1142 replies to this topic

[whitelightshadow]

Here is an idea for CW balancing:

It is clear that there needs to be restrictions to faction group player numbers to balance the game out. If all the factions had the same number of players slots or contract slots you can get a more balanced game. Currently it is just overload one faction and bash the rest.

Below is the stats for the different factions as quoted for the Tukayyid battle:

Players By Faction:

• Davion: 1601
  
• Kurita: 1477
  
• Liao: 614
  
• Marik: 678
  
• Rasalhague: 1905
  
• Steiner: 1740
  
• ClanSmokeJaguar: 812
  
• ClanJadeFalcon: 1974
  
• ClanWolf: 2704
  
• ClanGhostBear: 1269

If the numbers are more balanced we will see more battles between factions instead of one faction just trashing all the others. Like, if you limit all faction to 1500 players per faction, then all factions need to have 1500 player before another 50 slots open up per faction.


So then once every 30 days you can apply to change faction, get on a waiting list, and if there is a slot available, you can switch.

Another advantage is then you can have players that is inactive for that 30 days removed from faction so active players can take their space. This will insure that players will have to play a certain amount of games to stay in the faction.

You can also set player ratio for Units vs Pugs in any faction this way.

You can create pro teams slots into different factions so that pro teams are not all in the same faction at the same way.

Edited by whitelightshadow, 14 December 2015 - 01:11 AM.

[Kjudoon]

Phase three i think is really going to hurt the faction hopping and payola game units have been doing if some of what the seak peak video is accurate. Pgi is going to have to get more hardnosed about loyalty points ror those who only show loyalty to whatever pays the best. A reputation system would be nice. Maybe thats included. I dunno.

Phase three i think is really going to hurt the faction hopping and payola game units have been doing if some of what the seak peak video is accurate. Pgi is going to have to get more hardnosed about loyalty points ror those who only show loyalty to whatever pays the best. A reputation system would be nice. Maybe thats included. I dunno.

[Event Horizon IX]

I have been playing since the servers went online and thus have experience every iteration of matchmaking.

I am Tier 2, I both PUG and drop with pre-mades. I have no issues with with the current match making system, good work.

[Dugra Dugrasson]

whitelightshadow, on 13 December 2015 - 10:55 PM, said:

Here is an idea for CW balancing:

. . .

Why not just scale contract rewards based on player population? Introduce significant rewards for Loyalists. The former encourages faction hopping for Merc units (to maximize C-Bill farm). The latter discourages faction hopping for Loyalist units (to maximize C-Bill farm).

Edited by nodebate, 14 December 2015 - 12:06 PM.

[jarien13]

Why not use some sort of battle value system that assigns a point value to each chassis and every weapon and engine and piece of equipment and point of armor and module and skill tree unlock?

These individual battle values then all get added together for the custom load-out of each mech.

If done right and monitored and tweaked as necessary (just the same as nerfs and buffs for weapons and quirks) this could potentially fully account for the individual customization of the game and still allow an acceptable tolerance range of team balance for any kind of drop, solo, group, pug, or otherwise.

Edited by jarien13, 14 December 2015 - 04:25 PM.

[Munkeyed]

As long as the topic of CW has been brought up, I wouldn't mind seeing loyalty points for successfully defending another factions planet. I'm not "faction hopping" and I have no intention to, but why not be able to build loyalty slowly, I don't mean in-game match loyalty, but after victory points.

[RatataBanana]

Event Horizon IX, on 14 December 2015 - 11:10 AM, said:

I have been playing since the servers went online and thus have experience every iteration of matchmaking.

I am Tier 2, I both PUG and drop with pre-mades. I have no issues with with the current match making system, good work.

Well it is good for you. With my friend, 2 of us, we just stopped playing together as we were always against well organized teams, when we teamed up. The 2 of us... So each time, we had an organized opponent full of group members. We were T4 that time, newbies here. It ruined our joy. We agreed that MWO punishes those very few, who are not in any team and just want to play together. Never played together ever since...

For me, MM is very frustrating sometimes. I'm T3 now and I get picked into some serious pug groups against such players who stomp us all the time. 12-4 is the best I had today. Sometimes we do the same, if I get into a team who can move together... I would't call MM a good one here. WT isn't that unbalanced and does not punish regular players if they team up. Since I went to T3, I curse the MM. Cannot tell you when I've had a balanced game...

EDIT: Sometimes I say F%ck in the game also...Argh...
I would definitely make changes so such thing can never happen again in CW: Russian Experts against a completely PUG attack force. I doubt anyone had the 100 match score we wanted... Ridiculous things are happening.

Edited by BunnyWorldDominator, 02 January 2016 - 01:40 AM.

[Max Fury]

Really are the only things that matter are, my average Damage Delta per Mech, My Avg Damage sustained Per Mech. Both should be rolling average of the last say 30 match's per Mech (Assuming a static load). Pit me against someone who is either my opposite or my equal. If that mean after coming back after 2yrs if I need a 100 ton Atlas to beat is 20 ton Locust so be it.

With that being said how about a novel idea. MWO has been collecting performance data for as long as I can remember. Why not open that up and then give the community a chance to come up with their own match systems. Then sponsor a competition to find the best candidate. My guess is that you will end up with more than one working model and either let the player choose or rotate he model as no model is perfect.

[mad kat]

If this holiday period has been anything to go by its just proven that the matchmaker as it stands is nothing short of useless. Think i've had something like 4 games that were within a three or four kill difference but the overwhelming majority have been closer to 12-3. A lot of matches are either what the hell just happened or we practically walked right through the enemy.

Some may argue that's balanced. Win some lose some and all that but the margins in the way the games are being won and lost is just ridiculous. Close even games are now a thing of the past.

[Wintersdark]

Druarc, on 23 September 2015 - 04:23 PM, said:

I like the idea of the the 1/1/1/1 mechanic, also think the queue could aim to put more big teams together, seems to get a lot of 3x4 v 12's a bit too much.

Guessing a solo, 1-4, and 5+ queue is out of the question?

Yes.

1) It adds another bucket. The group queue is already under-manned to get decent matchmaking, this would split the group queue into rougly 2/3'rds (1-4 man groups) and 1/3rd (5+ man groups), making two seperate queues with even worse matchmaking than currently exists.

2) How do you make 12v12 matches with 8-10 man groups without 2-4 man groups?

mad kat, on 03 January 2016 - 02:52 PM, said:

If this holiday period has been anything to go by its just proven that the matchmaker as it stands is nothing short of useless. Think i've had something like 4 games that were within a three or four kill difference but the overwhelming majority have been closer to 12-3. A lot of matches are either what the hell just happened or we practically walked right through the enemy.

Some may argue that's balanced. Win some lose some and all that but the margins in the way the games are being won and lost is just ridiculous. Close even games are now a thing of the past.

As has been said many times, 12v3 sort of responses are normal even with good matchmaking. It happens because this is a single-spawn game, and once 1-3 mechs are killed, the match will tend to snowball very fast.

You'll notice a great many competitive matches with solid teams facing each other end up this way too.

It's not because of bad matchmaking. It's an inevitability of the type of game this is.

[Not A Real RAbbi]

Wintersdark, on 03 January 2016 - 03:39 PM, said:

Yes.

1) It adds another bucket. The group queue is already under-manned to get decent matchmaking, this would split the group queue into rougly 2/3'rds (1-4 man groups) and 1/3rd (5+ man groups), making two seperate queues with even worse matchmaking than currently exists.

2) How do you make 12v12 matches with 8-10 man groups without 2-4 man groups?

Agreed. Did we not have such matchmaking before? It's been a while, but I could swear we used to have three queues; solo, 4-mans, and full company. There's a reason that the game has moved on.

Quote

As has been said many times, 12v3 sort of responses are normal even with good matchmaking. It happens because this is a single-spawn game, and once 1-3 mechs are killed, the match will tend to snowball very fast.

You'll notice a great many competitive matches with solid teams facing each other end up this way too.

It's not because of bad matchmaking. It's an inevitability of the type of game this is.

I've seen a turnaround before. One guy in a RVN-3L(C), against 4 or 5 of the enemy, last one on our team, and he CARRIED, including finishing off against a DWF. But that's VERY VERY RARE. Especially, had we been down by 3 mechs or more early on, he'd have had little or no chance.

This is part of the reason that a lot of folks will get pushy on text/VOIP if the team is being timid and trying to trade/hide early on, because losing just one or two mechs can leave you at an almost crippling disadvantage. It's hard to overcome a deficit of more than 2, anyhow. It CAN BE DONE, but again, it's rare and something worth remembering.

This isn't poor matchmaking. It's the nature of the game, that things fall apart quickly if only a couple members of the team make a poor decision.

[Wintersdark]

TheRAbbi, on 04 January 2016 - 04:42 PM, said:

Agreed. Did we not have such matchmaking before? It's been a while, but I could swear we used to have three queues; solo, 4-mans, and full company. There's a reason that the game has moved on.

The 12-man queue was a wasteland, as there's always been (even today, despite the complaints) very few actual 12 mans queuing at any particular time. Solo's and 2-4 mans where all in the same queue together, and the solo players made the complaints that the 4-man players make now: Whichever team has the most 4-mans wins/the team with the 4 man wins.

The "big" 4 man lance (even after we went to 12 players per side) would have a massive impact on the game.

There IS a level of irony here that solo players sort of laugh at, as many of the small group players who complain today about how unfair it is that the bigger 8-12 man groups crush them mocked the soloes when it was the solo players complaining about the 4 mans dominating matches.

Quote

I've seen a turnaround before. One guy in a RVN-3L(C), against 4 or 5 of the enemy, last one on our team, and he CARRIED, including finishing off against a DWF. But that's VERY VERY RARE. Especially, had we been down by 3 mechs or more early on, he'd have had little or no chance.

This is part of the reason that a lot of folks will get pushy on text/VOIP if the team is being timid and trying to trade/hide early on, because losing just one or two mechs can leave you at an almost crippling disadvantage. It's hard to overcome a deficit of more than 2, anyhow. It CAN BE DONE, but again, it's rare and something worth remembering.

This isn't poor matchmaking. It's the nature of the game, that things fall apart quickly if only a couple members of the team make a poor decision.

Yup. And even great players do dumb things from time to time. God knows, last night, i couldn't play to save my life. Not to say I'm great, but after so many thousands of drops, you get some experience. Even so, I just kept doing really stupid things. Not my night for gaming. *shrugs* You could assume I was some T4 newbie from the idiocy of what went down. It happens. It happens to *everyone*. Nobody plays 100% all the time, particularly not when just derping about in the solo queue. It's easy to get distracted, make a mistake, whatever.

And if you've got someone being a bit derpy, and he gets himself killed at the very start of the match, and the opfor capitalizes on that, things can collapse very quickly.




And yeah, those rare reversals are awesome =)

Edited by Wintersdark, 04 January 2016 - 05:09 PM.

[Vickdak]

After spending the better part of a year or more on hiatus, I can honestly say that I'm much more partial to the current iteration of matchmaking then ever before. The single biggest selling point for me is the ability to play with any amount of friends at my leisure. We're a small unit consisting of about ten guys and most nights we could have anywhere between 3-10 on. Not being forced to sit a guy out because of an obscure system of matchmaking has been a godsend. All in all, this game has come leaps and bounds from its roots during closed and open beta and I would hate to see it regress after the progress that's been made.

[Drarz]

I'm new, as is most of the group I play with. We roll 3-7 players every night and the matchmaking has been good. Yes, we do like when there is another 3+ on out team but I think at our skill level there is enough chaos that anyone has a decent chance to win.

We had been doing CW drops but I now flatly refuse: we were hit with game after game of 12 stacks and it became a chore quickly -- one guy stopped playing in frustration.

If CW had multiple modes for groups of different sizes, I'd go back to it. But for now, until I can get into a 12-man I'm simply not going to waste my time.

[DarklightCA]

I am fine with maxing the groups to 4 man's only, leaving anything above that up to private lobbies and Community Warfare. I am also good with creating a drop ton limit on that 4 man group so they cannot bring 3 assaults and just face stomp everybody. The tier system is also great for keeping all those steam players out of veteran player's match making and vice versa to give them a better welcoming experience but I don't feel like it's doing much for any other tier's. The games feel the same to me like they always have, you either stomp or get stomped or you carry hard.

That being said I'd rather have PGI focus on fixing Community Warfare and releasing phase 3 than fixing match maker. Nothing really you can do for the MM, the biggest problems always seems like skill based problems. With so many players in tier 2-1 they are constantly matched against player's that just out perform them but are also in the same tier. Not really sure what the tier system is based off of but I think it needs to be adjusted a bit. In a more fine tuned skill based system I should likely be in tier 2 working my way to tier 1 with tier 1 facing tier 1 and tier 2 player's, tier 2 player's facing tier 1, tier 2 and sometimes tier 3 player's. Tier 3 player's facing tier 2, tier 3 and sometimes tier 4 players, etc, etc with tier 5 mostly only playing tier 5 and sometimes tier 4 if a que requires them.

Edited by l)arklight, 06 January 2016 - 09:38 AM.

[Galenthor Kerensky]

the only problem I really have in regards to the group and solo ques is the disgusting frequency of gettingthe bog and conquest, ( or as I call it, concrap ). I have been stuck with those modes either seperately or combined a good 75-90% of the time, and I am downright sick of it. Bring back the mode ban so I can at least block off the concrap! As for the idea of a 4 man match, I like that idea, especially in the scouting role that was mentioned in a town hall last year iirc.

[Commander A9]

CW matchmaking need not apply. It's fine the way it is.

Standard cue matchmaking needs to have voting system removed, unless it's addressing the maps, not the game mode type; game mode type filter needs to be given back to the players. No reason to have it removed. Then you can actually make use of cap accelerators in dedicated modes and not skirmishes.

[SgtMcFarty]

The answer to this problem can only be determined by the people that have access to the player base statistics. If you limit the group size to 4, you would make me happy (small group player), but you would anger the people that frequently play in large groups. This begs 2 questions: “How big is that group of large teams in the overall player base?”, and more importantly to the developer: “How much money does that group bring in, compared to 2-4 man groups?”.

If the answer to the second question is “a lot more money”, then keep things the way they are. I understand it’s a business, and at the end of the day, you need to do whatever is going to be most profitable, even if that means making a bunch of people, like me, upset. If that “is” the question to that answer, then unfortunately for people like me, that means I will play other multiplayer games with my friends, and play MWO solo when they are busy doing other stuff. It also means people like me are less likely to spend real money on the game, as the amount of time I will be playing is much less.

On the other hand, if the amount of money from large group players is dwindling, and the developer is looking to bring in new players to boost revenue, then I would think the solution would be to cater to the wider, more casual audience, even if that means upsetting your longstanding, but smaller, population of large group players. But maybe I’m wrong, maybe the 2-4 man teams are the minority, without access to player base statistics, I’m just making guesses.

[Thumper3]

SgtMcFarty, on 08 January 2016 - 02:46 PM, said:

This begs 2 questions: “How big is that group of large teams in the overall player base?”, and more importantly to the developer: “How much money does that group bring in, compared to 2-4 man groups?”.

From a marketing standpoint, that sounds great, but in reality, gathering that data would be nearly impossible. I play in large groups, I play in small groups, I also play solo (and I know I am not alone in this mix), and I have spent a lot of money on this game........a lot. How would you classify that? Would you run numbers to see what I play most as and then lump me there? What if it's a near even split? Maybe I like running in large groups and just solo and small group to grind and get rewards and if large group is hampered I would leave. Maybe others prefer solo and small group but do big groups for some other reason.

The main point is the community needs to stop looking for some perfect matchmaking algorithm[color=#333333][/color]that will keep them from facing statistically superior foes ever. It is a waste of resources better spent elsewhere ::cough:: CW economy and detail ::cough::

This isn't about "git gud", or some childish peacocking about skill at a video game. Facing tough opponents is what makes us all better, and I would rather fight a better pilot even if I get my lower servo's handed to me, than sit and watch a spinning wheel on a black screen waiting for a 'perfect' match.

I was hesitant of the new PSR system when it was described, and I have a feeling it does not work exactly as described based on what I have seen from match performance vs. PSR change, but I can certainly notice a difference. So however it works, it does seem to have been an improvement.

Edited by Thumper3, 08 January 2016 - 03:38 PM.

[SgtMcFarty]

Quote

...gathering that data would be nearly impossible.

If the developer isn't tracking this data, I would be very surprised. It is not difficult to track, games do it all the time, how many people you've killed, how many shots you've fired, how long you've played, etc. For some games, a lot of this info is even available on the public profiles of players.

Quote

I play in large groups, I play in small groups, I also play solo (and I know I am not alone in this mix), and I have spent a lot of money on this game........a lot. How would you classify that?

Hard to say, without knowing what data is tracked, but assuming time spent playing in a mode is tracked, I'd go by that. I'd also take into account the length of time for the current date a mode was last played. For example, if its been 3 years since you've played a 12 man game, and your numbers show you've been playing nothing by solo games since then, it would be safe to assume that you would be far more concerned to changes in solo play.

Quote

The main point is the community needs to stop looking for some perfect matchmaking algorithm...

I was simply expressing how I feel about the current state of the matchmaking, which is the topic of the post. As someone that only plays solo or small groups, I don't feel group play is fun, for me, in its current state, and I just wanted to voice my opinion. I understand you play people better than you to get better, but if you are brand new to the game, you shouldn't be playing grand masters. If I took a friend to learn how to play basketball for the first time, and Lebron James was there to slap down every shot he took, do you think he'd want to keep playing basketball? Again, what I really think it comes down to is the money, are 12 man teams cash cows? If so, don't do a thing. Or, is a new player base desperately needed? If so, you can't frustrate new players that are trying to learn the game with their friends. You can't please both sides, so pick the one with the money, so you can keep developing the game. I, however, am not going to just be someone's fodder, so for the time being I'll just play solo. It's just sad to me that I can't enjoy this great game with my friends.