32 replies to this topic

[Solahma]

So by now, most people are comfortable saying they understand how Elo works, that is not the point of this thread nor is weight matching or weightclass matching. I'm trying to make a presentation for a video covering how the MM works, but i'm stuck on one basic thing: how are teams actually formed at the start?

For now, I'll just keep things simple and discuss solo queue. What starts the MM process? I select my Griffin-1N then hit the launch button, what does MM do with me? There are many assumptions I have read across many threads, but none of them have a definitive answer to detail this process. A lot of assumptions and contradictions with no official response.

Let's look at it from this perspective: absolutely no one is online. Not a single player. I am the FIRST person online and click launch. What does MM do? Does MM put aside this 12 or 24 slot space to fill? A second person comes online, where are they placed? Does MM put him on my team? Does MM form a 12 person group first THEN tries to match a comparable 12 person group to fight against? If this is the case, does MM then try to match team 1's average Elo by plugging people into team 2 until they are close (also taking into account the weight classes)? Once there are 24 players matched up, the game launches, and the next player to hit "launch" starts the next group of 12 or 24?

OR does MM put the second player on the opposite team as the closest (only) match to my weight and Elo? Now it's a 1v1 matchup and MM is looking for the remaining 11 players for each side. If there are many people online, what does MM do next after there is a player on each team? Does MM try to find players that are close to their Elo while still trying to match weightclasses? This seems much more complicated and less likely.

Now, if there are 24 people who hit launch 1 at a time, based on the first theory, it would put the first 12 people on team 1 and last 12 people on team 2. This obviously cannot be the case because of weight class balancing, unless they wait long enough? I'm assuming MM could NEVER put 12 of the same weight class on the same team, thus it will continue looking for the remaining weights to meet the minimum criteria for a team, the others will be left in queue until team 1 is formed.

Now let's look at 48 players. The first 12 people to launch get put into team 1, then MM looks at the remaining 36 people in the queue to do what? How is the second team formed at this point? Does it compare on a player-to-player level trying to match their Elo? Or does it average team 1's Elo and start plugging in players that would also average to the same Elo average as team 1?

OR do the 12 first people to launch get compared to see if they're of similar Elo to be matched on the same team, waiting for potentially more people to launch and become candidates to match that first person's Elo?

I know, many question, questions that I haven't seen specifically answered, questions that need answering.

Edited by Solahma, 04 May 2015 - 11:07 AM.

[Elizander]

Get two to four high elo players who mostly play group queue. Fill the rest with cadets. Go?

[Solahma]

Elizander, on 04 May 2015 - 11:05 AM, said:

Get two to four high elo players who mostly play group queue. Fill the rest with cadets. Go?

That doesn't explain HOW those players are put into the team though. MM obviously has a queue, a line, first-come-first-serve with some minimum criteria needed for a team composition (weight classes). You have 4 assaults, 4 heavy, and 4 mediums looking for a match. They have various Elo, but they are the only 12 people searching, are they put together into Team 1 until more players come online to form Team 2. OR do they start getting split up based on weight and Elo? SO 1 Assault high Elo on Team 1, 1 Assault high Elo on Team 2. Then what? does it put the higher Elo people in first, matched against eachother? does it look at weight first or second? Will it put a low Elo Assault on Team 1 then a mid Elo Assault on Team 2? or will it put a High Elo Heavy on Team 1 and a High Elo Medium on Team 2?

see what I'm asking?

[Elizander]

Since the game has release valves for both elo and weight class, those are most if a ailable but elo and 3/3/3/3 are rules that were made to be broken in the event that there are no good matches. I think it tries to find equal elo/weight class then loosens up to the closest equivalent over time. If it cannot find two equal elo assaults it might look for two heavies. It has to work in weight class pairs or imbalance ensues which would explain why some games have only 1 assault or 0 light mechs.

[Solahma]

Elizander, on 04 May 2015 - 11:20 AM, said:

It has to work in weight class pairs or imbalance ensues which would explain why some games have only 1 assault or 0 light mechs.

This is not an issue with the first theory that a full team is formed first, then the opposing team second. MM could then see the composition of Team 1, then try to match each weight class as well as average? Elo.

[Lostdragon]

PGI has never given the level of detail you seem to be looking for. They have said the MM starts with a target ELO (which I would guess is based on the first player(s) it finds) then it can expand the acceptable ELO as time goes by if it does not find enough players.

I doubt they will ever give the exact formula.

[Solahma]

Lostdragon, on 04 May 2015 - 11:25 AM, said:

PGI has never given the level of detail you seem to be looking for. They have said the MM starts with a target ELO (which I would guess is based on the first player(s) it finds) then it can expand the acceptable ELO as time goes by if it does not find enough players.

I doubt they will ever give the exact formula.

Exactly, they have never actually said how this part of the process works, I've gone back and re-read their official posts on MM and Elo, but nothing there confirms how an entire team of 12 is formed.

An exact formula is not what I want to understand, i just want to know if both teams are created placing players on each team, one at a time, or if one team is created then matched by another team afterward.

They already have their formula public for how the Elo matching works, or at least the probability formula and how you gain/lose Elo rank

Edited by Solahma, 04 May 2015 - 11:29 AM.

[Elizander]

Solahma, on 04 May 2015 - 11:22 AM, said:

This is not an issue with the first theory that a full team is formed first, then the opposing team second. MM could then see the composition of Team 1, then try to match each weight class as well as average? Elo.

If it made team 1 first and for some reason there is no other mech of a specific weight class available the system might get stuck because I do not think itever launched without a 1:1 weight class format.

Typing on phone sux

[DaZur]

Simple... "Say Solohma, watch me pull some teammates out my hat... Presto!"

Edited by DaZur, 04 May 2015 - 11:32 AM.

[Solahma]

Elizander, on 04 May 2015 - 11:27 AM, said:

If it made team 1 first and for some reason there is no other mech of a specific weight class available the system might get stuck because I do not think itever launched without a 1:1 weight class format.

Well, I've seen plenty of non 1:1 games. At least in the group queue, worst i've seen lately was one team had 3 lights (mlx, mlx, lct) and 3 assaults (aws, vct, gar) our team had NO lights and 4 DWFs... the rest was also nasty comparison, but that's the short story.

Elizander, on 04 May 2015 - 11:27 AM, said:

Typing on phone sux

ikr

[Davers]

There was a thread called 'Paging Karl Berg' in Off Topic that gave a lot more insight into the MM, but I can't seem to find it anymore (or find Karl Berg for that matter).

But basically, the MM starts with the oldest player in the launch queue and builds the game around him. It initially starts looking with a +/- 50 Elo spread and constantly updates/recreates the teams until it fills all the slots. If it can't do that in 2 minutes, it slowly starts to expand the parameters. Around the 5 minute mark it reaches it's furthest spread of 1000 Elo, which is basically ignoring Elo except in the absolute extremes- But the worst players will still only be matched with average players, and the best players will not be matched with anything lower than average players. Not that it really matters, since a 1000 Elo difference still only gives less than 1% chance of winning. Thankfully something like 90% of matches are found within 3.5 minutes. I don't know at what point the MM gives up on class/weight balancing, whether before or after it expands the Elo range.

[Solahma]

Davers, on 04 May 2015 - 11:44 AM, said:

There was a thread called 'Paging Karl Berg' in Off Topic that gave a lot more insight into the MM

would be great to see that discussion...

based on your explanation, or recollection of Karl's explanation, it starts with ONE person, then starts to fill the slots based on that person's Elo. Now how does it fill the slots? sound like this method would be matching one person onto each team, back and forth, until all slots are filled.

[Elizander]

Davers, on 04 May 2015 - 11:44 AM, said:

There was a thread called 'Paging Karl Berg' in Off Topic that gave a lot more insight into the MM, but I can't seem to find it anymore (or find Karl Berg for that matter).

But basically, the MM starts with the oldest player in the launch queue and builds the game around him. It initially starts looking with a +/- 50 Elo spread and constantly updates/recreates the teams until it fills all the slots. If it can't do that in 2 minutes, it slowly starts to expand the parameters. Around the 5 minute mark it reaches it's furthest spread of 1000 Elo, which is basically ignoring Elo except in the absolute extremes- But the worst players will still only be matched with average players, and the best players will not be matched with anything lower than average players. Not that it really matters, since a 1000 Elo difference still only gives less than 1% chance of winning. Thankfully something like 90% of matches are found within 3.5 minutes. I don't know at what point the MM gives up on class/weight balancing, whether before or after it expands the Elo range.

So at the end of the day we are mostly just tools used to build one person's fantasy of giant robot battles. I feel less special now. I'll always be asking each time I drop "Was this game made for me or am I just another pawn in someone else's world?"

[Davers]

Solahma, on 04 May 2015 - 11:50 AM, said:

would be great to see that discussion...

based on your explanation, or recollection of Karl's explanation, it starts with ONE person, then starts to fill the slots based on that person's Elo. Now how does it fill the slots? sound like this method would be matching one person onto each team, back and forth, until all slots are filled.

It does start with one person, but it builds both teams simultaneously, as well as breaking up the teams and reforming them if it will make a better spread.

[Bilbo]

Solahma, on 04 May 2015 - 11:50 AM, said:

would be great to see that discussion...

based on your explanation, or recollection of Karl's explanation, it starts with ONE person, then starts to fill the slots based on that person's Elo. Now how does it fill the slots? sound like this method would be matching one person onto each team, back and forth, until all slots are filled.

It's all buried in here:
http://mwomercs.com/...courtesy-phone/

[Davers]

Bilbo, on 04 May 2015 - 11:56 AM, said:

It's all buried in here:
http://mwomercs.com/...courtesy-phone/

Where did you find that? LOL I must have expanded the topics 3x. Still no idea why this isn't stickied somewhere.

[Solahma]

Davers, on 04 May 2015 - 11:52 AM, said:

It does start with one person, but it builds both teams simultaneously, as well as breaking up the teams and reforming them if it will make a better spread.

That's the complicated part, so it starts putting teams together then, half-way through looks back at the queue and is like "oh! that one looks better! Let's trade these two for those two!"? How many times does that happen? does it keep looking and replacing people until when? What if it's looking for 2 minutes, it has 10 people on each team then spots a better match, now were back down to 5v5 thus extending the MM time into the "increase Elo spread" situation? Now it's rearranged the team several time from better match-ups, and has run out of time to make a well-matched game and starts plugging in widely varying Elo scores, but scores that still match so teams are (averaged) within a small percentage?

[Bilbo]

Davers, on 04 May 2015 - 11:57 AM, said:

Where did you find that? LOL I must have expanded the topics 3x. Still no idea why this isn't stickied somewhere.

Next page, next page, next page...

[DaZur]

Elizander, on 04 May 2015 - 11:51 AM, said:

So at the end of the day we are mostly just tools used to build one person's fantasy of giant robot battles. I feel less special now. I'll always be asking each time I drop "Was this game made for me or am I just another pawn in someone else's world?"

Unless you are in fact patient-zero player-zero and you are the tootsie-roll center of the MM lollipop!

[Davers]

Solahma, on 04 May 2015 - 11:57 AM, said:

That's the complicated part, so it starts putting teams together then, half-way through looks back at the queue and is like "oh! that one looks better! Let's trade these two for those two!"? How many times does that happen? does it keep looking and replacing people until when? What if it's looking for 2 minutes, it has 10 people on each team then spots a better match, now were back down to 5v5 thus extending the MM time into the "increase Elo spread" situation? Now it's rearranged the team several time from better match-ups, and has run out of time to make a well-matched game and starts plugging in widely varying Elo scores, but scores that still match so teams are (averaged) within a small percentage?

Not sure when it decides 'This looks good enough' and launches the game. I imagine if it finds 24 people within the initial spread right away it will go straight to the match. It only expands when it can't fill the queue. All I know is when I drop in a medium mech I find a match in under 10 seconds.