47 replies to this topic

[Wildstreak]

[Vlad Ward]

Louis Brofist, on 12 March 2021 - 05:05 PM, said:

But there are also a lot of players who can't make it there or stay up there apparently. It has to do with the overall playerbase, people are just not that good at the game so even T1 are simply not very good.

It really is this. There are so few genuinely exceptional players in the game that they all cluster at capped PSR and everything else is a crapshoot.

[The6thMessenger]

Then don't play.

No, i'm serious, and I'm not trying facetious, or mean. There is no shame not engaging in the game if you're not having fun anymore.

PGI is "trying" to fix this. IIRC, they still have the groups and solos together. So maybe until that time the game is back in a respectable state, try to scratch your BattleTech itch with something else. MW4 Mercs is nice, and better at being BattleTech than MW5.

[PocketYoda]

nopempele, on 11 March 2021 - 05:36 PM, said:

I don't know for you guys, but I have been watching this pattern for a while. Upon reaching a certain Tier score MM begins forcing defeats on me by picking out teams of really weak players against very decent ones. Like really weak, Tier 4-5 against Tier 1-2. I even recognize the nicknames from both sides of especially bad and especially good players.

This streak of forced defeats goes on until my score is diminished beyond a certain point when the trend is reversed. And this MM "swing" goes on and on in endless loop.

This is not fun or entertaining, quite the opposite. And it is not a good MM implementation, it's very straightforward.

I've been noticing this myself. Whoever implemented such an inane design really hasn't got any clue on how its effecting the players.. My friends are constantly depressed and threaten to leave.. Even if they don't leave and continue.. Is it really a smart design to smash customers over and over until they quit..

I honestly don't mind as much because i'm not very competitive, but my friends list seems to get smaller and smaller with offline players forever.

Its not that i'm saying i deserve to be in high tiers its that its blatantly obvious that they are gaming the matchmaker to do these things.

Meep Meep, on 11 March 2021 - 06:01 PM, said:

I'm curious as to how you know your teams skill composition. Are you screenshotting each matches roster then using jarl's to see their rankings?

After Literally hundreds of games with many of the same customers you can tell how a match is going to play out most of the time.. Looking at the names and the group drops you know whats likely to happen by the end of the match. You can see the matchmaker is "gaming" the teams one way or another.

It happens every day you start to pick up on who is in your teams and who is on the enemy.. Sure you get that blue moon match were luck and fluke shine through, but on a whole its pre ordained long before the first shot is fired with this match maker..

It mostly goes Login Win Lose Lose Lose Lose Win etc. And when you get to a point in your score it swaps you around to the opposite teams.

Edited by Samial, 12 March 2021 - 10:14 PM.

[EnochsBook]

Samial, on 12 March 2021 - 10:01 PM, said:

It mostly goes Login Win Lose Lose Lose Lose Win etc.

So, in other words, you experience wins and losses seemingly randomly, or at a frequency roughly equivalent to what you would expect for your skill level? Exactly like how any matchmaking system would work?

Samial, on 12 March 2021 - 10:01 PM, said:

And when you get to a point in your score it swaps you around to the opposite teams.

And when it "swaps you" to "the opposite teams", does the matchmaker give you streaks of losses? And when it "swaps" you back, does it give you streaks of wins? Almost like... It doesn't actually do any of that, and winning and losing streaks just happen naturally?


There is literally zero evidence that the matchmaker forces defeats, or pits you against better players in order to punish you, or anything of the sort. This conspiracy-theory level thinking is laughable.

[Sjorpha]

The MM is not forcing defeats, that is a completely ridiculous idea.

You are imlying that the system is complex enough to somehow track win or lose streaks of individual players and then puzzle them together based on that history in a way that "forces" defeats on them. If you don't understand how insanely complex that would be to program so it somehow works for all players at once you don't know very much about math.

This isn't a complex system. It doesn't know your match history and it's not trying to do anything on the individual level to manipulate your matches.

It basically only knows your current PSR as you queue, then tries to match teams of roughly equal PSR within the tier constraints (2 tier gap), and then uses a simple algorithm to increase or decrease your PSR depending on the match results. It doesn't "remember" those match results or adjustments, next time you queue it just looks at your PSR again and does the same thing.

All of the conspiracy theories of this kind that floats around about the matchmaker would require vastly more complex programming (to the extent they are even possible at all) than simply making a better matchmaker, you are essentially implying that one of the laziest game devs in the business are devoting enormous resourses on top of having some fairly ingenious secret programming talent on board to screw you over personally, without any obvious reason to do so. It simply doesn't make any sense.

Winning and losing streaks would be normal even for a good matchmaker, and this is a bad matchmaker. This is a bad matchmaker + a bad skill rating system + a bit of bad luck. There is nothing else going on.

It still all shakes out so that good players in MWO reliably get positive w/l over time, so that's what to look at to know if you're good. If you don't you're not winning more than losing over time you're not good and it has nothing to do with the MM. Actually the MM being bad is one reason it's so easy to get very high w/l in MWO, a good matchmaker would make that much harder.

Edited by Sjorpha, 13 March 2021 - 03:37 AM.

[PocketYoda]

EnochsBook, on 13 March 2021 - 02:23 AM, said:

So, in other words, you experience wins and losses seemingly randomly, or at a frequency roughly equivalent to what you would expect for your skill level? Exactly like how any matchmaking system would work?




And when it "swaps you" to "the opposite teams", does the matchmaker give you streaks of losses? And when it "swaps" you back, does it give you streaks of wins? Almost like... It doesn't actually do any of that, and winning and losing streaks just happen naturally?


There is literally zero evidence that the matchmaker forces defeats, or pits you against better players in order to punish you, or anything of the sort. This conspiracy-theory level thinking is laughable.

No i experience the same thing daily, i login and win easily, then its four or five losses which are usually hard stomps, then its a win, then again a string of losses. Then after a few days it switches around and i receive a string of wins that are stomps to the enemies and the occasional loss thrown in, until it switches back..

Its not random win lose its a large run of both at certain times of the week. Not random at all.. Its the same every day, for days.

[Gagis]

No, you are just not as good as you think you are.

[Haipyng]

This is a super old debate. Matchmaker is incapable of making balanced matches with the low population. It does not consider tonnage, weapon types, defense types, or groups in configuring teams. The few things does consider have blow outs (timers that drop those factors after a certain wait) when making matches. It is one step removed from completely random match making. You will get streaks of both wins and losses. You will see unbalanced 0-12 matches.

I've seen a few matches that had people thinking PGI was trolling us. One team had half a dozen multi AMS mechs and we had several missile boats. In another one s team dropped on Alpine where the longest ranged weapon the team had was medium lasers, the other was all long range builds. Eventually you see it all.

The current state of the Match Maker is what it is. Don't think it will get better. You have to go with the flow, or give it a break. Rather sad, as the state of the MM contributes to low population/

[TercieI]

I'd like to address the only legitimate concern that's arisen in this thread: "Phenomena" is plural. "Phenomenon" is singular.

[Kroete]

Samial, on 13 March 2021 - 05:06 AM, said:

No i experience the same thing daily, i login and win easily, then its four or five losses which are usually hard stomps, then its a win, then again a string of losses. Then after a few days it switches around and i receive a string of wins that are stomps to the enemies and the occasional loss thrown in, until it switches back..

Its not random win lose its a large run of both at certain times of the week. Not random at all.. Its the same every day, for days.

Seems you one of the few where the matchmaker is working.

With a working matchmaker, after you settled in your rank, you would have 50/50 win/lose.
But that doesnt mean one win and then one lose, its over some time, in the average.

Edited by Kroete, 13 March 2021 - 09:13 AM.

[The Pugilist That Punched You]

nopempele, on 11 March 2021 - 05:36 PM, said:

I don't know for you guys, but I have been watching this pattern for a while. Upon reaching a certain Tier score MM begins forcing defeats on me by picking out teams of really weak players against very decent ones. Like really weak, Tier 4-5 against Tier 1-2. I even recognize the nicknames from both sides of especially bad and especially good players.

This streak of forced defeats goes on until my score is diminished beyond a certain point when the trend is reversed. And this MM "swing" goes on and on in endless loop.

This is not fun or entertaining, quite the opposite. And it is not a good MM implementation, it's very straightforward.

What you say is true. Game manipulation by broken matchmaker/psr system IMO. They need to remove both systems IMO. Although it's likely not a good place to post here in this forum because there will be too many trolls denying it's a problem,justifying its virtues and or blaming you saying you're just a bad pilot.
They won't remove it because they feel this system by cushioning new players (which it does) will make them more money. Unfortunately where it becomes an issue for most is after you've become experienced and raised your PSR to the top levels. I would go into further detail as to why it's broken for more experienced players and why it would be better for everyone if they removed it. If they simply had a noob level for new or weaker pilots that couldn't be accessed by more accomplished pilots. But They aren't paying me nor have they shown interest in the past to let go of it. It comes down to what they think will make them more money. But they've made a lot of bad decisions like this over the years that have lost them a huge % of their customers. I expect that culture to continue.
Denying the problem exists or blaming it on the players is a sure way to lose more. But bean counters don't get this. They only think new revenue and this is their mistake.

Edited by The Pugilist That Punched You, 13 March 2021 - 12:25 PM.

[Paul Meyers DEST]

The biggest problem with the current MM is that the PSR maximum is way to low. Jay-Z mentioned in his sheet that it should be much higher. Actual PSR Max says that 80% Jarlslist players are as good as 90% and 99,9% and thats so wrong.

[Vlad Ward]

Is that fixable by just increasing the cap, or will the same group of players (with their huge variance in skill) just end up bubbling to a new cap anyway?

Edited by Vlad Ward, 13 March 2021 - 12:04 PM.

[EnochsBook]

The Pugilist That Punched You, on 13 March 2021 - 11:40 AM, said:

What you say is true. Game manipulation by broken matchmaker/psr system IMO.

lol

The Pugilist That Punched You, on 13 March 2021 - 11:40 AM, said:

They need to remove both systems IMO. Although it's likely not a good place to post here in this forum because there will be too many trolls denying it's a problem and justifying its virtues.
They won't remove it because they feel this system will make them more money by cushioning new players.(which it does) Unfortunately where it becomes an issue for most is after you've become experienced and raised your PSR to the top levels. I would go into further detail as to why it's broken for more experienced players and why it would be better for everyone if they removed it. If they simply had a noob level that couldn't be accessed by more accomplished pilots. But They aren't paying me nor have they shown interest in the past to let go of it. It comes down to what they think will make them more money. But they've made a lot of bad decisions like this over the years that have lost them a huge % of their customers. I expect that culture to continue.

Less time spent fantasizing about what the "they" are trying to achieve, more time spent providing evidence for what you're proposing, please. Thanks. Assuming you can provide any supporting facts besides "It really do be like that, though". Also nice "I could provide explanations, but I'm not going to". Classic. It's amazing how closely this resembles real-life conspiracy theories.

Samial, on 13 March 2021 - 05:06 AM, said:

No i experience the same thing daily, i login and win easily, then its four or five losses which are usually hard stomps, then its a win, then again a string of losses. Then after a few days it switches around and i receive a string of wins that are stomps to the enemies and the occasional loss thrown in, until it switches back..

Its not random win lose its a large run of both at certain times of the week. Not random at all.. Its the same every day, for days.

What you're describing sounds like a pretty average play session, with a hefty dose of false pattern recognition.
You say you've experienced this several times; I on the other hand never have. What now? Who's to be believed?


Seriously, you guys go from "It feels like I get alternating wins and losses streaks" directly to "the developers have secretely created a system in which I get punished by the matchmaker for doing too well, all in order for the game to become less fun", with not even an attempt to validate your beliefs. Top tier reasoning guys, wish you all the best.

[crazytimes]

Paul Meyers DEST, on 13 March 2021 - 11:42 AM, said:

The biggest problem with the current MM is that the PSR maximum is way to low. Jay-Z mentioned in his sheet that it should be much higher. Actual PSR Max says that 80% Jarlslist players are as good as 90% and 99,9% and thats so wrong.

The problem with this is that when you only have a small bunch of people, it doesn't matter how much granularity you apply in sorting- you still need 24 to make a match and with a tiny population your sorting efforts are wasted.

That we still need a 3 tier spread - ie 60% of the population- to make a match means there is no point in sorting further at all. The matchmaker would work just as well with an "above or below average" tier divisor as the current system.

Edited by crazytimes, 13 March 2021 - 02:38 PM.

[Heavy Money]

People are finding patterns where there are none and getting tricked by confirmation bias. Everything is WAY more random than you think because, as others have said, the matchmaker isn't sophisticated at all and the game has a million variables. The trends people are seeing is a combination of RNG + Confirmation Bias. If there's a complaint to be made, it ought to be about the degree of randomness.

I see a lot of funky matches. I am a t1 player that usually plays with a couple of buddies who are t5. And we play lots of silly builds and tactics, but also sometimes meta builds. Due to group matchmaking being funky, we end up in all sorts of odd matches. Sometimes we're in games with multiple cadets on each team and recognizable t5 players. Sometimes we're against t1 players. And guess what? There's basically no pattern or correlation on if we win or lose.

Last night we had a 6 in a row winning streak, including a game against JayZ's [228] 4 man that we beat despite being in silly builds. But we didn't beat them because we were better, we beat them because our 3 assaults did a flank that would generally lose us a match, but we just happened to run into their lance and out ton them in that area of the map. Sensible players would not have done that. So we won that one, but if we played against that team over multiple games, they'd win almost all of them I'm sure. The point is, even for good players like them, there's so many random variables.

That 6 in a row winning streak also included 2 games where our team had only 1 or 2 assaults and was massively undertonned, but we won anyway because...who knows why? Usually you lose when they have 5 assaults and you have 2. We won because winning is determined by the details of the match, not by some overall deterministic trend.

The night before we had a 9 in a row losing streak. As far as I could tell, almost all of those matches were t5 games. And we were playing pretty sensible builds. But we lost a lot because we kept being on the team that did really dumb things. Me and my 2 buddies would have 400+ damage, and most of our team would have under 200 or even under 100. Why? No reason, its just RNG.

I'm a t1 player because I consistently do good damage, so I rank up even on losses, regardless of tier of the match overall. My W:L is 1:1. There are matches where I do 1200 damage and 4 solo kills and my buddy does 800 and we lose. There are matches where I get cockpitted by double gauss from across the map 30 seconds in and my buddy didn't come back from the bathroom and is afk and my team has 2 cadets but we win 12:1.

Concern yourself with doing a good job and having a fun time and stop worrying about Win:Loss. If you want to be t1, focus on firing more often and more accurately and you'll get it.

Edited by Heavy Money, 13 March 2021 - 03:15 PM.

[PocketYoda]

Gagis, on 13 March 2021 - 05:18 AM, said:

No, you are just not as good as you think you are.

I never once said i was good.. But i see what i see and thats the fact.. The matchmaker has zero to do with if i'm good or bad.. its how its designed.

I'm saying i'm seeing a pattern in the way the matchmaker is designed.

Kroete, on 13 March 2021 - 09:12 AM, said:

Seems you one of the few where the matchmaker is working.

With a working matchmaker, after you settled in your rank, you would have 50/50 win/lose.
But that doesnt mean one win and then one lose, its over some time, in the average.

Fair enough but thats exactly what i'm seeing daily.. either a win then a string of losses or a loss then a string of wins. Depends on the time of the week..

EnochsBook, on 13 March 2021 - 12:29 PM, said:

lol



Less time spent fantasizing about what the "they" are trying to achieve, more time spent providing evidence for what you're proposing, please. Thanks. Assuming you can provide any supporting facts besides "It really do be like that, though". Also nice "I could provide explanations, but I'm not going to". Classic. It's amazing how closely this resembles real-life conspiracy theories.



What you're describing sounds like a pretty average play session, with a hefty dose of false pattern recognition.
You say you've experienced this several times; I on the other hand never have. What now? Who's to be believed?


Seriously, you guys go from "It feels like I get alternating wins and losses streaks" directly to "the developers have secretely created a system in which I get punished by the matchmaker for doing too well, all in order for the game to become less fun", with not even an attempt to validate your beliefs. Top tier reasoning guys, wish you all the best.

Maybe it goes by tiers, but i see this every day for weeks now.

Edited by Samial, 13 March 2021 - 07:24 PM.

[Wattila]

FWIW, IMO:

1) The tier system does not result in better match quality, or even guarantee skill. If anything, Tier 5 is a lot more random and fun than Tier 1 atm (wish I could go back). World of Tanks is slightly more popular than this game, and they've never segregated their player base like that, choosing to keep queue times short and balance the equipment instead. Then you have MWO with a tiny player base, long-*** queues, and hilarious tonnage differences between teams.

2) Garbage spawns are a much bigger detriment to match quality than any other factor. Is it groups pushing assaults to less favorable spawn locations, I don't know, but when your slower mechs are regularly DoA due to bad spawns, anything else you try to do to balance the teams doesn't really matter. Imagine being a new player in a trial assault and getting the B4 spawn on classic Frozen City Skirmish, RIP.

It's been like this for years too, I wonder if it's incompetence, indifference, or a combination of both. I've been hoping Microsoft would give the license to a competent developer, but there probably aren't any takers considering how dead MWO and MW5 are.

[Paul Meyers DEST]

crazytimes, on 13 March 2021 - 02:37 PM, said:

The problem with this is that when you only have a small bunch of people, it doesn't matter how much granularity you apply in sorting- you still need 24 to make a match and with a tiny population your sorting efforts are wasted.

No, you are wrong.