1911 replies to this topic

[SnagaDance]

Hi Karl. Got a question you'll probably need to ask others for the answer but I hope you can help: "How does the game determine in what Lance you start (in PUGs)?" These last 6 months I've consistently dropped in Alpha lance, hardly any exceptions except when a pre-made (who I know always gets in Alpha) was included. And since yesterday I'm suddenly a lot in Charlie, plus a couple of times in Beta and just a little Alpha? I'm not complaining, it's a nice change for now, but I'd like to know the mechanism behind this. (sorry for the little block of text, I'm behind a work computer that doesn't allow me to use Enter to get a new line on these forums for some reason).

[Cimarb]

Void Angel, on 16 July 2014 - 07:32 PM, said:

Hard math has never been "opinion."

Just because 2+2=4 does not mean it gives the best outcome when you are looking for a 5. Sometimes you need to add/change something to get the result that is needed.

[Coralld]

SnagaDance, on 17 July 2014 - 12:24 AM, said:

Hi Karl. Got a question you'll probably need to ask others for the answer but I hope you can help: "How does the game determine in what Lance you start (in PUGs)?" These last 6 months I've consistently dropped in Alpha lance, hardly any exceptions except when a pre-made (who I know always gets in Alpha) was included. And since yesterday I'm suddenly a lot in Charlie, plus a couple of times in Beta and just a little Alpha? I'm not complaining, it's a nice change for now, but I'd like to know the mechanism behind this. (sorry for the little block of text, I'm behind a work computer that doesn't allow me to use Enter to get a new line on these forums for some reason).

If I remember correctly, that is how you stack compared to everyone elses ELO with in the team your dropping with. Its also one of the reasons why it usually makes grouped players in Alpha Lance as they take priority because they are grouped, and their total ELO is combined to give them that spot.

There was a discussion about this somewhere a while back and this is just what I remember off the top of my head but I could be completely wrong.

[Cimarb]

Coralld, on 17 July 2014 - 07:21 AM, said:

If I remember correctly, that is how you stack compared to everyone elses ELO with in the team your dropping with. Its also one of the reasons why it usually makes grouped players in Alpha Lance as they take priority because they are grouped, and their total ELO is combined to give them that spot.

There was a discussion about this somewhere a while back and this is just what I remember off the top of my head but I could be completely wrong.

That is interesting if true. When I solo dropped primarily, I could count on one hand the number of times I was NOT in Charlie lance, but I just hope that means I always had two groups filling up alpha/bravo every drop.... Or it would make sense if I was at the bottom of a high Elo, I guess, as I regularly went up against names I recognized from tourneys.

Regardless, Elo is so out of whack lately that I don't think it means squat what lance you are in...

[TheCaptainJZ]

I don't know the answer for sure, but I do know your starting position in your lance is NOT based on ELO as I have dropped with my brother, assigned to the same lance, but his lance listing and my listing prior to match start is NOT identical.

[Void Angel]

Prior to match, meaning in the Social tab? That doesn't mean anything for sure. My own testing indicated that there is some predictable mechanism, possibly Elo, at work, but I was unable to isolate that variable. Premade groups, however, do seem to always get asigned to lances first - possibly because the matchmaker matches premades in a separate step in order to avoid having more than one premade on each team.

PS: Elo is a ranking system developed by Arpad Elo to govern competitive chess tournaments.

ELO is the Electric Light Orchestra:


You're welcome. =]

[Jman5]

Hey Karl, in the past few weeks, I've noticed some occasional, but severe hit registration problems in the private lobby games. Most games are fine, but every once in a while I'll get a match where everyone is experiencing bad hit reg.

Normal matches are fine though, so it's very strange. For the record I'd like to think I'm not the kind of person who blames hit reg every time he misses.

I'm just wondering if you guys are aware of anything going on with private lobby servers or connections.

[TheCaptainJZ]

No, I was referring to the ready screen. The lancemates are the same, but the order within a lance varies. Yes, alpha lance seems to be the first players the matchmaker selects. That meant groups were in alpha lance before they had the group only queue.

[Void Angel]

The ready screen that when you form a group and ready up before hitting the launch button to start searching for a match, right?

[TheCaptainJZ]

No, the ready screen when you hit the ready button in match. already loaded the match. if it's not the ready screen i don't know what you call it

[Void Angel]

Ah, I see - my confusion stems from both screens allowing you to ready up.

So what you're saying is that the order in your team's lances once the match begins doesn't match the order in the ready screen?

[Hammerhai]

To come back to what lance you are in: This has probably changed now, but I worked my way up from Beta and Charlie in the old days (2012) and was in Alpha so much that I noticed when it did not happen any more.

Am now back to Beta and Charlie.My W/L ratio however is <0.5 in favour and has been for most of my time in MWO, so I am a bit puzzled. Either way, how many ways can you spell steering wheel underhive...

[Void Angel]

The difficult thing is that you can't see Elo rating, leading to a lot of speculation - take what you're saying, for example. How can you "work your way up" in a randomly-assigned team, if Elo determines your placement in the match? There's probably too much hidden information for us to really parse out the matchmaker, which is probably for the best - but being able to predetermine who goes into what lance would help 8+ player teams a lot.

For example, ideally if you dropped with say, 9 players, you'd be able to select composition for your two lances, and the odd man out would be assigned randomly. Even if we can't get that any time soon, giving full 12-mans the ability to assign directly to lances in at least private matches would add a new dimension to the tactical environment.

[DarkonFullPower]

Void Angel, on 16 July 2014 - 04:48 PM, said:

Except that's not what's happening. What's happening is that you're being randomly matched in a pickup game with other players against another randomly matched team, and your personal ranking is adjusted based on how your team, including you, is expected to perform against the other team. This is not unfair in the least - what would be unfair would be to punish you by dropping your Elo the full amount when your lower-ranked teammates drop the ball against a higher-rated enemy team.

Elo works, it's not unfair, there is no better way to do it, and no number of bad analogies will change these facts.

^The above is the exact mathematical basis on how the phenomenon "Elo Hell" happens. I've always be meaning to do a video explaining it. I guess now is the time.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Void Angel, on 18 July 2014 - 08:32 AM, said:

Ah, I see - my confusion stems from both screens allowing you to ready up.

So what you're saying is that the order in your team's lances once the match begins doesn't match the order in the ready screen?

Ok, example. On the in-match ready screen, where the map is loaded, your teammates populate and the enemies populate:
You could have something like this:

ALPHA Player A
Player B
Player C
Player D

but to a teammate on voice comms that you are grouped with, it could show as
ALPHA Player B
Player D
Player A
Player C

Of course, the lances will contain the same players either way, but the exact ordering may vary. Which means it is NOT ordered by Elo high to low or anything like that. I'd guess it may be network lag/speed affected. The enemy team is always listed alphabetical (capitals then lowercase, so obviously ASCII ordered)

However, the lances themselves may be ordered somewhat based on Elo. Probably the player with the Elo closest to the "target Elo" (whatever that may be, high or low, probably, "average") is picked first and put in the first lance, and the next 3 players picked up are probably put into alpha lance too. The players in charlie lance then, are probably the furtherest from the "Target Elo," so more than likely, the stragglers picked up to finish the team. Seemingly, with lower Elo scores. I suppose the MM could start from a lower Elo score and match stragglers with higher Elos, but this doesn't seem to happen. I suspect it's because players with higher elos are more likely to be playing than those with lower scores so they are matched early on in the process. That is, the Elo bell curve describes the playerbase in terms of numbers, but not in terms of how often those players play. I'd bet those on the higher half play more than those on the lower half. This is all speculation though.

Now that groups are in a separate queue, the ordering would be based on largest groups first, I'd think.

Edited by TheCaptainJZ, 18 July 2014 - 11:46 PM.

[One of Little Harmony]

TheCaptainJZ, on 18 July 2014 - 11:44 PM, said:

The players in charlie lance then, are probably the furthest from the "Target Elo," so more than likely, the stragglers picked up to finish the team. Seemingly, with lower Elo scores. I suppose the MM could start from a lower Elo score and match stragglers with higher Elos, but this doesn't seem to happen. I suspect it's because players with higher elos are more likely to be playing than those with lower scores so they are matched early on in the process.

l get picked up in the last slot or two of Charlie much more than I should by probability when I'm solo dropping. (1/8th or 1/4th assuming a 4 person premade) I wonder if this means I'm "hard to match".

I too wonder how the effect of people who only play a small number of games and then never play again affect the Elo system. Elo is built around the theory that performance is normally distributed and Elo is a proxy to that based on winning, losing and ties. So all these ephemeral players could feed points into the Elo system by doing only a couple of games, generally losing and then leaving the game with low Elo. I would think this would leave a large amount of inactive accounts in the lower Elo rankings, providing a boost to active players.

This sometimes makes me wish I had the time to make an alternate account and go sandbagging (by handicapping myself with like a cheap joystick and integrated graphics) to see if there's a point where the people who really play suboptimally but adequately enough to hit another mech are being artificially boosted by those players who only play a few times but can never really figure out how to play, but can only fall so far in the Elo rankings because they haven't played enough games. I imagine there's some deep Elo level filled with players using touchpads on laptops with integrated graphics only managing to shoot each other with great effort, valiantly cheering as they struggle against their technological limitations.

[Void Angel]

I'm unclear how you can know what probability you have of being in the last slot when you don't know your Elo, others' Elo, or (as JZ suggested) how often players of various Elo ranks actually play?

DarkonFullPower, on 18 July 2014 - 07:33 PM, said:

^The above is the exact mathematical basis on how the phenomenon "Elo Hell" happens. I've always be meaning to do a video explaining it. I guess now is the time.

I've always explained it by pointing out that low-range Elo players are often there because of bad teamwork practices - like being hate-filled rage monkeys - in addition to bad player skills. Ironically, that means that the stereotypical abusive player often really is better than his ranking (and therefore his average teammates) would suggest - it's just that he's so abusive and hostile whenever anything goes wrong that he sabotages any team he's on.

Once you get far enough down in Elo (say by, er, raging back at the previously mentioned jerks) you start getting matched with players who are so uncooperative and rude that your own performance feels futile. As an example, once you get to 1200-ish Elo in League of Legends, you used to get a ton of people who would threaten to "feed" (that is, deliberately allow the enemy to kill them) if the rest of the team wouldn't allow them the spot on the team they wanted, or would be AFK from the start of the match, or would deliberately switch to a different spot whose player had already locked in, then claim that they were the one who locked in first during the match (chat logs are only available in-match.) I had one troll who I would love to do redactable things to, even to this day; he played the "I'm switching" game, and then followed people around to screw with them - all the while being scrupulously polite and friendly in chat.

This is Elo Hell. Sure, you'll eventually get out of it if you play enough - but can you play enough, and still live with what's left of your soul?

[Void Angel]

TheCaptainJZ, on 18 July 2014 - 11:44 PM, said:

Ok, example. On the in-match ready screen, where the map is loaded, your teammates populate and the enemies populate:
You could have something like this:

ALPHA Player A
Player B
Player C
Player D

but to a teammate on voice comms that you are grouped with, it could show as
ALPHA Player B
Player D
Player A
Player C

How do they appear to a third teammate? I'm trying to remember, but I really can't - in any case, we really can't know whether or not the team is arranged by Elo, Elo variance from the first team/player matched, or what - without knowing Elo rankings. So the matchmaker is kind of impenetrable with the information we have.

I don't want to see Elo, necessarily - but I do want to be able to organize my 12-man players into lances - and determine which lance drops where - before the drop. Having to detail someone to swap the team into the lance config you're using for voice coms is a pain.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Void Angel, on 19 July 2014 - 08:37 AM, said:

I don't want to see Elo, necessarily - but I do want to be able to organize my 12-man players into lances - and determine which lance drops where - before the drop. Having to detail someone to swap the team into the lance config you're using for voice coms is a pain.

Yes, this would be great. I suggested 5 or so possible drop zones for each lance. And you can mix and match your teammates into any combination, but this would have to take place before loading the match because once you've joined, it's already dropped you in the map.

[Wintersdark]

Void Angel, on 19 July 2014 - 08:37 AM, said:

How do they appear to a third teammate? I'm trying to remember, but I really can't - in any case, we really can't know whether or not the team is arranged by Elo, Elo variance from the first team/player matched, or what - without knowing Elo rankings. So the matchmaker is kind of impenetrable with the information we have.

I don't want to see Elo, necessarily - but I do want to be able to organize my 12-man players into lances - and determine which lance drops where - before the drop. Having to detail someone to swap the team into the lance config you're using for voice coms is a pain.

I asked Karl about this directly, this was his response:

Karl, in a PM said:

Hi Wintersdark,

What happens is that the matchmaker currently produces games using some metric. Elo, weight classes, how long you've been sitting in the queue, group sizes, etc.. The actual matchmaker doesn't matter for lance allocation.

The *dedicated server* assigns lances once the game launches. It does so using a fairly simple algorithm that works something like the following:

Sort the groups on the team by group size, in the case where groups are the same size, sorting is random due to the sort algorithm not being a stable sort (http://en.wikipedia....ry:Stable_sorts).

Place the largest group in lance alpha
Place the second largest group in lance beta
Place the third largest group in lance charlie
From here, the algorithm simply continues
- For each remaining group: place the groups in the smallest lance, breaking any players that don't fit into a single lance across multiple lances if required

The dedicated server doesn't consider nor care about Elo during lance allocation. It's solely concerned about trying to keep pre-made groups together within a single lance if at all possible.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention however! Feel free to repost this explanation if you think it would help; or simply let me know if you think I should clarify anywhere specifically.

-Karl.

So, no, lance assignment is NOT determined by Elo, period.