261 replies to this topic

[Khobai]

General Solo, on 26 June 2021 - 09:36 AM, said:

They have a plan to fix the game, a long list with Matchmaking, aka skillgap management last or near it.

They have it backwards imo.

I am not saying the game will be dead by the time they get to Matchmaking, aka skillgap management, but its a possibilty.

their plan to fix the game isnt making it anymore fun though.

ive been playing this game since closed beta in 2012 and the game was more fun back in 2012 than it is now.

instead cauldron is trying to revive some period from 2017 when the game wasnt even fun in 2017 either. it had already lost what made it fun by then. On top of that theyre constantly nerfing lowskill weapons, buffing PPFLD/sniping weapons, turning light mechs into god tanks, lowering time to kill for everything else, buffing meta mechs even more, and its not making the game more fun. all of that has created a bigger skill gap rather than closing the skill gap.

but I agree the biggest problem right now is the matchmaker. practically every game's outcome is predetermined with one team starting with at least one huge advantage. because matchmaker cant balance 3 different elements at the same time (individuals, groups, and tonnage). it can only reasonably balance 1 of those.

what they need to do is have a prelaunch screen where both teams get like an 800 tonnage limit or a 3/3/3/3 limit or a combination of both. And the game only starts once both teams have picked mechs and are under their tonnage limits. players that dont pick mechs in time would get stuck in trial mechs for that match. that fixes the tonnage/weight class problem.

then the only problem left is how to balance groups.

if the game had reasonably balanced teams nearly all of the other problems could be overlooked.

Edited by Khobai, 26 June 2021 - 11:13 PM.

[Vxheous]

General Solo, on 26 June 2021 - 09:26 AM, said:

@OP, Firstly its not SOLO que its Quick Play, or SOUP QUE with groups and soloes in the common toungue.

Could be lately most of the soloes have left town except for events giving away MC's, so mostly groups are left so that could explain the increase in difficulty.

And when the last solo has left, and their are only groups left, I wonder what will happen?

History maybe repeat itself, like it did in some other queues.

Possibly, maybe, probably.

Shouldn't matter, because at the very least, 7 players on each side must be solos or the game won't start. 90% of the groups out there don't actually affect the outcome of the match any differently than if they were solo (those players W/L haven't changed any from solo to soup)

[justcallme A S H]

Khobai, on 26 June 2021 - 10:43 PM, said:

what they need to do is have a prelaunch screen where both teams get like an 800 tonnage limit or a 3/3/3/3 limit or a combination of both. And the game only starts once both teams have picked mechs and are under their tonnage limits. players that dont pick mechs in time would get stuck in trial mechs for that match. that fixes the tonnage/weight class problem.

You want 12 random people to workout and agree on a tonnage spread or a match won't start?
Even better a new player with limited mechs that wants skill/level a specific mech and you can't use anything else and you might be stuck in trials just to start a match?


That would have to be one of the worst ideas I've ever heard [Redacted].

[Scout Derek]

Khobai, on 26 June 2021 - 10:43 PM, said:

their plan to fix the game isnt making it anymore fun though.

Your term of "fun" can be very subjective.

And so far, I've seen alot of people very content and eager to see future changes come to this game, changes that actually matter.

[Khobai]

justcallme A S H, on 26 June 2021 - 11:32 PM, said:

You want 12 random people to workout and agree on a tonnage spread or a match won't start?

No the match will start. It will put people in trial mechs if they cant choose in time. Cant pick the game picks for you. Wouldnt be the first game to do that.

And yes that is preferable to having 300 ton disparities in matches because matchmaker sucks.

I want balanced matches. I do not want unbalanced games mismatched by 300 tons or more. I am sick of seeing 1 assault on my team and 6 assaults on the enemy team.

Tonnage obviously isnt everything and tonnage disadvantage can absolutely be overcome upto a point. But when youre talking 200-300 ton differences on a regular basis thats very hard for the disadvantaged team to overcome.

Besides according to you group players the only advantage groups have is the ability to synergize builds with eachother. If thats actually true then a pregame lobby resolves that issue too. It fixes both the tonnage imbalance issue and the group imbalance issue at the same time.

Having pregame lobbies is the only real option left for balancing teams since all other options have been shoved off the table.

Scout Derek, on 26 June 2021 - 11:36 PM, said:

Your term of "fun" can be very subjective.

And so far, I've seen alot of people very content and eager to see future changes come to this game, changes that actually matter.

Going in circles is not meaningful change lol. Its just that: going in circles. PGI nerfed a lot of the things Cauldron is reverting for a reason. Those reasons are coming back too.

And if people are so content why are people complaining the game isnt fun? lmao. its not the first post thats popped up on the forums recently saying the games less fun. And not just because the matches arnt balanced.

But like I said a lot of the games issues can be overlooked if the matches are at least balanced. Thats one thing that players wont abide in the long run. unbalanced matches. If that continues this game will hemorrhage players like crazy again once the influx of new players due to covid stops. Even returning players will get sick of it eventually too. Im pretty fed up with it after 1000+ games.

Balancing matches is what the priority should be.

Edited by Khobai, 27 June 2021 - 12:28 AM.

[Vindicated]

Khobai, on 26 June 2021 - 11:50 PM, said:

No the match will start. It will put people in trial mechs.

And yes that is preferable to having 300 ton disparities in matches because matchmaker sucks.

As someone who plays faction play regularly, I can tell you that is not the case

[justcallme A S H]

Khobai, on 26 June 2021 - 11:50 PM, said:

No the match will start. It will put people in trial mechs..

So if 12 random people can't coordinate they just go into trial mechs. Completely ignoring:

- New player experience.
- Language barriers.
- Those who've made the choice to turn off text/comms.

[Redacted]

[nuttyrat]

Khobai, on 26 June 2021 - 11:50 PM, said:

And yes that is preferable to having 300 ton disparities in matches because matchmaker sucks.

I want balanced matches. I do not want unbalanced games mismatched by 300 tons or more.

What matters more ... equal tonnage or equal skill when balancing a match? Unless game population increases significantly (likely higher than it has ever been), you can really only choose one and have matches fire at a reasonable rate.

So, faced with this which is more important? Tonnage or Skill?

[nuttyrat]

Khobai, on 26 June 2021 - 10:43 PM, said:

what they need to do is have a prelaunch screen where both teams get like an 800 tonnage limit or a 3/3/3/3 limit or a combination of both. And the game only starts once both teams have picked mechs and are under their tonnage limits. players that dont pick mechs in time would get stuck in trial mechs for that match. that fixes the tonnage/weight class problem.

I'm quoting your posts out of turn but wanted to reply to this and perhaps encourage a bit of reality vs wishful thinking. PGI has said many, many times that engineering resources for MWO are slim to none, and what you are proposing is a complete up-end of the current matchmaking system and creating a new one. I'm sorry to say that this kind of idea just isn't practical, nor is it realistic.

Making improvements to the current system is the best and only approach we have at the moment. This can be achieved by things like improving how match score is calculated (which is on the dev roadmap, i believe) so that folks are distributed based on skill and match quality would likely get better as a result.

So, given that major changes to how MWO matchmaking works (like what you are proposing) is simply not possible ... how can it be improved with the options that we DO have ?

Edited by nuttyrat, 27 June 2021 - 12:31 AM.

[Khobai]

nuttyrat, on 27 June 2021 - 12:13 AM, said:

What matters more ... equal tonnage or equal skill when balancing a match? Unless game population increases significantly (likely higher than it has ever been), you can really only choose one and have matches fire at a reasonable rate.

So, faced with this which is more important? Tonnage or Skill?

what difference does it make if the match is unbalanced either way? horrendous imbalance is still horrendously imbalanced regardless of the reason.

besides under my solution the two arnt mutually exclusive. it balances both.

tonnage/weight class would be balanced by forcing both teams to adhere to the same rules for team construction. And the matchmaker would still pick all the players on each team based on their tiers.

nuttyrat, on 27 June 2021 - 12:31 AM, said:

PGI has said many, many times that engineering resources for MWO are slim to none

the game already has pregame lobbies for a number of gamemodes. I dont think its that much of a stretch to add a pregame lobby to quickplay. how could PGI not have at least one person that can do that? if thats really the case this game is completely doomed anyway.

Edited by Khobai, 27 June 2021 - 12:45 AM.

[nuttyrat]

Khobai, on 27 June 2021 - 12:31 AM, said:

what difference does it make if the match is unbalanced either way

besides under my solution the two arnt mutually exclusive. it balances both.

Your matchmaker idea just isn't practical for reasons in my previous post. Since it is not practical, we only have what we can work with. So since your idea just isn't realistic, how else can we improve match quality? In a perfect world we would have a secondary matchmaker that would balance within the lobby .. so, for example, if a 4-stack of JGx is on one team, it will put the two random EmP pilots on the alternate team so as to balance skill.

Just like your idea, a secondary matchmaker wishful thinking because the engineering resources just are not available right now, and might not ever be available in that capacity. So we have to work with what we have unless the game starts making craploads of money to justify getting engineering resources for that

[nuttyrat]

Khobai, on 27 June 2021 - 12:31 AM, said:

the game already has pregame lobbies for a number of gamemode. I dont think its as much of a stretch to add pregame lobbies to quickplay as other things.

how could PGI not have at least one person that can do that?

I'm not sure why you would think that a community manager, a 3d modeler, a level designer, and a live services manager would have the skills to pull off that sort of thing. That is all the resourcing that MWO has at the moment (plus i think one more person who is not an engineer), so again your idea just isn't realistic right now.

You also have to think of the impact that would have on the SPEED of matchmaking .. and i don't just mean kicking off a match. You are assuming that everyone is running a computer efficient enough to open a mechbay with a large number of mechs in a short amount of time, short enough to pick a mech and fight with your teammates over who is taking what, and then having that match fire. You will spend more time setting up a match then you will actually playing it. Sure, something like this exists in Faction Play ... but Faction Play takes longer to complete and has more mechs.

[nuttyrat]

Anyway, at the end of the day what you are asking for just won't happen ... and honestly PGI should be focusing their efforts elsewhere. The reality is that the game population has increased significantly since The Cauldron patches have been coming out .. and also by the tireless efforts from Matt and Daeron to help build trust and confidence with the community. Folks are largely having fun and enjoying the changes that have been made. Nothing is perfect, more changes and tweaks are coming .. but take a step back and just appreciate that the game has changed significantly for the better.

It's late for me so need to get to bed, gnight!

Edited by nuttyrat, 27 June 2021 - 12:57 AM.

[Khobai]

Again unbalanced matchups will cause people to quit the game.

excuses wont change that.

[justcallme A S H]

Khobai, on 27 June 2021 - 12:56 AM, said:

Again unbalanced matchups will cause people to quit the game.

Forcing new players, or any players, to have to she Trial Mechs in QP will cause them to leave the game a hell of a lot faster.


Your suggestion is once again completely unworkable, would force 1,000s to leave which shows a pretty big lack of understanding of what the issues even are.

Simply doing a secondary lobby balance once a lobby (24) is found would fix the majority of issues. No need to force people into trials, no need to make games take even longer to drop, let's people retain their mech choice and doesn't discriminate because you might not speak a specific language.

[nuttyrat]

Khobai, on 27 June 2021 - 12:56 AM, said:

Again unbalanced matchups will cause people to quit the game.

excuses wont change that.

Not according to active player counts, my dude.

https://imgur.com/a/CfPHSbP

[General Solo]

Did you know that Jarls can't tell the difference between a new player and an alt account.

https://steamcharts.com/app/342200

Steam only counts steam accounts, not alts unlike Jarls List, and according to steam numbers are down

https://leaderboard.isengrim.org/stats

Many if not most of those new players according to Jarls List can be alts farming skillgap.
No way of telling.
But with Steam an alt user would have to create a new steam account as well to count, as a new user.

Edited by General Solo, 27 June 2021 - 05:16 AM.

[General Solo]

Vxheous, on 26 June 2021 - 11:13 PM, said:

Shouldn't matter, because at the very least, 7 players on each side must be solos or the game won't start. 90% of the groups out there don't actually affect the outcome of the match any differently than if they were solo (those players W/L haven't changed any from solo to soup)

Well if the game cannot find 7 solo's in T1-T3, then the Tier gates open wide and the game will get them from T4-T5 as well.
So a T4 or T5 solo player will face possibly a T1 group, not the be solution if you want to keep new players.
Well if that keeps up eventually yes the game won't start.

Wait times go up
And History repeats it self, for the 3rd time.

[The Basilisk]

Guys, all of you who deny that the game itself hasn't changed due to the last patches are either blind and deaf or so utterly oblivious and jaded that you should considder taking a break for your self to get a correct perspective of reality itself again or you should just stop commenting since you seem simply to be unable to understand what ppl are saying.

Yes the game has changed !
It got faster !
The perceived surviability of mechs dropped to nowhere !
Lights are just footsoldiers now
Mediums feel like micro mechs or elementals
Heavys feel like lights or mediums and the Assaults feel like the Mediums I recall from the start of the game.

Only reason I give this a spin now and then is cuz its an old game I know and shooting other guys faces that aren't so twitchy fast that they have already reacted when I started to lift the weapon makes fun now and then.

But the original reason, because its BATTLETECH is absolutely gone.

Its just a hillarious carricature of mechcombat.
Paste gaudy comicstyle or WoW like graphics over it and nobody would realize the difference till some twitcher or screenshot guy points it out.

Oh...and good work on the Polar map its actualy realy fun even after some playthroughs.

[Haipyng]

Vercors, on 27 June 2021 - 05:33 AM, said:

I'm happy to see this idea make sense for you (even if this is not possible for the reason you say before). Strangely Justcallme A S H like your post and disagree with me when I write the same about spliting grouped players in differents teams.

No matter what, return to a separation of solo and grouped players is already possible now the population ingame have increase.

Matchmaker is hopeless until such time as there is a substantial population of players that it can use to make matches with. Until such time it is mostly random. The recent bump in population (if it is not just farming alts) is a drop in the bucket of what MM needs.

As bad as every one cries about 4 mans now, they should have tried playing with small groups in the old Group Queue. Again the population isn't there to support this move anyway.

A second pass with Matchaker like you describe might help. It still leaves a list of other issues that drive players nuts and makes them tire of the game quickly.

• Hit registration.
  
• Unseen terrain blocking shots.
  
• Many of the much needed balancing changes (that honestly shouldn't be being tested in live play).
  
• Small group play as a way to onboard players to large groups. (Currently not an issue, except that is no live match making system for large premade groups short of private lobby).
  
• The fake map and game type "selection" system. Try to get Conquest on any map type with a light configured to play the game type (like with capture accelerators). You will be playing your light for many, many games trying to get your multiplier up to the point that it will influence the choice.
  
• Skills that are no longer valid in the game because of other design decisions (see above).
  
• Game vastly rewards killing over other win conditions and options. Supporting behavior is not appropriately awarded due to farming concerns.
  
• The massive lot of mech chassis and models that just are not competitive to play. New players get so lost in these and then frustrated when they don't ever do as well as other players with superior models.
  
• The whole skill system (only design point is to give you something to spend C-Bills or MC on).
  
• Map designs that naturally encourage positional rotation. (NASCAR)

Oof, I better stop there. I am sure people can add on to that whole list. Point being there are many, many things to fix before you will ever see an amount of players sufficient enough for Matchmaker to actually... match-make fairly and effectively. The current changes are a good thing. The very public balance changes in multiple batches will irritate many people that have finely honed their play style using the previous settings.

Edited by Haipyng, 27 June 2021 - 06:09 AM.