198 replies to this topic

[Karl Streiger]

HiasRGB, on 09 October 2014 - 04:24 AM, said:

BV is no answer for Playerskill

BV is the ability of your Mech - the ELO rating is the ability of yourself + some white noise from the team.

Of course there is much dynamic - if a newb plays from the first moment in a pro team - his elo shouldn't rise - if i have understand Mischiefs statement - because the team elo have to be bigger as the elo they fighting against.
so he fight for 10.000 games as a pro - already has a name - and after some time he drops the first time - finding himself in the deepest pit of average players and newbs - because his ELO is still the same - of course if he is as good as he should be - he may turn defeats into a victory.

Question is - in 12 vs 12 games does a single player has much influence? I had the example were the failure of one condems the team to loose. But what about the other direction?
I know that in CB before ECM erased all target designations, i was able to command a PUG team of 8 and guide them to victory - but what about 12 vs 12?

I know that I have changed a battle on Conquest - but maybe it shouldn't have been a loosing trip when i had made another decision....

[Joseph Mallan]

Willard Phule, on 09 October 2014 - 04:27 AM, said:

I guess that my point is that the dynamic is different between the two queues. The Solo queue....where, technically, more people play (especially new players) has been ignored for so long now that it's virtually unplayable most of the time.

It'd be nice if the solo queue would get a little love.

But how do you love randomly? Seriously even if the matches were selected within 5 points Slaughters would happen all the time. Once the tides start to turn it will become a decisive victory, UNLESS teamwork! Which hardly happens in PUG.

[DaZur]

Karl Streiger, on 09 October 2014 - 04:39 AM, said:

Question is - in 12 vs 12 games does a single player has much influence? I had the example were the failure of one condemns the team to loose. But what about the other direction?

Quick answer "yes".

Long: In any dynamic competitive environment it takes more effort to manifest a positive than to absorb a negative... In short it's the equivalent of swimming against the current.

So "yes" door swings both ways but it's harder to push than to pull...

Edited by DaZur, 09 October 2014 - 05:11 AM.

[H I A S]

Karl Streiger, on 09 October 2014 - 04:39 AM, said:

BV is the ability of your Mech - the ELO rating is the ability of yourself + some white noise from the team.

Of course there is much dynamic - if a newb plays from the first moment in a pro team - his elo shouldn't rise - if i have understand Mischiefs statement - because the team elo have to be bigger as the elo they fighting against.
so he fight for 10.000 games as a pro - already has a name - and after some time he drops the first time - finding himself in the deepest pit of average players and newbs - because his ELO is still the same - of course if he is as good as he should be - he may turn defeats into a victory.

Question is - in 12 vs 12 games does a single player has much influence? I had the example were the failure of one condems the team to loose. But what about the other direction?
I know that in CB before ECM erased all target designations, i was able to command a PUG team of 8 and guide them to victory - but what about 12 vs 12?

I know that I have changed a battle on Conquest - but maybe it shouldn't have been a loosing trip when i had made another decision....

When you performe well, your Team will take the win. You do it constantly, your W/L rise up.

[Karl Streiger]

DaZur, on 09 October 2014 - 05:11 AM, said:

[/size]
Quick answer "yes".

Long: In any dynamic competitive environment it takes more effort to manifest a positive than to absorb a negative... In short it's the equivalent of swimming against the current.

So "yes" door swings both ways but it's harder to push than to pull...

If so - i don't see a problem with ELO.

If one or two player in a team are as good as they believe they are they will turn the tide and win.
All int that group Team get a better ELO.

Now its unlikely that those two players will drop with the same persons again.

All players found themselves in the "winner" team - in the next game.
While both "good" players are able to keep winning, there ELO stays at this level.

The other players may loose and there ELO is settled back to the level as before.
Of course the gap isn't that big - so maybe they drop again after some battles - and a difference of 50 in the PUGs between both teams isn't that much. So rising and falling ELO values should happen often. Because 50 means that both team should be almost equal

Edited by Karl Streiger, 09 October 2014 - 05:22 AM.

[Jonny Taco]

ELO and excessive match making are designed for the hand hold generation of gamers and "participation" trophy kiddies. Sadly egomania has become the norm with today's younger gamers and apparently must be catered to at all costs.

Essentially PGI needs to stop listening to the hordes of under hive baddies that would rather spend time complaining about game play mechanics that they do not understand rather than actively trying to get better.

I'd still rather have private servers and a server lobby... And no, a private match being behind a pay wall with a 2 premium requirement does not count... You're asking us to essentially pay for a feature that is FAR LESS intuitive than 15+ year old game browsers.... It may work on the slightly more gaming ignorant youngsters, as many of them don't have any idea what they have been missing but most of us who have been at it for the past couple decades known that elo and excessive MM have actually made things far worse in terms of a players ability to control who they play with and where they play.

The current game finding method just screams minimum viable product... Too many companies trying to chase after the methods of giants and in the process they have normalized the entire industry.

Edited by lartfor, 09 October 2014 - 05:30 AM.

[Willard Phule]

Joseph Mallan, on 09 October 2014 - 04:48 AM, said:

But how do you love randomly? Seriously even if the matches were selected within 5 points Slaughters would happen all the time. Once the tides start to turn it will become a decisive victory, UNLESS teamwork! Which hardly happens in PUG.

No, but in the PUG, you can tell if you're going to win or lose before the match even starts.

The new "meta" (if you want to call it that) is LRM/ECM combinations. The team with the most LRM boats covered by ECM wins. You can tell how many ECM units you've got at the beginning of the match. If they're Spiders and Ravens, then odds are good they're "Elite snipers" and won't be helping the team at all. Or, if they do try, they walk in front of the DW while it's cutting loose.

Which is sort of my point. In the Group Queue, you've at least got people that are used to trying to be a team. In the solo queue, you're lucky if you have a common language between half your team....and even then, most of them are new players that won't follow instructions anyway. They rush to the first red triangle like lemmings, chase the lights with assaults and then cry that they got ate by LRMs.

[Joseph Mallan]

Willard Phule, on 09 October 2014 - 05:36 AM, said:

No, but in the PUG, you can tell if you're going to win or lose before the match even starts.

The new "meta" (if you want to call it that) is LRM/ECM combinations. The team with the most LRM boats covered by ECM wins. You can tell how many ECM units you've got at the beginning of the match. If they're Spiders and Ravens, then odds are good they're "Elite snipers" and won't be helping the team at all. Or, if they do try, they walk in front of the DW while it's cutting loose.

Which is sort of my point. In the Group Queue, you've at least got people that are used to trying to be a team. In the solo queue, you're lucky if you have a common language between half your team....and even then, most of them are new players that won't follow instructions anyway. They rush to the first red triangle like lemmings, chase the lights with assaults and then cry that they got ate by LRMs.

Sounds like strategy is winning the day in PUG Phule. Do you want there to be less team work in a team game? Also match maker gives you Luck of the draw. For more control the team que is better.

Pick
Up
Game

Is random against random. Make the most of what you have. But the best team always wins in the end.

[KHETTI]

The Match Maker needs binned full stop, its currently the sole reason MWO can't retain players.
Just come out of a game where 70% of my team were running around in 3rd person, under-tonned aswell, against some very good players from various units.
MM makes this game very very un-fun, and un-fun games don't do well!.

Balanced games, no MM fixing games to garner a desired result(and yes this is exactly what it does).

[Fire and Salt]

Does a single player have an impact in a 12v12 game?

Yes. did anyone read my post?
By starting a new account and therefore having average elo again, I was able to win about 20 if my first 25 matches. This was solo queue, and I had this large influence with only a trial mech, despite only being 1 person of the 24 involved.

Remove ELO, and I expect that I will pull off a 5:1 win ratio in the solo queue. And I now have the data to back that up.



My impact on the outcome was obvious from even a small sample size.


You guys need to look up 'law of large numbers'. Those players who are scoring 100 damage when you do 800 aren't dodging anything. ELO will converge on their actual skill, just due to the fact that their team will always have a scrub on it, while you only occasionally get a scrub.

[Tombstoner]

Diablobo, on 08 October 2014 - 08:40 PM, said:

Apart from white getting the first move, chess is an extremely balanced game.

I can fix that, just have both players write down there opening moves and poof both people go first and then white moves.
better yet do that for all moves and you have perfect balance. Who cares about 1500 years of play testing.

This isn't TT chess its a computer chess program simulation of real chess, no need to follow the rules exactly as long as the game play feels good. Move your queen more then 3 times in a row and you loose a turn from ghost heat. cause we all know the queen is OP and you have to announce a turn in advance and charge up the rook before you can move it.

See i just fixed chess. now its perfectly balanced for match making.

In short MM cant take into account all possible permutations in players or equipment.

[Lily from animove]

lartfor, on 09 October 2014 - 05:20 AM, said:

ELO and excessive match making are designed for the hand hold generation of gamers and "participation" trophy kiddies. Sadly egomania has become the norm with today's younger gamers and apparently must be catered to at all costs.

this is stupid marketinwise.

bakc int he das, there were hardly any games. make those games brutal skill vs skill without weighting and oyu run out of customers, because people play what they have fun with. But this way you can't run any MMO todays where hundrets of MMO are sharing the same market. This is not: play either unreal or counterstrike. its play one of hundrets.The game you are dsigning would be faster dead than you could analyse the data to figure out why it is dying.

Edited by Lily from animove, 09 October 2014 - 06:07 AM.

[Robert blackseven Sohn]

lartfor, on 09 October 2014 - 05:20 AM, said:

ELO and excessive match making are designed for the hand hold generation of gamers and "participation" trophy kiddies. Sadly egomania has become the norm with today's younger gamers and apparently must be catered to at all costs.

...

The current game finding method just screams minimum viable product... Too many companies trying to chase after the methods of giants and in the process they have normalized the entire industry.

On the flip side of the "participation trophy" line people who agree with you like to trot out so often is that you guys want rewards (C-bills and stats) for beating on people who effectively can't fight back. You're like the NBA team rolling into town and destroying the varsity high school team. There's a reason no one would applaud that.

Also, minimum viable product would be a "matchmaker" that just throws 24 people into a match, divides them in half (only worrying about preserving teams), and throws them into a match versus each other. You know, how it was during closed Beta (well with 16, but same idea.) Was fun for the "elites" farming the noobs, I guess.

[Jon Phoenix]

Alistair Winter, on 08 October 2014 - 09:38 PM, said:

So how will this Battle Value system help when I'm playing the game with a group of friends who are new to MWO, and we get matched up against a House of Lords 12-man group?

How will it stop the pug-stomping we saw in Beta?

Did you really think this through?

If we had an open (public) lobby system, players could see that 12-man opfor and then leave the lobby if they don't want to play against them. The MM system is cumbersome, unbalanced, and just plain silly. It's fine for a beta test scenario but not for a released game.

Lobbies at least allow players to match up their own games. Even the private lobby system that PGI has now is a step up if they just opened them up to everyone. It would then be better if there were casual lobbies vs. competitive. The casual lobbies would not earn XP or C-bill rewards for playing, just like the private lobbies now. The competitive lobbies would earn rewards. It would then be best to have player rankings based on stats and achievements, like battle.net and other game systems. Competitive lobbies could restrict players based on ranks, so that people know they're only going to play people of certain experience and overall skill level.

(Casual/competitive system suggestion attributed to Elengil, btw.)

-Jon (has been suggesting a lobby system for a long time)

Edited by Jon Phoenix, 09 October 2014 - 06:36 AM.

[DaZur]

Karl Streiger, on 09 October 2014 - 05:19 AM, said:

If one or two player in a team are as good as they believe they are they will turn the tide and win.

If MW:O was a world of constants this would be true... Problem is between, BV, tonnage and individual skill/experience the rest of the team are variable of chaos.... thus even if the two players efforts are heroic, there are just too many weighted variable that can effectively throw a wrench in that premise...

The largest influence in match play is the effect of compounded force strength, and it's effect on match results. In short, for every player lost through combat attrition the opposing teams force strength increases exponentially.

This is why when a team, regardless of it's Elo composition loses several players in quick succession it quickly manifest in a roflstomp. There's an undocumented tipping-point of roughly 2-to-4 player differential where once exceeded (i.e. 5+ ) it's quite literally impossible for the losing side to win and statistically this usually results in an inequitable stomp.

[Kirkland Langue]

It's funny - the OP may very well be right.

But it's a waste of bandwidth to even discuss it. All you are going to do is distract our idiot developers from getting anything done during their work days - and you aren't going to make a change. The argument about ELO was had on every MOBA in existence, and yet they all came back to the belief that ELO is the best available method.

[Karl Streiger]

Jon Phoenix, on 09 October 2014 - 06:36 AM, said:

Lobbies at least allow players to match up their own games. Even the private lobby system that PGI has now is a step up if they just opened them up to everyone. It would then be better if there were casual lobbies vs. competitive. The casual lobbies would not earn XP or C-bill rewards for playing, just like the private lobbies now. The competitive lobbies would earn rewards. It would then be best to have player rankings based on stats and achievements, like battle.net and other game systems. Competitive lobbies could restrict players based on ranks, so that people know they're only going to play people of certain experience and overall skill level.

Lobbby for casuals - that are new to the game - and they won't earn anything? Sounds really bad for a F2P.
The "competive" game on the other hand - with different ranks - is this in any kind different to the current matchmaker - with the difference that you see the other guys before you hit launch?

DaZur, on 09 October 2014 - 06:37 AM, said:

This is why when a team, regardless of it's Elo composition loses several players in quick succession it quickly manifest in a roflstomp. There's an undocumented tipping-point of roughly 2-to-4 player differential where once exceeded (i.e. 5+ ) it's quite literally impossible for the losing side to win and statistically this usually results in an inequitable stomp.

I know its the first rule you learn in TableTop.

[Ghogiel]

The only thing that bothers me about the Elo MM in MWO is the net it can cast to grab players can be as wide as a 1000 point gap.

I imagine most people are fine as they'll sit somewhere nearer the middle of the Elo bell curve and have a greater majority of the players pretty close to their own Elo. It doesn't often work like that if you're on either end of the scale though...

right now there isn't anything to be done about it. Matches take like 4mins to find every game as is.

Edited by Ghogiel, 09 October 2014 - 06:54 AM.

[DaZur]

Ghogiel, on 09 October 2014 - 06:52 AM, said:

The only thing that bothers me about the Elo MM in MWO is the net it can cast to grab players can be as wide as a 1000 point gap.

I imagine most people are fine as they'll sit somewhere nearer the middle of the Elo bell curve and have a greater majority of the players pretty close to their own Elo. It doesn't often work like that if you're on either end of the scale though...

right now there isn't anything to be done about it. Matches take like 4mins to find every game as is.

In fairness... Regardless of the elected MM algorithm, there is always going to be a cap at both polar extremes and those caps are not unique to Elo as a MM solution.

[LORD ORION]

Fire and Salt, on 08 October 2014 - 11:28 PM, said:

Actually, ELO works quite well in this game - perhaps too well *more on that later.

Every few days I seem to see someone suggesting a different way of calculating player skill, rather than basing it off of wins and losses.

The most common argument seems to be of the form:
"I did 900 damage, but we lost - why should my ELO go down."
or the converse:
"Someone does 10 damage but their team wins, why should their ELO go up"



Well, what the matchmaker is trying to make a game where each team has a fairly equal chance of winning.
Guess what predicts future wins best: Past wins. That's right, I said it.

Given a large enough sample size, actual wins will predict future wins better than any ridiculously complex formula that you could even dream of building.

Consider the badass NARC mech, who can turn the tide of a battle while dealing a mere 100 damage. But it's not just the NARC assists, its more. This little badass narcs the biggest threat. Not just the most dangerous mech, or the most dangerous pilot - but a true reading of all the factors. Its not the (NARC assist damage) * (Enemy Player ELO rating) ratio, its better than that. He knows that even the most notorious badass of a pilot may not be the biggest threat when they are in a build not suited to the map. He knows enemy psychology too. Enemy players fall off the hill in fear, almost as if the narc was stuck directly to their fragile egos.
Now tell me, how the hell are you going to calculate this based on his average damage of a couple hundred per match?
I'll tell you how - he wins all the time. Hes so damn good that LRM noobs break their own personal best just by virtue of his presence.
You can tell because whenever he is around, the red team seems to crumble and fail.

What about the pilot that boldly charges in and causes chaos behind enemy lines. Sure, her Jenner often gets toasted early on, and she is seldom the last one alive... but how many mechs get shot in the back by the assault mechs on her team, because they were fixated on the jenner instead of the 500 tons of mechs just behind a ridge.
Is she the same as the other pilot who averages the same 350 a game by hiding until then end and cleaning up damaged mechs? How do you quantify her skill?
Maybe is the fact that any team with her on it is that much more likely to win.

What about that basass sniper who does clean damage, and only clean damage? You know this guy. He's the one who shoots the leg off your stormcrow with 3 back to back gauss shots. Funny thing is, he doesn't finish you. He's above that, and he knows it. There are plenty of scrubs on the team with bad aim that will be totally sufficient to finish off a 'crow with a broken wing. He's never killed a stick mech unless its the only target in sight, either, except that ******* that was spotting him. Is he not as good as the bullet-hose wielding pilot next to him, who spreads damage all over and overheats to kill an unarmed 'mech while another enemy decimates his nearby teammate? They score similar damage, and have similar numbers of kills and deaths, even though the other player steals his kills and hides to protect his KDR. How can you mathematically separate these pilots?
You can tell easily. The Sniper... HE WINS!





Now granted, if your first match is a 900 pointer and you lose, it would probably be safe to say that you are better than someone who won with 100. But this is an extremely temporary phenomenon which basically disappears once there is a sufficient sample size.

Something like this could probably be implemented to help slightly speed the convergence of a newly joined player to their actual ELO score. But it could only make things worse for us seasoned vets with 100s of games in each weight class.

Same thing for weight classes - nothing predicts assault performance like assault performance, but for the 2.0 win/loss ratio heavy pilot, it would probably be safe to assume that his first match in an assault 'mech will be a little more impressive than the average pilots first foray into the 80+ ton range.

But get 100 assault samples under the pilots belt, and you will have an even better idea. Certainly it is doubtful that the assault 'Mech tourney champion will be an inept noob in any chassis, but light mechs might not be his thing.







Unfortuately, unified ELO across a weight class is the cause to the issue where good players feel that they NEED to take "carry mechs".
ELO is expecting them to be a major force in the game... unfortunately, when your ELO is based on a Banshee, bad things might happen to your team when you step down to an awesome.

I know I feel this one when I try to pilot my X5. ELO, let me assure you that your expectations for me are perhaps a bit high.

There is, however, a reason that ELO is tracked for 4 classes rather than for each chassis. It helps resolve the problem of needing a large-ish sample size for a bunch of different mechs, which would add unwanted variation. Also, consider the case of a new pilot who starts off in a Shadowhawk, and then puts it away for awhile while grinding his X5. By the time he goes back to the Shadowhawk, not only is he far more skilled, but his shadowhawk actually has a lower ELO than his X5. All the sudden he thinks he has found the greatest shadowhawk build ever... until ELO catches up.

The best solution to this would perhaps be to implement some sort of modifier to ELO based on chassis weight relative to the weight class.

The purpose is to acknowlege that the following is not actually a fair matchup:

Team A: (Heavy ELO 1300 pilot in a Cataphract + Heavy ELO 500 pilot in a Dragon) total 130 tons, 1800 ELO
vs.
Team B: (Heavy ELO 500 pilot in a Cataphract + Heavy ELO 1300 pilot in a Dragon) total 130 tons, 1800 ELO

Team A is going to win more often, because the Cataphract is more likely to be an influential mech.


But what if the dragon multiplied elo by .8 since it is a lightweight in its size bracket?

Team A: (Heavy ELO 1300 pilot in a Cataphract + Heavy ELO 500 pilot in a Dragon adjusted to ) total 130 tons, 1700 ADJUSTED ELO
vs.
Team B: (Heavy ELO 500 pilot in a Cataphract + Heavy ELO 1300 pilot in a Dragon) total 130 tons, 1540 ADJUSTED ELO

Now that the matchmaker is actually making a better guess - it may realize that there is actually a closer match available.







Another thing is that people view 12-0 games as beling a blatant indicator of a matchmaker failure.
I just want to point out: I have been in a 12 man and wiped another team 12-0, and we get matched against them again in the very next match and it comes down to a 1v1 duel at the end. MWO is no respawn, failures cascade.

Also, in the group queue there is the additional concern that the "closest match" may not be that close at all.







And here comes the *

ELO has actually been bouncing around in my head a lot in the last few days.

I signed up for the last tournament, with no intention of trying to win. I had a lot of stuff to do over the weekend, but I signed up just for the chance to earn 10million cbills.
Getting 20 qualifying wins actually took me quite some time. Well, I was toying around in my Cicada X5 which is by no means a mdium class tournament winner... and I tried some CTF-4X builds thatI wanted to test... jumped over to a Dire for a few games and then played a decent amount in a Timberwolf just so I could be sure to get my 20 qualifying games.
It wasn't terribly difficult to get qualifying wins but it took maybe 10 total hours of gaming over the weekend... I had a lot of good games that ended in a loss...



On monday night I decided to try and use the tourney to grind some cbills to spend on a blood officer account (which had a total of 0 games so far) FYI, if you see a blood officer account, they are basically used by clans that conduct anonymous trial duels, etc. because MWO does not allow you to hide names, even in private lobbies. There are actually a lot of these floating around... I know because the first one I tried to sign up for was actually taken! (And no, it wasnt something obvious like Blood Officer 007)

Here is a timeline of events for that night as best as I can recall:
Game 1: Trial Nova - WIN - see a bunch of players I never heard of. Get the Hat Trick Acheivement.
Game 2: Trial Nova - WIN - see a bunch of players I never heard of
Game 3: Trial Nova - WIN - see a bunch of players I never heard of
Game 4: Trial Nova - WIN - see a bunch of players I never heard of. I actually ot blowed up on this one. Spectate an Ember pilot who doesn't seem to know how to use his arms. He machine guns a kitfox, but he's lasering the dirt. Again. And again. LOL.
Game 5: Trial Nova - WIN - see maybe a few players I have seen with my main account, but no-one of 'legenday' status
Game 6: Trial Nova - WIN - see maybe a few players I have seen with my main account, but no-one of 'legenday' status
Game 7: Trial Nova - WIN - see maybe a few players I have seen with my main account, but no-one of 'legenday' status
Game 8: Trial Nova - WIN - see maybe a few players I have seen with my main account, but no-one of 'legenday' status
Game 9: Trial Nova - WIN - see maybe a few players I have seen with my main account, but no-one of 'legenday' status
Game 10: Trial Nova - WIN - see a player who actually got 1st in this tourney
Game 11: Trial Nova - WIN - by this point I have gotten 7 qualifying wins, see first Lord
Game 12: Trial Nova - I think this was the first loss. Abandon my attempt to get knight errant (25 games) with all wins. Resume BANZAI style of gameplay. (True story about Fire and Salt... if the team doesn't push, I get bored and go and die alone. Save 5 minute sandoffs for league play. Yea, I'm undisiplied, sue me.)
...
Game ~15: See a few players that are epicly skilled. See first SJR. Feel a lot better about the guy I saw in game 10. Acually, the playerset looks like one that I may actually see with my main account.
Game ~16: More Noobs - OK, so I clearly don't have as high of an ELO as I do on my main account, but I atleast have as high of an ELO as someone I might actually see from my main account.
...
Game ~18: Get the bad company acheivement. Yep, still facing occasional teams of noobs who can't aim, but I am now occasionally seeing high ELO players (Who are probably thinking: oh, look, scrubs! upon looking at the player list. Scrubs being relative, of course.)
...
Game ~21: Trial Nova - WIN - by this point I have gotten around 10 qualifying wins, and my total losses are now up to 3 or 4
Game ~22: Buy A Nova
Game ~25: Pimp Nova out, at this point I probably have 11ish qualifying wins.
...
Game ~27: Forget that I switched back to the trial nova. Alphastrike on my very first shot of the game. Die before powering up with about 75 damage (which was all done to a summoners CT, who was noobishly standing still. But who am I to judge LOL.)
...
Game ~29: Remember mid-game that I am aupposed to use an ERLL to farm assists
Game ~30: Qualifying win. Use ERLL to farm assists. 2k 10a or something like that.
Game ~31: Qualifying win. Use ERLL to farm assists.
...
Game ~33: Qualifying win. Use ERLL to farm assists.
...
Game ~35: Qualifying win. Use ERLL to farm assists. Realize that I cracked the top 100 in mediums in slightly less than 3 hours of gameplay. Apologies to anyone I knocked down a slot... Vow to complain about ELOs impact on tournaments. Decide that I will start farming cbills with a different mech if I get to close to the top 15. Don't want to knock someone off the bord who isn't in easy mode.
Game ~35: Make noob mistake. Get pwned. Screw it, go to bed, feeling just a little dirty. Ended up with 15 qualifying wins... mostly in a trial mech. Finished in 65th place for a measly 3:00 of gameplay (in game time) with a score of just over 1900





My conclusion is that ELO actually converges reasonably quickly. For the case of tourneys, however, it is unreasonably slow. I knew that tourneys were slightly unfair to high ELO players, but I didn't realize it was so blatant.

For the sake of tourneys, all players that opted in need to get thrown in one big bin together. Form the matches such that the best players are mixed in with the noobs as far as the 24 total players go and THEN try to balance by ELO.

Basically what we have now is:
Total ELO 2000 team vs Total ELO 2000, noobs all around
and
Total ELO 8000 team vs Total ELO 8000, vets all around
This is BAD

For tournaments those same 48 players need to be suffled so that its:
Total ELO 5000 team vs Total ELO 5000, each team is a mix of noobs alongside vets
and
Total ELO 5000 team vs Total ELO 5000, each team is a mix of noobs alongside vets
This is GOOD

I think it would be WAAAAY to easy to use a new account to win a tourney. Especially if you bought one of the mastery packs and a small cbill package. Imagine starting that first game with a fully kitted out machine with a MC arty strike (so as to be equal to the cbill one that requires grinding)

Also, I tried to win games even when I knew I wasnt going to get a good match score. I won my first 11 games, but surely I could have slowed my ELO progression if I wanted to be sheisty, by deliberately doing poorly as soon as I realized I wasn't going to output a tournament winning game.








Tournaments aside, ELO seems to work quite well. I think the matchmaker fails are frequently cascading failures due to a no respawn game, as well as simple cases of not enough suitable players available at a given time. ELO is not to blame as much as people think it is.

You wrote a whole bunch of stuff that sounds smart, but is actually really ******* stupid when you consider the statistical sample size.

How to explain... ah yes...
Imagine yourself cheering for a hockley team that has random players from little league all the way up to the NHL. Sometimes the team has 3 goalies on the ice, sometimes 6 defenseman.

Any position the team is in for standings means nothing (which is the W/L/T points)