1142 replies to this topic

[IsaAurinkoinen]

1/1/1/1 for smaller groups compined solo opt in with group sizes 2-11 sounds good.

[skorpionet]

Kjudoon, on 04 September 2015 - 01:02 AM, said:

you did well and got into a higher tier. that's the probable conclusion. Ergo, better players, less fun, harder time.

uhm.. If I better understand PSR I play with 23 players of the same tier.... if I go into an highter tier I will play with better players in all teams? Right? How is possible to have 95% of losses? Or it's as ELO that MM wants put in a match a bad and a good team?

[Elizander]

I think you can do even teams like 2/4/8 or just 2/4.

If you want to maintain a 4 man group (no more, no less) then please make it easy for people to grab a random third/fourth person to join their team. Maybe a server-wide prompt stating some people are looking for groups, please check the whatever tool (never used the LFG tool, sorry).

Of course I'm not a group queue player so feel free to disregard my opinion.

[Kjudoon]

PFC Carsten, on 04 September 2015 - 01:05 AM, said:

Look again at the picture you quoted and you will see your conclusion is invalid.

Not that match. that's the result of getting better. Some of those names on that list who beat you are very good players. Congrats, you're no longer Tier 4 at worst, or you made it to Tier 2... Either way, welcome to your new reality.

[Kjudoon]

skorpionet, on 04 September 2015 - 01:08 AM, said:

uhm.. If I better understand PSR I play with 23 players of the same tier.... if I go into an highter tier I will play with better players in all teams? Right? How is possible to have 95% of losses? Or it's as ELO that MM wants put in a match a bad and a good team?

In theory, if they limited the Tiers to just the neighbors, yes. But they opened it up to +/- 2 tiers. So tier's 2 and 3 can get anyone. But if you are being balanced for tier 2, you can expect more tier 1 players, since they can face only tiers 3 and up.

And I doubt you're having 95% losses except in a losing run. And they happened to everyone and will continue to happen even under this.

[countTZT]

Hei, I like to drop with 3 Daishi, don't make me lose friends to decide who deserves the 100 Tons

[skorpionet]

Kjudoon, on 04 September 2015 - 01:28 AM, said:

In theory, if they limited the Tiers to just the neighbors, yes. But they opened it up to +/- 2 tiers. So tier's 2 and 3 can get anyone. But if you are being balanced for tier 2, you can expect more tier 1 players, since they can face only tiers 3 and up.

What?! "they opened it up to +/- 2 tiers. So tier's 2 and 3 can get anyone" What?! I Told: PSR is an huge lie.

Kjudoon, on 04 September 2015 - 01:28 AM, said:

And I doubt you're having 95% losses ...

Why are you doubtful?

Edited by skorpionet, 04 September 2015 - 01:57 AM.

[Tom Sawyer]

Russ

Going back to 4 man groups in my own small opinion is a bad idea,I appreciate PGI wanting to keep improving the game, However this is NOT call of duty or other rapid run and gun.

This is a game with big stompy bots. Big stompy bots that are supposed to work together with scouts scouting, mediums hunting scouts, heavies and assaults forming the lines and walls of battle.

12 man groups often allow players that WANT to play together to do so. the 3/3/3/3 forces players into these roles.

Thank you for taking the time to respond to us in this thread and hopefully a good compromise can be reached to keep this game alive.

[Lily from animove]

PhoenixFire55, on 03 September 2015 - 01:52 PM, said:

Oooook ...



BS.

Quality of the average match in solo queue is still p!ss poor. You still see one team with 2-3 guys doing all the work carrying 9 scrubs who barely know how to walk, while another team has 10-12 "average" players and proceeds to steamroll the former. Is that what you understand as a "quality balanced match"?



90% of people I've started playing this game with about 3 years ago left the game forever because you did exactly that once before already. NOBODY wants to choose which friends they want to play with and which friends they'll have to pass on. And NOBODY wants to be told he can't play his favorite mech simply because your stupid MM can't balance a match. You do that again, your already low population will become non-existant.

Honestly however, I don't even know why I bother replying at all. You never read your own official forum anyway. Over the span of 2.5 years since the "phase.1" of matchmaker came out there have been hundreds of suggestions on how to make it work properly, all of which were totally ignored.

it is not MM fault if the peopel choose wrogn emchs, if a team of 0 people is using 3 assaults, 3 heavies and 3 lights, how is MM trying to get 3 mediums into this? the only solution would be throwing the 3/3/3/ rule totally ut of the window, but this will just lead to even worse Matchups due to totaly broken weights fitting in.

So sry but from those 100 ideas, 90 probably won't work, and are just flawed from the entire basic concept and other 8 are with the current state of the game not feasable. At least unless you just want to accept that everoyne plays everyone just for creating a game. but this would realistically just make more and more bad matchups which in consequence would lead to people leaving the group queue.

Tom Sawyer, on 04 September 2015 - 01:59 AM, said:

Russ

Going back to 4 man groups in my own small opinion is a bad idea,I appreciate PGI wanting to keep improving the game, However this is NOT call of duty or other rapid run and gun.

This is a game with big stompy bots. Big stompy bots that are supposed to work together with scouts scouting, mediums hunting scouts, heavies and assaults forming the lines and walls of battle.

12 man groups often allow players that WANT to play together to do so. the 3/3/3/3 forces players into these roles.

Thank you for taking the time to respond to us in this thread and hopefully a good compromise can be reached to keep this game alive.

The question is how do you then make proper matches in the groupqueue? in the gep queue you have 2 mans, 3 mans 4 mans 5mans grouping up as well, and all of them do exactly lack what you said about 12 mans. actually up to 8 mans this would be the case. And so the MM will never ever be able to put up proper matches due to the lakc of what you described.

skorpionet, on 04 September 2015 - 01:00 AM, said:

Hi Russ,

how is possible with PSR in SOLO to play 15 games (and counting) and to win only one? How is possible a match like this:


... and so many stomps....

First days I was a big PSR fan but now.... what's happens? PGI revert back silently to ELO? PSR is bugged or is a lie?

it would be good to know on which daytime and with which selectors you queued up.
The MM allows T1's to face T3's and it allows T2's to see T5's. So when your selector only has access to a specific set of people available to be matched here, what do you want? wait 10 minutes to get only proper people? people would whine about how long it takes to get a match. Allow the vents to open to a lower tier/higher tier to take people from there to match and start a match, then people start to complain about imbalanced matches. Someoen will always whine, and the less population available, the higher the tier difference will be. Esecially conquest and assault are on many peoples list deactivated, so when you have set only one server active of 3 and then such a niche mode, even less suitable at this servers offtime, you will have a very unsuited amount of people getting matched with eachother. That is how it works, and its not broken, it is t make people not whine because having to wait too long. But many don'Tunderstand this.

Edited by Lily from animove, 04 September 2015 - 02:10 AM.

[PhoenixFire55]

Lily from animove, on 04 September 2015 - 02:01 AM, said:

it is not MM fault if the peopel choose wrogn emchs, if a team of 0 people is using 3 assaults, 3 heavies and 3 lights, how is MM trying to get 3 mediums into this? the only solution would be throwing the 3/3/3/ rule totally ut of the window, but this will just lead to even worse Matchups due to totaly broken weights fitting in.

MM treats Spider-5V the same way it does Firestarter-FS9-A. Your precious 1/1/1/1 solves nothing. If Elo or PSR values actually worked properly and did so for each mech variant separately, then you would never have any weight/class mismatch issues. That one simple change have been suggested a million times since day one of matchmaker.

Lily from animove, on 04 September 2015 - 02:01 AM, said:

So sry but from those 100 ideas, 90 probably won't work, and are just flawed from the entire basic concept and other 8 are with the current state of the game not feasable. At least unless you just want to accept that everoyne plays everyone just for creating a game. but this would realistically just make more and more bad matchups which in consequence would lead to people leaving the group queue.

So sorry, but from the ideas that are in consideration none will work for sure. The only thing that these ideas will achieve is solo queue becoming the only game mode. But of course, how can you even dare to not play solo in a team-based game. Pfft.

[Roger That]

Return to 4 mans only would be intolerable. Leave it alone and fix CW first.

[Kjudoon]

skorpionet, on 04 September 2015 - 01:56 AM, said:

What?! "they opened it up to +/- 2 tiers. So tier's 2 and 3 can get anyone" What?! I Told: PSR is an huge lie.



Why are you doubtful?

My worst run ever was like 48 of 50 with I think it was a 35 game losing streak in there, it was followed by almost a week long winning streak where I won almost as many as I lost. My w/l is always hovering around 50%. So, I'm not surprised, but do get very frustrated at long term losing streaks.

Roger That, on 04 September 2015 - 02:19 AM, said:

Return to 4 mans only would be intolerable. Leave it alone and fix CW first.

It's 2-4 man. Not just 4man. And forcing all 5+ groups into CW will help the population there.

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

I have not read any of the replies so far ... this is my unvarnished opinion.

For the long term health of the game, it needs to be done ... the group queue is a mess.

Unlimited group sizes has only one specific benefit ... it allows large groups of friends to get together and play the game and earn XP/CB while doing so. Before Community Warfare and private lobbies were options, I was all for unlimited group sizes. We need the ability to drop in large groups, but now there are options ... CW and Lobbies.

CW is dead right now, compared to a few months ago. Part of this is lack of real incentive to play, part of this is that no one is playing. CW will become much healthier if the groups of 5+ migrate there, but there's flexibility of faction in the group queue that you can't have (right now) in CW ... there should be a major Clan-vs-IS front where mixed-faction attackers and defenders can battle it out. It would be interesting if there was a "put us where ever you need us" queue for CW to simplify the match making.

Lobbies are awesome, but the biggest drawback is that you can't earn XP or CB there. I don't know if there's anything that can be done about that ... too much opportunity for farming.

1/1/1/1, I'm a little more skeptical about, but willing to see what happens ... especially if there's a "ranked queue" in the future.

I wouldn't mind if there was a reduced-rewards "wild west" queue, where anyone can bring whatever they want, in whatever group size they want, with the possibility of extremely long wait times.

Depending on how the new group queue turns out, you may not need a solo queue anymore ... just saying.

TL;DR: Do it. Hopefully big groups will migrate to CW.

[Skarlock]

Quote

- Shift back to a maximum group size of 4 or less.
- Each group needs to be created in a 1/1/1/1 fashion.

This will remove a significant amount of jig saw puzzles from the MM. Imagine no longer needing to deal with odd sized groups like 5, 7, or 9. This is helped further by all the smaller groups of 2 and 3 not being made up of primarily one weight class as is the case now where we see a group of 3 heavies.

This would be our first point of action. If we need to go further than we will look at the game modes.

A couple of notes.

1. A maximum group size of 4 still allows for odd groups. You can have a group of 3, which can only be matched with another group of 3. If you really want to remove the odd group size from the equation you must eliminate groups of 3 and force groups of 2 or 4.

2. Four man groups adhering to 1/1/1/1 will help but any group of 3 will throw a complete monkey wrench into the works because pretty much any group of 3 will probably either take an assault, a heavy, and a light or an assault, a heavy, and a medium. By the same token any 2 man group will probably be an assault and a heavy. As long as matchmaker doesn't care about this fact, wait times will be much faster, however, if it's trying hard to force more lights and mediums, everyone loses IMO because matchmaker is simply waiting for basically no reason. On the other hand though, the team with more 2 man groups will almost definitely have more assaults and heavies, which is probably bad.

3. If PSR was per mech, this wouldn't be as problematic. A lower skill level player in a lower tier assault can't carry as hard as a top tier player in a light they are infamously good with. Even an excellent pilot will have mechs that outperform and mechs that under perform relative to their skill level. If you just looked at the contributions a player makes during a game and don't care about tonnages as much, that would probably be far more balanced than forcing arbitrary weight classes first and player skill second. Player skill and performance should be primary, tonnage should be secondary and far less relevant. This would also allow top tier pilots to get faster matches by literally playing lower tier mechs, empowering players with more options and control about the quality and wait time of their matches.

4. Displaying PSR of pilots in your group would also probably be useful to groups. Perhaps if PGI had some kind of threshold warning players if their group PSR is too high for matchmaker to adequately handle easily, this would also be useful.

While I don't play group queue personally, I do watch a lot of streams of top tier players. I notice when players get bad matches, they complain a lot and it angers them, but when they DO NOT GET MATCHES PERIOD because the wait times are insanely long for single AND group queue, they stop playing. PGI, please understand that if the game isn't perfect, that's one thing. If you literally can't play the game because you spend more time staring at the search wheel than actually playing, that is strictly worse by a huge margin. Unhappy customers... Are still customers...

[Locabiosol]

Locabiosol, on 03 September 2015 - 11:52 PM, said:

We will have the BV system soon^™. This gives every Mech a numerical value for it's strength, wouldn't it? Great!
So let's assume a Metawhale get's 1000BV, a TDR 750BV, a Hunchback 500BV and a FS9 250BV.
Now give the group for every player who joins the group 500BV for the groups BV pool.
You want to drop a Whale in a 4 man? Great! Just sacrifice the 1000BV and go Dire, Hunch, 2x FS9. Go two TDR? 2xTDR + 2FS9. TDR + 2 Hunch + FS9...
This leaves you with a great way to restict 0/0/#/# style groups without taking away the option to do a Hunchbro drop (I would cry if we can not do this anymore ). The maximum amount of Whales would be 4 since four whales are 4000BV. This would leave you with 2000BV left for 8 guys wich would all have to take a FS9 then.
I mean the restrictions to weightclasses are dumb anyway. What's the difference between a Cicada and a Jenner anyway? 5 tons? This would automaticly boost the validity of low tonnage (assume lower BV) mechs in a given weight class.

I'd like to work on this a little more. What speaks against this?

• You may not be able to drop with two heavys in a two-man group. Solution could be to raise the BV pool for groups of less then 3 players.
  
• Both teams may have very different BV. This would be the same as in a weightclass system. MM could address this, though. Or to relax MM use an upper and lower BV limit for each group.
  
• One Group could troll MM by using low BV mechs only. Solution: give the group a lower limit for BV as upper limit, too.
  
• You want your 3 Daishi drop? Well, not gonna happen with 1/1/1/1, too.
  
• Loadouts etc. will not be accounted in BV. No big deal, since they aren't in any weightclass selective system as well. Anyways, PGI could probably account loadouts with a factor in BV aswell. This would be a bunch of work, though.

The good thing about BV + PSR Matchmaking over Weightclass + PSR Matchmaking would be, that the players take away load from the MM by matching the strength of their group by them selfs. With a upper-lower-limit BV system you'd allways get groups who fit to other groups regarding pure 'Mech strength. PSR is a different story.

Maybe I'm missing something really detremental here. I don't know. All I know is, that I think 1/1/1/1 would be really bad for smaller groups. This takes away so much freedom of 'Mech choices, it's incredible bad.

[DrRip]

Thx for the discussion @Russ.

I was very pleased as the groupsize limitations were loosened, but since then I realised why a lot of Games have set quite strong limitations to the group size.
Many players I know found small groups a long time ago more balanced, and this was also stated several times before.

Chimperator, on 03 September 2015 - 02:24 PM, said:

4 player groups are good for more intresting/close games but at the moment the queue times are the problem... 10 min searchtime is a no go!
I guess takeing away the possibility to choose game modes would be a good improvement, there is anyway no need to choose because they all similar / its all skirmish

xCico, on 03 September 2015 - 02:27 PM, said:

Go back to 4 only and 12 only, best matches were there, best balance was there, just bring it back!

And so do I, therefore I think a limitation of max. 4 players per group seems quite reasonable for me (could also live with just 2 and 4 player groups for the sake of the MM).
You could also bring back a 12v12 only queue (as also proposed by xCico), when your group drops there you know what to expect and this will be more fun, than a 12 man group is now.
I think for the sake of the most entertaining games with lowest number of stomps some sacrifices have to be made and if I can only play with max. 3 or 11 other friends, that’s OK for me, since there are further options (CW and the lobby) where groups of any size can drop. Of course CW in its current state is not a real solution, but that is another Topic on its own.

Only problem I see is the 1/1/1/1 restriction. This should be a 2/2/2/2 restriction or something similiar. When you drop in a group you typically want to play together which is difficult when you have to drop with an assault and a light mech in your party. I think it is not the "large group"-feature, but the "drop and play as a coordinated group"-feature which raises the fun.
For me the group size is not the most important topic, but the composition in terms of mechs/chassis which allows for a coordinated playstyle.

This was also discussed before by coe7, who also proposed an interesting idea to encourage lance style play:

coe7, on 03 September 2015 - 03:01 PM, said:

Queue search is lights or heavies, meaning that team of 4 must take 2 light and 2 medium or 2 heavy and 2 assault depending what group lance type they want to drop. Then show % of splits searching. So you would end up with situation where you only need to match 1 lance of the light group and 3 other lances can be from heavy set. Or wise versa depending on situation.

Match could be example 32lances of heavy mechs (2 heavy 2 assault x 2) and one set of light lance (2 light 2 medium) vs similar lance groups.

Sometimes you might even drop into games where you have 2 light lances and only one heavy lance. Or 3 heavy lances.

This will also encourage lance group play, lights and mediums play well together. Same for heavies and assaults. Group of 2-3-4 friends can choose what to drop and play wide selection of tactics within these two lance types, that allow more variety.

Problem with 1-1-1-1 is that, 1-1-1-1 can not play together in lance style. In my suggestion of 2/2/0/0 and 0/0/2/2 we allow light rushes, brawls, snipers, medium range, support lights, etc, etc work together. 1/1/1/1 split can not really work as lance is intended to work at high level of play. This would work great with tier setup as well.

If you want to push towards role warfare, 1-1-1-1 is not a lance play set on roles. Its individual effort of people doing what their tonnage allows while talking **** on TS about the workday or girl they met last night. =P

Ps. In group queue allow only server selection, no game mode selection.

I also would suggest to get rid of game mode selection

just my 2 cents

Rip

Edited by DrRip, 04 September 2015 - 03:15 AM.

[Taifune]

Suggestions:

• Minimum group size should be 4: bring at least a lance. That will also help bringing people to units. Effectively reduces number of possible group sizes from 10 to 8.
  
• Only allow Lore-Group sizes: 4 (lance), 5 (star), 10 (binary), 12 (company) - this would leave an additional 2 man for a binary, requiring something special, like a 'command group' of 2. - This effectively reduces the number of different group sizes from 10 to 5, reducing the jigsaw-puzzel-problem for the MM.
  
• Alternatively only allow even group sizes: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 (clans might complain). Effectively reduces number of different group sizes from 10 to 6.
  
• Or go for 4, 8, 12 to make it quiet simple, without omitting the larger group sizes completely.

Whatever group sizes you choose, do not go for 1/1/1/1 in smaller groups, because people would also like to play with say 2 Lights, 2 Mediums in a lance, as a lance itself has a role. Also, allow for bigger groups than 4, because this is one of the great things in MWO. Go e.g. for average tonnage:

Lets say for a 12 man group and 3/3/3/3 a maximum total tonnage of 795t is allowed now. So if you split the groups to smaller ones, they should be allowed to take the according fraction of it - whatever Mechs they choose... so a 4 man would have 265 t available, a 2 man 130 t (rounded down), etc. - and they should have a lower limit, so a 4 man group does not show up with 4 Locusts... for a 4 man group, the lower limit should be e.g. 150 t - the equivalent to 2x35t light mechs + 2x40t medium Mechs - so such a group would be forced to use mediums at least, too (maybe the actual value should be a bit higher though).

Maybe your new MWO-BV system will help here, too.

The essence of my post: please do not go from all group sizes allowed down to just one group size (lances only) allowed. You will overshoot your goal. Some variation (4, 8, 12 with 1/1/1/1; 2/2/2/2; 3/3/3/3, or just even numbers) will likely help the MM already significantly.

[Daelen Rottiger]

Let me get this straight..... So we are thinking about limiting options and restricting the players choice because the player base is so low that the MM has problems in creating balanced matches?

Where's the failure ?!

[Scandinavian Jawbreaker]

Daelen Rottiger, on 04 September 2015 - 03:14 AM, said:

Let me get this straight..... So we are thinking about limiting options and restricting the players choice because the player base is so low that the MM has problems in creating balanced matches?

Where's the failure ?!

It's not the playerbase. It's the insane amount of options mm has to handle in the group queue.

[Chemie]

if they go to only 4-mans in the "group queue", you might was well just combine the solo and group. There is no point splitting the queues with no real difference between them. The point of group queue was for units to drop together.