11 replies to this topic

[MrMadguy]

Simply because there are not enough players in this game, playing certain mech classes and factions, to allow matchmaker form the group in a reasonable amount of time. When I started playing this game, it's biggest advantage was - almost instant queues. Now with time queues are becoming longer and longer. I don't know, why: may be number of players in this game is dropping and my ELO constantly rising, making it harder for matchmaker to find completely noobish team for me. But queue time is closing to the value, that is unreasonable to me. And both 3x4 and CW separately will make queue times N times longer. Sorry, I just won't play this game, if queue times will be tens of minutes. And, I guess, PGI understands it too. That's why 4x3 and CW are constantly being delayed. For example 4x3 release was cancelled not due to some bugs - PGI just simply realized, how long queue times will be with this feature active.

[Chemie]

MM will match 3x4, ELO, weight, game mode, faction. There must be lots of ways to get that to work...right?

[Khobai]

3/3/3/3 is dumb anyway. Because it creates predictable mirror matchups and removes the fun of figuring out what the other team's composition is. It also treats a Locust and Jenner as being the same which is completely wrong.

What would work infinitely better is allowing a max of 4 of each weight class. And having a min/max tonnage range for each team that falls between 700-750 tons.

[Kiiyor]

Khobai, on 28 June 2014 - 02:38 AM, said:

3/3/3/3 is dumb anyway. Because it creates predictable mirror matchups and removes the fun of figuring out what the other team's composition is. It also treats a Locust and Jenner as being the same which is completely wrong.

What would work infinitely better is allowing a max of 4 of each weight class. And having a min/max tonnage range for each team that falls between 700-750 tons.

I think those factors should be applied to 3/3/3/3. There's nothing stopping the devs from calling it 3/3/3/3, yet giving it more leeway when creating groups. Looser MM requirements will also result in lower queue times.

At any rate, i'm interested in seeing how it's implemented, and how well it works.

[Reitrix]

Khobai, on 28 June 2014 - 02:38 AM, said:

3/3/3/3 is dumb anyway. Because it creates predictable mirror matchups and removes the fun of figuring out what the other team's composition is. It also treats a Locust and Jenner as being the same which is completely wrong.

What would work infinitely better is allowing a max of 4 of each weight class. And having a min/max tonnage range for each team that falls between 700-750 tons.

Oh yes, because a team that has 3 Atlas will play *exactly* the same as a team that contains a Dire Wolf, poptart Victor and an LRM Stalker for its Assaults.


This is probably the dumbest argument against 4x3 on these boards. Newsflash, just because you know what CLASS of 'Mech is coming doesn't mean you don't need to find out what they are, what their loadout is and whether or not that team is properly protecting its firepower.
All this system does is prevent the game from turning into a 12v12 Assault blob fest. And that is a GOOD thing.

[Satan n stuff]

Chemie, on 28 June 2014 - 02:35 AM, said:

MM will match 3x4, ELO, weight, game mode, faction. There must be lots of ways to get that to work...right?

There are plenty of ways to get it to work, but with such specific criteria matchmaking will take longer, there's no way to avoid that. You also forgot premade groups, which would supposedly be limited to one per team, and only groups with the same number of players would be matched against each other.
Assuming the numbers Paul gave us are still accurate that alone would make premade matchmaking even slower than it already is because there are barely enough PUGs to fill all the teams if they all have 4 man groups, and according to those numbers 4 man groups only make up 25% of all premade groups. Add all the other criteria and the fact that certain weight classes are much more common than others and players will likely be spending as much time in queue as they are actually playing. It will be much worse for players with elo ratings on either end of the scale who already have to put up with long wait times, even after a patch that allows them to be matched against more average players. For a lot of players the game would likely be completely unplayable on certain hours, for some it might be unplayable regardless.

Edited by Satan n stuff, 28 June 2014 - 03:24 AM.

[MischiefSC]

It will work just fine - most of the time. The key is allowing one-offs to clear queue imbalances. So if you've got players for 20 matches but 3/3/3/3 and Elo matching to fill 16 of them, you drop 16 matches and kick the other 4 out as they stand, as close to goal as possible.

There will be some tweaking on the release valve matches but we'll see how it shakes out. I'm jazzed for it.

[SirLANsalot]

Khobai, on 28 June 2014 - 02:38 AM, said:

3/3/3/3 is dumb anyway. Because it creates predictable mirror matchups and removes the fun of figuring out what the other team's composition is. It also treats a Locust and Jenner as being the same which is completely wrong.

What would work infinitely better is allowing a max of 4 of each weight class. And having a min/max tonnage range for each team that falls between 700-750 tons.

Someone did not play the PTS on Tuesday, or read up on what is coming.


3x4 is coming yes, but it also has TONNAGE MATCHING!!

So no, I am calling you bullshit on a Jenner being matched up against a locust. That would only happen in a very rare case of some super low population times, so basically, never.

[OneEyed Jack]

SirLANsalot, on 28 June 2014 - 03:41 AM, said:

Someone did not play the PTS on Tuesday, or read up on what is coming.


3x4 is coming yes, but it also has TONNAGE MATCHING!!

So no, I am calling you bullshit on a Jenner being matched up against a locust. That would only happen in a very rare case of some super low population times, so basically, never.

This.

It also has built-in, and tune-able, release valves to allow for when it just can't put matches together.

I didn't get around to playing on the test server, but from what's been described as ready to go, PGI may have actually gotten it right. I can't attest to how well the coding works, but the design itself seems pretty damned good. And since they can manually adjust the release valves without bringing the servers down, I figure even they are bound to find a good balance for it eventually.

[Appogee]

I'd rather wait a few minutes for a good evenly-matched game than have endless stompfests served up instantly.

4x3 will make for better matchplay. My team has been trialling it for months, and it leads to more interesting matches.

[Torgun]

I'm just curious how hard it will be to break the matchmaker to loosen up the constraints a lot if plenty of players refuse to bring anything but their heavies and assaults. Because you know they'll try so they can keep running their Dragon Slayers, Timberwolves, etc.

[East Indy]

Khobai, on 28 June 2014 - 02:38 AM, said:

3/3/3/3 is dumb anyway. Because it creates predictable mirror matchups

Reitrix, on 28 June 2014 - 03:20 AM, said:

All this system does is prevent the game from turning into a 12v12 Assault blob fest. And that is a GOOD thing.

Yeah, I'm not sure why people don't understand how slow-moving teams of 'Mechs in weight classes that generally park and fire when they spot each other are utterly predictable.