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Aethon, on 15 March 2013 - 10:10 AM, said:
The thing you may not be aware of is that I never made up my mind about ELO until I started to see how it panned out...because I did not know what it was, and everyone on the forum hailed it as some sort of messiah that would save the game, etc. Then, after I posted about it on the forum here, people told me to wait a couple weeks, and that it would get better...but, day by day, my numbers are not changing. I thought they were when I had that one good day, but then it went right back to the way it was. I did not form my final opinion, *then* start counting up the numbers simply to confirm/deny my suspicions.
I also play about 15-20 matches per day, so the matchmaker/ELO system should have a pretty good record of me by this point, although I cannot speak for others.
After having read up on ELO, though, I still think it was a poor choice of action on PGI's part. Player-created lobbies, private matchmaking, new players only matching against other new players, etc. would have all been superior to the mess we have right now. It is a really bad idea to negatively impact the veteran players, just because the new players are getting stomped due to oversight on PGI's part (namely, the fact that the number of 4-man groups per side is not balanced).
here's the thing though. For your argument to be valid what has to happen is low Elo players dropped with high Elo players. I don't think that's happening. Statistically what's more likely is that the other team is just better coordinated and is using focused fire or brutal, well coordinated tactics to kill members of your team before they even had a chance.
I would bet cash money that all these complaints are coming from people actually playing with other people in and around their own Elo level, no huge disparity. They may be in off-variants, trying new things, pugging when they normally play in a premade or otherwise off their game. It happens to all of us. I normally kick a$$ in my D-DC but yesterday I got cored from behind by an A1 (where was my support guys?
I was in a premade even!) without doing a single point of damage. I'm sure the rest of the team looked at that and went 'Pfft. N00b! Go back to CoD!' even though normally I'm a strong team player and use my Atlas to support my team, bring ECM to LRM targets and brawl like I'm a drunken parent at a pee-wee hockey game.Aethon, on 15 March 2013 - 10:18 AM, said:
I honestly cannot argue with what you have said in this post. It makes sense. I just wish others knew what they were talking about when they posted here. And, honestly, I like playing against good teams, as long as they are not abusing the most broken, cheesy builds in the game just to win every time (4 RVN-3L's and 4 LRM70 Stalkers, for example). Thank you for being clear, constructive, and not pointing at group players being the antichrist, like half the other posters on these forums, lol.
Still, working as intended or not, I believe ELO is counterproductive in MWO. In the same way that communism was supposed to divide everyone's money equally, instead of allowing one's hard work to allow them to prosper, ELO removes the rewards for playing well, since you will be put up against teams who are either in your ELO bracket and do nothing but cheese/exploit all day long, or people of a higher skill level who will bludgeon you back down to the previous bracket. This artificial regulation of your C-Bill/XP income and win/loss ratio makes the game feel pointless to me.
You know it's been a month since the premade vs pug forum wars but it's worth pointing out that I was always pro-premade. Just anti-pugstomper.
Without Elo though you're not going to create an effective path for player development. You need newer players playing with and against *slightly* better people *sometimes*. This helps them improve. You need to keep skilled players away from everyone else but not isolate them or they turn into an inbred mess.
Elo is a critical step towards CW and here is why. They've said that this is just one piece of the puzzle - what CW will do is use Elo bands to determine relative value of objectives. High Elo score gives high value objectives and allow people to move up into higher earning jobs against most skilled opponents and help prevent higher skilled players from farming lower level players and objectives for easy money.
Does that make sense?
Elo is not the destination but it's a critical piece of the puzzle to get CW going. You'll get your higher reward to match higher challenge games in time but for now the method of separating player skill bands needs worked, tested and polished.
Be patient.
