7 replies to this topic

[YaoYaoYiffy]

I've been playing a couple days and still very much finding my way around the game.

Right now my biggest wonder/concern is how teams are formed? About every other match seems to load more, heavier, and better built mechs all onto one team. And EVERY match is a total blowout, either 8-0 or 0-8. What, if any, matchmaking is taking place? Or is it more of a fill-teams-as-quick-as-possible? Or am I just running into pre-mades?

Right now I just have a Medium (Cicada) that I'm tooling around in. Most matches I feel VERY worthless. I haven't been able to make any sense of how mechs are placed on teams. I regularly see games where one team or the other has a large tonnage advantage, and I can't say I've ever seen the heavier team lose.

Just my early observations and questions, thought I'd run them by the community and see what other people are seeing/get some advice on how to cope.

[Arcturious]

It's a little old now, but there is match making in place that's quite in depth. There are a few command chair posts such as this one:

http://mwomercs.com/...-making-update/

This game uses a form of Elo:

http://en.wikipedia....o_rating_system

For every game you win or lose, your Elo rating will be modified.

It's explained down in this thread:

http://mwomercs.com/...79-matchmaking/

So yes, if you are new the game doesn't have much data on you so it may be a little off. It should in theory get better along the way.

[Redshift2k5]

Keep in mind even if two teams are even it does not mean the score will be "close", two evenly matched teams can result in 8-0 very easily. Once the first couple of kills are made, it is easy for the remaining 8 vs 6 to turn into a lopsided 8-0 win.

The Devs have said that less than 3 percent of games are being matchmade poorly. Sop 97% of the time you are seeing what you're supposed to see.

some things to keep in mind:

• If you're relatively new, playing more matches will help you settle into your correct place on the Elo curve
  
• If you are not playing on a team of 2-4 players, it is likely your opponents are. Try looking for a team via one of the many community voice servers http://mwomercs.com/...e-chat-servers/
  
• The Cicada can be a harsh mistress, very unforgiving of mistakes. A solid Hunchback or Heavy mech would be a good investment.

Edited by Redshift2k5, 08 May 2013 - 05:05 AM.

[YaoYaoYiffy]

It's good to know the matchmaking exists for player skill (using what black magic algorithum ELO is calculated off of).

What's maybe more concerning is how actual team loadouts are assiagned. I understand there's far too many factors at play for a simple "Team X has z tons, Team Y also has z tons", but there do seem to be a lot of matches where the tonnages seem out of proportion. It feels like if I'm not stomping around in a heavy or assault that I'm not doing my part for the team. I've gotten better to where I'm not immeadiately blasted during matches (usually ) and I take advantage of my speed to flank and spot for my team. But at the end of the match, I just can't put out the raw damage with my MedLas that a larger mech can; and it still only takes one good/lucky alpha to put me down.

I suppose I should start screenshotting match comps and calculatting tonnages so I have some real numbers to go on. Good thing classes are over!



I'm saving up my credits for now while I decide on what Mech I want to pick up as my first "real" Mech, I've got about 14 mil now. My original plan was an Atlas D-DC, but I'm taking the time to really look through all the mechs available to find the one that seems the best/most fun.

Edit: I'm kinda liking the looks of the JumpJet Trebuchets, solid firepower and some crazy mobility.

Edited by YaoYaoYiffy, 08 May 2013 - 08:03 AM.

[Darwins Dog]

A lot of times having a group can skew the ratings a bit. In our clan we often have newer players in groups with experienced players. It's the best way to help people learn the finer points of the game. Since the MM system is averaging our Elo scores we get placed in against lower rated players than the veterans might run into solo. Also, a team that communicates (voice or text) has a big advantage over one that doesn't. Premade teams usually have voice comms.

There is a little bit of wiggle room for the matchmaker, and it uses weight class instead of tonnage, so it counts 2 Dragons as equivalent to 2 Cataphracts.

In a Cicada, you shouldn't be focused on raw damage. Try to shoot out the weak points on the enemies and get assists. They pay just as well as kill shots do anyway. Follow a big guy around and shoot what he shoots.

Since you're in my favorite mech right now I'll out in a shameless plug for my Cicada guide. It's gotten pretty good thanks to the contributions of the community.

[Koniving]

YaoYaoYiffy, on 07 May 2013 - 09:27 PM, said:

I've been playing a couple days and still very much finding my way around the game.

Right now my biggest wonder/concern is how teams are formed? About every other match seems to load more, heavier, and better built mechs all onto one team. And EVERY match is a total blowout, either 8-0 or 0-8. What, if any, matchmaking is taking place? Or is it more of a fill-teams-as-quick-as-possible? Or am I just running into pre-mades?

Right now I just have a Medium (Cicada) that I'm tooling around in. Most matches I feel VERY worthless. I haven't been able to make any sense of how mechs are placed on teams. I regularly see games where one team or the other has a large tonnage advantage, and I can't say I've ever seen the heavier team lose.

Just my early observations and questions, thought I'd run them by the community and see what other people are seeing/get some advice on how to cope.

Couple of things. First, welcome!

Very recently I explained this so I'll do this the easy way.

Sigh. Seems that thread is unfindable.

Second, you're very new it seems in terms of your start date. That can be found on a person's profile by clicking their name. Your ELO is a "middle" spot right now. You'll find good and terrible players frequently. Sometimes more on one side than on the other.

That said, let's move on.

Let's start from the beginning.

ELO is a chess-based system of probabilities.

Your score starts out kind of middle-ish.

It goes by the individual to compile the scores, but it goes by an overall team average. One team is usually finished first to make a "Standard." It then combines the final elements of the other team to create a "balance." They are averages. As a single player you're more likely to be thrown into a round to "balance" whether a team is too strong or too weak.

This system is set to weight classes. You have a score for light, medium, heavy, and assault. All of them start semi-middle ground.

The issue with the system is that ELO will never perfectly match the score. There's always a team that is more likely to win, and prediction of win or loss. If you lose but were expected to, little happens. If you win but were expected to lose, you score jumps quite a bit. If you lose and were expected to win, your score drops quite a bit. If you win but were expected to, very little changes.

Especially high and especially low players can be called upon and throw into a match to be a last ditch to balance out a match that is jacked but can't be fixed within the allotted time limit. On my profile is a link that goes to a picture where I was thrown in to balance out a team. Though I died first and had a joke build with only MGs and Flamers, I still outdid my entire team, against an enemy team that wasn't all that great. I spent most of my time going against an Atlas and a Dragon at the same time, completely isolated from everyone else. The arrangement was less than ideal, and ELO threw me in to desperately try and balance the team (my ELO is likely exceptionally high for Heavy mechs due to a combination of extremely successful builds in the heavy class).

By myself, I am thrown into teams that are less skilled, against more skilled teams and sometimes I am thrown into matches where I am the weakest link on my team against an incredibly strong opposing team that doesn't stand a chance against the team I'm on.

But then there are those matches that hit the sweet spot, where it boils down to just 2 or 3 mechs at the very end duking it out.

Groups have their scores combined into a single large average. It tries to pit groups against groups, but doesn't always. Group versus group matches tend to be much more even.

While looking for my better past explanation, I found these threads which will help any new player.

I have a few posts in these that will help you.
http://mwomercs.com/...-few-questions/
This has a lot of info that gradually forms, such as "roles", ideas on how to use certain mechs. Explanation of engines and upgrades.
http://mwomercs.com/...some-questions/

Gameplay tactics and strategies.
http://mwomercs.com/...101528-tactics/

On this are many ideas for a tutorial thingy I'm working on. Lots of basics are simply stated there. Worth a read and offer suggestions too?
http://mwomercs.com/...newcomer-input/

This is someone's introduction to MWO. It has a lot of information compiled together. It comes in the form of an instruction manual! Lots of us miss those.
http://mwomercs.com/...s-guide-to-mwo/


Never knew this person, but it's someone's endorsement of me. That's gotta mean something!

Marvyn Dodgers, on 05 May 2013 - 10:06 AM, said:

Also, for good videos, check out Koniving's posts, I believe he has a new player section, will try to find it and edit with a link (if he doesn't beat me to it first).

Still searching, but here is Koniving's YouTube channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/Koniving

You may also want to check out Koreanese here



Hopefully something above helps, welcome aboard!

And below was a response on the topic of changing ELO's starting score to lower points to help new players. PGI supposedly did this, but that might not be low enough.

Koniving, on 02 April 2013 - 07:31 PM, said:

New players should start with a bad ELO, which will guarantee they are placed with other players of similar skill sets (that being either non-existent or poor) so that they can have the opportunity flesh out their abilities before going up against anyone with any actual experience.

I've been around for a while. I was closed beta before the founder's program. Didn't buy my way in, just proudly supported it. I got to play with people both average and poor, learning my ways. I had some advantages that others who just started did not; I knew a bit about the genre and I tested things.

When I joined Forest colony was the only map. My first mech the Jenner had bad heat issues. I did not know about how to change weapon groups or how to chainfire. My first opponent was another Jenner. We tangled. We rammed each other, knocking each other down to the ground and getting back up. We exchanged blows. We had identical builds. We had terrible heat issues. I played Mechwarrior 3. As soon as I discovered water, I bolted for it. Water doubles your cooling speed. There were heatsinks stuffed in my feet. I stood a little more than knee deep. Steam emanated around my mech.

He seemed afraid to enter the water. My heat issues were cooling away faster. His weren't. We tussled more. I broke his leg. Struggling to get my first kill in my first match, I fired just too many times. I shut down from heat despite the faster cool down. He rammed me soon as he recovered from the unstable gyro. I fell over, but he didn't. He ran, got his buddies, and came back. All my buddies were dead. They surrounded me after taking out my leg. At range they took out my weapons. I sent out a distress call. "I'm at [gridsquare]. Need help." No one answered. Can't chat when you're dead. Behind the enemy Atlas, the limping Jenner could be seen. With his big brothers now surrounding me, I got my welcoming hazing, torn limb from limb. I was hooked.

It was a dark but instantly enjoyable experience.
---
Now new players have forced trial mechs, instead of a wide arrange of default builds to try out. The new set of trial mechs every week idea never got pumped through and time between changes dragged out. Experienced players recognize these builds. We exploit them. We get easy kills. New players are lucky to live more than 2 minutes in a match on the largest maps. Lucky to live longer than even 50 seconds on smaller ones.


(At 1:07, I started firing missiles on a trial build before recognizing it. Clearly I state feeling bad for it because I usually avoid swiftly killing trial mechs to give new players a chance. They should never be in the same match as me but it happens sometimes.)

Prior to ELO, but during the weight-class balancing, I saw a Cataphract 3-D trial build. I was a Cataphract 4x. I was too slow to keep up with my team. They all died. But left my enemies really weak. Since I was so slow I started to talk about something I thought was funny about the game. Can't recall what it was. But as I got over there, I saw a stalker. Bang. It died. XL engine and no armor on the side. Raven 3-L, pre-legged? (Someone else shot its leg out before my team was wiped out). Bang. Dead. Dragon with no ammo and one or two medium lasers against my fully healthy, 99% front armor build? I shot its leg off before it got smart enough to move forward instead of backward, then went for the side torso. He died. I overheated. 4 AC-5s will do that when you back them up with twin medium pulse and an SRM-4. This left that trial build. I looked at him and shot a few times to rub his weakest torso raw. I knew the exact build. It had an XL engine. I'm close to overheating. Still no worse than yellow armor, and with my front armor and his weapon combo he had no chance at all unless he went behind me. A single shot would take his engine out. I was pretty hot, so I powered down manually. Tried to type. Game wouldn't let me. So I waited. Drank some mountain dew. Poured myself another glass (I keep a 2 liter next to the monitor). Sipped some more. Then I powered up. All my heat is gone, cooling accelerated by shutting down. He powered down from overheating. I press T and type "Alright, I gave you a chance. I see you went for my arm." Enter. "Here's the issue. I have two of them, and I still have weapons in the chest." Enter. "What you probably didn't know despite how slow my mech is, I have an XL 170 engine. Know what that means?" Enter. "You could have done this and won." Enter. Aimed for his right torso. Bang. ....boom.

New players need to be pit with newer players. Given a chance to learn, to build their ELO up. Not start in the mud pigs too eager to tussle and butcher them.

Edited by Koniving, 08 May 2013 - 12:45 PM.

[YaoYaoYiffy]

Great stuff. I'm new to MWO, but I'm familiar with ELO systems from about a dozen other games. I was wanting to get some details on the matchmaking/weight-balancing so I could plan out my play a little better. For every hour I've played the game so far I've spent 2 reading up on mechanics and strategy and sifting through builds.

I've actually played every Mechwarrior game starting with Mechwarrior 2, so I'm familiar with the "flavor" of different builds and itemization. That said, and I know this is beta, but the game is still pretty rough on a new player. The biggest saving grace right now is the great community. The forums here and at mechspecs.com are both great resources, and there's plenty of youtube videos floating around. There's other, similar F2P games out right now, some of them are more polished than MWO right now; but no one else has the community of MWO.


I'll second (and third) the comments about the trial mechs being...a mixed bag. I don't know what new players had before, but anyone who's played a Mechwarrior game in the past knows one key: never run stock. Last week the trial assault had 3 PPC's and a small laser (AWS-8Q). It's slow, has heat issues, is easily out-ranged by custom setups running Gauss and ERPPCs, and out-gunned by any number of setups. It didn't take me long to drop down to one of the lighter mechs, the 8Q's stock setup is just...kinda absolutely horrible IMO.

The sooner people get away from the trial mechs the better.

[Koniving]

Weight matching is limited by class.

If there's a light, there's a light on the other side. If there's an assault, there's an assault on the other side.

Mismatches are due to ELO offsets, in case if one side is too high or low, the other side will get a lower or higher mech class. There should never be more than two offset weight classes. If there is, the match was poorly done and a result of "OMG, I'm out of time. You, you, you, and uh, you! Quick get in there. What do you mean you're oversized and too strong? Who cares, get in there!"

I can run pretty good in standard builds. They have some advantages that non-defaults don't. Water. Get in the water, and enjoy.

Spoiler