67 replies to this topic

[627]

Nooo, don't take the minigame, it is awesome!!

No seriously, I have to wait like 5 minutes for a match. First matchmaking takes its time, then those 18 seconds of voting, then up to 2 minutes till everyone finally loaded the map on their slow potato (no seriously guys, buy a SSD for god's sake) and then I finally have to wait another 10 seconds for this damn timer because people are too tired to click one green button.

So at least let me have some fun in those 18 seconds.


And now, some insight of how vote trolling really works:

First you get your 10-12x multiplier

Then you vote for the "meta map", that is HPG or frozen or FOTD map, you know the maps you see ALL. THE. TIME.
If possible, be the first to vote, so your voting power is not visible (First voter is always 100%).

Then you wait... people will now try to change their vote from the meta map to the least desired map, mostly mordor, bog or yordor (that is yellow mordor), just to farm their own vote for whatever reason.

And if the clocks run down, you simply unvote the meta map, so you didn't vote at all.

Profit! You now play on a map you haven't seen in a while, Congratulation!


So, conclusion: If people would stick to their initial choice, there would be no vote trolling. But people want to farm votes, so they try to game the system.
And if you gamble, you win sometimes, you lose sometimes. Because there's always a bigger fish multi out there.

So vote trolling isn't trolling at all but this is the only way to play on some of the other maps that are not in heavy rotation. So it is more of a public service! Seriously!

Edited by 627, 19 January 2016 - 02:26 AM.

[Sassori]

I will play Mordor all day, every day, I love that map.

[MrMadguy]

627, on 19 January 2016 - 02:24 AM, said:

Nooo, don't take the minigame, it is awesome!!

No seriously, I have to wait like 5 minutes for a match. First matchmaking takes its time, then those 18 seconds of voting, then up to 2 minutes till everyone finally loaded the map on their slow potato (no seriously guys, buy a SSD for god's sake) and then I finally have to wait another 10 seconds for this damn timer because people are too tired to click one green button.

So at least let me have some fun in those 18 seconds.


And now, some insight of how vote trolling really works:

First you get your 10-12x multiplier

Then you vote for the "meta map", that is HPG or frozen or FOTD map, you know the maps you see ALL. THE. TIME.
If possible, be the first to vote, so your voting power is not visible (First voter is always 100%).

Then you wait... people will now try to change their vote from the meta map to the least desired map, mostly mordor, bog or yordor (that is yellow mordor), just to farm their own vote for whatever reason.

And if the clocks run down, you simply unvote the meta map, so you didn't vote at all.

Profit! You now play on a map you haven't seen in a while, Congratulation!


So, conclusion: If people would stick to their initial choice, there would be no vote trolling. But people want to farm votes, so they try to game the system.
And if you gamble, you win sometimes, you lose sometimes. Because there's always a bigger fish multi out there.

So vote trolling isn't trolling at all but this is the only way to play on some of the other maps that are not in heavy rotation. So it is more of a public service! Seriously!

Anti-trolling works exactly the same way. But do we really need it? I don't want to be anti-troll. I just want to vote for map, I want to play.

[JC Daxion]

Alistair Winter, on 19 January 2016 - 01:58 AM, said:

I changed my mind about this topic this morning.

Look at it this way:

In a hypothetical match, let's say the options are: Polar Highlands, River City, Caustic Valley and Mining Collective.
Before voting, let's say that...

• 40% of the players want Polar Highlands
  
• 25% want River City
  
• 20% want Caustic valley
  
• 15% want Mining Collective

In other words, 40% of the players want Polar Highlands, 60% of the players want other maps. And let's say that those 60% are sick and tired of Polar Highlands and would prefer any of the 3 other maps rather than another game of Polar Highlands.



If blind map voting was implemented, the people who wanted Polar Highlands would win every time. Everyone would vote for their #1 choice of the 4 options.

Not if they kept increasing the stack on the people that didn't get their map.. Having blind voting, does not mean they need to change the way the stacking works. Because what will happen, are all those people getting their maps, will be stuck at one.. While all those others that are picking other maps will easily out do them sooner than later.

what happens now, is people see frozen city, then a bunch swap, and stack a vote,, when none of them would actually get a vote stack, unless they took a chance on voting on another map, and enough stayed on the one they wanted. To me that would make people voting for what map they actually want, not a vote just to stack 12,, so 12 matches later than can get the map they want. It could actually lead to more variety not less.

[Alistair Winter]

MrMadguy, on 19 January 2016 - 02:08 AM, said:

That's why vote multiplier is here. We just don't need intentional stacking of it to bring/avoid special maps, like Terra Therma. Intention of vote system - to vote for map, you want to play. If Terra Therma needs 12x to bring it (if there are no people, like me, who can bring 8x-12x to counter it) - it's problem with map design - not vote system problem.

You make a good point, but I'm not sure if you're right. I think your argument works in the case of 1 map being particularly popular or 1 map being particularly hated. Because all the Polar Highland fans would lose their modifier, the few Terra Therma fans would get good modifiers to sometimes play their favourite map. But in the cases where the most popular and most unpopular maps aren't options, I don't think a blind voting system would please the maximum number of players. And every time the Polar Highlands (i.e. most popular map) isn't an option, the people who would vote for it are potentially gaining modifiers to use when it does become an option.

The sad thing is that this really isn't too complicated. I think that you could find an objective answer to what system is better, using mathematics and game theory. But I don't know if anyone on the forums has the knowledge to do that.

[Sjorpha]

I always vote for the least popular map just to increase the variation, I want it as close to random as possible because IMO it should be random. If I can play the shufflers to get terra, bog etc selected I will sometimes do that, but usually I just vote for them right away and leave it at that.

The funny thing is that lots of people seem to assume these maps gets selected by mistake, how do you it's not intentional and someone actually wants to play on it?

[Alistair Winter]

JC Daxion, on 19 January 2016 - 02:31 AM, said:

Not if they kept increasing the stack on the people that didn't get their map.. Having blind voting, does not mean they need to change the way the stacking works. Because what will happen, are all those people getting their maps, will be stuck at one.. While all those others that are picking other maps will easily out do them sooner than later.

They'll only be stuck at one if Polar Highlands keeps showing up. Which it won't. There are 14 maps. My math could be wrong, but I think there's only a ~29% chance you'll get Polar Highlands as an option in any given vote.

JC Daxion, on 19 January 2016 - 02:31 AM, said:

what happens now, is people see frozen city, then a bunch swap, and stack a vote,, when none of them would actually get a vote stack, unless they took a chance on voting on another map, and enough stayed on the one they wanted. To me that would make people voting for what map they actually want, not a vote just to stack 12,, so 12 matches later than can get the map they want. It could actually lead to more variety not less.

In some cases, there may not be one map you actually want. You may be indifferent about two or three of them, and you really want to avoid the last one. So letting people change their vote may be good for cases like that.

[MrMadguy]

Alistair Winter, on 19 January 2016 - 02:34 AM, said:

You make a good point, but I'm not sure if you're right. I think your argument works in the case of 1 map being particularly popular or 1 map being particularly hated. Because all the Polar Highland fans would lose their modifier, the few Terra Therma fans would get good modifiers to sometimes play their favourite map. But in the cases where the most popular and most unpopular maps aren't options, I don't think a blind voting system would please the maximum number of players. And every time the Polar Highlands (i.e. most popular map) isn't an option, the people who would vote for it are potentially gaining modifiers to use when it does become an option.

The sad thing is that this really isn't too complicated. I think that you could find an objective answer to what system is better, using mathematics and game theory. But I don't know if anyone on the forums has the knowledge to do that.

We should get rid of voting AGAINST maps - only voting FOR maps should stay.

[Alistair Winter]

MrMadguy, on 19 January 2016 - 02:42 AM, said:

We should get rid of voting AGAINST maps - only voting FOR maps should stay.

I disagree. Some maps in MWO are so bad. Terra Therma ruins my day, because I know exactly what will happen, I don't enjoy it and I can't stop it. I can either join the mindless charge into the volcano, or I can wander the wastelands alone. Unless I, by some miracle, drop with the most amazing pugs possible, those are my only two real options.

I hate that map so bad. My conscience and my quest for higher PSR are the only things that stop me from simply disconnecting instantly from Terra Therma matches. And some people don't have either of those two things.

[MrMadguy]

Alistair Winter, on 19 January 2016 - 02:47 AM, said:

I disagree. Some maps in MWO are so bad. Terra Therma ruins my day, because I know exactly what will happen, I don't enjoy it and I can't stop it. I can either join the mindless charge into the volcano, or I can wander the wastelands alone. Unless I, by some miracle, drop with the most amazing pugs possible, those are my only two real options.

I hate that map so bad. My conscience and my quest for higher PSR are the only things that stop me from simply disconnecting instantly from Terra Therma matches. And some people don't have either of those two things.

May be you're right. It's better to be able to explicitly vote against maps, you hate, then to watch, how Therma somehow pops up and you can't do anything to prevent it. I actually don't need vote system - I have always been asking for Ban Map feature instead, cuz it's better to avoid map, you hate, then to get map, that isn't your favorite. It would be great to also ban Alpine and Crimson Strait (or some other terrible map, like River City), but now I'm happy, that at least I can ban Therma in 99% of cases. Bad thing - amount of terrible maps in this game increases with time. Polar Hinterlands, if it will be snipe/LRM fest - will be terrible too.

Edited by MrMadguy, 19 January 2016 - 03:01 AM.

[Duke Nedo]

MrMadguy, on 19 January 2016 - 02:08 AM, said:

That's why vote multiplier is here. We just don't need intentional stacking of it to bring/avoid special maps, like Terra Therma. Intention of vote system - to vote for map, you want to play. If Terra Therma needs 12x to bring it (if there are no people, like me, who can bring 8x-12x to counter it) - it's problem with map design - not vote system problem.

The thing about multipliers though, they don't work like that because there is a random pre-selection of 4 maps. That means that you can't vote Terra every time, which means that you will probably vote something else a lot of the time and if one of your choices happen to be something that others also vote for (very likely), you will lose your influence long before you reach your 12x multiplier. Even with open votes and if you really try your best to build, it's really hard to reach more than like 8x without accidentally losing the influence... image doing that blindly. I'd guess you'd rarely get above 4x or 5x.

[Retrospectus]

every time I see someone whine about the voting their argument usually boils down to "screw everyone else, only my map preferences matter"
you were still forced to play maps you didn't like beforehand. only now you can swing the vote away. I love bog because I play brawling lights mostly, but that 5 ERLL stalker I just took to pieces probably hates it with passion and wanted alpine peaks instead where he shoots down an AC20/3SRM6 atlas at 1KM away who hates alpine and wanted HPG instead ETC
everyone has preferences, some players love therma, some love caustic, why shouldn't they get to play their maps just because they're in the minority?

[Kjudoon]

Blind voting yes please. Please eliminate mode voting since population growth has made it superfluous and it still stinks.

[Appogee]

I pity these wannabe trolls who think that scamming their way to an unpopular map vote win achieves anything other than demonstrating what sad little lives they lead.

I couldn't care less what map is selected, ever. I'd be fine if the map and mode were completely random.

[MrMadguy]

Duke Nedo, on 19 January 2016 - 03:06 AM, said:

The thing about multipliers though, they don't work like that because there is a random pre-selection of 4 maps. That means that you can't vote Terra every time, which means that you will probably vote something else a lot of the time and if one of your choices happen to be something that others also vote for (very likely), you will lose your influence long before you reach your 12x multiplier. Even with open votes and if you really try your best to build, it's really hard to reach more than like 8x without accidentally losing the influence... image doing that blindly. I'd guess you'd rarely get above 4x or 5x.

If you want Therma so much - don't waste your multiplier on something else. If you vote for some map and get it as the result - then loss of multiplier is reasonable. Nobody said, that you should be able to stack +1x every match.

I'll tell you, why some maps are terrible and people hate them and why some maps are just bad due to being played the same way every time. There are speed and range imbalances in this game.

1) Big map punishes slower 'Mechs, but small map doesn't punish faster ones so much. You can't say it's my problem, as picking Assault or Heavy 'Mech - is legitimate choice.
2) Open space map punishes brawlers, but map with cover doesn't punish snipers/LRM boats so much. And again, you can't say, that it's my problem, cuz picking brawler build - is legitimate choice.
3) Spawn points are not randomly picked, so unbalanced maps punish players, who always spawn on the "bad" side of such a maps.

Due to reasons, stated above, some maps are just unbalanced and felt unfair.
1) People hate to waste time: they want to play MechWarrior Online - not WalkWarrior Online. As Assault 'Mechs - are those 'Mechs, that usually determine the success of the match - players are usually group up around Assaults. And Assault 'Mechs usually pick the shortest way towards enemy team. That's why matches usually revolve around some center point of the maps and all other map space is just wasted. Players also hate to be flanked or ambushed by faster 'Mechs - that why they pick safest ways to center of the map.
2) People hate snipe/LRM fests - it's just unfair, that some 'Mechs are able to damage you, without any threat of taking fire in return. That's why they always pick spots with best cover on every map. That's why every map is being played the same way in every match. That's why most of the map space is wasted.
3) People hate unbalanced maps, cuz usually it's predetermined loss, so this match it not interesting or challenging right from the beginning - it usually better to lose fast in such a match.

So, what we have? The problem is not with players being selfish - the problem is with game mechanics and map designs being unbalanced and unfair. If you want to play snipe/LRM fest - play it with players, who want it too. If you want to play terrible maps, like Therma or unbalanced ones, like Alpine - play it with other players, who want it too - not with me. This imbalance affects my rewards, cuz MM assumes, that I perform equally on all maps, but it isn't the case - this is unfair.

So, if PGI can't balance this game and don't want to allow us to pick 'Mechs to play on map in every match - then we should at least be able to pick fair and balanced maps to play on. If they refuse to develop such maps - it's their problem, that they are wasting their resources on terrible maps, nobody wants to play on.

Edited by MrMadguy, 19 January 2016 - 05:26 AM.

[Duke Nedo]

MrMadguy, on 19 January 2016 - 05:07 AM, said:

If you want Therma so much - don't waste your multiplier on something else. If you vote for some map and get it as the result - then loss of multiplier is reasonable. Nobody said, that you should be able to stack +1x every match.
*snip*

I don't want anything really, random was fine with me. Just saying that the multiplier doesn't make up for the point that Alastair is correctly making in his earlier post. Open voting can be partly justified by this.

My point, if I have one, is that the current system gives more variation (for good or bad) than hidden voting would. I am the first to agree that the minigame is kinda silly sometimes, but on the other hand I really hated the first implementation when we only played frozen city... again and again and again... the end result is better now imo.

My personal implementation of map voting would be the following:

1. Remove the voting procedure
2. Add the old tick-boxes in the launch dropdown menu, one of each map.
3. Before launch, each of the 24 players tick all maps they want to support, that can be 0, 1 or 10 maps ticked
4. Once a game is launched, the launcher adds up all "votes" or "likes", and makes a weighted RNG decision based on which maps these particular players had ticked.

For example. Summed up, the 24 players had made a total of 100 map ticks (lucky round number). 20/24 players had ticked HPG, but only 2/24 players had ticked Therma. That means that Therma stands a 2% chance of being played while HPG stands 20% chance of being played.

In effect: if nobody wants to play a map, it has 0% of spawning. Totally fair RNG selection. Also, we don't need to waste 20 seconds to determine which map to play, that voting screen is a time sink....

Edited by Duke Nedo, 19 January 2016 - 05:50 AM.

[MrMadguy]

Duke Nedo, on 19 January 2016 - 05:48 AM, said:

I don't want anything really, random was fine with me. Just saying that the multiplier doesn't make up for the point that Alastair is correctly making in his earlier post. Open voting can be partly justified by this.

My point, if I have one, is that the current system gives more variation (for good or bad) than hidden voting would. I am the first to agree that the minigame is kinda silly sometimes, but on the other hand I really hated the first implementation when we only played frozen city... again and again and again... the end result is better now imo.

My personal implementation of map voting would be the following:

1. Remove the voting procedure
2. Add the old tick-boxes in the launch dropdown menu, one of each map.
3. Before launch, each of the 24 players tick all maps they want to support, that can be 0, 1 or 10 maps ticked
4. Once a game is launched, the launcher adds up all "votes" or "likes", and makes a weighted RNG decision based on which maps these particular players had ticked.

For example. Summed up, the 24 players had made a total of 100 map ticks (lucky round number). 20/24 players had ticked HPG, but only 2/24 players had ticked Therma. That means that Therma stands a 2% chance of being played while HPG stands 20% chance of being played.

In effect: if nobody wants to play a map, it has 0% of spawning. Totally fair RNG selection. Also, we don't need to waste 20 seconds to determine which map to play, that voting screen is a time sink....

All that problems with map selection essentially leads to just one - developers don't want maps to be "wasted". They created terrible, unfair and unbalanced maps and now playing "bring the map - not the player" game, instead of fixing them. Delete Therma, Alpine, River City, etc. - and create more maps like Canyon, HPG and Frozen City with the same visual assets. Problem solved. We won't need any voting then - we may return to random map rotation (if it was random, not kind of "always hot maps for hot 'Mechs").

[Mechteric]

100% agree on blind voting and on not just locking votes

[Almond Brown]

Alistair Winter, on 19 January 2016 - 02:34 AM, said:

stuff

But in the cases where the most popular and most unpopular maps aren't options,

You can ONLY pick from the selections offered though. What does ones individual "map preference(s)" have to do with anything, if they are not available for selection?

Edited by Almond Brown, 19 January 2016 - 11:34 AM.

[RoboPatton]

The voting mini game reminds me of Gwent from Witcher 3.