183 replies to this topic

[Spider Monkeylord]

My KDR is fine, my W/L is not magnificent, but beyond all of the statistics, which I care very little about, I don't have as much fun as I used to, pre-ELO. A couple of fights will be me vs someone quite good, and those are fun. The rest is either my team getting stomped because they are terrible, or me just road-pizza'ing a bunch of super noobish players. I know there are plenty of players out there who are quite good, I'd love to face off against them with other quite good players on my team (I know there are plenty out there), and let all of the terrible players play in their own arena, against other terrible players. As it is, games are often split between a few good players (3-4) and a few awful players (4-5) on either team, which is just a big joke.

As for 8v8s... I don't like them, because absolutely needing 8 players to drop is pretty lame. I have about 5 friends in the world, sometimes the 6 of us want to play MWO together. We could try syncdropping which either pits us against each other, puts us in different matches, or is no fun because we pugstomp, or we can try to pull in a couple of random people from some ts server or something. I don't personally like any of those options. I'd love the option to just drop with 6, against another 5-8 man, with the extra slots filled by random players.

[Stoicblitzer]

Caleb Lee, on 31 March 2013 - 07:47 PM, said:

That's the real rub... there's no way for one pilot or even several to carry a team. A group of average to above average players will always win in a game like this.

I also want it that way.

I'm NOT winning most of my games right now unless we all go Atlas/Stalker and carry the team. That is NOT fun. I'm forced int o a weight class not of my choosing so I stand any chance of winning.

this has been my experience also. our team has to consist of tournament or cheese builds for the most part to remain competitive in 4mans. this partly has to do with reduced/nonexistent class matching and partly that the game isn't balanced very well. it seems like most of the teams we face consist of 2x 4mans while we have 1x 4man and 4 randoms. i have no proof but sometimes we will see 4 LNW + 4 MRK on the other team or other such combinations while we have 5 LNW + 2 STN + 1 LIA. this is not a perfect determination of premades but it's better than guessing like we used to do. one of our pugs typed "zerg rush" then ran off while a teammate followed him and they got 8v2'd then DC'd.

[SgtKinCaiD]

What can you expect from teammates like this :





Today, I also got paired up with a Muromets equipped with only one gauss and 3 tons of ammo. One and only gauss ... on a Muromets.

I'm fed up with this matchmaking : I'm not here to explain why sticking together is important, why you shouldn't run behind a scout when you are an assault, why LRM at point blank range don't do any damage, why an AC-10 is not jamming, it's out of ammo !

Now when I see the green stock camo on my teammates, all i want to do is shoot them to end their sufferings.

High-Elo ratings and low-elo ratings players should have their own match, they should not be mixed together for the sake of having a lower waiting time.

All I am asking is to have teammates in my Elo bracket and opponents in my Elo bracket like the Elo ratings should normally work.

Edited by SgtKinCaiD, 01 April 2013 - 03:35 PM.

[FerretGR]

Tezcatli, on 31 March 2013 - 07:53 PM, said:

This has been a recurring theme in threads. They need to implement tonnage limits on matchmaking. Even if someone is highly skilled, they're still fighting an uphill struggle against heavies and assaults.

Yes, everyone is always on the team full of newbies piloting mediums versus the team of organized pros with 3 assaults. If it was happening, shouldn't it occasionally happen to the other team?

[Anologue Kid]

Well,

I know this is anecdotal and I'm not a long time player. But I bought a Catapharact today as my first heavy. I started running some drops in it and saw my team had several trial mechs in it. Being new to the heavy class I figured I'd have a low ELO.

That first drop we got ramrodded by a group of players running many Jagers in nearly the same paint scheme and lost 8-1.

Second drop I had more trial mechs, and the other team nailed us with a pack of ravens 3l's with 3 assaults as backups....none of those were trials. Several following matches had similar results, though the last round was closer and the other team seemed to have a mixture of trials and custom mechs.

I'm not really sure whats going on here, whether its low playerbase so the MM has to pull hard from ELO to make up the teams, or if RNG just is against me winning any matches in this mech. But out of 7 drops I've not won any, and it seems like I'm usually on the side missing players or the one built mostly with trial mechs.

I know that the common thread in each of these drops was me in a fresh CTF-3d, but this has been a fairly hard slap today and I cannot say I have had much fun. I don't care about K/D, W/L or whether Tinkerbell pilots an Atlas or a Jenner. I'd just like a bit more parity in teams so that I can have a tad more fun in the time I've invested.

Edited by Anologue Kid, 01 April 2013 - 04:02 PM.

[Xie Belvoule]

Caleb Lee, on 31 March 2013 - 11:26 PM, said:

As one other user posted, in a FPS I can carry the team with a few well placed shots. MWO is a whole other game and you can't carry the team as a 4 man even.

Thats a lie, I carry my teams all the time, you just need to L2P.




Thats an average game for me, you just aren't good enough to pull your own weight. A good player gets anywhere from 3-5 kills a game. Also, it might help if you L2Warboss aswell, even pugs can be organized into a fighting force.

[One Medic Army]

Xie Belvoule, on 01 April 2013 - 04:49 PM, said:

Thats a lie, I carry my teams all the time, you just need to L2P.




Thats an average game for me, you just aren't good enough to pull your own weight. A good player gets anywhere from 3-5 kills a game. Also, it might help if you L2Warboss aswell, even pugs can be organized into a fighting force.

Couple things:
1) You're in an atlas.
2) You're not carrying the team. Look at the damage and assists on the rest of your team, they weren't doing nothing.

Carrying the team is when one guy has 800+dmg and the rest all have like 100-200.

[Xie Belvoule]

One Medic Army, on 01 April 2013 - 05:03 PM, said:

Couple things:
1) You're in an atlas.
2) You're not carrying the team. Look at the damage and assists on the rest of your team, they weren't doing nothing.

Carrying the team is when one guy has 800+dmg and the rest all have like 100-200.

I like you man, but your wrong. In that match im using a sniper build that has a 55 point alpha, If I aim correctly I can 2 or 3 shot any mech in the game, which is what you see there. A skilled mechwarrior will have 1 kill for every 150-200 damage. Anyone who does more than 700 damage and hasn't killed the entire enemy team isn't a skilled player at all. Also, I did CARRY my team, as I killed two of my targets in the roughly the first minute of the game, basically making it a 6v8, letting my teammates run wild. Also, yes im in an atlas, is this a problem?

[One Medic Army]

Xie Belvoule, on 01 April 2013 - 05:18 PM, said:

I like you man, but your wrong. In that match im using a sniper build that has a 55 point alpha, If I aim correctly I can 2 or 3 shot any mech in the game, which is what you see there. A skilled mechwarrior will have 1 kill for every 150-200 damage. Anyone who does more than 700 damage and hasn't killed the entire enemy team isn't a skilled player at all. Also, I did CARRY my team, as I killed two of my targets in the roughly the first minute of the game, basically making it a 6v8, letting my teammates run wild. Also, yes im in an atlas, is this a problem?

From the screenshot you posted, your contributions weren't excessively more than the other players on your team.
You were a sniper atlas, why didn't the entire enemy team all swarm and off you? Oh, the rest of your team kept them busy.

Bottom line is you only did ~170dmg more than the next highest person on your team, everyone on your team did at least 100dmg and 5 assists with 6 doing over 200 and 6 or more assists+kills.
Carrying your team means the rest of your team did nothing and you did all the heavy lifting.

[MischiefSC]

Your Elo isn't putting you with terrible people but good people on the other team.

Your Elo is not trying to create situations where you will lose to drive you to a 1.0 win/loss.

Your Elo is just grouping you with people of approximately the same Elo score as you and filling the other team with people of approximately the same Elo as you.

That's it.

Just made a whole thread about this and have discussed it for 3 pages, even posted in comments from the devs saying exactly that.

A few anecdotal experiences of times you did great and your team didn't doesn't mean anything to Elo. Play a few hundred games, win more than you lose, your Elo will rise and you'll drop both with and against better people. Or lose more than you win and you'll drop both with and against people of your same skill level.

THAT is what pushes you to a 1.0 win/loss. Playing with/against people of your same skill so you're just as likely to win as lose.

There is no glass ceiling aside from your own skill.

[Glythe]

Tickdoff Tank, on 31 March 2013 - 07:30 PM, said:

If you are winning more than 50% of your matches then you are not in the right Elo grouping. As a poster above has said, you should be losing/winning 50% of your games in a "proper" Elo system.

And this is why Elo is stupid. It's a crutch to help bad players have any hope of winning. Until about 5 years ago I never played an online multiplayer game with Elo. We didn't need them before and don't need them now. There shouldn't be a penalty for being good at the game.

OP's gripes 1-3 are very common among good players but baddies who aren't that high in the ladder never see the problem. In the same way that the lowest tier folk have zero problem killing 3L ravens at the bottom of the Elo spectrum.

MischiefSC, on 01 April 2013 - 05:30 PM, said:

Your Elo isn't putting you with terrible people but good people on the other team.

Your Elo is not trying to create situations where you will lose to drive you to a 1.0 win/loss.

Your Elo is just grouping you with people of approximately the same Elo score as you and filling the other team with people of approximately the same Elo as you.

Just made a whole thread about this and have discussed it for 3 pages, even posted in comments from the devs saying exactly that.

There is no glass ceiling aside from your own skill.

Elo isn't supposed to put baddies on your team but DOES when the enemy is overall less skilled (and more average).

Elo does what it can but fails quite often when the population is low

There is a glass ceiling because you aren't allowed to have a high win rate with Elo. The higher you go the more you level out. It's an artificial barrier to prevent high win rates.

Edited by Glythe, 01 April 2013 - 06:06 PM.

[MischiefSC]

Glythe, on 01 April 2013 - 05:52 PM, said:

And this is why Elo is stupid. It's a crutch to help bad players have any hope of winning. Until about 5 years ago I never played an online multiplayer game with Elo. We didn't need them before and don't need them now. There shouldn't be a penalty for being good at the game.

OP's gripes 1-3 are very common among good players but baddies who aren't that high in the ladder never see the problem. In the same way that the lowest tier folk have zero problem killing 3L ravens at the bottom of the Elo spectrum.



Elo isn't supposed to put baddies on your team but DOES when the enemy is overall less skilled (and more average).

Elo does what it can but fails quite often when the population is low

There is a glass ceiling because you aren't allowed to have a high win rate with Elo. The higher you go the more you level out. It's an artificial barrier to prevent high win rates.

Elo does not put 'baddies on your team'. It puts you in a game with both teams in a similar Elo range. You are as likely to end up with the higher ranked team as the lower ranked team. Any statistical variations in Elo values of people you drop with are as likely to be in your benefit as to your detriment.

When the population is low it pulls in people from wider Elo ranges higher OR lower. This will work for or against you with equal odds. It is statistically impossible to say that Elo is somehow magically always stacking the odds against you whenever there's not enough people to fill a match. You will benefit from it as often as you suffer from it.

You can have as high a win rate as your skill allows with Elo. You'll play against better and better people until you settle against people of your own skill. Then, if you improve, you'll advance to play against better people.

What Elo does NOT allow is you to inflate your win/loss rate by playing against less skilled opponents with any regularity. It might happen but it's unlikely.

The problem with a declining win/loss is NOT Elo but the skill of the player involved. Keep getting better and you'll keep winning. Saying that you deserve to stomp newer or less skilled players to pad your stats isn't a legitimate argument.

Play more often so your Elo improves, play better. The quality of the people you drop with and against is set by YOUR PERFORMANCE. Nothing else. Both teams will be balanced essentially the same. If there's a variance it will be just as likely to benefit you as punish you.

Even more to the point you lose few if any points when you lose to a higher Elo team on times matchmaking has to cast wide. You gain little when you beat a team of a lower rank. Thus even when you do get dropped in a game outside your personal Elo level the impact of that games results are weighted for fairness in how they impact your Elo. Drop with a team of noobs? If it did happen and you lost to a better team your Elo wouldn't suffer because the matchmaker knew the odds were against you. Win anyways? See a big bump because you won against the odds.

Elo is driven 100% by your performance. Not trying to be insulting here but if you're having a problem you need to play more games to better settle your Elo or play better if you want to play with better team mates. That's the nature of the system and it's exactly how it should work.

[Corwin Vickers]

Caleb Lee, on 01 April 2013 - 10:35 AM, said:

Elo is per weight class but doesn't do class matching at all. I.E. if you take a light, it doesn't match you up with a player in a light of equivalent skill.

Worst case scenario. You take a light, enemy counterpart is in a Stalker or Atlas with a 70 tonnage spread. Meanwhile, his equivalent Atlas on your team does 0-100 damage if that and if there even is a light on the enemy team he is easily taken out.

You're thinking of it wrong. If you want to think of it as a 1-1 match up then you need to realize that the atlas that is matched up against your Jenner has the same Elo rating in his assault class as you do in your light class. That means that even WITH HIS WEIGHT ADVANTAGE he only does as well as you in your Jenner, from a win/loss stand point.

jay35, on 01 April 2013 - 12:53 PM, said:

People are quick to whip out this rejoinder and claim it's the complaintant's fault and they're just "not as good as they thought they were", when in reality the matchmaker has to drag a couple high ELO players into much lower ELO matches all the time just to fill out the teams. We know this is happening because of the percentage of games we play where the matchmaker can't even fill out an 8v8 team and it's 8v7 or 8v6. That means not only did it try to match players in the same ELO bracket, it went beyond that bracket and still couldn't find enough players to fill out the match.

I think this is completely wrong. When it says "failed to find a match" that is the match maker failing to find enough players even with it's wide sweep.

When you only have 7 guys on your team it's because some a-hole deleted his map file for that map or sometimes it's a crash or a bug (usually you still get their name and "disconnected" when this happens) but I believe it's almost all map deleters.

Quote

This brings up the biggest bugbear with ELO: Above average players no longer have the same level of success they are used to experiencing in FPS games where they are consistently among the best players in every match they play. That is their expectation and it is legitimate. If they are better than the average player in most FPS games when they play a pub match, then they should be near the top of the results. So when they are artificially forced to only play against people with a similar skill to theirs, it is actually much less fun for many of them.

Is your argument "pug stompers gotta stomp?" Of course it's not reasonable to smash lower skilled players all day. It's not just your fun that matters. Matching players up based on skill is the MOST FAIR way to do it.

Quote

I don't always want to face a fierce challenge every round in pub matches. When I play a pub game, I want to face a normal proportion of the total playerbase. Facing a completely random assortment of players on the enemy team means that on average a player who is above average should win more than half the time. If they are no longer winning more than half the time, it is quite plainly providing a less fun experience for them compared to what they are used to.

Not just your fun that matters

jay35, on 01 April 2013 - 02:07 PM, said:

It's not that simple and never will be.

The number one factor in match quality and balanced matches is team communication and teamwork. And that cannot be accounted for by any ELO or matchmaking system. By and large, the team that works together, wins.

Not if you are the guy organizing your team. As any semi-intelligent person can see, how well you lead is a factor in how many games you will win and thus a factor in your Elo rating. Elo doesn't care how much damage you did or how many kills you got, it only cares how many times you win versus how many times you lose. If your team spazzes out it is a reflection of your ability to win games.

Caleb Lee, on 01 April 2013 - 02:24 PM, said:

Well, let me ask you this... what part of Elo is fair?

The way I see Elo is that it's a glass ceiling. Regardless of any players skill, the system will artificially force you to the same win/loss ratio as anyone else.

Instead of pitting you against players of equal skill, it artificially swings things around drastically to try and get you to a 50/50.

I might have explained that poorly before. You have admitted you are at a much higher win rate than 1 to 1. Thus you are still at an Elo score lower than your abilities. As your Elo skill rises you will be matched against harder and harder opponents until your win rate is 50%. At 50% you will be losing and gaining rating at an equal rate to stabilize you at that score.

How many matches do you have since it started keeping count? I'm over 2000 atm and my win loss is pretty close and the games are good.

Anologue Kid, on 01 April 2013 - 04:00 PM, said:

I'm not really sure whats going on here, whether its low playerbase so the MM has to pull hard from ELO to make up the teams, or if RNG just is against me winning any matches in this mech. But out of 7 drops I've not won any, and it seems like I'm usually on the side missing players or the one built mostly with trial mechs.

What if the guy who didn't load in on your team was the ringer the match maker gave you to make up for the guys on the other side? So the guy who hates RCN screwed your team. Deleting maps is against the rules btw, just need PGI to sack up and do something about it. Only other thing is when you lose to teams with a higher Elo rating that you have you don't lose as much rating. I don't know if it takes into account the AFKs, disconnects, and map deleters though.

Glythe, on 01 April 2013 - 05:52 PM, said:

And this is why Elo is stupid. It's a crutch to help bad players have any hope of winning. Until about 5 years ago I never played an online multiplayer game with Elo. We didn't need them before and don't need them now. There shouldn't be a penalty for being good at the game.

OP's gripes 1-3 are very common among good players but baddies who aren't that high in the ladder never see the problem. In the same way that the lowest tier folk have zero problem killing 3L ravens at the bottom of the Elo spectrum.



Elo isn't supposed to put baddies on your team but DOES when the enemy is overall less skilled (and more average).

Elo does what it can but fails quite often when the population is low

There is a glass ceiling because you aren't allowed to have a high win rate with Elo. The higher you go the more you level out. It's an artificial barrier to prevent high win rates.

It's a crutch to pair the bad players up with the bad players and the good players up with the good players? How does that make sense? A crutch is pairing up good players against bad.

You don't think the bad players see it when they get paired with a 4 man group on TS that refuses to talk to them because they are pug nubs?

MischiefSC, on 01 April 2013 - 05:30 PM, said:

There is no glass ceiling aside from your own skill.

^ This. Should be clarified that it is your skill at winning games that matters.



For a bunch of "above average" guys this concept is not that hard to comprehend. I too think I am above average in skill. I'm always top of the score boards but I also enjoy a close match and I have a lot of them with Elo. It does get worse when I'm in a 4 man but then we're all on vent talking to eachother, we should be upping our game but so far everyone is still grinding mechs out. I do feel like I win more often when I'm solo than in a 4 man.


L2P better and stop slapping your own back with how awesome you are. You guys just come off as a bunch of a-hole whiners.

[jay35]

The only thing worse than ELO, is that a 3-4 man group of well-driven Raven 3Ls can completely ruin a PUG game because ELO isn't smart enough to ensure they're matched up against a team with an equal number of 3Ls or even at least other lights with ECM. So once they kill the enemy lights, which is easy when they're not also coordinated 3Ls or at least have ECM, they mop up the rest of the team.

Edited by jay35, 01 April 2013 - 07:51 PM.

[Vermaxx]

No one wants to get into a game and get facerolled, every time. Most players (I hope) don't want to get into a game and see they're fighting OBVIOUSLY INFERIOR PLAYERS of such low skill it isn't anything like a challenge.

All you need to do is look back on closed beta to see if we needed some kind of better matching. Back when 8man teams didn't have their own queue, when there was nothing but weight-for-weight (which still couldn't readily deal with premades), and when almost every game was some kind of curb stomp one way or another.

GOOD matching is supposed to pair you up against people in your skill level so you average around 50/50. It isn't there to penalize you, it is there to make sure you play people close enough that THEY WIN about half of the time. It has less to do with you LOSING as with someone else WINNING an equivalent amount of time.

No, elo isn't great, but they claim it isn't finished. They also NEED to come back to some kind of weight matching in addition, unless this is YET ANOTHER ISSUE that CW is going to magically fix.

I'm sorry you feel like you're being personally brutalized. I'm also sorry you get some douches who argue when you try to lead. I generally have decent luck 'pub-wrangling.' Maybe it's how you're saying things. Maybe you just have absolutely terrible internet luck.

Maybe someone you play with constantly swaps mechs and has a terrible elo in everything he rides.

[Corwin Vickers]

MischiefSC, on 01 April 2013 - 06:44 PM, said:

Elo does not put 'baddies on your team'. It puts you in a game with both teams in a similar Elo range. You are as likely to end up with the higher ranked team as the lower ranked team. Any statistical variations in Elo values of people you drop with are as likely to be in your benefit as to your detriment. When the population is low it pulls in people from wider Elo ranges higher OR lower. This will work for or against you with equal odds. It is statistically impossible to say that Elo is somehow magically always stacking the odds against you whenever there's not enough people to fill a match. You will benefit from it as often as you suffer from it.

You've got it wrong Mischief. When I win it's because I'm awesome, when I lose it's because of the match maker.


It is worth mentioning that if you have 4 good players in a 4 man drop that it is more likely you will get less skilled players as your other 4 players.

If you were dropping as 4 good players separately the match maker could split you up to even up the teams. It's the 4 player block that the match maker cannot split up to equalize the teams that is the problem.

[Corwin Vickers]

jay35, on 01 April 2013 - 07:25 PM, said:

The only thing worse than ELO, is that a 3-4 man group of well-driven Raven 3Ls can completely ruin a PUG game because ELO isn't smart enough to ensure they're matched up against a team with an equal number of 3Ls or even at least other lights with ECM. So once they kill the enemy lights, which is easy when they're not also coordinated 3Ls, they mop up the rest of the team.

That's an ECM problem. I also think Raven 3Ls are still harder to register hits on than the other ravens. I still don't understand why the hit boxes on the 3L were different than the other ravens.

[One Medic Army]

Corwin Vickers, on 01 April 2013 - 07:34 PM, said:

That's an ECM problem. I also think Raven 3Ls are still harder to register hits on than the other ravens. I still don't understand why the hit boxes on the 3L were different than the other ravens.

It's that the other Ravens can't go fast enough to get a similar effect is all. Play a 3L with the same engine as a 4X, do it without ECM, and you'll probably die just as fast (if not faster due to 3L hate).

[MischiefSC]

Corwin Vickers, on 01 April 2013 - 07:30 PM, said:

You've got it wrong Mischief. When I win it's because I'm awesome, when I lose it's because of the match maker.


It is worth mentioning that if you have 4 good players in a 4 man drop that it is more likely you will get less skilled players as your other 4 players.

If you were dropping as 4 good players separately the match maker could split you up to even up the teams. It's the 4 player block that the match maker cannot split up to equalize the teams that is the problem.

I'm not so sure about that.

In terms of the matchmaker, at least according to Paul in a relatively old post, it's going to average you guys out and fill your team with people of a skill level equal to your average. Then do the same with the other team.

The matchmaker is specifically NOT designed to try and balance good players with bad on the same team to get an average that's equal to the other teams average. Here's the quote from Paul:

Quote

How does the match maker compose a teams Elo rating, is it average rating or closest to a target?

It's closest to a target value, so the match maker starts trying to make a match for an Elo of say 1300 and will pull in players to those teams closest to those values

The idea that a good player will be pulled into a team full of bad players to match against a team of all above average players is a myth. It doesn't work that way.

Elo largely balances the premade vs pugs thing out. Bluntly? Premades get shafted by Elo; your team is counted almost like a single person in terms of it averaging all your Elos out. How your Elo is impacted though is calculated individually. So if you're the best person on your team of 4 in terms of Elo but the other 3 are bad you'll have a lower average. This is terrible! Why? Because when your whole team of 8 loses because you can't carry them alone you'll take a NASTY Elo hit. As far as it's concerned you just lost a game to people with inferior Elo. Conversely your team-mates will be playing with an Elo below your grouped average so the other team will technically be composed of people with a higher score than their individual rankings. When they win they'll take a big bump - pushing them into higher Elo faster so that when they pug they'll get just hammered without being grouped with a better friend.

Make sense? Honestly what's more likely is that the friends you are dropping with may be skilled but haven't gotten enough matches (several hundred) to appropriately settle their Elo and thus regardless of their skill the system thinks they are noobs. Result? Your average as a team is slightly above noob level. You'll play on a team full of noobs against teams full of noobs.

[jay35]

Corwin Vickers, on 01 April 2013 - 07:22 PM, said:

Not just your fun that matters.

No, but my fun does matter too, is all.

You can keep repeating that mantra all you want but it doesn't excuse the way the system works right now.
Match after match that's a frustrating mess is not an enjoyable experience, especially for someone who's used to have a fun experience a majority of the time. Sacrificing good players' fun for the sake of bad players is a crappy way to "balance" things. It's not really balance at all, it's bringing everyone down to a lowest common denominator, in this case 50:50 or 1:1. Plainly, anyone accustomed to doing much better than that is simply not going to enjoy the experience as much.

Edited by jay35, 01 April 2013 - 07:57 PM.