62 replies to this topic

[Kodyn]

There's definitely either a lot of valve releasing going on, indicating low player count in the higher tiers, or in general perhaps, or...

As someone else mentioned, there's possibly a lot of newer/Steam players who've managed to grind into Tier 1-2 and are now stuck there, without the ability to really keep up as far as actually building mechs/performing.

I certainly get the loss streaks where I can get rolled 10-20 times in a row, maybe a single win scattered in there somewhere. And I certainly see players in mechs that I cannot understand seeing at Tier 1-2, even 3. I've been in matches with enough known T1-2 names that I know it must have been an all T1-2 drop, yet still seen an Atlas with a LRM 10, LRM 15, two ERLL, ECM, and nothing else....

Either this game got too easy somewhere along the way, thus pretty much making separate Tiers useless, and allowing newer/less skilled players into higher tiers, or the valves being released all the time are pretty much negating the purpose of the tiers anyway.

[Ultimax]

Matches my experience.

It's awful right now, it's like dropping in T4 80% of the time.

My PUGs don't even move forward, they move sideways from spawn to other lances out of irrational terror.

[Soulstrom]

It is fine for public ques, but for the group ques it is a little off.

[Catra Lanis]

Too bad it's not taking mechs into account as well. My assault lance: Victor, a Gargoyle, a K2 and a Mad Dog their assault lance: 2 Direwolves, a King Crab and a Highlander.

[Torgun]

Hot-fixing flamers broke matchmaker? The funny thing is it wouldn't even surprise me if that's the case.

[Lukoi Banacek]

OP, I know streaks like the one you describe can be frustrating (they certainly drive me nuts too at times) but its an awfully small sample size to be honest, hardly worth getting worked up over.

When we are in a foul mood, 10 bad losses over a weekend can feel like a hundred, even if 90 other matches were,played out and pretty typical. Human nature to dwell on the highlights and,lowlights sometimes. I rattled off 11 straight wins yesterday in solo.....didnt even notice until I hit a couple of bad beats in a row and got really pissed and disheartened until I checked stats and realized it was an 11-2 run.

Dont let the small sample size cloud things for ya.

Group queue does have the added advantage of charging teams tonnage for more teamwork capacity (more players in a group, less tons available to that group) which I think is a pretty fair balancing mechanism.

For solo queue I think balancing tier, tonnage and a form of BV could do the same thing. Like. Tier 1 AWS pilot balancing out a tier 3 TBR pilot. Not a perfect solution of course as there are differing levels of skill within a tier, but certainly a more granular and accurate team balancing option than we have now which is purely single variable (i.e. tier) based.

[PR1VATEER]

I have noticed this lately
Last night I played about six battles and it seemed the other team stomped us without breaking a sweat! Several 2-12 matches

[Ulris Ventis]

Oh! I remember only one time when MM really messed up big time. Here you go.
8!!! 100t mechs in enemy team. 2!! 100t mecs in my team and a BLR. The match was a joke when they simply went forward and steamrolled my team.
http://images.akamai...D89122BFAD9E46/

[m]

Ulris Ventis, on 25 February 2016 - 02:01 PM, said:

Oh! I remember only one time when MM really messed up big time. Here you go.
8!!! 100t mechs in enemy team. 2!! 100t mecs in my team and a BLR. The match was a joke when they simply went forward and steamrolled my team.
http://images.akamai...D89122BFAD9E46/

THIS I recognize happening to myself a couple days ago. We had horrible mixes just like this. It was just after the recent mini-patch update and since I never read the patch notes on the small update (still haven't tbh) I just thought it was a some sort of feature. Power ended up going out at my place and I forgot about it entirely. Thank you for the reminder.

As for the rest of the posts, yes I read them all. I went through something similar to what most of you are describing at the beginning of the year and was shocked at the reaction I received from the community when it could have been easily proven by not naming names and watching some popular streams in repeat.

http://mwomercs.com/...-sync-dropping/

I am not saying the problem provided in the above link is the exact problem here BUT it can't be ruled out as part of the many problems with the Match Maker.

EDIT: Just to speculate, what would it really take for people in private circles to game the Tier system in the PUG Queue, then after earning Tier 1 (as some sort of endgame achievement) they stop gaming the system with speedrunning (by syncdropping?) the Tier system and now play normally (by not syncdropping?). Seems plausible if you compare that notion with what you are all saying.

Also if a problem were fixed it would also create the eventual problem that most of the people in this thread are describing, with people in Tiers that don't belong there...those people would be stuck in a Tier for months. To fix the problem in the Tier system it would have to be removed or rebuilt (my very old suggestion: http://mwomercs.com/...he-friends-list )

Edited by m, 25 February 2016 - 02:42 PM.

[Salticidae]

It not just the experience of playing the game, or building mechs.

A lot of the games are decided by where your assault mechs spawn and how much your team supports them.

I run direwolfs a lot ( over 2300 pug games ) it has a 94 pin point alpha @ 445m, it will 1 shot most lights and mediums, heavys with XLs and I even chop other direwolfs in half. If I don't kill my target it has such a hole in it, the next team member who shoots at it gets a free kill.

With no support it does about 200 damage before I die, with support its just devastating.

[Jman5]

Well whatever they've done it seems to be helping me. I've won nearly every solo queue game I've played today and I'm not even doing well.

[C E Dwyer]

Appogee, on 24 February 2016 - 11:42 PM, said:

I'm used to getting plonked into a team of low-tier PUGs, so that the matchmaker can convince itself that it's created an 'average' team.

But the past 7 days seem to have been especially bad.

I'm getting dropped into team after team of players who just walk dead ahead from spawn without regrouping, don't have an "R" key on their keyboard, stand behind buildings spamming LRMs into the scenery, or simply hide behind buildings waiting for ... well, I don't know what they're waiting for.

It's like I found a secret Tier 6 or something.

I'd normally put this down to the MatchMaker being mostly comprised of 'release valves'. But the past 7 days seem much worse than usual. (For example, in the past two days, I've been repeatedly dropped in teams where up to three of us are higher tier, but the rest are really really bad. And on the opposition team I see large numbers of players who I know to be some of the best in the game.

Yet, these Tier 1 players aren't distributed across the teams, they're all on the one side.

So, that's why I am asking whether anyone else has noticed PUG queue matchmaking being much worse than usual recently...?

I'm only one player. But I have played a lot over a long period, so I can detect what seems like a change in 'usual'. And in match chat a few others have noted that matches seem to be more one-sided than usual.

So I'm just seeking wider input on whether you've noticed a change recently. Maybe this is just an ongoing run of bad luck and not a systemic issue at all.

a few 2-12 stomps either way, had a 12-11 game this morning, I'd say most matches are ending around the 12-6 mark, and still there are cry babies saying team sucks.

My perception has been that the MM hasn't been to good, but if I really think about it, its not been that terrible either, what has been the issue I think is that the matches are over tonned, it feels like bring a direwhale party, and when two out of three are terribads then you got problems.

Jman5, on 25 February 2016 - 03:19 PM, said:

Well whatever they've done it seems to be helping me. I've won nearly every solo queue game I've played today and I'm not even doing well.

Tomorrow you are DOOOMED !!

[Deathlike]

Kinda need more info (regions, time of day, solo vs group).

If you honestly feel the MM is "turned off", it's probably more to do with population at the time.

However, some regions are still worse than others in terms of quality. I get the feeling any idiot can get to Tier 1 in a non-NA server quickly... and consequently this alters what you end up getting.

That and the events affect the population quality.

[DustySkunk]

The nature of the game will have you on loss streaks. Given that the population is more stratified than it ever has been before, is this really a surprise? With the Steam release, there is a steady stream of new players coming in where before it was more of a trickle. So the matchmaker is left in a situation where you have a bunch of really experienced players being mixed with a bunch of newer players and told to make "fair" matches.

General question: Anyone''s W/L ratio taken a serious dip as a result of a loss streak? I'm betting not. Don't get me wrong, I understand the frustration of repeatedly being stomped because of "special snowflakes," a team that won't move, or a clear actual matchmaker fail (like the example above with eight 100 ton mechs on a team) but my initial reaction is that really not much has changed.

[MrMadguy]

Yeah, today situation became so bad, that I'm even expected to carry my team, lol. Got streak of matches, where my team was completely useless and even more - it would be better, if they would stop crowding, blocking my 'Mech and lines of fire.

[DGTLDaemon]

Something is definitely going on with the matchmaker. My experience, however, has been directly opposite from what other members described in this thread. I'm currently Tier 3, and I've felt more or less comfortable in it until now, but for the last few days it seems that I've been going almost exclusively against Tier 1-2 players. The matches have become very hard, I can clearly see that most of the other players are more skilled than myself. I don't mind a challenge every once in a while, "adversity builds character" and so on, but this feels wrong, I'm definitely playing way above my league. And it repeats match after match. I think it started yesterday, everything seemed alright before that. And my waiting times have become very long, so it could be related. EU servers, if that matters.

Update: And now all of a sudden it seems back to normal. Very weird. I'm used to such difficulty spikes in CW where there is no matchmaker, but not in solo. Tier 3 solo has been pretty consistent until now...

Edited by DGTLDaemon, 27 February 2016 - 11:51 AM.

[Revis Volek]

Mister Blastman, on 25 February 2016 - 08:07 AM, said:

This is the second thread I've seen this brought up and I too have seen weird player matchings since the weekend. I've seen some awful teams and horrible players that I only saw when I was at tier 4 a long time ago. But the strange thing... is, as the OP says, these awful players are all on one team, starfishing and spreading across the map while the other team has several tier 1 players on it.

Stomps were frequent before... but right now... it is just bad.

So I propose Blastman's CLAW (Come Lose Away from Winners).

It is a simple system that monitors the game for player activity.

IF
A player finishes four to five games in a row with less than 100 damage

THEN
they are banished to the Island of Misfit Players!



And they stay there for the rest of the night! If they do it again the next night... they are banished for a week! They do it next time they are released... banished for a month! The maximum is one month because everyone deserves another chance to get off the island.

The 100 damage threshold can be changed to be 150, 200 or whatever the developers want to be.

WHY do we need CLAW, Blastman?

Easy!

Because some folks like to get loaded, blazed or play with spasmodic disorders that prevent them from aiming well. Note: Spasmodic disorders are OKAY. Some folks can't help themselves and suffer from horrible diseases that make playing the game a huge challenge. That is OKAY.

That's why we have the Island of Misfit Players! So they still get to play--and play with other folks who have their same deficiencies above and beyond the bottom tiers. This guarantees they aren't pugfodder™ and have a chance at a better game!

Support CLAW... today!

I'm so down for this...

Where do I sign up and how do i send money to get it going?


and for the record, i have had more games since this ISSUE has arisen that had more then 2 players from the same units then I have seen in 2 years.

I was even in a game tonight with 4 fellow members from MY unit and we arent some huge unit. I think 9 or 10 of us were on at the same time and MM found 5 (freaking FIVE) of us and threw us in the same match (3 on one 2 on the other).

Seen alot of other drops with 4-7 players from the SAME UNIT in my drop, cant say i EVER saw this before in the 7000 drops i have.

Coincidence?? or something broken?

Edited by Revis Volek, 16 March 2016 - 10:25 PM.

[4rcs1ne]

Appogee, I've been noticing a very similar trend. Literally, nearly every match 8 mechs go to chase one light leaving me and the other three mechs to die while getting pushed on. It is really getting old.

[Chuck Jager]

Appogee, on 25 February 2016 - 12:23 AM, said:

So far today: six matches, all losses, despite top-scoring in 4 of them. (I'm using a strong LPL/SRM Mech.)

But my PSR went down in 4 matches because I just can't carry a team of very low players to victory. Nor is there enough time for me to make the 250 match score necessary to stop PSR being reduced, when the team just hides and dies.

In the last match, I spent a lot of time in text chat trying to get the team to regroup, telling them which way to look, which way the enemy was coming, which way to face. Their reaction...? After rallying where I suggested, they then proceeded to run away as soon as they saw a red triangle. Instead of making any attempt to use the position we'd secured, they immediately ran into a ditch and were summarily executed by the enemy team.

There was one other player in my team who was in a unit. He went off and stood on a ridge, sniping until he was the last player facing 11 enemy Mechs solo. Then he died, having done 220 damage.

This proved to me once and for all that all the time I spend trying to help PUG teams do anything intelligent is just wasted. I may as well just not bother.

That's me done with Mechwarrior Online for the day.




Back to the original point of my post: matchmaker just doesn't seem to be working at all as far as I can tell. Or maybe I'm just seeing it in full 'release valve mode' over and over, because PGI apparently can't come up with anything less flawed than the idea that 2 good players + 10 bad players = 12 competent players.

I really get tired of the LET OTHERS DO THE HEAVY LIFTING while I farm EPEEN with my damage
Something seem to be happening, but I think it is the influx of folks who are used to other FPS games versus MWO. I am seeing folks turning and running from any red Dorito without firing a shot or even trying to target the enemy. Guess what these are the loosing games. One after another. It is sad to see your chances of a win lessen when you see another decent player on your team, because it has to be balanced by the short yellow bus.

[VirtualRiot]

What really bums me out is that it seems I can not afford to play any mech other than my meta overlord mechs.
Look I know that people say stop complaining that you are so good and you cant play fun mechs because the rest of your team sucks but its true.
If I don't drop in my meta and do 600-800 damage which is the regular for me, then my team is missing out on 600-800 damage and we will lose.
I try doing raven support, LRM boat assault, light mech with spls, anything on the kit fox, whatever. I just lose every time. I'm not bad at those mechs its just that my team can not afford to miss out on all that damage and I am forced to play my "good" mechs if I want to win.
I don't care about psr or kdr or any of that ****, you just get more c-bills if you win and do a bunch of damage and I need to get that monayyyy.