51 replies to this topic

[BlueStrat]

Why is it that over a course of 500 PUG (I'm T3, but falling fast the last week or so, almost back to T4) matches, 5 of every 7 matches have ended in 12-0, 12-1, 12-2 one-sided blowouts?

This is not "fun", even when I'm on the winning side. Shooting fish in a barrel is no challenge. Being the fish in a team that simply falls down and goes 'boom!' is no better, even when I'm at or near the top of the post-match scoreboard on kills/damage.

I get the distinct feeling that a lot of the time the ques have been so thin that MM throws whoever is waiting together, regardless of tier, but does not actually attempt to balance how many players of each tier are on which team. It feels like quite often, one team ends up with almost exclusively lower-tier players while the other team has a majority of higher-tier players.

I would much rather wait longer in que rather than have massively-unbalanced matches, even if that means that at times I won't be able to get a PUG match. I neither want to seal-club, nor volunteer as the seal, thanks very.

Edited by BlueStrat, 18 November 2016 - 12:29 AM.

[Duke Nedo]

Quite some time ago now I did just this test and recorded all match results and I did not see what you see: http://mwomercs.com/...omm-is-working/

[El Bandito]

The nature of MWO's pug gameplay means one side snowballing is more likely than not, an inevitability. Just do your part to snowball your side.

Edited by El Bandito, 18 November 2016 - 12:38 AM.

[BlueStrat]

Duke Nedo, on 18 November 2016 - 12:28 AM, said:

Quite some time ago now I did just this test and recorded all match results and I did not see what you see: http://mwomercs.com/...omm-is-working/

El Bandito, on 18 November 2016 - 12:37 AM, said:

The nature of MWO's pug gameplay means one side snowballing is more likely than not, an inevitability. Just do your part to snowball your side.

The thing is, this has been a recent phenomenon happening over the last week or so. Up until recently matches have been roughly equal, of course there's been the one-sided matches when one team screws up royally but that's been the exception rather than the rule. It seems to have started after I hit Tier 3, so that's why I theorized that MM was compressing/mixing team/player tiers when the ques are thin in order to reduce que wait times for a match. I've seen this with other games where they compress player/vehicle tiers to reduce que times, and I've never seen it work out positively. It's resulted in players leaving in frustration, and that's the LAST thing I or anyone wants.

I may have to take a break from MWO and play something else for a while and give PGI a chance to address the issue, as one-sided matches are not much fun to play and I don't want to drop my PSR any farther than it's already dropped.

Edited by BlueStrat, 18 November 2016 - 08:14 AM.

[TWIAFU]

El Bandito, on 18 November 2016 - 12:37 AM, said:

The nature of MWO's pug gameplay means one side snowballing is more likely than not, an inevitability. Just do your part to snowball your side.

Funny how all the clubbing that goes on in QP is acceptable but totally unacceptable when when the game mode requires the use of teamwork, be it Group or CW queues.

[TercieI]

BlueStrat, on 18 November 2016 - 08:12 AM, said:

The thing is, this has been a recent phenomenon happening over the last week or so. Up until recently matches have been roughly equal, of course there's been the one-sided matches when one team screws up royally but that's been the exception rather than the rule. It seems to have started after I hit Tier 3, so that's why I theorized that MM was compressing/mixing team/player tiers when the ques are thin in order to reduce que wait times for a match. I've seen this with other games where they compress player/vehicle tiers to reduce que times, and I've never seen it work out positively. It's resulted in players leaving in frustration, and that's the LAST thing I or anyone wants.

I may have to take a break from MWO and play something else for a while and give PGI a chance to address the issue, as one-sided matches are not much fun to play and I don't want to drop my PSR any farther than it's already dropped.

If that's true and not observation bias, the most likely explanation is that you're coming up against better players who exploit the numerical advantages. Matches in Tier 5 (I messed with an alt recently) are quite different because most of the players are directionless. With capable players, when a door gets opened, it gets used. Even fairly competitive matches can easily have 12-4 scores because of the nature of the game. When it's all about local numerical advantage, once that's established, it's hard to reverse.

Watch comp drops and you'll see this too. I just re-watched the match we played last night and we had an 8-2 win that was actually razor close, we just got a couple kills at the key moment and then were in control.

[El Bandito]

TWIAFU, on 18 November 2016 - 08:29 AM, said:

Funny how all the clubbing that goes on in QP is acceptable but totally unacceptable when when the game mode requires the use of teamwork, be it Group or CW queues.

Because solo-q is unpredictable. GQ and CW queues are dominated by big groups and pugs tend to get slaughtered by them, therefore no one wants to see their chance of victory evaporate before their eyes at the match start screen. Especially if he just got his arse handed to those big groups the match before.

BlueStrat, on 18 November 2016 - 08:12 AM, said:

The thing is, this has been a recent phenomenon happening over the last week or so. Up until recently matches have been roughly equal, of course there's been the one-sided matches when one team screws up royally but that's been the exception rather than the rule. It seems to have started after I hit Tier 3, so that's why I theorized that MM was compressing/mixing team/player tiers when the ques are thin in order to reduce que wait times for a match.

That's the quirk of being in T3. T3 players can queue with players from all tiers. Therefore you can get extreme noobs of T5 when you are unlucky, or good T1 players if you are lucky. Once you go up to T2 and T1, the MM will be more merciful to you.

Just consider T3 the equivalent of Silver elo in League of Legends. Absolute chaos and frustration.

Edited by El Bandito, 18 November 2016 - 08:48 AM.

[BlueStrat]

TercieI, on 18 November 2016 - 08:37 AM, said:

If that's true and not observation bias, the most likely explanation is that you're coming up against better players who exploit the numerical advantages. Matches in Tier 5 (I messed with an alt recently) are quite different because most of the players are directionless. With capable players, when a door gets opened, it gets used. Even fairly competitive matches can easily have 12-4 scores because of the nature of the game. When it's all about local numerical advantage, once that's established, it's hard to reverse.

Watch comp drops and you'll see this too. I just re-watched the match we played last night and we had an 8-2 win that was actually razor close, we just got a couple kills at the key moment and then were in control.

Well if that's true, then I'll just deliberately down-play myself back down-tier to T4 as PUG matches were much more like fun there and I don't play CW/Faction because my low FPS (avg. 15-17 FPS) prevents me from effectively piloting lights and even mediums are a huge challenge, so I own only 1 IS light 'mech and may sell that soon.

[TercieI]

BlueStrat, on 18 November 2016 - 08:50 AM, said:

Well if that's true, then I'll just deliberately down-play myself back down-tier to T4 as PUG matches were much more like fun there and I don't play CW/Faction because my low FPS (avg. 15-17 FPS) prevents me from effectively piloting lights and even mediums are a huge challenge, so I own only 1 IS light 'mech and may sell that soon.

IMO, the game is way more fun when it's challenging.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

Please PGI Fix the Ki by the T 4/% Players ... ...assault Backstanding Guys ,Trollbuilds ,LRM Terraforming Boys ,or Rambo-im-kill -all with under 30Dmg Boys

[BlueStrat]

El Bandito, on 18 November 2016 - 08:44 AM, said:

Because solo-q is unpredictable. GQ and CW queues are dominated by big groups and pugs tend to get slaughtered by them, therefore no one wants to see their chance of victory evaporate before their eyes at the match start screen. Especially if he just got his arse handed to those big groups the match before.




That's the quirk of being in T3. T3 players can queue with players from all tiers. Therefore you can get extreme noobs of T5 when you are unlucky, or good T1 players if you are lucky. Once you go up to T2 and T1, the MM will be more merciful to you.

Just consider T3 the equivalent of Silver elo in League of Legends. Absolute chaos and frustration.

Never played that game, no idea what you mean. As I posted above, it seems like the logical move is to pull punches in matches until I'm back down to T4 where game-play was closer to balanced. I don't give a hoot about my personal player rating, leaderboards, CW/Factions, or much of anything except playing an enjoyable match when I hit the QP button. If I can't do that then it's time to find another game to play and spend $$ on.

[XxXAbsolutZeroXxX]

BlueStrat, on 18 November 2016 - 12:20 AM, said:

Why is it that over a course of 500 PUG (I'm T3, but falling fast the last week or so, almost back to T4) matches, 5 of every 7 matches have ended in 12-0, 12-1, 12-2 one-sided blowouts?

That happens whenever a ton of people who haven't played in a long time come back.

Some are under ranked on PSR.

Others are over ranked.

It takes time for everyone to get to the tier they belong in.

And mismatches occur.

[Aiden Skye]

MM cant account for who's just playing crappy on a given day, who's in a sub-par mech messing around, lvling mechs, who's on fire etc. Doesn't take much to get a snowball rolling, could be just one player in the wrong place wrong time. No re-spawns in MWO, you lose a player and you're already falling into a pit.

A lot of these stomps are often closer than they look - If you look at how much damage everyone has taken. Just that once you're down 2-3 players the focus fire advantage becomes real and its easier to use that momentum and roll over the survivors. I've won lots of matches where it was seemed like a stomp, but everyone had some major damage inflicted on them.

And pug life is pug life. In tier 3 you play with everyone -Tier 1 to tier 5. So you match experience can be anything. Heck in teir 1 it still can be anything - I still have matches where I see guys standing in the open waiting to get shot like it's tier 5.

Edited by W A R K H A N, 18 November 2016 - 09:10 AM.

[El Bandito]

BlueStrat, on 18 November 2016 - 08:50 AM, said:

Well if that's true, then I'll just deliberately down-play myself back down-tier to T4 as PUG matches were much more like fun there and I don't play CW/Faction because my low FPS (avg. 15-17 FPS) prevents me from effectively piloting lights and even mediums are a huge challenge, so I own only 1 IS light 'mech and may sell that soon.

Just play LRM mechs. They work well even with 15 FPS.

[BlueStrat]

TercieI, on 18 November 2016 - 08:57 AM, said:

IMO, the game is way more fun when it's challenging.

I totally agree. It's not challenging as a T3 to seal-club T5 players and it's not challenging to be the T3-seal for a T1 clubber.

[TercieI]

BlueStrat, on 18 November 2016 - 09:04 AM, said:

I totally agree. It's not challenging as a T3 to seal-club T5 players and it's not challenging to be the T3-seal for a T1 clubber.

If you agreed, you'd work to get better rather than tanking yourself down to potato land.

I'm not talking out of my butt here, I was awful when I started, and improving and growing as a player has been the most enjoyable part of MWO.

[Single Mom]

Moving out of the lower tiers players starts to pick up on how to punish mistakes they catch, and sure enough the side that gets the opportunity to do this earlier on has a higher chance to snowball. On the other hand I see a lot of mid tier players not able to react well to changes in the match, a lot of them would rather stick with the plan until it fails completely than adapt to something new (where as low tier players may not have a plan to begin with).

[Aiden Skye]

BlueStrat, on 18 November 2016 - 09:04 AM, said:

I totally agree. It's not challenging as a T3 to seal-club T5 players and it's not challenging to be the T3-seal for a T1 clubber.

Not sure how you define clubber. I'm tier 1, my W/L ratio is barely 1-1 playing solo queue. Solo queue is no mans land, everyone has bad streaks of matches. Sometimes it does help to go to a different weight class or to simply take a break, but at the end of the day solo queue is...solo queue. You win some, you lose some.

Edited by W A R K H A N, 18 November 2016 - 09:24 AM.

[jss78]

I dunno, in short I don't see this. You get stomps both ways, you get close games. I don't think this has changed either in the couple years I've been here.

I find that in a PUG game, it can be such small things that turn a close game into a stomp.

A couple of AFK's or YOLO's leaving you outgunned at 10-to-12. Or just someone suggesting any halfway-decent strategy on VOIP/chat, and the rest of the guys listening. At least at Tier 2, I find that most players listen, most of the time. If your team does anything organized and the other team doesn't, it just gets ugly.

Below's a short clip of a recent game I had. All that was said was a handful of words: "All at the same time", "Now", "Don't stop". People listened, and 3 minutes later it was 12-0. I'm not convinced that any MM could prevent games like this.

Spoiler

[BlueStrat]

I'll never be a T1 player and I'll never have a huge stable of 'mechs. I'm too old (59) and my PC is a potato because I'm on disability fixed-income. I've loved MW since MW2 came out and I just want to push the QP button and have a decent chance at an enjoyable match. That's all.

Maybe that's too much to ask.