1821 replies to this topic

[TygerLily]

Carl Avery, on 24 November 2014 - 12:03 AM, said:

I've retired from stock matches until the arrival of improvements to the 'mech quirks (if any). I've had good times playing stock, but the quirks completely broke it for me. See the following post for a longer explanation: http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__3912148

Ah, sad. Well, maybe the stock scene had a good run and hopefully the guys at the company got the message. =(

[Tesunie]

SMM tonight was short, but sweet. A lot of good matches and a few new faces. Not much of a turn out though, but it was still a lot of fun.

Avery, you just wont know what you are missing out on... (But you will be missed if that is your final decision.)

[Mattiator]

I've been real busy lately with work but I'll try to show up more.

[BarHaid]

All right stock crew, got a question for you all. I'm looking or a set of heavies to grind through in stock mode (natch), and have narrowed it down to two. Dragon or Thunderbolt?

My thoughts for the Dragon are Good ammo supply on the 1N and Flame (ignore pesky endosteel and real monies requirement) and they're fast.
My thoughts on the Thunderbolt are three solid stock units if I convert the 9SE to a 5SE (but everyone sees me as a 9SE) but they are slow. I've got slow with my Centurions and whatever Assault I finally choose.

What are you're thoughts? No questions on my play style; just push your highly subjective opinions onto my (assumed) tabula rasa.

[Sergey Kosinskiy]

Soo im not sure about StockEU, but iam tottaly gonna be on NA, anybody else?

[Tarogato]

I'll try to stop in! Isengrim unfortunately meet at the same time, so I'll have to be in two places at once.

[Tesunie]

This Monday, if everyone else is alright, I'd like to continue/preform an experiment. I'd only wish to take 5 consecutive drops to see if it may work, but the whole time would be better if possible.

Last monday, we didn't have a lot of people, but it was still fun. However, we kept having problems either balancing tonnage or having the same two people switching teams all the time (with whomever tending to be traded from the winning team making that team win next match).

My proposal is, why balance tonnage when we should be trying to balance skill?
I'll use myself as an example from last week. I was playing my main (this) account. All I had stock was the 4J and the AH. Just switching between the two I went from always dealing most damage/match score (4J) to running average with the other players more (AH). My skill levels varied greatly depending upon which mech I was using, but their tonnage was exactly the same.

My proposal runs with a bit of self restraint. The basics run like this:
- Each player joining SMM would choose a single mech to use for the whole (or at least most) of the event.
- This means that players will be moved with our balancing rotation based on their skill in that specific mech.
- This does also mean that sometimes a team may end up with more tonnage than the other teams.
- However, despite tonnage differences, we should be more balanced on skill within the teams. A 20 locust can, if they are skilled enough, take down a 100 ton Atlas, if that pilot is either unskilled/unfamiliar, or is outskilled.

Here is where the restraint is to be considered as well.
- If you are noticing that you are personally either tanking or thrashing within a certain mech, consider making a mech change inquiry. We want this to be fun, not just for one but for all.
- I'm hoping we can keep mech switching to a minimum, so that players of equal skill within a chassis are split into appropriate teams. If you really aren't liking your selection, ask to change.


I just want to see if this may work. If it doesn't, then we go back to tonnage balancing. However, if this does work, we very well may see faster entry from lobby into matches, as we don't have to juggle tonnage and figure out what each team's tonnage is (especially when we have uneven teams). We should be able to go from one match, change the two (or four team size dependent) players around on the teams, and jump right into the next match.


So? What do the rest of you say? I want to just give it a try, nothing more right now.

[sandbag1]

Yes. Fantastic idea. Now we will see some real mech brawls

[Panthros]

This is a great idea. Just now coming across this. It sure would be nice for PGI to implement a button to reconfigure the mech to the default build. It could be 3025 weekend where only mechs with single heat sinks, no endo or ferrous and was around in 3025. This button could have 3 uses. 1 button for default and 2 buttons for saved configs. Boy this would rock!

[ice trey]

Man... I'd be down like a Toyota Crown. I'm not sure if I could catch anyone playing in my timezones, though.

Still, going back to the old Closed Beta feel without all the broken optibuilds? That would be fantastic!

[Sergey Kosinskiy]

Tesunie, on 30 November 2014 - 03:53 PM, said:

So? What do the rest of you say? I want to just give it a try, nothing more right now.

Iam not sure. I mean.... sure we can try it.
But i have a lot of stock mech and be stuck with only one for some time... is difficult.
Also can we try to use some sort of BV?Maybe after quircks some of 50tonner is.... a lot better than other?

Sorry for English

Edited by Sergey kosinskiy, 01 December 2014 - 12:13 PM.

[Tesunie]

Sergey kosinskiy, on 01 December 2014 - 12:12 PM, said:

Iam not sure. I mean.... sure we can try it.
But i have a lot of stock mech and be stuck with only one for some time... is difficult.
Also can we try to use some sort of BV?Maybe after quircks some of 50tonner is.... a lot better than other?

Sorry for English

I'm not saying you can't change your mechs from time to time, just not to change it after every match more or less and to try and not balance by tonnage as much as we should balance by skill. We can give it a test tonight. What's the worst that can happen? It doesn't work?

BV I think would overcomplicate things I feel. We've already had people leave because "it took too long between matches" as we balanced weight. Even then, I tend to find that weight doesn't always equal the same skill in that mech. I'm a better pilot in my 4J than I am in my AH. Thus, even though they are the same tonnage, just by changing my mech my skill level changes.

(And one can read Skill Level as mech chassis familiarity. I don't intend to imply anyone as more or less skilled than anyone else.)

Consider it like, Avery in his Raven 4X or him in (basically) almost any other mech. He was a down right monster in that 4X. In another mech, he was still good, but didn't preform nearly as well as he tends to within the 4X.

[Surtr]

How's turnout been on these? I toyed with the idea a while back but didn't get much interest due to in game constraints.

[TygerLily]

Surtr, on 01 December 2014 - 06:26 PM, said:

How's turnout been on these? I toyed with the idea a while back but didn't get much interest due to in game constraints.

To be honest, it's been dwindling...but community events are what the community makes of them! In the first month we had over 70+ but it has gone down significantly. Many factors have contributed; from people having to wait on others to "fix" their Mechs, or for us to shuffle teams for balancing, etc.

But, if you just show up, hang on the Teamspeak server (even if noone's around) then eventually you'll get a poke and people will start accumulating. Many thanks to everyone who's attended in the past from Niko to members of notable units like Lords and SJR. It's always a good time!

[Conn Man]

In now, and I'm having a blast running an Awesome 8Q.

[Alaskan Nobody]

Keep trying to make it - but my timing has been horrible.

[Sergey Kosinskiy]

Nice game guys. And a very good 9vs8 and all that. 4vs4 was fun too.
Thx for showing up.

[Tesunie]

After playing some matches, here were the results from the "new" balancing mechanic. Before I post them though, I'd like to make a few notes. Player cycling was playing with the numbers, as people had to come and go often through the event. I also think some people continued to change mechs (not that much of a problem) between matches, which rebalanced the tonnage and threw off the concept of balancing to skill.

Here are the numbers:
Team #: Number of players/ Tonnage/ w=win

Match 1
Team 1: 6p 330
Team 2: 5p 320 w

Match 2
Team 1: 8p 480
Team 2: 8p 475 w

Match 3
Team 1: 9p 490 w
Team2: 8p 495

Match 4
Team 1: 10p 555
Team 2: 9p 555 w

Match 5
Team 1: 8p 440
Team 2: 9p 515 w

Match 6
Team 1: 7p 415
Team 2: 8p 450 w

Match 7
Team 1: 7p 365
Team 2: 7p 380 w


There was a lot of good matches, and I only recall one match actually being a complete land slide. Most of the matches were fairly evenly matched, even when the tonnages were way off. It may be worth trying this again and comparing numbers at a later time. May also be more worth trying to reach optimum team balance if we change out 1 person from each team (like normal) for every lance in play.

Eventually, the event broke down to 4v4 matches, which were a blast but I did not record the numbers.


So, overall, how did people think the concept worked? It had some hiccups with all the people coming and going, but I feel that every match was fun anyway. More testing (if desired) may be needed.

[Alaskan Nobody]

I missed it -and I even logged in to get to it >.<

Curse my timing.

[Sergey Kosinskiy]

Yeah when i saw you in friend list we were running our last match in trials just for fun. Sorry man:(