32 replies to this topic

[Paul Inouye]

So, about that PTS...

We were trying to target today for the PTS tests to take place.

QA testing has found some issues with game modes that broke for some reason (Incursion will instantly fail if any base takes any damage for example). That is not a complete blocker, but it doesn't play well into the story points that are being told.

The big blocker is that the war log which updates everyone on the progress of the phases is not updating correctly. The back end services are not reporting win counts as it should. Engineers are looking into this right now.

What does this all mean?

1) If the war log can't be fixed, there's no point in putting PTS up right at this moment as you will not be able to see the progress and outcome of the conflict phase. It would just be blindly playing a single game mode without knowing its effect on the story.

2) If the war log does get fixed, PTS will go up and this will be a functionality test since the game modes are still messed up. Scouting/Skirmish/Domination seem to be working fine so the phases will be aligned with those game modes.

Please do not take this as a doom/gloom situation, I'll be updating this thread later today to let you know exactly what's up. Just wanted to let you know that there's a pretty big issue with the PTS build.

I'll be back at 1:30 PST to update as the engineers should have a better picture of what can and can't be done for today.

[D V Devnull]

Paul Inouye, on 05 April 2019 - 11:00 AM, said:

I'll be back at 1:30 PST to update as the engineers should have a better picture of what can and can't be done for today.

Okay... This leaves me with one question...

Has any of the advice to avoid docking Match Score on every single Death been heeded, particularly such that only one single docking occurs if you lose ALL of your Mechs, and is not something more nasty than about 25% lost?

If the current Faction Warfare Match Score System has not been changed, there will be two major issues with the MatchMaker Testing. First, the MatchMaking has to work against people being scared of losing their Mechs on the battlefields, and what that will do to a player's Match Score at the end of a Match. Second, Coordinating Teams also have to fight with people not being willing to eject/sacrifice their Mechs due to there being a hidden penalty for doing such, even when it might be necessary to actually trying to win. I would think having those kind of hiccups to the flow of gameplay is not something wanted in a PTS Test for underlying elements such as this.




By the way, I'll try to get in some runs on the PTS myself, even though the current state of MWO is totally burning me out in general. At least then you'll have some data that averages in Casual-Class Pilots, including those whose body is in less-than-perfect shape.


~Mr. D. V. "bringing up the 'silent white elephant' in the room with Faction Warfare MatchMaking" Devnull

[Jaybles-The-PegLeg-PotatoCaptain]

8 hours of scouting, 8 hours of skirmish, followed by 8 hours of domination???

Remember that time when siege mode was always at the end of the capture window and people complained because they never got to play siege mode? Please dear god don't tell me this new event system is structured like that...…..

[ccrider]

Personally, I would drop match score in FP. It's fairly useless. I would rather play with people using all 4 mechs in an effort to kill the enemy than someone racking up 800 damage in a single mech who doesn't affect the outcome in any meaningful way other than to say, "look at muh super high match score!"

[Yondu Udonta]

D V Devnull, on 05 April 2019 - 11:09 AM, said:

Okay... This leaves me with one question...

Has any of the advice to avoid docking Match Score on every single Death been heeded, particularly such that only one single docking occurs if you lose ALL of your Mechs, and is not something more nasty than about 25% lost?

If the current Faction Warfare Match Score System has not been changed, there will be two major issues with the MatchMaker Testing. First, the MatchMaking has to work against people being scared of losing their Mechs on the battlefields, and what that will do to a player's Match Score at the end of a Match. Second, Coordinating Teams also have to fight with people not being willing to eject/sacrifice their Mechs due to there being a hidden penalty for doing such, even when it might be necessary to actually trying to win. I would think having those kind of hiccups to the flow of gameplay is not something wanted in a PTS Test for underlying elements such as this.




By the way, I'll try to get in some runs on the PTS myself, even though the current state of MWO is totally burning me out in general. At least then you'll have some data that averages in Casual-Class Pilots, including those whose body is in less-than-perfect shape.


~Mr. D. V. "bringing up the 'silent white elephant' in the room with Faction Warfare MatchMaking" Devnull

I have no idea what mode you play, but nobody brags about match score in FP, only damage and kills.

[D V Devnull]

Yondu Udonta, on 05 April 2019 - 11:51 AM, said:

I have no idea what mode you play, but nobody brags about match score in FP, only damage and kills.

There are unfortunately people out there toxic enough to demean others over their Faction Warfare Match Score being anything below about 400 per game. It really doesn't help the atmosphere over in the CW/FW/FP area.

More remarkably of note, there's the Primary Point of it not helping the MatchMaker if people are ending up pugstomped into low Match Score repeatedly. It's NOT even a matter of so-called "Bragging Rights" here. It's a matter of helping people slot properly for MatchMaking based on their In-Game Performance, which can not happen properly when people are getting misplaced by the MatchMaker for any of a myriad of reasons. Imagine for example that you have a Team-Minded player, but the MatchMaker is repeatedly putting them with the wrong crowd just because all it has left to put that one person with are a bunch of so-called "Potatoes" who can only possibly drag this person down. At this point, that single good player needs to be able to get recognized for their reasonable work so that they don't get dragged down into a hell of being pugstomped more. Right now, the current "dock on every Death" system that's in-place is actively preventing them from breaking away from those annoying "Potatoes" that they should never be trapped with.

But, those things above are partially beside an alternate point that's been hiding in the shadows for a little while now. This following point is why you find most people unwilling to enter Faction Warfare at all. You want to know what I'm getting at? It all boils down to ONE word... Events ...and what happens when people want to reach Match Scores on the order of 250 or more, just to meet Event Challenge Requirements. People want to complete the Challenges, and get the Loot Bags when they're running. Unfortunately, we both know how hard it is to get people to coordinate and communicate with each other, what with language barriers and all that other annoying junk. But, even worse is the predisposition of humankind to be utterly selfish, ultimately to the detriment of everyone. We have seen that with quite a number of recent Events that have happened, particularly in how the execution fails to properly reinforce TeamWork, and instead ends up dragging good people down due to selfish Teammates damaging better players and their efforts. Any actual good Team-Minded player who has some reasonable amount of kindness & decency will tell you that they feel being dragged down by others doing bad things is simply wrong in general. Unfortunately, the only good place to start in order to fix this is the MatchMaker itself, and that requires changing the rules on Match Score in order to put an end upon the underlying problems in the Player Base, particularly those who go around and mess with other people's efforts.


By the way, thanks for popping up with the thought that got the more valuable discussion rolling. I'm giving your post a '+Like' for that.

~Mr. D. V. "It's not the bragging that's the issue, but is instead the problems with MatchMaking & Event linkings." Devnull

[Paul Inouye]

Let's try this again.... (forum logged me out mid post)

The issue with the game modes was found and fixed. It was also determined to be the same cause of the war log issues. In short, all things appear to be operating as they should.

So Yes, PTS is a go. ETA is sometime this afternoon as QA wants to run a few more tests to make sure the build is as stable as possible. Will make a bigger announcement in the Announcement section just before it goes live.

As for people commenting on duration/game modes etc.... this PTS is for testing purposes... when the system goes live on the production servers, durations and game modes will be assigned based on story. e.g. a scouting phase might be 2hrs long, or it could be 2 days long... it's up to the story writer to determine it. The story phase might not even have a scouting mode. etc etc etc. You get the idea.

[Yondu Udonta]

D V Devnull, on 05 April 2019 - 12:36 PM, said:

There are unfortunately people out there toxic enough to demean others over their Faction Warfare Match Score being anything below about 400 per game. It really doesn't help the atmosphere over in the CW/FW/FP area.

More remarkably of note, there's the Primary Point of it not helping the MatchMaker if people are ending up pugstomped into low Match Score repeatedly. It's NOT even a matter of so-called "Bragging Rights" here. It's a matter of helping people slot properly for MatchMaking based on their In-Game Performance, which can not happen properly when people are getting misplaced by the MatchMaker for any of a myriad of reasons. Imagine for example that you have a Team-Minded player, but the MatchMaker is repeatedly putting them with the wrong crowd just because all it has left to put that one person with are a bunch of so-called "Potatoes" who can only possibly drag this person down. At this point, that single good player needs to be able to get recognized for their reasonable work so that they don't get dragged down into a hell of being pugstomped more. Right now, the current "dock on every Death" system that's in-place is actively preventing them from breaking away from those annoying "Potatoes" that they should never be trapped with.

But, those things above are partially beside an alternate point that's been hiding in the shadows for a little while now. This following point is why you find most people unwilling to enter Faction Warfare at all. You want to know what I'm getting at? It all boils down to ONE word... Events ...and what happens when people want to reach Match Scores on the order of 250 or more, just to meet Event Challenge Requirements. People want to complete the Challenges, and get the Loot Bags when they're running. Unfortunately, we both know how hard it is to get people to coordinate and communicate with each other, what with language barriers and all that other annoying junk. But, even worse is the predisposition of humankind to be utterly selfish, ultimately to the detriment of everyone. We have seen that with quite a number of recent Events that have happened, particularly in how the execution fails to properly reinforce TeamWork, and instead ends up dragging good people down due to selfish Teammates damaging better players and their efforts. Any actual good Team-Minded player who has some reasonable amount of kindness & decency will tell you that they feel being dragged down by others doing bad things is simply wrong in general. Unfortunately, the only good place to start in order to fix this is the MatchMaker itself, and that requires changing the rules on Match Score in order to put an end upon the underlying problems in the Player Base, particularly those who go around and mess with other people's efforts.


By the way, thanks for popping up with the thought that got the more valuable discussion rolling. I'm giving your post a '+Like' for that.

~Mr. D. V. "It's not the bragging that's the issue, but is instead the problems with MatchMaking & Event linkings." Devnull

Yes, initially everyone starts at a certain level for ELO. But unless the ELO is win/loss based, which it shouldnt be because of multiple variables, a skilled player would eventually rise up with good positioning and gunnery even with losses.

And with regards to matchscore for events? Just convince PGI to not have these kind of dumb objectives that promote selfishness, or any of those type like detect x number of mechs objectives where lights just dive bomb to dump a UAV. Matchscore isn't an issue if it's avoided or ignored. Like if you know match score aint worth ****, why would you be affected over someone demeaning you over it?

[MisterSomaru]

Yondu Udonta, on 05 April 2019 - 12:55 PM, said:

Yes, initially everyone starts at a certain level for ELO. But unless the ELO is win/loss based, which it shouldnt be because of multiple variables, a skilled player would eventually rise up with good positioning and gunnery even with losses.

And with regards to matchscore for events? Just convince PGI to not have these kind of dumb objectives that promote selfishness, or any of those type like detect x number of mechs objectives where lights just dive bomb to dump a UAV. Matchscore isn't an issue if it's avoided or ignored. Like if you know match score aint worth ****, why would you be affected over someone demeaning you over it?

for me, I watch people's damages. if they routinely break under 1K, they usually aren't contributing properly. Hell, if they don't break 500 over 4 mechs, they should rethink a lot of things.

[Grus]

D V Devnull, on 05 April 2019 - 11:09 AM, said:

Okay... This leaves me with one question...

Has any of the advice to avoid docking Match Score on every single Death been heeded, particularly such that only one single docking occurs if you lose ALL of your Mechs, and is not something more nasty than about 25% lost?

If the current Faction Warfare Match Score System has not been changed, there will be two major issues with the MatchMaker Testing. First, the MatchMaking has to work against people being scared of losing their Mechs on the battlefields, and what that will do to a player's Match Score at the end of a Match. Second, Coordinating Teams also have to fight with people not being willing to eject/sacrifice their Mechs due to there being a hidden penalty for doing such, even when it might be necessary to actually trying to win. I would think having those kind of hiccups to the flow of gameplay is not something wanted in a PTS Test for underlying elements such as this.




By the way, I'll try to get in some runs on the PTS myself, even though the current state of MWO is totally burning me out in general. At least then you'll have some data that averages in Casual-Class Pilots, including those whose body is in less-than-perfect shape.


~Mr. D. V. "bringing up the 'silent white elephant' in the room with Faction Warfare MatchMaking" Devnull

On the eject issue, 100% agree. If I ran out of ammo and the enemy's not willing to kill me to get in another mech, and I'm now just a walking stick, AND the penalty for ejection is stupid high, what's the point? A look into this needs to happen.

[D V Devnull]

Paul Inouye, on 05 April 2019 - 12:43 PM, said:

Let's try this again.... (forum logged me out mid post)

The issue with the game modes was found and fixed. It was also determined to be the same cause of the war log issues. In short, all things appear to be operating as they should.

So Yes, PTS is a go. ETA is sometime this afternoon as QA wants to run a few more tests to make sure the build is as stable as possible. Will make a bigger announcement in the Announcement section just before it goes live.

As for people commenting on duration/game modes etc.... this PTS is for testing purposes... when the system goes live on the production servers, durations and game modes will be assigned based on story. e.g. a scouting phase might be 2hrs long, or it could be 2 days long... it's up to the story writer to determine it. The story phase might not even have a scouting mode. etc etc etc. You get the idea.

Eh... with Bugs this close to intended release time? I would say go ahead and take an extra week to iron those pesky problems out, then run the PTS after that. No reason to rush and then regret later.

~D. V. "better to have it all working right, and not have people grumpy over Bugs" Devnull

[Deathshade]

Paul Inouye, on 05 April 2019 - 12:43 PM, said:

Let's try this again.... (forum logged me out mid post)

The issue with the game modes was found and fixed. It was also determined to be the same cause of the war log issues. In short, all things appear to be operating as they should.

So Yes, PTS is a go. ETA is sometime this afternoon as QA wants to run a few more tests to make sure the build is as stable as possible. Will make a bigger announcement in the Announcement section just before it goes live.

As for people commenting on duration/game modes etc.... this PTS is for testing purposes... when the system goes live on the production servers, durations and game modes will be assigned based on story. e.g. a scouting phase might be 2hrs long, or it could be 2 days long... it's up to the story writer to determine it. The story phase might not even have a scouting mode. etc etc etc. You get the idea.

Now we are talking. Event controlled Faction Play. You go guys

[Paul Inouye]

Forgot to knock on wood... D V Devnull hit it on the head.

Latest summary from QA:
- War Log is not updating correctly... Factions display right flags but the win counters are remaining at 0.
- Skirmish, Assault, Incursion will result in defeat for both teams.
- Scouting, Domination, Conquest are showing working functionality.

As I mentioned earlier, War Log is kind of critical for PTS. It's not looking good for today folks. Each time a build is kicked off,we have about a hour and a half wait until the build servers publish the new build. QA then has to retest all aspects to make sure something didn't go wrong in other areas.

The engineering group is looking into what's going on with top priority but it's odd things that are happening when code in those areas was not supposed to be touched. They are doing an immediate build right now as I type this to see if there's a possible way to get the PTS up today.

For a heads up, if PTS is not ready today, it will take a bit to get it running next week. Our build engineer is looking at all changes that have been made and the backend/systems guys are auditing all changes that have been made. This takes a while to do.

Matt is currently on standby to run a normal marketing event if PTS does not go up today.

In short, the best I can tell you is this build that is being worked on right now will make or break PTS going up. If PTS does not go up today, a normal event will run. We will re-investigate everything Monday. I'll be writing frequent updates as things pan out.

I apologize for the delays here but we just can't put PTS up without an indication of progression (war log) in the conflicts being played out. As you may notice.. my updates in the last couple of days are real-time and can sway one way or another depending on the findings from QA and engineers.

I'll update once again today no matter which way this pendulum swings.

[Deathshade]

Thanks for the update. It is appreciated.

Skye Rangers have Faction Friday nights and we were working on getting folks together to play the PTS. Hope the build gets pushed for tonight.

Edited by Deathshade, 05 April 2019 - 02:06 PM.

[D V Devnull]

Yondu Udonta, on 05 April 2019 - 12:55 PM, said:

Yes, initially everyone starts at a certain level for ELO. But unless the ELO is win/loss based, which it shouldnt be because of multiple variables, a skilled player would eventually rise up with good positioning and gunnery even with losses.

That's why the Match Score needs to be severely unlinked from single Mech Deaths in Full DropDeck Faction Warfare, and linked only to the final Death that puts the Pilot out of the Match completely. That way, the ELO/PSR can be properly calculated in a manner that reflects each and every individual's efforts and capabilities, without it being infringed upon by the failures of their Teammates at all.

Yondu Udonta, on 05 April 2019 - 12:55 PM, said:

And with regards to matchscore for events? Just convince PGI to not have these kind of dumb objectives that promote selfishness, or any of those type like detect x number of mechs objectives where lights just dive bomb to dump a UAV. Matchscore isn't an issue if it's avoided or ignored.

Heh... Try and get PGI's Events Team to use Savior Kills as a metric for Challenges. They seem to be gravely adverse, like as if it were a plague or something to be paranoid of, even though it is the one thing that would certainly stop selfish behavior.

Strangely, the Event-related problem does not happen with Match Score if no Challenge requires more than about 100 per game to complete. It also seems to be a lot less likely to happen on Cumulative Match Score Challenges, where people can keep stacking Match Score to get Loot Bags, instead of having to get a completely fresh scoring from every single Match that happens.

Yondu Udonta, on 05 April 2019 - 12:55 PM, said:

Like if you know match score aint worth ****, why would you be affected over someone demeaning you over it?

It wouldn't bother me if it were just one person being a toxic jerk. Unfortunately, some of these toxic people out there have this unusual ability to cause an effect... the kind of which I can only refer to by pointing you to a book called "Lord Of The Flies" ...and is a book which I have had the sad luck of reading before. One might say that when bad people can run amok, then others will suffer needlessly. You can trust me when I tell you, it's no fun being a victim.

Hey, you seem like you've got a good ability to punch into troublesome things and come out swinging. Any chance you would be willing to help in order to get these Issues with Match Score & Reinforcing TeamWork fixed, perhaps?



~Mr. D. V. "I hear of 'chilling effects'... I'm trying to stop them... Will you help me to succeed?" Devnull

[D V Devnull]

Paul Inouye, on 05 April 2019 - 02:00 PM, said:

Forgot to knock on wood... D V Devnull hit it on the head.


<<<snip>>>


I'll update once again today no matter which way this pendulum swings.

Thank you for the update on what's happening behind the scenes. It's extremely appreciated.

By the way, running an Event in place of having the PTS is not mandatory, and I most certainly will not hold it against anyone if we have no Events running right now. Feel free to route every resource that you can into the PTS, including Matt, so that we can have the Bugs all worked out by next week, alright?

Also, my apologies for even accidentally foretelling a negative future on you. I'm sorry, and I hope things get better!

~Mr. D. V. "in hope for the best, but already accepting likely reality... not worrying about much else" Devnull

[Paul Inouye]

So here it is.. end of day...

Engineers are still trying to figure out what is sending a non 1 or 0 to the win condition value that is tracked by the database. Essentially every match has 2 teams and which team won is set to -1 by default (correct behavior). When a team wins, it's supposed to be assigned a 1 and the losing team is supposed to be set to 0. Any other values are ignored. For some reason, matches will randomly set 1,0, or some odd number like 15. Stepping through code line by line is not giving any indication of where these weird numbers are coming from. This is causing the war log to not track anything which means there's no way to track progress of the conflict results. The story line system then gets blocked as it cannot determine a winner. This completely breaks the purpose of the PTS.

What this means, is that there will not be a PTS this weekend. Investigations will continue tonight but there's no time to push a new build. Engineering will pick-up again on Monday to investigate the cause of the issue. I'll once again be updating daily as we try to figure out what's going on.

Apologies for the inconvenience as I know some of you are organizing your units and friends to test out the new update. When 'stuff' happens (insert your favorite cuss word), it happens in a down pour.

-Paul

Edit: I don't mean there will not be a PTS before release of the feature... I just mean it's not going to happen this weekend. A full PTS is considered a REQUIREMENT before release of the FP Update.

[Deathshade]

Paul Inouye, on 05 April 2019 - 04:25 PM, said:

So here it is.. end of day...

Engineers are still trying to figure out what is sending a non 1 or 0 to the win condition value that is tracked by the database. Essentially every match has 2 teams and which team won is set to -1 by default (correct behavior). When a team wins, it's supposed to be assigned a 1 and the losing team is supposed to be set to 0. Any other values are ignored. For some reason, matches will randomly set 1,0, or some odd number like 15. Stepping through code line by line is not giving any indication of where these weird numbers are coming from. This is causing the war log to not track anything which means there's no way to track progress of the conflict results. The story line system then gets blocked as it cannot determine a winner. This completely breaks the purpose of the PTS.

What this means, is that there will not be a PTS this weekend. Investigations will continue tonight but there's no time to push a new build. Engineering will pick-up again on Monday to investigate the cause of the issue. I'll once again be updating daily as we try to figure out what's going on.

Apologies for the inconvenience as I know some of you are organizing your units and friends to test out the new update. When 'stuff' happens (insert your favorite cuss word), it happens in a down pour.

-Paul

Edit: I don't mean there will not be a PTS before release of the feature... I just mean it's not going to happen this weekend. A full PTS is considered a REQUIREMENT before release of the FP Update.

Sounds like you got the same variable somewhere. How else could you get that wonky 15? Maybe rename it to another var.

No SR got on yet anyways. I am seeing lots of Clanner moving over to IS though. I will work on posting a heads up for next weekend. I am looking forward to checking it out. Thanks

[slide]

Well Paul that's life in development/prototyping. Sometime no matter how hard you try things just don't go your way.

A really big thank you for the communication though, that really helps.

Back to Surving Mars for another week for me then.

[VigorousApathy]

But Paul, I eagerly await PTS, and hope ya'll take however much time you need to do it as properly as can be done.