168 replies to this topic

[Threat Doc]

Dudeman3k, on 23 January 2014 - 04:52 PM, said:

... seriously, what will it take for your team full of interns to realize you really need to balance with weight class and BattleValue.

I published this in the Project Update Feedback thread from day before yesterday, and quite a few folks seemed to like it...

Having heard episode100 NGNG, and that you're all going to begin looking at placing weight limitations in-game, let me make a suggestion, one from BattleTech that could make things a lot easier, here.

There are four classes of MechWarrior in BattleTech: Green, Regular, Veteran, Elite; this is known as MechWarrior Quality. You give me an Elo limit of 2800... split that between the four classes, and have those classes, as in the Battle Value system, affect weight limitations. Voila, matched matches.

The actual weight class of a 'Mech is adjusted by the MechWarrior Quality as such: A Green Pilot drops the class by one (ie - from Heavy to Medium), Regular keeps the weight class as-is, Veteran by +1 (Medium to Heavy), and Elite adjusts by +2 (Medium to Assault). If you have an Elite pilot in an Assault, it should give the other team a bonus for matching weight classes.

Alternately, if you want to use tonnage, the faux weight of a 'Mech is adjusted down by 25% for Green, as-is for Regular, +25% for Veteran, and +50% for Elite, again providing a bonus to the opposite team for an Elite pilot in an Assault 'Mech.

So, you have a Light 'Mech, 35 tons, with a Veteran Pilot in it... with the by-Class system, the Light counts as a Medium, and by the percentage rules, the 35 ton 'Mech would count as a Medium 'Mech at 44 tons, rounded out, of course.

Elo should NOT be the primary determinant, nor should weight class or weight limitations, it should be a mixture in order to get the most fair game possible. Of course, when planetary mission drops begin, weight class and Elo shouldn't make any difference, anyway.

Edited by Kay Wolf, 23 January 2014 - 10:14 PM.

[Biruke]

Can new players start with a lower level of ELO? Say 1000 instead of the current 1300? That was a suggestion from Leonid which I fully support.

Leonid, on 23 January 2014 - 12:02 PM, said:

перечитал еще раз часть писалова Баллока про матчмейкер, и кажется, понял что у Рыб портит всю малину - завышенный ELO для новичков. Надо его с 1300 уменьшить до 1000 и тогда папки на них почти не будут попадать. Реально лани трепетные и (...) (вписать самим свое определение их поведения в бою).

The reason is that new players start playing together with the advanced (medium and highly skilled) players and it is very hard both for them to survive and for the advanced players to coordinate the battle. If they start at 1000, they will be playing with the lower-end players and in some time join the advanced players.

Can you please try this?

Edited by Biruke, 23 January 2014 - 11:23 PM.

[Johnny Reb]

Helmer, on 23 January 2014 - 02:51 PM, said:

I really, REALLY, look forward to tonnage limitations.


In case you where unaware, it appears tonnage limits are coming 'around April':

Twitter User Jan 13th
I would really like to know roughly when are tonnage limits coming into the game? Only w/CW?
Bryan Ekman ‏@bryanekmanJan 14th
around April with the launch module.

Source: https://twitter.com/...197580185448448



Cheers

Tonnage limits are needed for us mediums!

[One of Little Harmony]

I put "longer wait times" but it's a good mix of longer ones and almost instant ones. I would say the standard deviation increased, but the overall wait time remains similar.

[Jman5]

I don't know if it's coincidence, but tonight I had one of the worst weight mismatches I have ever seen.



The only reason it was somewhat close was because they split up and we managed to smash most of them with several well placed artillery. If they had just been a tiny bit smarter, we would have gotten rolled much harder.

Is there really nothing that can done in the short term to stop 100+ ton mismatches? What about a last second check followed by a "failed to find" if the weight difference was too large. It's going to be hard waiting several more months.

Edited by Jman5, 24 January 2014 - 01:30 AM.

[Appogee]

I had a night of dropping with teammates of breathtaking incompetence - like this one, where 7 of them scored less than 50 damage.

Gosh, I wonder why my team lost, and why it's so hard to grind CBills/XP/level Mechs, when I and one or two other competent players are consistently left to take on 10 or more barely-damaged enemies?

What awesome matchmaking, and what a compelling reason for me to spend another $500 on your game.

Edited by Appogee, 24 January 2014 - 02:05 AM.

[BOWMANGR]

I didn't notice a solid difference in waiting times but I DID notice way better matches. I was even wondering at my luck to get so good matches one after the other. So even if you did a change to try to fix waiting times you somehow fixed the matchmaking.

Either way, tonnage limits should be implemented to finally give Mediums their rightful spot AND to reduce the Heavy/Assault meta which plagues this game.

[Thomas G Wolf]

Still takes ages and ages. Ah well only another 30 days of premium time left then I am gone for good so I am not bothered anymore.

Edited by Eric Wulfen, 24 January 2014 - 03:31 AM.

[Thomas Alderman]

No change for me but then I'm probably a median player and drop on any so have never really had a problem.

[GrimmwolfGB]

What about: ELO has a problem, when one side has 4 (c) suiciding and the other team fielding vets only...
I prefer longer waiting times and less uneven teams.

[AntharPrime]

I didn't notice any change in the wait time but I did notice an increase in the type of players that try to shoot their targets through things like mountains, buildings and other teammates or battlemechs that just walk into walls, buildings and other teammates like it was being controlled by trackball.

[PanzerMagier]

Well great I'm back to waiting ******* 5 minutes in a queue...

THANKS PAUL*.

Edited by PanzerMagier, 24 January 2014 - 05:11 AM.

[Heffay]

Biruke, on 23 January 2014 - 11:21 PM, said:

Can new players start with a lower level of ELO? Say 1000 instead of the current 1300? That was a suggestion from Leonid which I fully support.

New players (recruits) start with an Elo of 1100. After their 25 matches, they get reset to 1300. At least according to a PGI post from a while back.

[Barbaric Soul]

Personally, I can not wait until private matches are allowed. WHY CAN'T YOU JUST LET US PICK WHO WE FREAKING PLAY WITH?

[Denolven]

Heffay, on 23 January 2014 - 02:18 PM, said:

Even 1400 seems high, but for the 5 guys who play in the 2500+ Elo bracket, the game must have been not fun at 1000 spread.

Ah, so if I understand that right, it's the range (x-axis of the gauss curve) that the matchmaker is allowed to pick people from.
Wouldn't it make more sense to make the spread depend on the distance from the average, instead of just using the same range everywhere? Actually, the best would be to make it depend on the amount of people in the range, but depending on math skill it might be harder to implement. The "distance from average" attempt is easier and probably a good enough estimation, as long as the standard deviation of the curve doesn't change heavily.

In the middle of the gauss curve we can have a small range, because there are still enough people in this range to always find enough matches. Then as we get more to the outsides and the amount of people there becomes lower, the range would become larger to compensate.

The classical "one size does NOT fit all"...

EDIT: In case I missed something and the range is dynamic already (growing when matchmaking waits too long), then all that needs to be changed is the function that handles the range increment per time. We could have a really really small range as start, as long as the way the range gets enlarged is handled appropriately. It works pretty much like a logarithmic zoom function (used in zoomable user interfaces, there are scientific papers about this)

Edited by Denolven, 24 January 2014 - 05:59 AM.

[JagerXII]

I played for a very long time yesterday after this matchmaker change. I only failed to find match twice throughout all the drops so that still seems to be working great.

The primary difference I noticed was that 3/4 of my games were EXTREMELY close. Most came down to a few hits or misses (which highlights the importance of improving hit registration, but that is another topic). If this was your intention then it is working. However, the reason that these games were constantly so close was because more than half of my team in every drop were absolutely terrible players. Some of the worst I have ever seen. Me and my lance had to carry insanely hard almost every single drop to barely squeeze in a victory. I like close games when they are against good players and my team is half competent, but these are far less fun and much more stressful because if I make only a couple mistakes that is GG for my team. When the entire success of a game is hinging one one player putting in a fantastic performance every single drop as one out of twelve on a team that is very rough.

So if that is what you were going for, you hit it. These have been the hardest and closest games I have ever had on a consistent basis; not because it was a high skill game on both sides, but because it is basically only a couple people on my side that will put in any contribution to the match versus the entire enemy team.

Edited by JagerXII, 24 January 2014 - 06:03 AM.

[PhoenixFire55]

Horrendous wait times ... again.

[Thorqemada]

Imho the Skill-discrepancy in the matches is lessened making better (more homogeneous) matches.

Stomp still happen from huge weight disparites and random fate though but that is nothing Elo can address.

[Triordinant]

Skyfaller, on 23 January 2014 - 02:19 PM, said:

Do not allow premades in PUG teams.

This is the most needed change in MWO.

[Bhelogan]

What I have seen is loner wait times, especially when in groups. this doesn't bother me so much.

However I have seen an increase in matches where one side only has 11 to start the game. These matches are usually over pretty quick. Other than that though, matches that have been full have generally been decent.

Edited by Bhelogan, 24 January 2014 - 06:58 AM.