20 replies to this topic

[JC Daxion]

I see lots of players that are good, complain about playing with bad people in pugs all the time.. It is probably one of the most popular posts to make, or respond to.. How much MM sucks, How much Tier sucks, blah, blah..


So i ask.. Why don't all those players set up some play nights during the week, or weekends, and get some private matches going? Go pick teams, get a bunch of teams and play round robin, or just get 24 folks, and switch teams around and have fun all night?

We have the tools for this now, I am just not sure why more people don't do it? Heck even one night a week, like Friday night Top Tier fights or something.. Is it lack of motivation, or what?

[Wintersdark]

Or the same reason the MM fails: Player counts.

There's lots of players, don't get me wrong. But once you're limiting things to "just the best players", etc... It's a lot harder.

Then add organizational and logistic headaches. Ugh. I'll deal with the MM, thanks

[Kirkland Langue]

Oh I've posted multiple times exactly how PGI could fix the MM - but they are idiots so probably don't even read the forums to see any ideas.

But it's very very simple.
1. Grab 24 highest ranked players in queue.
2. Divide those players such that the teams are as close as possible total Tonnage of their mechs.
3. Begin game.
4. Grab 24 lowest ranked players in queue.
5. Divide those players such that the teams are as close as possible total Tonnage of their mechs.
6 Begin Game.
7 goto 1.


There you go. Games are balanced by pilot skill; teams are balanced by mech weights.

[Mawai]

Cbills and convenience

1) No cbills for private matches ... 2 players need premium time for the advanced features
2) If you only have time for a few drops ... it takes too long to try to recruit 24 people to one chat channel in order to put together matches ... then someone needs to leave and you need to find a replacement ... or one person wants to change their mech/loadout or needs a bio. Organizing a group of 24 people is not easy and usually requires scheduling and commitment ... which a lot of folks just don't have the time for ...

Thus ... you don't see your suggestion happening very often.

[adamts01]

That's basically what player run tournaments are. I absolutely can't stand that scene though, it's pure try-hard and they take it way to seriously. And as mentioned earlier, you need premium time, and I've closed my wallet to MWO a long time ago. The level of scrubbery got so bad, on top of that it's cool to not give a **** about the team in quickplay now, I left the game over it.

[Mawai]

Kirkland Langue, on 08 August 2016 - 03:52 PM, said:

Oh I've posted multiple times exactly how PGI could fix the MM - but they are idiots so probably don't even read the forums to see any ideas.

But it's very very simple.
1. Grab 24 highest ranked players in queue.
2. Divide those players such that the teams are as close as possible total Tonnage of their mechs.
3. Begin game.
4. Grab 24 lowest ranked players in queue.
5. Divide those players such that the teams are as close as possible total Tonnage of their mechs.
6 Begin Game.
7 goto 1.


There you go. Games are balanced by pilot skill; teams are balanced by mech weights.

This has the implicit assumption that the pilot ranking system actually works

Which it doesn't

Tell me ... are you as good playing heavies as lights? Assaults vs mediums? Mastered mechs vs brand new ones? Trials vs owned?

However, there is only one number used to represent pilot skill ... this means that the skill rating system implicitly assumes that the player is just as good in all of the above situations. Which, leaving aside the fact that the PSR ranking system is fundamentally flawed anyway, is not true. So ... you have an inaccurate ranking number that doesn't include a lot of relevant factors being used as the sole indicator for balancing matches.

Finally, the method you describe above is actually pretty close to the algorithm used by the matchmaker
- take the player who has been in queue longest - their PSR value is the seed for the next match
- collect 24 players with PSR values close to this value that satisfy weight class constraints. If this take longer than 1 minute, make the window larger, if it takes longer than 2 minutes, make the window even wider ... if the match making takes too long then widen the range to the maximum allowed (which is NOT the entire possible range).

Players are assigned to the teams in order to balance weight classes. The inital goal is 3/3/3/3 but this requirement is also relaxed depending on how many players are in each of the mech weight class queues.

This system is pretty much identical to your suggestion (except it uses weight class instead of tonnage) ... if a seed value near the top is chosen then the top 24 players are loaded in a match ... if the seed is near the bottom then the bottom 24 players are chosen (with a bit of additional spread to balance weight classes as a secondary constraint). The current matchmaker does pretty much EXACTLY what you are suggesting.

So why do folks think the MM isn't working?
1) PSR does not reflect actual player skill
2) MWO is a snowball game ... make a mistake or lose a mech or two on one side and the odds shift strongly in favour of the team with the advantage ... often leading to stomp like results no matter how well balanced the match was when it dropped.

Edited by Mawai, 08 August 2016 - 04:54 PM.

[Bishop Steiner]

because the point of quick play is to do exactly that, when you have some free time, not to have to set up play dates with the other children in the neighborhood.

[Kirkland Langue]

The problem with the current matchmaking, as I understand it, is that the current matchmaking tries to simultaneously match based upon LMHA and pilot rating. My system matches ONLY on pilot rating, and then forms the teams to be as balanced as possible.

1. As for players having different ratings for different mechs - I'm completely on board with queing players together based upon their rating for their currently piloted mech.

2. As for gradually increasing the range of player skill to get a match - that's a problem created by lack of players. Since the perception is always going to be unfair matches, it's better for games to try and get faster games than better matchmaking. If you really want to get away from pairing new players against vets - then the answer is to require fewer players for a game to launch. Making players wait in queue just makes players less likely to want to hit "launch" - which further exacerbates the problem.


I'll admit, if the MM currently ignores LMHA for game creation, and uses it for team formation, then it would be very similar to mine. But my impression is that the game tries to take both PSR and LMHA into consideration when creating games.

[N0MAD]

When they were having the pre round table meeting and asking about how to increase pops ect, the only idea i put forward and still maintain as the only way to increase player pop is to, especially short term....
Provide a Zone type lobby.. nough said...

[PhoenixFire55]

JC Daxion, on 08 August 2016 - 03:20 PM, said:

I see lots of players that are good, complain about playing with bad people in pugs all the time.. It is probably one of the most popular posts to make, or respond to.. How much MM sucks, How much Tier sucks, blah, blah..


So i ask.. Why don't all those players set up some play nights during the week, or weekends, and get some private matches going? Go pick teams, get a bunch of teams and play round robin, or just get 24 folks, and switch teams around and have fun all night?

We have the tools for this now, I am just not sure why more people don't do it? Heck even one night a week, like Friday night Top Tier fights or something.. Is it lack of motivation, or what?

There are player run leagues you know which exsist for years. But it has nothing to do with MM that is supposed to provide quality matches for people who are playing solo. Personally I think there shouldn't be any MM at all, but since the whine crowd says it is needed here it is ... utterly useless in terms of quality matches but really amazing at wasting your time. If you take a careful look around the forum there are hundreds of suggestions regarding the MM and quite a few fully developed MM models suggested as well. But does PGI care? ... Nope.

[KodiakGW]

Private matches don't give XP or CBills. Obvious reason why is because it could be gamed.

Two words:

OPEN
SERVERS

Fix PSR so it is an actual representation of skill instead of an XP bar. Then limit by PSR who can join a server. Auto populate each side so teams can't be stacked. Also, make servers for groups of 2-4 so people can play together. Maybe make FP (or CW) the place for larger group play.

Want a Conquest game? Join the Conquest server. Don't like the map? Exit and join another server. Plus, we all get the added feature of choosing the mech we want to take based on the map/mode.

No more trying to figure out what Karl programmed and change it. MM server can be shut down.

[Idealsuspect]

Damn so people who feed this topic.

Also this thread wasn't a basic troll ?

[Stone Wall]

Why make a MM if you could just remove MM...

[Lily from animove]

because those matches don't grant you any cbills and stuff?

you know what? if people could run their own servers and we just had a mains erver for the account (similar to TF 2) that would be quite nice and could actually help. Also PGi woudl save some money on the servers and people could make servers everywhere in the world.

Edited by Lily from animove, 09 August 2016 - 06:31 AM.

[Precentor Ward]

JC Daxion, on 08 August 2016 - 03:20 PM, said:

So i ask.. Why don't all those players set up some play nights during the week, or weekends, and get some private matches going? Go pick teams, get a bunch of teams and play round robin, or just get 24 folks, and switch teams around and have fun all night?

Well... No. I vote pgi just fixes their shizz. Peace.

[JC Daxion]

Idealsuspect, on 09 August 2016 - 06:18 AM, said:

Damn so people who feed this topic.

Also this thread wasn't a basic troll ?

How? trying to get community events and players to have more fun enjoying matches is now considered trolling? *sigh, i don't understand this community at all...

Lily from animove, on 09 August 2016 - 06:29 AM, said:

because those matches don't grant you any cbills and stuff?

are C-bills really that big of an issue?. I'd gladly skip out on c-bills one night a week, if i could have some fun with a good group of people and have a blast gaming all night.

not to mention most people that complain about teh MM have been around a long time, Buying another mech isn't really the big issue for them.

Bishop Steiner, on 08 August 2016 - 04:54 PM, said:

because the point of quick play is to do exactly that, when you have some free time, not to have to set up play dates with the other children in the neighborhood.

then you get what you get.. It is just like Pool/dart leagues in my area.. there is a die hard crowd that goes out and plays 2 nights a week, tuesday darts, and wed pool.. they have about 40-50 people on average, and get high level competition, and all have a great time. The other nights of the week if you wanna play a match, you get some good and bad... (just like QP)

Putting the effort into the weekly events Far outweighs the down side of actually putting in the slightlest big of effort to increase the fun level..

Because those play dates are a hella lotta fun... when you actually know the folks you are playing with/against, rather than some PUG game in some random bar with what could be just a couple of A-holes..

Edited by JC Daxion, 09 August 2016 - 01:01 PM.

[Stone Wall]

Baradul got matched against 8 Assaults.

[Mawai]

Lily from animove, on 09 August 2016 - 06:29 AM, said:

because those matches don't grant you any cbills and stuff?

you know what? if people could run their own servers and we just had a mains erver for the account (similar to TF 2) that would be quite nice and could actually help. Also PGi woudl save some money on the servers and people could make servers everywhere in the world.

How would PGI make any money?

The basic game economy is based on cbills. Earning Cbills lets you buy equipment, mechs and modules. PGI earns money by selling content for MC that offers two features ... 1) early access and 2) fast access so you don't need to spend many games playing to earn the required cbills. A lot of real money purchases in MWO are driven by the motivation to save time. Many folks have some money but don't have the time to play thousands of matches.

So .. why is this a problem with player run servers? PGI loses any ability to control the cbill economy. If people can run hacks on clients they can run hacks on servers that are not under PGI control. Want to earn 10 million cbills .. go ahead and use a hacked server. PGI would have no way to verify that cbill earnings on player run servers were legitimate. Thus, there is no way that games on a player run server could reward cbills.

So ... there is no motivation for players to play on player-run servers if cbills can not be earned except for rare private match or tournament setups ... but there would still be no possibility of in game player rewards from player run private servers.

[JC Daxion]

One other thing, this would be much easier if PGI would run a chat server so we could make our own channels..

Would be much easier to organize these kinds of things.. Popular channels would get people to join in just on word of mouth alone.. people joining up for something like.. Friday night fights,, You get home, pop into the channel, see who is around,, could have moderated messages of the day by people that create the channel and are moderators on them.. City of heroes had something like this, and at any given time there were well over 100 people hanging out in the channel (Hami raid) or something like that, but was used to get groups, create task forces and such, or just to hang out and talk shop..

That is one thing this community is missing.. The general forums are pretty toxic, so much that many people don't bother and just play.. But moderated channels have worked in tons of games over the last 20 years, and i don't see why this would be any different.

[Stone Wall]

Mawai, on 09 August 2016 - 01:22 PM, said:

How would PGI make any money?

The basic game economy is based on cbills. Earning Cbills lets you buy equipment, mechs and modules. PGI earns money by selling content for MC that offers two features ... 1) early access and 2) fast access so you don't need to spend many games playing to earn the required cbills. A lot of real money purchases in MWO are driven by the motivation to save time. Many folks have some money but don't have the time to play thousands of matches.

So .. why is this a problem with player run servers? PGI loses any ability to control the cbill economy. If people can run hacks on clients they can run hacks on servers that are not under PGI control. Want to earn 10 million cbills .. go ahead and use a hacked server. PGI would have no way to verify that cbill earnings on player run servers were legitimate. Thus, there is no way that games on a player run server could reward cbills.

So ... there is no motivation for players to play on player-run servers if cbills can not be earned except for rare private match or tournament setups ... but there would still be no possibility of in game player rewards from player run private servers.

They should remove C-Bills from the game. Open up all mechs and equipment, except for specials/heroes/cosmetics, and let people go ham. If people enjoy your game, they will spend money.(look at Path of Exile) Instead of early access or the pay2notgrind, people will buy up decals, camo, cockpit items, other special stuff.

Instead we have PGI going the StarCitizen route and making people pay for ships. They should be going the Path of Exile route and having only cosmetics/super special stuff be paid for with MC.