157 replies to this topic

[HammerMaster]

[justcallme A S H]

Vxheous, on 11 January 2019 - 06:43 PM, said:

How am I shaming or being toxic?

When you have no other point left to argue - You pull the toxic card. Pretty standard around here.

[Vxheous]

justcallme A S H, on 11 January 2019 - 07:37 PM, said:

When you have no other point left to argue - You pull the toxic card. Pretty standard around here.

Careful, you're shaming him now

[Remover of Obstacles]

Sean and ASH,

Thank you so, so much for the time you put into this game.

Totally agree with lots of your points.

- Match score tiers makes a lot of sense with a great graphic chart
(rip the bandaid off quickly and things will settle out in a couple of weeks or months)
(maybe take a look at a few items that inflate matchscore artificially at low teirs - for example ams missiles shot down)

- Side torso destruction death was rejected by the community
(hurts that lots of clan mechs have locked engines and the lowest side torso armor densities. Blood Asp, Timber Wolf, Madcat MkII, Warhawk, Dire Wolf....Not a lot of humanoid shapes with good hitboxes.)
(Some people I knew were pretty pissed about the number of LFE they bought and then felt like they might as well remove and use XLs)
(give standards +10 CT structure, +5 ST structure and a bit of crit reduction, maybe 5%, and call it good - adding mobility is dangerous especially with how rough things have been since engine desync and skill tree options)
(it was pretty $h!tty to drop that change over the holidays when a lot of players get off school/work or get a new rig/gear and pick the game back up. Our units are getting smaller and smaller as it is. We don't need more "Fun Sucking Ideas". )

- Lrm rage- Lrms were fine before Chris started "fixing" them.
(Velocity buff was nice and probably could have stopped there. The extra ammo capacity is fun. The heat reduction coupled with the heat capacity and dissipation changes were the force multiplier that pushes it over the edge. I am fine with velocity staying the same, maybe take ammo back a bit, take heat back up - if and ONLY if you revert the reticle changes. )
(and for the love of god stick trees and lamp posts shall not break locks)

Future messing around with LRMs - no need to change the firing arcs, not going to promote better play.
(totally agree, closer range LRMers will be more hurt by the arc changes and be forced to move to indirect fire. What a waste of developer time and money.)

(UAVs were mentioned as providing an easy way to get a lot of damage. Maybe UAVs should be bigger and have less HP - maybe 2 or 1!!!. Clan gauss rifle is 12 tons and has 5 hp... UAV is essentially weightless and has 10 hp, really??)

Looking forward to more of Sean and ASH.

PGI please listen to ASH.

Chris don't send any changes (especially balance) to the LIVE Server without enthusiastic buy in from ASH. Like Tom Cruise jumping on couches enthusiastic. Phil dancing the haka in a sharksuit enthusiastic.
If you bring up changes and Phil breaks eye contact and says something non-definitive like - maybe that could help, somehow- just drop the idea on the porch like a flaming bag of dog poo.

[MischiefSC]

*using the word 'you' in a general sense because I'm not wanting to call anyone specific out. However, it probably means you in some form or fashion.

Balance is a moving target rotating in 3 directions with a lot of different sides. Some players want balance around the effort involved (same effort put out in, say, a SPL Firestarter should get approximately the same results on an equally ideal map/mode as say a UAC5s/10s MK II), some want it around the skill involved (i.e. poptarting should be awesome again), some want it around casual/ease of use vs competitive balancing (i.e. LRMs should be strong so casuals can keep pace with competitive players).

You could probably split that up another 20 times into different categories and interests.

There's no way to make balance suit everyone because many of the positions on balance are mutually exclusive so PGI tends to try and get a bit middle of the road, which will inevitably make nobody totally happy but everyone minimally pissed off.

Uncomfortable truths:

1. It's never going to be effort balanced because there's just too much baked in inequality in mechs and equipment. To some greater or lesser degree bigger is always going to be better and role warfare just isn't in the cards for this MWO. Maybe MW5 or MWO 2. The best you'll get is a slow rotation on which mechs are good, which suck and what the meta is.

2. It's never going to go too far into skill based because that leads to a pretty inbred environment like the days of poptarts all day for days. Conversely this means the skill curve gives diminishing returns. Once you get too far above mediocre it takes a huge amount of effort and games played to move any significant distance up from everyone else. If you're not putting in that huge effort you're not going to see much gains.

3. There's going to be mechs and loadouts that are low skill, low effort and reasonable returns. This will inevitably give huge returns for high skilled players. The truth is those players would have likely one anyway and playing with low skill stuff (like LRMs) is going to make them lazy anyway.

4. Some players are better at the game than you. Way better. They understand the game and how it works and why better than you. Way, way better. Generally (but not universally) people who win a lot understand what wins and why better than people who don't win a lot. This usually applies over every spectrum of the game. If you don't win a lot then what you're doing and the decisions you're making are not winning ones. That's okay - however it is true and real and pretty easy to identify and determine. Doesn't mean you can't speak up and share your opinions but we have a wide variety of available metrics to clearly show who does and doesn't understand what wins and how and why. You don't have to agree with people who disagree with you but if someone always beats you and they have an opinion about what works well and what doesn't you have a really steep burden of proof if you want to say they're wrong on that subject and you're right.

5. PGI isn't balancing the game around what you want, because you're not even close to that important and it probably is close to 90% of the criteria about balance decisions are based in information you don't know and they will not and have no need of sharing with you.

6. If you haven't preordered MW5 and are saying you'll just get it after it's patched up, you're bad at math. If you're going to spend the money later why not spend it now and get a ton of free stuff with it. You're going to buy it. You know you will. Probably right after release because if you were not weak you would have walked away from MWO 50 forum tantrums ago. Just ******* buy it.

7. There's a few members of PGI leadership who look like they're putting on some extra weight. I get it, we're all getting older but you gotta mind that CICO. Just because Canada legalized your favorite habit doesn't mean it's all munchies all the time.

[Knuckles OTool]

Is this a post telling people to not bother posting?

[Dee Eight]

Prototelis, on 09 January 2019 - 09:56 AM, said:

Most of the userbase plays in the same matches (tiers 1 down to 3). They see the same gameplay. Most of the people playing this game have no interest in learning how to actually play better. And thats cool, they making a game just for these people, its called "MechWarrior 5."

BUT...designing the game around 1% clearly has not worked out, which is why the game cannot retain players. Right now reading the forums, 2:40AM EST, when the solo queue is full of brits and frenchmen waking up in europe,.. there are 42 members logged into their account on the forum (which is usual for the ones who actually intend to post something), and 687 guests... meaning all the folks who aren't interested in actually posting. And today's top20 posters include a whole lot of names who responded in this thread but most are NOT representative of the 90% of the player base.
Today's Top 20 Posters

Member Joined Total Member Posts Posts Today % of today's posts [color=#F0FF5A]Koniving[/color] 27-May 12 21,793 22 4.45%

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[color=#F0FF5A]Dimento Graven[/color] 22-August 12 5,783 19 3.85%

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[color=#F0FF5A]HammerMaster[/color] 30-June 12 1,479 17 3.44%

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[color=#F0FF5A]Prototelis[/color] 07-July 16 1,263 17 3.44%

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[color=#F0FF5A]Y E O N N E[/color] 17-April 14 15,538 16 3.24%

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[color=#F0FF5A]LordNothing[/color] 28-October 13 8,744 13 2.63%

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[color=#F0FF5A]Grus[/color] 23-March 12 3,116 12 2.43%

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[color=#F0FF5A]justcallme A S H[/color] 01-July 12 5,697 11 2.23%

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[color=#F0FF5A]RickySpanish[/color] 12-August 12 1,284 10 2.02%

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[color=#F0FF5A]Trevor Devalis[/color] 27-May 16 40 10 2.02%

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[color=#F0FF5A]Kubernetes[/color] 15-October 13 1,822 9 1.82%

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[color=#F0FF5A]arcana75[/color] 31-August 17 1,025 8 1.62%

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[color=#F0FF5A]D V Devnull[/color] 25-November 15 2,492 8 1.62%

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[color=#F0FF5A]VeeOt Dragon[/color] 21-December 17 63 8 1.62%

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[color=#F0FF5A]Cichol Balor[/color] 10-March 17 251 8 1.62%

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[color=#F0FF5A]Wil McCullough[/color] 26-October 13 1,186 7 1.42%

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[color=#F0FF5A]tattaki[/color] 02-October 12 3,767 7 1.42%

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[color=#F0FF5A]Vxheous[/color] 06-June 12 2,852 7 1.42%

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[color=#F0FF5A]The Lost Boy[/color] 03-October 13 523 6 1.21%

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[color=#F0FF5A]NRP[/color] 24-December 12 3,879 6 1.21%

[Dee Eight]

justcallme A S H, on 11 January 2019 - 07:37 PM, said:

When you have no other point left to argue - You pull the toxic card. Pretty standard around here.

Most of my suspensions from the forum have come from "reports" from folks who'd run out of logical replies... because you know...can't refute the message...well...silence the messenger then.

[justcallme A S H]

Dee Eight, on 11 January 2019 - 11:47 PM, said:

BUT...designing the game around 1% clearly has not worked out, which is why the game cannot retain players.

If the game was balanced around the top 1% - the community balance document would have come to fruition, or most of it. Instead a couple of things came out of it and we, wrongly implemented, by and large.

The game is nowhere near balanced in terms of top tier players. Not even close.


The game is not retaining players for many many reasons but to claim that is is because the balance is geared toward top tier is absolutely farcical. I mean, most Top Tier players have QUIT the game because of how poor balance is.

Edited by justcallme A S H, 12 January 2019 - 12:15 AM.

[Appogee]

My view on how to fix matchmaking by fixing PSR...



The 'secondary sorting' approach discussed in the video would be a great adjunct to the approach I have outlined.

But until PSR starts reflecting actual skill, instead of just accumulated experience, it's worse than useless for creating matches.

Edited by Appogee, 12 January 2019 - 12:17 AM.

[justcallme A S H]

There simply is not enough players from 226 Average Match Score as that is only 30% fits that, or there about, going off Jarls numbers.

Thus the issue with having that 6th tier, or essentially creating a two-middle tier. You must have that overlap from that middle tier like we do now or you will not get matches. And again my AMS numbers were simlpy a illustration, more analysis would need to be done.

Anyway thats just my hunch based on overall population and spread across the Average Match Score.

[HammerMaster]

So all ideas not from one source are shot down.
We dont rate conversation time with our "betters".
More staus quo minor changes that don't amount to anything.
Seems right.

Edited by HammerMaster, 12 January 2019 - 04:44 AM.

[Palfatreos]

oh no the aussie virus spreading over the internet the containment has failed. Putting them on an island plan din't prevent them for going beyond the ocean.

[Wil McCullough]

HammerMaster, on 12 January 2019 - 04:29 AM, said:

So all ideas not from one source are shot down.
We dont rate conversation time with our "betters".
More staus quo minor changes that don't amount to anything.
Seems right.

it's hard to take your ideas seriously when you have a habit of contradicting yourself when it's convenient.

just in this thread, you went from accusing pgi of "pushing lore away" to pushing the idea of reticle bloom (which is DEFINITELY not lore).

also, you're kinda guilty of saying gems like "Anyone who continues to state lurm rather than L R M has issue with LRM."

[HammerMaster]

Wil McCullough, on 12 January 2019 - 06:21 AM, said:

it's hard to take your ideas seriously when you have a habit of contradicting yourself when it's convenient.

just in this thread, you went from accusing pgi of "pushing lore away" to pushing the idea of reticle bloom (which is DEFINITELY not lore).

also, you're kinda guilty of saying gems like "Anyone who continues to state lurm rather than L R M has issue with LRM."

Pushing lore away for convenience of not coding is not convenient to me.

Reticule bloom parallels lore in that when you move , you're less accurate. Plain and simple. I want bloom. You make it sound as if I don't? This also causes more spread to affect convergence which is a good thing. (Repair and Rearm was a good thing but people cried that one out of existence)

That "gem" as you call it. Well. I'm gonna keep that one. I like it.

Contradictory? Let's see more examples if you really want me to expound. If I'm wrong. I'll say so. Don't expect me to backpedal. Did you have a point here sir?

Edited by HammerMaster, 12 January 2019 - 07:01 AM.

[MischiefSC]

Match score is also a bad indication. Again, go to Jarls. Sort by match score. Strip everyone under 200 total matches.

Do the same again by win/loss.

The top 60 players shuffles some but is reasonably similar. After that you get a huge swing and not in a good way.

There's a pretty thick swath in the AMS 300+ range with barely a 1.0 to 1.1 w/l and it's all the "hold locks, armor sharing is a myth" crowd.

I can go over the math on why the only useful metric is w/l for making matchmaker again and how only a fraction of 1% of the games population has their w/l skewed by group queue but I'd like to think it's been gone over enough.

Edited by MischiefSC, 12 January 2019 - 07:18 AM.

[Appogee]

justcallme A S H, on 12 January 2019 - 12:34 AM, said:

There simply is not enough players from 226 Average Match Score as that is only 30% fits that, or there about, going off Jarls numbers.

Thus the issue with having that 6th tier, or essentially creating a two-middle tier. You must have that overlap from that middle tier like we do now or you will not get matches. And again my AMS numbers were simlpy a illustration, more analysis would need to be done.

Anyway thats just my hunch based on overall population and spread across the Average Match Score.

The average match scores for each tier shown in the diagram are only illustrative examples.

The actual tier boundaries would be dynamically determined every season based on the actual distribution of AMS for actual active players. The top 2.5% go into Tier 1, the next 14% into Tier 2, etc.

In this way, there are always the right number of players in each tier.

[HammerMaster]

Appogee, on 12 January 2019 - 08:06 AM, said:

The average match scores for each tier shown in the diagram are only illustrative examples.

The actual tier boundaries would be dynamically determined every season based on the actual distribution of AMS for actual active players. The top 2.5% go into Tier 1, the next 14% into Tier 2, etc.

In this way, there are always the right number of players in each tier.

Zero sum?
Let's say it doesn't work.
Could 1 more tier really make it worse?
Give it an honest chance.

For arguments sake? Can your method apply to 5?

Edited by HammerMaster, 12 January 2019 - 08:22 AM.

[Wil McCullough]

HammerMaster, on 12 January 2019 - 06:58 AM, said:

Pushing lore away for convenience of not coding is not convenient to me.

Reticule bloom parallels lore in that when you move , you're less accurate. Plain and simple. I want bloom. You make it sound as if I don't? This also causes more spread to affect convergence which is a good thing. (Repair and Rearm was a good thing but people cried that one out of existence)

That "gem" as you call it. Well. I'm gonna keep that one. I like it.

Contradictory? Let's see more examples if you really want me to expound. If I'm wrong. I'll say so. Don't expect me to backpedal. Did you have a point here sir?

you backpedal almost every other post you make, dude.

you shout that you want moar loar but you want to introduce reticle bloom to the game.

reticle bloom has never been part of lore. in lore, pilots miss more when they move because moving makes it harder to aim. in mwo, players miss more when they move because *gasp* moving makes it harder to aim too! in lore, pilots with great gunnery suffer less accuracy loss when moving. in mwo, pilots with great gunnery also suffer less accuracy loss when moving.

just because you can't shoot the side of a barn when you move doesn't mean that other pilots shouldn't be able to as well. just learn to shoot instead of whining about lore.

pgi isn't the greatest at balancing their game but moving away from lore and tt mechanics is the best frigging decision they ever made.

[HammerMaster]

Wil McCullough, on 12 January 2019 - 08:24 AM, said:

you backpedal almost every other post you make, dude.

you shout that you want moar loar but you want to introduce reticle bloom to the game.

reticle bloom has never been part of lore. in lore, pilots miss more when they move because moving makes it harder to aim. in mwo, players miss more when they move because *gasp* moving makes it harder to aim too! in lore, pilots with great gunnery suffer less accuracy loss when moving. in mwo, pilots with great gunnery also suffer less accuracy loss when moving.

just because you can't shoot the side of a barn when you move doesn't mean that other pilots shouldn't be able to as well. just learn to shoot instead of whining about lore.

pgi isn't the greatest at balancing their game but moving away from lore and tt mechanics is the best frigging decision they ever made.

You forgot about convergence.
Please pick on that too.

Also cite instances of backpedaling. For records sake.
I'll give you one. I complained of spider size when introduced.
It was pointed out to me that they are in fact not too small but other mechs are too big.
This was correct as I took a look again so not so much a backpedal as agreeing I was mistaken.

Why are you saying I can't shoot now?
So what are we shaming now?
LRM shaming?
Stat shaming?
Finance shaming?
Country shaming?
Fat shaming?
Brown hair shaming?
Whatever it takes to make you feel better than me?
Please.

Edited by HammerMaster, 12 January 2019 - 08:55 AM.