1579 replies to this topic

[SolahmaWarrior]

Z Paradox, on 04 May 2020 - 10:52 AM, said:

PGI could just add option for "solo" and/or "group" next to quick play and same to group drop: add groups and/or add solo players. that way we could play solo vs solos or group vs group or mix of all...

and if they want new player to stay and play they need to give them 8 bays and ~75% discount for first 2 mech per class, ppl who played with me didn't want to grind for first mech to find out they dont like it and then they need to grind more to try next, free to play selection is crap and useless 80% of the time.

so I ended up with 4 accounts they dont use...

Or maybe if PGI set it up so you could "Trial" any mech in the store, including allowing the player to make mods and test those out in actual matches. Especially for Cadets or T5 players. This would allow them to figure out what their play style is and the mech load out that works best for them, without the frustration of the trial and error/wasting c-bills method that they are currently relegated to. Only caveat would be that they don't earn XP for that chassis during said trial and only 50% c-bills payout at the end of the match.

[Alzorath]

Not sure how many times the glaring flaw in the system right now has been mentioned in the past 60-ish pages, but this wouldn't be nearly as crap if they actually did just a little bit of balancing to tonnage - as it stands, multiple matches where the tonnage is close (if not more than) double the other team's is really asinine.

[Bud Crue]

RickySpanish, on 04 May 2020 - 01:08 PM, said:

Group queue shouldn't have been shut down, gq should cater to players who want to fight other groups exclusively, at a high level of play.

I don't know about "at a high level of play" but yes, some of us played GQ almost exclusively up until MW5 and the maintenance mode announcement made it untenable. We are usually a group of 6-8 people most nights. The 8v8 was a nice, because it let us go back to dropping together without having to sync in solo queue. It was a return to minimal wait time, fun matches. Oh well. PGI knows best and all that. Anyway, the funniest part of this mixed queue thing is that because of the 4 man max limitation, we are STILL forced to sync drop if we want to have a chance of playing in the same match (two teams of 3, etc.), but now all the scary top level players who used to live in GQ as well, are forced to come down and run the table far more often and in a far more pronounced manner than any group of casuals ever could. This, to me, is hilarious.

[Larsh]

Alzorath, on 04 May 2020 - 02:45 PM, said:

Not sure how many times the glaring flaw in the system right now has been mentioned in the past 60-ish pages, but this wouldn't be nearly as crap if they actually did just a little bit of balancing to tonnage - as it stands, multiple matches where the tonnage is close (if not more than) double the other team's is really asinine.

As posted from OP:
---


Here it is as it currently sits (current values for groups as it has been for a while):

2-player groups: Min Tonnage 40, Max Tonnage 200
3-player groups: Min Tonnage 80, Max Tonnage 255
4-player groups: Min Tonnage 120, Max Tonnage 280

Again, these numbers can be adjusted on the fly with no down time. If you have suggestions on some tonnage numbers, post them and we can try them out.

---
Pretty much input given from playerbase, and viewing how the test progresses, they will tweak the tonnage every week (or something like that). I think they even scaled down the tonnage from their original post. I would need to hunt for it. You would think they would have it on the front page where its easy to find!

They also need to see if they can match certain weight classes in certain drop zones on the maps. Since in the past, it seems PGI based drop zones for a weight class ( Cause Balance! ) . Now you have assualts dropping in Alpha when a map may have had its drop zone designed for light / medium mechs.

[Nesutizale]

Knight Captain Morgan, on 04 May 2020 - 01:51 PM, said:

Why would that be so noticeable? There have been more than a few "my friends & I just wanna have causal drops together" Posters claiming their friends have reinstalled & come back to the game because of this 1 change... surely they aren't lying are they?

secondly you and so many others are falseley claiming that 1 sided stomps aren't up as much as would be believed so surely your experiences could be chalked up to whatever you've been smoking to convince yourselves of this collective lie, right?

For a pure group Q the number of groups is still to small to fill the ranks. I hardly see 4 man teams, most of the games had 2 man teams, one on each side. That would result in group Q times like we allread had them.
Another point is timezone and region of play. Depending on that, judging by what people say here, you have pretty different skilled and sized groups.

Maybe it could work for US primetime but if it only works there then its not realy working at all but to get that we would need more detailed data that most likely only PGI has access to.

As for the stomps. It is my impression during my timezone of play that stomps happen not much more then usual. This again could be very different when the 1% comes online. People I have never meet and most likely never will. So my experiance can be quite different from yours.

I don't say that stomps don't happen and I see that this isn't an easy task to bring in groups and solo players but its not like that it completly destroys quickplay. Its different, some cases positive, I have seen lot more coordination in general, something I only know from FW not quickplay and matches where overall more engageing for me even when we got stomped.

That is quite a different thing because while beeing stomped it wasn't just because of the enemy team beeing just better but lot of times it was a forth and back until they managed to get past us, like with lights getting into our back while the other distracted us. That was clever and resulted in a good stomp for the enemy. I can respect that and I like it.

What this also means and I can understand that some people don't like it...its not nascar only anymore. You have to actualy have to do something different. Some people like that some don't.

The biggest challange I see is how to handle the 1% group of players. Gate machtmaking so those have it harder to find a match? Exclude them? Do nothing and except that they will dominate whenever they are there?
I don't have the answere to that but for the middle ground tiers haveing friends around to casualy shot mechs is good and if we can get more people into the game its even better.

[wasder undapants]

Knight Captain Morgan, on 04 May 2020 - 02:31 PM, said:

if you & your friends were truly getting stomped as often as you claim, they would've already quit again. Try again...

[Redacted] I never said we were the ones getting stomped, and also they stopped playing because we couldn't drop together in small numbers. We don't really care about getting killed in a game, we do care about being able to drop without having to wait forever.

[Spare Knight]

If PGI were able to work out a good match maker that sorts skill level properly, what would be your maximum reasonable waiting time for a match? Knowing it will be a decent match.

I could live with 5 minutes max. It wouldn't be good all the time, but during non-peak hours, I could live with it.

[wasder undapants]

Spare Knight, on 04 May 2020 - 03:24 PM, said:

If PGI were able to work out a good match maker that sorts skill level properly, what would be your maximum reasonable waiting time for a match? Knowing it will be a decent match.

I could live with 5 minutes max. It wouldn't be good all the time, but during non-peak hours, I could live with it.

This should be what we hopefully see next and see quickly. I feel this will bring new players in better and help more experienced players enjoy the game more. I dont have any idea how the complexity and precision of a given matchmaker will relate to time spent in queue but I agree that up to 5 minutes for a more competitive game is fine. Isnt the elephant in the room that MWO doesn't have the player base to make a complex matchmaker work at all let alone quickly?

[Excessive Paranoia]

SolahmaWarrior, on 04 May 2020 - 07:57 AM, said:

No, I totally get that. However, from Russ' own mouth, development of new Mech Packs were stopped because they were not profitable, haven't been for going on 3 years now (he said it last summer during the MW5 Q&As. They also anounced that MWO has been scaled back to "Maintenance mode", 9 or so months ago.

That being said, and having watched player numbers drop significantly over the last 2-3 years, this "Test" by PGI leads to the following possibilities:
1. Enough new money has come in that PGI has found it profitable to make these changes (less likely, to be honest)
or
2. The financial burden that is MWO is too significant to maintain without a quick influx of new, willing to spend money, players.

We already know, again from Russ' mouth that PGI would love to tap into the Fornite player base, and part of the reason they went Epic exclusive (yes, I know they got a huge sign-on bonus), MWO is free advertisement for MW5, as evidenced by all of the anouncements of patches, etc, popping up when you log into MWO. So, it helps them out for luring players to MW5, which costs money, period and is profit.

Bottom line in business, whether F2P or not, is profitability. If you aren't making money, you're losing money. Right now, PGI is losing money on MWO.

I haven't followed what Russ has been saying, so I can't dispute what you've said, and honestly, it does sound like a reasonable approach to a degree. I for one hate the epic games store for its timed exclusives combined with its objectively worse storefront and have committed not only to not purchasing games there until that business practice is ended, but also refusing to purchase any game that has signed onto it for more than half the list price, not matter how badly I wanted it. That said, the reasoning behind agreeing to the exclusives from a developer / publisher standpoint are legitimate... more money, better distribution deals, better advertising... The tradeoff in player goodwill has been worthwhile for many. On the other hand, my point still stands, the metric which we as the player base has control over that would actually communicate to PGI that their approach is wrong is whether or not we play at all. This thread could go to 10k pages of arguments and it still wouldn't be as impactful on their decision making as if 5k people just stopped playing for a month. As I said in my last post, being F2P, MWO hinges on players participating to keep matches flowing, whether or not they are paying customers. No or fewer players literally equates to no or fewer matches available, which would be viewed by PGI as a failed experiment. Conversely, steady player numbers means at the very least the change did not have a negative impact on match numbers, which will be viewed by PGI as a successful test. So as a result, if you don't like the change, yet you keep playing, YOU ARE LITERALLY CONTRIBUTING TO THE CHANGE YOU DISLIKE BECOMING PERMANENT.

I will point out yet again that, while I personally disagree with mixing group and solo queues, the reasoning behind the merge (the ability for friends to play together on a team... this is the only reason because we know from experience that everything else said about this merge is either a bald-faced lie or serious spin on a potentially bad change) is not necessarily bad. The issue is that PGI have done it in the way that required the least amount of effort... throwing the solo queue MM out the window and just dumping the entire community into the terrible group queue MM. If PGI had been willing to put time, effort, and money into writing a new merged MM that would have kept some semblance of balance in matches, this whole thing would have gone very differently. This, however is where your points from above come into play... MWO isn't making enough money to bother with putting that kind of effort, so they took the least expensive approach and now we have a dumpster fire for a MM. The sad thing is this really does have the potential to snuff out the game completely since its very likely that even if they don't leave now, large chunks of the community will leave as a direct result of this if its made permanent. After all, who in T4/5 is going to keep playing when they're forced into matches not just with T1 players, but organized groups of the top tiers of them? How about the T3+ players who've failed upward, but now can't have fun because their limited skill leads them to mistakes that get them deleted in seconds? How about those of us who could probably do just fine with mixed matches, but because balance is thrown out the window, don't enjoy it anymore? I'd hazard a guess that collectively just the groups I've described add up to at least half of the player base, if not much more, and if they leave over the next few months, those that are left might be the most hardcore players, but they're going to be waiting 5-10 mins for solo queue matches at certain times of the day, and who's going to stick around for that?

EDIT: After reading some of Russ' recent tweets, I'm getting the impression that his recent experience playing a thousand matches in WoT has colored his views on game balance. It would appear that he's thinking that you don't need player skill differentiation because other games (i.e. WoT) don't bother with it and they do just fine. The problem is, those games are balanced around varying tech levels, something that MWO 100% does not have, has never had, and its far too late to try to implement (the time for that would have been in beta...).

Edited by Excessive Paranoia, 04 May 2020 - 04:11 PM.

[VonBruinwald]

Larsh, on 04 May 2020 - 03:03 PM, said:

As posted from OP:
---

Here it is as it currently sits (current values for groups as it has been for a while):
2-player groups: Min Tonnage 40, Max Tonnage 200
3-player groups: Min Tonnage 80, Max Tonnage 255
4-player groups: Min Tonnage 120, Max Tonnage 280
Again, these numbers can be adjusted on the fly with no down time. If you have suggestions on some tonnage numbers, post them and we can try them out.
---
Pretty much input given from playerbase, and viewing how the test progresses, they will tweak the tonnage every week (or something like that). I think they even scaled down the tonnage from their original post. I would need to hunt for it. You would think they would have it on the front page where its easy to find!

Pg. 33

Paul Inouye, on 30 April 2020 - 05:26 PM, said:

So, tomorrow at 12PM PDT (Noon) 19:00 UTC, the max tonnage for 4 player groups will be dropped to 260 tons. It will remain here for the duration of the weekend. Will be reviewing match results on Monday and adjust from there.
As mentioned on twitter, there will be times where I will be adjusting some numbers that dictate PSR tier matching... but those will have drastic impacts on queue times.

I'm guessing 2 and 3 are unchanged. My suggestions:

2-man - 80 - 150
3-man - 120 - 200
4-man - 160 - 240

That's enough for everyone to bring a medium/heavy without flooding the queue with lights or assaults.

Edited by VonBruinwald, 04 May 2020 - 04:10 PM.

[50 50]

Thorqemada, on 04 May 2020 - 07:56 AM, said:

Simple Question:
Why then did the Group Queue not work, or FW or PRIVATE MATCHES?

Few different reasons over the years for why FW population didn't get far and then declined sharply.
Group Queue it seemed a little sudden but I would attribute the skill tree change as a major impact on the population.
After that it's been self fullfilling.
You queue for a match, wait a certain amount of time before giving up and either jumping to a different queue or ditching the game entirely for something else.
The more this happened the wait times increased further and around it went.

If this change with the queues helps to bring some life into the game overall then that's good for all of us as greater player numbers in the game will mean things like PSR matching can work better. (And maybe we get a better system)

If we don't have enough overall players at the moment to make enough 12 players teams to provide that mix of games in any given tier range then we can expect the wait times to blow out and enjoyment to drop.

The example of 100 players was used earlier when looking at the probability of encountering a high skill group.
100 players only means 4 games when it's 12v12.
With no tier separation you might hope that these 100 people cycle around a bit and mix and the players in the teams each time to create that variety of opponent and therefore different match experiences.

So while we do need to see the players separated by tier and have a better match maker in that regard, that reduction in available players for the matches will impact the wait times and variety of opponents.
It's hard to say how that would impact player experience as a +/- but we would hope that some separation of tier 5s from tier 1s would help make more even matches and less stompy.
This could be a complete myth mind you as even before this merge of the queues it seemed just as likely for a game to end between 12-0 and 12-4. We have to remember the matches sit on a knifes edge and when one side gets the upper hand that can escalate quickly. A game might look like it was a stomp at the end when looking at the match stats, but if it was a hard fought battle for 10 minutes and then there was a bit of attrition leading to that snowball effect in the last 5? You might say 'wtf' but it might have been bl**dy enjoyable fight.

Got side tracked there a little.

Back to the point on player population making the match maker work better.
If we don't have enough players to use an effective PSR matching/separation 24 hours / 7 days a week in a single queue, without an influx of players there are only a couple of things that might help:

1. Go back to the single NA server to consolidate the player base as the ability to deselect servers means the player base can divide itself.
2. Consider the option to allow matches with smaller teams. I don't suggest a hard limit on the team maximum, but a dynamic team building based on numbers. Going to elaborate on this a bit.

Everything in the game is based around the lance of 4 players as part of the full company of 12 players for a team.
With the new limitation on group maximums of a lance, we should look at this as a building block to create the teams.
That is, if the match maker tries to create a game every minute (add a timer and queue count like there is in FW) then the system needs the flexibility to initially try and create a 12v12 match. If that is not possible it should be able to immediately attempt 8v8 or then 4v4. Can't even make a 4v4, well, wait 1 minute and try again.
There are several advantages in having this sort of flexibility but the simple objective is to get people playing as many games as possible as the more games you can play, the more you will play therefore encouraging greater participation overall.

[VonBruinwald]

NEW FEEDBACK THREAD FROM PAUL WITH METRICS!

[50 50]

Larsh, on 04 May 2020 - 03:03 PM, said:

As posted from OP:
---


Here it is as it currently sits (current values for groups as it has been for a while):

2-player groups: Min Tonnage 40, Max Tonnage 200
3-player groups: Min Tonnage 80, Max Tonnage 255
4-player groups: Min Tonnage 120, Max Tonnage 280

Again, these numbers can be adjusted on the fly with no down time. If you have suggestions on some tonnage numbers, post them and we can try them out.

---
Pretty much input given from playerbase, and viewing how the test progresses, they will tweak the tonnage every week (or something like that). I think they even scaled down the tonnage from their original post. I would need to hunt for it. You would think they would have it on the front page where its easy to find!

They also need to see if they can match certain weight classes in certain drop zones on the maps. Since in the past, it seems PGI based drop zones for a weight class ( Cause Balance! ) . Now you have assualts dropping in Alpha when a map may have had its drop zone designed for light / medium mechs.

I'd like to see how it goes with the 3/3/3/3 and have groups fit a 1/1/1/1
Don't mind if we keep the drop locations according to lance over mech class as it would be the same on both sides.

[Thorqemada]

Yeah, Player Skill Level Balancing works for Single Player or Teams that are allways made of the same Players (and allways use the same Equipment).

Neither is MWO a Single Player game (albeit it is a Solo Player Game for part of the Playerbase) nor has it Teams that allways are made of the same Players, nor do they allways use the same Equipment.

Such Balancing does not take into account the many, many, many Mechs and Variants a Player can use who massively interfere with the ability of a Player to perform as some Mechs or Roles are inferior or less usefull in the current game environment.

So an Elo based or Skill based MM is in reality never doing its Job!

For the Job to be done you would need an Equipment based MM in the first step as base MM that can then be tweaked on an individual per Player Level.

Edited by Thorqemada, 04 May 2020 - 05:53 PM.

[Horseman]

Einherier96, on 04 May 2020 - 10:46 AM, said:

problem is, lets be realistic here: the playerbase is not even remotly large enough to seperate into 1percentile, or even 10percentile without making the game unplayable for these people, and lets not start talking about an even more sophisticated one that would divide the players into smaller brackets for mm purpose

And we should not artificially separate those for matchmaking either, merely try to give both teams roughly equal distribution of each given "quality" of a pilot.

VonBruinwald, on 04 May 2020 - 12:59 PM, said:

I'd also suggest doing away with large groups (5 or more players) entirely if we combined in this manner, if people want to 12 man they can still do so in FW, it also makes it easier for the MM to split groups between teams more easily.

Groups are already limited to 4. If the matchmaker throws a "group" of 6 into the match, it's actually putting two groups of 3 together (which is a known issue)

Thorqemada, on 04 May 2020 - 01:37 PM, said:

Why had Elo a long wait time (for High Elo Players)?
Bcs there were not many High Elo Players outside the Primetime.
Which also made them combat the same opponents quite often...
(...)
Why had it competitive pressure?
Bcs the High Elo Player would be paired with many lower Elo Players forming a Team with quite a Skillgap that the the High Elo Player had to fill - he had to carry his Team, so allways using the best equip and utmost skill he could offer or get wrecked.
Then came the PSR experience bar...
But going back to Elo, or something along that line, will obviously not help the game...it will only bring back old Problems thrown at a way smaller Playerbase this time...

Either way we need a meaningful performance metric, doesn't matter if it's ELO, WLR, matchscore or whatever... it just shouldn't be matchmaking by cucumber.

wasder undapants, on 04 May 2020 - 02:08 PM, said:

In short, don't rage against this change, its the only reason a fair few people are back playing this game now. Rage against how skills levels/experience levels/stat levels are matched up to create the rounds - thats the problem. I am in tier 1 and I am fully behind a full tier reset and a completely overhauled system if it means we can in a few weeks/months get to a place with better match making.

Pretty much. Matchmaking quality is what made this change so opposed, if the matchmaking was good enough to produce balanced matches everyone would be applauding.

SolahmaWarrior, on 04 May 2020 - 02:37 PM, said:

Or maybe if PGI set it up so you could "Trial" any mech in the store, including allowing the player to make mods and test those out in actual matches.

You can't take them into matches, but you can take them into Training Grounds.

wasder undapants, on 04 May 2020 - 03:35 PM, said:

Isnt the elephant in the room that MWO doesn't have the player base to make a complex matchmaker work at all let alone quickly?

That's what Russ claims.

Thorqemada, on 04 May 2020 - 05:52 PM, said:

Yeah, Player Skill Level Balancing works for Single Player or Teams that are allways made of the same Players (and allways use the same Equipment).

Given large enough sample size, all random factors will average out.

Quote

Such Balancing does not take into account the many, many, many Mechs and Variants a Player can use who massively interfere with the ability of a Player to perform as some Mechs or Roles are inferior or less usefull in the current game environment.
For the Job to be done you would need an Equipment based MM in the first step as base MM that can then be tweaked on an individual per Player Level.

PGI tracks our stats for each map, mode and mech variant - you can see that in your profile: https://mwomercs.com/profile/stats . They can also track global stats for mech variants per map/mode. Those can be used to correct for the mech, map and mode factors when determining a player's "value" to the matchmaker.

Quote

So an Elo based or Skill based MM is in reality never doing its Job!

We don't need to restrict matchmaking to strict ELO or skill brackets. What we do need is use some meaningful metric when assigning solos to equalize both teams. Because at this time it's too random.

Edited by Horseman, 05 May 2020 - 02:26 AM.

[JackHarkon]

Please turn it back. The matches are horrible now. I do not want to lose all the time because I now get matched with meme players.

[Thrudvangar]

Its fun, its good, it keeps ppl playing or makes them return!

Keep it!

[Thorqemada]

Regarding MM and averaging out...

If you have a Skillbased MM that will ofc balance out at some point if the Playerbase is still big enough but is detrimental to the Playeretention as well as the Business Modell that PGI uses.

In a Skillbased MM the Player has 1 Variable he has full control over and that is Equipment (Mech, Armament, etc.).
That will naturaly result in the scenario that almost always a Player will pick the very best option available or lose, bcs there is no way around, MWO is an Equipment based game were skill only matters (if it is not Greenhorn vs 1%er) if the euipment is at least similar in combat ability.

Why is that detrimental?
It puts a huge pressure at the Player to use only the best Equipment Option in every match and that is at some Point boring and may even prevent a Player from playing his favourite Mech which lowers motiation to play.

It narrows down the usage of Mechs from hundreds of Variants to a few dozen percived as "good" and the workhours put into all the variants will hardly be recouped financially as well it demotivates the Players to buy additonal stuff for that Mechs.
It makes the whole businessmodel of PGI, selling Mech Packs and "beautyfication items" for Mechs obsolet for hundreds of Mechs seen as underperformers bcs why would you spend money for Trashmechs?

So, while at some Point you may achieve some sort of "Balance" with skill based MM it is an unhealthy one that works against your Businessmodell and Playermotivation.

Only with Eqipment based MM you allow the Players to explore all the Options you offer them while you are not punishing them with automatic losses for doing so!


PS: And ofc Map n Mode Voting had to be a Premium Time item!!!

Edited by Thorqemada, 05 May 2020 - 04:01 AM.

[Horseman]

Thorqemada, on 05 May 2020 - 03:55 AM, said:

If you have a Skillbased MM that will ofc balance out at some point if the Playerbase is still big enough but is detrimental to the
In a Skillbased MM the Player has 1 Variable he has full control over and that is Equipment (Mech, Armament, etc.).
That will naturaly result in the scenario that almost always a Player will pick the very best option available or lose, bcs there is no way around, MWO is an Equipment based game were skill only matters (if it is not Greenhorn vs 1%er) if the euipment is at least similar in combat ability.
(...)
Only with Eqipment based MM you allow the Players to explore all the Options you offer them while you are not punishing them with automatic losses for doing so!

Jesus christ... like I said multiple times before, PGI has the means to track your "skill level" individually for each chassis or even individual mech you run
That way if you chose a mech you perform poorly with, the matchmaker would be able to account for that and not score your "value" as highly as it would if you instead picked a mech you perform exceedingly well with.
This isn't freaking rocket science, man.

Edited by Horseman, 05 May 2020 - 09:01 AM.

[DAEDALOS513]

JackHarkon, on 05 May 2020 - 02:20 AM, said:

Please turn it back. The matches are horrible now. I do not want to lose all the time because I now get matched with meme players.

Baha, you seriously think it's worse than before as far as what mechs ppl bring to a match? Come on.. Play more than 10 matches before you decide if you dislike soup queue.. you'll find it's a vast improvement from the chaos the old solo queue brought.

Edited by DAEDALOS513, 05 May 2020 - 09:46 AM.