2
So I came back to the game after a long hiatus and I noticed the matchmaking breakdown when hovering over the solo queue button. The discrepancies between the classes vary for a fair bit (snapshot as of writing: 8/30/34/28) but from a small sample-set it's reasonable obvious that there is a preference towards the heavy weight class. I also noticed that there was a nice little "queue as light mech for faster matchmaking" most of the time, and it occurred to me: why not pair this with a credit incentive?
The suggestions
There''s two ways I've thought of how to possibly go about this. One being more simple than the other, so I'll let that one go first.
1) Queueing as the 'suggested' weight class gives you a flat X% (e.g. 20%) C-bill bonus to earnings in the match it places you in when entering the queue as such.
alternatively
2) assuming that a 3/3/3/3 spread is the ideal target composition, give a scaling C-bill bonus for each percentage point under 25% of queued players of that weight class at the time of queuing.
e.g.: using a 2% C-bills boost epr percentage point difference, using another snapshot 12%/15%/44%/29% would result in a +26%/+20%/+0%/0% bonus for players entering the queue during that snapshot.
EDIT: capping this bonus somewhere in the region of 25%-30% to avoid extreme cases seems wise.
Merits and disadvantages
The advantage of 2 over 1) is that it provides a bigger incentive when the queues are less balanced, and spreads out the incentive, so in cases where lights and mediums are in minority compared to assaults and heavies, it is not only lights or only mediums that recieve the boost - which may cause a lot of flip-flopping between the suggested weight class (and frustration, since the associated bonus would flip-flop as well).
The downside of 2) is that it's more unstable and (probably?) more complicated to implement, with more to potentially go wrong or behave unexpectedly in ways that would be frustrating for the players, as there are much more moving parts and fluctuating values.
Overall, I think that a C-bill incentive for under-queued classes will lead to less weight-class imbalanced matches, (somewhat) faster matchmaking and a greater mech variation as players are encouraged to diversify. Depending on the level of success, it may cause a (slight) meta shift in favour of more versatile mechs as team composition in terms of weight classes becomes more even.
Other considerations
Incentivizing players will C-bills may increase overall credit gain. Keep in mind that, given the current balance of things, this increase may be smaller than might seem obvious due to to the total HP of a team going down on average, as the heavier weight classes are more popular currently. Also note the suggestion deliberately avoids earnings penalties for over-represented weight classes as this discourages play altogether, rather than encouraging a change in mech selection. Lastly, the incentive should be significant enough to be effective, which may slightly impacts the relative value of other credit-earning bonusses such as premium time and certain premium/special mechs.
Edited by Orkimedes, 10 March 2017 - 02:12 AM.
