147 replies to this topic

[Cimarb]

Sandpit, on 05 July 2014 - 09:03 PM, said:

there's a lot of us at this point saying "I told you so" regarding the rule of 3.

I would also like to go on record that the one-group rule was and still is a bad idea as well. (granted, the group queue makes this much less of an issue...)

[Deathlike]

Screech, on 05 July 2014 - 09:19 PM, said:

You ever seen the movie The Blood of Heroes? Kinda sounds like that with mechs, except the lights would need to get the beacon to the enemy base.

I'd rather do it the way I proposed.

The "standard concept" allows for camping... which is simply then a test of skill @ shooting light mechs.

My suggestion forces you to chase and tactically strategize routes... in addition to killing (but not being the only primary focus). That's the difference.

[xe N on]

My proposal for short term fix of lights:

- All lights get radar deception as base feature
- Falling damage is deacreased for lights without jump jets
- Capturing speed of lights is 25% higher as a base feature
- Generally, the time to start capturing if point is neutral is decresed

Long term fix: Introduction of information warfare:
- detection ranged based on class (i.e. with active radar assault: 800 m; Heavy 700 m, Medium 600 m, Light: 500 m)
- passive radar mode (detection range 200 m)
- command wheel for reporting enemy movement without voice comm

Edited by xe N on, 05 July 2014 - 11:12 PM.

[Karamarka]

xe N on, on 05 July 2014 - 11:11 PM, said:

My proposal for short term fix of lights:

- All lights get radar deception as base feature
- Falling damage is deacreased for lights without jump jets
- Capturing speed of lights is 25% higher as a base feature
- Generally, the time to start capturing if point is neutral is decresed

Long term fix: Introduction of information warfare:
- detection ranged based on class (i.e. with active radar assault: 800 m; Heavy 700 m, Medium 600 m, Light: 500 m)
- passive radar mode (detection range 200 m)
- command wheel for reporting enemy movement without voice comm

How about also big map where lances are seperated or something

Most maps accomodate jump sniping, i mean every map has random "walls" to hide behind.

tldr: maps are way way too arena like

I'd love to see some big bases, and jungle area connected or something.... MW4 style with deserts and stuff maybe. But than again in MW4 LRMs were Line of Sight, not indirect shooting over walls.

Edited by Karamarka, 06 July 2014 - 12:01 AM.

[stjobe]

Chemistry Warden, on 05 July 2014 - 08:57 PM, said:

So, not only are there fewer lights than other classes in each match, my data suggests that not only has the last patch done nothing to increasing the number of lights in a match, but has actually decreased the number of lights in each match.

Huh. Who'da thunk that implementing leg damage that hits lights the hardest would lower the number of lights on the field?

And who'da thunk that putting "release valves" into the 3-3-3-3 system makes it behave like the 3-3-3-3 rule never existed?

It's almost like someone didn't think things through. Again.

[Jalik]

Sandpit, on 05 July 2014 - 11:03 AM, said:

No amount of "forcing" or hard restrictions is going to make a player want to take a mech that they don't have fun playing in.

that's absolutely true.
But I accept the fact that they have to do one step after the other. Firstly, the new matchmaker works better than what we had before. From my perspective at least. I had some pretty close and fun solo matches and was served with a match with minimum waiting times (even in a heavy). Some tuning with small groups versus 12 mans necessary, as I understand. But the MM works pretty well. The necessary gameplay changes to make lights and mediums really attractive to play are something completely different and has little to do with the matchmaker itself. MAYBE community warefare is planned to bring some new roles for lights? I dunno, I hope they have a plan

Edited by Jalik, 06 July 2014 - 01:01 AM.

[ztac]

I don't suppose he mentioned the statistic that is average waiting time to get a match?

After the patch (But it was patch day and every man and his dog would be playing to see what the change is) matches were fast to come by , now it takes a lot longer , So I guess there are a lot fewer people for the MM to put in games.

[Karamarka]

ztac, on 06 July 2014 - 02:19 AM, said:

I don't suppose he mentioned the statistic that is average waiting time to get a match?

After the patch (But it was patch day and every man and his dog would be playing to see what the change is) matches were fast to come by , now it takes a lot longer , So I guess there are a lot fewer people for the MM to put in games.

In my TBR it takes less than 1 minute always. Id' rather wait a little longer for perfect matchmaking.

[SnowdogJJJ]

Guys, you have to look at it through PGIs eyes, "how will this make us money" (there is nothing wrong with that in my opinion, my point is if you can show then how (as a business) they can increase profits then you may be able to get them to move in a direction. I am not sure how role warfare would increase the bottom line? Maybe someone smarter than me (who also still cares) can come up with a business model that will drive revenue. As long as the community continues to support the game there is little reason for any company to change. It is also why governments tax behavior (of course it is to generate revenue ) but the leftists think they can drive action through monetary hardship. I know I am typing to my self at this point so I will stop.. enjoy your day.

[Almeras]

Spoiler

Cimarb, on 05 July 2014 - 10:20 AM, said:

In reference to:

Spoiler

Russ Bullock‏@russ_bullock

See this by example of our new MM command center pic.twitter.com/FImD5RD5NA

I found some interesting points from these 25 matches.

In regard to 4x3:

Here are the average #s from that sample data:
Lights ------ 2.44
Mediums -- 2.64
Heavies --- 3.48
Assaults --- 3.44

Outliers. Lights are actually NON-EXISTENT in one match. That means least 3 valves where released by them alone in that match! Mediums are almost as bad, since they have 3 matches where there was only a single Medium. On the other hand, there is a match where there are FIVE Heavies, as well as a match where there are FIVE Assaults.

50% of matches where 4x3. That is decent, but makes valves being released the norm, not the exception. Russ did state that this is one of the things they want to quickly fix.

In regard to Variance:

Now, something we cannot get a full view of is the Variance (far left column). We can only see 14 out of the 25 matches. Still a decent number to look at, though.

Elo is from 0-2800. While the average difference in variance is 241.27, match #24 in the list has a HUGE 762 variance. That is 30% of the whole Elo range, meaning one team is roughly in the middle of the mid-Elo "bucket", while the other team is roughly in the middle of the LOW-Elo "bucket". I would be willing to bet that was a horrid, horrid match.

Also, 9/14 matches were in triple digit variance, 8/14 were 200+ variance, and 4/14 were 350+ variance.

What makes this even worse is that these team variance's are the average Elo of the players on that team. Not only is there a large amount of difference between teams, but you also have the very possible issue that has been brought up before: High+Low vs. Medium.

What this means is that you have a few very High Elo players offsetting a bunch of very low Elo players, balanced against a full team of average players. Even though their combined Elo averages may be "close", the skills of those individual players are horribly "not close", which is what causes a lot of stomps to begin with.

Lessons:

• Role Warfare (rewards) needs to be implemented ASAP. Trying to force players to play lighter mechs is very obviously not working, and never will work. Until players are rewarded for playing what they WANT to play, they will never play them regularly. The vast majority of players would rather wait a couple minutes than play a mech they get little to no rewards playing.
  
• Data Transparency. This is exactly why PGI does not like releasing specific data...

UPDATE:

Great post. Also not taken into consideration is theoretical kill ceiling of an individual pilot.

The clearest example of these would be a High elo player in a ammo based mech. He might have enough ammo to kill 3 fresh mechs 1vs1 that's a hard limitation he'll never be able to do more than that. However the MM looks at his ELO and may expect him kill 4.

There's only so much 1 mech can do regardless of the pilot because of hard limitations of heat, armour and ammo.

below is the kind of match I see frequently solo. There was no chance to rescue the team, too hot, not enough armour and ammo. Dropping in a light or medium is worse as my elo is better in them yet my ability to down mechs is reduced.

Spoiler

Edited by Almeras, 06 July 2014 - 05:12 AM.

[ArchSight]

Nothing is perfect.

[N a p e s]

Cimarb, on 05 July 2014 - 02:45 PM, said:

I appreciate that oasutlook. I am not trying to nerf lights or remove their ability to fight, but currently that is the only role that IS rewarded. I just want to get OTHER roles rewarded.

If I get my way, it will have absolutely no affect on your playstyle, as it is rewarding something that you will not be doing regardless.

Additionnally, if the cap rewards were increased light mechs on the enemy team would be motivated to cap the same spots you might be capping and thus you would get to shoot those. There'd be plenty of fighting.

[Prezimonto]

Cimarb, on 05 July 2014 - 11:18 AM, said:

I completely disagree with you, which is probably why PGI is having such a hard time with this.

For instance, I want an opt-in so I can solo drop in the group queue, which is the antithesis of your #1.

PGI did give us a launcher that allows any type of drop we want, and I think it is perfectly reasonable to require ONE person out of 24 to be at least minimally vested in the game, or two if you want to use the server resources for duelling.

#3/4 are really not even worth addressing. It is humorous you even split them apart, as they are both trying to defend your point by insulting whoever may respond.


I would not say it completely defeated the purpose, but it did prove what we were saying quite well, so I have been hounding Russ about Role Warfare Rewards since it was released.

Sometimes, you have to let them do it their way so you can say, "see what I was talking about now?"

I would assume that if their data showed otherwise they would have used a different example screenshot. That is the issue with analytics to begin with: it is VERY easy to manipulate them to show what you want them to show.

Unfortunately, I think the issue here is more in regards to an overabundance of averaging. Like I mentioned about the variance, if you average averages, you will obviously get an even MORE average. If that is your goal, then it will succeed, but it does not make for balanced matches.

Yes, the mean of the mean is the mean. The mean of the mean has a much smaller distribution and variance, unrepresentative of the variance and distribution of the items. The mean of the mean is a normal distribution, while the items may have a distribution of many different shapes for a variety of reasons.

There's reasons to want to use mean of means, but if you want to learn about how your items (players/mechs/matches) are distributed it's a bad idea.

[Willard Phule]

You know, all these goobers up at PGI that are constantly on the Vlogs and such really SHOULD drop solo into the public queue a few times.....then see what they think about their Elo and 3/3/3/3 thing. Every time I see them, they're dropping as a group. Completely different animal there.

GG close.

[Jolly Llama]

Cimarb, on 05 July 2014 - 10:20 AM, said:

In reference to:

Spoiler

Russ Bullock‏@russ_bullock

See this by example of our new MM command center pic.twitter.com/FImD5RD5NA

I found some interesting points from these 25 matches.

In regard to 4x3:

Here are the average #s from that sample data:
Lights ------ 2.44
Mediums -- 2.64
Heavies --- 3.48
Assaults --- 3.44

Outliers. Lights are actually NON-EXISTENT in one match. That means least 3 valves where released by them alone in that match! Mediums are almost as bad, since they have 3 matches where there was only a single Medium. On the other hand, there is a match where there are FIVE Heavies, as well as a match where there are FIVE Assaults.

50% of matches where 4x3. That is decent, but makes valves being released the norm, not the exception. Russ did state that this is one of the things they want to quickly fix.

In regard to Variance:

Now, something we cannot get a full view of is the Variance (far left column). We can only see 14 out of the 25 matches. Still a decent number to look at, though.

Elo is from 0-2800. While the average difference in variance is 241.27, match #24 in the list has a HUGE 762 variance. That is 30% of the whole Elo range, meaning one team is roughly in the middle of the mid-Elo "bucket", while the other team is roughly in the middle of the LOW-Elo "bucket". I would be willing to bet that was a horrid, horrid match.

Also, 9/14 matches were in triple digit variance, 8/14 were 200+ variance, and 4/14 were 350+ variance.

What makes this even worse is that these team variance's are the average Elo of the players on that team. Not only is there a large amount of difference between teams, but you also have the very possible issue that has been brought up before: High+Low vs. Medium.

What this means is that you have a few very High Elo players offsetting a bunch of very low Elo players, balanced against a full team of average players. Even though their combined Elo averages may be "close", the skills of those individual players are horribly "not close", which is what causes a lot of stomps to begin with.

Lessons:

• Role Warfare (rewards) needs to be implemented ASAP. Trying to force players to play lighter mechs is very obviously not working, and never will work. Until players are rewarded for playing what they WANT to play, they will never play them regularly. The vast majority of players would rather wait a couple minutes than play a mech they get little to no rewards playing.
  
• Data Transparency. This is exactly why PGI does not like releasing specific data...

UPDATE:

And this is why 3/3/3/3 is bullshit. We should be able to drop what we want in groups. I was in a match last night with a 12 man, forced into 3/3/3/3. The other team was not a 12 man and had six assaults. Really? Scream balance and then screw people dedicated enough to play 12 man groups.

Not another penny PGI, do you hear me? No one more cent will you get from me while you prohibit me from playing what I want, when I want.

[Adiuvo]

geodeath, on 06 July 2014 - 07:20 AM, said:

And this is why 3/3/3/3 is bullshit. We should be able to drop what we want in groups. I was in a match last night with a 12 man, forced into 3/3/3/3. The other team was not a 12 man and had six assaults. Really? Scream balance and then screw people dedicated enough to play 12 man groups.

Not another penny PGI, do you hear me? No one more cent will you get from me while you prohibit me from playing what I want, when I want.

If you were actually in a 12man then they didn't have six assaults. They had 3. Karl Berg (the guy who wrote the matchmaker) has explained repeatedly that while the MM will adjust many things, one thing it will never fold on is class matching.

[Silentium]

Is that in the group context or both group and solo?

[Bigbacon]

Cimarb, on 05 July 2014 - 12:06 PM, said:

But either of those situations revolve around Lights still be combat-focused. It should not matter how hard they are to kill, because they should not be getting into combat nearly as much as they are. Ideally, they should really only be fighting other lights that are also capping/scouting.

This is exactly why there needs to be incentives for lights OR, the scoring system needs toreward team based activities a lot more.

As a light only player i do tend to scout and cap but since it is so damage/kill oriented i will fight when i need to and it is a lot more fun to fight.

They do not need to make lights harder to kill. Lights just take a different skill to play well and it doesnt help that stock light loads are crap.

Edited by Bigbacon, 06 July 2014 - 08:10 AM.

[Adiuvo]

Bigbacon, on 06 July 2014 - 08:02 AM, said:

This is exactly why there needs to be incentives for lights OR, the scoring system needs toreward team based activities a lot more.

As a light only player i do tend to scout and cap but since it is so damage/kill oriented i will fight when i need to and it is a lot more fun to fight.

They do not need to make lights harder to kill. Lights just take a different skill to play well and it doesnt help that stock light loads are crap.

This is why I really dislike that people are trying to make lights some PvE class. Sitting on a cap point for 90sec is not fun. Sitting there holding lock for your LRM boat is not fun. People play MWO to fight other mechs, not to do those things.

Before someone tries to chime in with 'But I find it fun!' think about it - are you an outlier or do you really expect (ideally) 25% of the game's population to find capping so great that they will play lights often enough to fill up the queue?

[Sprouticus]

Adiuvo, on 06 July 2014 - 08:18 AM, said:

This is why I really dislike that people are trying to make lights some PvE class. Sitting on a cap point for 90sec is not fun. Sitting there holding lock for your LRM boat is not fun. People play MWO to fight other mechs, not to do those things.

Before someone tries to chime in with 'But I find it fun!' think about it - are you an outlier or do you really expect (ideally) 25% of the game's population to find capping so great that they will play lights often enough to fill up the queue?

Screen shot of I call BS. unless you were on during the weeee hours fo the morning, I highly doubt the safety valves would not only screw up Elo, but also end up with 6 assaults to your 4


And in the very very slim chance they did have 6, you STILL should have 1on easily with 12.