254 replies to this topic

[Mr Snrub]

KodiakGW, on 08 September 2017 - 09:50 PM, said:

Yep, matchmaker certainly looks tightened up to me....



My one, and only, game for the weekend. Only waited about 30 seconds for this game. So this is all T1 and 2.

Looks like your "fix" isn't worth the effort you put in. Try again.

1 Stomp is prove for a failing Matchmaker? Really?

These matches will ALWAYS happen, regardless of the system used for matchmaking. All it needs is one team having a strategy while the other just 'waits and sees'. Or two lights running in the bulk of the enemy at the start, getting shot in the first minute and demoralizing the whole team. Or simply a couple of AFKs.

Nevermind someone stepping up to be the 'Dropcaller'. Even if he's not terribly competent, as long as the Team cooperates while their opponents play as individuals, it's going to be a stomp.

Stop blaiming MM for everything.

[KodiakGW]

Prosperity Park, on 09 September 2017 - 07:30 AM, said:

Maybe you're right, Kodiak. Perhaps you should be bumped down to T3...?

Yes, the one in the IFR doing top damage should be bumped down. Nice personal attack adding nothing tho the thread. Thanks for your input.

[Alkabides]

I was able to get clan invasion matches fairly fast then all the sudden this last week it's become a wait of 10+ minutes at least. Good to know there is a reason but man I liked earning those invasion cbills.

[Shard Phoenix]

Yeah. Stomps have, and will always be a thing. Been that way since Closed Beta.

The only thing MM can do is attempt to lump players who, on "paper", appear to be in the same bracket skill level wise.

What it cannot do is force PuGCats to herd themselves into a team and work as such. Only thing that screen cap shows is one side managed to utilize some manner of team work, and the other didn't even try.

[KodiakGW]

Mr Goldenfold, on 09 September 2017 - 07:32 AM, said:

1 Stomp is prove for a failing Matchmaker? Really?

Maybe before opening your mouth you should see my prior post in this very thread. Here is a hint where it is.

KodiakGW, on 07 September 2017 - 09:33 PM, said:

Played five games tonight before moving over to Planetside 2. Played from about 9:30PM-11PM EST (prime time).......

Two games were 12-2 and 12-3 stomps. So, only 5 games played since the "fix", and 60% stomps. But, you are right. "Stay the course, thousand points of light, stomps will happen, git good, etc, etc.". Been working out well so far.

[KodiakGW]

eyeballs, on 08 September 2017 - 10:46 PM, said:

Kodiak that match looks like it was brutal. Can you tell us about it? Did the two teams having mostly clan vs mostly is seem to make much difference? How much of a fight did the commando give you?

I'm bored at work. Sorry.

Fight was on Polar, but no mass LRM boating on either side. Looked to be mostly direct fire. Saw lots of PPC, ERLL fire being exchanged. I was busy flanking from one side to another getting pot shots in and chasing the Commando who was spotting. He was running Stealth Armor and never turned it off, even when he finally rushed in to use his SRMs. He overheated and shut down, allowing me to finish him off. At no time was he harassing the bigger mechs enough for them to start chasing him. I was doing my job to keep him off of them and running.

So, it should have been a fairly even fight. It wasn't. Saw a number of solo suicide charges with long range weapons. Would have recorded it, but was on comms with two of the people who left this game. They were playing APB.

[Love in an Annihilator]

KodiakGW, on 09 September 2017 - 07:48 AM, said:

Maybe before opening your mouth you should see my prior post in this very thread. Here is a hint where it is.



Two games were 12-2 and 12-3 stomps. So, only 5 games played since the "fix", and 60% stomps. But, you are right. "Stay the course, thousand points of light, stomps will happen, git good, etc, etc.". Been working out well so far.

You seem to be a very pleasent guy, Kodiak. A pillar of the community.

You said it was the 'one and only game this weekend'.

Anyway stomps will happen, no matter how good the MM is, there are many, very common events that can lead to stomps that have nothing to do with matchmaking.

[Lorcryst NySell]

Alkabides, on 09 September 2017 - 07:44 AM, said:

I was able to get clan invasion matches fairly fast then all the sudden this last week it's become a wait of 10+ minutes at least. Good to know there is a reason but man I liked earning those invasion cbills.

Hmmm ? Invasion is Faction Play, right ?

I'm afraid that those wait times in FP have NOTHING to do with the tightening of the MatchMaker in SOLO QUICK PLAY.

I've read in another thread that those wait time in FP are actually quite normal and working as intended ... IIRC, when you launch a lobby search for a FP match, the game first populates a bucket of 12 players on one side, then searches for 12 waiting players on the other side of the faction divide, and finally makes them drop into a match, ONE BUCKET AT A TIME, made that way to prevent populous units or groups of players from synching ghost drops and gaming the system.

You'll have to search for more info yourself though, since I didn't bookmark that thread.

Oh, and as far as I know, there isn't any PSR or tier-matching in Faction Play.

I'll be glad to be corrected if I'm wrong tough.

Edited by Lorcryst NySell, 09 September 2017 - 08:28 AM.

[Atomic Hamster]

Well after about 5-10 + games in a row of being on the wrong side of a stomp under the old MM, was about to take a long, long break from MWO as was beginning to get that 'Groundhog Day' feeling (as a casual player with a full time job, I don't want to waste leisure time on a game that I'm not enjoying).

After seeing the MM announcement, thought I'd give it one more go. The waiting time was marginally longer, but my first match was a lot closer (and fun) than any I can remember in a long while, with a totally unexpected result:



Not only was the match close, but we actually managed to win with the entire team dead! More a case of the other team snatching defeat from the jaws of victory than vice versa (although we had destroyed half their base by the end), but still more memorable than the endless 12-2/1 stomps.

By way of comparison, this is the sort of scoreboard I was getting under the old MM, over and over again:



Am cautiously hopeful that the change will at least make things more entertaining for low-tier players (maybe helping retention of new players). Can't comment on the high-tier experience, but I do seem to remember posts on this forum (and Steam) complaining about being forced to play with low-tier 'potatoes'....problem solved?

Also, if there are players in Tier 1 who don't belong there, aren't they more likely to be 'weeded out' if they no longer get matched against T4-5s? Presumably those players' PSR (or whatever you call it) will eventually drop to a point where they actually go down a Tier?

Edited by Atomic Hamster, 09 September 2017 - 09:08 AM.

[Felicitatem Parco]

KodiakGW, on 09 September 2017 - 07:38 AM, said:

Yes, the one in the IFR doing top damage should be bumped down. Nice personal attack adding nothing tho the thread. Thanks for your input.

Actually you blamed the game developer's matchmaking algorithm for the output of match. In reality the output of the match was due to the players. The only options are that you were in the wrong match, or maybe your "n=1" statistical analysis was flawed and you should not have launched a personal attack on the game developers.

Instead of complaining after a single match, maybe you should [in your own words] try again.

Edited by Prosperity Park, 09 September 2017 - 08:35 AM.

[KodiakGW]

Prosperity Park, on 09 September 2017 - 08:32 AM, said:

Actually you blamed the game developer's matchmaking algorithm for the output of match. In reality the output of the match was due to the players. The only options are that you were in the wrong match, or maybe your "n=1" statistical analysis was flawed and you should not have launched a personal attack on the game developers.

Instead of complaining after a single match, maybe you should [in your own words] try again.

Maybe you should see that I already had two similar instances that I posted about in this same thread. Those times I was on the winning side. I saw a number of stupid things done that someone who is expected to compete with the top players in the game would never do.. PSRXPBAR isn't working, but feel free to keep defending it. "Stay the course, thousand points of light..."

Edit: Just an FYI, for year over year August, 3553 points of light have gone out...from 17,995

Edited by KodiakGW, 09 September 2017 - 08:55 AM.

[Alkabides]

Lorcryst NySell, on 09 September 2017 - 08:12 AM, said:

Hmmm ? Invasion is Faction Play, right ?

I'm afraid that those wait times in FP have NOTHING to do with the tightening of the MatchMaker in SOLO QUICK PLAY.

I've read in another thread that those wait time in FP are actually quite normal and working as intended ... IIRC, when you launch a lobby search for a FP match, the game first populates a bucket of 12 players on one side, then searches for 12 waiting players on the other side of the faction divide, and finally makes them drop into a match, ONE BUCKET AT A TIME, made that way to prevent populous units or groups of players from synching ghost drops and gaming the system.

You'll have to search for more info yourself though, since I didn't bookmark that thread.

Oh, and as far as I know, there isn't any PSR or tier-matching in Faction Play.

I'll be glad to be corrected if I'm wrong tough.

Thanks for the response. I'm pretty brand new to game so I'm still trying to get things down. I picked up a cbill boost during the summer special to farm cbills, faction invasion was netting me 800k per win. I was getting games fairly quickly then by late last week the wait time went to unbearable. I've been doing some scouting missions which are nice but not 800k nice and of course I can get somewhere inneighborhood of 300k when I kick tail pipe in quick play but that's a little tougher to consistently pull off.

[Ruar]

Prosperity Park, on 09 September 2017 - 08:32 AM, said:

Actually you blamed the game developer's matchmaking algorithm for the output of match. In reality the output of the match was due to the players. The only options are that you were in the wrong match, or maybe your "n=1" statistical analysis was flawed and you should not have launched a personal attack on the game developers.

Instead of complaining after a single match, maybe you should [in your own words] try again.

The outcome of the match has a lot to do with the matchmaker though. Specifically, the matchmaker building teams based on a PSR which fails to reflect the true skill of the player. So we end up with matches where one team is almost always stacked with better players than the other team.

While technically the players could play above or below their relative skill levels, the vast majority of the time the result is already predetermined once the match is created. This is/was a big problem in WoT as well. There were third party programs which parsed the results of each fight and then assigned a skill rating to each player. Most battles the outcome could be predetermined simply looking at player skill rating and what tanks they were using to the point a % chance to win was shown at the start of the match. If a high skill player was in a strong tank it has much greater effect then a lower skill player being in a similar tank. Occasionally the match played out differently than predicted because people do make mistakes or a group worked together outside of normal tendencies. However, typically the team predicted to win would win.

There was even talk about internal algorithms used by WoT which increased or decreased a players RNG setting to provide better or worse rolls on aiming and armor penetration. This theory seemed to hold true because wins/losses tend to be very streaky and logging off for a period of time seemed to reset the RNG performance. Fortunately there doesn't seem to be such a big reliance on RNG in MWO.

If PGI wants to improve the fights in MWO they first have to scrap the current PSR and start over with more focus on KMDD instead of pure damage. Supporting tasks like staying in formation, hit/run, flanking, scouting, and assists should have more value than pure damage. The PSR should be reset periodically with the last ranking being used to seed the new ladder which would quickly adjust based on current performance instead of historical.

Then they need to take the time to assign some battle values to the different mechs and mech variants. Hardpoint locations and numbers should be a big part of the equation as well as speed and mobility. Personally I think not having a value for weapons makes more sense than assigning weapons a value, but there are good arguments either way.

In the end having a matchmaker base the teams on an actually reflective PSR and the battlevalue of the mechs being used would provide better fights. It's just going to take some work by PGI to make happen. Unfortunately it seems things like Solaris have a higher priority than actually taking time to fix the core game.

[MischiefSC]

Tier isn't a good indicator of value. Back to something Elo based, plus a rough Elo for the mech/chassis. That would give you a more accurate view of a players value in the match.

[Lorcryst NySell]

Alkabides, on 09 September 2017 - 09:19 AM, said:

Thanks for the response. I'm pretty brand new to game so I'm still trying to get things down. I picked up a cbill boost during the summer special to farm cbills, faction invasion was netting me 800k per win. I was getting games fairly quickly then by late last week the wait time went to unbearable. I've been doing some scouting missions which are nice but not 800k nice and of course I can get somewhere inneighborhood of 300k when I kick tail pipe in quick play but that's a little tougher to consistently pull off.

No problem mate, I've been trying to play this game for more than a year now, and I'm still quite new !

Faction Play, and Invasion especially, can indeed rack in the big , mostly due to the fact that you have four 'Mechs with respawn in there, that means four times the amount of targets, so of course more opportunities for .

But, from my personnal point of view, that part of the game is a strange beast ... usual builds and tactics don't really apply, you're limited to one Faction for your 'Mechs, and it seems that most of the time it's quite dead, unless there is an event with FP requierements, then you'll see a lot more action in there (until most of the "casual FP" players have reached their goals).

I enjoy it actually, totally different atmosphere and people than my usual SoloQPUGlandia, I found players that actually wanted to cooperate and work as a team in there, instead of the "me shoot robbits, me ignore teammates" that I see in my Tier 5 matches ...

[Dogstar]

Ruar, on 09 September 2017 - 09:38 AM, said:

There was even talk about internal algorithms used by WoT which increased or decreased a players RNG setting to provide better or worse rolls on aiming and armor penetration. This theory seemed to hold true because wins/losses tend to be very streaky and logging off for a period of time seemed to reset the RNG performance. Fortunately there doesn't seem to be such a big reliance on RNG in MWO.

That was my 'Is WoT Playing With Loaded Dice?' topic that started that.

I've since come to the realisation that WoT probably wasn't loading the RNG it's more likely that streaks of wins or losses occur because of the type of the game (team arena battle with no respawn) and clashes between player expectations and the reality of randomness rather than because of MM rigging. Let's face it, there's no way PGI have the skills to code a rigged matchmaker so the streaks of wins/losses must be down to another reason.

Making even matches seems to be something that developers of this type of game have a lot of trouble with. The MWO MM can't even ensure that clan/IS numbers and tonnage are balanced across both teams let alone balancing by skill.

Edited by Dogstar, 09 September 2017 - 11:32 AM.

[Brain Cancer]

Lorcryst NySell, on 09 September 2017 - 02:48 AM, said:

Confession time :

I WAS WRONG.

Oh so very wrong ...

I spent hours last night, could not sleep, scouring my Drives for pictures of my endgame screens ...

And I mixed things up in my brain, badly.

S'alright. That's why I always try to make sure I get pics of things I see happen, just in case.

[TWIAFU]

Hestan, on 08 September 2017 - 02:23 AM, said:

Noticed I am stuck with 6 or 7 really bad players who often can't even break 100 damage.

That is going to be so much 'fun' to experience in 8v8 won't it?!?

[Thorqemada]

MischiefSC, on 09 September 2017 - 10:05 AM, said:

Tier isn't a good indicator of value. Back to something Elo based, plus a rough Elo for the mech/chassis. That would give you a more accurate view of a players value in the match.

Back in the ELO-Days PGI found that according to their statistics a Stomp happened more likely the more coherent the Elo-Levels of the Players in each Team where.
That is bcs in such a Team Setup the Snowball-Effect has its most effect as the Player coherency prevents a breakdown off the destruction avalanche that starts when one side loses 1, 2, etc. Mechs.

In an incoherent Teamsetup (in a certain window of incoherency that has to be found by testing) Players wont take Advantage of their numerical superiority at some Point and the Snowball-Effect fails, so you can get to a win from 3 or 4 behind.

Elo works in Chess and Single-Player-Sport but it needs heavy adjustments in a Teamenvironment and the term of the Elo-System in MWO was the broadly used infamous "Elo-Hell" for that reason.

Nobody wants Elo-Hell back!

Edited by Thorqemada, 10 September 2017 - 04:44 AM.

[MischiefSC]

Thorqemada, on 10 September 2017 - 04:44 AM, said:

Back in the ELO-Days PGI found that according to their statistics a Stomp happened more likely the more coherent the Elo-Levels of the Players in each Team where.
That is bcs in such a Team Setup the Snowball-Effect has its most effect as the Player coherency prevents a breakdown off the destruction avalanche that starts when one side loses 1, 2, etc. Mechs.

In an incoherent Teamsetup (in a certain window of incoherency that has to be found by testing) Players wont take Advantage of their numerical superiority at some Point and the Snowball-Effect fails, so you can get to a win from 3 or 4 behind.

Elo works in Chess and Single-Player-Sport but it needs heavy adjustments in a Teamenvironment and the term of the Elo-System in MWO was the broadly used infamous "Elo-Hell" for that reason.

Nobody wants Elo-Hell back!

Except stomps always happen, will always happen. The fact that teams saddled with terribads will always be functionally gimped from doing anything coherent or useful isn't a good thing.

It's a 12 v 12 team game. Or, hopefully, 8 v 8. You're always on a team. Trying to gimp teamwork by design is a truly magical kind of bad game design.

If someone wants to win more, they need to get better at the game. Not try to design the game to increase the odds of playing against worse opponents.

Elo-hell was a myth people used to justify why they lost matches. The biggest problem with Elo as it was implemented was a sort of high-low balance, goods and bads on a team to make an average when human skill doesn't work that way, the bads are significantly more of a negative than the goods are a positive. If you're in a tighter band that's way less of an issue and your improvement is more impactful on the teams overall win odds - so if you're rated a 1400, but you work hard, git gud and are playing like a 1600, you'll move up because you're playing with/against 1400s. If you're on a team of 600s-2000, averaging 1400 then your performance change can get washed down to minimal value and take a lot of matches to settle.

Also we need a mech Elo score. Especially with the last 3 years of balance changes the value of the mech and loadout you take can be massively impactful. For bad players the value of the mechs performance can be as much of a factor as their skill. For good players where a win/loss flips on a tiny advantage it can still be critical.

What we need is player and mech Elo and tighter band matchmaking.