490 replies to this topic

[Nearly Dead]

I see no further point in attempting to post suggestions or even express disagreement as a customer with their decisions. It is obviously futile.

With this decision PGI is saying either join a unit or take your money and go play some other game. Or just skip that whole joining thing and go straight to the go away part.


Group queue died from lack of players.

Solo queue had fast drop times, mech balance, sensible lances, and reasonable player skill balance (within the limitations of the tier system). In other words, it was a viable community.

So they dumped the remnants of group queue into solo queue. Which . . . Ruined mech balance. Ruined lance organization, ruined player skill balance, and for about half the players, ruined play experience.


As a former boss of mine once said, "I can write a business plan, I can certainly tell what one is intended to accomplish by watching it in action". That was the day he told the team he had handed in his resignation, and just a year before the first plant closed in our division.

[FearThePaladin]

LOLOLOLOLOLOL - I will never move up as the HG Fafnir almost never does enough damage to move the needle... I welcome tier five forever... LOL

[General Solo]

Tier 5 doesn't seem so bad
Gotta noice ring to it
I may even enjoy it

[Andrzej Lechrenski]

Anomalocaris, on 05 June 2020 - 02:42 PM, said:

I think you're missing the point here. Look past the bitterness (a lot of us are still pissed about the merge) and consider what Brauer has been dishing out. The meta is a strong group of players that drop together in a 4 man, ideally with strong complimentary mechs.

Regardless of your skill level or mech choice, if you drop solo in the merge queue today (or in some cases even if you drop light in a group) you are not bringing your A-game to support your team. It's like taking a weak mech or a bad build. No matter your skill level you would have done better if you brought a good mech/loadout. The same thing applies to dropping solo vs. group now.

Really, really think on that one. Players who drop solo are handicapping themselves and their team - I don't care if its Brauer, Magic Pain Glove or ASH. If they drop solo they are not helping the team as much as if they drop group. The only problem is, the merge queue is designed to force 7-8 solos into a match with groups. Now ask yourself how scoring those players on their skill in that mismatch is going to be useful for building competitive matches. Particularly if you use a primary condition that is dominated by the skill of the group.

Frankly, even using relative positioning within a match gets borked with groups in the queue, but at least if you get a bad group (increased chance of loss) you could play well enough to demonstrate your skill.

I do understand the frustration, and I would love to have group queue back. But the fact of the matter is that the player base is no longer large enough to support anything more that FW (and even just barely that). I think that a lot of people who played exclusively solo before have the impression that group died for lack of demand. The influx of exclusively group players now should prove that demonstrably false. Some people also seem to think it died because it "wasn't fun" or there were too many stomps. However, I think the stronger argument is that the relative demand has not changed, but rather that the overall number of players has drastically declined. I am getting aggravated with people refusing to recognize that fact, and instead choosing to blame the state of the game on group players when we (all of us) have been heading towards this point for years, as the data show. Blaming group play is a cop-out.

However, many solo players haven't seen many of us before, and now we are messing up the whole "meta" of solo (if there ever was one aside from farming) because coordination is something that is alien to solo queue. I get it, and I understand why that is upsetting to a lot of people. On the other hand, there is no turning back from this. And matchmaking needs to change to reflect that. We need to work together if we want to keep this game fun. The tiers cannot simply be a "reward" for individual performance anymore. They need to be something that enables the quality of the actual game-play to improve.

Perhaps his particular fix won't work. Particularly concerning is the fact that this solution is not actually "zero-sum". I suspect it might indeed be negatively biased, but we shall see. We still have Jarlslist to compare against if it truly does turn out that good players are systematically discriminated against, especially if it makes their experience worse. And then it will be time for another fix. If there is time.

Edited by Andrzej Lechrenski, 05 June 2020 - 04:06 PM.

[GaelicWolf]

"POOF"

[mod]Discussing moderation is against the CoC[/mod]

Edited by Ekson Valdez, 08 June 2020 - 03:57 AM.

[The Teddy Bear]

Andrzej Lechrenski, on 05 June 2020 - 03:16 PM, said:

I do understand the frustration, and I would love to have group queue back. But the fact of the matter is that the player base is no longer large enough to support anything more that FW (and even just barely that).

Lovely, so let us now all focus our frustration on destroying the solo que as well, which btw seems to have been the only decent balanced que I have ever seen in this game, At least its was such a decently random que.Now, how can you convince me to play a game, when plaiying solo, and feel I am going up against a decently competitive enironment, when having a 50/50 chance of getting a good or bad team on my side? - Now - this is the challenge for PGI - hopefully they wont take too long to figure this out... Cause time is nigh.

[Gladiolix]

STOP USING WORDS LIKE "REWARD" OR "PUNISH"!!!

These have nothing to do with PSR, FFS.

[Spare Knight]

I see this as a good start. It will require some tweaking, but it is a step forward from where we are now.

[Anomalocaris]

Andrzej Lechrenski, on 05 June 2020 - 03:16 PM, said:

I do understand the frustration, and I would love to have group queue back. But the fact of the matter is that the player base is no longer large enough to support anything more that FW (and even just barely that). I think that a lot of people who played exclusively solo before have the impression that group died for lack of demand. The influx of exclusively group players now should prove that demonstrably false. Some people also seem to think it died because it "wasn't fun" or there were too many stomps. However, I think the stronger argument is that the relative demand has not changed, but rather that the overall number of players has drastically declined. I am getting aggravated with people refusing to recognize that fact, and instead choosing to blame the state of the game on group players when we (all of us) have been heading towards this point for years, as the data show. Blaming group play is a cop-out.

However, many solo players haven't seen many of us before, and now we are messing up the whole "meta" of solo (if there ever was one aside from farming) because coordination is something that is alien to solo queue. I get it, and I understand why that is upsetting to a lot of people. On the other hand, there is no turning back from this. And matchmaking needs to change to reflect that. We need to work together if we want to keep this game fun. The tiers cannot simply be a "reward" for individual performance anymore. They need to be something that enables the quality of the actual game-play to improve.

Perhaps his particular fix won't work. Particularly concerning is the fact that this solution is not actually "zero-sum". I suspect it might indeed be negatively biased, but we shall see. We still have Jarlslist to compare against if it truly does turn out that good players are systematically discriminated against, especially if it makes their experience worse. And then it will be time for another fix. If there is time.

Well let's be clear, I'm not going to reargue the queue merge. It was a mistake to cater to 15% of the population at the expense of the other 85% (not my numbers, PGI's) and IMO its going to kill this game faster than if they'd chosen another path. Disagree or not, but the numbers will tell in time (and we've already stopped growing vs. the last 3 month trend...).

That addressed, I said look past the bitterness and acknowledge that the merging of groups and solos makes psr calculation and matchmaking significantly more difficult. They have no way to (1) address the relative strength of groups (2) address solo match ranking vs. group match ranking (3) address the impact on WLR of playing solo vs. group.

The biggest issue here is that each group has the potential to break matchmaking, either by skewing the composite PSR of a team up or down from where it would be if the players were placed individually into each team for balance. We can talk about why this is and it probably involves how a team is constructed when groups are in the queue.

But fundamentally, the argument I am making is that in a WLR dominated PSR system, groups degrade the accuracy of player ranking, which then degrades the effectiveness of the matchmaker (I am assuming queues stay merged). At least when players can drop in a win or rise in a loss, players who vary substantially in skill from the match mean can still personally impact their PSR in a useful way.

I quit the game when the queues were merged. I had hopes that a proper player ranking system and matchmaking could mitigate the trainwreck that merging brought and I would return. Those hopes were sadly misplaced it would seem, even if I should have been able to predict Paul's game destroying behavior based on past experience.

[Andrzej Lechrenski]

Anomalocaris, on 05 June 2020 - 05:03 PM, said:

Well let's be clear, I'm not going to reargue the queue merge. It was a mistake to cater to 15% of the population at the expense of the other 85% (not my numbers, PGI's) and IMO its going to kill this game faster than if they'd chosen another path. Disagree or not, but the numbers will tell in time (and we've already stopped growing vs. the last 3 month trend...).

That addressed, I said look past the bitterness and acknowledge that the merging of groups and solos makes psr calculation and matchmaking significantly more difficult. They have no way to (1) address the relative strength of groups (2) address solo match ranking vs. group match ranking (3) address the impact on WLR of playing solo vs. group.

The biggest issue here is that each group has the potential to break matchmaking, either by skewing the composite PSR of a team up or down from where it would be if the players were placed individually into each team for balance. We can talk about why this is and it probably involves how a team is constructed when groups are in the queue.

But fundamentally, the argument I am making is that in a WLR dominated PSR system, groups degrade the accuracy of player ranking, which then degrades the effectiveness of the matchmaker (I am assuming queues stay merged). At least when players can drop in a win or rise in a loss, players who vary substantially in skill from the match mean can still personally impact their PSR in a useful way.

I quit the game when the queues were merged. I had hopes that a proper player ranking system and matchmaking could mitigate the trainwreck that merging brought and I would return. Those hopes were sadly misplaced it would seem, even if I should have been able to predict Paul's game destroying behavior based on past experience.

Yes, I noticed a lot of people who haven't actually been playing have had a lot to say about this.

[The Teddy Bear]

Andrzej Lechrenski, on 05 June 2020 - 06:14 PM, said:

Yes, I noticed a lot of people who haven't actually been playing have had a lot to say about this.

Are you surprised? I have been waiting for the PSR reset since some time in 2016/2017. Just still hoping for at least some competitive matches - there has been far-far too few of them to even remember. You really dont need more than max a handfull of matches a month to understand that you are not in a competitive environment - either positive or negative - hopefully the reset can bring some decent level of balance back, but teams will most likely unbalance the balance right of the bat. Pretty complex and a bold move or better said chance taking from PGI, lets hope it works out somehow.

[Andrzej Lechrenski]

The Teddy Bear, on 05 June 2020 - 06:49 PM, said:

Are you surprised? I have been waiting for the PSR reset since some time in 2016/2017. Just still hoping for at least some competitive matches - there has been far-far too few of them to even remember. You really dont need more than max a handfull of matches a month to understand that you are not in a competitive environment - either positive or negative - hopefully the reset can bring some decent level of balance back, but teams will most likely unbalance the balance right of the bat. Pretty complex and a bold move or better said chance taking from PGI, lets hope it works out somehow.

I agree with 90% of what you guys are saying. What I don't agree with is the needless scape-goating of groups for a problem that has existed, and been hurting this game, for years. Certainly groups are highlighting the problem, but now we are even getting people (not you two specifically, but I'm sure you saw the others) coming out and saying that matchmaker was perfectly fair and balanced before groups somehow "ruined" it. I mean, c'mon, that doesn't even make sense.

We are all frustrated right now, but I don't think the attitude of "let's blame the new guys" is helping, and it's especially non-constructive from people who haven't even been playing.

Edited by Andrzej Lechrenski, 05 June 2020 - 07:14 PM.

[Kurdain]

I already see a huge problem with this. (TBH I did not read all 17 pages so if this was addressed already sorry).

I often run a stealth light, usually a raven, and run around most of the match spotting, marking, NARC'ing targets while getting in a few pot shots, arty strikes, or capture points when available.

I find this play style enjoyable.

I am VERY mobile and very active the entire match...unless of course I get unlucky and someone gets that pot-shot off with an AC20.

I rarely get a high match score...however my LRM/Missle teammates get 600+ match score simply by sitting in 1 spot and raining death.

With this new system I will be at the bottom quickly...but if I run one of my high damage builds I can get high match scores.

Why am I penalized for playing a team support role?

I can get a much better score by thinking of myself only and going out for damage only but this is a team game and I'd rather help my team succeed rather than just myself.

The match score SEEMS to depend far to heavily on damage output and with my spotting and mark/narc their ability to put out damage goes up quite a lot..but I don't see much of a difference in my scores because my damage is usually quite low, ~200'ish as I am running around spotting targets as fast as possible.

This may change as I earn a larger variety of 'mechs, but I don't see it changing much.

Edited by Kurdain, 05 June 2020 - 07:40 PM.

[Thorqemada]

Man, reading this Forum is most entertaining!!!

So, nobody is buying bread anymore but as long there are as many bakerys as b4 that proves demand has not dropped.

It only means they sold other stuff to survive - now the other stuff is replaced by bread.

And no, the problem is not that most People do not like the offered bread but that they have not adjusted their tastes.

Breadlovers United assures you too can love bread if you try hard enough (we will give it to you anyway)!

[JoeCold]

Krasnopesky, on 04 June 2020 - 10:17 AM, said:

Excellent decision to reset the tiers.

However the changes to PSR in regards to zero sum completely miss the mark.

I have one question for you:

Why should a player who wins a match with a matchscore of 0 receive the same PSR change as a player who loses with a matchscore of 600?

THIS. Correct. Exactly.

PSR is changing more based on overall team performance. It now judges PSR equally badly regardless of win/loss instead of favoring win, but it definitely judges badly. And it still doesn't address how stomps skew play quality. Even though MS isn't a great measure, it would still be a better system to use straight MS regardless of win/loss and to not change PSR at all for any player in a stomp.

[DickTricky]

As usual PGI isn't listening to its customers. We've been complaining about matchmaker for years and years with virtually nothing done. This system penalized better players for years after it was brought to your attention. That was why you lost the first wave of disenfranchised customers. Now you've wrecked the ranking system tied to it. How can your people be so tone deaf and slow to react. If and when you do anything it's more of the same. Nothing is fixed 100% professionally and polished with you guys.
I have a twelve year old cousin who could come down to your office and fix the game for you so you stop hemoraging customer base if you want. I guarantee he would get it right the first time. I lost 9 out of 10 games recently. I was number one or number two in scoring for every game from all 24 players. Yet I still dropped in rank. You fixed it good guys....lol. Judging by the comments. Oh yea and why not post that we are all happy with the new changes. Alienate your base further. Whoever the people are you are getting your advice from are inept. Get some new advisors. Scathing I know. However, I've been playing this game essentially since day one and the frustration level with your company is well....just look at the numbers. You dropped the ball and lost most of your customers to really stupid fixable Shiite that as I said a 12 year old recognizes and could have fixed in a timely, professional and polished fashion. I can only conclude that someone or some people have been put in a position(s) in the company they have no business being in. Too bad. I'll bet there are some good people there. Kinda like top tier players being forced to play on a team stacked with potatoes. You can play well but you're still going to lose because you've been ball and chained with the potato patch kids who are shooting holes in your back.

Edited by DickTricky, 05 June 2020 - 08:26 PM.

[The Teddy Bear]

Andrzej Lechrenski, on 05 June 2020 - 07:03 PM, said:

I agree with 90% of what you guys are saying. What I don't agree with is the needless scape-goating of groups for a problem that has existed, and been hurting this game, for years. Certainly groups are highlighting the problem, but now we are even getting people (not you two specifically, but I'm sure you saw the others) coming out and saying that matchmaker was perfectly fair and balanced before groups somehow "ruined" it. I mean, c'mon, that doesn't even make sense.

We are all frustrated right now, but I don't think the attitude of "let's blame the new guys" is helping, and it's especially non-constructive from people who haven't even been playing.

This is not about blaming anyone of the players, I have seen too many posts blaming the competitive players as well, even though some people do not understand that they have been delivering the scene that can be used by any player to improve their game - for good or bad - whether how your view is of course. Playing or not it not an issue in this case as far as I see it. Having played with and against groups is a pretty good lesson to figure this one out. PSR reset should have been done before the merge - this is a nobrainer - lets hope PGI can balance the que out before too many solos get a second thought....

[Munkeyed]

With all due respect, and I mean ALL due respect... f$#% your numbers.

[Grumpy Old Man]

Paul Inouye, on 03 June 2020 - 12:09 PM, said:

New PSR values:
Player LOSES:
Match Score: 0-100 goes down in PSR by -5
Match Score: 101-250 goes down in PSR by -3
Match Score: 251-400 goes down in PSR by -1
Match Score: 401+ does not move.

Player WINS:
Match Score: 0-100 does not move.
Match Score: 101-250 goes up in PSR by +1
Match Score: 251-400 goes up in PSR by +3
Match Score: 401+ goes up in PSR by +5

Counter Proposal:

New PSR values:
Player LOSES:
Match Score: 0-100 goes down in PSR by -5
Match Score: 101-250 goes down in PSR by -3
Match Score: 251-400 goes down in PSR by -1
Match Score: 401+ goes up in PSR by +1

Player WINS:
Match Score: 0-100 goes down in PSR by -1
Match Score: 101-250 goes up in PSR by +1
Match Score: 251-400 goes up in PSR by +3
Match Score: 401+ goes up in PSR by +5

[Horseman]

Wesxander, on 05 June 2020 - 01:44 PM, said:

Match maker scoring system is broken. Example in match where I used no strikes I did more damage than a team mate AND scored 1 kill where they scored none. MM decided I scored nearly 40 points less than that person. CARE TO EXPLAIN THAT? Of course not. Players btw should not score more points for doing less damage and no kills. On the same hand MM detests conquest missions on large maps for players that might be doing caps during the mission. MM thinks people who use voice comms as well to coordinate strats are no different from a bozo who does not once work with the team. MM does not penalize farming mechs IE guys who intentional go off suicide into the enemy time after time. MM thinks throwing an elite light against 4 elite assault players is good match making. None of that has been adjusted. Yet resetting PSR will make a bad MM point scoring system go away. Would you like people to post video games where they out performed their team mates but MM says nope they played better and deserve a better MM score?

The match score misses a lot of things, like who did the most efficient damage for a given kill (not most damage, but rather most damage against the component or components that eventually scored the kill) and rewards spotting (TAG or visual) with a flat bonus for each salvo that impacts rather than based on the amount of damage your spotting helped with.

Grumpy Old Man, on 05 June 2020 - 09:33 PM, said:

Counter Proposal:
New PSR values:
Player LOSES:
Match Score: 0-100 goes down in PSR by -5
Match Score: 101-250 goes down in PSR by -3
Match Score: 251-400 goes down in PSR by -1
Match Score: 401+ goes up in PSR by +1

Player WINS:
Match Score: 0-100 goes down in PSR by -1
Match Score: 101-250 goes up in PSR by +1
Match Score: 251-400 goes up in PSR by +3
Match Score: 401+ goes up in PSR by +5

First of all, again, average player score is 225. Thus, a "neutral zone" around that mark (+/-25 to 50 or so) is strongly advisable. Second, IIRC a win scores +14 ms over a loss, so we need to work around 218 average on a loss and 232 average on a win. (admittedly it might be better to average scores from winning and losing teams across multiple matches to determine the actual target points)

A player who consistently performs to the global average (1:1 WLR, 225 MS) should be staying where they are. In your system, they would be consistently going down in rating as losses would take more PSR from them than they can earn back on wins