75 replies to this topic

[A banana in the tailpipe]

I'm starting to feel like if I don't run a heavy+ the game isn't worth playing due to the matchmaker constantly putting you up against full lances of mechs that completely outclass everything else.

Over the holiday things seemed better because there were more pugs who usually try out a variety of mechs, but PGI failed to retain any of them and we're back to the same old same old.

le sigh and tonnage limits can't come soon enough.

[Craig Steele]

idk Lockwoodx, I am playing a lot less (6-10 matches a day and thats it for me now)

But MM has in the last 2 days at least been better than what I saw for a month (post patch?)

Maybe its just a spike but the stomps seem less often.

Whether that means the AC velocity thing has had an effect or people "believe" its had an effect and are outfitting other designed idk. LRM's sure seem popular in my recent matches.

Or maybe game population is spiked because of the patch and people are trying it out?

Either way its fair to say that PGI have enough of my money until the game meets what I am looking for entertainment wise.

[Solnaga]

I'm finding matchmaker to be atrocious as of late. I shouldn't be averaging 200-400 damage a game and losing over 75% of my matches over the course of 30+ matches. Losing due to caps (technically a class mix imbalance; eg lack of lights), extreme weight imbalance (having 6+ lights in skirmish doesn't usually bode well), or just sheer imbalance of experience would account for most of those losses.

[A banana in the tailpipe]

Admittedly I was just having a mediocre night and the last few matches of it left me sour. For instance, there was one where our entire drop had 2 heavies and 1 assault for snowcity. Super light drop. Our lance decides to scout tunnel and ran smack into a lance of 3 AC/40 jagers and a thundertart whom absolutely destroyed us in seconds. The next drop was the same map except that lance was on our team now and I watched them ignore tunnel and get picked apart by 3 lights and a wolverine. Aint that some sweet irony?

Rotten luck and all I felt just like sharing because this is actual feedback and we ALL know it's the grim reality of this game. The match maker has been much worse than normal lately tho, and its a clear indication that once the kids went returned to school, MWO's population is back in the toilet. Something else I've noticed is that since before the holiday I've never had over 40 ping and now it's always in the 80s. I'd love to know WTF is going on over at PGI but I'm more likely to know what the NSA is doing than those hacks.

With my gripe about mediums... I'm slowly being proven wrong in a sense that the Shadowhawk, Griffon, and Wolverine are all vastly superior to others, even some heavies. Like OMFG how many hits does it take to down you superior? I play mediums and brawl almost exclusively so when it comes to even subtle changes they're noticed, and everyone can tell that PGI is balancing mechs around selling newer ones.

The combination of all these factors last night led to this post. Normally poor matchmaking only rears its ugly head when I pug but even in lances last night every other match was a crazy blowout. No booze or poor judgement involved just some bad luck along with a lot of little things adding up, hence this mild rant.

Enjoy!

Edited by lockwoodx, 10 January 2014 - 07:56 AM.

[Profiteer]

There are no tonnage limits so of course a lot of people are just going to take the best mech (i.e. Highlanders).

So drop in 4 assaults as well - preferably Highlanders/Stalkers/Victors.

You will win more.

It gets boring, but like you have found, if you try and ton down the MM will put you against 2 good 4 mans with 8 assaults.

Oh and PGI - this is costing you money. Your MM forces me to drop in a 732/733c most of the time, so I have no need to buy other mechs, mech-bays, camos, premium etc.

Edited by Profiteer, 10 January 2014 - 12:04 PM.

[Ngamok]

I have been playing my Griffins and Wolverines quite a bit and have to say very few times the other team had the 4x Assault Lance mega tonnage beat down brawl warrior online thing going.

[Profiteer]

Ngamok, on 10 January 2014 - 01:09 PM, said:

I have been playing my Griffins and Wolverines quite a bit and have to say very few times the other team had the 4x Assault Lance mega tonnage beat down brawl warrior online thing going.

That's because you play in the pre-school ranks

[Barantor]

Playing less lately due to several games where my friends and I are the premade lance in a normal motley collection of weight classes but go up against other premades with all assault. Hard to fight that armor regardless of skill level and especially when you get a few games where the opposite team has 3 times the assaults.

I still like the game, but some sort of better matchmaker (weight balance, lobby system, whatever) can't come soon enough.

[Ngamok]

Profiteer, on 10 January 2014 - 01:44 PM, said:

That's because you play in the pre-school ranks

Could Be.

[Xmith]

It can go both ways. I was in a match last night on a team of 6 Atlas and 4 were D-DC.

We lost. A good example why tonnage limits are really not needed.

[Skyfaller]

The imbalance is cause primarily by the broken pre-made system.

We see too many pug games where people enter with 4 assaults (usually 4 ECM atlas to exploit the thing) premade and the rest of their team is heavies....being pitted against a team that is mostly mediums and lights.

... I mean, seriously? C'mon now.

ELO is a useless system. It should go away. Forever.

Return the MM to match mechs in numbers by type (light,heavy,etc) so one team does not have more than another.

ECM per team should be limited to 2: One light or medium mech ecm, one assault or heavy ECM. (one is scout the other is combat team support).

Player skill is IMPOSSIBLE to gauge.

[Scandinavian Jawbreaker]

Skyfaller, on 10 January 2014 - 02:44 PM, said:

The imbalance is cause primarily by the broken pre-made system.

We see too many pug games where people enter with 4 assaults (usually 4 ECM atlas to exploit the thing)

No offence, but... You're wrong.

[wanderer]

lockwoodx, on 10 January 2014 - 07:50 AM, said:

With my gripe about mediums... I'm slowly being proven wrong in a sense that the Shadowhawk, Griffon, and Wolverine are all vastly superior to others, even some heavies. Like OMFG how many hits does it take to down you superior? I play mediums and brawl almost exclusively so when it comes to even subtle changes they're noticed, and everyone can tell that PGI is balancing mechs around selling newer ones.

I'm not so surprised. When they added those, they finally put in the Holy Trinity of medium 'Mechs. The gold standard. Ask a grognard player what they think of when they think "Medium", and those three are gonna show up an awful lot (along with the Phoenix Hawk, which would be a fantastic fast jumper with arm mounted ballistic and/or energy hardpoints of happy) on people's lists.

Profiteer, on 10 January 2014 - 12:03 PM, said:

There are no tonnage limits so of course a lot of people are just going to take the best mech (i.e. Highlanders).

So drop in 4 assaults as well - preferably Highlanders/Stalkers/Victors.

You will win more.

It gets boring, but like you have found, if you try and ton down the MM will put you against 2 good 4 mans with 8 assaults.

Oh and PGI - this is costing you money. Your MM forces me to drop in a 732/733c most of the time, so I have no need to buy other mechs, mech-bays, camos, premium etc.

I've had a better tiering system sitting in my sig for months. One of these days...

...yeah, about time I posted that fella out of the archives, it's dead and buried in there.

Edited by wanderer, 10 January 2014 - 03:28 PM.

[Skyfaller]

IV Amen, on 10 January 2014 - 02:58 PM, said:

No offence, but... You're wrong.

On what? The premades on pugs exploiting failed mechanics design or the MM delivering horribly mismatched teams because of it?

[KHETTI]

Current matchmaking is dismal, very little reason to actually play because of it.
And yes Amen pre-mades do unbalance the matchmaker when mixed with solo droppers.
The matchmaking has been exploited since the beginning, groups were given a queue back in closed beta(At their request i might add) and most chose to sync drop against solo players, with only a few actually dropping against other teams.

CW will just be amazing with unbalanced matchmaking.....not.
Currently 50% of me wants this game to work, while the other 50% just wishes this game would hurry up and die the miserable death it deserves.
Waiting on a patch and wipe for another beta, which should happen sometime this weekend, time for a long break from MWO.

[Khobai]

Quote

CW will just be amazing with unbalanced matchmaking.....not.

CW will be okay im sure, but it really should not be PGI's focus. PGI should be focusing primarily on fixing the matchmaker and adding more gamemodes. Because thats the core of the game, and if your gamemodes arnt fun or diverse enough, then players will quit the game.

[Agent 0 Fortune]

Khobai, on 10 January 2014 - 05:31 PM, said:

CW will be okay im sure, but it really should not be PGI's focus. PGI should be focusing primarily on fixing the matchmaker and adding more gamemodes. Because thats the core of the game, and if your gamemodes arnt fun or diverse enough, then players will quit the game.

more game modes will only fracture the game into smaller and smaller populations, forcing more unbalanced matches.

Not that community warfare will be better, but it "should" do a better job of matchmaking by presenting Level (skill) appropriate targets worlds, it will encourage high ELO players to pursue high profit worlds, and not allow low ELO players access. So now instead of segregating the community by game-mode, we will segregate by skill level.

However this ELO segregation has already be done, but it was later turned off by devs, because without Lobbies, high-Elo players constantly failed to find match. So really CW isn't going to save the game, but maybe lobbies will.

[Craig Steele]

Khobai, on 10 January 2014 - 05:31 PM, said:

CW will be okay im sure, but it really should not be PGI's focus. PGI should be focusing primarily on fixing the matchmaker and adding more gamemodes. Because thats the core of the game, and if your gamemodes arnt fun or diverse enough, then players will quit the game.

idk about this.

Having a great MM and mechanics without an immersion is a game thats just about stats. I suspect that appeals to a certain player base, but I am not confident it's a broad one.

Both aspects need to be balanced imo, neither is "more important" than the other.

[War Beast]

Agent 0 Fortune, on 10 January 2014 - 05:50 PM, said:

more game modes will only fracture the game into smaller and smaller populations, forcing more unbalanced matches

Or simply take out game modes. Its automatically set to any.

Queue options can be:

1) Teaming queue.
2) Solo only queue.
3) Battle value only queue.

Suddenly without 4 diff games modes (including 12 man) thinning things out, you suddenly have options for different queue types. Options to get people playing together in non broken environments.

Imagine that.

[Skyfaller]

The ELO system is also garbage. Its outright incompetent to have win:loss ratio determine 'your' level of skill. You can be the world's best MWO player and if your team scatters all over at map start and dies noobrushing the entire enemy team it is NOT your lack skill that lost the map yet that is how it gets counted.

MM needs to return to mech class matching. If one team has a heavy then the other team needs to have 1 heavy too. If one team has 2 ECM the other team also needs to have 2 ECM.

etc etc.