12 replies to this topic

[Jman5]

Match Score is something that has been in the game for over a year now, and yet the entire thing is shrouded in mystery. It's fairly obvious that damage, kills, and assists are the lion share of the points, but it's also clear that there are other values calculated as well such as component destructions and perhaps spotting assists.

We often hear players insist that you shouldn't judge them on damage numbers alone, but what else can we work on? As far as I can tell you guys have never laid out the formula for the Match Score. How could anyone use it as a metric if they don't even know the numbers behind it? Furthermore, how can we offer constructive feedback on ways to improve the matchscore without knowing anything about it?

Can we please have the formula used for calculating match score?

[Deathlike]

You are better off asking in the Karl Berg thread.

Technically it's against the rules to demand info from the devs.

[Wintersdark]

Yeah, really, you can't use score to determine player contribution at all. There's just too many unmeasurable factors, and too many ways that the scores that are tracked can be misread.

While we don't know exactly how match score is calculated, it's clearly heavily impacted by damage/kills/assists, so much so that it's effectively redundant as D/K/A is already shown.

If there was an effective scoring mechanism, they could use that instead of Elo. But that's just not the case.


Did he get lots of damage because he's just a bad shot, using splatter type weapons? Or because he hid in the back and allowed everyone else to die first, while he sprayed random ERLL/LRM fire about uselessly? Or because he's a beast, who was up front, spreading damage like a boss, using cover effectively and murdering folk?

Did he get lots of kills because he was randomly herfing LRM's at every dorito he could see (and thus nabbing kills off engaged mechs - not a bad thing, but not an indicator of great skill either)? Or the above?

If I get 3 kills and 200 damage, did I "steal" those kills, or maybe I'm just very accurate? If I do 700 damage and get no kills, am I grossly inaccurate and bad, or did my lancemates focus firing just happen to get the killing blows?

All stats are worthless when viewed in a vacuum, really. They can be useful when you track your own over multiple matches and know the context, but match end scores are irrelevant. All that matters is whether or not you win games.



Don't get me wrong, I'd like to know how Match Score is calculated too, but no matter how it's calculated it'll still be worthless.

[Jman5]

Deathlike, on 26 August 2014 - 10:05 AM, said:

You are better off asking in the Karl Berg thread.

Technically it's against the rules to demand info from the devs.

This would fall under a design question, so I don't know if badgering him would be appropriate. Besides he seems busy enough already. Several months ago, I contacted support about this before and they didn't know but promised to look into getting a developer response. No such luck, so now I'm here to request (not demand) information on the match score formula. Not just for me, but for the community.

Afterall, they have said in the past when they first introduced it that they were planning on using it as part of a global ranking mechanism in the future. To me, that seems like something that should be out in the open and vetted with community feedback. I don't want to spend an entire evening testing each possible variable multiple times just to figure out an approximate.

Edited by Jman5, 26 August 2014 - 10:23 AM.

[stjobe]

Jman5, on 26 August 2014 - 10:19 AM, said:

Afterall, they have said in the past when they first introduced it that they were planning on using it as part of a global ranking mechanism in the future.

"Match Score is an early ranking system for the End of Round screen only. This number will be later worked into or made part of Combat Score which will be your global ranking. For now it's just a handy way to rank players in a match. It is subject to tuning in the near future."

Yeah. As so many other things, it's a place holder that's become a permanent fixture.

[Deathlike]

Jman5, on 26 August 2014 - 10:19 AM, said:

This would fall under a design question, so I don't know if badgering him would be appropriate. Besides he seems busy enough already. Several months ago, I contacted support about this before and they didn't know but promised to look into getting a developer response. No such luck, so now I'm here to request (not demand) information on the match score formula. Not just for me, but for the community.

Afterall, they have said in the past when they first introduced it that they were planning on using it as part of a global ranking mechanism in the future. To me, that seems like something that should be out in the open and vetted with community feedback. I don't want to spend an entire evening testing each possible variable multiple times just to figure out an approximate.

All I can say is ask there and see what happens.

The only time PGI members respond to threads is if it generates enough attention to itself to warrant a response. I doubt this thread will grow unless a major discussion is fostered from it.

[Wintersdark]

stjobe, on 26 August 2014 - 10:24 AM, said:

"Match Score is an early ranking system for the End of Round screen only. This number will be later worked into or made part of Combat Score which will be your global ranking. For now it's just a handy way to rank players in a match. It is subject to tuning in the near future."

Yeah. As so many other things, it's a place holder that's become a permanent fixture.

Sometimes, I think MWO itself is a placeholder.

I mean, I love the game, I really do. But I could spend all day listing things that were implemented as placeholders and then left there untouched for months/years.

[Deathlike]

Wintersdark, on 26 August 2014 - 10:37 AM, said:

Sometimes, I think MWO itself is a placeholder.

I mean, I love the game, I really do. But I could spend all day listing things that were implemented as placeholders and then left there untouched for months/years.

Are we talking about Assault or the Mech Trees?

Everything has a placeholder.

[stjobe]

Deathlike, on 26 August 2014 - 10:34 AM, said:

The only time PGI members respond to threads is if it generates enough attention to itself to warrant a response. I doubt this thread will grow unless a major discussion is fostered from it.

So let's start the speculating!

I'll start, here's my match score formula:
(damage / 10) + kills + assists

(yeah, I know that won't even stand up to cursory inspection, but come on - someone has to go first )

Edited by stjobe, 26 August 2014 - 10:39 AM.

[Redshift2k5]

The problem is, even match score isn't going to draw from new or hidden values; being a pure support still wont' give you as much match score as a big damage dealer. We see some small xp and cb rewards for support (UAV use, counter ECM, missile spotting, etc) but whther these add to match score is also a mystery, but fi they do, it won't be much ince they don't give much cb or xp either.

I think knowing how match score is calculated is a good question, but I'm not sure if you'll like the answer.

[Lynx7725]

You guys haven't figured it out?

Basic Match Score for Skirmish goes like this:

Damage/ 10, rounded up (so 11 damage counts as 2 points) + Kills + Assists + Component Destroyed + Spotting Assists.

Add 10 more points if you won the game. Go check Skirmish scores. It's very consistent this way. Very easy to see who has been lobbing limbs or spotting for others this way, so I routinely practice breaking scores down.

For Assault, IIRC winning by base capture adds another 10 points (so +20 for win and base capture). I hadn't played Assault for some time, so I might be off.

For Conquest, there's some way the resources captured figures in. I'm not that sure though.

[DEMAX51]

This is from a post on the Outreach subreddit:

Quote

...but the C++ code has this.
int matchScore = int((m_UserData.userGainedStats[UserDataEnums::eGained_TeamKill] * -5) + m_UserData.userGainedStats[UserDataEnums::eGained_Kills] + m_UserData.userGainedStats[UserDataEnums::eGained_CompentsDestroyed] + m_UserData.userGainedStats[UserDataEnums::eGained_KillAssists] + m_UserData.userGainedStats[UserDataEnums::eGained_SpottingAssist] + ceil(m_UserData.userGainedStats[UserDataEnums::eGained_DamageDone] * 0.1f) + (m_UserData.userGainedStats[UserDataEnums::eGained_Wins] * 10) + (m_UserData.userGainedStats[UserDataEnums::eGained_CaptureWin] * 10) + m_UserData.userGainedStats[UserDataEnums::eGained_CaptureAssist] + (m_UserData.userGainedStats[UserDataEnums::eGained_ConquestWin] * 10));

Edited by DEMAX51, 26 August 2014 - 11:05 AM.

[stjobe]

Okay, so I had the starting formula right after all - I was just missing a few things

(Damage / 10) + kills + assists + components destroyed + spotting assists + capture assists + (10 * wins) + (10 * capture wins) + (10 * conquest wins) - (5 * team kills) = match score.

Edited by stjobe, 26 August 2014 - 11:22 AM.