34 replies to this topic

[DaZur]

Okay... Obviously there has been a fare share of bile regurgitated over the past few months regarding the viability of the match-maker as it pertains to establishing viable / balanced matches. Aside from the viability of using Elo to pair teams, which is a different discussion... Probably the next heavily debated topic is the scope / draw pool the match-maker uses when assembling teams. In short... we have roughly three categories: 1.) Top-Tier Elo players 2.) The great unwashed (Us average guys) and 3.) The true green noobs... There obviously is "gray" cross-overs between the highs and middles and the middles and noobs but for concise argument, we'll stick to three...

PGI has run into problems with either the brackets being too narrow and ultra high Elo players not finding matches, causing feelings of disenfranchisement and brackets being too wide, thus pairing players whose Elo's are too widely contrasted, resulting in unfulfilling game play for both parties. In a nutshell... We are trying to placate the needs of a player base without taking into consideration their personal preference. As such, here is my elegant logic-based solution that does not unceremoniously impose artificial walls without the player agreeing to them.

Option #1: More Options.

This solution is simple, in the same way PGI allows players to define what type of matches to drop into... I suggest allowing players to also select the scope of the draw pool they wish to drop into.

- Open: Elo is not considered in match-making. Allowing players from top to bottom to potentially meet on the field of battle. = Fastest draw results.

- Relaxed: Elo criteria is enforced but set with widest criteria possible. = Ensures top-tier and green noobs do not meet but leaves enough flex over the middling pool making it fairly easy to draw match pairings.

- Default: Elo criteria is enforced but set with the most logic based parameters (i.e. close to what we have now) = Well, pretty what we have now....

- Tight: Elo criteria is tightened to only allow reasoned flex outside the origins draw scope. = Players will largely be paired with players within an arms reach of their Elo bracket. Higher potential for failed matching but greatest chance of player equity.

- Elite: Elo brackets are strictly enforced with no flex. Guarantees match pairing within players Elo bracket but comes at a cost of high potential of failed match.

This allows players to decide if they want to give up expedient match & drops versus longer searches and higher potential for match failures as well as agreeing to how stringent the Elo scope is applied.

In short... Individual players have some control over their game-play experience.

Thoughts?

Edited by DaZur, 06 February 2014 - 02:23 PM.

[Sandpit]

I'm glad someone finally got the nerve to post about this

[DaZur]

Sandpit, on 06 February 2014 - 01:40 PM, said:

I'm glad someone finally got the nerve to post about this

Me too! .... wait.

[DaZur]

Option #2: Dynamic Elo Bracket Adjustment

Okay... Here's a potentially controversial solution.

- Based on the available active player in the draw pool, Elo brackets AND team composition automatically adjust. I.e... When the draw pool is deepest, the brackets are the tightest and drops are comprised of 12 man teams. When the draw pools are the most shallow, brackets relax and the teams revert to back to 8 man drops.

Result: Deep pools means greater likelihood of matching Elos and less likelihood of drawing ill-matched players, as well as maintaining a equity through a 12 man drop. Shallow pools relax / widen to accept more players and drop to 8 man team to maintain a viable draw pool.

What's controversial? The dynamic adjustment of the drops could potentially expose the potential dearth in the active player base.

Edited by DaZur, 07 February 2014 - 06:21 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

I'd seriously leave teh MM wide open. I want to fight against Wispsy and Noobs. In a meet you on the battlefiled situation you don't know if our opponent is the state Militia or Seal team 6. I love that kind of surprise, and accept the results that can occur.

At the end I look at my performance and see how I stack up, or need to pack up. I know not everyone is that competitive, but I am! I want to face anybody in the game in any given drop. That is excitement!

[SI The Joker]

I like #1... let me choose which types of games and leave skirmish off that list. I want everything but skirmish.

Now with regard to ELO. Worst. Matchmaking. Idea. Ever. Drop it... like Mallan said... leave the MM wiiiiiiide open.

Finally, implement TONNAGE MATCHING instead of this horrendous 'skill' based matching system. Supposedly that's coming... so yay on that.

Edited by SI The Joker, 07 February 2014 - 06:35 AM.

[DaZur]

Joseph Mallan, on 07 February 2014 - 06:28 AM, said:

I'd seriously leave teh MM wide open. I want to fight against Wispsy and Noobs. In a meet you on the battlefiled situation

I'm kind'a in the same boat as you... I desire "challenge" and that does not necessarily come from parity IMHO...

That said, if/when I'm grinding out c-bills to purchase something... I may want that tighter match-making parity so every match is not necessarily a tractionless uphill battle!

[Joseph Mallan]

DaZur, on 07 February 2014 - 07:10 AM, said:

I'm kind'a in the same boat as you... I desire "challenge" and that does not necessarily come from parity IMHO...

That said, if/when I'm grinding out c-bills to purchase something... I may want that tighter match-making parity so every match is not necessarily a tractionless uphill battle!

That isn't a situation I ha considered. Yeah if I wanted to grind cash, I would probable want to narrow my options to increase my income... Kinda like taking a garrison mission on a core world, to get some pay and schedule R&R.

[SI The Joker]

DaZur, on 07 February 2014 - 07:10 AM, said:

I'm kind'a in the same boat as you... I desire "challenge" and that does not necessarily come from parity IMHO...

That said, if/when I'm grinding out c-bills to purchase something... I may want that tighter match-making parity so every match is not necessarily a tractionless uphill battle!

Joseph Mallan, on 07 February 2014 - 07:14 AM, said:

That isn't a situation I ha considered. Yeah if I wanted to grind cash, I would probable want to narrow my options to increase my income... Kinda like taking a garrison mission on a core world, to get some pay and schedule R&R.

Oh sure... but we can't have our cake and eat it too!

(Or even have our cake, so it seems)

[Joseph Mallan]

SI The Joker, on 07 February 2014 - 07:19 AM, said:

Oh sure... but we can't have our cake and eat it too!

(Or even have our cake, so it seems)

Anybody can do that!

Now eating your cake and having it too... That is something to strive for!

[Sandpit]

I've noticed that when they tweaked the MM last time I get much closer matches on average. That's just my personal experience though. I've had a few stomps (win and lose) here and there but they've become less frequent

[DaZur]

Sandpit, on 07 February 2014 - 10:33 AM, said:

I've noticed that when they tweaked the MM last time I get much closer matches on average. That's just my personal experience though. I've had a few stomps (win and lose) here and there but they've become less frequent

My experience mirrors yours...

I've got a .75 w/l ... Between that and dropping typically between 9PM and 1AM CST, I think I'm effectively enjoying what amounts to my Elo "sweet spot".

I'm almost afraid to do better for fear of limping into the "not quite good enough" periphery of a higher Elo bracket and getting thrashed by the apex players in that bracket...

This is where "Option #1" would come in handy as I could decide what level I might choose to handicap at.

Edited by DaZur, 07 February 2014 - 10:56 AM.

[IceSerpent]

@DaZur: The concept of giving players the option is solid, but your proposed implementation has a problem. Let's say I am a rookie and I select "Open", you have a much higher Elo and select "Elite" - in other words, I am willing to play with/against you, but you are not willing to play with/against me. MM either honors your selection and makes my selection meaningless (my pool of available players doesn't increase by including you), or it honors my selection and makes yours meaningless (I am in your pool of available players despite the fact that you don't want me to be there). The end result would be that match can only be made among players that selected the same setting - elite vs. elite, tight vs. tight, etc.

I think a better solution would be to limit the selection to Elo enabled = your "elite" setting, I'd suggest roughly 75 pts of Elo difference max (translates to about 60% / 40% win chance) and Elo disabled = your "open" setting, fastest matching possible at the expense of match quality.

[Trauglodyte]

Actually, DaZur, I think that you're going down the right path but looking at it a bit wrong. Right now, there are two things that grind the wait time to a halt and cause MM issues with finding matches (disregarding weights for the sake of this arguement):

1- People choosing specific match types (Assault, Conquest, Skirmish [aka Assault without a point])
2- A limited pool from which to draw mechs

The first issue is already fixed by taking "any" but it could be bettered by allowing people to go with combinations of matchs (ie Assault and Skirmish, Assault and Conquest, or Conquest and Skirmish). Regardless, the match types, if people are choosing specific types, causes a bottleneck which slows the MM and hampers team compositions.

The second issue is really a hard one because the MM is limited by population currently on-line. The only way to get around that is to artificially inflate the population. Currently, we're only allowed to queue up one mech at a time. BUT, if I were allowed to pick any, all, or inbetween of my mechs, of which I own 18, that right there adds another 17 mechs into the queue.

The second issue, along with the fix I've proposed, could also be alleviated by attaching ELO scores to individual mech variant or chassis instead of the weight class. So, if I'm badass in my Cicada but I suck in my Shadowhawk (and I do), my ELO isn't hampered by how much I suck in one or two mechs. Even then, if I were able to queue up all of my mechs, I automatically add more ELO scores from which to pull.

Right now, the MM has, if we assume 2000 people on-line during prime, a possible 8000 ELO scores to pull from at any given time, ignoring people being in matches, if each player has 1 mech of each weight. 8000 isn't bad but if we assume that every player has 10 mechs in their bays, that 8000 ELO scores jumps to 20000 or by 150%. You're still limited to 2000 people playing but it offers more options.

Just a thought, anyway.

Edited by Trauglodyte, 07 February 2014 - 11:07 AM.

[DaZur]

IceSerpent, on 07 February 2014 - 11:01 AM, said:

Trauglodyte, on 07 February 2014 - 11:06 AM, said:

Interesting point guys... Thanks for the consideration and suggestions!
I still think there's something to be had out of this but I'll have to actually draw it out visually to structure the logic trees...

There's a wicked web woven when you give players options but I think there's potential still if we can find a way to keep players from erroneously making too many and ultimately causing more problems than it solves.

[3rdworld]

I am not sure there is a large enough population for a huge number of options in the MM. Because each option would still have gameplay modes or no?

I would like to see a "quick" match option. No mode selection, solo queue only.

Just for my curiosity what exactly do u consider to be an "elite" w/l?

Edited by 3rdworld, 07 February 2014 - 02:37 PM.

[Deathlike]

It's harder to have more options when the population is that small.

The simplest solution requires ELO bracket/tiers. You've already identified "the brackets", so it's up to PGI to figure out what those levels are. Games should be "constructed" with those brackets in mind, where the "current pool/population" allows for it.

Allow it to add for some variants/variations (like newbies occasionally pop into higher level brackets, or elite occasionally pop into lower level brackets due to winning or losing streak respectively).

This will make matches generally more competitive and/or fair, but far from perfect due to the snowball effect and tonnage. Tonnage will be addressed "soon™" but the overall idea is that elite players don't want to be hampered with a lance and half of newbies... it's unrealistic to carry them all.

Also, allow for 8v8 matches for smaller maps, in the hopes of improving MM and the # of players having to "carry" to be be "carried".

Edited by Deathlike, 07 February 2014 - 02:45 PM.

[Trauglodyte]

3rdworld, on 07 February 2014 - 02:36 PM, said:

Just for my curiosity what exactly do u consider to be an "elite" w/l?

I'm curious about this too. I'm hovering at a 1:1 ratio but I've been struggling to over come Beta games where I got crushed by Jenners in my Cicada and where PUG stomps happened early and often. Looking at you Wispsy! Hell, for that matter, there are a lot of people in this game that are just now finding units. My success right, like many sky rocketed once I found people with whom to play.

[DaZur]

3rdworld, on 07 February 2014 - 02:36 PM, said:

Just for my curiosity what exactly do u consider to be an "elite" w/l?

Trauglodyte, on 07 February 2014 - 02:49 PM, said:

I'm curious about this too.

In my mind if you were to divide the full expanse of the Elo potential into 5ths, the "Elite" would effectively be positioned inside that top 1/5th percent. In essence the true high-end competitive players who has low tolerance for pairing with players outside their Elo...

There is no evil / negative intent implied upon that qualifier....

[IceSerpent]

3rdworld, on 07 February 2014 - 02:36 PM, said:

I am not sure there is a large enough population for a huge number of options in the MM. Because each option would still have gameplay modes or no?

Deathlike, on 07 February 2014 - 02:45 PM, said:

It's harder to have more options when the population is that small.

Guys, the playerbase size if not really that big of a factor - adding options is exactly the same as adding new game modes from the MM perspective. There's no difference between adding "King of the Hill" mode and adding "Assault with strict Elo" (or "Skirmish with 1PV only") mode.

Granted, some game modes are and always will be more popular than others, but so what? The situation where you select strict Elo mathcing and have to wait longer is no different from selecting Conquest mode only and having to wait longer.
The only catch is that for every option added there has to be a setting to select "all"/"any" for folks who don't want to wait.