642 replies to this topic

[ShadowSpirit]

The person who scraped and showed the "stomps" vs. "close matches" .. is there anyway that can be broken down by tier?

It seems we're possibly getting really bad matches in tiers 1 through 3 but possibly better matches 3 to 5.

I know it's anecdotal but the tier 5 dude seems to be loving it. I'm currently hating it due to wait time and the quality of matches today have been landslides one way or another.

Edited by ShadowSpirit, 16 July 2020 - 08:34 AM.

[ExoForce]

BenMillard, on 15 July 2020 - 09:56 PM, said:

This is what we've all been asking for. Let's give it a chance.

Ive heard that thousand times. When comes the patch fix?

[Wraith of Shadow]

Just going to comment that wait times wouldn't be so bad if we could actually do something while we wait.

Like once you click on the Quick Match launch button your selected mech is locked out (can't change the weapons, etc) and you get a small window in the corner that says "Searching for Match". It then lets you keep doing things. Like work on setting up your other mechs, or maybe spectate currently playing matches (something they could do even when not in a wait queue), and whatever else we can think of.

Then once the match is found the window changes to "Match Ready", you finish whatever you were doing and click on it to go to the match votes or directly to the lobby if you were tardy (no votes for slow pokes).

In essence, wait times are more tolerable if they're not boring.

[OneTeamPlayer]

Knight Captain Morgan, on 16 July 2020 - 08:29 AM, said:

someone call webster's dictionary. The word "infinite" has now been redifined to mean 4 minutes. So let it be written, so let it be so...

I mean not to be rude, but are you currently in Tier 1?

If not I can point out that just because a post says the timer is intended to be 4 minutes doesn't mean the actual time is 4 minutes.

I can confirm that matches last night were taking an average of 8 ish minutes for me to join, including matches where i immediately ended a match and tried to jump right back into another. The waits were long enough that i literally pulled out a stopwatch and went off to read on other websites, during one match when the icon started flashing i had actually forgotten i was still playing MWO and looking through steam to launch another game (that was my last match of that night).

Nightbird, another T1 player has also discussed his long wait times, as have multiple other T1 players.

Keep in mind these are reports from immediately after the change, which is to say these are players in US prime most of which had both servers selected to choose from! Imagine off-prime wait times for T1

If you are in T1 and are getting 4 minute or less wait times consistently, then i apologize but i'd also point out that 4 minutes of wait on matchmaking is also out of this world when we consistently were at <1 minute (max 2) wait times a scant few months ago, and heck even as recently as just pre-reset.

If i play 3 matches with a 4 minute wait that opens a valve making a 5 minute wait that means in 3 matches 15 minutes has been spent doing nothing. No game can survive that kind of ratio- especially given that 3 matches will not fill a full hour give most games run for less than 10 minutes.

Edited by OneTeamPlayer, 16 July 2020 - 10:12 AM.

[ghost1e]

long wait times, and matches don't seem a lot closer

[morosis]

Paul can you help me understand how this system works please?

Context: i started the day yesterday in T2. I was put into a ton of high end T1 games last night.

Questions: can a T2 player be "borrowed" by the MM to fill in T1 games repeatedly? is there something that would prevent the same T2 player from being chosen over and over again to reduce wait times for the T1 player population? or some sort of balancer that ensures T2 is exposed to BOTH T1 and T3?

I think everyone who has been around awhile knows who the great players in this game are. as a T2 player, i should not be seeing those guys in every game. correct?

I suspect that this aspect of the MM may be breaking, since T3 has enough population to be self sufficient but T1 does not, I think I am only being pulled into T1 games, but not T3 games.

Lastly - what was the rationale in making the restriction on Tier right now? You guys said it would take 3 months for the PSR's to settle, doesn't changing the way the MM works right now screw up everyone's ability to settle into the right Tiers?

Edited by morosis, 16 July 2020 - 11:02 AM.

[Bolo Atari]

Hiten Bongz, on 15 July 2020 - 02:39 PM, said:

Yes, I have been meticulously scraping data from the servers and this is what I've plotted so far

Look man, that's accurately funny as hell.

You sir, have won so much internet love from me (in that Mechwarrior kinda way).

[Rkshz]

Paul Inouye, on 15 July 2020 - 02:11 PM, said:

As of this post, I will be making the maximum Tier separation in the match maker, 1 (one). This means a Tier 1 player should not see any other players outside of Tier 1 or Tier 2.

Now there are some caveates there. If a group of 3 Tier 1 players decides to add a Tier 3 or lower player to their group, there's nothing we can do about that. Next, the release valves still need to be in place but I'm going to be restricting the time it takes for them to kick in and how fast they release over time. For this first test, I'm going to set a hard restriction of 4 minutes before the release valves kick in.

As mentioned, we'll continue to monitor and adjust as needed. At the end of 3 months, we'll take a hard look at all numbers involved and discuss with you the next steps.

-Paul

ty Paul, I've been waiting for this for a long time

Spoiler

it's better to wait for the game for 10-15 minutes, but have fun with high skill players, than entering the game right away, but getting murderball

[General Solo]

OneTeamPlayer, on 16 July 2020 - 10:11 AM, said:

........the timer is intended to be 4 minutes doesn't mean the actual time is 4 minutes.

I can confirm that matches last night were taking an average of 8 ish minutes for me to join, including matches where i immediately ended a match and tried to jump right back into another......

Eight minutes is OK, its better than those dead queues, wot they called, o yeah group and faction play.

That's what the same tier till open valves after 4 minutes is designed to prevent. Dead Que.

Its a fair trade imo. Even some posts about improved matches, didn't get much of that before.

Edited by OZHomerOZ, 16 July 2020 - 11:00 AM.

[General Solo]

letir, on 16 July 2020 - 08:15 AM, said:

Waiting times returning with vengeance, and now i'm stuck at 3/4 of T2 with "real" players. In squads. Sigh.

Anyone know how to rapidly drop tier again? I'm alredy sick of high-level nascars.

Nascar!
Thats a good sign
Maybe solo queue may survive 100%.

[VonBruinwald]

Due to the way the matchmaker works, the higher the ratio of groups to solos the longer the wait times.

If all the group players dropped solo, matches would be made faster, but how can you farm stats if you're not in a group....

Edited by VonBruinwald, 16 July 2020 - 11:11 AM.

[R Valentine]

The fact that there are so many more players in tier 1 than tier 5 tells me the riddle still isn't solved. Given that playing in groups hinges your bets to move upwards, I'd say that merged queue is still screwing with the system badly. Either merged queue needs to go, or PSR gains/losses need to be weighted based on your group size. People climbing all on their lonesome should be rewarded more than group LRMers, and group LRMers who still can't win should be punished harder than people failing solo.

Edited by Kiran Yagami, 16 July 2020 - 11:11 AM.

[denofsteves]

The MM should not be based on a fixed score, it should be based on the distribution of players on the PSR scale.

Fixed tiers mean you have to wait for the system to balance out, if ever. Percent distribution means the MM can pick from all the people online at any given time.

Set a percent for the MM instead of a number ( something like 15, 20, 30, 20, 15 ) and then look at the players that are currently online. The MM can then match currently online players more accurately.

Edited by denofsteves, 16 July 2020 - 11:15 AM.

[Warning incoming Humble Dexterer]

Paul Inouye, on 15 July 2020 - 02:11 PM, said:

Now there are some caveates there. If a group of 3 Tier 1 players decides to add a Tier 3 or lower player to their group, there's nothing we can do about that.
-Paul

There's certainly something you can do about that : Always use the top player's Tier, as the group's Tier.

Meaning :
1) If a bunch of Tier 5 group with one Tier 1, the group becomes Tier 1.
2) If a bunch of Tier 1 group with one Tier 5, the group stays Tier 1.

It's a group, they'll manage.

[GARION26]

morosis, on 16 July 2020 - 10:35 AM, said:

Paul can you help me understand how this system works please?

Context: i started the day yesterday in T2. I was put into a ton of high end T1 games last night.

Questions: can a T2 player be "borrowed" by the MM to fill in T1 games repeatedly? is there something that would prevent the same T2 player from being chosen over and over again to reduce wait times for the T1 player population? or some sort of balancer that ensures T2 is exposed to BOTH T1 and T3?

I think everyone who has been around awhile knows who the great players in this game are. as a T2 player, i should not be seeing those guys in every game. correct?

I suspect that this aspect of the MM may be breaking, since T3 has enough population to be self sufficient but T1 does not, I think I am only being pulled into T1 games, but not T3 games.

Lastly - what was the rationale in making the restriction on Tier right now? You guys said it would take 3 months for the PSR's to settle, doesn't changing the way the MM works right now screw up everyone's ability to settle into the right Tiers?

I'm not Paul by any means.
But his post initially says you can be matched within 1 tier of you. So as a Tier 2 you could see some games with Tier 1 and Tier 2 players, and other games with Tier 2 and tier 3 players, and maybe some games with just Tier 2 players.
At some point (4 minutes) the valves open and you will see people with a wider tier diference then the above in your games.

What kind of games you see depends on the population around when you drop.

If you have 1000 people entering matchmaker at the same time you'll probably see lots of tier 2 only games. If you have only 30 people in the matchmaker at one time you are probably going to wait 4 minutes and get a mismatched by tier game.

I'd rather have the valves open up a bit earlier then they do now with matchmaker prioritizing PSR balancing first, then groups then tonnage.

[morosis]

GARION26, on 16 July 2020 - 11:34 AM, said:

I'm not Paul by any means.
But his post initially says you can be matched within 1 tier of you. So as a Tier 2 you could see some games with Tier 1 and Tier 2 players, and other games with Tier 2 and tier 3 players, and maybe some games with just Tier 2 players.
At some point (4 minutes) the valves open and you will see people with a wider tier diference then the above in your games.

What kind of games you see depends on the population around when you drop.

If you have 1000 people entering matchmaker at the same time you'll probably see lots of tier 2 only games. If you have only 30 people in the matchmaker at one time you are probably going to wait 4 minutes and get a mismatched by tier game.

I'd rather have the valves open up a bit earlier then they do now with matchmaker prioritizing PSR balancing first, then groups then tonnage.

thanks man. I appreciate the conversation.

i dont mean to be too self centered here, but if that's the case, doesn't it have the potential to really mess up tiers 2 and 4?

as a tier 2, you are bordered by a very small population in tier 1 and a very large population in tier 3. MM for tier 3 games will have a lot of tier 3 PSR to draw from so it should more often than not ignore tier 2 players. However, MM for tier 1 games will have sparse tier 1 PSR to draw from so it will consistently draw in tier 2 players to solve for Tier 1 wait time issues.

if i'm understanding the dynamics correctly, then this would push tier 1 further to the tails of the bell curve (since tier 1 would be playing against tier 2 players quite frequently and presumably winning) while compressing tier 2 down into the top of tier 3 (since tier 2 would be playing against tier 1 quite frequently and presumably losing). from Paul's earlier comments, there's a PSR limit both on the top and bottom end, so the only effect that would be measured by PSR is the negative PSR allocated to the Tier 2 player consistently failing in Tier 1 games.

this same effect will also happen in reverse on the other end of the bell curve in tiers 4/5. Tier 4 players will be pushed toward the center of the bell curve because they play against weaker Tier 5 players due to the similarly small populations over there.

[BTGbullseye]

I think 4 minutes is a bit long this early on. 3 minutes would be better, with 2 minutes for later gates.

There is still one incredibly huge flaw in the system though, and that is that match score is so heavily swayed by either the amount of damage dealt, or the amount of missiles shot down, to the point that nothing else really matters in comparison.

[Tier5 Kerensky]

My MM wait times, as solo player, I timed few of them. 1 min, 4 mins, little less than 6 mins, 2 mins plus little more(didn't stop timer immediately), 7 mins, little less than 7 mins. I played little in midday, more on early evening. When in the above I say like 1 minute, it's pretty accurately 60 seconds, the MM definetely seems to operate on full minutes.

Stomps: no idea, don't really pay that much attention to them. Don't really feel they are happening that much, but I do notice some games where the winning team loses only few mechs. If the fighting keeps going long enough, it doesn't seem a stomp to me.

"MM fairness", the usual deal. Don't observe a lot of huge disparity between teams in mech classes, seem better now than before PSR reset and tier tightening.

Matches seem fair enough in sense that I lose some, win some. Right after when queues were combined, it seemed so unfair to solo player and I mostly kept losing, but it eventually got better. PSR change+reset didn't seem to do much change to either direction, nor this MM tier tightening. For me this is kinda important that I have fair chance when playing solo.

"Tier 1": I don't really see anything special. If there is few assults, you can bet your *** it's going to be 200% nascar, and if the assult players don't realize it in advance, they will die fast and complain. Occasionally you will see some player yoloing really hard and making a move early in game that is just guaranteed easy kill for the enemy team. But players in general seem to have much better idea, than when everyone was tier 3. Probably even slightly so, compared to situation before PSR reset. I would not say much better though.

Currently I could only complain about MM waiting time. But I can/will give it some time, for higher tiers to populate. But I think the tiers should be loosened much faster than they are right now, like loosen them little after 60 seconds, and much after 90 seconds. When nearly always it takes at minimum 4 mins just to get two teams, then the map voting, loading into battle and waiting for all players to connect, that's quite a lot of not playing.

And then so many times it takes like 7 minutes...

[Trifakt]

waiting time for me as tier 1 player is total fine. its about 2 - 3 minutes which is fair enough

[morosis]

Tier5 Kerensky, on 16 July 2020 - 12:11 PM, said:

"Tier 1": I don't really see anything special. If there is few assults, you can bet your *** it's going to be 200% nascar, and if the assult players don't realize it in advance, they will die fast and complain. Occasionally you will see some player yoloing really hard and making a move early in game that is just guaranteed easy kill for the enemy team. But players in general seem to have much better idea, than when everyone was tier 3. Probably even slightly so, compared to situation before PSR reset. I would not say much better though.

i disagree. i think along with MM/group merge this is my number 1 complaint.

just bc people are used to nascar and "have a much better idea how to play it" doesn't mean its not horrible. there is often zero strategy/tactics, just a mass run of people to the center to begin a death spiral into the back of the opposing team. the opposing ends of each spiral kill the slowest people on the other team from behind until the remaining lights and mediums finish the game in some weird silly brawl between mechs with 2 medium lasers left that takes 5 minutes.

if i knew in advance the MM is going to stick me in Tier 1 nascar games, i would only play fast mechs with jump jets. but the game doesn't tell me, so there I am in my 50kph sleipnir getting left behind to die in the first 30 seconds of the game and there is nothing i can do about it. call for assistance does nothing. ask the team to stop the nascar does nothing. I am in the wrong chassis and might as well afk. but if i go off on my own to live longer than 30 seconds, the team complains about the scrubby players that didnt stick together.

anyway, that has little to do with the current topic, it is a community problem not a PGI problem. still, a problem nonetheless as imo the two worst things about this game at the moment are: 1a) matchmaker/group merge 1b) nascar. they are both cancer.

matchmaker makes me play against players way too good for me, or groups i can't compete with.

nascar makes 60% of builds and chassis unplayable.

Edited by morosis, 16 July 2020 - 01:34 PM.