972 replies to this topic

[0rionsbane]

Well this is a sorry state of affairs.

While I would like to see better matchmaking by using a larget sample size in queues.
I don't want to be forced into a game mode that I dont want to play, namley conquest.

I am sure many other people will not like that feature too, and catering to even a majority of players who support that change will lose players who reject it. In other words your going to lose players with this decision, and that reduces the percieved impact a lot.

If you want to really increase matchmaker balance you will find ways to attract players. your current buisness model is desinged to attract hardcore gamers to buy a 10-30$ virtual mech using the noveltey of the original mechwarrior franchise. However it is balanced around attracting players with littile or no knowlege of the game. This disparity is a major source of discouragment for both playebases.

If you want to keep and attract people with novelty you need to rebalance the game closer to tabletop, add CW last year, and bring back former players with some kind of refund. But if you want to attract a larger player base you need to do just one thing, lower prices for mc on all mechs to something about 20-30% lower than your current mastery packs. This should be priced to allow a casual gamer to buy a set of 3 mechs, master them and enjoy learning the game for under 10$ as a light pilot. Currently its around 30$, or 20 with mastery packs, this is to high especally considering the game is lacking features that will keep casual players.

However one major flaw in your current pricing is your mech bay, you should actually charge a bit more for that. many times that is the cash wall to keep people from going pure ftp. And limiting mech bays but making mechs cheaper increases the likleyhood of a player cashing out of a particular mech and trying a different one, instead of getting massive warehouses of 80+ mechs. You also should increase c bill earnings by at least 50%, why because it increases reward factor in playing your game which has littile else to work toward at this moment, its the only value added in this game currently.

TLDR: Creating more splits in the playerbase only further reduces your playerbase and end up unbalancing matchmaking due to a lack of players.

Edited by 0rionsbane, 08 October 2014 - 01:28 AM.

[jozkhan]

Once again this is a deviously worded Poll that this time suggests we cant have ELO improvements without the loss of player choice which is absurd.

Why are these polls always stacked like this in their wording?

[AeusDeif]

Tsuki Ookami vas Mugunghwa, on 08 October 2014 - 01:07 AM, said:

Darth Futuza made some points on that:

• Resource Locations should be randomly placed, right now it is always the same. If it were generated dynamically, it would increase the enjoyability a lot more.

This single change could have a tremendously positive effect on shifting up gameplay and keeping maps 'fresh' so new parts are played.

obviously a completely random location for resources would be problematic, but you could have a lot of presets for possible locations which you test out as viable. Then maybe test out which combinations of locations are viable -- you wouldn't want all of them to be next to one team. then whatever is viable becomes randomly selected, or you could just load them as versions of the map (which you don't know which version until you look at the map during match)

another way to balance that would be to apply the same semi-randomization to Drops -- and this could effect Every game mode. I'm not sure if you could change bases on assault but you could still change drops. again, set up viable drop locations, test which ones are viable in combination with eachother (and with different conquest cap locations in conquest mode). You wouldn't want one team dropping very far apart while another is close together, but if you have them both dropping far apart, or both close together, so no unfair advantage, and in varied locations regardless, it could change where the main fight occurs, especially on larger maps.

Tsuki Ookami vas Mugunghwa, on 08 October 2014 - 01:07 AM, said:

next let us choose which mech to drop with PER GAMEMODE.

this is a good idea -- perhaps being able to load mechs up in the bay and select which mode they'd be used for, or select the mech to drop in once you know the mode and then click 'ready'

with this in place, I would feel more comfortable dropping in 'any' mode or in the match voting mode being debated. part of the issue is having a mech optimized for one game mode or map, dropped into the opposite.

[NeonKnight]

I have to ask....How valid is a poll if by the time I vote, the answers have been changed since the original poll????

[Sneaky Shadow Stalker]

this is silly, why break the essence of having a choice in game modes, if you get put into one you don't want to play, all in the name of closer elo? jeeze, if you didn't want to give us a choice, then why did you give us one at all? this garbage needs to go, go back to guaranteed game mode of your choice!!

[sabujo]

Votes yes. I find ELO balance more important than my choice on game mode. I'm tired to share games with complete newbies that do not know what they are doing, and at the same time I get lords, eglar, sean lang, b33f. Don't know about the level of this guys, but I am reckon they certainly are above average. It makes no sense to continue with that discrepancy.

[Karenai]

Again, please add "I do not care" and "I do not know" options. Yes or no questions are for agressive cross examinations in court, not for opinion polls.

[blow torch]

this hurts! i want a better elo on gamemodes i prefer.
thx!

[Kojin]

I'm not voting as I generally play any mode and like the variety and quick queue times, but I want to make a suggestion which would allow people to opt in to a 'fuzzy' selection idea.

The idea is to allow for 'Yes', 'Maybe' and 'No' match type selections. 'No' would mean you definitely will not be queued for that match type, a 'Maybe' would be weighted at 1 "vote" and a 'Yes' would be weighted at 2 "votes"

[Carthoo]

No profiles will help to Daishi in Conquest.

What I still do not understand, why is forced conquest necessary for "improved" matchmaker. Which tried to persuade me to leave MWO and uninstall it - 5 games in row my teams didnt move from spawn point, or got to the center spawn point and camped there till slaughtered. If thats improvement, than Im the next pope.

[Tsuki Ookami vas Mugunghwa]

i also wonder: why was there never a poll for the other way around?


i mean (assuming i understand PGIs logic right) waiting time, freedom of choice and balance of teams are 3 factors which more less contradict one another.

in the old system Choice was high, time was so-so and balance was also not good (i admit i too am not fond of the current incarnation of ELO, so i question the current meaning of balance).

now choice is low, but Time and balance went up a lot.

then what if we dump time? what about a poll where we could decide to wait longer (even longer than in the old model) to get into match with the MECH I WANT in GAMEMODE I WANT with an ENEMY I CAN BEAT (or at least have a truly fair chance of beating)

ain't that appealing to anyone?

[ebea51]

Keep the new system Paul...

Not only is it FAIRER but its also more interesting because it can give you more modes to drop in without you intending it.

If players want the option of 100% controlling what game mode they want to play in, that can be PREMIUM feature.

Besides, it hasn't even been 48 hours and people are already jumping to conclusions without even giving it a weeks worth of play because they are out of their comfort zone.

Regarding people giving preferences to Skirmish and Assault an getting dropped on Conquest:
People SHOULD learn to play Conquest instead of turning the brain off and just shooting at anything with red triangle above it. My pug experience, from closed beta to now is that most players cant even handle the concept of defending their base in ASSAULT let alone capturing, holding, defending and recapturing 5 resource points in CONQUEST.

... time to learn how to play objectives OTHER the kill everything in sight people.


+10
Keep the new system (or at least see how I goes for 2-4 weeks and make a decision).

Edited by ebea51, 08 October 2014 - 01:54 AM.

[somanov]

I initially voted yes. After reading some of the comments in this thread i changed my vote to no. Personally I have no problem with any of the game modes and I think every change that improves match quality helps. However I now see the point of the people voting no. There must be a better way to fix matchmaking and we should probably all vote "no" to indicate to PGI that they should keep looking for a better solution.

[Manwue]

MWO is a game. I play games to have fun. I have a hard day, I come online for 3-4 drops. perhaps 5. Last thing I want is to load a map, walk around for 5 minutes and win (or loose) without having fired a single shot. That is not fun for me. Sure, it is fun for some other people. They can find like-minded people and play with eachother. I can find like-minded people and play with them. But if I come to play for the small time window I have and find myself forced in a game for someone else's enjoyment, I am alt-tabbing to farmville. If some players have trouble finding like-minded people to play with, they should not forcibly reqruit me for their fun.
As for the perceived ELO matchmaking change, that has everything to do about winning, and nothing to do about playing. I would rather loose more matches and play in all of them, than win half of them and play in half of them as well.

Yours, Manwue.

[Chrithu]

Tsuki Ookami vas Mugunghwa, on 08 October 2014 - 01:50 AM, said:

i also wonder: why was there never a poll for the other way around?


i mean (assuming i understand PGIs logic right) waiting time, freedom of choice and balance of teams are 3 factors which more less contradict one another.

in the old system Choice was high, time was so-so and balance was also not good (i admit i too am not fond of the current incarnation of ELO, so i question the current meaning of balance).

now choice is low, but Time and balance went up a lot.

then what if we dump time? what about a poll where we could decide to wait longer (even longer than in the old model) to get into match with the MECH I WANT in GAMEMODE I WANT with an ENEMY I CAN BEAT (or at least have a truly fair chance of beating)

ain't that appealing to anyone?

I'd certainly be willing to also try that. Problem is that long wait times probably are not very good for new player retention. Players that are unaware of the inner workings of the MM and the factors it needs to balance will have little understaning for having to wait 4+ minutes on a match.

And even for players in the know the impact of matching must be enough to pretty much guarantee matches that last longer than the wait time for them not to come crying to the forums.

I truely believe anyways that if this here also fails the current elo based matchmaker is beyond the ability to truely improve and PGI really should consider to put another MM redo high on priority for the time AFTER CW Phase 2 to make it based on a loadout specific battle value which includes weight class and elo.

[Kamies]

Simple solution to keep everyone happy.

Go back to old MM but add a choice to be matched only by ELO score.

[ ] Assault
[ ] Skirmish
[ ] Conquest
[ ] Only by ELO

Clickin ELO would disable other options.

People who want balanced matches could choose to be matched only by their ELO score and have no control over gamemode.

People who want to choose their gamemode would still benefit of those people who use "Only by ELO" option and in the worst case their matchmaking would be just the same as it was before this patch.

edit. Oh right... Clicking all 3 on (Assault, Skirmish, Conquest) = Only by ELO. I am stupid.

Edited by Kamies, 08 October 2014 - 02:49 AM.

[Tsuki Ookami vas Mugunghwa]

ebea51, on 08 October 2014 - 01:52 AM, said:

Regarding people giving preferences to Skirmish and Assault an getting dropped on Conquest:
People SHOULD learn to play Conquest instead of turning the brain off and just shooting at anything with red triangle above it. My pug experience, from closed beta to now is that most players cant even handle the concept of defending their base in ASSAULT let alone capturing, holding, defending and recapturing 5 resource points in CONQUEST.

... time to learn how to play objectives OTHER the kill everything in sight people.

are you even aware that are just about as many players who tended to play nearly exclusively Conquest and also get shoved in modes they didn't like. they too specialized on their favorite mode and fitted their mechs towards it and then land on skirmish and are faced with a lance of Dires they must take out.

this system f*cks everyone who specializes/favors one single gamemode. no matter which one

Edited by Tsuki Ookami vas Mugunghwa, 08 October 2014 - 02:00 AM.

[Hades Trooper]

some of have no issue with which style we play, if it givs me matches based around more my own ELO then i''m all for it

[Kilo 40]

I predict that 24 hours from now we'll have tons of threads about how PGI listens to the forums too much.

[Mercy Killing]

I'd rather wait as long as it takes to get a match type that I picked rather than be shoved into something I don't want to play and will yolo so I can leave it.