212 replies to this topic

[N0MAD]

good luck with it.

Edited by N0MAD, 24 June 2014 - 11:41 PM.

[Igor Kozyrev]

N0MAD, on 24 June 2014 - 11:38 PM, said:

I feel really sorry for PGI and the player base that you either cant afford or dont want to run the test server for a couple of days to get a better result.

Why did you change your post?

[VoodooLou Kerensky]

As an Alternative to the Urbie then how about Mackies or KitFoxes with the Long Tom Cannon (http://www.sarna.net...Long_Tom_Cannon) or maybe this http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Loki_Mk_II

Karl Berg, on 24 June 2014 - 11:32 PM, said:

Yes exactly. I suggested they keep the urban in reserve as a PTS only mech to draw users. I was laughed at

[Xavier]

Some observations from the public test.
1) 4x3 Matchmaker: I noticed that matchmaker was doing an ok job of matching tonnage when not able to enforce 4x3 logic this will at least ensure both teams have similar tonnage to throw at each other, Kudos
2) Jump Jet Fall Damage: (Let me preface this by saying I use jump jets frequently but also understand the need for all damage) While I agree with the principal of fall damage I noticed a couple of big issues with the implementation on the PTS
a) I was taking leg damage from bunny hopping just barely tapping my JJ's (There needs to be a minimum hight above ground reached before fall damage kicks in 3-5 meters or so: accidentally/intentionally tapping my JJ's should not do damage)
damage should be related to the speed at which you are falling not how far you fall from(If I cushoin my landing with 25% of mu JJ's at the very end I seemed to take the exact same damage as if I fell without cushion) This was not the way this feature was originally pitched to us, much like there needs to be a minimal height before fall damage counts there needs to be a minimum fall speed at impact before damage is dealt.

Just my couple takeaways but as I see it the feature was not implemented as was discussed or thresholds were never established.

Test Server Incentives: If you want to have better public server tests than you most offer the base a reason to play on the Test server which does not reward them with C-bills for their time. (Test server participation needs to give out MC or a flat rate of C-bills based on time played and committed to the PTS say 1,000,000 c-bills per hour spent on the server) Until you offer incentive's for what the community may see's as a useless effort you will end up with subpar attendance. And for the record the clan PTS turnout was because of the enormous new content that in and of itself was an incentive so hopefully you can see my point.

-X-

Edited by SLDF Xavier, 25 June 2014 - 05:25 AM.

[Cord78]

Well the mixed grouping seemed to work. Had a match last night where my group of 6 was combined with another 1-2 other small premades and we dropped against a 12 man. was a bit of a wait (realistically about 5 min) but wasn't horrible.

[Wispsy]

Karl Berg, on 24 June 2014 - 11:36 PM, said:

Even under these conditions, nope. We'd be able to produce some percentage of threes games, with several assault / heavy dominated games to empty the queue of the remaining users. The exact percentages would be a function of the tolerance and decay values we use in the matching algorithm.

Wait so..games are going to basically be as they are now but a little closer on the class matching????? Most games 6+assaults right now...with a few that are just random distributions of classes, around 3-3-3-3 loosely. So you have spent how many of your very valuable hours...making 3-3-3-3 (and the main reason I hear behind it is so that lights and mediums can somehow feel viable as they get some of their own to kill off) to go ahead and say "well yeah we will empty out a load of assault heavy games so a few get 3-3-3-3"....like....do you not think that is a massive waste of time and you might as well have just done class or tonnage matching from the start and not tried to force people into mechs they do not want to play then removing it so often because wait times are too long (which is...kind of...the whole point of the system? to make people wait longer so they do what you want...if they wish to play your game).

Edited by Wispsy, 25 June 2014 - 07:24 AM.

[Heffay]

Wispsy, on 25 June 2014 - 07:21 AM, said:

to make people wait longer so they do what you want...if they wish to play your game).

The population will self level. Even if some people don't want to play the underrepresented weight classes, enough will switch to avoid an increased queue time to even them out.

Edited by Heffay, 25 June 2014 - 07:45 AM.

[Xavier]

Heffay, on 25 June 2014 - 07:45 AM, said:

The population will self level. Even if some people don't want to play the underrepresented weight classes, enough will switch to avoid an increased queue time to even them out.

That is a horrible way to make an impression on your community:

Oh you want to play with that-sorry you will have to wait longer to play with that
But in the meantime if you play with what we want you can play more often.

thats basically what the matchmaker will be doing: Horrible strategy if you ask me.

[WarHippy]

Karl Berg, on 24 June 2014 - 11:03 PM, said:

I would need to clarify with design and product owners, but it seems like something that could be considered in future if there appeared to be enough interest.

Obviously one of our goals was to simply the number of factors you have to deal with to queue up and get in game. There are many more changes still to come intended to help streamline things even further.

As a solo player believe me when I tell you that this is desired. I have a great deal of interest in being able to drop in the group queue, and I am certainly not alone in that desire.

[BLOOD WOLF]

SLDF Xavier, on 25 June 2014 - 08:00 AM, said:

That is a horrible way to make an impression on your community:

Oh you want to play with that-sorry you will have to wait longer to play with that
But in the meantime if you play with what we want you can play more often.

thats basically what the matchmaker will be doing: Horrible strategy if you ask me.

nobody is forcing you to play anything you do not want; However if a certain class is in high percentage It would be a good idea to switch over for a bit then you can come back. Or if you do not want to switch then the wait time is unavoidable. I guess the problem is that too many people are playing the game?

[Heffay]

SLDF Xavier, on 25 June 2014 - 08:00 AM, said:

That is a horrible way to make an impression on your community:

Oh you want to play with that-sorry you will have to wait longer to play with that
But in the meantime if you play with what we want you can play more often.

thats basically what the matchmaker will be doing: Horrible strategy if you ask me.

I don't think you understand how effective it is. A lot of people have no problem playing different weight classes, and will gladly switch to an underrepresented one in order to get more matches in. Willingly and happily switch. And that population is big enough that it alone will level out the queues, which means *everyone* benefits, including those who want to play assaults exclusively.

[Wispsy]

Heffay, on 25 June 2014 - 08:37 AM, said:

I don't think you understand how effective it is. A lot of people have no problem playing different weight classes, and will gladly switch to an underrepresented one in order to get more matches in. Willingly and happily switch. And that population is big enough that it alone will level out the queues, which means *everyone* benefits, including those who want to play assaults exclusively.

Kind of sounds like a cover up to fix the fact that barely anybody wants to play half the classes when given the choice...whether people happily switch or not, will not matter, as nobody will see it, because people are made to anyway or not play, so people can say it works and never be disproven...

[Belorion]

Karl Berg, on 24 June 2014 - 11:36 PM, said:

Even under these conditions, nope. We'd be able to produce some percentage of threes games, with several assault / heavy dominated games to empty the queue of the remaining users. The exact percentages would be a function of the tolerance and decay values we use in the matching algorithm.

Does it also relax elo at the same break point, or does one get relaxed before the other?

[Heffay]

Wispsy, on 25 June 2014 - 08:47 AM, said:

Kind of sounds like a cover up to fix the fact that barely anybody wants to play half the classes when given the choice...whether people happily switch or not, will not matter, as nobody will see it, because people are made to anyway or not play, so people can say it works and never be disproven...

This happens to every game, and even if they add incentives there will *always* be a discrepancy in what classes people play. Look at the Dungeon finder for WoW: If you were a tank, you had insta-queues. If you were a healer, a short wait, and DPS sat in Stormwind picking their toes for 30 minutes even though there were 3 slots for them for a combined 2 of the others. Even when they offered significant incentives for tanks and healers, they were STILL the least represented classes and had insta-queues.

Saying that people don't want to play lights and mediums isn't a failure of lights or mediums being viable. It's just that more people want to play the big bad bully on the block, and not the stealthy knife-fighter that turns the tide of the battle.

[Wispsy]

Heffay, on 25 June 2014 - 08:58 AM, said:

This happens to every game, and even if they add incentives there will *always* be a discrepancy in what classes people play. Look at the Dungeon finder for WoW: If you were a tank, you had insta-queues. If you were a healer, a short wait, and DPS sat in Stormwind picking their toes for 30 minutes even though there were 3 slots for them for a combined 2 of the others. Even when they offered significant incentives for tanks and healers, they were STILL the least represented classes and had insta-queues.

Saying that people don't want to play lights and mediums isn't a failure of lights or mediums being viable. It's just that more people want to play the big bad bully on the block, and not the stealthy knife-fighter that turns the tide of the battle.

WoW dungeon finder works because you can do every other thing in the game whilst you are waiting in the queue. Also, they have very little choice, as the dungeon will most likely fail without 1 tank 1 healer and 3 dps. MWO is not that kind of game. LoL does not have people queue for solo/mid/jungle/adc/supp and those roles are much more necessary then whether you have mediums or not.

In this you cannot even look over the mechs you have or check your acheivements.

Edited by Wispsy, 25 June 2014 - 09:02 AM.

[Heffay]

Wispsy, on 25 June 2014 - 09:01 AM, said:

WoW dungeon finder works because you can do every other thing in the game whilst you are waiting in the queue. Also, they have very little choice, as the dungeon will most likely fail without 1 tank 1 healer and 3 dps. MWO is not that kind of game. LoL does not have people queue for solo/mid/jungle/adc/supp and those roles are much more necessary then whether you have mediums or not.

In this you cannot even look over the mechs you have or check your acheivements.

Well, that would be a nice feature to add. Maybe even be able to fiddle in the mechlab or even drop in the testing grounds while you wait for the queue. Then again, since the constraints will open up as time goes on, the longest wait is probably still going to be under 5 minutes, so there needs to be a way to save your work in progress. It's all possible, but probably not a super high priority since queue times will be (relatively) low anyway.

But there is nothing inherently wrong with 4x3, and since the population will happily self balance, you end up with far more interesting matches where role warfare can actually thrive, instead of people just bringing the tonnage to be the hero. Which they rarely are. And since you have better matches, you have more happy people in all weight classes, retention goes up, people buy more, etc, etc.

There really is no downside to 4x3.

Edited by Heffay, 25 June 2014 - 09:09 AM.

[Lostdragon]

Prediction: Lights and mediums will continue to be under represented overall no matter what PGI does to the match maker because the game mechanics make these classes harder to use effectively. I know in the last week playing lights has become very, very painful to the point where I'm considering abandoning them after having played them 90% of the time for the last year.

[Jman5]

Karl Berg, on 24 June 2014 - 11:03 PM, said:

I would need to clarify with design and product owners, but it seems like something that could be considered in future if there appeared to be enough interest.

Obviously one of our goals was to simply the number of factors you have to deal with to queue up and get in game. There are many more changes still to come intended to help streamline things even further.

I was thinking what you could do is have an "any" check box that will slot you into either group queue or solo queue wherever you're needed.

This might also give you more accurate matchmaking and pave the way to allow 11-man groups.

Edited by Jman5, 25 June 2014 - 09:17 AM.

[Wispsy]

Heffay, on 25 June 2014 - 09:07 AM, said:

But there is nothing inherently wrong with 4x3, and since the population will happily self balance, you end up with far more interesting matches where role warfare can actually thrive, instead of people just bringing the tonnage to be the hero. Which they rarely are. And since you have better matches, you have more happy people in all weight classes, retention goes up, people buy more, etc, etc.

There really is no downside to 4x3.

There are plenty of downsides...if people wanted to play them, then they would be playing them now and they would not be so drastically underused...I mean you can say its all fun and balanced and the like and people will happily self regulate but it is clearly not balanced...else people would want to play them...so they clearly have less fun in them...

They are still going to get 1shot, there will still be 6 heavies/assaults that have a significantly greater impact on the outcome of the game. There is still just as much role warfare in normal pub queue right at this moment as there will be in 3-3-3-3, it is simply just not a big part of this game. Also it sounds like they are just going to make games as class matched as they can after a little bit of waiting time anyway, completely contradicting the reasons for doing 3-3-3-3...whilst wasting literal months of apparently very valuable coding and personnel time that could be put to any other use at all, rehashing and remaking and retesting and retweaking 3-3-3-3 trying to force people into underrepresented classes to come out and say "well I guess we will just make it even on classes, because people do not like waiting".........taking up this much time with everything else in this game sooooooo far behind is a big downside...all just to make stats look better...

Edited by Wispsy, 25 June 2014 - 09:21 AM.

[Mawai]

MonkeyCheese, on 24 June 2014 - 11:24 PM, said:

I really dont think it would be that bad on the live server, they said the test server was like 10% of the turn out for the clans test server.

The live server has so so so many more players than that small fragment we seen on the test server. I think the system will easily be able to find 24 people before the matchmaker has to let up on the weight class restrictions and things like 8 assaults or 10 lights on a team happen. I assume they will be rare.

Once all the bugs are squashed and the new system is live that is.

Actually, the total number of folks in the queue doesn't affect queue times ... it is only dependent on the distribution of mechs entering the queue.

If 70% of people enter the queue in heavy/assaults then either the matchmaker creates matches with those proportions of mechs to keep the queues short ... or the queues grow indefinitely for a fixed mech distribution.

Changing the player base mech choices is a classic carrot and stick problem ... the stick is the queue time. However, if you make the queue times too long (even 2 minutes seems too long to me but some folks might find 5 minutes a bigger deterrent) ... then some people will quit playing rather than wait ... the goal with the queue time stick is to get people to hop into a more needed class so they don't wait as long.

The aspect they haven't addressed yet is the carrot. I would suggest something like:
If the mech proportion in the queue is less than 25% then there will be a cbill bonus for choosing to play that class of mech.

1, Lowest fraction in queue less than 25% = 10% cbill bonus
2. Second lowest fraction in queue less than 25% = 5% cbill bonus
3. Third lowest fraction in queue less than 25% = 2.5% cbill bonus

Could also look at xp bonus but that would be much less of a motivator for the player base to switch mech classes since it is of greatest interest only when leveling up a mech.