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Paging Karl Berg...karl Berg, Please Pick Up The White Courtesy Phone...


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#1241 Alaskan Nobody

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Posted 11 July 2014 - 01:40 PM

View PostGoose, on 11 July 2014 - 12:35 PM, said:

So we had our first sale on 'Mechs in , right? How'd that turn out?

I dunno about others, but I bought 1 Atlas, 3 Catapults, and rebought 2 Jenner.

Also - that was technically the 2nd Cbill sale :D
First one was not announced

#1242 Wintersdark

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Posted 11 July 2014 - 01:50 PM

View PostGoose, on 11 July 2014 - 12:35 PM, said:

So we had our first sale on 'Mechs in , right? How'd that turn out?


Second. I've bought a bunch, at 50% off you can buy them, powerlevel them and sell them without losing any money, so this allowed me to master my Sarah's Jenner and my Atlases (needed one more) at no cost to myself :D

#1243 Wintersdark

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Posted 11 July 2014 - 02:13 PM

View PostCimarb, on 10 July 2014 - 06:01 PM, said:

Let me reset this a bit...

The matchmaker is currently borked big time. We have brand new players playing with those that have played for years. We have tourney teams playing against casual players. The current system, however you want to phrase it, is not working.
No, the current system is working as it is designed to work. What it's NOT doing is working in a completely different manner, how you want it to work:

Quote

I want to play with against players that are of equal skill and/or experience as myself. I do not want to have to explain how to chainfire weapons, or what the button for air strike is. I want brand new players to play with people that are also learning, so they are spared the comments that come from us experienced players when they cannot even hit an Atlas walking by them.
The vast, vast majority of players are Medium Elo. It doesn't matter how good they actually are, the majority of players' skill level becomes Middle Elo based on how the system works. Average Elo is, in fact, average.

I understand you only want to play with more experienced players. I get that. But this system isn't designed to do that. What the system is designed to do is match teams as fairly as possible, and get people to the ranking they should have as quickly as possible.

The reason new players start middle ranked (actually, Cadet players with <=25 matches are substantially lower in practice - the system tracks actual Elo and Cadet Elo simultaneously during this time) is that it's quicker to get them to an appropriate level from that starting point, so everyone can get better matches faster. In most cases, however, they're not going to move far from that middle point simply because most players belong right there.

There are two tricksy factors here:
1) People hate to think they're actually average players, despite the fact that almost everyone actually is an average player.
2) Consider, if you will, 20,000 concurrent players at a specific moment in time. If those players spend an average of 8 minutes inside a match, 2 minutes getting drinks/chatting/tweaking loadouts/buying consumables/whatever then hit Launch... with a 30sec window looking for a match, only 5% of the currently online players are in the matchmaking pool at any given time. That's 1000 people in the MM's grasp when trying to put a match together, with 48 players per match, weight classes to consider, and elo ranges of 1-2800. The hard reality is that the vast majority of those players are going to be very, very average players, sprinkled thoroughly with newish players, and the MM has to build a match right now. The further from middle Elo you are, the greater the Elo delta within your team must be, simply because there aren't enough like-ranked players searching at that exact same moment in time.


Quote

I believe that basing our "Elo" on multiple statistics will make for a much better system of matching players. That, combined with using BV versus weight class, will make for a much better experience for everyone.

In magical "We don't actually need to design a system" land, sure. You brush it off as "Hard, but possible", but you don't really seem to grasp just how hard it is.

You can't just incorporate other statistics into Elo, because Elo is designed as a player ranking algorithm specifically that doesn't use scores. So, what you are asking for is a ground up new system.

There is nothing like that around today. There's no example system you can look at and tune to fit. How, exactly, do you rank things?
How much is a kill worth? An assist? What is the relationship between a Spotting Assist and a PPC on an Awesome? Not only do all these things need values, they all need values that are correct relative to each other. You'd never find to people, not even professional designers, who would have anything close to the same ideas there. This is not a trivial task, it's not even a hard task, it's a virtually impossible one. Try it. Seriously. Try to build an algorithm that will take all these stats into account in a useful way.

Now, how do you prevent gaming the system? If I find Kills are worth a lot, I can deliberately cripple players but never kill them to get a lower matchmaking ranking, so I'm regularly placed against weaker opponents to ease cbill generation and the appearance of awesomeness. The more factors used in determining your ranking, the easier it becomes to game.

Elo isn't gamable, at least not in a useful manner aside from possibly "smurfing" into PGI's old style of tournament. The only way to lower your Elo artificially is to deliberately lose a lot of games against lower ranked teams, which can be hard, because that means other people on your team are likely better than your opposition too. All so you can... win games easily until you get back where you were? You'd end up, either way, with roughly 50% wins anyways.


Elo isn't perfect. It doesn't do what you want, and isn't expected to. It does fail most notably when there are insufficient player counts in the matchmaking pool to make ideal matches.

But there currently isn't a better system. If you think you can make one, go to it! There's a lot of money to be made there.

#1244 Siriothrax

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Posted 12 July 2014 - 04:48 PM

View PostHeffay, on 10 July 2014 - 06:27 PM, said:


This isn't true. If the Elo disparity between the teams is high enough, it's possible to LOSE Elo points if you win against a much inferior team.


Dafuq? No, it isn't. Please stop spreading misinformation. You just gain an extremely small amount of points.

http://i.imgur.com/Ttx2q.png

WinFlag is 1 for a win and 0 for a loss. Probability is 0<P<1 (based on this: http://i.imgur.com/60HlX.png), so there is always some change, but it is always in the correct direction. .

#1245 Heffay

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Posted 12 July 2014 - 05:37 PM

View PostSiriothrax, on 12 July 2014 - 04:48 PM, said:


Dafuq? No, it isn't. Please stop spreading misinformation. You just gain an extremely small amount of points.

http://i.imgur.com/Ttx2q.png

WinFlag is 1 for a win and 0 for a loss. Probability is 0<P<1 (based on this: http://i.imgur.com/60HlX.png), so there is always some change, but it is always in the correct direction. .


There are some implementations of Elo where it actually is possible to lose and gain a point. Happened in WoW occasionally when their MM got all horked up.

#1246 Void Angel

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Posted 12 July 2014 - 08:59 PM

I remember that - but that's an improperly designed Elo system. As I understand it, normal Elo should never return a negative adjustment for a win, because there cannot be a negative probability of any outcome.

#1247 Koniks

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Posted 12 July 2014 - 09:21 PM

Karl,
Thanks again for raising the SRM impulse values with Design. They normalized the C-SRMs but according to Smurfy's data the C-LRMs still don't line up.

All IS LRMs are at .35
C-LRM5s are at .35
C-LRM10s are at .40
C-LRM15s are at .40
C-LRM20s are at .40

Can you check with them and, if it's intended, have someone post to confirm?

Separate question: can you provide any stats on how Inner Sphere mechs are faring against Clan mechs? Is there a correlation between ratio of Clan/IS mechs and winning? Is there a difference at different Elo ratings? In the Group Queue vs. the Solo Queue? Any other interesting stats about team composition and mech loadouts would also be appreciated.

#1248 Modo44

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Posted 12 July 2014 - 09:27 PM

View PostHeffay, on 12 July 2014 - 05:37 PM, said:

There are some implementations of Elo where it actually is possible to lose and gain a point. Happened in WoW occasionally when their MM got all horked up.

Happens in games that use MMR or some other bullshit "we can add special modifiers" system. This is why I keep talking about tracking more Elo values instead of adding hard modifiers. They will **** **** up.

#1249 East Indy

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Posted 13 July 2014 - 07:25 PM

Karl, what kind of data do you guys have on average damage per single component per use for each weapon?

#1250 Koniks

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Posted 13 July 2014 - 08:53 PM

View PostEast Indy, on 13 July 2014 - 07:25 PM, said:

Karl, what kind of data do you guys have on average damage per single component per use for each weapon?

Do you mean how much damage is applied by one weapon to a single component when fired? E.g. on average a medium laser is hitting 3 components, doing 1 point of damage to each, and hitting air with the other 2 points?

#1251 TheCaptainJZ

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Posted 13 July 2014 - 11:05 PM

View PostHeffay, on 12 July 2014 - 05:37 PM, said:


There are some implementations of Elo where it actually is possible to lose and gain a point. Happened in WoW occasionally when their MM got all horked up.

Not in this game according to http://mwomercs.com/...9-matchmaking/. Read post #3 towards bottom "A player’s rating will only go down if they are beaten by a player who has a lower rating than theirs. In this case, if the 1350 player lost, their score would not change since the Match Maker was correct in its prediction."

#1252 East Indy

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Posted 14 July 2014 - 05:34 AM

View PostMizeur, on 13 July 2014 - 08:53 PM, said:

Do you mean how much damage is applied by one weapon to a single component when fired? E.g. on average a medium laser is hitting 3 components, doing 1 point of damage to each, and hitting air with the other 2 points?

Exactly.

Range would be a factor in the data, I'm sure, but that's just as revealing.

#1253 Coralld

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Posted 15 July 2014 - 07:27 AM

Hey Karl.

This just hit me but it would be cool to customize your own pilot character. Think something along the lines of EVEs character creator. You can buy outfits and accessories and other junk with MC as well as C-Bills, and by completing challenges. I can see the Clanners getting the glowing face tats like in the BT animated series.

Of course this is an idea for after CW comes out as that takes priority.
Now I have no idea if you guys have talked about this before or if its even on the radar. Thoughts?

#1254 Cimarb

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Posted 15 July 2014 - 08:26 AM

View PostCoralld, on 15 July 2014 - 07:27 AM, said:

Hey Karl.

This just hit me but it would be cool to customize your own pilot character. Think something along the lines of EVEs character creator. You can buy outfits and accessories and other junk with MC as well as C-Bills, and by completing challenges. I can see the Clanners getting the glowing face tats like in the BT animated series.

Of course this is an idea for after CW comes out as that takes priority.
Now I have no idea if you guys have talked about this before or if its even on the radar. Thoughts?

I think that is a great idea, though I am not a fan of the glowing tattoos - I know this is a sci-fi game, but I do not want to cross the line to anime, lol

#1255 Void Angel

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Posted 15 July 2014 - 09:56 AM

EI implants don't glow in the source material, as I recall - they're just visible above the skin and look like tattoos.

#1256 Coralld

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Posted 15 July 2014 - 05:38 PM

View PostCimarb, on 15 July 2014 - 08:26 AM, said:

I think that is a great idea, though I am not a fan of the glowing tattoos - I know this is a sci-fi game, but I do not want to cross the line to anime, lol

As Void Angel pointed out, the EI implants are canon, and with the fantastic art team PGI has at their disposal, I am sure they can make them appear way less cartoony.

Also, its your own customizable character, so if you don't want those then fine, don't put them on.

It would also be amazing if you can give your character a flight jacket with your house/merc/Clan affiliation logo on the back of it. (This right here is what I want most.)

#1257 Karl Berg

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Posted 15 July 2014 - 10:31 PM

View PostHelmer, on 07 July 2014 - 12:56 PM, said:

Karl Fanboi:


Niko tweets "Monday Morning Coffee and a new Webcam "

You think.... "Hey there's Karl! Wonder how he's doing"

Cheers.


Hah, Niko caught me working on secret things with the friendly neighborhood tools programmer. Good thing you can't see the screen!

#1258 Karl Berg

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Posted 15 July 2014 - 10:38 PM

View Postcarl kerensky, on 10 July 2014 - 08:24 AM, said:

Posted by Slide

Hi Karl I see that you are on as I type, I hope I can catch you.

Time to kill (TTK) has been a hot topic for a while now, with various solutions including increasing IS hit points and burst fire AC's

I was wondering if a simpler solution was possible, this was my thinking.

Some stats would help here but it seems to me that most of my deaths are due to engine destruction through the CT, even when running XL engines. Currently engine health I believe is 15 points. If this were to be increased to say 50 points (it stands to reason a fusion reactor would be heavily shielded) then TTK would be greatly increased without changing any other fundamentals about the mech. I think you would take more crits to other systems (HS, weapons etc) before dying.

This would increase TTK (no more one shots) and also increase the immersion factor by having your mech fall apart around you more. As an added immersion and balancing factor, as your engine take more damage you can suffer other set backs like reduced speed, higher heat etc.


Yup, I can certainly forward this on too.

#1259 Karl Berg

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Posted 15 July 2014 - 10:48 PM

View PostDEMAX51, on 10 July 2014 - 10:50 AM, said:

Karl,

Can you shed any light on the specifics of the functionality of the Enhanced Narc module? The module's description is very vague, and even Smurfy doesn't seem to know what it actually does. Here are my specific questions, raised in another thread (to which no one has yet replied - implying that nobody on the forums actually knows...)


I'll try and remember to ask tomorrow. I haven't touched or looked at the module stuff at all yet unfortunately. I've been pulling 7 day weeks for the last while; first crunching out the matchmaker, and now quickly making up lost ground on my community warfare work.

#1260 Void Angel

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Posted 15 July 2014 - 10:51 PM

Er, but Engine destruction happens when the component is destroyed by having its internal structure depleted, right - not when the engine criticals take damage?

PS, we wuv you.





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