158 replies to this topic

[LowSubmarino]

Spr1ggan, on 04 August 2017 - 06:00 AM, said:

Not to mention that Tiers 1 through 4 are all thrown into the same matches anyway. Not like it matters, every match goes one of two ways. A campfest or nascar.

Campfest is an effective strategy. With some good snipers in your team youll destroy the enemy team.

Stop complaining if you cant handle snipers.

L2P

[Spr1ggan]

oneda, on 04 August 2017 - 06:09 AM, said:

Campfest is an effective strategy. With some good snipers in your team youll destroy the enemy team.

Stop complaining if you cant handle snipers.

L2P

Please teach me the skills that make you so great oh master...

Edited by Spr1ggan, 04 August 2017 - 06:20 AM.

[Ssamout]

oneda, on 04 August 2017 - 06:09 AM, said:

Campfest is an effective strategy. With some good snipers in your team youll destroy the enemy team.

Stop complaining if you cant handle snipers.

L2P

Oh you mean TK'ing is ok then??

Most of the damn 'snipers' are like blind donkeys, spreading damage and firing way over the optimal range, and still think they are doing something good. Thats what happens when higher tiers are saturated with sub optimal pilots, playing the tier 4 game when they should push.

[Jman5]

Appogee, on 03 August 2017 - 12:21 AM, said:

Any actual matchmaker wouldn't put two of the best players from the best team in MWO onto the same side in a SOLO quick play match, then add a bonus KCOM player, and then create an opposing team that contains 5 players who can't manage 100 damage.



This was last night, incidentally. But it's not unusual. Can cut both ways.

Point is... it should have been easy to better compose that match based even on just the scant information available.

This is what I believe is the biggest problem with the matchmaker. You've got a huge range of skill at Tier 1, but MM treats them all equally.

Russ has argued in the past that they can't do anything about it because wait times, but I really don't agree. All it comes down to is creating a more granular system at Tier 1 and ranking them. It's not even very hard to do. Just create a table of all Tier 1 players and then rank them based on the average matchscore of their last 100 games. You could make it even better by ranking them based on their last 100 games within each weight class. So if you drop in a light you're not being treated the same as when you drop in your heavy. You still match with the same people so wait times are the same as before. It's just mitigating the team-stacking issue.

Matchscore isn't perfect, but it's good enough.

[Bigbacon]

Zergling, on 04 August 2017 - 01:25 AM, said:

I need to be killing 12 enemies to win those sorts of games.





I loled hard at this enemy Timber Wolf I encountered a week or so ago in my Cougar: his loadout was 1x Gauss, 2x ALRM15.
I overheated and shutdown, and this nublet walked up to my stationary mech, then fired his LRMs into me at point blank range.

Then the next enemy mech I saw in the same battle? A fresh Dire Wolf with 10x ER Large Lasers; he'd been hiding far behind his team the entire battle.

you'd be amazed at how many times mid battle at some point I will completely forget about the min range. I do it all the time. 99% of the round i'm conscious of it and the other 1% I just forget completely.

[Appogee]

Jman5, on 04 August 2017 - 08:05 AM, said:

This is what I believe is the biggest problem with the matchmaker. You've got a huge range of skill at Tier 1, but MM treats them all equally.

Russ has argued in the past that they can't do anything about it because wait times, but I really don't agree. All it comes down to is creating a more granular system at Tier 1 and ranking them. It's not even very hard to do. Just create a table of all Tier 1 players and then rank them based on the average matchscore of their last 100 games. You could make it even better by ranking them based on their last 100 games within each weight class. So if you drop in a light you're not being treated the same as when you drop in your heavy. You still match with the same people so wait times are the same as before. It's just mitigating the team-stacking issue.

Matchscore isn't perfect, but it's good enough.

Exactly.

The whole 'wait times' argument doesn't stack up. Any of us could write a competent matchmaking algorithm that would distribute the 24 players available for that match across two teams in a more even way.

The simple truth is, PGI just can't be bothered.

Edited by Appogee, 04 August 2017 - 09:55 AM.

[Brain Cancer]

Quote

Heh, I'm honestly not a great player. Above average for sure, but not good enough to reliably carry battles.

And honestly, one player should not have to flatten 4+ targets to make up for the droolers on his team that can't clear 100 damage, maybe 200 on a good day consistently.

[poltergoost]

Yeah, its kinda sad when you see matchups like that screenshot... you know the result before the match even starts.

At lower tiers, and in the rare balanced matches, it feels like you actually have some personal impact on the game.

But in matches with the strongest players so unevenly distributed... if they are on the enemy team, you may as well just lube up and get it over with... and if they are on the friendly team, you could sit at the back picking your nose and still be on the winning team

[LordBraxton]

oneda, on 04 August 2017 - 06:09 AM, said:

Campfest is an effective strategy. With some good snipers in your team youll destroy the enemy team.

Stop complaining if you cant handle snipers.

L2P

Youre joking right?

I havent played much lately, but I remember Spriggan from years ago, and he knows how to play.

If you're joking, sorry. If not, gtfo.

[ZealotTheFallen]

There is more involved in tier one then none can say here, skill is not the whole issue.

[Brain Cancer]

That would be because Tier 1 doesn't equal "most skilled".

Just "lots of play at a mediocre to decent level". I fully expect to hit T1 eventually, despite being merely a slightly above-average player. The bar keeps slowly moving upwards each day.

[Willard Phule]

Appogee, on 04 August 2017 - 09:54 AM, said:

Exactly.

The whole 'wait times' argument doesn't stack up. Any of us could write a competent matchmaking algorithm that would distribute the 24 players available for that match across two teams in a more even way.

The simple truth is, PGI just can't be bothered.

Seems to me that "wait times" have always been horrible, except during an event where everyone and their grandmother (who uses a steering wheel, apparently) is funneled into one queue or the other.

I agree with the majority that population is a big issue, but until PGI addresses the retainment of players, it's hopeless. So far, their entire strategy has been to attract new players, fleece them for a few bucks (wanna buy a mech pack?), and then focus on attracting the next crop of suckers....er....next wave of new players.

Any company that actually wanted to retain their playerbase would have some kind of 1 player interactive tutorial and some form of matchmaker that separates the experienced players from the new ones. Taters don't like being stompped any more than everyone else likes stomping them. Given the choice, I think most of us would prefer to play with people closer to our own level.

poltergoost, on 04 August 2017 - 10:40 AM, said:

Yeah, its kinda sad when you see matchups like that screenshot... you know the result before the match even starts.

At lower tiers, and in the rare balanced matches, it feels like you actually have some personal impact on the game.

But in matches with the strongest players so unevenly distributed... if they are on the enemy team, you may as well just lube up and get it over with... and if they are on the friendly team, you could sit at the back picking your nose and still be on the winning team

And they say the matchmaker doesn't "predict" winning sides anymore......

[Weeny Machine]

The problem is the experience bar. You cannot play so bad that your PSR tanks. This means at one point we are all T1.

The tier system has been introduced for quite a time now. It simply means that we have a bunch of very good T1s, mediocre T1s, and sucky T1s.

Actually it is no surprise that the matches get lousier the older the system gets

[Spr1ggan]

Bush Hopper, on 04 August 2017 - 01:27 PM, said:

The problem is the experience bar. You cannot play so bad that your PSR tanks. This means at one point we are all T1.

The tier system has been introduced for quite a time now. It simply means that we have a bunch of very good T1s, mediocre T1s, and sucky T1s.

Actually it is no surprise that the matches get lousier the older the system gets

To actually lose PSR to the point you drop a rank. You have to set it as a goal and put effort into losing rank. Such a ridiculous system.

[QuantumButler]

Yes

[LordBraxton]

Can confirm, playing tier 1 today... my team spreads out and dies everytime, I beg them to group up, and they dont.

Is it like, 2x tier 1 pilots with potatoes vs 12x tier 2\3 pilots?

[Mole]

I hit tier 1 and nothing changed. Because I was still playing with the same people I was in tier 2.

[Angel of Annihilation]

LordBraxton, on 04 August 2017 - 04:47 PM, said:

Can confirm, playing tier 1 today... my team spreads out and dies everytime, I beg them to group up, and they dont.

Is it like, 2x tier 1 pilots with potatoes vs 12x tier 2\3 pilots?

This is exactly how I feel about things. Most of my matches seem like this. If it was as some people claim just a matter of there being great Tier 1s, average Tier 1s and Bad Tier 1s all mismatched together then random change would insure a more even distribution of match quality. You would get 20% were you get rolled, 20% where you lose it isn't a complete rout, 20% where it is pretty even, 20% where you win but have to put a little bit of effort in and 20% where you completely roll the enemy. Instead I am seeing 50% were my team is steam rolled, 20% where we at least kill off a few enemy mechs but still get beat badly, 20% where we win but barely, 9% where we win by a fair margin and only 1% where we roll the enemy.

[Zergling]

The Lighthouse, on 04 August 2017 - 04:29 AM, said:

Maybe, MAYBE if MWO was still 8 vs 8, I'd agree that 'git good' argument actually hold some water. But 12 vs 12? It is highly probable that I could be afk all game and my win/loss ratio would not change even a single bit.

A single player can have a large effect in W/L, even though it is a 12 vs 12, because it is statistically impossible for a player to have a high or low W/L over thousands of battles.

oneda, on 04 August 2017 - 06:09 AM, said:

Campfest is an effective strategy. With some good snipers in your team youll destroy the enemy team.

Stop complaining if you cant handle snipers.

L2P

You really should check Leaderboard stats before you say 'L2P'.

Edited by Zergling, 04 August 2017 - 06:28 PM.

[Kjudoon]

Spr1ggan, on 04 August 2017 - 01:55 PM, said:

To actually lose PSR to the point you drop a rank. You have to set it as a goal and put effort into losing rank. Such a ridiculous system.

And divorce it from win loss ratio, because that does not actually evaluate skill. As proven by some of the testimonies here on guys having to kill four plus mechs to make up for all the window lickers. Right now all we have is a time in service counter. That is all tiers mean. Even the worst of potatoes will eventually rise to at least tier 3 over time. Creating a subsection of rankings for Tier 1 would do nothing to solve the problem except add another layer of complexity on the Matchmaker. The idea of adding granularity, I think is actually a good one. Divided up into 20 tiers and have you able to Face Off versus the next four levels above and below, and maybe that's a good fix for it. But PGI needs to stop making excuses for trying to normalize to edge cases instead of protecting the bulk of the population and using statistics on individual performance properly.