104 replies to this topic

[Mawai]

Nicolai Kabrinsky, on 07 October 2014 - 04:41 PM, said:

I don't know if this explains it, but I would hazard a guess that there's a shortage of light and medium mechs in skirmish mode, and a shortage of heavy and assault mechs in conquest. So light mechs will rarely be forced to play conquest, while assault mechs will rarely be forced to play skirmish.

Nope. Matches aren't made that way. The matchmaker collects all the players into as balanced a match as it can manage both in weight class and Elo within a specific time window. THEN after the teams are collected it polls the players for their game mode preferences ... calculates the probabilities and draws a random number to select game mode.

IF lights and mediums prefer conquest/assault and heavies and assaults prefer assault/skirmish ... you would probably see about 1/4 conquest, 1/2 assault and 1/4 skirmish.

As a very small data set ... so far with 5 drops in a light mech I have had 2 conquest, 2 assault and 1 skirmish ... with my personal preference set to skirmish/assault.

[Davers]

Russ Bullock, on 07 October 2014 - 05:46 PM, said:

I will gather the stats but don't the majority of conquest matches just end in an enemy team being wiped out more often then by cap?

Don't you think that is a little odd?

[Dagor1]

Um...Zealot...No. I play mostly IS and am perfectly willing to put any of my IS mechs against any clan mech of same or even 1 higher weight class, and I assure you, I will win 90% of the time.

Back on topic...sorta....I read the old poll and really Russ, it does read like it would be for team play.

[WarHippy]

Russ Bullock, on 07 October 2014 - 06:15 PM, said:

You said listen to the forum goers more, so we are. Now that is unacceptable, so what would you like from us now?

Listen yes, but not take it as a mandate from on high. You are just making excuses now, and ignoring the rest of what I said.

Edited by WarHippy, 07 October 2014 - 06:29 PM.

[Soul Tribunal]

I for one have noticed positive changes for once.
And I personally am happy for them to be honest.

-ST

[Mawai]

Russ Bullock, on 07 October 2014 - 06:15 PM, said:

You said listen to the forum goers more, so we are. Now that is unacceptable, so what would you like from us now?

Honestly, I think polling the forum was the best approach. However, I think it would be better if you had a way to communicate with your players. The poll should perhaps have been linked to a newsfeed on the client at start up ... or on an ingame communications/bulletin board system. You just don't have enough tools to communicate with your player base directly (even email could be usable).

Also ... if you look at the poll results ... there were 80% in favour and 20% opposed ... the 20% opposed was still more than 300 players ... you have to expect to hear from them when you make such a significant change since it is the 20% who were opposed that probably REALLY don't like one of the game modes for one reason or another.

Some folks hate skirmish because there is no way to end it if the last person on the other team runs off to a quiet hidden corner and shuts down ... the entire opposing team has to spend the rest of the match looking for them.

Personally, I don't like conquest because I often play lights ... which gives me the choice of either capping to help my team and earning nothing for my efforts (no cbills - just the resources everyone gets ... which might be very limited if the other team caps the point back fairly quickly, no xp, and no motivation to actually claim anything) ... so then everyone blobs up and tries to blow up the other team before one or the other acquires enough resources to win ... skirmquest ... it is just an unbalanced and motivationless game mode in my opinion. There should be some individual reward involved in actually capping ... making it worthwhile for players to spend minutes standing around doing nothing except be bored.

[Errant Audio]

Side note: As annoyed as I am at things, bravo for responding and not just killing this thread. It gives me a strange sense of hope...

[jozkhan]

Russ Bullock, on 07 October 2014 - 06:15 PM, said:

You said listen to the forum goers more, so we are. Now that is unacceptable, so what would you like from us now?

Just some common sense please. No other game has ever operated a system of preference in place of player choice. There's a good reason why not.

[Mystere]

Russ Bullock, on 07 October 2014 - 05:46 PM, said:

It is a difficult situation.

The counter point was multiple posts per week from players stating that the group queue was frustrating enough that they were going to quit playing. The ELO spread was just to great, and with our player base size we had just to many options available as to make it impossible for the match maker to put better matches together.

Then maybe you should have just implemented this in the group queue. Because I also seem to recall you stating that the solo queue was much better.

Russ Bullock, on 07 October 2014 - 05:46 PM, said:

Instead of just making the changes I felt would make matches more competitive I came to the community and polled players. Players chose 80% in favor of the change.

We make the change and we have some customers that are unhappy. I am planning on making an additional post to describe the results of the MM change. It does seem to be having the desired impact.

I would like to suggest a few things:

• Wait for two weeks or so
  
• Assuming you maintain previous player data, make your stats also take into account how many did not play during the two-week period (or how less they played)
  
• Announce on the forums that you are doing the two above things

Those who are not (too) bothered by the change will play at their normal rate. Those who are will either play less or stop during that period. What is key though is that people are aware of what you are doing and how you are measuring.

Russ Bullock, on 07 October 2014 - 05:46 PM, said:

Do I not have an obligation to majority of my customers? sometimes there just isn't a middle ground. I will gather the stats but don't the majority of conquest matches just end in an enemy team being wiped out more often then by cap?

That is most likely because the rewards for capping are pitiful and/or the cap duration is too long.

Edited by Mystere, 07 October 2014 - 06:40 PM.

[ShinobiHunter]

To be fair to Russ and PGI, y'all are a bunch of whiners! He gave everyone a chance to vote for this. If you didn't vote, well what the heck did you think was going to happen?! You whined about to many stomps, now you whine about having to play a different game mode. What do you want? I would much rather have a close match in Conquest than a roflstomp in Skirmish.

[Dymlos2003]

Oh my the whine is over flowing today.

[Darth Futuza]

jackal404, on 07 October 2014 - 05:54 PM, said:

If 1500+ votes in this poll constitutes a majority of players, this game has significant issues.

I would suggest you do the poll again, and link it to player game log in so that you reach the "majority" of your players.

This would be a good idea Russ, let them try the new stuff out for 2 weeks, collect your statistical data, and then do another poll after presenting the statistical information to the forum. Also make sure that there's a link on the patcher to the poll so people who don't usually use the forums also know about it.

[-Natural Selection-]

Russ Bullock, on 07 October 2014 - 06:15 PM, said:

You said listen to the forum goers more, so we are. Now that is unacceptable, so what would you like from us now?

I was the only one out of 40 in our group that saw the poll. By the time they knew about it, it was locked. Seemed like something pretty important to some, to not promote the decision process a little better. Just my opinion though.

[Rufus Ingram]

Russ Bullock, on 07 October 2014 - 05:46 PM, said:

It is a difficult situation.

The counter point was multiple posts per week from players stating that the group queue was frustrating enough that they were going to quit playing. The ELO spread was just to great, and with our player base size we had just to many options available as to make it impossible for the match maker to put better matches together.

Instead of just making the changes I felt would make matches more competitive I came to the community and polled players. Players chose 80% in favor of the change.

We make the change and we have some customers that are unhappy. I am planning on making an additional post to describe the results of the MM change. It does seem to be having the desired impact.

Do I not have an obligation to majority of my customers? sometimes there just isn't a middle ground. I will gather the stats but don't the majority of conquest matches just end in an enemy team being wiped out more often then by cap?

I don't want a refund and I do want to choose my gamemode, but I did have a question and just saw Mr. Bullock's reply reposted in another thread. I understood from a previous piece of public information (NGNG interview or possibly Developer Vlog, I'm sorry I can't remember where) that matches involving groups constituted at the time (several months ago by now) roughly 10% of matches. I fully support providing more even matches in the group queue. But what is meant by "majority of my customers" if a minority of matches even involve groups, assuming that is still the case? I assume it is a majority of the people who saw the poll and voted. Does that actually represent the majority of players or, for that matter, majority of matches? Or, since we are talking in customer language (no problem with that) does it represent the majority of revenue? No one said it was a secret ballot after all and it would be easy to line up votes with transaction history.

Piranha has the data so they're addressing a majority that makes business sense to them which is all well and good, just not sure what "majority" is being referred to. I look forward to actual data across players that shows match gamemode in relation to gamemode preference of participating players and which queue the players were in. I'm posting my own in a separate thread but early on its running at getting my desired mode 40% of the time. That's not a passing grade in any school.

Still like the game. Afterall, it's still Battletech:)

Rufus

[Darth Futuza]

Mickey Knoxx, on 07 October 2014 - 06:45 PM, said:

I was the only one out of 40 in our group that saw the poll. By the time they knew about it, it was locked. Seemed like something pretty important to some, to not promote the decision process a little better. Just my opinion though.

Saw it, but decided not to vote, because I really didn't know whether I'd like it or not and would rather try it before deciding.

[jozkhan]

No 'incremental mystery improvement' to a broken match maker is ever gonna be worth the loss of player choice. Period.

Find your incremental improvements elsewhere, it's as simple as that.

It is entirely unreasonable to expect players to not be unhappy about the removal of player choice once given seeing as that is what they have in every other game ever made.

Edited by jozkhan, 07 October 2014 - 06:47 PM.

[WarHippy]

ShinobiHunter, on 07 October 2014 - 06:39 PM, said:

To be fair to Russ and PGI, y'all are a bunch of whiners! He gave everyone a chance to vote for this. If you didn't vote, well what the heck did you think was going to happen?! You whined about to many stomps, now you whine about having to play a different game mode. What do you want? I would much rather have a close match in Conquest than a roflstomp in Skirmish.

First off you are whining about the whining so lets stop that argument now. As for the vote I am on the forums too much as it is and it was closed before I ever saw it, and it had less people vote than the heavy mech poll. It was a poor showing of what the players wanted. As for closer matches I am not seeing them, and I never complained about the stomps as I enjoy fighting better players because that is the best way to improve. What I don't want is to ever play skirmish and until they fix conquest I don't want that either.

[1453 R]

ShinobiHunter, on 07 October 2014 - 06:39 PM, said:

To be fair to Russ and PGI, y'all are a bunch of whiners! He gave everyone a chance to vote for this. If you didn't vote, well what the heck did you think was going to happen?! You whined about to many stomps, now you whine about having to play a different game mode. What do you want? I would much rather have a close match in Conquest than a roflstomp in Skirmish.

I knew exactly what was going to happen. I voiced my opinion in the original polling thread, and started an additional thread to try and find solutions to the problems I knew I was going to have with this system. As has been pointed out, 80% in favor of the matchmaker updates still leaves over three hundred players left in the lurch whose opinions, worries, and potential solutions were discarded.

You can lambaste the player base for being whiners, or you can assist in determining solutions.

[Kaptain]

Russ Bullock, on 07 October 2014 - 05:46 PM, said:

Do I not have an obligation to majority of my customers? sometimes there just isn't a middle ground. I will gather the stats but don't the majority of conquest matches just end in an enemy team being wiped out more often then by cap?

Russ, for me its not about the mode itself, its about the rewards. Not only is it the 'go here and cap this' game mode we were told would 'never' be a part of MWO but there is no money/experience in it.

First on point should yield a bonus
Time on point should yield a bonus
Neutralize should yield a bonus
Decap should yield a bonus
Contesting a point should yield a bonus

At the moment the only thing that pays if fighting in conquest and it pays (half?) of what the other 2 modes pay.

[Mawai]

ShinobiHunter, on 07 October 2014 - 06:39 PM, said:

To be fair to Russ and PGI, y'all are a bunch of whiners! He gave everyone a chance to vote for this. If you didn't vote, well what the heck did you think was going to happen?! You whined about to many stomps, now you whine about having to play a different game mode. What do you want? I would much rather have a close match in Conquest than a roflstomp in Skirmish.

1) Are you including the folks who voted no in your little rant? It seems to me they retain every right to complain since they did not want the change in the first place.

2) I want to see hard data on whether or not this change has actually had any real impact on match outcomes. This is not just standard deviation of Elo in matches ... I want to see a plot of match results ... number of mechs killed ... wins by capture in assault and resources in conquest ... both before and after this change. If they can't see any quantitative difference in the actual match outcomes as a result of the change ... then it isn't doing anything.

In fact, it may turn out that the outcomes are WORSE. Why? There are players who like to drop in heavy slow assaults ... dw for example ... it is a BAD choice in conquest. It is too slow to cap effectively, Better choices would include victors or some of the faster assaults. Many players in these mechs would NOT choose conquest since the mech is not appropriate for that game mode ... however, now we have these bad mech choices for conquest being forced into conquest matches ... this leads to unhappy players and possibly different game outcomes ... either more skirmquest ... or slow assaults being cut off and eaten by opposing teams light mechs that are running around capping.

Anyway, it isn't clear that an improved Elo balance will necessarily lead to a measurable positive change in match quality ... and PGI should publish the statistics when they have been processed whether they support their theory or not ... at least that will be the open and best way to engage the community on these issues.