85 replies to this topic

[NinetyProof]

Keifomofutu, on 30 April 2013 - 06:41 PM, said:

So basically no elo at all is more balanced. That's what I'm hearing here. And it has been my observation as well. The tighter weight matching is more important and led to more balanced matches in the past.

No .. that is not what your hearing. You are *hearing* what you want to hear.

What you should be hearing:
ELO separates the more competitive players from the more casual players. Casual players tend to socialize more, and tend to wing it and not care about outcomes as much. This person likes that.

What you should also be comprehending is:
If you *removed* ELO, those more competitive players would get lumped back in with the casuals.

You wrongly assumed that ELO was the problem and should be removed ... and in reality, ELO actually bands like skilled players together.

The OP's assumption is wrong. He is assuming that his alt will not rank up out of the starter ELO. I think that is in error. The only way to keep your ELO low is to lose are much as you win, and experienced players tend to tip the scales in low ELO matches.

What's worse, is if this guy doesn't start throwing games, he is going to drag other puggies "up" the ELO chain bringing them where they should not be, only to crash back down again. If enough people did this, it would be a dis-service to the low ELO players.

[Hauser]

Zerberus, on 01 May 2013 - 04:52 AM, said:

As far as the basic Elo-hell principle goes, I have my own opinions after earning my living pushing other people`s Elos in LoL and watching tham failboat themselves right back to where they were before within days..

You've convinced me. People, Elo-hell is real and I'm your saviour! For a modest fee I can help the weight class of your choice ascend to Elo-heaven! Call now 0900-THE-END-IS-NEIGH!!!!

Mister Blastman, on 01 May 2013 - 06:43 AM, said:

It isn't?

Well then Sherlock, how does THIS happen?

http://i121.photobuc...zps81f508a8.png


... And it happens far more often than not. THAT people, THAT is ELO hell.

So just to be clear. More often then not you've got two trials, a disconnect and a crap mech on your team while your opponents have only one trial mech? That seems rather unlikely. But fair enough, lets see if we can figure out what is going on here.

At what time of the day are you playing?

What game modes are you playing and how many games have you won and lost with heavies?

What is your damage per match?

IceSerpent, on 01 May 2013 - 07:08 AM, said:

You are describing how it's supposed to work (according to PGI). In reality it can instantly (no "time goes by" part) put you on a team with much higher or much lower Elo than yours, as well as against a team with a very different Elo rating. Which kind of defeats the whole purpose of the exercise.

Of course that can happen. You might very well be that next eligible person the match maker needs to fill out a team.

[Mister Blastman]

Hauser, on 01 May 2013 - 12:07 PM, said:

So just to be clear. More often then not you've got two trials, a disconnect and a crap mech on your team while your opponents have only one trial mech? That seems rather unlikely. But fair enough, lets see if we can figure out what is going on here.

At what time of the day are you playing?

What game modes are you playing and how many games have you won and lost with heavies?

What is your damage per match?

Not always trials and not always disconnects. Disconnects vary every couple of games. Typically though I get several players on my team that don't know what they're doing or run off and die without breaking 100 pts of damage.

I play in the evenings (well, not this week, I'm taking a break!) anywhere between 8 PM EDT - 2 AM EDT.

I play Any mode.

I have no idea how many games I've won/lost with heavies since the last reset but I can tell you that I'm winning about 2:1+ (before trashing my stats the past week) and on average I do around 500 damage a match. Average (dividing damage/drops on chassis). I break 1000 often and an 800-900 pt game isn't uncommon at all in anything from a light to a heavy. Well, was common before the PPC Apocalypse in Mediums/Lights--now they are fodder. I have thousands of drops so it isn't like I'm working with a small sample set.

As far as I can tell it puts higher ELO players with lower ones to average it out.

I've also tried experimenting by Alt F4ing if the matchmaker takes more than 10 seconds to pair me up. Sadly, even this method doesn't solve the problem.

Edited by Mister Blastman, 01 May 2013 - 12:21 PM.

[RickySpanish]

NinetyProof, on 01 May 2013 - 11:25 AM, said:

No .. that is not what your hearing. You are *hearing* what you want to hear.

What you should be hearing:
ELO separates the more competitive players from the more casual players. Casual players tend to socialize more, and tend to wing it and not care about outcomes as much. This person likes that.

What you should also be comprehending is:
If you *removed* ELO, those more competitive players would get lumped back in with the casuals.

You wrongly assumed that ELO was the problem and should be removed ... and in reality, ELO actually bands like skilled players together.

The OP's assumption is wrong. He is assuming that his alt will not rank up out of the starter ELO. I think that is in error. The only way to keep your ELO low is to lose are much as you win, and experienced players tend to tip the scales in low ELO matches.

What's worse, is if this guy doesn't start throwing games, he is going to drag other puggies "up" the ELO chain bringing them where they should not be, only to crash back down again. If enough people did this, it would be a dis-service to the low ELO players.

I think you misunderstood my OP: I said that I enjoy competitive play, but that there currently is no reward for the escalating difficulty, and that the imbalance of this game shines brightly at higher Elo ranks where players understand the meta game fully - snipers, basically, and that this is not fun.

Being able to enjoy a game should NEVER be mutually exclusive of competitive play!!

This is a hugely important statement imo, because if competitive play isn't fun, the chances are that many of the choices given to competitive players to customize their mechs and playstyles are redundant. As gaming in any form is about choice (which leads to strategy and everything else), a lack of choice through redundancy will DESTROY a game.

I do of course have faith that the game will be balanced eventually, especially as This Is Still A ******* Beta™, but in the meantime, I find it pretty funny that I cannot seem to escape Elo hell by becoming a better player

PS I do not assume that my alt will stay at a low Elo without throwing games.

[Hauser]

Mister Blastman, on 01 May 2013 - 12:18 PM, said:

Not always trials and not always disconnects. Disconnects vary every couple of games. Typically though I get several players on my team that don't know what they're doing or run off and die without breaking 100 pts of damage.

I play in the evenings (well, not this week, I'm taking a break!) anywhere between 8 PM EDT - 2 AM EDT.

I play Any mode.

I have no idea how many games I've won/lost with heavies since the last reset but I can tell you that I'm winning about 2:1+ (before trashing my stats the past week) and on average I do around 500 damage a match. Average (dividing damage/drops on chassis). I break 1000 often and an 800-900 pt game isn't uncommon at all in anything from a light to a heavy. Well, was common before the PPC Apocalypse in Mediums/Lights--now they are fodder.

As far as I can tell it puts higher ELO players with lower ones to average it out.

I've also tried experimenting by Alt F4ing if the matchmaker takes more than 10 seconds to pair me up. Sadly, even this method doesn't solve the problem.

Mmh. Exiting the client when it takes a long time won't work, you might just become the match makers desperate pick for another game.

Playing Any is good.

I can't say you're a bad player either. You've made it to the 10th spot on the leaderboard for day 3. Though the aggro needed to do that is probably how you trashed your stats.


That win loss ratio should definitely have given you good Elo. So the only thing I can really imagine right now is that you have a good Elo but nobody to play with.

I'm not familiar with end of your time slot though. On a weekday I suspect it might be running a bit late around 2AM for most people. Have you noticed a difference between the quality of the matches around noon and in the weekends?

Edited by Hauser, 01 May 2013 - 12:42 PM.

[Mister Blastman]

Nah the time doesn't matter. I get crap matches no matter the time of the day. However, I get less good players during the day than I do in the evenings. Prime time evening hours is when most of the good players are online I've found.

[IceSerpent]

Hauser, on 01 May 2013 - 12:07 PM, said:

Of course that can happen. You might very well be that next eligible person the match maker needs to fill out a team.

Yep, that's a distinct possibility. Problem is that this completely negates the desired effect of Elo in the matchmaker. Without Elo matching you get random people as your teammates and drop against a similarly random opposing team. With Elo...you also get random people on your team, as well as random people on the opposing team.
The only practical difference is that with Elo that randomness is a function of everyone's time spent in the queue instead of just first-come-first-served logic. From a player perspective it's not a difference that matters, as you can't really tell whether Elo matching is turned on or not.

[ArmageddonKnight]

Since there is no way on knowing for definite where u are in the Elo graph..i can only guess on my experiance.

I must be pritty high up (though im not arrogan to think im at the topend lol), iv bumped into Garth a few times, and the people I play with are all generaly scoring well.

That said, i mentioned in a suggestion poll i made (about a elo tracker) that within the space of a few days i noticed a distinct change in the attitude of the players i droped with ( i only ever pug). i also noted they were all new to me, so my Elo had obviosly changed, be it up or down. I have since settled with 'up' as the level of play does seem to have gone up. BUT the attitude of players is awefull, i would much rather be playing lower down in the elo tbh.

My conclusion.

The higher ur ELO is, the more ****** players u will encounter

Elo MUST work on somthing other than the announced win/loss u have, becouse wining or loosing in a pug means nothing of ur skill as a player. You could be the BEST player in the world and still loose catastrophically simple beouce the teams is sh*t. Meh i dunno ..all i know is .im not liking the people im getting grouped with atm lol.

EDIT:
Elite Skill: If you are a highly skilled player but only play solo PUG games, I expect phase 3 is going to give you a lot of problems. Right now you are probably always #1 or #2 in score for your team, win or lose. In true PUG on PUG matches, you frequently get your team the win. In PUG on 4man matches, your team probably still loses most of the time, but you go down swinging. Because of this, after ELO goes in, you are going to live on the edge of the pre-made ELO bubble. You are going to get placed into a lot of matches with pre-made teams on both sides, but you won't be on team speak with your pre-made team mates. Instead of crushing lower skilled pugers like you do now, you will have to fight players that are individually less skilled than you are, but are always working as a group. As a result, you will keep bouncing in and out of the pre-made bubble, dipping into PUG land to collect some skulls before rating back up into the pre-made matches. Elite players will hit a glass ceiling on ELO and likely need to join pre-made groups to advance further.

This atm ..is what im experiancing. That in itself im ok with, the people though ..argh ..as*hats

Edited by ArmageddonKnight, 01 May 2013 - 01:29 PM.

[IceSerpent]

ArmageddonKnight, on 01 May 2013 - 01:15 PM, said:

Elo MUST work on somthing other than the announced win/loss u have, becouse wining or loosing in a pug means nothing of ur skill as a player. You could be the BEST player in the world and still loose catastrophically simple beouce the teams is sh*t. Meh i dunno ..all i know is .im not liking the people im getting grouped with atm lol.

Elo can not work on something other than win/loss - it's based on W/L by definition. If you create a rating based on something else, it won't have anything to do with Elo.

[ArmageddonKnight]

yea i know ..it just feel completly borked for pugs is all.

[xRaeder]

Kageru Ikazuchi, on 30 April 2013 - 10:59 PM, said:

I think there are a lot of experienced players that take the game way too seriously.

I can't wait until we get past the "drop -> rush -> fight -> game over" mechanic, and into something a bit more organized for PUG drops.

Even just one minute between the match filling up and "all systems nominal" for PUG teams to organize themselves into lances and come up with a basic starting strategy would help the game immensely.

As long as we are playing an Xbox game in terms of team and map sizes that won't happen. It will always be blob up and focus fire.

[One Medic Army]

IceSerpent, on 01 May 2013 - 02:15 PM, said:

Elo can not work on something other than win/loss - it's based on W/L by definition. If you create a rating based on something else, it won't have anything to do with Elo.

This is a modified Elo system (like most "Elo" systems used for team vs team), as I understand it it also takes into account your "match score" as seen on the post-match screen.

[IceSerpent]

ArmageddonKnight, on 01 May 2013 - 02:21 PM, said:

yea i know ..it just feel completly borked for pugs is all.

That's because it actually is completely borked for everybody. It's supposed to work sort of like this:

An incomplete team sits in the queue with average Elo rating E(team). As time passes, the interval of acceptable ratings increases by +/- I(team).
Same goes for a player in the queue - they have Elo rating E(player) with increasing interval of +/- I(player).
That player should get on that team when E(player) falls inside the range E(team) +/- I(team) AND E(team) falls inside the range E(player) +/- I(player).

For example, let's say interval increases by 25 every 10 seconds, starting E(team)=1900, starting E(player)=2000:

0 seconds: I(team)=0 (1900-1900 range), I(player)=0 (2000-2000 range) => no match
10 seconds: I(team)= +/- 25 (1875-1925 range), I(player)= +/- 25 (1975-2025 range) => no match
20 seconds: I(team)= +/- 50 (1850-1950 range), I(player)= +/- 50 (1950-2050 range) => match on 1950, player joins the team.

Instead of that, current implementation seems to only check for E(player) falling inside the range E(team) +/- I(team). So, when a team has been sitting in the queue for a while and player just clicked launch button, that player joins the team regardless of how large the Elo diference is.

Edit:

One Medic Army, on 01 May 2013 - 02:43 PM, said:

This is a modified Elo system (like most "Elo" systems used for team vs team), as I understand it it also takes into account your "match score" as seen on the post-match screen.

In what way? Rating is supposed to change when the actual outcome (win/loss) is different from outcome predicted by Elo - where does match score come into play?

Edited by IceSerpent, 01 May 2013 - 02:47 PM.

[TruePoindexter]

Mister Blastman, on 30 April 2013 - 07:10 PM, said:

If they didn't take the great players...

And match them up with THESE players on their own team (to even out ELO)...



The game would be somewhat better... Broken, but still, better.

What?!?! How did you get that camera in my Raven?

Being serious I do wonder how the ELO match maker deals with 4 mans with high ELO in an environment of other players with mid to low ELOs. It's not actually possible to match all the time so there are going to be stilted matches.

Edited by TruePoindexter, 01 May 2013 - 02:54 PM.

[NinetyProof]

RickySpanish, on 01 May 2013 - 12:24 PM, said:

I think you misunderstood my OP: I said that I enjoy competitive play, but that there currently is no reward for the escalating difficulty, and that the imbalance of this game shines brightly at higher Elo ranks where players understand the meta game fully - snipers, basically, and that this is not fun.

I guess I did cause I really can't understand how you can want it "harder" yet "easier" at the same time ... doesn't make sense.

"escalating difficulty" has nothing to do with imbalances. There are hard counters to everything ... your issue seems to be about pop sniping ... and the counter to that is taking the long way around, under cover, till you can get in their face.

RickySpanish, on 01 May 2013 - 12:24 PM, said:

Being able to enjoy a game should NEVER be mutually exclusive of competitive play!!

Yes it will, if the only way for you to enjoy the game is to do the same-old-same-old. As you get better, you should develop new tactics and counters to situations. Not wanting to "change" tactics based upon the situation is not "escalating" anything.

RickySpanish, on 01 May 2013 - 12:24 PM, said:

This is a hugely important statement imo, because if competitive play isn't fun, the chances are that many of the choices given to competitive players to customize their mechs and playstyles are redundant.

This is to say that you want to drive one mech, one way, and never change ... yet you profess to want "escalating difficulty" which is at odds with what you seem to *require*

RickySpanish, on 01 May 2013 - 12:24 PM, said:

As gaming in any form is about choice (which leads to strategy and everything else), a lack of choice through redundancy will DESTROY a game.

Games are about choice ... good choices give you good things and lead to winning, bad choices give you bad things and lead to losing. In a single player game, the *best* ones give you multiple paths to winning ... in a PvP based game, your "multiple paths" are the others you play against and there are infinite number of combinations.

RickySpanish, on 01 May 2013 - 12:24 PM, said:

I do of course have faith that the game will be balanced eventually, especially as This Is Still A ******* Beta™, but in the meantime, I find it pretty funny that I cannot seem to escape Elo hell by becoming a better player

It appears you are not in ELO hell, but rather in a "Rut Hell". You want to play what you want how you want ... you want it to be more challenging, but not so much that you have to deviate from your RUT.

Sorry, that is not going to happen. As you play against better players, tactics / approaches that work on lessor skilled players won't work. Sometimes, you simply get *out positioned* or *out played* ...

RickySpanish, on 01 May 2013 - 12:24 PM, said:

PS I do not assume that my alt will stay at a low Elo without throwing games.

If you are constantly scoring 800-1000 points a game, you are definitely playing "under your ELO" ... period. Especially when you look at the scoreboard and you see everyone else is < 400 and your sitting at 800+? Your going win games just based upon your score and that is going to raise your elo.

Sniping is not going away ... although pop-tarting will get some nerf, but I doubt it will get removed. The only reason it's even an issue right now is that LRM boats can not sit back and blast those tarts out of existence (as most hide behind low cover that would not stop LRM's.).

Edited by NinetyProof, 01 May 2013 - 03:51 PM.

[Jman5]

A few weeks ago, I started playing a chassis I had not touched since Elo came out, so I was baseline. The game played much different as you pointed out in your opening post. Anyway, I played it enough and eventually, I started matching back with the regulars I see with my medium/assault chassis.

I think the biggest difference in how the game and atmosphere differs is the amount of premades. I would bet money that low Elo with beginners have much fewer 2-4 man teams than the high Elo brackets. With the higher frequency of premade teams, you get more people communicating on teamspeak, coordinating builds, and not bothering to talk much with the pugs. At the low end of Elo, you have people just starting out and playing alone more. They will communicate through text more and may not have the flavor of the month mech yet.

As a side note, if you guys are sick of mass jump snipers, I would recommend switching over to Conquest. There is much more build diversity and brawling.

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

For the guys (like me) who are PUGing and seeing massive ROFL-stomps, is it "virtually every match", "most matches", etc.?

I would say it's probably about 50/50 for me ... sometimes I'm on the stomping side, other times, I turn the corner and immediately get focused by four mechs, and go on to watch the rest of my team get swiftly but methodically picked apart.

Other times, there's a bit of coordination, a bit of follow-the-leader, a sniping exchange for a minute or so, and then a good brawl ... sometimes that ends in a very lopsided score, but I don't consider that a stomp.

I think the biggest difference is the 2-4 man groups ... I have dropped in several games over the past few days where the enemy side was already full, and my side is filling our roster one name at a time. Sometimes 2-3 games in a row against the same eight guys (with only two or three repeats on my side). Those are the games that most often end in a stomp.

I see three possible solutions to improve both new player and PUG experience ...

• New players start with a below-average Elo score (right now, they start at 1300, which according to the graph in this post from Omid: http://mwomercs.com/...ted-april-19th/ is slightly above average, and right in the middle of the largest group of players)

and/or

• Groups are first matched against groups ... if two groups join the queue at the same time, they are matched against each other, and solo PUGs fill in the rest. If one group joins a match, the next group to join will be placed on the opposing team.

and/or

• Solo pugs only join a match if their Elo score is equal to or higher than the average score of an opposing group.

Since I don't know exactly how the matches are actually made, implementation may be harder or more difficult that I think, or there would be some unintended consequences.

Overall, my experience has been positive, and almost every time I get rolled by a clearly better team, I learn something. However, while some of the more experienced players complain about the new solo players not being able to contribute, it is vastly more frustrating to me when I can't contribute because my team is so outclassed in terms of either skill or coordination.

[RickySpanish]

NinetyProof, on 01 May 2013 - 03:47 PM, said:

I guess I did cause I really can't understand how you can want it "harder" yet "easier" at the same time ... doesn't make sense.

"escalating difficulty" has nothing to do with imbalances. There are hard counters to everything ... your issue seems to be about pop sniping ... and the counter to that is taking the long way around, under cover, till you can get in their face.


Yes it will, if the only way for you to enjoy the game is to do the same-old-same-old. As you get better, you should develop new tactics and counters to situations. Not wanting to "change" tactics based upon the situation is not "escalating" anything.


This is to say that you want to drive one mech, one way, and never change ... yet you profess to want "escalating difficulty" which is at odds with what you seem to *require*

Games are about choice ... good choices give you good things and lead to winning, bad choices give you bad things and lead to losing. In a single player game, the *best* ones give you multiple paths to winning ... in a PvP based game, your "multiple paths" are the others you play against and there are infinite number of combinations.


It appears you are not in ELO hell, but rather in a "Rut Hell". You want to play what you want how you want ... you want it to be more challenging, but not so much that you have to deviate from your RUT.

Sorry, that is not going to happen. As you play against better players, tactics / approaches that work on lessor skilled players won't work. Sometimes, you simply get *out positioned* or *out played* ...


If you are constantly scoring 800-1000 points a game, you are definitely playing "under your ELO" ... period. Especially when you look at the scoreboard and you see everyone else is < 400 and your sitting at 800+? Your going win games just based upon your score and that is going to raise your elo.

Sniping is not going away ... although pop-tarting will get some nerf, but I doubt it will get removed. The only reason it's even an issue right now is that LRM boats can not sit back and blast those tarts out of existence (as most hide behind low cover that would not stop LRM's.).

I don't want it harder and easier at the same time, I want it to be more fun, that is a big difference. A game that shoe horns players into using predominantly the same game-play mechanics to ensure the best chance for an acceptable outcome is severely flawed.

Games are indeed about choice, however the majority of choices should not disadvantage the player or they become redundant and pointless. In the current meta, sniping is far and away the best strategy. You can sing songs about running through cover all you like, but that is assuming that you are not playing against an equally skilled player. When I hop into my 3D, the change in balance is simply astounding. There is simply no reason for me to run another heavy mech.

I don't understand why you imply that I want to keep doing the "same old same old", that is exactly what I'm rallying against. My scores in games are around 300-500 damage and I am sitting at a 55% win ratio, down from a peak of 65% during the first week that Elo hit, I'm not in a rut but I find myself using the same tactics over and over to win games. What I am experiencing is a sharp decrease in the strategies available for me to proceed, because more skilled players have rightfully asserted that sniping with jump jets is the best way to play. I spend most of my games sitting back using PPCs for at least the first five minutes until someone inevitably gets popped, and the other team begins to advance. Sniping is a perfectly valid tactic, and a good counter to brawling, however the pendulum has swung too far away from the other engagement ranges, and what we have is an inversion of the last meta-game, but essentially nothing better. MWO needs more viable choices and counters for the existing meta-game.

I've also noticed that the game is matchmaking me as a "fix" for low Elo teams facing a premade or another good player. As a test, a merc friend and I sync dropped duo into about 15 games. In all but one game, we were on opposing teams, with rather unskilled players making up the rest of the match. When I encounter my merc friends randomly, we are rarely on the same team. This further players into my frustration; I often notice that my team-mates are far less patient than I am, and it only takes one guy to step out into the line of fire of a waiting Stalker to get themselves obliterated, and once one player is down you have a massively decreased chance of winning that match. What you end up with is a spy vs spy affair where the few good players on each team try to stay out of each other's way, while taking down the "filler" until they have no choice but to meet face to face.

In summary, a high skill cap is fine and will naturally bring the best strategies to the forefront, however when there is only one 'best strategy' that strategy had better be damned good, and in my opinion the sniping meta-game favours unbalanced mechanics to ensure its success instead of any real investment of player skill.

[Glythe]

Having Elo at all in this game is hell.

Random match maker made for better games.....

Just put all the trial mechs and people with less than 50-100 games together and everything would be fine.

[Lefty Lucy]

Prophetic, on 30 April 2013 - 11:19 PM, said:

My ELO has forced anyone that I group with to play a min of 4 JJ Poptard Highlanders, while we run farming mechs, or leveling new ones. This makes the game just plain awful.

How you you run 4 JJ highlanders and level mechs in the same match?