60 replies to this topic

[Gagis]

8v8 would be a better format allowing for more interesting tactics and map utilization. It would be an improvement to MWO.

But it has absolutely nothing to do with matchmaking.

[The pessimistic optimist]

Gagis, on 19 November 2020 - 12:35 PM, said:

8v8 would be a better format allowing for more interesting tactics and map utilization. It would be an improvement to MWO.

But it has absolutely nothing to do with matchmaking.

OK improve the match maker and take it down to 8v8 agreed

Edited by SirSmokes, 19 November 2020 - 12:51 PM.

[GARION26]

Gagis, on 19 November 2020 - 12:17 PM, said:

You can. It just needs really really accurate data to know which players really are the 2 best ones out of the 24 to put them in opposing teams and then go the list all the way down to the worst 2 players.

That accurate data is something it doesn't actually have, since PSR is based on Match Score and will thus unavoidably under-estimate just how much better than average the best players are and just how much worse than average the worst players are.

A matchmaking algorithm can do just fine with 24 completely randomly chosen players. The closer the matchmaker can make the chances for winning to 50-50, the better the algorithm is. This is why Win/Loss Record is also the best possible metric for ranking players, since it directly tells the matchmaker about a player's ability to shift the chances in their teams favour.

TIERS only make the job of a matchmaking algorithm easier by making sure the outliers above and below the curve are not too far away from each other.

There is absolutely no reason why teams in any given game would have to consist of 24 as IDENTICAL as possible players, as long as both teams have even distribution of different skill levels.

Agreed but what we've been given to understand is that currently the matchmaker prioritizes one thing (currently group vs non group) we can change to what degree it prioritizes that one thing or what that one thing is. If we have minimal prioritization on 'one thing' we could make the other items relatively more equivalently weighted. But just watching this discussion it's pretty clear that different players have very different ideas of how best to balance a match and might be unhappy about prioritizing one thing vs another or deprioritizing something like the presence of groups to balance everything else. For example if we drop in a match and see on the load screen Weight Class and PSR (if you could see it) are perfectly balanced, but one side has 2 (or one) groups of 3 and the other has none in a group would all the players in this thread be happy?

I think PSR is better then the other currently existing options if we had to pick a primary rough measure of effect on the match. I agree with Horseman we could try and build a much more nuanced measure of skill pre chassis etc but I don't think that's realistic both in terms of programming time and in terms of the player base or PGI's ability to do the kind of analysis to figure out the underlying mathematical relationships that would give you a very granular (down the chassis level) and accurate result. You can get a very granular inaccurate result much easier then a granular and accurate result if you don't really understand the underlying math (and we'd really have to do iterative modelling of various equations to try and build an understanding of the math, I don't think this player base has the tolerance for that even if PGI had the resources.)

Edited by GARION26, 19 November 2020 - 02:37 PM.

[Gagis]

I agree.

I'm pretty sure the current PSR system should be pretty good with just a few more iterations to the parameters such as match score kickers, figuring out how skill rating is assigned to a group as a whole and how soon and widely the matchmaker starts mixing tiers to get a match started faster.

Edited by Gagis, 19 November 2020 - 03:01 PM.

[Jack Booted Thug]

Haven't played since May, but might come back for: new maps - faction play modes / improvements

[General Solo]

Horseman, on 18 November 2020 - 12:33 PM, said:

Stop being disingenuous. If the population was large enough to support separate solo and group queues I'd be the first person calling to split them again. It doesn't, and before the merge a lot of casual players were complaining about their inability to play with 1-2 buddies, taking their ball and ****ing off to games where they can do that. That's for whom really the change has been made, and you know it.

Stop shiilling for PGI
Solo Queue was self supporting
Groups killed their own Queues

PGI's Answer

[VgerRD]

IS 'mech Hardpoint balance pass. Give the AS7-KR 1 missile HP in the RT and one ballistic HP in the LT and keep the rest of the Hardpoints the same for build diversity Please and thanks.

[Zordicron]

Hi.
I am downloading the game on steam right now. I last played in 2017. I started playing when they made the beta available to people besides founders. I watched this game evolve, and then stopped playing for a few reasons, other games first, then later because I built a new machine and didn't bother to reinstall.

This game needs to go back to 8v8. It needed that 2 months after they went to 12v12. Why 2 months? because that is when they hired that dude that fixed(or put in, I forget) HSR and hit detection went from "maybe lulz" to "yes". It completely destroyed the wespon balance PGI had been fooling with the entire time, and it made the 12v12 matches turn into absolute gankfests.

This game was immensly better when players- and by this I mean newer or even maybe "not as good" players- could make a position mistake and not have their mech cored instantly.

people saying 8v8 isn;t the matchmaker are wrong. Part of the matchmaker is getting people into matches before they have to wait for half an hour..... meaning, the clamps on their tier, or rating, or whatever it is called now get expanded over time as they wait. This is detrimental to their play as far as team matching, but beneficial to their play as far as wait time.
Having the matchmaker only need 2 of each class for a team instead of 3 of each class is a basic math problem when it comes to wait times. And if wait times go down, the clamps don't have to expand as far, or as fast.

I keep reading comments as I browse this forum years later now, and youtube comments, that players don;t like getting shredded, don;t like NASCAR, blah blah.... yeah. Go back to 8v8. Do it. It wasn't like it is back then. People were pushing for this change when I left. And before I left. And protested the change to 12v12 when it happened, and begged for it to revert shortly after. it is time to listen to the old timers and revert some things.

The other thing? The desynch. The desynch was done backwards. it was something people wanted. Except, what they wanted was for all mechs to operate as though they had the biggest engine in them, as far as torso twist and turn rate(not speed) as it was a consensus that the game played best that way for the larger mechs to tank damage, but would allow them to avoid forced tonnage allocation into std 375's or bigger to get it so they could actually mount weapons too.
What happened was the opposite, and it hamstringed a few chassis, or worse. REVERT, or, just set the base to whatever the biggest engine would have given back when, and it will do the same thing for the most part.

That's what I would start with. I think it would also be the fastest things they could implement.


They have potential with this new owner to expose this game to console players with advertising, etc. IMO the faction play stuff would have been briliiant, but they built it with a 200k playerbase in mind.

The core gameplay needs to improve, so players don;t leave. 8v8 will help, it will not only change new player XP but also help matchmaker. Desynch revert will help with survival issues, mobility is basically how you survive in MWO, leastwise how I recall.
MWO has always been, at it's core, a more thoughtful, tactical, FPS then others. If players wanted to sprint and pew pew and die and respawn they would go play one of the other, many, many, many FPS games. MWO needs players to be able to take some hits and not die, needs players to be able to make a mistake or two and not get instaganked, needs to let players enjoy giant stompy robots. That's the niche, that's where we started, and that's where we need to get back to.

[Bowelhacker]

Going to 8v8 is going to make getting that Death Star achievement just a tad harder...

[Horseman]

SirSmokes, on 19 November 2020 - 12:31 PM, said:

*sigh* Nah they need to except reality and go own to 8v8

"You can't make 8V8 matches with no player to make the matches better still not getting it"
What I was saying was that having the bare minimum of players to form a match of any size, the matchmaker can and should perform a slightly more in-depth team balancing pass. It might be as simple as swapping a few high-performing solos from the more advantaged team with slightly lower-performing solos from the less advantaged team, as long as it has a sensible metric to do so.

OZHomerOZ, on 20 November 2020 - 02:00 PM, said:

Groups killed their own Queues

An assertion you fail to support with any reasonable level of proof. I'd suspect - strongly - that what actually killed GQ was the matchmaking that provided no meaningful feedback on the queue state and resulted in smaller groups waiting ad infinitum for larger ones instead of forming matches out of the existing small groups. But whatever. Queue times can be pretty bad now despite the merged queue. I was not in favor of the merge personally, but splitting the queues again would result in worse matchmaking times and would cheese off just about every casual who returned because of the queue merge. PGI simply can't afford an idiotic misstep like that after all the things they've screwed up before.

[R Valentine]

Remove ST Heat Spike
Fix Mech Mobility

Some mechs are outright unplayable after the engine de-sync, namely the Kodiak and the Night Gyr. There's no reason for either to be such slow, clunky pigs. ST heat spike is just dumb AF to begin with.

[VonBruinwald]

Kiran Yagami, on 24 December 2020 - 01:36 PM, said:

ST heat spike is just dumb AF to begin with.

IS-XL dying on a ST loss is worse.

If we're gonna insist on being able to kill IS-XL's on a ST loss (3 crits). Then we need to implement crits properly and be able crit out LFE/cXL when armour is gone.

[PocketYoda]

Remove Consumables.

Remove skill grind..

[Anomalocaris]

Horseman, on 24 December 2020 - 01:18 PM, said:

An assertion you fail to support with any reasonable level of proof. I'd suspect - strongly - that what actually killed GQ was the matchmaking that provided no meaningful feedback on the queue state and resulted in smaller groups waiting ad infinitum for larger ones instead of forming matches out of the existing small groups. But whatever. Queue times can be pretty bad now despite the merged queue. I was not in favor of the merge personally, but splitting the queues again would result in worse matchmaking times and would cheese off just about every casual who returned because of the queue merge. PGI simply can't afford an idiotic misstep like that after all the things they've screwed up before.

Well akshually....

There really wasn't a group queue matchmaker, short of fitting together groups into 2 teams of 12. Which meant that skill wasn't taken into account, and it could get pretty stompy. I know in my limited group experience with MJ12 a couple years back my WLR was much higher than in solo while dropping 4-6 man groups.

Which is exactly the problem now, no? And saying PGI can't make another idiotic mistake is whistling past the graveyard, isn't it? I mean, they tanked population pretty hard the month after the merge happened because the quality of matches dropped. So why not do it again (not that I think pop would change much if they put back a 8v8 group queue)? It is what Russ is good at.

[Nearly Dead]

Nothing they CAN do would bring me back, because they can't get the groups out of solo queue. There aren't enough players to make it work. Wait times in group queue would go right back above the "screw it, I have better things I could be doing" line.

If they want to make investments in the game to make it popular again AND that results in having a solo QP queue again (and a return to proper lances, mech/weight balance etc) I will blow the dust off of the headset. If they were to present a plan to grow the game and it looks reasonable I would consider participating in some kind of fundraiser, but I would not reinstall the game until I heard here that the queues were separated.

Otherwise I have better things to do with my time.

[evil kerensky]

mobility increase
skill tree removal/reduction

i miss the days when i could brawl and when i could rebuild mechs between matches in a timely manner

[General Solo]

Horseman, on 24 December 2020 - 01:18 PM, said:

An assertion you fail to support with any reasonable level of proof.

How many dead group type queues do you need as proof. Keep denying denier.

Maybe you never heard of the term seal clubbing.

They merged group queue into solo not the other way around.

More premad propoganda

Can't let forum readers believe that crap is true

Coz its not

[Kodyn]

I haven't stopped playing or spending money, I just do much, much less of both.

However Russ waking up one day and deciding to fire himself, then apologize to everyone he's ever met for having to encounter, look at or listen to him- this would be a big step towards causing me to want to spend real money again and have faith in humanity.

That won't ever happen though, so I can keep my money and my low expectations for human quality.

[Horseman]

OZHomerOZ, on 26 December 2020 - 05:46 AM, said:

How many dead group type queues do you need as proof. Keep denying denier.

That the queue died does not prove in any way shape or form your assertion that "the groups killed their own queue". Without concrete proof for your claims, you're just rambling like a crazy person.

Edited by Horseman, 27 December 2020 - 12:54 AM.

[LTC Kilgore]

so many things that aren't on the list that need fixed..but they are too hard, they require more than an edit of a spreadsheet.