23 replies to this topic

[Doctor Proctor]

Note: When I'm complaining about trial mechs, it's not because I think that "scrubs" are driving them. They're simply inferior to a fully tweaked out mech. Case in point, look at the Light and Medium trial mechs for this month. The RVN-2X has 208/238 armor (no idea of the configuration though...could be shorting the leg armor, could have 50/50 front to back ratio, etc) whereas the CDA-3C trial mech has 128/274. That's less than half of the it's total armor tonnage available, and about 60% of the armor of the RVN-2X. Anyone piloting that Cicada, regardless of skill, will be cored almost instantly.

Or take the RVN-2X again. I've been seeing a LOT of these really slow 2X's running around with the same loadout as the trial mech. The thing only goes 81kph though, which is the same speed as my Hunchback (without speed tweak) running a STD250. For a Light mech though, that's extremely slow. Not to mention, it's running single heat sinks, which in their current incarnation are nearly useless. Anyone running this mech, regardless of skill, is going to have a rough time. They're too slow for being a light mech, the armaments are okay, but you won't have the heat sinks to consistently use them.

Having two or three of these mechs on your team in a match is actually a detriment to your side due to how poorly optimized they are compared to the rest of the mechs people will be running. The differences between stock mechs and optimized mechs in this game are just staggering. Look at one of my favorite chassis, the HBK-4G. Stock, it has a STD200 engine, AC/20, 2 Medium Lasers and one Small Laser. I'm fairly sure it had just 10 single heat sinks as well. The one I run has a STD250, AC/20, 3 Medium Lasers and 10 double heat sinks. It's faster, cooler and has more firepower. It's flat out better in every way than the stock variant.

This is the crux of the problem here. Newer players run trial mechs before they have the money to get the mech they want to buy. Even once they buy that mech, they're often using stock loadouts for awhile before they get CBills to do the upgrades and/or have the experience to build them properly. Throwing them into the middle ELO brackets, which is how the system is currently weighted, means they'll be up against experienced players with customized mechs that far outclass theirs. However, since their ELO is effectively the same as those other players, it means that the system most likely doesn't balance the number of newbie players between teams (ie- you might have 3 newbies on one team, but none on the other, which the system won't stop because both teams have the same effective ELO mix). So now you not only have an inexperienced player in the cockpit, which is something that can dealt with by giving them direction and helping them to understand the game, but they're in a weak and underpowered mech that probably won't last beyond the 5 minute mark. It's just not conducive to good matches.

[Diablobo]

ELO is for chess, not MWO

[Roadkill]

Doctor Proctor, on 29 August 2013 - 06:09 AM, said:

This is the crux of the problem here. Newer players run trial mechs before they have the money to get the mech they want to buy. Even once they buy that mech, they're often using stock loadouts for awhile before they get CBills to do the upgrades and/or have the experience to build them properly. Throwing them into the middle ELO brackets, which is how the system is currently weighted, means they'll be up against experienced players with customized mechs that far outclass theirs. However, since their ELO is effectively the same as those other players, it means that the system most likely doesn't balance the number of newbie players between teams (ie- you might have 3 newbies on one team, but none on the other, which the system won't stop because both teams have the same effective ELO mix). So now you not only have an inexperienced player in the cockpit, which is something that can dealt with by giving them direction and helping them to understand the game, but they're in a weak and underpowered mech that probably won't last beyond the 5 minute mark. It's just not conducive to good matches.

Well said.

To fix it, though, we either need split queues or the MM needs to be MUCH smarter about creating groups. Since they obviously would rather endure a shitstorm of epic proportions rather than split the queue (see also: 3PV), they're going to have to radically upgrade the MM.

Players with 0-25 missions, plus players with 26+ missions using a non-Champion Trial Mech should be balanced on a team. It might work to simply say that the Elo ranking of the above should be considered 0 for MM purposes, as that seems like the easiest way (by far) to correct for the problems we're currently seeing, but I'm not sure that would be successful. We really need to have the same number of newbs on each team. The non-Champion clause is necessary because those Mechs are actually pretty good, so an experience player could take one and upset the MM again.

An experience player could still upset things a bit by taking a non-Champion Trial Mech, but those Mechs are so bad (relatively speaking) that we'd still be light years ahead of the current MM.

[Obadiah333]

I know. We could separate the 3pv from 1pv into their own que. Wait, sorry, wrong thread.