54 replies to this topic

[Serapth]

... that we end up with 3 or 4 players on the team doing well under 100 damage...

And it is completely disregarding mech weight like it is currently...


Why, oh why, did I just have a 8v6 match... again? How hard is it to find players for a match when the criteria seem to be non-existent??? At least pre-Elo you matched based on weight.


Seriously, what happened since last patch... before then, Elo matches seemed quite balanced, I never had a match worse then 8v7, and even the weight mismatches didn't seem quite so bad. The skill balance certainly seemed better. Has the community shrunk so you have so few players to choose from, or does the matchmaking algorithm really suck that bad now?

[One Medic Army]

8v6 is probably due to that exploit people are using so their poor splatcats never end up on alpine...

[Serapth]

One Medic Army, on 12 March 2013 - 09:03 PM, said:

8v6 is probably due to that exploit people are using so their poor splatcats never end up on alpine...

That however, should show up as a disconnect, not merely the game launching with 2 players missing.

[DrSecretStache]

Its been explained before that this happens when someone's game dies and they were part of a team...actually happened to my friend. His game died, and we had a 7v8 according to the matchmaker. It simply can't fill the space for some reason, and because it happened before hand (or something, I don't know the details), it doesn't show up on the roster.

I don't think it has to do with actual matchmaking.

[Aethon]

Serapth, on 12 March 2013 - 09:00 PM, said:

... that we end up with 3 or 4 players on the team doing well under 100 damage...

And it is completely disregarding mech weight like it is currently...


Why, oh why, did I just have a 8v6 match... again? How hard is it to find players for a match when the criteria seem to be non-existent??? At least pre-Elo you matched based on weight.


Seriously, what happened since last patch... before then, Elo matches seemed quite balanced, I never had a match worse then 8v7, and even the weight mismatches didn't seem quite so bad. The skill balance certainly seemed better. Has the community shrunk so you have so few players to choose from, or does the matchmaking algorithm really suck that bad now?

ELO is so stupidly broken, and it never should have been implemented in its current state...not to mention the fact that it is a solution looking for a problem.

[Serapth]

Aethon, on 12 March 2013 - 09:18 PM, said:

ELO is so stupidly broken, and it never should have been implemented in its current state...not to mention the fact that it is a solution looking for a problem.

Oh god no, there certainly is a problem.

The game needs a matchmaker... it needs to balance out the premade advantage, or remove them from the PUG queue entirely, and it needs to protect the newbs from veterans, or the game will never gain in popularity.

And... it seemed to do this... for a while. Now, its horrifically broken AND weight matching is borked too. So now, can you not only end up with a couple trial mechs on your team, facing a 4 man premade, but that premade could be entirely in Atlases, while your team is mostly Hunchbacks.

Again, before the last patch, other than weight matching, things seemed to be working pretty well over all.

[Aethon]

Serapth, on 12 March 2013 - 09:23 PM, said:

Oh god no, there certainly is a problem.

The game needs a matchmaker... it needs to balance out the premade advantage, or remove them from the PUG queue entirely, and it needs to protect the newbs from veterans, or the game will never gain in popularity.

And... it seemed to do this... for a while. Now, its horrifically broken AND weight matching is borked too. So now, can you not only end up with a couple trial mechs on your team, facing a 4 man premade, but that premade could be entirely in Atlases, while your team is mostly Hunchbacks.

Again, before the last patch, other than weight matching, things seemed to be working pretty well over all.

ELO was not the answer, though. It was never needed. I do not need or want some computer artificially regulating my win/loss ratio, just to hold everyone's hand. It also penalizes groups of good players. The better the players I end up with in my 3-4 man groups, the worse the matches end, because the other 4 people hardly deal any damage before they run out and die by themselves. Just because I know some special little snowflake is going to claim that I think all pugs suck, am an elitist so-and-so, etc., I had better put in the usual disclaimer: I have seen good and bad pugs...but ELO balances the good players by putting really bad players on their team, which pretty much turns the match into 4v8. It also is not very fair for these players, because they are being dragged up into matches against players of a much higher average skill level.

If you want pugs to have a fair shake, all you have to do is give them a 'pug only' queue, so they do not have to deal with organized groups of pugstompers on teamspeak. This is fair, this is simple, and this does not penalize the people who have 2-3 people who want to have fun together.

As it presently stands, I have to drop solo to get any good matches, which kind of defeats the purpose of being in a unit. Sure, we can drop 8-man groups, but we only have 8 of us online at certain times of day; the rest of the time, we pretty much have to pug, or try to suffer through the crappy matchmaking system if we want to have fun playing together...which really is not much fun.

[Dan Nashe]

I have not seen a 8 v 6. I have had people I was queuing with crash when the queue was found. This leaves an empty slot. No name or disconnected message. I won my last 8 v 7 as the 7. No dcs on their team, just a good close 8-3 math with about equal damage per side, but better focus fire on our side. I did once get a 4 v 8 pre-elo. We lost as the 4, badly.

This is out of 20p pre elo games and 200 post elo games in chassis in all 4 weight classes.


Anecdotes aside, give us some productive feedback where subjective opinions really matter:
How long is an acceptable wait for better matched groups? 2 minutes? 5 minutes? 10 minutes? Better matching will mean longer waits. Do you want better elo or better weight matching?

Can we agree that both tonnage and skill matter and need to be balanced?


My final thought, albeit anecdotal and of little persuasive weight: I had a .25 win Ratio (I lost 75% of my 80 games) during the first post elo tournament. The games were still waaaay better than than pre elo, because on at least 1/2 of my losses I could say "if I hadn't made x y and z mistake, we might have had a real chance to win". And on half my wins I could identify something I did right that probably made a difference. Pre elo, it was 90% about flipping a coin because one team vastly outclassed the other 80+ percent of the time.

P.s. low damage doesn't necessarily mean bad player. If my premade decides we want you dead first, you'll be darned lucky to do 150 damage if you're good. Not many mechs can take 3 mechs pounding on them for long. Hiding so we single out someone else won't help your team win either. I'd love to see what scoreboards look like after the top RHOD teams fight to see if my theory is right or wrong that they look more imbalanced than you might expect.

Edited by DanNashe, 12 March 2013 - 09:51 PM.

[Aethon]

DanNashe, on 12 March 2013 - 09:43 PM, said:

Can we agree that both tonnage and skill matter and need to be balanced?

Tonnage and the number of groups per team (or the number of grouped players per team) are the things that need to be balanced; this would simultaneously make sync-dropping a non-issue, and ensure that both teams have the same core of organized players to back them up.

Skill is something that a computer cannot quantify; as such, I believe it should be left alone.

Edited by Aethon, 12 March 2013 - 09:50 PM.

[Serapth]

Thontor, on 12 March 2013 - 10:00 PM, said:

Uneven numbers of players is not because the matchmaker can't find people, its because some people were selected by the matchmaker, but they didn't load into the map... because the game crashed, or some other reason.

If thats the case, then the match maker is 12 kinds of stupid. We've seen matches that sat and spun at 8v6 for a good 30 or more seconds before starting, you can so often tell when the game is about to screw on side. That it doesn't have the logic to fill someone in for a dropped spot, in the time it often takes to match an ENTIRE match... that's just not right.

[CheezPanther]

shorthanded matches are a result of someone getting matched but failing to connect to the match server.. Now the MM used to correct this by recognizing the failed connect and grabbing someone outta the waitng pool and connecting them... When they designed ELO matching routine they forgot to code in the routine for seeing a failed connect and replacing the player...

Someone ASSUMED that the game is stable enough to not fail to connect a player.. TSK TSK TSK!!

There is another theory about why theres sooo many failed connections but that one is not for forum discussion...

[Serapth]

Thontor, on 12 March 2013 - 10:00 PM, said:

Elo rating is just a tool for the matchmaker. Do you blame the hammer for smashing your fingers when you use it?

If I had a hammer that gave me a splinter 50% of the time I picked it up, you bet your *** I would blame the hammer eventually! Or myself for not replacing the hammer, but frankly, since this is the only Battletech game in town, well... that's not really an option.

That's the part that is infuriating about the current iteration of Elo though...

Up until last patch, I won about 50/50 or maybe a bit higher... but the matches were well balanced, and most of all, fun to play. By far the most fun I had since starting to play this game. The weight mismatches sucked pretty hard, but the generally parity of skill seemed to make up for it.


Then... something happened...

In that initial period of time, I never saw trial mechs... nor did I generally seem to see people dominate rounds. It really was like like minded players were playing like minded players. Then it became more like a yoyo. You either got a stacked deck, or prepared to be an abuse victim, there was no balance, no middle ground, it was a see-saw, that either put you on easy street, or kicked you in the nuts. This... is not fun. Yes, it works out to a basically 50/50 end result, but by institutionalizing the 8v0 rolls that made the pre-Elo game suck so bad.

[JeepStuff]

Aethon, on 12 March 2013 - 09:36 PM, said:

...but ELO balances the good players by putting really bad players on their team, which pretty much turns the match into 4v8. It also is not very fair for these players, because they are being dragged up into matches against players of a much higher average skill level.

That's not the way it works, or at least, the way it's designed to work. In some post somewhere (I'll find the link if it's important to you) a dev said that the matchmaker does not try to match the average of one team to the average of another. It tries to put individuals with similar scores in the same match. If a good player is matched with a bad player, the matchmaker only did that because there weren't enough players of similar skill available to throw into the same game.

Aethon, on 12 March 2013 - 09:36 PM, said:

If you want pugs to have a fair shake, all you have to do is give them a 'pug only' queue, so they do not have to deal with organized groups of pugstompers on teamspeak. This is fair, this is simple, and this does not penalize the people who have 2-3 people who want to have fun together.

Oh no no no. As a 100% pug, I DESPERATELY want the matchmaker to give me teammates and opponents of similar skill level. A pug-only queue with no regard for skill level wouldn't be fun because you would still get half the team scattering every game. Just because I'm a pug doesn't mean I want to be matched with new players all the time. It's not good for me and it's not good for them. My bliss is to be elevated to the level of people who stick together and use teamwork, but still below people who take the game too seriously and get too competitive (in my opinion). People who want to scatter should get games with other folks who scatter, and the hardcore gamers should get games with other hardcore gamers. I want to get players right in the middle. I believe Elo, after much tuning, might get us there. I'm willing to wait.

[Commander Kobold]

Aethon, on 12 March 2013 - 09:18 PM, said:

ELO is so stupidly broken, and it never should have been implemented in its current state...not to mention the fact that it is a solution looking for a problem.

I thought we where talikng about ELO...not ecm, wait...nevermind

[Aethon]

Thontor, on 12 March 2013 - 10:00 PM, said:

Elo rating is just a tool for the matchmaker. Do you blame the hammer for smashing your fingers when you use it?

No, but I can blame whoever is smashing my fingers with a hammer, especially since the hammer was never needed in the first place. MWO without ELO is like a covert spy mission without an accompanying polka band.

Thontor, on 12 March 2013 - 10:00 PM, said:

The phase 3 matchmaker has to balance the time to find a match with the balance between teams. They could make perfectly balanced teams and mechs but it could take forever to actually get into a match.

That's not saying its ok the way it is...

The only way they can know these problems is if they implemented it. These kind of things can only be tested on the live servers with us being the guinea pigs beta testers. The devs haven't even made any adjustments yet, they are still gathering data (which they need to make it better, and wouldn't have if the phase 3 matchmaker hadn't been implemented) and will then need to use that data to balance the time to find a match with the balance of the match.

It is broken. It does not work. It penalizes groups. It increases match wait time. The wait time will be even longer if we actually want it to work better, and I spend enough time twiddling my thumbs between matches already. It nerfs the C-Bill income of the players who try to better themselves, and keeps them from enjoying a higher win ratio as a reward for their efforts.

In short, it is crap. Hopefully, the devs figure this out soon, and get rid of it.

Edited by Aethon, 12 March 2013 - 10:29 PM.

[GalaxyBluestar]

[REDACTED]

this is elo mark 1 you want miracles? there's tons more developement to be done with matchmaking yet so...

Edited by Viterbi, 13 March 2013 - 02:56 PM.
Removed aggressive photo

[Aethon]

Omni 13, on 12 March 2013 - 10:19 PM, said:

I thought we where talikng about ELO...not ecm, wait...nevermind

Lots of things get implemented without being properly thought-out around here. It is starting to sound like a broken record, even though the acronyms change with each patch.

[Aethon]

Thontor, on 12 March 2013 - 10:29 PM, said:

Elo rating was needed, even in its I tweaked state it had made the matchmaking SOOOO much better than it was before. I look forward to future tweaks making it even better.

Better how? Every match is a landslide, one way or the other, for me. I also keep ending up with grossly mismatched weights, and I cannot play with my friends, unless I want to lose most of the time, since the matchmaker keeps adding more boat anchors to my team with every friend I add to my group.

This is NOT better.

Also, I have yet to see a valid argument for ELO's necessity.

Edited by Aethon, 12 March 2013 - 10:36 PM.

[Serapth]

GalaxyBluestar, on 12 March 2013 - 10:25 PM, said:

this is elo mark 1 you want miracles? there's tons more developement to be done with matchmaking yet so...

be a man and deal with it.

No, this is mark 2.

Mark 1 worked great.

Mark 2 is ****. Whatever they changed has ruined Elo.

[Feetwet]

I have to agree with serapth on this. Up until last week I had some of the best matches I had ever had. Lots of close matches. Since last Tuesday my game experience has gone into the sh itter. A ton of blow outs. Tonight I had a match where every opponent was declared for house Liao. How the f8ck is that possible. Every mech, all 8, house Liao...

The steamrolls at least for me are back with a vengeance. Ca n we rewind to elo version 1.

S