849 replies to this topic

[Brauer]

LordNothing, on 26 May 2020 - 01:50 PM, said:

objectives in qp are meaningless and any mode in qp is skirmish.

however the thing about conquest fp edition isnt that you had to sit on cap points, but that you had to control the map. meaning rather than a massive deathball collision you end up breaking off into little pocket battles. rather than sitting in one spot trading the whole match. you are forced to not only use your mech's weaponry but also its mobility. you get wolfpacks, light hunters, assaults and heavies used as area denial or to confront any concentrated forces. theres always a new problem to deal with. most importantly you are rewarded for taking risks, something almost all other modes flat out punish. it was the only mode to sufficiently mix up the game where the others failed. and no the qp version is not a substitute, its effectively skirmish. removing it was a horrible mistake. there are lots of modes with meaningless token objectives that can be removed.

I am aware.

I personally greatly enjoyed FW conquest. If anything I'd bump the ticket count for victory to 1500 and then see if it warranted a further slight bump. I wouldn't go further than 1750.

Edited by Brauer, 26 May 2020 - 03:37 PM.

[L1f3H4ck]

The Ghost Walker, on 26 May 2020 - 09:00 AM, said:

Please don’t NOT reset the tiers.
I busted my *** to get to full bar Tier 1 status.

Sigh, the fact that it turned out to be an XP bar is the focal point of our current problem. Status? "Tier 1 btw" is a meme, it's nothing to be proud of.

Reset when exactly? Do we have to wait until next Tuesday or can we have it sooner?

[Drunk Canuck]

Leidulfr, on 26 May 2020 - 02:51 PM, said:

1) Why do you care about your tier, especially if the MM is pulling from all tiers irregardless, due to the low player pool? You said yourself the balance is all out of wack.

2) If it's a "grind" for you to get out of it, why do you play? What benefit is there for you to play with the label of Tier 1?

3) If it's a "grind" for you to get out of it, maybe you belong in those tiers? A year to move up, seriously? My wife picked up the game and played for three weeks and is in tier 2 already.

4) You've played since beta and you still struggle to make it to Tier 1? Just given the amount of games played, with the current system, even with losses, having played for that long, you should still be ranking up on losses, unless you're just bad, in which case, you simply belong in the tier you're in. Again, why does it matter to you? Why don't you just quit?

It's the entitlement award. Everyone and their mother has known for years that the tier system is a joke that any scrub can max out. Odds are he's a bottom tier player anyway, a reset with zero sum would really balance out the player disposition more accurately.

[Remover of Obstacles]

Do we need to more specific with what zero sum PSR means?

Will existing pilots be reset to Tier 3 or 5?

Will PSR changes scale directly with match score or be a quick and dirty rework of the existing match score range and win/loss based system with a wider area for no change and also an option to go down in PSR with a win with poor match score?

(Your Match Score - Average Match Score) / Variable X = PSR change?

[Nekkriss]

I say go for it, if it does not work just do a roll back. The players still playing are not going to drop the game over a wide application experiment. A change like this can not be driven on a test server due to lower participation so drop it live.

[ThirdWorld]

Why even have 5 tiers?

Why not 3.

[LordNothing]

Brauer, on 26 May 2020 - 03:02 PM, said:

I am aware.

I personally greatly enjoyed FW conquest. If anything I'd bump the ticket count for. Victory to 1500 and then see if it warranted a further slight bump. I wouldn't go further than 1750.

in addition to the ticket count i think id also reduce the cap time to about half. such that the emphasis isnt so much on the caps as the terrain. the caps are just there to say this part of the map is ours.

[SethurStorm]

How about for gaining/loosing PSR:
After the match your team gets an average match score calculated. Depending on your match score relatively to the average (with a factor for each chassis) you gain or loose PSR (or stay where you are).
Having more than average in a win gives a bonus, having less than average in a loss gives a malus.

[TheFourthAlly]

Nearly Dead, on 26 May 2020 - 12:03 PM, said:

I saw it again today. Playing my Vapor Eagle wATMs, winning game where I screwed, got to the yellow circle and ended up boxed and dead in a three way cross fire. Rest of the team won, I got a skill rating increase for one or two assists and maybe 100? damage if that. Another match I got one of only two kills on our team, did the most damage but we lost and my skill rating dropped.

That is a bit absurd.

[...]

Team score for the most recent 100 matches, or a month, or almost any period, as long as it is a rolling average with the oldest dropping off.
[...]

I do feel that the above points make a lot of sense.

Not knowledgable enough to comment on the other points.

[JoeCold]

Drunk Canuck, on 26 May 2020 - 02:12 PM, said:

Performance Metrics should be rated as follows:

1. Kills
2. Damage Taken (obviously relative to your Mech's weight class/total armor potential scaled so as not to be a detriment to lighter chassis)
3. Components Destroyed
4. Time Alive
5. Damage Done (much like damage taken, should be factored relative to your weight class and maximum tonnage)
6. Win/Loss
7. Assists

Kills is a nice "ping" achievement, but its not a good measure of success or skill. KMDD, Assists, and Damage combined measure overall offense much better. "Combined" being the operative word.

I wholeheartedly agree with you, though, that Damage Taken isn't strong enough in calculations. But it matters, to some degree, when you take the damage. For example, if an Assault mech hasn't chipped its paint by mid-game because its playing as a third line mech (letting the team lose firepower in the process due to smaller mechs taking the damage it should be taking) should get a huge ding in the formula. However, he's still going to take that damage eventually when the opponent finally swarms him because he's the only mech left after he let his team mates down.

Sorry if I got a little ranty in the example. 3rd line Assault mechs are my one serious MWO pet peeve. There is a reason they are called Assault mechs and not Extra Heavy mechs. Sorry, ranted again.

Edited by JoeCold, 26 May 2020 - 04:34 PM.

[DAEDALOS513]

If you're tweaking the psr calculation so it's more difficult to reach tier 1.. reset sounds good.

[GoodPants]

Never posted in the forum before. Only posting now because I saw this.

Zero sum is absolutely the right thing to do. Please. Reset PSR.

I started playing again 6 months ago and I'm in tier 2 now. I don't care if it drops me down again and I wouldn't if I hadn't stopped playing back in 2014. The PSR system should never be something to "level up" or "grind through", but the way it's treated now is more like an XP bar in an RPG than a matchmaking metric in a team PvP game. Please reset it and make it zero-sum. I want to land in matches I should be in.

[Jade4161]

i cant wait to be tier 4 again!

[Syso69]

Reset PSR!

Edited by Syso88, 26 May 2020 - 05:56 PM.

[Capt Deadpool]

Reset plzzzz, and thank you!

MW2 Annihilator, on 26 May 2020 - 03:10 PM, said:

Dewit!! I've never been in a Tier lower than 1, I need to farm that Death Star somewhere somehow.

You'll get it ; I made an alt to mess around with a few things last month and nearly got it in mah flea within a couple hours

[Velite]

Paul Inouye, on 25 May 2020 - 03:41 PM, said:

So, the 4 weeks are up. I want to start by sharing some findings.

The last time I communicated I set the Match Maker configs (release valves) in this manner and left it for a while...




What I didn't tell you was that two Fridays ago after reading all the comments and watching some vids the community made, I made this adjustment to see what would happen over a longer period of time:



Basically I decreased the weight class valve to no longer allow it to open up completely. I also reduced the allowable Tier spread and increased how long the MM would wait until it added another Tier to the viable team composition.

As you can see, the Average Team PSR values narrowed drastically between any two opposing teams. The Weight Class balance would open up to maximum first, then eventually Tier separation would open up. This is why at times in the above graphic will still have tight Tier separation but the Weight Class balance would be a little lop sided.

These settings seem to be working well in terms of finding a relatively happy medium.

* Matches are still kicking off much faster than before.
* Tier/PSR separation is drastically tighter than before.
* Weight class balancing is also much tighter than before.

On another note, when we just combined the queues, stomp rates went up by 5%. With the current settings in the match maker, that went back down to 1%.

It is because of these results, [color=orange]we have decided to keep the current combined queue.[/color]

[color=red]HOWEVER:[/color]

There's still an elephant in the room. PSR calculations. Yes it's true that it biases upward movement. That bias comes from the formula currently saying that if you LOSE, you can still move up if you perform well. THIS is the aspect that breaks zero sum distribution.

That being said, we have a plan to make PSR zero sum... but, there's a big draw back. If we make this change, the PSR rankings for all players will need to be reset. That means if you're Tier 1, you'll be going back to Tier 4 for a bit. If you're Tier 5, you're also going back to Tier 4.

There is a multiplier for the first 20 games all players play that push your PSR changes higher or lower to speed the seeding process of the PSR player distribution. After those 20 matches, regular PSR zero sum values will be used.

We need your feedback on whether this is acceptable or not (losing current Tier standings).

Yes, please reset tier standings.

[Spare Knight]

Paul Inouye, on 25 May 2020 - 03:41 PM, said:

So, the 4 weeks are up. I want to start by sharing some findings.

The last time I communicated I set the Match Maker configs (release valves) in this manner and left it for a while...




What I didn't tell you was that two Fridays ago after reading all the comments and watching some vids the community made, I made this adjustment to see what would happen over a longer period of time:



Basically I decreased the weight class valve to no longer allow it to open up completely. I also reduced the allowable Tier spread and increased how long the MM would wait until it added another Tier to the viable team composition.

As you can see, the Average Team PSR values narrowed drastically between any two opposing teams. The Weight Class balance would open up to maximum first, then eventually Tier separation would open up. This is why at times in the above graphic will still have tight Tier separation but the Weight Class balance would be a little lop sided.

These settings seem to be working well in terms of finding a relatively happy medium.

* Matches are still kicking off much faster than before.
* Tier/PSR separation is drastically tighter than before.
* Weight class balancing is also much tighter than before.

On another note, when we just combined the queues, stomp rates went up by 5%. With the current settings in the match maker, that went back down to 1%.

It is because of these results, [color=orange]we have decided to keep the current combined queue.[/color]

[color=red]HOWEVER:[/color]

There's still an elephant in the room. PSR calculations. Yes it's true that it biases upward movement. That bias comes from the formula currently saying that if you LOSE, you can still move up if you perform well. THIS is the aspect that breaks zero sum distribution.

That being said, we have a plan to make PSR zero sum... but, there's a big draw back. If we make this change, the PSR rankings for all players will need to be reset. That means if you're Tier 1, you'll be going back to Tier 4 for a bit. If you're Tier 5, you're also going back to Tier 4.

There is a multiplier for the first 20 games all players play that push your PSR changes higher or lower to speed the seeding process of the PSR player distribution. After those 20 matches, regular PSR zero sum values will be used.

We need your feedback on whether this is acceptable or not (losing current Tier standings).

Well Paul, as you can see, the vast majority are ready for this.


Do it!

[Xiphias]

Ult9876, on 26 May 2020 - 03:00 PM, said:

On a big numbers scale, across the game? No. The sum of wins and losses is zero. If a particular group of "good" pilots has a high win-loss-ratio, then - in an idealized fashion - that means the matchmaker screwed up and has either placed that pilot in a lower skill environment where he has no place to be or it has a bias towards shifting multiple such pilots to one side of the match.

Of course in the less-ideal real world you will end up with say 90% of players of a particular tier having a 0.9 WLR with the other 10% having a 1.9 WLR. Which is what Tier 1 looks like today pretty much. Now, if you separate those two groups as the "1.9" group seems to want?
Then that means that 10% of Tier 1 is playing each other, obviously at a 1.0 WLR because they're all "that good". And all is fine. Well, they would, if they could. Except we don't have the population for that 10% of Tier 1 group to ever find matches only among themselves.

I should have been more clear in that I was referring to the seeding process. You are correct, once people are seeded a good match maker should average things towards a WLR of 1.

Assuming everyone starts in the same tier, good players will win more. They will move up and get matched against each other. The better ones will then win more and will move up. Finally, the best ones will get to the top tier and win more matches than they lose (because they can't move up). If someone's WLR goes to 1 it means that MM has successfully placed them in the right tier. If they start losing more they will move down, winning more they will move up, the way the matchmaker should be.

MM might match up teams of all T1s, but more realistically, you'll probably end up with a group of T1-3. In that case, if the MM is pairing an even number of T1-3 on each side, I'd rather the tier levels more accurately reflect the skill of the pilots rather than all of those players being T1 and getting randomly thrown on either side as it is now.

[AnUndeadMonkey]

Leidulfr, on 26 May 2020 - 02:51 PM, said:

1) Why do you care about your tier, especially if the MM is pulling from all tiers irregardless, due to the low player pool? You said yourself the balance is all out of wack.

2) If it's a "grind" for you to get out of it, why do you play? What benefit is there for you to play with the label of Tier 1?

3) If it's a "grind" for you to get out of it, maybe you belong in those tiers? A year to move up, seriously? My wife picked up the game and played for three weeks and is in tier 2 already.

4) You've played since beta and you still struggle to make it to Tier 1? Just given the amount of games played, with the current system, even with losses, having played for that long, you should still be ranking up on losses, unless you're just bad, in which case, you simply belong in the tier you're in. Again, why does it matter to you? Why don't you just quit?

3) Your wife is playing with a much smaller player pool then 5 years ago when all this PSR was started. Don't even go there with that. 1)The matches are out of balance now with the 4 man groups dropping in solo queue, I had many 12-0 stomps on saturday alone because those 4 mans went off and did their own thing and left the rest of the team high and dry, and died. 4) i never said I struggled, I belong top tier, maybe T2. I have watched players wiff gauss shots because they can not lead a target, when the shooter is standing still. I can lead a target while moving in my Marauder IIC D with dual gauss. 2) the benefit for me is knowing I'm facing other players with the same skill level or higher which will make me a better player over time.
I Only have enough time to play maybe 3-4 hours a day over 2 days. Not everyone sits at home on a computer and plays video games. I have 2 jobs, still during this pandemic plus volunteering. I volunteer at a VA hospital helping fellow Veterans. Me grinding is the only time I have to to relax, play and deal with my own PTSD. I get better at builds and learning how other players play, and see the patterns in the games. Everyone hates "nascar" Because they want to stand still. That makes you an easy target I never stand still unless I'm in a light supporting assaults with AMS and ECM. One of my other jobs is doing military war simulations for war games for the US. I know how a ranking system work. Zero sum does not work for a war sim. This game is a war sim in a MOBA environment. You want a zero sum ranking system when teams of 12 are involved? So I can get kills, do most damage on my team and more the half the other team which has happened and get the loss and It's fair to lose ranking? I did better then the players I killed on the winning team. That's far from fair for a quick play game mode. There are players that know me on the top of the leader boards. They look for me because I'm a threat, sometimes I play for fun, laughs and like I said an escape. If you want zero sum in the Comp mode or faction, go a head I don't have time to put in to those. But resetting everyone is not the answer. It's like pushing rest on a million dollar airplane computer system. That wont fix a damn thing. Troubleshooting 101 you fix the small issues at hand first. Fix Comp and factions and S7. Quick play is just that Quick play. Quick play is for those that want to get a few games in. Or what it should be is a learning step for the comp, faction and S7 modes. I'll quit if they do a mass reset, there is no value in the game for me if they do that. Punish everyone to make some happy. Thats the basis of zero sum thinking right there. Not everything works that way.

Edited by AnUndeadMonkey, 26 May 2020 - 06:48 PM.

[JessiK]

I'm for it, so long as it doesn't drastically affect wait time for a match. That would devastate the playerbase further.