85 replies to this topic

[Amsro]

Stoicblitzer, on 04 July 2013 - 04:43 PM, said:

i don't even know. there are so many factors and who knows if the system is working as intended? I am just sick of talking about it. i'm sick of tryharding every single game. i like winning as much as the next guy but i just can't do it anymore. where did the fun go? i win and i don't really feel like i had fun.

That is how you know its not working as intended, close matches do feel great (win or lose) but those are rare, too many compromises going on with MM.

[InRev]

Stoicblitzer, on 04 July 2013 - 04:43 PM, said:

i don't even know. there are so many factors and who knows if the system is working as intended? I am just sick of talking about it. i'm sick of tryharding every single game. i like winning as much as the next guy but i just can't do it anymore. where did the fun go? i win and i don't really feel like i had fun.

This is probably the biggest problem with the Elo system. It's basically the Peter Principle applied to computer games. Eventually, the game just becomes a grind because you really have to bust your butt to either: 1) carry a team of not-so-good-players; or 2) stay competitive against an enemy team of players who are out of your league.

It goes from fun diversion to being a chore.

[Fate 6]

RickySpanish, on 30 April 2013 - 06:38 PM, said:

And it isn't where you think it is! Last night, after hours of enduring sniper warrior online, getting smacked by 4 ppc stalkers and putting up with team mates who I can only assume were mentally challenged, I decided to roll an Alt to see what matchmaking at neutral Elo was like. Immediately I was struck with:

* Team mates greeted each other with more effort than glhf
* Although the level of play wasn't as great, players made attempts to communicate with one another
* There were fewer genuinley good, and genuinley god damned awful players

In general, I found gameplay to be more enjoyable and more balanced at the neutral Elo, and I honestly don't feel like going back to my main. The matches are more frustrating, require me to run the same minmax builds, offer zero room for error and give me absolutely no extra reward compared to starting over. Not to mention the sheer stupidity of some players the matchmaker pits me with, vs a coordinated team on the other side.

I expect CW will fix a lot of these problems, but for now, seemingly finding Elo hell become more prominent as skill increases is just downright bizarre.

Welcome to slightly-above-neutral Elo! We run what we want to down here, because we like "Mechwarrior as a game" more than we like "winning in MWO". *back to mediums and balanced heavies*

[Blackadder]

Mister Blastman, on 01 May 2013 - 12:44 PM, said:

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.

I get the same results sometimes while there is no proof, i think the issue is the player pool is to small at times, and its throwing together matches over a wider range of ELO, then normal.

Its also possible, its just the steamroll syndrome, 2 players run off, get instagibbed, 2-3 others are roaming around mindlessly and it goes south from there because the opposing team has the advantage, and some cohesion while your team is clueless

[Screech]

I was in a game where some random teammate said "I think I am in Elo hell." I am not sure what he meant but what I did know is I carried his *** to victory. Some people just need to be given a whistle for them to blow when they are scared and it is the duty of others to help them out.

[PanzerMagier]

Unlike most games, MWO's elo hell is currently sitting higher than the average elo player.

why? A lot of veteran players can't leave the cheese damn well enough alone. they're obnoxious, ignorant, malicious trolling little scum who can only spew "l2p QQ noob" from their cheetos stained lips. The munchkin player. Poor things.

Edited by PanzerMagier, 04 July 2013 - 05:38 PM.

[Malora Sidewinder]

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.

as someone who has studied the theory of elo due to competitive chess in his youth, elo is probably not the most efficient way of matchmaking for this game; at least not the way it was currently implemented. The elo needs to be more flexible and less direct on who your teammates are.

currently, a high elo will be matched with it's opposite on the low scale, that is to say, a great player will be matched with a terrible player.
Unfortunately, the way MWO works out, an atlas with 4 ppcs and a gauss piloted by a great player is worth probably 1.5 on a numeric scale.
the way the current elo is set up, each player would theoretically balance to 1 at the end of elo match.

a pug with his pet build of a jagermech equipped with 6 MG and 2 flamers is realistically worth .1, maybe .25.
according to the current matchmaker, he's worth 1.

my point here is that terrible players are worth far more than what they actually equate to, putting the burden on better players to carry their teammates in an extremely unrealistic sense.

essentially, elo punishes the best players quite a bit.

[Mycrus]

I'm average joe joystick and I am still enjoying the game

All high Eeeelow players must ask themselves what they did to get there?

Cheeze + consistent 4-man perhaps?

Please don't wonder why you can't hack it anymore as a pug... You never built the skillz in the first place...

The MM is still skewed towards your pugstomping days when yah thought yah were eleetz..

Yah aren't plain and simple...

Me on the otherhand avoided the 4-man queue before Elo matching and only recently ran pee pee cees is still thoroughly enjoying the game with most matches ending decently and rarely stomps..

How do I know? I have a few guys that I drop with that are in elo hell (aka high elo) and the game turns to ish whenever they try to find a drop.. Some of them stopped 4-manning altogether and had to be brutally grounded down to their correct Elos...

Some have stopped playing altogether...

Some have become lepers and groups having 1001 reasons to disappear when they step into the room..

A few have to run chEeez + 4-man + tryhard to be able to play and keep their pre-eelow KDRrrrrrrrr...

[pulupulu]

2 months necro? Then again, not much has changed.

I do have a question for the high elo competitive players though.

Should fun be part of competitive gaming?

Edited by pulupulu, 04 July 2013 - 06:56 PM.

[Amsro]

Mycrus, on 04 July 2013 - 06:38 PM, said:

Speculative post on why matchmaker "feels" broken

While I read and understand your points; I don't 8 man, nor play competitively. I Pug or drop 4 man (50/50) with a few 2O2P pilots and we by no means steam roll or wreck face (on a regular basis).

Regardless if I play solo or drop 4 man, the matchmaker malfunctions on a regular basis. In fact until recently it struggled to maintain 16 players in a match, never mind balance teams.

Reintroduction of the class matchmaking would help tremendously, there is no reason to have 4-8 assaults or any other class on a team ever. Balance the teams this way (2-2-2-2) and watch all the classes have a roll instantly.

[Sporklift]

The probably need to make Elo brackets that insulate the various "skill" levels from each other. Five brackets would be sufficient it might look something like this:

Career Suicide Farmers-----Inept Fun-----Average Fun-----Above Average Fun-----"Pros", Exploiters, and Cheats

(There are no fancy level rank names in Sporkland)

People start out in the middle bracket then over time you lose or win your way into a different bracket. Elo probably should be more than win/loss but rather overall performance per game (like time stayed alive, and what you did with that time). The deep end of Career Suicide Farming should be really hard to dig your way out of and the high end of "Pros" should be really hard to come down from.
The main point though is people don't play other people from different brackets unless they came in with a team (which would be skewed to the higher players' bracket).

Some might argue that there aren't enough players. Some people just like to argue.

Edited by Sporklift, 04 July 2013 - 07:30 PM.

[Tekadept]

Edited by Tekadept, 04 July 2013 - 08:52 PM.

[WarZ]

High Elo is Hell. Thats the bottom line in the current configuration.

70% of matches I try and solo drop into, I get a team that is so new or unskilled its unbelievable. Matches where I will routinely do 600-1200 damage (not joking), get 2-6 kills, then get chased down by the remaining enemy team, because:
- 4 players on my team did less than 90 damage
- 2 other players got up to 150 damage
- 1 player had 0 damage
- no one else got a kill

Because of my rank / rating I'm asked to carry an entire team that by elo standards are as low as you can go. I am usually the ONLY reason my matches "look" way closer than they really are / were.

A good example is last time I played, the match started and I looked around at my teammates - every single one of them had the starting green paint job. I asked "is everyone on our team new", and in reply 2 players were in trial mechs, 2 players were in stock mechs. The others didnt say anything, and were probably so new they didnt know what was going on. The match went almost identical to the results noted above.

Add in the fact that I am familiar with the teamspeak servers, and I am playing against established 4 man groups most of the time (i know most of the groups, or can see them in the dropship channels), even when solo, and still given a way sub standard newb team.

An observation:
- When I load a match, the enemy team is always fully filled out, and it takes 20'ish seconds for the rest of my team to fill out the spots. Its as if the game grabs a team quick, then builds my team around me and then fills it in based on elo (usually with the weakest players). I dont know if its just how the client is presenting me with information, or if its actually taking me, and then grabbing a quick 8 man team, then filling in the lower elo players to balance (handicap) our side appropriately.

All in all its extremely frustrating to say the least. I was all for the devs removing newb stomping and didnt have a problem with elo, but for me its just creating what feels like an unfair scenario.

Before elo games seemed more "open". There was a more nuetral feeling to them. Now they are just heavily stacked it seems.

Edit: Mister Blastman your screenshots tell it all, lol ! And shakespeares was a good example too. Thats is basically what I see most of the time, as I tried to describe it above.

Edited by WarZ, 04 July 2013 - 09:36 PM.

[Zordicron]

Fate 6, on 04 July 2013 - 05:20 PM, said:

Welcome to slightly-above-neutral Elo! We run what we want to down here, because we like "Mechwarrior as a game" more than we like "winning in MWO". *back to mediums and balanced heavies*

I was going to post something like this.

To OP(if he is still reading this old thread) or anyone else who found this an interesting read-

OP is right. basically. I mean look, if you want to WIN, and that is all that matters, ever, then you best stick to AC40 Jager and PPC stalker.

However, I doubt you are here reading the forums, or this thread in particular if you play that way.

So you know what? Mix up that loadout. Play stuff thats fun. Chat in team chat, tell jokes at match start, whatever. Tell other players good job, your team or not. See someone doing awesome stunts and amazing things? Tell them so.

It is actually pretty easy to tell when your ELO starts getting to high, out of "fun range", because the match will suddenly go to hoardes of stalkers and jagers and no lights. While it is still fun to rain on their UBERELO parade, if you get 6ppc sniped, eh. If you lose a little ELO, huzzah! now you are back in "fun range" and your team mates will actually be varied in both chassis and loadout, making tactics varied and a lot more interesting.

So if you are like OP, and are so sick of PPC boats and AC40 jager and dual gauss or whatever, know what? just change your loadout, go ruin a few PPC boats till you start getting sniped a few too many times, and once your ELO drops just a smidge, all that stuff that "looks fun" will actually be viable enough to be fun! If all you want to do in MWO is have fun, the only one stopping you is you.

[Kmieciu]

"ELO HELL is Other People"

on your team who do <100 damage before they die

Edited by Kmieciu, 04 July 2013 - 11:34 PM.

[Johnny Reb]

Does dropping against ppl I see here posting alot count? If so then I am there!

[Malora Sidewinder]

there are so many times where i'll check the score, see we're down 2, and say, "screw it. i've got this."

i'll proceed to duel with 1, 2, maybe 3 enemies and get a kill or two, my fair share of damage and then some.
when i finally die, i'll check score and see that i was either kill 7 or 8, and that the game is over... with me doing nearly double the damage of the REST OF MY TEAM PUT TOGETHER.

two nights ago i was pugging in a jenner. i ended up with top damage done 4 games in a row for my team.
in a JENNER. i'm NOT a good light pilot. like at all.

it's absolutely ridiculous, the matchmaker expects me to be able to compensate for people who can literally not get 100 damage in an assault mech.

[Gaden Phoenix]

I am running a BJ-3 build with 1 PPC, 4ML just for fun.

I love to theory craft the best mech, but I find that now adays I rather build interesting mechs with fun weapons.

When I was running my stalker and/or Cat-C1, with my pro friend(s). I really was in ELO hell. So many green paint jobs, so many new players. So many times I spam in chat "Please go to MECHSPECS, for the love of god MECHSPECS.com!".

Now I just take it easy in my BJ-3. Do about avg 400 dmg and chillax. As a medium that can instant death by 1 alpha I hope that I am so insignificant, keeping in the middle of the damage pack, that others can dictate my ELO. And to some extent it works.

This way I know I am not pawning myself by contributing too much to the win. That is sad but better then playing an assault, get a horrible team and rage when you see how low other people scores are.

Also when I get to a point when matches are painful, I will get "special" assaults that ensure I lose the next 5~10 matches and thus dumping my ELO.

Edited by Gaden Phoenix, 04 July 2013 - 11:56 PM.

[Appogee]

I've been experiencing the worst parts of being teamed with n00bs for many weeks now.

It's very disheartening to consistently be the last guy fighting impossible odds, after your team got itself killed for low damage scores. (Sometimes it leads to hero moments, But mostly, I just get ground down beneath overwhelming weight of enemy numbers.)


Sadly, I think I am going to have go with cheese builds from this point, just to have a chance to win more than I lose. While I have avoided AC40 Jager and LRM Boat Stalkers and PPC/Gauss Assaults so far, it seems to me I've going to need to do that just to be able to progress in the game.

[Jonathan Paine]

Will need to sample a bunch of matches to get less subjective evidence, but yeah feels like 8 out of 10 matches end up being a roll in one direction or the other. The last two matches tend to be glorious though.

One of the bigger problems with the current mal-adjusted match making system, is that it creates a lot of friction between newer players and the us grizzled veterans. We feel that they drag us down, they feel like we are cheating bast@ards taking advantage of them. I don't think that either population is well served right now. Maybe there is a happy middle somewhere where 16 players of similar skills fight it out with diverse builds. I just haven't seen that in an eternity.