268 replies to this topic

[Star Witch Esperanza]

Matthew Craig, on 19 September 2013 - 03:40 PM, said:

Throet: Sorry you think microtransactions are baloney, as both a developer and a consumer I think there is a lot of merit in microtransactions though its still in its infancy and there are both good and bad implementations. The standard box product model just means you have to put down 50-60 dollars and hope the game delivers what you want. Not entirely a bad option after all its got us this far but its quite all or nothing.

but 50-60 dollars in this only gets you a couple of decent hero mechs at best.. these micro transactions aren't exactly micro.

[Doc Andrews]

Nephera, on 20 September 2013 - 01:19 AM, said:

but 50-60 dollars in this only gets you a couple of decent hero mechs at best.. these micro transactions aren't exactly micro.

Hero mechs are luxury items. You can spend around 50 bucks and get 12,000 MC. That will set you up for play at the highest levels of the game, if you're smart. You want to buy:

Mech bays. Get an extra 15. This will let you get all the mechs you need for Mastering every weight class. Buy the mech types in groups of three with normal CBills, and then after you bring them up to at least Elite,you can sell off the chassis that you don't intend on playing long term and Master the ones you plan to keep. That will cost you 4500, leaving you 7500.

GXP Conversion. In order to shave weeks off of the Mastery process and get you the module unlocks you'll want, wait for a half price GXP conversion sale, and then convert 5500 MC worth of your extra mech xp to GXP. That leaves you with 2000 MC.

Keep the 2000 MC for a rainy day,

When compared to what people spend on MMO's, 50 bucks a year is quite reasonable if MWO is your primary source of entertainment.

[retakrew7]

I would like this thread to go back to what it is actually all about:

the matchmaking

Right now I have to wait quite some time when I play lights.

Mediums is fine, the trebuchets took some time to get used to.

With heavies it also is fine since the dragons pulled me a bit down I guess.

My assaults are also fine, however, there should be a difference whether I am in my laser awesome or in one of my two missile variants, as I am way more effective in the laser variant.
This would be one of the cases where variant elo would be nice instead of class elo.

Edited by retakrew7, 20 September 2013 - 02:48 AM.

[Haakon Magnusson]

Matthew Craig, on 19 September 2013 - 03:40 PM, said:

Throet: Sorry you think microtransactions are baloney, as both a developer and a consumer I think there is a lot of merit in microtransactions though its still in its infancy and there are both good and bad implementations. The standard box product model just means you have to put down 50-60 dollars and hope the game delivers what you want. Not entirely a bad option after all its got us this far but its quite all or nothing.

I do mirror the sentiment that many of the items being for sale here definately are not micro transactions (Micro transactions are indeed that, when I was working in a startup with it's earning model catered for micro transactions... for us the pricepoint was sub 1$ for microtransactions, something insignificant people don't think about. Just click and buy. But they will buy in bulk. I think this is probably mirrored with you guys how much camo/colors you are selling.. if they were microtransaction prices, everybody would have SOME customization in their mech. Now it requires a thought if you really want to part with your cash and they are consequently less common. Or then simply markets have significantly changed, which I find unbelievable or customerbase isn't large enough. This is also a problem attracting "walk-in" customers, if prices are high they will just walk out no matter how nice shop looks.)

I'd be willing to bet that were an analysis to be made, lower price point would end in more sales being made than being lost in singular transaction. If I were economics major I'd even remember the name of the theory.. there was one, but I'm engineering so I choose to forget it

Admittedly hero mechs are premium items, but I'd definately you need significantly lower the price point on normal mech MC costs. I have earlier taken the shortcut of using MC to get mechs (Hey, I wanted to master atlases to match my founders one) but frankly having looked at the cost they had... no way in hell will I buy a normal mech with MC now and considering that you have a HUGE array of mechs for sale maybe it would be better to cater for those who do not want to grind the cb but would be willing to take MC shortcut IF prices were a little more sensible, micro if you will

In my personal opinion I play FAR too much, but still the amount of games I have played is insignificant compared to those around here that have thousands of games played... were the premium benefits more tangible or MC prices more reasonable, I'd go for them.. but I feel the difference isn't big enough to justify the expenditure. And if I am not moving forwards in a meaningfull way as I am spending a lot of time playing, it will eventually lead to less playing.

I fear much of this is sort of vain stubborness, "We cannot seen lowering prices, it will be seen as weakness."
I my opinion, sales should always win over pride.

[Chavette]

I'd like to throw up an idea:

Seperate elo value for players in 12v12 ques. These errors seem to happen much more often to people who almost solely play 12s like this guy here.
http://mwomercs.com/...age__p__2769342

Its not out of ordinary for teams in 12s go on 10-12 win streaks, when theres no proper competition.

You guys could see the metrics for missrate/relative rate of 12s played to verify this.

Matthew Craig, on 19 September 2013 - 02:46 PM, said:

Yes it's something that will be discussed if we can do that behind the scenes. Something that was noted internally is that if you were able to continue to make changes in mechlab to other Mechs (not the one dropping) while you wait that would potentially help ease the strain of longer wait times?

Chat function would be better while searching, of course both would be best. Also chat status messages!

Edited by Chavette, 20 September 2013 - 06:11 AM.

[Arete]

@Matthew: Do you have the time for a question?

Was wondering a bit of how the matchmaker uses these buckets you're talking about.
Does it work like players (or group) starts searching, and the matchmaker searches for a a suitable "bucket" to put them in, then waits until the bucket is full to launch? Meanwhile removing any player that has waited to long from the bucket?
Can a player/group be put in multiple "buckets" at the same time in this case, and launch as soon as one of their member buckets are filled?


I was thinking about doing a matchmaker as a pet project at home (just to see if using SQL matching for massive amounts of data would be feasible in that scenario) so It'd be interesting to know more about how your matchmaker works :-)

[DragonsFire]

Relatively good discussion thus far, but try and do your best to keep it constructive folks. It's pretty clear that Matt and team are keeping an active watch on this, so let's keep giving them feedback to help coincide with the data they're seeing on the back end. These two factors together will only serve to help them in tuning the matchmaker further for everyone's benefit.

I know not finding a match is frustrating as all get out, but try and keep a level head about it when posting. Try and include things like the amount of players in your drop and what weight classes you and others taking. They can look this stuff up of course based on your username but having it collected in here will be helpful as well.

As for my feedback, we ran 4's last night between 10 PM - 12 AM EST and were usually matched up within 1-2 minutes tops every time, all of us were running Heavies. About to try some solo drops starting at 8 AM EST, also in a Heavy.

[Ransack]

Thanks for taking time to engage the community with this discussion, Matt. It is appreciated.

[Rippthrough]

Ransack, on 20 September 2013 - 04:19 AM, said:

Thanks for taking time to engage the community with this discussion, Matt. It is appreciated.

It's certainly something of a novelty of late. If I had his paypal I'd send him a beer.

[Throe]

Matthew Craig, on 19 September 2013 - 03:40 PM, said:

...bad implementations.

For the record, although I do understand that this is the way MWO's producers have decided to bill it, I really feel like the only thing that *must* be changed about it at this point is the MC for consumables. Pay-to-Win defines a situation in which players with more money obtain a measurable in-game advantage. In this case, that advantage is in bonus damage. Which ever player has the most money to throw at the game can give themselves a consistent increase in damage *every* match. Everyone else would quickly run out of CBills(and what little MC they had) in an attempt to do the same.

Edited by Throet, 20 September 2013 - 09:16 AM.

[PropagandaWar]

Haakon Magnusson, on 18 September 2013 - 02:16 PM, said:

It would actually be really interesting to know if those outlayers are actually those high elo players (Or low for that matter) who sleep in their assault mechs (or whatever single class they have chosen to perfect in)
I'm propably somewhere there in the middle in most classes depending on how crappy variant I happen to be leveling, but in any case I am switching mechs a lot over the course of evening, while I'd propably be much better playing a mastered mech every time.
So if one mm category takes long... so what my next in a light/med/hvy/*** will take a different time and get me matched up.

This makes me wonder, do we need to really finetune the whole mm for those people who have that one damn mech they ride, every damn time? As far as I see, best experience is bound to come to those in the crowded part of elo curve. And if that works, it also works for the most people looking for a game. For the high and low end, expand search parameters more aggressively but do keep what works in the middle going as its been.

Aww whatta ****, I'm due another beer.. cheers...

I noticed as soon as I went into my Mediums search time was waaaay longer, Heavies somewhat longer, assault instant. I play PST at night so we still found games but there were a couple where I was questioning it.

[Throe]

Doc Andrews, on 20 September 2013 - 01:31 AM, said:

Hero mechs are luxury items. You can spend around 50 bucks and get 12,000 MC. That will set you up for play at the highest levels of the game, if you're smart. You want to buy:...

...When compared to what people spend on MMO's, 50 bucks a year is quite reasonable if MWO is your primary source of entertainment.

Thank you so much for this. At least now, if I do decide MWO is worth paying for(and I'm getting there), I have a target. This is one of the things I've been looking for from the developers. Instead, with no clear explanation from them, I've been left with the idea that they really expect me to spend a few hundred right off the bat, which was a major source of frustration.

Yo, IGP: Pay attention. You should be copying his suggestion down and putting it in an FAQ somewhere titled: "I've decided to buy MC, but what's the best way to spend it?" At the very least, offer newer players some recommendations on what to spend that MC on, rather than just throwing everyone to the wolves.

[Maerawn]

im just wondering aloud here but it seems to me the match maker is picking 24 pilots who meet a elo requirement and trying to make a match and some times due to a pilots inflated elo score they fail.

If this is the case then would it not be possible to build each team in a match independent of the opposing team, and then once the team is a 12 man company, taking the combine elo score and then matching teams to make the game.

you could even use the lobby system spoken about to make it work, you launch and are teamed with 12 players of relatively similar elo ranking, with at looser restriction the higher or lower down curve you go to maintain number of possible opponents. This team is loaded into a pre match lobby and the elo score is averaged, that score is then run through the matchmaker a second time to find the opposing team best set to fight your team.

just a thought...

[Darkblood]

Matthew Craig, on 19 September 2013 - 02:46 PM, said:

Yes it's something that will be discussed if we can do that behind the scenes. Something that was noted internally is that if you were able to continue to make changes in mechlab to other Mechs (not the one dropping) while you wait that would potentially help ease the strain of longer wait times?

That would definitively be nice!

[Eagle vFv]

[Jman5]

Hey Matt,

I have noticed a lot of people who seem to be having problems tend to play during non-peak hours. Have you considered creating a monitoring system that strengthens or weakens the matchmaking requirements based on the current population?

For example, if it's 7PM PDT and you're seeing peak hour numbers, the matchmaker would tighten up and be real selective about who goes where. It will take the full 3 minutes if it has to because it knows there's a bunch of people close to your Elo online. However come 4 AM PDT, when the server is practically dead the matchmaker loosens up automatically. It knows that there are realistically only a handful of people on near your Elo so it's just gonna fudge it as best it can from the get-go.

[Monky]

Played quite a few matches today against a lot of high ELO players (previous tournament champions and other well knowns), not sure if I'm a midlevel being pulled in to compensate or if I'm at a good ELO rating, but my personal queue times are under 2 minutes, which I deem acceptable.

[Star Witch Esperanza]

Doc Andrews, on 20 September 2013 - 01:31 AM, said:

Hero mechs are luxury items. You can spend around 50 bucks and get 12,000 MC. That will set you up for play at the highest levels of the game, if you're smart. You want to buy:

Mech bays. Get an extra 15. This will let you get all the mechs you need for Mastering every weight class. Buy the mech types in groups of three with normal CBills, and then after you bring them up to at least Elite,you can sell off the chassis that you don't intend on playing long term and Master the ones you plan to keep. That will cost you 4500, leaving you 7500.

GXP Conversion. In order to shave weeks off of the Mastery process and get you the module unlocks you'll want, wait for a half price GXP conversion sale, and then convert 5500 MC worth of your extra mech xp to GXP. That leaves you with 2000 MC.

Keep the 2000 MC for a rainy day,

When compared to what people spend on MMO's, 50 bucks a year is quite reasonable if MWO is your primary source of entertainment.

I feel like even if you do the max efficiency spend (like the plan you just outlined here). You still get considerably more out of other free to play games at the moment. I'd lay out 50 dollar plans for other games but i feel like i would get moderated if I did that.

Edit: and while this is their game and they can charge whatever they want. I honestly think if you expect somebody to have multiple chassis/characters/ships/warframes, the price point should be lower than 20 dollars. Because people are more likely to make several small purchases rather than multiple big ones.

Edited by Nephera, 20 September 2013 - 02:09 PM.

[Sturmwind]

15 min and counting ... 3-man Jagbros..."Failed to find a match"...*sigh*...

[DragonsFire]

Sturmwind, on 20 September 2013 - 02:09 PM, said:

15 min and counting ... 3-man Jagbros..."Failed to find a match"...*sigh*...

See if moving one of your drop up or down a weight class helps improve the results.