81 replies to this topic

[Jun Watarase]

You can't use the "It's a beta!" excuse anymore. It's been uh....approx 1.5 years since closed beta started.



Winning team : 850 tons

Losing team : 765 tons

That's nearly a 100 ton advantage. And it's pretty obvious there was a huge ELO mismatch, and the same premade vs randoms problem again.

Would really like an official explanation for this. (Im betting a million c-bills there won't be one, or it will be some canned response)

Edited by Jun Watarase, 04 December 2013 - 07:51 AM.

[Shredhead]

Let's see. There is not even one 3 or 4 man premade on the other side, maybe an odd 2 man team. Your team had a way better lance composition regarding speed of mechs.
I'd say your team was just bad. That could be an Elo mismatch (I don't know how long your waiting time was), people adapting to those new terrible spawn points, or someone on the other side coordinated his team successfully via ingame chat.
Stuff that premade bogeyman bs, it doesn't apply here.

[ImperialKnight]

there's pretty much no tonnage balance even though the ELO might be

[cSand]

Here's your official explanation:

765 and 850 is a perfectly fine matchup

Do you really think it should be perfectly evenly matched every time? But then what excuse would you use for losing? Op weapons? PPC maybe? Poptarts? Hitboxes? TAKE YOUR PICK

Time to grow a pair. Your team sucked, you probably suck, get better and LTP

THANK YOU COME AGAIN

Edited by cSand, 04 December 2013 - 09:24 AM.

[Mawai]

The tonnage is about as matched as it gets - so that wasn't the problem here in my opinion.

I have seen many more stomps since the patch ... I don't think it is the matchmaker.

I think the issue is the team organization has dropped substantially with the change in spawn points. Whichever team is more organized with either pre-made groups or someone stepping up to lead has a much bigger advantage than before the patch. Also, it is much more likely that one lance on one side will run into two lances on the other and get wiped out. Individuals who head out on their own are also much more likely to get caught along with the slow assault/heavy mechs which folks often leave behind - these are now slowly trying to catch up from 3 starting points instead of one and are easier targets for fast lights.

Basically, tactics play a much larger role now and teams of random players are generally {scrap} at tactics.

So ... in my opinion, the issue is not the matchmaker, ELO or tonnage ... but that coordination now plays a much bigger role now that the spawn points have been distributed.

[l33tworks]

Its the nature of the "health" and killing aspect game. (In addition to heat values that limit the killing ability of a single mech). A single person no matter how pro cannot do much agaisnt multiple enemies (unlike most other FPS games).

So, the way the game turns out in the first few exhcanges ussualy determines the result of the game and this can be down to random chance. Then there is a snowballing effect. If the first few mechs on your team die suddenly its 9 vs 12.

12 mechs can get rid of 9 mechs a lot quicker than 9 can 12. Maybe 1 on the enemy team will die but 3 will die on yours. Suddnely its 6 vs 11. 11 mechs can get rid of 6 mechs a LOT quicker than 6 can get rid of 11. Suddnely its 9 vs 2. The 2 will get slaughtred in an instant. So more often than not, its likley a match will be a roll over. Co-incidently this is why I think they have recently changed the spawn points.

Stop blaming the matchmaker or PGI. Its just the nature of the game. You win some you loose some. Move on or ogranize a 12 man. This is something that is first nature to the way mech battles pan out even if the matchmaker is as perfect as can be.

Edited by l33tworks, 04 December 2013 - 09:35 AM.

[Jun Watarase]

An extra 85 tons is huge...its basically an assault's worth of extra firepower. Which does a substantial difference in a metagame dominated by PPCs, gauss and ACs.

Co-ordination really means very little. Stacking a team in terms of tonnage, skill or optimized loadouts effectively decides a match before it begins. You can have the best organization in the game....but it really means nothing if your entire team is at one point getting slaughtered by half the enemy team. If anything, the new spawn points make co-ordination less important...when its a lance on lance fight, what really matters is loadout and skill.

Edit : If you want to believe its the nature of the game to pit a team comprised mostly of newbies against vets in premade teams, then you may need a reality check.

Edited by Jun Watarase, 04 December 2013 - 09:41 AM.

[Burke IV]

You get matches like that because its conquest. One team wanted to play battlemechs and the other team wanted to play tactics, which in conquest is grab 3 and then camp down under an umbrella of multiple ECMs. The sad fact is that if you are on the wrong team at the start you might aswell just drop. Until PGI looks at this you might aswell avoid that game mode completely. If you want to play conquest drop in a pre made or at the very least bring ECM. Allowing premades of any kind to play agains pug teams in the conquest game mode = broken game. The fix is of course to remove premades and introduce in game voip. Its not going to happen.


Edit: ECM just sucks really, having multiple layers of ECM isnt skill. If the match maker was any good it might limit ECM to 2 per team or something. The match maker is full of fail but again... premades are to blame!

Edit2: i blame premades cause its obvious the mm cant cope with the variables when people are allowed to group mechs.

Edited by Burke IV, 04 December 2013 - 09:47 AM.

[Alekzander Smirnoff]

The longer it takes the matchmaker to find a match, the crappier a match it is. Zero to 60 seconds is an even(ish) Elo bracket, 60-120 is getting out of the Elo matching realm, and once you hit 120-180 seconds the MM is just trying to throw you into any match available regardless of Elo. So, If it took you two plus minutes to get into that match, expect it to be a steam roll either way.

I know this was explained I don't know how many times but people evidently seem to forget this...

[Burke IV]

and a steamroll win is almost as boring as a steamroll loss.

[John MatriX82]

100 tons advantage is.. nothing. If I want to search I can find several consecutive drops with 200+ and even 250+ discrepances. The matchmaker is borked to the bone anwyay.

[Jun Watarase]

Its quite sad to see that some guilds/corps/whatever are going to the effort of sync dropping with 3 premades, arranged with incompatible weight classes, to get easy wins against randoms....

[Ransack]

Jun Watarase, on 04 December 2013 - 07:49 AM, said:

Would really like an official explanation for this. (Im betting a million c-bills there won't be one, or it will be some canned response)

You have been here long enough to know better. There will not be one forthcoming. They have said that they are going to fix the matchmaker. We ALL know it sucks when you are on the low side of the weight ladder.

Quote

Its quite sad to see that some guilds/corps/whatever are going to the effort of sync dropping with 3 premades, arranged with incompatible weight classes, to get easy wins against randoms....

SOME are actually trying to matchup against each other, just like last year. I seriously doubt that organized lances are purposly synch dropping HOPING to catch and kill a bunch of PuGs. 12-0 is not much fun for the winners either.

[Atheus]

cSand, on 04 December 2013 - 09:22 AM, said:

Here's your official explanation:

765 and 850 is a perfectly fine matchup

Do you really think it should be perfectly evenly matched every time? But then what excuse would you use for losing? Op weapons? PPC maybe? Poptarts? Hitboxes? TAKE YOUR PICK

Time to grow a pair. Your team sucked, you probably suck, get better and LTP

THANK YOU COME AGAIN

You're one of those people who thinks being a complete jerk is cool, right? I get it. Take a look at that bolded part, though. That's the problem area. ELO is supposed to make the game fun, even for people who "suck". They should be playing against other people who "suck". That's the whole point he's trying to make. I guess you're too up yourself to think about it, though, so you're contributing nothing worthwhile to the discussion.

[TheStrider]

Heh, that match up looked pretty good tonnage wise...

I've got to dig up some screen shots... Some are ridiculous.

[Atheus]

I'll take a stab at why "ELO" and matchmaker are fairly helpless against this game. There are a CRAZY number of variables to determine how well a given player will perform. Just to name a few:

• Pilot efficiencies - an experienced player in a brand new mech will perform at about 50% of their ability, simply because their mech is too slow, and too hot without efficiencies.
  
• Loadout - even if you're generally good at building mechs, players are forced to play in variants they wouldn't personally want to pilot in order to build out elite on a chassis.
  
• Upgrades - Some players won't bother with the 1.5-3 million in basically mandatory upgrades on chassis variants that they don't particularly like, hoping their team will carry them through basic efficiencies.
  
• Consumables - these powerful modules can have a huge effect on a battle when used at the right time. ELO doesn't evaluate separately how you perform when using air/artillery strikes vs. not, then evaluate your loadout, etc.
  
• Chassis - some variants are just plain strong, while others are not. Matchmaker isn't going to give you an ELO boost just because you're in your Highlander 733C, then drop it down super low because you're in an Awesome. They use the same ELO figure.
  
• Environment compatibility - We still don't get to pick what map we play on, but there's no secret that ballistics are particularly strong on hot maps, or that LRM's are particularly strong on alpine and caustic. How exactly do you compensate for that, though, when each mech might be carrying all 3 of those types of weapons in different mixtures? You can try, but as the meta shifts the parameters for weapon affinity will shift with them.

In a game where people all use basically the same equipment, ELO is pretty effective. MWO has a massive array of variables to account for, though, and quantifying them is pretty hopeless. Players will have an affinity for one system over another, while another player will be just the opposite, and the game is never going to be able to compensate for player P trying out the gauss rifle when he's actually really bad at using the gauss rifle, or player H loading up a mech that runs a little hot, then discovering he's landed on Terra Therma. All PGI can hope for is that players of a certain ELO will randomly land both strong and weak loadouts on both teams.

That said, perhaps using "big data" you can evaluate all matches and come up with some sort of ultra-advanced ELO that takes every little detail into consideration and comes up with a loadout compensated ELO customized for each player's weapon affinities. It's certainly not impossible for something like that to happen, but for that to happen PGI would need to have Gandalf and Spock and also probably a good fortune teller on their staff. If I were Spock, though, I would probably apply to another company before PGI, though.

[Thorqemada]

One of the most unbalanced matches i played was when i did a Raven run post patch.
It was a group of mostly Lights at 485 tons vs a group of mostly Heavys at 680 tons.
The Lights totall Roflstomped the Opposition 12:1 and the 1 was a Locust.

Another one was a match with 8 or 9 Highlanders that totally Roflstomped the oposing Atlases, Stalkers and Viktors 12:0...

Tonnage is only part of the Balance - some Mechs in Capable Hands are simply Way Superior to anything else.

ELO wont change that - Rank/Leagues could do i guess...

Edited by Thorqemada, 04 December 2013 - 03:38 PM.

[M4NTiC0R3X]

I believe that PGI would tell you it is not the match maker which is broken,

rather,

Our capabilities to select the proper chassis.

[Jun Watarase]

Premades are a myth they said. Theres no way you could get multiple premades on the same team in the same match they said.

All 4 jagermechs had the exact same load out....which was....you guessed it, dual AC20s. Chainfiring to bypass the ghost heat penalty of course (not that it prevented them from three shotting every mech on the field).

Edited by Jun Watarase, 04 December 2013 - 02:27 PM.

[Atheus]

Jun Watarase, on 04 December 2013 - 02:19 PM, said:

Premades are a myth they said. Theres no way you could get multiple premades on the same team in the same match they said.

All 4 jagermechs had the exact same load out....which was....you guessed it, dual AC20s. Chainfiring to bypass the ghost heat penalty of course (not that it prevented them from doing three shotting every mech on the field).

Alpha may be premade, but there's no strong evidence that Bravo is premade. Besides, only two of those four jagermechs did a substantial amount of damage, and they were in separate lances.

When I run 4 man premade, I would say at least half the time we wind up in Bravo lance, and maybe 5% of the time Charlie lance - meaning that there is at least 1-2 other premades in my group. I suspect that maybe half the players in the mid-high ELO pool are dropping in 2-4 man groups at any given time.

If you're that worried about premades, though, you should be pulling for integrated VOIP. Premade would become fairly irrelevant at that point.

Edited by Atheus, 04 December 2013 - 02:32 PM.