156 replies to this topic

[Bistrorider]

Thorn Hallis, on 03 July 2020 - 04:14 AM, said:

I have yet to encounter those "try-hard groups out to stomp some Solos". I've seens groups, but they were running all kinds of builds, none of which I'd call meta. And it didn't ment auto-win to have a group in your team (not always, at least).

True, that's how it goes. So looks like uneven tonnage is biggest problem right now. 10 assaults versus 2 assaults is a problem

[VonBruinwald]

Bistrorider, on 03 July 2020 - 05:05 AM, said:

So looks like uneven tonnage is biggest problem right now. 10 assaults versus 2 assaults is a problem

Depends on your perspective, Baradul realised his team had an overwhelming tonnage advantage and to quote him 60 seconds later:

"This is so insane it's actually a lot of fun playing it like this."

[Snowhawk]

VonBruinwald, on 03 July 2020 - 05:19 AM, said:

Depends on your perspective, Baradul realised his team had an overwhelming tonnage advantage and to quote him 60 seconds later:

"This is so insane it's actually a lot of fun playing it like this."

What would he have said if he was on the losing side?

[MF H3NDO]

I agree with some of the comments, but I am having a ball since the reset, and I am really enjoying playing with pilots I normally do not see much as I level back up.

[Anomalocaris]

Monkey Lover, on 02 July 2020 - 09:42 PM, said:

I was shocked to see your jarls list stats basically haven't changed in a year. You would think with the game being f****d I would see some differance.

Umm, non-sequitur here? Why would my stats change? I quit playing when they merged the queues and created the s**tshow of matchmaking we have now.

OneTeamPlayer did a good job explaining why teams, good or bad, screw up solo queue. All those "I wanna play with my friends" folks that lobbied Russ for merging queues weren't all that good. That's why they stopped playing group queue and didn't play FW. Because they got their ***** put through a meat grinder against good teams. So they thought they could sneak in their groups to solo and stomp some people there what with the huge population of lower skilled players. Only that didn't work out too well either. Because they still sucked and the actual good players kicked the living daylights out of anyone they faced (90%+ win rates!). So now we have a matchmaker that can't match by group skill, can't match tonnage, and skews the win chances to one or another extreme based upon where the group (good or bad) ends up.

The sad part is, all of this was pretty much predicted the moment Paul announced they were going to try merge queues. The only things we didn't initially consider were the impact of a potato group being just as significant (in the opposite direction) as an elite group, although it makes sense. And how badly PGI would screw up matchmaking by using the old group queue MM which throws tonnage to the wind. In retrospect, this is PGI so while we couldn't necessarily predict the tonnage issue, we should have known there would be wonderful easter egg full of **** in the whole process.

[Monkey Lover]

Anomalocaris, on 03 July 2020 - 07:19 AM, said:

Umm, non-sequitur here? Why would my stats change? I quit playing when they merged the queues and created the s**tshow of matchmaking we have now.

OneTeamPlayer did a good job explaining why teams, good or bad, screw up solo queue. All those "I wanna play with my friends" folks that lobbied Russ for merging queues weren't all that good. That's why they stopped playing group queue and didn't play FW. Because they got their ***** put through a meat grinder against good teams. So they thought they could sneak in their groups to solo and stomp some people there what with the huge population of lower skilled players. Only that didn't work out too well either. Because they still sucked and the actual good players kicked the living daylights out of anyone they faced (90%+ win rates!). So now we have a matchmaker that can't match by group skill, can't match tonnage, and skews the win chances to one or another extreme based upon where the group (good or bad) ends up.

The sad part is, all of this was pretty much predicted the moment Paul announced they were going to try merge queues. The only things we didn't initially consider were the impact of a potato group being just as significant (in the opposite direction) as an elite group, although it makes sense. And how badly PGI would screw up matchmaking by using the old group queue MM which throws tonnage to the wind. In retrospect, this is PGI so while we couldn't necessarily predict the tonnage issue, we should have known there would be wonderful easter egg full of **** in the whole process.

Because if all the stomps happen you would see your win ratio change but it hasnt. Match score hasn't changed so dmg levels are the same. So lengths must be about the same. If anything last month you did better than before groups were added.

I been playing in 3-4 man from the start now and my stats are basically the same. I guess my team isn't tier 1 so I don't get all these easy stomps everyone is talking about.

I will give you there has been some change but nothing so screwed up people should freak out over.

Edited by Monkey Lover, 03 July 2020 - 03:18 PM.

[OneTeamPlayer]

Monkey Lover, on 03 July 2020 - 03:12 PM, said:

Because if all the stomps happen you would see your win ratio change but it hasnt. Match score hasn't changed so dmg levels are the same.

I will give you there has been some change but nothing so screwed up people should freak out over.

Incorrect assumptions. A stomp is just a loss at a certain level of unbalanced 12-3ish or worse. The difference is that people don't feel terrible about at 12-6 loss as much as a 12-0 loss, which is why W/L could be exactly the same while loss could be up by 100% or down by 100%.

Also Match score doesn't tell the tale either, The reason my tier is going up though i currently have more losses than wins in my little urbie is that most times even in a stomp I'm top 5 scorers overall.

My match score is alright, but yeah, i've seen a lot of stomps since i refuse to bite the bullet and join a group to overrun solo queue.

Might i ask if you are playing exclusively solo, Monkey Lover? If not, what percentage would you say is group play, versus solo play?

Edited by OneTeamPlayer, 03 July 2020 - 03:23 PM.

[Bistrorider]

VonBruinwald, on 03 July 2020 - 05:19 AM, said:

Depends on your perspective, Baradul realised his team had an overwhelming tonnage advantage and to quote him 60 seconds later: "This is so insane it's actually a lot of fun playing it like this."

Somehow it's fifty-fifty imo. Some matches my team has more assaults, some matches reds have them more. And fun is something you can't count

Had some very bad stomps yesterday in QP and few good matches when I pulled up some games alone or by playing 2 or 3 man group. Since I'm average player and not tier 1 rush oriented, I think I will stay in T-3 for a while. And I think you are right that in many cases playing in a group is not a win recipe.

So what do you think about groups? They should stay in QP or not?

It looks like it doesn't matter if it gonna be group or not, this or that tonnage (except some extremities). It all comes back to skill, build, team setup and how good you know people from your group, team. Imo when you have stomp after stomp something is not right. But maybe that's a nature of current QP. From great match or at least even match, to heavy stomp. And yeah, when I've been stomped yesterday my teams even create a firing line and tried to counter nascar. And we ended few with loss like 12:2, 12:3. And it's idiotic score when you have 6-7 assaults for both sides. There should be some heavy melting, hands and legs should fly in the air. Imo there is a big gap between those who just want to shoot (and don't mind what the target is and in what direction) and those who are elite, vets or improve oriented. Or maybe it's like average team versus average team more often right now so it's impossible to predict outcome of sucha match.

Thought I gonna have some better matches, score yesterday, but whatever.

Enjoying chaos once more.

Edited by Bistrorider, 04 July 2020 - 01:37 AM.

[East Indy]

The only situations that really bother me are passive teams that just wait for the other team to surround them. Just does not compute.

Thing is, other than new names, I haven't noticed a difference at all. That's how inaccurate PSR had become.

[Tarl Cabot]

East Indy, on 04 July 2020 - 07:35 AM, said:

The only situations that really bother me are passive teams that just wait for the other team to surround them. Just does not compute.

Thing is, other than new names, I haven't noticed a difference at all. That's how inaccurate PSR had become.

? How is that? Remember PSR (Tier) EVERYONE was reset to mid Tier 3 and NEW players even now start in mid Tier 3, and that is an issue in itself. PGI could have either left at least Tier 5 players in Tier 5.. OR reseeded the population between Tier 2-Tier 4 and have new accounts start in Tier 4. Remember when Tier/PSR went live? Players started in Tier 4 but within a week PGI moved that to Tier 5.

And hai, we had one lance, Alpha Lance of of assaults/meds, GUARD Alpha during Dominion mode on the Canyon map... considering how they fared at the end, they might have been okay only as meatshield but not much else. Only one of their mediums broke 75 MS.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 04 July 2020 - 10:11 AM.

[Gagis]

In order for the system to be zero sum, the starting point has to be in the middle of Tier 3.

[Nightbird]

Gagis, on 04 July 2020 - 10:15 AM, said:

In order for the system to be zero sum, the starting point has to be in the middle of Tier 3.

The system was zero-sum for the first 2 days. It's no longer zero sum since many pilots have hit the top of Tier 1, and so points they earn is lost into a black hole. It's now a net-negative system.

[East Indy]

Tarl Cabot, on 04 July 2020 - 10:09 AM, said:

? How is that?

Even pre-Mixed, I'd notice players in extremely low percentile rankings, and confirmed enough of them to be Tier 1 (rather than a result of opened matchmaker valves) to make the conclusion. It's certainly not their fault, and frankly I don't think MWO teams with varying performance levels are any different than such teams in other competitive events. It's when the matchmaker thinks a huge spectrum constitutes a tier and mis-assigns them to teams that painfully one-sided matches happen.

[Tarl Cabot]

Gagis, on 04 July 2020 - 10:15 AM, said:

In order for the system to be zero sum, the starting point has to be in the middle of Tier 3.

The system, ie community, is not set to zero sum, only the end result of the PSR is zero-sum for that drop. Would have it mattered if the players were semi-seeded? Think about that... there would have been more higher MS players playing with and against more often than the avg joe who lives MWO and plays a tons of games while avg 190 MS. Or drops seeded said Tier 4 player pulling other low tier players, cycling back and forth. There are stomps then there are STOMPS. What new or low level player will stay and put themselves through that games where they might hit 100MS facing off against a more aggressive team, veterans/elite players?

The "system" is not pulling any external values outside of that drop, so one person zero-sum range can be different from another person's zero sum range. PGI current setup is only comparing the that specific group of players to each other then moving their PSR bar up or down, based on those results.

And hai.. even pre-mixed, I had been tracking a few players who were in Tier 1 and 2 with low percentile rankings, and the default rankings are based on avg MS every sense PSR/Leadership boards went live. One player has an avg 171 MS with almost 30K games played. He bounced between Tier 1 and 2 for a few months back in Nov/Dec 2019 but had settled back into Tier 2. Two other players with slightly lower games played avg 182 MS and 190 MS in Tier 2, so hai, am quite aware of the number of Basic players who were in Tier 1 and 2. And those three have an avg 0.83 W/L ratio, so the teams they were on were losing more than winning. I shouldn't have been but I was actually shocked at the vast difference in the PSR values between Win and Loss. A player might do okay when their team wins, moreso in a semi-stump vs a close game but is not able to hold their own when on the losing side.

Essentially, almost everyone wants good games more often than not, win or lose but if a player is dropping into matches with some others which it is definitely outside of their league, and just starting the game, how long will said player really stick around, especially someone who has no real knowledge about Battletech franchise, someone who is not vested, someone who is initially overwhelmed and feel it is too challenging?

Am I one for participation rewards? Heck no, but I also do not believe the deck should be stacked up so high one cannot even see the sky, whether the player is a recently new player or not. Does anyone really disagree with that, at least?

[letir]

I don't see to much "nightmare".

There is stomps, but they are on the level of pre-updates. Most of the games was stomps, and they still stomps. Game just snowballing like that - first few kills and momentum usually deciding the match. There is actually improvement compared to solo T1-T2, matches are more unpredictable and less "ring around" sometimes, with real possibility of fire lines or just bunch of guys in unexpected spot.

Uneven tonnage - thanks to the disable restribution - is another can of worms, and not exactly connected to stomps. Assaults are not magical "i win" button, they still can be bested by heavies, interceped mid-way by harassers or outflanked by mediums. Ability to carry the game aren't tied to numbers in the hangar, team cohesion and map flow is.

[Monkey Lover]

OneTeamPlayer, on 03 July 2020 - 03:23 PM, said:

Incorrect assumptions. A stomp is just a loss at a certain level of unbalanced 12-3ish or worse. The difference is that people don't feel terrible about at 12-6 loss as much as a 12-0 loss, which is why W/L could be exactly the same while loss could be up by 100% or down by 100%.

Also Match score doesn't tell the tale either, The reason my tier is going up though i currently have more losses than wins in my little urbie is that most times even in a stomp I'm top 5 scorers overall.

My match score is alright, but yeah, i've seen a lot of stomps since i refuse to bite the bullet and join a group to overrun solo queue.

Might i ask if you are playing exclusively solo, Monkey Lover? If not, what percentage would you say is group play, versus solo play?

I play zero solo matches other than we did some sync drops few months back. If you look at my stats when my games drop to under 100 thats' when group q died and we started some sync dropping but really we all stopped or cut back playing.

One thing i do find funny is groups started so show up in solo q in November but really no one said anything. Heck my Percentile and win ratio was better when i was sync dropping lol

Edited by Monkey Lover, 04 July 2020 - 01:33 PM.

[Crunchback]

I'm not reading these forums often and I am a poor pilot. My 2 c-bills.

If you want to know how playing this game feels at the moment: a simple comparison. Start a game, turn the override off and alpha strike until your mech explodes. game over. Rinse and repeat. Every time the screen that your mech is destroyed.

Before this week, I enjoyed this game. I was matched with and against pilot of roughly my skill level. So, I was an average pilot in my group. But sometimes I managed to play a bit better than I usually did and got rewarded with result. Climbing a bit higher on the learning curve resulted in a sweet view. It was rewarding. It made me come back and try to be the best pilot I could be.

And now I am basically a target dummy for players whose skill I’ll never meet. The challenging learning curve has become a hopeless abyss. I might as well overheat my mech, it is as much fun but less demotivating. The message is now that my best is not near good enough. For my teammates, it also can't be any fun, getting teamed up with a liability. Perhaps it is fun for my opponents, that is until they realize they might as well boot up a practice game, since the target mechs are as much of a hazard as I am.

I'm not having fun and see only two option: a) work my way downwards in a pointless frustrating grind until I get evenly matched once again. Or leave the game to come back later once this mess is sorted out, if I want to wait that long and just deinstall.

(For any potential flamers that say That I am a noob, the kind they hate when it appears in their team: that is the whole point,

For people that claim that I should just practice and that will make me good, a question: why are you not an e-sport millionaire? Is this because your lazy and don't care about money. Or is it that practice may make you better but you eventually hit a ceiling that can only be raised very slowly or not at all? Mine may be lower then yours).

[Monkey Lover]

Crunchback, on 04 July 2020 - 01:53 PM, said:

I'm not reading these forums often and I am a poor pilot. My 2 c-bills.

If you want to know how playing this game feels at the moment: a simple comparison. Start a game, turn the override off and alpha strike until your mech explodes. game over. Rinse and repeat. Every time the screen that your mech is destroyed.

Before this week, I enjoyed this game. I was matched with and against pilot of roughly my skill level. So, I was an average pilot in my group. But sometimes I managed to play a bit better than I usually did and got rewarded with result. Climbing a bit higher on the learning curve resulted in a sweet view. It was rewarding. It made me come back and try to be the best pilot I could be.

And now I am basically a target dummy for players whose skill I’ll never meet. The challenging learning curve has become a hopeless abyss. I might as well overheat my mech, it is as much fun but less demotivating. The message is now that my best is not near good enough. For my teammates, it also can't be any fun, getting teamed up with a liability. Perhaps it is fun for my opponents, that is until they realize they might as well boot up a practice game, since the target mechs are as much of a hazard as I am.

I'm not having fun and see only two option: a) work my way downwards in a pointless frustrating grind until I get evenly matched once again. Or leave the game to come back later once this mess is sorted out, if I want to wait that long and just deinstall.

(For any potential flamers that say That I am a noob, the kind they hate when it appears in their team: that is the whole point,

For people that claim that I should just practice and that will make me good, a question: why are you not an e-sport millionaire? Is this because your lazy and don't care about money. Or is it that practice may make you better but you eventually hit a ceiling that can only be raised very slowly or not at all? Mine may be lower then yours).

It took Magic Pain 10 hours to get to t1. He's a top 100 player so for other tier 1's going to take longer. I would say come back in a 2 weeks. You will start seeing more balance around here.

Edited by Monkey Lover, 04 July 2020 - 02:45 PM.

[crazytimes]

The 3 tier spread is still a thing. I sat down to grind tier solo yesterday and ran into a number of people who I knew were already tier 1, some solo and some in groups.

Any idea that people had that using a new system of sorting into tiers will change who you see in matches can be safely discarded now. Cadets will still drop against tier 1. Only people sufficiently below average to hit tier 4 will not see tier 1- and they will still be facing tier 2 .

I'm happy with the new PSR system, I just want to dispel the myth it changes the matchmaker in any way for anyone except the truly potato who succeed in hitting tier 5.

[Vindicated]

crazytimes, on 04 July 2020 - 03:45 PM, said:

The 3 tier spread is still a thing. I sat down to grind tier solo yesterday and ran into a number of people who I knew were already tier 1, some solo and some in groups.

Any idea that people had that using a new system of sorting into tiers will change who you see in matches can be safely discarded now. Cadets will still drop against tier 1. Only people sufficiently below average to hit tier 4 will not see tier 1- and they will still be facing tier 2 .

I'm happy with the new PSR system, I just want to dispel the myth it changes the matchmaker in any way for anyone except the truly potato who succeed in hitting tier 5.

Yes cadets still drop with T1. The way I HOPE it's working is that the distribution of T1 and T3 cadets is balanced between both teams