37 replies to this topic

[Zervziel]

Ranek Blackstone, on 18 March 2013 - 06:41 PM, said:

I think I remember this pic. I know one dude posted getting 5 Atlas mechs, 2 heavies and a med against a team of 2 heavies 3 meds and 3 lights. The lighter team won.

Must have been a different picture, because the one I spoke of the lighter team got stomped pretty bad.

[MuonNeutrino]

Daisu Saikoro, on 18 March 2013 - 08:56 PM, said:

Splitting up into 3 groups of 2 or 3 and moving to and defending the separate capture points (you need 3 to win ultimately) wouldn't work?

It might work... in theory. At least in the first game. The problem is, it requires a *lot* more coordination than is easily gotten with the limited communication tools in a pure pug. And if you assume sufficient coordination for the friendly team, then to be fair you have to do it for the enemy team as well - which means that those little bite sized groups of 2 or 3 mechs are going to get steamrolled under by the entire enemy team one clump at a time. And that's the first game. The second game was pretty much an auto-lose for any pug team - you almost *have* to be in one tight clump to have any hope at all of surviving against a premade raven swarm.

It's all a matter of initiative - the side with the light mechs gets to dictate the pace of the game. If you stick together, they can cap all the points and laugh at you. If you split up, they can use their superior speed to regroup with the rest of their team and swarm your isolated detachments one at a time - or just swarm your detachments themselves, if they're weak enough.

[FerretGR]

Ninja Snarl, on 18 March 2013 - 06:27 PM, said:

We'd be better off having the old system, where at least we don't have games become impossible to win thanks to the matchmaker giving one side a bunch of lights on Alpine or having the teams imbalanced by 150-200 tons. where I could go out and stomp newbies to my heart's delight.

At least be honest about why you want the old matchmaker back. Yes, the old matchmaker was better for you because you were stomping newbs with reckless abandon. It was utter **** for the newbies though, and utter **** for anyone who wanted something more than guaranteed facerolls every match.

Me, personally, I'll take a system which matches me with real competition, but gives the occasional weight imbalance, over one that places newbies up against experienced pilots in tweaked rides ten times out of ten.

[Comguard]

I wanted to use my founder-Atlas. Joined a match were my team had 2 Atlas DC + 2 Ravel 3L. Thought it was a premade, they said they weren't. Needless to say that the other team didn't have much of a chance against the ECM-power.

[Syllogy]

I've been out-tonned and out-ECM'd many times, and still come home with the Win, even without being in a Premade.

Once you get over these mental blocks that you keep putting in, and accept that there are circumstances that you will have to Adapt, Overcome, and Harden the Frack Up, then you will notice the little things.

.... like that Raven 3L standing still on the hilltop, just waiting to get blasted by an Alpha-Strike from a Sniper....

[Mercules]

Last night my friend and I had a ton of wonky games. Rough estimate from memory it seems that last night I was the fastest mech on our side in my TBT-5J the majority of the matches. When we did get a faster light mech on our side it tended to be a non-ECM version and for some reason the other side got at least 2 ECM Lights.

Alpine was particularly fun. Here I am in a mech with LRMs, PPC, and some Medium Lasers having to run for points instead of doing the fire support thing because everything else on our team moved at about 64kph or slower. Opposing team gets a Commando, Spider, and Jenner and the match type is Conquest.

Of course we don't know they have 3 lights who decided to wolfpack till after I was dead and could type in there location as of 10 seconds ago, the direction they were probably headed, and what they were. It was smart play by those pilots, but a fairly easy game for them as well since all they really had to do was keep mobile and away from the main pack and swarm any single player that broke away to try and counter their capping.

The one time we did manage to get a nice balanced team we ran into 2 3xLRM15 D-DCs with 2 RVN-3L "spotters" and sundry other mechs including a Stalker LRM boat. Our lonely ECM light ran out in the open, was tagged, and ate a stream of LRMs(aka, not very good).


We had maybe 2-3 good solid matches last night where the team weight balance wasn't a factor and in those it often went down to very close matches. Elo seems to work okay when it isn't desperately expanding its parameters to try and force a match in a short period of time. If it is "rushed" though it creates matches that are painful.

[Syllogy]

Okay, but how many of those total matches were separated by a win of less than 3 kills?

Mercules, on 19 March 2013 - 05:14 AM, said:

We had maybe 2-3 good solid matches last night where the team weight balance wasn't a factor and in those it often went down to very close matches. Elo seems to work okay when it isn't desperately expanding its parameters to try and force a match in a short period of time. If it is "rushed" though it creates matches that are painful.

[Mercules]

Syllogy, on 19 March 2013 - 05:18 AM, said:

Okay, but how many of those total matches were separated by a win of less than 3 kills?

I just stated... 2-3. The vast majority of the 14-16 matches were blowouts 8-3 or worse. Either we steamrolled them, or they steamrolled us.

[TheStrider]

Every time I drop with all Mediums and Heavy mechs, I quail. Inevitably the matchmaker gives the other team Atlai (or Stalkers) and Ravens, usually all with ECM and LRMs.

[Mercules]

Thontor, on 19 March 2013 - 05:27 AM, said:

Personally I don't even pay attention to the weights... Win is a win, loss is a loss, move on the the next match.

I wouldn't either, if they somehow matched the teams up by BV. But when you end up with one team consisting of mostly Assaults in Assault or mostly Lights in Conquest and in addition end up with things like Stock Trial mechs against tweaked mechs.... things get ugly.

[Asakara]

6 Assaults + 1 Heavy + 1 Medium VS 3 Lights + 3 Mediums + 2 Heavies does not seem like a very balanced match in my opinion, yet that is what I got one game when dropping as a 3 man.

These days, from what I have seen in the 1-4 man queue, when I am in a light it is uncommon for me to be matched against another light on the opposing team.

[Konstantin Richter]

They`re destroying their own game with a matchmaking like that!

I had never seen so unballanced matches before....

I remeber one match against 6 atlases and one awsome...against our hevies and mediums...
Please change the matchmaking as it was before.

[MustrumRidcully]

As I understand it, the system simply tries to use Elo rankings and weight class to balancing teams. If it can't find the right team compositions, the system will loosen the restrictions. The weight balance is the first to go.

Wishing for the weight balancing being back means putting more emphasis on weight classes and less on Elo rankings. (Ergh, stupid words.) Do you really believe this will make the game better than it is now? We had that system, when we had no Elo rankings at all, and I don't think it was all that great.

No, the best thing to hope for is that they can fine-tune the system further so it gets better results in the same or less time. I certainly don't want to increase the time to wait for matches. I already played Startrek Online.


Steam-rolls and one-sided mechs are not necessary the same thing. If you see one group of enemies fighting well together and overrunning an uncoordinated team, you got a steam roll.

But if one team loses a mech early and then can't seem to make up for that loss, resulting in a 8-2 result or something like that - that's just the brutal nature of math. Without respawns, recovering from losing a mech is extremely hard (and even with respawns, it is not easy.) The enemy just got 1 target less he can spread his damage around on, and you just lost a seizable portion of your firepower.

Most games of similar skilled players are probably decided once the team size difference exceeds 2, if not earlier.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 20 March 2013 - 02:22 AM.

[Godswrath]

just wanted to pop in and mention the game I just left...well after we lost. our team was 1 assualt, the rest mixed. opponents team was 6 assault along with hunch and something else....how can the matchmaker create such a lopsided matchup.... I really didnt want to read the this post as I am completly aware of the issues with this game...

All this aside, I still greatly enjoy the game when its working smoothly and really hope some of the more serious issues get ironed out.

[xxx WreckinBallRaj xxx]

We never had weight based MM in the first place. We had class based. But why they took it out instead of improve it or upgrade it to weight based; I'll never know. Now games are often weight skewed IN ADDITION TO pug vs premade every game.

[Mothykins]

My fav. moment with it so far was it deciding we needed a five man team VS Seven.

5v7

How the **** does that make any sense?

[xxx WreckinBallRaj xxx]

Cavale, on 25 March 2013 - 06:49 PM, said:

My fav. moment with it so far was it deciding we needed a five man team VS Seven.

5v7

How the **** does that make any sense?

That happens because of map dodgers. People are rejecting maps with a directory exploit. When it occurs, the game drops without them, leaving an empty slot. You'll see this a lot, because people only want to play certain maps, yet can't pick the ones they want or reject the ones they don't want. Since Piranha won't give you the ability to do it outright, they exploit for it. The latest QA said they plan to fix it, but that just means the players will leave at start or DC instead. Either way, you aren't going to make them play maps they simply hate. A better solution would be to just let US pick the maps WE want to drop on.

Jackson Jax Teller, on 25 March 2013 - 07:13 PM, said:

What does the MM in WoT do? Since this is basically based on that

You're asking me about MM in WoT? I've never even played that game...

[KhanCipher]

Jackson Jax Teller, on 25 March 2013 - 07:13 PM, said:

What does the MM in WoT do? Since this is basically based on that

it's... hit and miss, the last time i played there wasn't any real steamrolls... but that's due to it being possible to get OHKO often

Edited by KhanCipher, 25 March 2013 - 07:28 PM.