642 replies to this topic

[Marquis De Lafayette]

morosis, on 18 July 2020 - 10:03 PM, said:

i am having the opposite experience. i am being put in nothing but tier 1 games and i hate it. i dont care if its fun for them to kill lesser pilots, i dont care if they have to wait so long for games. i do not want to play in tier 1 games all the time because i am not a tier 1 pilot.

i have lost about 1/3 of my T2 psr bar because i cannot escape these games. it doesnt matter what time of day i play, what chassis i play, the matchmaker always does its ridiculous calculus and plops me in games with the best pilots around. i am always going to lose and underperform if the matchmaker only puts me in games with pilots a standard deviation better at the game than I am.

you made PSR zero sum. That makes zero sense if you arent going to allow people to play against pilots at their own tier, let alone skill level.

I understand that if (truly) you are only pulled up into tier 1 games that the matchmaker probably isn’t being fair to you. You should get a variety of matches...including some tier 3 “pull downs”. Hopefully, as the population moves out of tier 3, things get better for you as more matches can get made.
I love to do well...and with these tier 1 matches it’s not possible to crush it (huge MS) every match...but it’s been tense and competitive, so at tier 1 the intent of this reset seems to be kicking in. Match quality is improved as everyone seems to at least have a sense of what to do.

[VixNix]

Tel the "Elite" have their own playground...

[ERescue]

@Marquis De Lafayette: Both sides can contain multiple groups. I have been in multiple games that have had at least five different groups.

[VixNix]

ERescue, on 19 July 2020 - 05:52 AM, said:

@Marquis De Lafayette: Both sides can contain multiple groups. I have been in multiple games that have had at least five different groups.

4 is largest, and only 1 4 man per team, the rest can be also, correct?

[LTC Kilgore]

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

<snip>

-Paul

Yeah, thats fantastic but is anyone working in support anymore? I cannot get an answer from them for tickets that are months old now.

[Tarl Cabot]

VixNix, on 19 July 2020 - 06:03 AM, said:

4 is largest, and only 1 4 man per team, the rest can be also, correct?

4 is supposed to be the only group per side, then 3+2 or 2+2 but I have had a few drops where it appeared it was 3+3. The 3+3 potentially could have been a sync drop with one of the players but each time they were played in the same lance.

PGI should either drop the 4 for 3 only then 2+2, or 4 only, 3 only then 2+2. And I would also prefer that the groups cannot bring the same weight class.

[Magic Pain Glove]

I am probably on a break until PGI reverts this , or lowers the time required until the gates open up to 2 or even 1:30 minutes . Average wait time of 5+ minutes during EU/NA prime time for T1 is unacceptable .

This experiment was started WAY too early ... And the other thing is . Why cant the matchmaker have 3 different tiers in a match but each team gets the same number of Tier 2 , Tier 1 , Tier 3 pilots ? Instead of locking tiers ?

[OneTeamPlayer]

Magic Pain Glove, on 19 July 2020 - 07:04 AM, said:

.. And the other thing is . Why cant the matchmaker have 3 different tiers in a match but each team gets the same number of Tier 2 , Tier 1 , Tier 3 pilots ? Instead of locking tiers ?

Groups in solo queue. The answer to the question of almost any negative ramification lately is simply "groups exist in solo queue".

Why can't tiers be mixed equally? Cause something about the algorithm that allows groups into solo queue isn't complex enough to account for tonnage and tier and since you saw that the team allowed the community create the entire algorithm for them instead of releasing their own internal work chances are they also don't have the coders needed to change whatever set of variables would be needed to account for groups/tonnage/weight class/ and tier at the same time.

The answer to this current mess is always "groups in solo queue broke everything".

[StankDog the damp]

morosis, on 18 July 2020 - 04:39 AM, said:

while we are on the subject of unanswered questions: can you also please answer my earlier question.

why, as a tier 2 pilot, am I being put almost exclusively into tier 1 games?

tonight i played a lot of games to test this. based on knowing who the good pilots in this game are, and using the post-reset leaderboards as a second datapoint, i estimate ~90% of my games tonight were with Tier 1, tested across approximately 50 games.

per your own comments, my matches are supposed to be my own tier +/- 1. that should mean that i play a balance of 2+3 games and 2+1 games. this balance appears to be failing terribly.

proposed solution: if the matchmaker is going to draw me up into a tier 2+1 game, it must balance that by drawing me down into a tier 2+3 game before it can draw me up into another tier 2+1 game.

thanks for any progress you can make on this.

I would think that this will even out as more players get moved up to Tier1. (I could be wrong, again)

[Windscape]

Cant play the game anymore. Tried two games since this and they were 7min and 8min waits. Not waiting, Maybe a group is faster but no longer can I do a quick solo. I'm out.

Game needs:
Adjusted Matchscore (already being worked on in the PSR discord I assume)
Adjustment of lockons to make them less of a noob crutch. I would just make all lockons run hotter to make that an easy fix. (perhaps lowering matchscore of damage inflicted by LRMS and ATMs if values can be adjusted that specifically, but not the best solution imo).


Matches need to be sorted by tier number

Examples

each team could have (For T1)
about 1 5k tier players
about 2 4k tier players
about 2 3.5k tier players
about 2 3k tier players
about 4 2.5k tier players
about 1 2k tier players

For a T5
about 1 2.5k tier players
about 2 2k tier players
about 2 1.5k tier players
about 2 1k tier players
about 4 0.5k tier players
about 1 0k tier players

I am sure there is a mathematical value that can ensure there is a eqal distribution of higher tiered and lower tiered players, as well as insuring that when there is the population to support a higher tiered match than there is an equal distribution of players.

Of course having groups scews this and what that means if you have a group of 5k tier 1 players, then they can only have people that are 2.5k or less depending on who's in the pool. If a group of 3,5k T2's was facing that T1 group, the T2 group should still get a majority of available T1 pilots, if current tier distribution is to be believed. I am sure there is a complex mathematical equation that could represent this too, and it does not even take in tonnage balance. The only way I can see to fix that would be to ensure that no team has more than +2 lights/assaults for 1-2 min, then (slowly) increase the value of disparity between lights/assaults.

If groups were removed from solo queue that would be great. 8v8 group was good proposition for someway to have a level of competitive play baked into the game. (I know faction and Comp Q do this too but only one of those works and faction is a larger time sink in between matches)

Adding the queue counter to soup that faction and Solaris is long overdue. Could have been done on tier reset if not earlier.

TLDR: Not playing till game is fixed since I can't play anyway. Better this way than to self torture myself in soup queue.

Edited by Windscape, 19 July 2020 - 12:06 PM.

[Hiten Bongz]

Just remove groups from QP already and give them their own queue back. Sounds like nobody really wants a bunch of groups in the QP queue anyway.

That will solve a lot of the problems by itself.

[morosis]

Magic Pain Glove, on 19 July 2020 - 07:04 AM, said:

I am probably on a break until PGI reverts this , or lowers the time required until the gates open up to 2 or even 1:30 minutes . Average wait time of 5+ minutes during EU/NA prime time for T1 is unacceptable .

This experiment was started WAY too early ... And the other thing is . Why cant the matchmaker have 3 different tiers in a match but each team gets the same number of Tier 2 , Tier 1 , Tier 3 pilots ? Instead of locking tiers ?

i agree, and actually your post made me laugh. for you, as a tier 1, the slowness of the matchmaking is your rationale in taking a break. for me, as a tier 2, the fact that i am being abused as filler for tier 1 games to solve for the slow matchmaking is my rationale for taking a break. safe to say this system is not working for either side of the coin.

to your question though: i think the desire for doing the entire psr reset in the first place was that tier 1 wanted higher match quality and higher skill players in tier 1 games. if you do a mixed approach like you suggest, its pretty much the same as the pre-reset tier 1 with a variety of skill levels in each game.

with the shall we say "questionable" idea to start everyone from cadets to less active great players in tier 3, the current tier 3 is very likely to have an enormous skill level range. including them in tier 1 games is probably not a good idea if the goal is quality and skill level balance. on top of that, keeping tier 3 away from the influence of tier 1 and tier 5 allows these players to find their level faster and more accurately.

opening up the gates faster to make tier 1 happy is not a good solution. this will just further encourage the matchmaker to abuse tier 2 to solve for tier 1.

to me the solution is to launch 8v8 with no groups. alternatively, there could be the introduction of private lobbies either for people to play with their friends or for ultra-competitive elite guys to have the top quality matches they want.

Edited by morosis, 19 July 2020 - 06:06 PM.

[morosis]

Marquis De Lafayette, on 19 July 2020 - 05:02 AM, said:

I understand that if (truly) you are only pulled up into tier 1 games that the matchmaker probably isn’t being fair to you. You should get a variety of matches...including some tier 3 “pull downs”. Hopefully, as the population moves out of tier 3, things get better for you as more matches can get made.
I love to do well...and with these tier 1 matches it’s not possible to crush it (huge MS) every match...but it’s been tense and competitive, so at tier 1 the intent of this reset seems to be kicking in. Match quality is improved as everyone seems to at least have a sense of what to do.

at the time of day that i play (after 11pm Pacific TIme), i believe the populations are quite small. i think the matchmaker is seeing that all the tier 1 pilots are waiting a long time due to small population, so it starts just grabbing tier 2 pilots in every case to solve for tier 1 wait times. there is no balance.

i think you're right that this system has created higher average skill in tier 1 games. at the cost of everything else really. for people who arent great pilots, its probably been either a neutral or negative impact in terms of their experience with mwo. for that small population at the top, its probably quite nice, wait times aside.

Edited by morosis, 19 July 2020 - 02:49 PM.

[Thorn Hallis]

StankDog the damp, on 19 July 2020 - 09:18 AM, said:

I would think that this will even out as more players get moved up to Tier1. (I could be wrong, again)

Possible. But as Tiers are no longer glorified xp bars, the number of people reaching Tier 1 is ultimatly limited. So ist remains to be seen If there will be enough Tier 1 players to solve this.

[MadcatX]

A friend and I have a unique dynamic: I'm just a little ways into tier 2, he's halfway up tier 1. We have interesting arguments because when they are restrictive in who MM matches (keeping ties away from each other, it caused him a much longer wait time then I in solo and I was having some better quality matches. Today, it feels like they loosened the restrictions and he's having less wait and a a couple decent (although nascar is very strong) matches and I'm feeling like I'm being put up against folks with a much higher PSR rating then I.

The repercussions of the PSR reset is making for weird times.

[ESC 907]

Hearing all of these complaints about who ones op4 is makes me wonder if it would not be a good idea to make PSR invisible, and remove the "levels". Make MM work on the score PSR is based on. Perhaps attempt to balance both teams based on each team's total PSR score?

Edit: I personally am of the opinion that things will get better as time passes. It will just take time for all players to reach the respective score where they belong.

Edited by ESC 907, 19 July 2020 - 04:49 PM.

[Mechwarrior 37]

I just came back and I noticed that all 6 of my accounts are Tier 3 and that makes sense.

I've also seen some well known Tier 1 players back down to Tier 2. A few of those surprised me.

[50 50]

Still a huge block in T3 so it would seem that it hasn't shifted that much just yet.
If that filters out a bit more and we see more players push up to T2 or down to T4 then the match times for T1s and T5s will pick up.

Be interesting to see the results again in another few weeks.

[Paradoxbound]

Marquis De Lafayette, on 19 July 2020 - 05:02 AM, said:

I understand that if (truly) you are only pulled up into tier 1 games that the matchmaker probably isn’t being fair to you. You should get a variety of matches...including some tier 3 “pull downs”. Hopefully, as the population moves out of tier 3, things get better for you as more matches can get made.
I love to do well...and with these tier 1 matches it’s not possible to crush it (huge MS) every match...but it’s been tense and competitive, so at tier 1 the intent of this reset seems to be kicking in. Match quality is improved as everyone seems to at least have a sense of what to do.

This is exactly my experience. I was an upper quartile tier 2 player before the tier locking, I was actually going up in PSR rating around 80% of the time. New rules kick in I am in all tier 1 matches. I played 20 matches yesterday, 20% victory rate, my PSR went up about 3 times, level about twice, down the rest.. Played around the same number of matches today peak times I was seeing around a 60% victory rate and my PSR started to rise slowly again. Just finished playing half a dozen matches off peak all ending in defeat and stomps. Another few days of this and I will be down into tier 3.

If my experience is typical for tier 2 then we won't end up with a smooth bell curve but a hollow where tier 2 should be.

The MM is horribly broken in this last change. It needs to ensure an even mix of tier 1 and 2 across the teams and try to avoid the hideous tonnage mismatches that have become all too frequent.

I am genuinely glad that the top players are getting a better game but as a tier 2 player the experience is horrible.

[50 50]

https://static.mwome.../PTSEP_0716.png

So based on that last graph from the 15th July, if you are tier 5 or tier 1 there is a much smaller section of players available to get matches with when it is limited to +/- 1 tier difference.
Given those players are all going to be online at different times, those that have rushed into the T1/T5 brackets in these first few weeks are going to find it tough to get matches.
Any restriction to the match maker will have an impact on the wait times.
We should expect that given more time, more people will filter out of T3 and therefore begin to even out those wait times.
Seeing as it is also now much easier to go backwards in PSR, the movement of players is going to be gradual so we have to give that time.
In that regard, it might have been a bit early to restrict the match maker.
That seems pretty easy to adjust however and perhaps it should be left for another month and the numbers reviewed again.
It would also appear to be a good idea to put new recruits in at a lower tier.