44 replies to this topic

[JonahGrimm]

Or: "How I learned to love the MM, and understand what was happening in a round."

Okay, folks - here's the thing. A matchmaker in an exclusively PVP game is always a dicey prospect - and it's never perfect. If you're awesome, you're going to be put into situations where you're carrying a team. If you're average, sometimes you'll get folks whose ranking in the matchmaker doesn't really match up to what 'average' is. No matter what your ELO, you may end up with... well. Me.

I'm the kind of guy that doesn't always run optimum mechs - I'm playing with kitting out a Spider 5K as an Urbanmech, and have brawler Trebuchets for fun. I have gimmicky locust builds and experiments I'm trying in live fire. Sometimes, I get a little too aggressive even in good builds and get my face shot off early.

Basically, I'm the you most of you won't admit to being.

Why is this important?

Well, I'm the reason you're ROFLstomped - or, vice-versa, ROFLstomp other people.

(for newbies reading this: ROFLstomp is a 12-3 victory or better - when one team just rampages over the other.)

I'm going to tell you - it's not the matchmaker's fault.

-----------------------

What causes a ROFLstomp is actually fairly simple - gun advantage. Put another way: once you have begun to lose mechs, the loss will have a tendency to accelerate unless you can generate new, short term advantages.

Essentially, once you lose firepower, you lose the ability to generate kills. If you lose significantly more firepower than the opposing team, they can actually make it impossible to recover unless you can generate situations in which they can bring firepower to bear. If you go down 0-4 early, you will likely lose the match in a stomp. In the converse, if you go up 4-0 early, you're probably winning this match in the same way.

This doesn't have anything to do with a 'fail team', or a bad matchmaker - it has everything to do with how your team fares in the early engagement. Did you leave your assaults to fend for themselves and lose them early? Did your lights make a bad corner and eat facefull of Jager AC40? Did your team choose a bad spot for a firing line, or did your enemies just do better at shooting this time and knock out too much armor at range?

If you get stomped, you may have been (and likely were) equally matched, but something went dramatically wrong.

Perhaps you were outplayed - someone had a great night. Perhaps you or someone on your team made a mistake. Perhaps you had no leadership, and they knew when to push. Who can say?

However, stomps don't happen because it was impossible to win - rather, they happen because you went down a bunch of mechs early, for whatever reason. Analyze that and you'll figure out your loss - or your victory, if you want to see /why/ you won.

Blaming the matchmaker is usually the refuge of those who didn't pay attention to the fight. The best team in the world can have a bad night, get out of position, or fail on coordination. That's essentially not the matchmaker's fault.

Edited by JonahGrimm, 07 July 2014 - 10:06 AM.

[Malcolm Vordermark]

You heard him. Its his fault! Get him!

Edited by Rouken, 07 July 2014 - 10:10 AM.

[JonahGrimm]

... oh /man/. .. my next few days are going to be /awful/, aren't they.

[Dawnstealer]

[Philldoe]

...or...just maybe... you ran into a Lords and SJR mixed 10/12 man. That'll also do it.

Edited by Philldoe, 07 July 2014 - 10:38 AM.

[JonahGrimm]

Philldoe, on 07 July 2014 - 10:38 AM, said:

...or...just maybe... you ran into a Lords and SJR mixed 10/12 man. That'll also do it.

dropping with C4, the other day I ran into B33f and his crew. .... that didn't go well. *cough*

Thing is, though, I'll say - honestly - we could have won. We just dinked around trying to kill B33f so badly the rest of his team basically cored us.

[Modo44]

Curing frustration with denial. Solid therapy.

[Vanguard319]

I can agree with the OP. The last match I played was an assault where we were steamrolled the other team and overran their base, yet we lost. How did this happen? Simple, they sent a trio of lights who took our base, we had plenty of time to send someone back to defend the base, but nobody went back until it was already too late. We had some people near the enemy base, (myself included) but when the "base under attack" msg popped up, I was the only person on my team to immediately take their base, and one of the only ones to call for the nearest people to rtb, there were two other team mates near me, but it didn't occur to them to get on the base until we were clearly losing on cap.

Our losses were minimal, and most of my team started whining about base rushes instead of addressing the real issue: We lost because most of our team lacked any situational awareness, and failed to listen to those who did.

[Alaskan Nobody]

JonahGrimm, on 07 July 2014 - 10:16 AM, said:

... oh /man/. .. my next few days are going to be /awful/, aren't they.

You did kinda ask for it.

[Xeno Phalcon]

Think this is the worst thing about being roflstomped, Im aware its happening and can't stop it (most of the time) being a team oriented game where there is no team work is bad.

Pugs life and all that jazz, though me and a timberwolf on caustic earlier banded together as the last two standing and killed SIX of the enemy team together before the wolf was downed and the last two enemy pilots avoided me for a resource win but still we went from 4-10 to 10-11 with a little team work.

[Corralis]

While ROFLSTOMPS do still occur (and they usually occur for the reasons you have mentioned above), I'm actually finding that a lot of the games we have been playing have been pretty even. Normally if you get a 7 man and a 5 man team on one side and a 5, 4 and a 3 man on the other team you would expect the side with the bigger teams to win but from the games I have played since the new patch I'm seeing far more 12-8, 12-9, 12-10 and 12-11 scores than I am seeing 12-0, 12-1, 12-2 and 12-3 scores.

I really think PGI got their sh*t together for this latest patch.

[Jody Von Jedi]

The OP is so spot on with this post. I've had matches that my team has recovered from a 0-3 disadvantage early on, but those turn arounds are rare. 0-4 and you can forget it. I've seen it turn around, but the the other team made a critical error that allowed a comeback. A lot of matches remind me of a Baseball game. You only score on a good baseman/pitcher when they make an error.

[IraqiWalker]

Corralis, on 07 July 2014 - 11:34 AM, said:

While ROFLSTOMPS do still occur (and they usually occur for the reasons you have mentioned above), I'm actually finding that a lot of the games we have been playing have been pretty even. Normally if you get a 7 man and a 5 man team on one side and a 5, 4 and a 3 man on the other team you would expect the side with the bigger teams to win but from the games I have played since the new patch I'm seeing far more 12-8, 12-9, 12-10 and 12-11 scores than I am seeing 12-0, 12-1, 12-2 and 12-3 scores.

I really think PGI got their sh*t together for this latest patch.

I would agree with that sentiment. Aside from the errant match where you end up facing top of the line players (which in this case, is the exception, not the rule), the MM has been working just fine. I've been stomped some days, and others I did the stomping. However, all in all, the real reason my team won/lost was usually coordination. Even when we didn't stick with the basic death ball tactic. The matches we won, were usually won because our team got it's act together, protected the assaults, had mediums to run along the sides, and the main formation knew when to stop advancing, lay down some suppression fire, and bait the enemy team into getting flanked, and then annihilated.

[Urdasein]

Quote

. If you're awesome, you're going to be put into situations where you're carrying a team.

YES ! BUT !

In my mech stats, i have some mechs with "god mode" ratio (like K/D ratio slightly over 5). With those build i often do 750+ dmg with peaks at 1200dmg and at least 4 kills.

In those games, yeah... sometime the match let me think i'm being stomped and... Nope ! The left 4 guys are killing the 12 other one. Sparta times ^ ^.

I am not a good player. I'm only good on some "cheesy" builds.

So... what happens when i want to play with a "meh" build ? Well the matchmaker put me against high ELO team but i will play like a ****... Stomped, stomped, stomped until ELO cooldown. Unfun.

What happen when i'm frustrated and i want to play again with my uber mechs ? Well... 8 kills, over 1000 dmg... Unfun for the other guys. I really feel sorry sometimes (sometimes =).

So... the ELO rank should not be linked to "you" but being relative to the mech you are playing (and it wont solve builds changes but will reduce bad matchmaking)

BTW: this build is pure cheat (zoom + target depriv + seismic)
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...fd9e3b8b569d306

[Alaskan Nobody]

Corralis, on 07 July 2014 - 11:34 AM, said:

I really think PGI got their sh*t together for this latest patch.

Which makes me kinda nervous.

I haven't been able to play since the patch - but the (apparent) new normal, was my old normal.
With everyone else's luck apparently flipped around, will mine as well?

[JonahGrimm]

loupgaroupoilu, on 07 July 2014 - 11:52 AM, said:

YES ! BUT !

In my mech stats, i have some mechs with "god mode" ratio (like K/D ratio slightly over 5). With those build i often do 750+ dmg with peaks at 1200dmg and at least 4 kills.

In those games, yeah... sometime the match let me think i'm being stomped and... Nope ! The left 4 guys are killing the 12 other one. Sparta times ^ ^.

I am not a good player. I'm only good on some "cheesy" builds.

So... what happens when i want to play with a "meh" build ? Well the matchmaker put me against high ELO team but i will play like a ****... Stomped, stomped, stomped until ELO cooldown. Unfun.

What happen when i'm frustrated and i want to play again with my uber mechs ? Well... 8 kills, over 1000 dmg... Unfun for the other guys. I really feel sorry sometimes (sometimes =).

So... the ELO rank should not be linked to "you" but being relative to the mech you are playing (and it wont solve builds changes but will reduce bad matchmaking)

BTW: this build is pure cheat (zoom + target depriv + seismic)
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...fd9e3b8b569d306

... at the risk of saying something wholly wrong (Kon?) - everything I've read about the matchmaker indicates it is per chassis, not per player.

I do know that my best mech has a K/D close to 2, and - more importantly - a W/L close to the same. This mech routinely puts me up against names I know. My clan mechs? Not so much - they're new chassis.

Shar Wolf, on 07 July 2014 - 01:31 PM, said:

Which makes me kinda nervous.

I haven't been able to play since the patch - but the (apparent) new normal, was my old normal.
With everyone else's luck apparently flipped around, will mine as well?

Here's hoping? 3/3/3/3 may have its detractors, but /man/ is it making for much better games, all around - especially for dedicated light/medium players (like me). I know my PUG games have gotten to be a /lot/ more fun - and my group games with C4 have gotten great simply because we can all drop together, however many there are for the evening.

Really, I'm enjoying this /tons/.

[Alaskan Nobody]

JonahGrimm, on 07 July 2014 - 01:44 PM, said:

... at the risk of saying something wholly wrong (Kon?) - everything I've read about the matchmaker indicates it is per chassis, not per player.

Elo cares only about the W/L ratio - and it set so you have one value per weight class.
Whether clan mechs get their own Elo lists or not is up in the air last I checked (no official word anyways)

So you would have 4 (or 8 if Clans are separate) Elo scores
One for Lights
One for Mediums
and so on.

[JonahGrimm]

Shar Wolf, on 07 July 2014 - 01:55 PM, said:

Elo cares only about the W/L ratio - and it set so you have one value per weight class.
Whether clan mechs get their own Elo lists or not is up in the air last I checked (no official word anyways)

So you would have 4 (or 8 if Clans are separate) Elo scores
One for Lights
One for Mediums
and so on.

... this explains why I end up in the "Hopeless" ELO tier when I drop with Assaults. Good to know!

[Tim East]

JonahGrimm, on 07 July 2014 - 10:05 AM, said:

I have gimmicky locust builds and experiments I'm trying in live fire. Sometimes, I get a little too aggressive even in good builds and get my face shot off early.

I'm guilty of both of these things.

Also guilty of driving my machines before upgrading them a lot of the time. I bought an atlas when they were cheap a little ways back and haven't even begun to kit it out properly yet. It's still using a standard engine leftover from my not-so-awesome CTF-4X that I sold when i got it. Most of the time the battle is over long before I get there at a bit shy of 40 kph. Heh. And the C-bills I spent on that probably SHOULD have been spent getting modules for my locusts, which are actually semi-upgraded. At least I learned how to gauss with the new (I know it ain't that new, but it's new to me, dangit) charge and release system.

I guess I'm kind of a tool sometimes. Even to my mechs.

[Tylerchu]

'Gimmicky' as in Kon's Flamer Stalker?
It's such a situational mech, but if you can get it in the right place, it chews through anything.