12 replies to this topic

[Douglas grizzly]

since the match maker no longer works it needs to be fixed so that tier ones cannot be all oon one side and be dripping against anyone other than tier ones and tier twos. will this cause some angst with tier ones because they can no longer go seal clubbing, to be sure but thier angst is not important. since the vast majority of the player base is the ones who are 3 through 5 i feel their thoughts are a bit more important , other wise quick play will collapse once the tier 3 through 5 people just refuse to play quickplay.
I realize some of you tier ones will whine that player base is not large enough but i will posit it is when you dare to include ocenia server and dare to quit going seal clubbing.

[Mawai]

Unfortunately, there are several problems with your post.

1) How do you know what tiers are on each side? Based on match outcome? Lol ... not a useful indicator since even if all 24 players are "tier 1" there are still stomps.
2) I am assuming that you have had a streak of losses and wish to blame the matchmaker. Unfortunately, if you play this game long enough, you will go through several streaks of losses that sometimes feel like they will never end. These are mostly due to random luck. The match maker doesn't care which team you are on so if it is making unbalanced matches then the odds of you being on the winning side are about equal to being on the losing side.
3) If everything is perfectly balanced ... what are the odds of getting four losses in a row? They are about 1/16. This means that if you play 4 matches a night over a two week period you can expect to have at least one night where you lose all the time ... just based on luck if the matchmaker was perfect. However, your skill does play a role in the match so if you are an above average player (and that is not fully reflected in your player skill rating) then you can swing the odds in your favour.
4) People tend to notice loss streaks much more than win streaks.

However, the player's personal contribution is the less significant usually than teamwork. If you can make ANY contribution that increases teamwork ... even talking to your team at the beginning of the match can make a difference ... then you can have a much larger effect on your chances of winning the match since teamwork is far more effective at winning than the contributions of any one player.

Anyway, based on comments from PGI the last time they talked about the matchmaker, the matchmaker itself doesn't do a bad job generally in matching the skill ratings and ranges between two teams. However, if the skill ratings are flawed then the matchmaking will also be flawed.

However, PGI hasn't commented recently and they haven't shared any matchmaking statistics nor acknowledged requests to add some indication of match balance to the end of game screen. So ... ultimately who knows

[dario03]

Douglas grizzly, on 31 May 2017 - 09:27 AM, said:

since the match maker no longer works it needs to be fixed so that tier ones cannot be all oon one side and be dripping against anyone other than tier ones and tier twos. will this cause some angst with tier ones because they can no longer go seal clubbing, to be sure but thier angst is not important. since the vast majority of the player base is the ones who are 3 through 5 i feel their thoughts are a bit more important , other wise quick play will collapse once the tier 3 through 5 people just refuse to play quickplay.
I realize some of you tier ones will whine that player base is not large enough but i will posit it is when you dare to include ocenia server and dare to quit going seal clubbing.

Even when dropping in a group with a bunch of Australians, during Aus prime time, with the Oceanic server checked, I still rarely see the that server.

[sycocys]

Doesn't take many people on one side playing like noobs with only a couple on the other side playing well to cause a complete stomping. Really doesn't matter the tier.

[sub2000]

Douglas grizzly, on 31 May 2017 - 09:27 AM, said:

since the match maker no longer works it needs to be fixed so that tier ones cannot be all oon one side and be dripping against anyone other than tier ones and tier twos. will this cause some angst with tier ones because they can no longer go seal clubbing, to be sure but thier angst is not important. since the vast majority of the player base is the ones who are 3 through 5 i feel their thoughts are a bit more important , other wise quick play will collapse once the tier 3 through 5 people just refuse to play quickplay.
I realize some of you tier ones will whine that player base is not large enough but i will posit it is when you dare to include ocenia server and dare to quit going seal clubbing.

MM is actually working better than 2 months ago.
I strongly believe it calculates total PSR for the unite and makes matching according to it.
I always look at the game table looking first for the badges and name unites. There is no big difference with the preskill tree time beside one particular difference. There is significantly less percentage of whales, I believe the number of people waiting for the Civil War partch to skill their huge stables is considerate. What you experience is the effect of fireball.
Actually it is the reason why I stayed and I still immensely enjoy playing this game.
It is when a group of quite average players somehow form a group, a wolfpack better said, during first two minutes of the match (I call it "catching The Flow" because that what it is) and just run through other unit like through butter.
I loose regularly 12:1, I win regularly 12:0 killing in the process 3-5mechs. I see same names in both types of slop matches. Right UAV, lucky position, early kills can move balance dramatically transfering boring wait and poke people into team players.

[Novakaine]

Matchmaker has always been based on this criteria.
The sheer amount of that starchy white vegetables online at any given time.
Notice the silhouettes wink wink.

[Llymrel]

Not sure what game mode you guys giving the OP grief play? Everyone in solo queue knows low tier players are being pulled into matches against top tier players. The low tier players with mics will even say they are just learning the game while other people on the team are tier 1. People don't know the maps, use weapons, etc.

For those boasting about mechanics of the MM system, go look at the recent Battle of Tuk. statistics. Inference is there is something less than 17k players in MWO. No real surprise Matchmaker struggles to launch a balanced team within a few minutes with that low of a player base. PGI said from the start MM biggest challenge is a low player base. There were a lot more players when they said that.

Maybe this will get fixed with the new Mechwarrior title bringing in a new player base, refresh the game engine graphics, etc. Until then, about the only thing that could be done is adjust matchmaker to reflect balanced tiers per side at the tonnage levels so its a little more fair.

Its not unreasonable to keep reminding PGI to make MM improvements considering the current player base size.

[Escef]

Llymrel, on 31 May 2017 - 10:50 AM, said:

Not sure what game mode you guys giving the OP grief play? Everyone in solo queue knows low tier players are being pulled into matches against top tier players. The low tier players with mics will even say they are just learning the game while other people on the team are tier 1. People don't know the maps, use weapons, etc.

As far as I've seen, Tier 1 and Tier 5 still don't get matched together, but when population is low Tier 4 and Tier 1 do meet. However, Grizzly's apparent idea that the teams are stacked such that it's all Tier 1 vs Tier 3 and below is farcical.

OTOH, Grizzly has made some rather startling assertions in the past, assertions that belie a serious flaw in his ability to evaluate things. I'll give him credit, he's got the basics of the game down pretty well, but when he gets out played, out fought, and out smarted his go-to chant is that the enemy team is cheating (in fact, he's been known to begin matches by asserting the other team is cheating, guy's a few fruits shy of a basket, IMO).

[sycocys]

I'm tier 5.

I'm tier 1.

I'm neither, the point is you don't know if anyone is telling the truth in-game. To a T4 player a T2 is likely to look extremely good and vice versa. Also since the PSR is just an xp bar that weights most heavily on racking up a lot of damage even if you have very little skill the tier's really don't matter all that much.

[HollowBassman]

Llymrel, on 31 May 2017 - 10:50 AM, said:

..

For those boasting about mechanics of the MM system, go look at the recent Battle of Tuk. statistics. Inference is there is something less than 17k players in MWO. No real surprise Matchmaker struggles to launch a balanced team within a few minutes with that low of a player base. PGI said from the start MM biggest challenge is a low player base. There were a lot more players when they said that.

...

You cannot judge the number of quick play players by a community warfare event. There are many of us that do not play that gamemode even if there is a big event. Also, more players participated in this Battle of Tukayyid than did in the first one.

[Soultraxx]

This last few days Ive had games in my in my Linebacker and Hunchie II where Ive had near 1000 damage and others where Ive just about scraped 100.

I put this down to my own bad play/ positioning and not the match maker.

Yes, the matchmakers not great, but it inly takes a moments lack of concentration/ situational awareness and you go down in a ball of flame

Edited by Soultraxx, 31 May 2017 - 11:52 AM.

[Humpday]

The matchmaker works...i know this for sure as I entered T1 like 2 weeks ago.

I always wondered why I never saw, or saw very rarely peopl that are T1 on the forums or high ranking on the leader boards in game...now. They all show up, I've seen many of the top posters here now where as I never used to see them at all.

I mean I see monpax just about ever 3-4th game now. Never once did i see him before in T2 and he plays ALOT.

Anyway t1/2 is rare, a bulk of the scene is t3-5.

Just as a reference since I'm new to T1 it took 3766 games and 4 months to get from the very bottom of T5, I was so bad my tier bar went to the bottom and the T5 bar starts at 75% full lulz, to Tier1

Oh and lastly, we do get grouped with low tier players, you hear it on the MIC all the time. "How do i play this mode", "how do I change my weapon groups", not really a big deal. Many a games have been won with a disconnected assault or a dead light 30 seconds into the game.

My alternate account is T5 and the crap is confusing. People play so scared and passive that most the game is spent either running right, or at 600m. The light pilots are really really bad too. I purposely went derping around on my own in my Nigh Gyr clearly aggravating the other team...and no light game out to mess with me, yet i was shooting at him!

I was so confused...I don't like T5 very much lol. You can really see a difference when you go from one extreme to another. What I didn't see is nearly any change progressing through each tier sequentially...it felt the "same", there was no sudden jerk of "crap these people are good".

Edited by Humpday, 31 May 2017 - 12:06 PM.

[Dee Eight]

Llymrel, on 31 May 2017 - 10:50 AM, said:

For those boasting about mechanics of the MM system, go look at the recent Battle of Tuk. statistics. Inference is there is something less than 17k players in MWO. No real surprise Matchmaker struggles to launch a balanced team within a few minutes with that low of a player base. PGI said from the start MM biggest challenge is a low player base. There were a lot more players when they said that.

Actually there are more than thirty thousand, just half of them don't give a flying fornication about FW even if an event is running. By matches played, this is the bottom of the tracked leaderboard as of 6:26pm EST today.

33705 Raining LRMS 1 8 0.13 0 7 0.00 10 13

Then there's all the hundreds if not thousands more who didn't play ten matches this month to make it onto the leaderboard. If the Turkey3 prizes hadn't been so good, I'd have skipped it myself. I skipped one of the FW events last summer even though they were giving mechs away.

Edited by Dee Eight, 31 May 2017 - 02:29 PM.