1142 replies to this topic

[Josef Koba]

I keep seeing this thread pop up so I figured I might as well take a look at it. I'm glad the discussion is ongoing. As much as I love this game, and despite all the money I've given over in support and for my own enjoyment, I am growing increasingly frustrated. Matches are not interesting anymore for me. Over the last two days I've dropped about thirty times. Sure, this is probably low compared to some, but that's what I've managed after taking a couple weeks off due to work. Guess how many times I've been on the winning side. Five. Five times in thirty games. It's hard to stay jazzed about playing when you feel a sense of accomplishment 16% of the time.

"But wait, Koba," you'll say, "you can still have fun even if you lose!" Normally, I'd agree. But it's the nature of these losses that are perhaps most frustrating. Routinely matches end 12-3 or worse. The most common number seems to be 12-2. Of the five wins I was a part of, we won 12-2, 12-1, 12-0, 12-4, and 12-9. I'm not exactly carrying my weight anymore - I used to be quite good at this game; a solid performer - but a look at the match scores of the losing side gives the appearance of a bunch of T-ball players facing the second coming of the 1927 Yankees. Sub-100 damage, no damage, Dire Wolves with 50 damage. These are quite frequently legitimate stomps. It isn't necessarily a stomp when the 11 remaining mechs on the winning side are all in various states of damage, and the losing team mostly contributed. But it is a stomp when the losing team, as a whole, myself included, barely scratched the OPFOR's paint.

In my mind, the matchmaker and PSR are in a state of absolute shambles. Perhaps taken as a whole it is successful (though based on the 50 pages here, I suspect not), but from my view it is atrocious. I am a hairs breadth from tier 2, not that such matters one bit. But I am no longer remotely competitive at this game. Not even a little. I would personally rather see the MM tied far closer to individual performance. If I score 900 damage (which still happens despite my diminished skills), and kill five enemy, I want my PSR to reflect that. But I can also score 98 damage and be on the winning side and my rating goes up... Why? I hate that. I don't' like that my rating is derived in large part from wins or losses. In that way, it's not much different from the previous iteration of the MM formula. Wins and losses are weighed far, far too much for my tastes. If my team wins and I sucked, well, I didn't carry hard enough and over time my PSR should reflect that kind of play. But if I'm carrying hard and still losing, well, I think it should reflect that too.

In terms of the queues, well, it used to be that I played exclusively with my one lance mate. We had a lot of fun together over the years. We didn't always win, but we didn't always lose either. Then they grouped us in with the large groups and we lost constantly. It wasn't fun anymore. Now I drop almost exclusively solo. Guess what? Still not all that fun for the above reasons. Not to mention I don't really get to play with my friend anymore. One would think that dropping together would make us more competitive - we've played long enough together. But all it does is make us less so. We score better and do better when we play by ourselves. That's weird.

I can certainly see the argument against reintroducing two mans to the solo queue. I get it. I just wish upon wish that there was a happy medium somewhere. We can't compete as one part of six two mans dropping against the comp team 12 mans.

Such is life. If I move on, I will still have all the wonderful moments MWO has given me (like when I killed the entire team by myself back when we had 8 man drops), and I will definitely miss it. I just don't derive as much fun as I used to from this game, and the matchmaker environment is part of the reason.

[The Smoking Man]

It's been a couple weeks now, something changed in the matching for group queue. If I'm solo, I score higher and get more kills, when I'm placed in group queue (of same tier) I'm barely pulling 200-300 damage. And some will say, that's enough damage.. it's not compared to the 1k to 1200 damage rounds just two weeks ago. So if I actually want to "get better" I need to play solo? If I play with my friends I'm going to drop against a team that can apparently one shot my dire from across the map. At least it seems this way when I'm trying to rationalize a 56 pt damage game, or an 80 pt damage game.... wtf.

It's a little hard to judge your skill rating when your damage is going from 1,200+ pts a round, to 50-80 pts. Same mechs, same pilot.

[Wintersdark]

Locke2, on 24 March 2016 - 10:20 AM, said:

I see a hybrid system being implemented:

- 1 to 6 man group
- 7 to 9 man group
- 10 to 12 man group

Since most players PUG in small groups or solo queue, the "1 to 6" option is most versatile. This lets any number of smaller teams get into queue. No restrictions are placed.

Once a group his 7 to 9 players it will only be matched in queue with other teams of 7-9 man groups. The same happens for 10-12 man groups. This way only teams play other teams.

Uhhh, right.

Ok.

So you've got a 9 man team. You queue in the group queue. You MUST be matched with a team of 3.

You can't take small groups out of the queue that big groups are in, because teams must total 12.

Further, 2x6 players are not disadvantaged vs. 1x9+1x3.

You don't want 6x2 vs. 1x12 of course, but at least 6x2 can bring 1200 tons vs, what, 720?

The Smoking Man, on 16 April 2016 - 04:57 AM, said:

It's been a couple weeks now, something changed in the matching for group queue. If I'm solo, I score higher and get more kills, when I'm placed in group queue (of same tier) I'm barely pulling 200-300 damage. And some will say, that's enough damage.. it's not compared to the 1k to 1200 damage rounds just two weeks ago. So if I actually want to "get better" I need to play solo? If I play with my friends I'm going to drop against a team that can apparently one shot my dire from across the map. At least it seems this way when I'm trying to rationalize a 56 pt damage game, or an 80 pt damage game.... wtf.

It's a little hard to judge your skill rating when your damage is going from 1,200+ pts a round, to 50-80 pts. Same mechs, same pilot.

Group queue difficulty is random. Small group play in the group queue is MWO hard mode as a result.

This is because making matches, the MM needs to find teams of the right sizes to stick together, and the group queue is much lower pop than the solo queue. So, PSR tends to go out the window to make a match at all, particularly for larger groups.

[DeathlyEyes]

Group queue drops need to be built by assembling similar PSR players. Once similar PSR players/group sizes are assembled the teams should be formed. From what I understand the matchmaker forms one team then tries to match another team against it. This leads to a lot of mismatches where if 1 group were swapped from one team to the other it would be even.

[The Wolfpack75]

PSR needs to stop being so heavily based on Wins and Losses. Don't rate the pilot on whether or not his team did their job, rate the pilot on whether he did his job! I know they want to encourage teamwork and that is great! Do it in OTHER ways.

What other ways?
Bonuses and penalties!
For example a good bonus for everyone:
Concentrated Fire Bonus (more people shooting a target more cbills/xp)
And a penalty:
Out of position (something that penalizes the people who wander off)

And clean up PSR so it looks at damage dealt, kills, assists, etc and rates the skill of the pilot.

[Veev]

I did not bother reading the 48 pages of back and forth, PGI has been pushing for a 4 man drop que for a while. I dont care about that aspect, it is going to happen eventually or PGI wont be happy.
I do care about the 1/1/1/1, this is one of the worst ideas I have seen. 2/2/2/2 would work. But not 1/1/1/1. If I am running wing man with someone it is sometimes fun to actually run the same mech or weight class.

[mad kat]

Still being a glutton for punishment loosing the vast majority of games then every once in a while you practically sleep walk through the red team. Either way game skill differences are so polar and drastically inconsistent that i can probably say in the last six months i've had about five close, truly close matches. Breaking into t2 has made things worse but the pug queue is just so odd. Our team gets lurmed to death by assault mechs hiding 800m away with not a spotter in sight yet the lurms keep coming. When the enemy push our team just evaporate. Then i decide to join the lurms and not one soul can press 'R', not a sod notices UAV's everyone either splits up and goes to do their own thing or death ball huddle together and try and run away shooting through each other in the process. Then you get the players that couldn't hit the side of an aircraft hanger from inside.

Its not just that though. When you have a bad day or are derping yourself and within one or two games things are just going **** up you may as well just quit as most games are won / lost by 2-3 players a team.

Basically PSR introduction is the single worst thing that has happened in this game. The previous MM was far more supreme.

Edited by mad kat, 29 April 2016 - 02:12 PM.

[Ashram]

I just want a pug only queue. No teamers, no group.

[Solarise]

What is after tier 1 .

[Helios Norlund]

i think since scouting missions
invasion games need lot longer to start because many people queue up in scouting

maybe consider making scouting not simultaneous to invasion but instead happen at start of planet attack more often and then only random a scouting game pop up (like 3 invasion 1 scouting) and not allow endless queue up players for scouting and this way have not enough in invasion


i think solo players who didnt find into community warfare should be guided
to create their 4 mech dropdeck and the normal quick play button should also
have a option to opt-in for add them as freelancer into community warefare

not filled and forever needed to launch invasion drops is the biggest issue i see at the moment

Edited by Helios Norlund, 01 May 2016 - 02:16 AM.

[Gigashot]

So wow, reading these comments this is going to be a very unpopular opinion but:

Please don't cap the group size. I've been there many times where our team is a patchwork of solos, duos, and the other team is a 12 man unit and we get smashed. But one of the biggest draws of this game for my group of friends is that we could actually play together with more than 4 or 5 of us. There's incentive to recruit our other friends to play because they can play with us.

I can see from the comments that a lot of people are solo/duo players and obviously want it reduced to 4 man parties. But it's a team game. If we can't play as a team then what's the point. I'd rather get smashed by a organized group playing MWO, than have to switch over to League or CS:GO because our 5th friend got on and the MWO party cap is now 4. There has got to be a better way.

Edited by Gigashot, 03 May 2016 - 07:41 AM.

[Helios Norlund]

i think the place for bigger groups is community warfare

i would have no problem at all if non comunity warfare suport no group at all and just single player

after all its nothing else that gather some basic practice for move a mech

and skill them up

later everyone should play community warfare

[Kael Posavatz]

I seldom drop the public group queue, and so shall reserve my comments to exclude this mode.


Public Queue-solo:

This is currently about as good as it has ever been. I remember the days of 8v8 when one team almost always had a four-person group coordinating on TeamSpeak or the like, and the matches, quite honestly, were very, very bad. It wasn't helped that the only options for those who wanted to duel were to either go often on their own and 'teamkill', or to find fourteen other people and try to synch 8-man teams. (Going to 12-man teams didn't help this, but PGI finally gave us private lobbies)

There were various ways PGI tried to address matchmaking: implementing ELO, then individual ELOs for each weight class, finally PSR. There have been various incremental improvements along the way. Some were actual improvements, others...not so much. For myself I think PSR is still weighted towards win/loss and needs to take into account individual performance (KMD, Scouting, etc.) more.

On the whole my experience in the public games is pretty good. Not outstanding, but pretty good. And many of my 'bad' games are probably the fault of the players: An Atlas peeks around a corner and gets lit up by eight enemy mechs, or two mechs off scouting find the whole enemy team. You know, the kind of thing that puts your team at an early deficit that makes too many just sort of give up and rush in, a sort of 'get it over with' mentality.


Faction Warfare-scouting
This is kind of meh. The weight restrictions make it very interesting (something I haven't seen outside of private lobbies). The nature of the win condition means that any reasonably fast mech (not, say, the Adder or rbie) with good armor can run in and hit the dropzone at the last moment for the scouting team...but that's a feature, or defect, in the game mode rather than the match up of the teams.

Frankly, these tend to be short enough in duration that the really bad match ups aren't as noticeable. Also, because it is faction warfare even most of those without a unit seem to have a headset or at least their speakers set up to hear voip which is a big plus. The same can't be said for quick-play, but the up-coming Command Wheel should help there.

That said, there have been, and continue to be, some horrifically bad match-ups the only upside of which is a 0-4 loss isn't quite so demoralizing as a 0-12 loss. Fortunately these queues seem to be active enough, and the games short enough, that even a very minimalist sorting system would go a long way.


Faction Warfare-Invasion

Playing Faction Warfare honestly reminds me of the bad old days in beta with premade teams from well-practiced units using 'skittles' for target practice all the while. Moving the defensive LZs was a badly needed change, but moving the gens and bunkering them only made the objectives too difficult for most pug-teams to attack (even against pug defenders), and still too difficult for many pugs to have a reasonable chance of holding against an organized team.

Frankly I'm not sure what you can do about this. Russ has said in his townhalls that MW:O doesn't have they player population to accept a repeat of the entirely divorced solo/group queues like there is in the public game. I don't know if anyone's taken a look at limited queues (say, a 'solo' queue that featured one group of no more than four mechs on each team, and a 'group' queue with all pre-mades, and groups of 2-4 would be available for both queues). On the other hand there seemed to be enough surplus population playing FW that an entirely new game-mode could be inserted that very specifically pulls people away from invasion.

From what I've heard from those who played it, the non-unit invasion matches were very good if you could get them. But I wouldn't know personally since I am in a unit, I like being in a unit, and I didn't want to disadvantage my unit by leaving and them needing to pay to bring me back in.

I'm hoping that a lot of the bad games I currently am seeing will go away with the rescale/requirk pass that will be coming in a few months, but I'd be lying if I said that I think this will fix most problems.

So basically, FW is sort of what we were promised at launch, but the matches are what we had in beta and from what I'm seeing they aren't going to get any better.

Edited by Kael Posavatz, 11 May 2016 - 12:32 PM.

[Kokytus]

I think one thing that would help increase satisfaction with FW would be to have the ghost drop time decrease for each successive ghost drop on a particular planet. People aren't going to be very motivated to join an empty queue knowing that there's like a half hour wait before they even get to have a ghost drop. If that ghost drop time would decay, people would queue up to take advantage of the chance to push that scout or invasion win% up for their faction, and then other people would see that there are actually people in the queue, causing a snowball effect. I think the net result would be a more dynamic border, with planets changing hands more often, and shorter waits in the queue, and more of both ghost drops and contested drops.

[Biclor Moban]

Solarise, on 01 May 2016 - 12:28 AM, said:

What is after tier 1 .

You go back to Tier 5 and now you're in a hover tank.

You should know at least that if you are Tier 1.

Edited by Biclor Moban, 14 May 2016 - 08:52 PM.

[mad kat]

Three days, about 20 odd matches, two wins and two kills. The introduction of PSR is the single worst change this game has ever seen. The weird thing is my PSR is still climbing.

The imbalance of teams is like night and day. One team your with all bunch up behind you and huddle together while the other team gives each other space sends a few mechs to flank while the big hitters push. And the game is decided within about two minutes.

The vast majority of pug matches are now decided in about three to four minutes.

Edited by mad kat, 16 May 2016 - 01:14 AM.

[Darth Futuza]

Goose, on 14 April 2016 - 05:51 PM, said:

What is this, your x and y axis have no labels?

[Randy Poffo]

Where matchmaking is going to get really important is Solaris. Solaris simply can't succeed without some kind of more sophisticated ELO system, entirely separate from the PSR thing - something that takes into account quality of opponent and adjusts gains and losses more dynamically. The bright side is that it should be easier to do this more accurately with the (presumably) smaller drop sizes. And honestly if they get that right, then everyone should be able to live with a sloppy matchmaking system for QP.

Depending on how things work out it could indirectly people who want to play together in QP casually as well by drawing some of the bigger unit groups that mostly populate QP away from that mode.

[Karl Streiger]

Randy Poffo, on 29 May 2016 - 11:14 AM, said:

Where matchmaking is going to get really important is Solaris. Solaris simply can't succeed without some kind of more sophisticated ELO system, entirely separate from the PSR thing - something that takes into account quality of opponent and adjusts gains and losses more dynamically. The bright side is that it should be easier to do this more accurately with the (presumably) smaller drop sizes. And honestly if they get that right, then everyone should be able to live with a sloppy matchmaking system for QP.

Depending on how things work out it could indirectly people who want to play together in QP casually as well by drawing some of the bigger unit groups that mostly populate QP away from that mode.

For an S7 mode, the matchmaking would be accurate simply because you have fewer variables and those you can even reduce further by the right game modes.
And the choice of game mode don't have to be the players choice but the load balancing algo of the server.

Lets say you drop in an Gargoyle:

Options:

• Leaderboard (matching another Gargoyle)
  
• Assault Championship
  
• Heavy/Assault Championship
  
• Free For All Championship
  
• True Lance Championship

Of course, you shouldn't even choose 1o1;2o2;4o4 - again there should be algorithm handling to manage this.

---

We don't need a sloppy MM - not if you don't have any in FP and a different system in S7.
What we need are game modes that differ:

• QP - test you skills, create and alter Mechs without any consequences (no MM)
  
• FP - no MechLab - fixed Mechs - assignment based on Faction
  
• S7 - Mechlab available - bonus for using "sponsored" Mechs (ELO)
  
• each Mode can "bleed" into another one

[Captain Mittens]

The reason why you see 12:2 matches most often is not really because of a team stack, it's simply because due to the no-respawn and long TTK associated with MWO the game tends to quickly snowball.

If you boil it down to 2v1, the solo player would have be SIGNIFICANTLY better than the other 2 to have a hope of winning the fight. In an even skilled contest, chances are the solo player would be destroyed and one of the duos would be moderately damaged.

So if you expand this to a team, if a team gets an early lead or a pick on an out of position enemy it gives them a compounded benefit for the rest of the match. Additionally, matches are often decided by the position of both teams when the full fight starts. One team will be in a superior position and ALL of it's players will have an advantage against the other team.

Sometimes a good head shot, or a light turning a team around is enough to give a team a huge lead, and it just spirals from there.