PS, after the fact I realized I should add the PGI Phase One & Two MM presentation here as well, so here it is.

Paul Inouye, on 12 October 2012 - 05:29 PM, said:

<snip>
Match Making:

The developers at PGI are all veteran game players. Many of us were or still are competitive gamers and truly know the feeling of a great match played between two equally matched teams.

The next 3 stages of planned releases for Match Making involve the following:

Phase 1:

Reduce the maximum # of players in a group to 4. This means when players form a group, they will only be able to add 3 people. When that group launches, they will be put in a bucket. The match maker will then fill the rest of the 8 player team with 4 PUGs or any partial groups that are looking for a match at that moment. The same will happen for the other team. Matches will still be 8v8 but instead of playing against 8 people in an organized premade, you will see a max of 4.

Now before you light your pitchforks, we know that this does not address all the issues and that 8-player groups are the mainstay of community and organized team-play. This is why we move to Phase 2 VERY soon after Phase 1.

Phase 2:

Players will be able to convert their 4-player group to an 8-player group similarly to how World of Warcraft’s group to raid conversion works. With a click of a button, a group leader can convert a 4-player group to 8-players and invite 4 more players to the group. There is a limitation to this however. If the group leader decides to convert to an 8-player group, they MUST have 8 players in order to launch. (i.e. you cannot launch a game with 5,6 or 7 players). In addition to that, your 8-player group will be matched to another 8-player group ONLY. This does reduce the change of finding a match quickly but at the same time 8-players teams will finally be matched to other 8-player teams exclusively.

At some future date we will also want to include the ability to challenge a specific 8-player team to a match in a competitive/eSport manner. But as stated, this will be coming at a later date.

Also relevant is Phase 3:

Paul Inouye, on 12 October 2012 - 05:29 PM, said:

Phase 3:

We have been examining the various ranking systems in other games/structured tournament play etc. This includes ELO, TrueSkill and others. Our current plan is to use a hybrid system that uses the mentality of ELO with a weighting system that we’ve determined that drives down to player effectiveness/skill in a match. In order for this to work properly, we will need to do heavy pre-release testing before it goes live to the community and hence the amount of time to get it implemented.

We currently cannot go into detail as to how this system will work because we are not going to over-promise something that may change during implementation. We will try to keep you as up to date on this as possible.
<snip>

Edited by Sir Roland MXIII, 14 October 2012 - 10:08 AM.

[Beorning]

Actually Sarg mentioned it first on comms. It seemed.. so obvious I had to post it.

[Tuoweit]

As someone who plays mostly solo, I think it's reasonably fair to be matched up against a large premade group, as long as my team has one as well.

[Sir Roland MXIII]

Beorning, on 13 October 2012 - 06:27 AM, said:

Actually Sarg mentioned it first on comms. It seemed.. so obvious I had to post it.

I knew that, but I found it unwieldy to say (think "Artist Formerly Known as Prince"), so in the interest of brevity I left that part out. Is his user name Sarg? Or Sarge? I can go ahead and edit the post to include him since I always prefer to see credit given where credits due.

As for the general idea, yeah, it does seem more obvious. More fluid, organic, whatever you want to call it. Honestly it's like Phase One and Two glommed onto each other all at once BUT without the stiff intractable requirement of 4, no more or less, or 8, no less. In the end, I could see this idea used in whole, or in part along with Phase One & Two. This Matchmaker seems a LOT more player friendly to me.

Edited by Sir Roland MXIII, 13 October 2012 - 10:28 AM.

[Henry Pride]

To be honest i dont like the other idea either, but the version of pgi with fixed team counts is crap in my opinion. League of Legends for example has a matchmakin i would apply to. Premade groups of certain number of players only face premade groups on a similar amount of players. For example 5 premades vs 5 premades and both teams are filled up with pugs. The fixed count of 4 or 8 will disturb the gameplay of premade teams extraordinary cause when i imagine i do always have to get 4 or 8 ppl together then others of my team will have to stay out or go on their own. U can never guarantee to be at least 8 players in teamspeak online to form a group. If there just 7 ppl for example the rest has to stay outside, couldnt play with their mates and has to go pug or wait either until the 8th man appears. Due to the fact that this is still beta i know that pgi has to test some stuff at least, but a matchmaking like its presented in phase 1 and 2 is not the holy grale, i would say.

[Sir Roland MXIII]

The only thing about premade vs premade only is that if there's room for Lone Wolves to play, they should be allowed*. So, a group of four with some PUG people like phase one isn't a bad idea, EXCEPT for those of us who prefer to premake teams, like real-life friends getting together, clans / guilds, etc.

So what I Iike about the Sarge(sp?) Beorning Vijil idea is that it doesn't punish team builders, but still supports lone wolves.

* Or at least that should be default, with the teams able to set this value to "0" / 'false" / No if they choose.

Edited by Sir Roland MXIII, 14 October 2012 - 10:10 AM.

[Beorning]

Sir Roland MXIII, on 14 October 2012 - 10:07 AM, said:

The only thing about premade vs premade only is that if there's room for Lone Wolves to play, they should be allowed*. So, a group of four with some PUG people like phase one isn't a bad idea, EXCEPT for those of us who prefer to premake teams, like real-life friends getting together, clans / guilds, etc.

So what I Iike about the Sarge(sp?) Beorning Vijil idea is that it doesn't punish team builders, but still supports lone wolves.

* Or at least that should be default, with the teams able to set this value to "0" / 'false" / No if they choose.

Sorry, it's 'Sarg', my bad for spelling it wrong - he's some clanner anyway so who cares.

I suppose you could call it 'APimpNamedSlickback'.

[Hauptmann Reinhardt]

By looking at the poll, it seems that vast majority of those who voted prefer the Boerning / Vijil method. It does give the option for 5 player groups to participate.

I like that option, because many of us dont have a group of 8, but would still like to play with more than 4 people.

[Adrienne Vorton]

just give pugs/ solo players a button to switch from " que all matches" to "que only solo matches"... and everything would be fine with that system up there

[Sir Roland MXIII]

Kale Sedero, on 15 October 2012 - 07:34 AM, said:

By looking at the poll, it seems that vast majority of those who voted prefer the Boerning / Vijil method. It does give the option for 5 player groups to participate.

I like that option, because many of us dont have a group of 8, but would still like to play with more than 4 people.

In my case, as part of a clan, we don't always have 4 or 8, we have anywhere from 2 to 8. Frankly human nature and time zones conspire to have our group number constantly shifting due to dinner, kids, sleep, etc. So Phase One & Two will be kind of brutal.

I also have some real life friends that play - two, that is. Here again the proposed Matchmaker will not be user-friendly. Once it goes live, we won't be able to team from the sounds of it.

Now, frankly, Phase One & Two could be fixed if it was set up so that people prmaking a partial team could have slots they're filling, with an option for premade slots to be set to Pick Up Player Here. Look at Civ, setting up games in advanced mode, where you determine players on a slot-by-slot basis, and then apply that here.

Instant solution to everyone's concerns - hope that happens but will have to wait and see.

[Low351]

I don't understand why it has to be so complicated. Just match up the groups a group that has the closest number of members and backfill with lone wolfs. Once in a while you'll get a group vs lone wolfs but not nearly as often. And then PUGS will have to suck it up and stop whining. It's not a run and gun game.