59 replies to this topic

[DevinMace]

I think as you go lower in skill level more tonnage means more, but in the same thoughts higher end players in assaults handle light mechs better. So I dunno what my point is...

[MrMadguy]

Tommy Atkins, on 04 July 2020 - 12:28 PM, said:

Has anyone else noticed that since the change combining Group Queue and Solo Queue into a single Quick Play Queue the weight balance is right out the window?

I keep dropping in games where one side will have two assault mechs and the other will have five or six. I think the most egregious example I've personally seen was one on one side and five on the other. I know Baradul has posted a YouTube video where one side boasted ten assault mechs.

I think combining the two queues hasn't been too bad... but a consistent lack of balance is a serious problem. And before people jump on me with "well, it's not impossible to beat a heavier team" I know that. I also know that one team having more than half-again the weight is a huge uphill obstacle and the average quick play team of randos simply isn't going to be able to overcome it.

It's very little fun going into a match and being stomped flat by sheer weight of metal.

This can be caused by PSR reset, but at the end of the day PSR balance should be >> weight balance. Forced 4x3 is one of the reasons (second reason - is IS vs Clan imbalance), why quality of game became much worse vs what we had in Open Beta, where all players were playing Heavies and Assaults and overall match speeds were much slower.

You should clearly understand, that forced 4x3 causes one terrible problem. Lets say, Lights are less popular. That means there are fewer Lights in a queue. Forced 4x3 means, that MM will prefer "unbalanced by skill" vs "unbalanced by weight". I.e. it will aways pick Lights from Tier 1 and put them against, lets say, Tier 3 Assaults and Heavies. This will cause stomps. And it would be much better, if it would be old sweet Heavies and Assaults vs Heavies and Assaults.

And also. Because for example I do better in Heavies, than in Assaults. This means, that if I'll play Assault and game will balance around having equal number of Assaults, then this match will actually be unbalanced.

Edited by MrMadguy, 08 July 2020 - 09:28 PM.

[Black Ivan]

Yes, noticed larger tonnage discrepancies between both side now more often after I came back recently.

[Khobai]

The problem with trying to balance tonnage is that it will slow down matchmaking even more

The better solution is for PGI to deliver on their promise of role warfare by making all four weight classes contribute more equally to your team winning.

Heavies should not be significantly better than all other weight classes

Heavies in general still move way too fast. They need to lower the engine cap on a lot of heavies to give mediums back the speed advantage over heavies theyre supposed to have.

Going back to 8v8 would help too since Lights and Mediums are a proportionally larger fraction of their teams overall tonnage in 8v8. 12v12 is largely responsible for making lights and mediums lose significant ground vs heavies and assaults.

Edited by Khobai, 09 July 2020 - 12:10 AM.

[MrMadguy]

My idea is pretty simple. If heavier weight class would mean higher performance, then it would also mean higher PSR. And at the end players with higher PSR will play against players with higher PSR. I.e. system will balance itself. 6 noobish Assaults will play against 6 pro Heavies and will have equal chances to win. And forced weight balancing brakes this self-balanced system. This is real reason, why quality of matches dropped after implementation of force 4x3.

Edited by MrMadguy, 09 July 2020 - 12:18 AM.

[OneTeamPlayer]

Has little to do with 8v8 (which hasn't existed since what, beta?) or 12 v 12 and everything to do with "rescale/desync" making lights the size of a barn and slow as well as a completely unchecked power creep mixed with a boring standardization of mech builds (there was no "metamechs" site at launch).

Want to test power creep? Walk into training and fire one volley at any mech there with even a trial heavy or assault- note the result.

Training mechs didn't get much of, if any, update and still represent the old armor layout.

Players wanted the game "balanced" until nothing but damage mattered, they wanted the score system changed until nothing but damage mattered, and they even wanted ranking changed so that nothing but damage mattered.

Every system that isn't a variation on "direct damage stack 3 to 6 and press w + m1" has been nerfed into oblivion (despite players to this day complaining about alternate systems based on mechanics they had from versions over 2 years ago) and thus we have peak damage warrior online.

It's working out about as well as expected.

[Tarl Cabot]

Either tighten up the min/max tonnage to prevent 2 x 90/100 assaults or restrict the groups to one/weight class, and maybe drop the 4-player group altogether, leaving it for FP. Below is the current tonnage limits for the groups.

Quote

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

[-FROST-]

This is definitely a big issue. See below - I had a match on 6/30 (post-group Q merge and pre-PSR reset) where my team had 0 assaults and 1 heavy while red team had 2 assault and 7 heavies. Our team actually almost won, but talk about tonnage mismatch!

[Anomalocaris]

Khobai, on 09 July 2020 - 12:07 AM, said:

The problem with trying to balance tonnage is that it will slow down matchmaking even more

???

There wasn't a problem with matchmaking speed before the merge queue. Adding group and solo together was supposed to improve matchmaking speed. Why does trying to make sure that mechs are well distributed from team to team become so difficult now? This isn't a hard thing, since PGI did this perfectly fine prior to April 28th.

[Brauer]

Anomalocaris, on 09 July 2020 - 07:10 AM, said:

???

There wasn't a problem with matchmaking speed before the merge queue. Adding group and solo together was supposed to improve matchmaking speed. Why does trying to make sure that mechs are well distributed from team to team become so difficult now? This isn't a hard thing, since PGI did this perfectly fine prior to April 28th.

This.

Particularly since pre-merge if you had 4 assaults they had 4 assaults. The matchmaker was very strict about matching weight classes and matches popped off very quickly.

[OneTeamPlayer]

If solo players were the players who got secret meetings with the developers while the rest of the population can't get them to respond twice to a thread they've posted in their own forums I'll bet priorities would look a bit different.

Sorry your matches are fundamentally broken, solo players- but on the bright side- group drop times are down to the lowest in MWO history! That's a positive change overall for solo queue, right guys?

Guys?

Guys?!?

[V O L T R O N]

Organize the drops by SPEED and this will help.

[Tarl Cabot]

Brauer, on 09 July 2020 - 11:58 AM, said:

This.

Particularly since pre-merge if you had 4 assaults they had 4 assaults. The matchmaker was very strict about matching weight classes and matches popped off very quickly.

True, but only in the SQ but not the GQ, and unfortunately PGI is using the GQ MM. To make it work closer to the SQ MM, groups would need to have tonnage removed and replaced with 1/weight class, which may allow an easier time for the MM to match up teams w/weight class, minus 1 offs.

[Jman5]

Tarl Cabot, on 09 July 2020 - 06:00 AM, said:

Either tighten up the min/max tonnage to prevent 2 x 90/100 assaults or restrict the groups to one/weight class, and maybe drop the 4-player group altogether, leaving it for FP. Below is the current tonnage limits for the groups.

Rather than being overly restrictive, I would prefer a ranked choice system where players choose 1 mech in each weight class in ranked preference. The matchmaker then selects mechs based on preference and availability to build a fair match up.

Doing it this way would completely relieve matchmaker from needing to care about what mech you bring because it evens everything up after the fact.

[Brauer]

Tarl Cabot, on 09 July 2020 - 07:16 PM, said:

True, but only in the SQ but not the GQ, and unfortunately PGI is using the GQ MM. To make it work closer to the SQ MM, groups would need to have tonnage removed and replaced with 1/weight class, which may allow an easier time for the MM to match up teams w/weight class, minus 1 offs.

That may help, BUT you also have groups of 2 and groups of 3. Groups also do not appear to be the only cause of this issue. I have had a drop where my side had 2 assaults and the other side had 9. Overall the matchmaker is not capable of matching weight classes regardless.

V O L T R O N, on 09 July 2020 - 12:36 PM, said:

Organize the drops by SPEED and this will help.

That does not fix the massive differences in effective HP, and DPS that can occur between teams because of nonexistent tonnage balance. In my opinion it really doesn't fix much of anything at all.

Weight class discrepancies aren't the primary drivers of stomps (skill discrepancies between teams are), BUT it is annoying to have to burn through many times more armor when your team is substantially undertonned.

Edited by Brauer, 10 July 2020 - 08:28 AM.

[Anomalocaris]

Jman5, on 10 July 2020 - 07:23 AM, said:

Rather than being overly restrictive, I would prefer a ranked choice system where players choose 1 mech in each weight class in ranked preference. The matchmaker then selects mechs based on preference and availability to build a fair match up.

Doing it this way would completely relieve matchmaker from needing to care about what mech you bring because it evens everything up after the fact.

Not really workable. I rarely played lights and assaults. Just not for me. Forcing people into mech classes they generally don't play won't make things better. Just look at how bad things get during events that require achievements in specific classes or even chassis.

[martian]

Black Ivan, on 08 July 2020 - 10:22 PM, said:

Yes, noticed larger tonnage discrepancies between both side now more often after I came back recently.

Yeah, this is relatively common now.

[Jman5]

Anomalocaris, on 10 July 2020 - 08:16 AM, said:

Not really workable. I rarely played lights and assaults. Just not for me. Forcing people into mech classes they generally don't play won't make things better. Just look at how bad things get during events that require achievements in specific classes or even chassis.

Then you put those two mechs as your third and fourth choice so that you rarely need to play them.

As far as events, all the ones I can think of that had weight class requirements did so for all 4 weight classes. Just shuffle the ones you don't need to your 3rd/4th rank spot and it's fine.

[Anomalocaris]

Jman5, on 10 July 2020 - 10:04 AM, said:

Then you put those two mechs as your third and fourth choice so that you rarely need to play them.

As far as events, all the ones I can think of that had weight class requirements did so for all 4 weight classes. Just shuffle the ones you don't need to your 3rd/4th rank spot and it's fine.

You're vastly understating the problem. People like choice. The more you restrict their choices and tell them they "have" to do things, the less they'll play your game. I haven't played since April because the queue merge degraded the game experience so badly. Plenty more like me too. Lots of guys are giving up post PSR change because they're getting stomped even more (and no, it won't get better as they reach their proper tier - population size guarantees it). Force people to have to play mechs they don't want to play, and more will leave. One of the keys to growing the population is to increase choice, not limit it.

[OmniFail]

Jman5, on 10 July 2020 - 07:23 AM, said:

Rather than being overly restrictive, I would prefer a ranked choice system where players choose 1 mech in each weight class in ranked preference. The matchmaker then selects mechs based on preference and availability to build a fair match up.

Doing it this way would completely relieve matchmaker from needing to care about what mech you bring because it evens everything up after the fact.

This!!!

Drop decks for the masses.