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[Pineapple Salad]

Once again, I'm stuck in a rut. Trying all morning just to get my daily doubles. Close to 20 games already, with 2 wins. On top of that, one win didn't even count because my network disconnected mid-game.

This happens almost every time I get into a new mech and try to exp it out. It's enough for me to lose interest in the game for weeks.

Matchmaker might be broken, but that's not the only thing. The problem is made worse by progression system that puts way too much emphasis on winning. Maybe if I wasn't exping new mechs, I wouldn't even care about winning, only about having a good match. But the game doesn't let me do that.

So how could we change the game to get rid of the frustration caused by these loss streaks?

1. Separate solo and group Elo.

This should be obvious. Elo ranking only works if all the other variables are kept as close to constant as possible, and only thing changing is the player skill. Group play is not the same as solo play. Players that play a lot in large groups win a lot more, because they often face teams made of smaller groups with less coordination than a large premade group that coordinates actively over TS. (Ingame voip helps a bit with this). When a players like that go to solo queue, they often end up having to "carry" a team of much lower Elo ranked players, often against an average Elo ranked team. This situation might work, if it wasn't for the two false assumptions that are made in this scenario. A) The player is playing a fully exped mech that he/she is competitive in and The player's Elo rank is not artificially inflated as result of group play. If either of these assumptions are not met, the matchmaker is going to end up skewed, which in turn results in these huge loss streaks with one or two wins in between before the Elo normalizes again.

2. Remove win bonuses from the game

This obviously does not solve the problem, but it would help tremendously with the symptoms. The biggest cause of frustration, at least for me, is the need to get those double XPs to exp efficiently. When that win just isn't coming, or when that first victory is a bad game for you personally, it feels like you're just wasting time. The first victory bonus is there to give the players incentive to come and play every day and give satisfaction when that first victory happens. But it can also have the exact opposite effect. When the requirement to win becomes the object of player frustration, a thing that lessens the enjoyment and satisfaction of playing the game, it needs to be get rid of. Instead, up the overall rewards by some, give some other rewards that keep people logging in each day, such as first match, first kill, first 500 damage match, etc. In general, I'd like to see a larger shift to rewarding player actions and skill rather than the dice roll that currently winning in the game is. The new reward system is already a step in the right direction.

3. Give a consolation prize to players that are on a losing streak

Yeah. Maybe give us the damn doubles after 5 losses or something? We tried, right?


Any thoughts?

[Kissamies]

The daily doubles sometimes cause obsessive behaviour in me when the win just doesn't come. A "shallower" version wouldn't require a win, but would simply give the bonus for the first time in day a mech is used. Sure it would be dissapointing if the bonus would be wasted on a bad game, but it would keep me from grinding through a loss streak and losing my nerves.

Initially, from the devs' point of view, it might seem like a good thing to make me play more and provide the server population, but grinding like this makes me tired of the game and leave it for weeks.