103 replies to this topic

[DaZur]

Joseph Mallan, on 31 January 2014 - 10:00 AM, said:

LOL Thats cause in My energy rich Battlemaster I saw Terra ...6-7 times, Tour 5 times and Frozen City twice!

If I go into training, select a map... drop into to it, exit and then launch... I can with like a 99% accuracy then be dropped into that same map.

Aliens man... Aliens.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

FactorlanP, on 31 January 2014 - 09:38 AM, said:

This is my experience as well.

I play mostly on "Any"... When playing during the day (US time), matches seem more even and much more fun. Once you get into US prime time, there seem to be many many many more pre-made 4 man groups running the poptart meta builds. The play gets boring and I notice more lopsided matches.

This has been my exact experience. Which is a pity because US prime time is when I normally play.

One glorious day when I had the day off, and played in the morning, the game was SO much more fun.

[Almond Brown]

Joseph Mallan, on 31 January 2014 - 04:48 AM, said:

A penalty for being picky???

I woulds wager that most 4-mans, or smaller 3-person groups would tend to select a mode, where as a PUG'r, as noted by many here, myself as well, just let it fly. I build for all eventualities, and it does not always work out the best, but I also don't not see this ramp-it stomping all the time that seems so prevalent.

The only true pet peeve for me is when "Conquest" is selected and 50%+ play it like they actually got "Skirmish". Arrggghhh. Assault is Fight or Cap not just fight ffs! Play the mode as intended, otherwise just get off of "Any" and please select "Skirmish" fcol.

Edited by Almond Brown, 31 January 2014 - 10:26 AM.

[FactorlanP]

Nicholas Carlyle, on 31 January 2014 - 10:12 AM, said:

One glorious day when I had the day off, and played in the morning, the game was SO much more fun.

Which is why I believe that it is extremely important for PGI to take steps to bring brawling back, and I am beginning to become a proponent of separating premade groups from pug players completely.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

FactorlanP, on 31 January 2014 - 10:15 AM, said:

Which is why I believe that it is extremely important for PGI to take steps to bring brawling back, and I am beginning to become a proponent of separating premade groups from pug players completely.

Same, my experiences with the matchmaker during different times of the day leads me the same direction.

[Almond Brown]

MustrumRidcully, on 31 January 2014 - 08:30 AM, said:

I think that sounds like a logical reason, but it makes one wonder how small the number of available players must be...

Well let's assume there are lots of players but there is now 2 buckets for the MM to draw from. Given the Global nature, only 65% of the Pop is awake at any one time. If we take that 65% and divide by 2, assuming an equitable split in Match selection type, you now have only 32.5% of the total population available for any one Match.

That is why and I read it somewhere, why the Dev would prefer not having to many Buckets running all at once.

[FactorlanP]

Almond Brown, on 31 January 2014 - 10:21 AM, said:

That is why and I read it somewhere, why the Dev would prefer not having to many Buckets running all at once.

I think I would prefer that they removed the option to select a preferred mode (to reduce bucket numbers), and separate pre-made groups from pug players.

[DaZur]

Nicholas Carlyle, on 31 January 2014 - 10:12 AM, said:

This has been my exact experience. Which is a pity because US prime time is when I normally play.

One glorious day when I had the day off, and played in the morning, the game was SO much more fun.

Mines the opposite... I play between 9PM and 1AM CST and this is when I get my most even-handed matches. On the rare occasions when I am off work and or mid day weekends... I get absolutely slaughtered by the prime-time Euro crowd.

Euro players for whatever reason are tough hombres... ​Either that or us Continental US / Canada players are candy arses...

Edited by DaZur, 31 January 2014 - 10:25 AM.

[Almond Brown]

DaZur, on 31 January 2014 - 10:06 AM, said:

If I go into training, select a map... drop into to it, exit and then launch... I can with like a 99% accuracy then be dropped into that same map.

Aliens man... Aliens.

Hard to beat Aliens I hear. Now that is worth a try.

[FactorlanP]

DaZur, on 31 January 2014 - 10:24 AM, said:

Mines the opposite... I play between 9PM and 1AM CST and this is when I get my most even-handed matches. On the rare occasions when I am off work and or mid day weekends... I get absolutely slaughtered by the prime-time Euro crowd.

Euro players for whatever reason are tough hombres... ​Either that or us Continental US / Canada players are candy arses...

Well, I would suggest that 9pm to 1am CST isn't US prime time. So, you may be seeing a similar situation to what I see during the US day. Also, weekend days are much more similar to US prime time.

Playing on a Tuesday at 1pm is a totally different experience than Saturday at 1pm...

[Almond Brown]

Nicholas Carlyle, on 31 January 2014 - 10:17 AM, said:

Same, my experiences with the matchmaker during different times of the day leads me the same direction.

So somehow changing the way the game selects players should be based on what TZ you currently play most of your Matches in? The MM only uses what is at hand. If the NA market has more players than another, how does segmenting that market do anything positive, at all?

FactorlanP, on 31 January 2014 - 10:24 AM, said:

I think I would prefer that they removed the option to select a preferred mode (to reduce bucket numbers), and separate pre-made groups from pug players.

But they added that feature at the specific request of the Community. Hard to take back something you gave out on request. Especially around this place.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Almond Brown, on 31 January 2014 - 10:29 AM, said:

So somehow changing the way the game selects players should be based on what TZ you currently play most of your Matches in? The MM only uses what is at hand. If the NA market has more players than another, how does segmenting that market do anything positive, at all?

My personal belief is that I'm not seeing as many pre-mades when I play during off hours. If you go into the main teamspeak servers, you rarely are seeing groups in there. Where as when I go in during Primetime there are always 4-5 groups going in the PUG drop ships.

Of course I can't totally prove this, as PGI CONTINUES to avoid showing pre-mades in matches, thus not allowing us to see what's really going on (big surprise, hiding data, PGI's MO).

[FactorlanP]

Almond Brown, on 31 January 2014 - 10:31 AM, said:

But they added that feature at the specific request of the Community. Hard to take back something you gave out on request. Especially around this place.

Honestly, I think that they are going to be forced to retract the ability to choose a specific game mode in regular play. As they invent more and more game modes, the ever increasing number of "buckets" is going to be unsustainable.

I fully expect that once they enable the ability to set up private matches, they will make the mode selection a feature of those matches and not of the regular matches.

As evidence, I direct you to the descriptions of how Community Warfare is going to work. There will be no ability to select match modes in Community Warfare. There will be a sequence of matches, of various types, required to win a planetary battle.

[Joseph Mallan]

Almond Brown, on 31 January 2014 - 10:21 AM, said:

Well let's assume there are lots of players but there is now 2 buckets for the MM to draw from. Given the Global nature, only 65% of the Pop is awake at any one time. If we take that 65% and divide by 2, assuming an equitable split in Match selection type, you now have only 32.5% of the total population available for any one Match.

That is why and I read it somewhere, why the Dev would prefer not having to many Buckets running all at once.

Thats a cool analogy!

[Almond Brown]

Nicholas Carlyle, on 31 January 2014 - 10:32 AM, said:

stuff

Of course I can't totally prove this, as PGI CONTINUES to avoid showing pre-mades in matches, thus not allowing us to see what's really going on (big surprise, hiding data, PGI's MO).

I think the Community showed it own colors when they turned off the Player counter and then got blasted for trying to hide something from "everyone". Funny how not "everyone" actually gave a ****, but with some it seems, they feel they speak for all...

Sadly the data the counter showed was only players connected at any instance in time, not the GD Community numbers as a whole.

But try and tell that to the Tin Foil Brigade! Bah! they said. They would have none of it. It was obviously a blatant lie and a way for PGI to hide the dirty truth. According to them, it could only be that because, on that fateful day all of their Tin Foils Hats tingled at the same time.

I don't wear Tin myself, doesn't agree with my sensibilities, but hey ymmv.

Edited by Almond Brown, 31 January 2014 - 10:41 AM.

[FactorlanP]

I'm curious to see how the upcoming "Social" features will work. A truly useful "Social" system of chat areas necessary to organize matches will not be able to hide population numbers as easily.

[Joseph Mallan]

If SWTOR can show I am on Tython with 47 other players or 146 on Korriban MW:O can show me I am on Frozen City with 300 or 40 which ever it is!

[DaZur]

The problem with showing snapshot population numbers is it's not contextual...

There may be 30,000 players online at one instance but exactly how many are inside your Elo bracket is more germane to the quality of play.

[Navy Sixes]

Bhael Fire, on 30 January 2014 - 09:43 PM, said:

The "Any" option gives the MM more wiggle room (i.e. more viable opponents and teammates to chose from), and therefore you get more accurate/balanced matches.

Makes sense. Dropping with "Any" and most matches are fairly balanced. When the matches are one-sided, I can almost always point to the moment I and/or my teammates did smart or dumb to make that happen. I refuse to let the MM take credit for my awesome performances, and I refuse to use it as a pride-crutch when I suck.

NextGame, on 31 January 2014 - 04:28 AM, said:

Heres a pertinent question to those who cant handle a good stomping: Ignoring tonnage mismatch, and lack of individual backbone: Would you rather be paired against a fairly wider spread of players quickly, or have to wait several minutes to play a match with tighter restrictions around level?

It's been asked already, and the answer from the community is why I often feel sorry for PGI. Half the community whines that they have to wait for an hour (to hear them tell it ) to get a match and the other half whines, "OMG why are these n00bs allowed to even look at the same map I'm dropping on!?" So PGI adjusts the matchmaker, and the ones who hated waiting start complaining about dropping with n00bs and the ones who complained about dropping with n00bs complain about waiting.

They really can't win.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

DaZur, on 31 January 2014 - 10:53 AM, said:

The problem with showing snapshot population numbers is it's not contextual...

There may be 30,000 players online at one instance but exactly how many are inside your Elo bracket is more germane to the quality of play.

I don't care about how many people are online.

All I care about is A] who is in a premade in my matches, and B] ELO scores.

Those two items, with enough matches played, means I can definitively decide whether the matchmaker is working properly.