29 replies to this topic

[Hagen Zwosta]

You skill ratings dont work, as a result the matchmaking is god awful.
Just make randon matches without looking at skill ratings.
It can only be better. Thanks.

[martian]

Hagen Zwosta, on 19 November 2023 - 05:34 AM, said:

You skill ratings dont work, as a result the matchmaking is god awful.
Just make randon matches without looking at skill ratings.
It can only be better. Thanks.

As Russ Bullock said, MWO is going to stay more or less "as-is" until PGI pulls the plug.

[Hagen Zwosta]

Ok, makes sense. Will be sad to see it go. It is a really awesome game.

[Void Angel]

Hagen Zwosta, on 19 November 2023 - 05:34 AM, said:

Just make randon matches without looking at skill ratings.
It can only be better. Thanks.

That's not correct. You do not want to fight me if you're a Tier 5 beginner. I'm not Comstar's gift to combat or anything - but I've got solid skills, my builds work, and I know the ropes tactically.

I suspect you might be seeing the results of the attrition-based combat inherent in this franchise (Battletech, not just MWO.) This game boils down to a contest of skilled attrition. Everything from basic trading at range to Light wolfpacks to flanking skirmish builds all have one goal in a fight - to neutralize the enemy by wearing down their armor and structure on critical components. Understanding this is key to understanding the deeper levels of the game.

Now, if your team wears down the enemy at more or less the same rate, you can have matches that feel fairly close, but that doesn't always happen. What can also happen is that some yahoo makes an error that gets him killed fast; now you might be down an 85 ton 'mech with 85 damage dealt to the enemy team - and the other side has more 'mechs and more guns, which makes it just a bit more likely that they'll get the next kill, too.

Or maybe your team managed to focus fire well, and killed the first enemy 'mech, while the enemy scattered their fire all over your team. Well, they may have done the same amount of damage, but your damaged 'mechs are still fully or partially combat effective, and you're now ahead of the attrition game.

I haven't been Tier 5 for a while, but it tends to be... chaotic. Which is what you'd expect from people who are learning a pretty complex game. It can be frustrating, and it gets better at higher Tiers - but I don't want you to think too badly of the matchmaker. Throwing random players, piloting random 'mechs, into a game like this one is going to lead to chaotic results, even if everyone has roughly the same level of skill.

Edited by Void Angel, 19 November 2023 - 07:38 PM.

[Besh]

Void Angel, on 19 November 2023 - 07:38 PM, said:

That's not correct. You do not want to fight me if you're a Tier 5 beginner. I'm not Comstar's gift to combat or anything - but I've got solid skills, my builds work, and I know the ropes tactically.

I suspect you might be seeing the results of the attrition-based combat inherent in this franchise (Battletech, not just MWO.) This game boils down to a contest of skilled attrition. Everything from basic trading at range to Light wolfpacks to flanking skirmish builds all have one goal in a fight - to neutralize the enemy by wearing down their armor and structure on critical components. Understanding this is key to understanding the deeper levels of the game.

Now, if your team wears down the enemy at more or less the same rate, you can have matches that feel fairly close, but that doesn't always happen. What can also happen is that some yahoo makes an error that gets him killed fast; now you might be down an 85 ton 'mech with 85 damage dealt to the enemy team - and the other side has more 'mechs and more guns, which makes it just a bit more likely that they'll get the next kill, too.

Or maybe your team managed to focus fire well, and killed the first enemy 'mech, while the enemy scattered their fire all over your team. Well, they may have done the same amount of damage, but your damaged 'mechs are still fully or partially combat effective, and you're now ahead of the attrition game.

I haven't been Tier 5 for a while, but it tends to be... chaotic. Which is what you'd expect from people who are learning a pretty complex game. It can be frustrating, and it gets better at higher Tiers - but I don't want you to think too badly of the matchmaker. Throwing random players, piloting random 'mechs, into a game like this one is going to lead to chaotic results, even if everyone has roughly the same level of skill.

t5s get matched against t1 groups every day .

[Aidan Crenshaw]

Besh, on 20 November 2023 - 03:54 AM, said:

t5s get matched against t1 groups every day .

This may happen, but it's not a random encounter and more of a last resort, matchmakingwise.

[JPeiper]

Sitting happily in tier 3.5 for me the matchmaker seems ok. It can have a fit every now and then when it puts me in a high tier game ( 99% of players in a team ....) life is short but interesting and when I land in a low tier match (1 or 2 in a team) and indeed it is chaos, but fun !
I think if you are "average" the matchmaner is fine, but if you are at one end or other of skill and xp it will cause you a problem, esp if servers are busy or it's quiet.
How to fix ? god knows, with PGI investment "may be an issue" and balancing player xp,lights to assaults, teams and ping could take all day.
'Course if i could ask the matchmaker to dump all the lights that look like a tiny but lethal stacks of micros and mg's that can take out my back quicker than JGX's DATA in a Dire Wolf into a locked game they could'nt get out of i'd be happy....(only joking)

[Besh]

Aidan Crenshaw, on 20 November 2023 - 04:01 AM, said:

This may happen, but it's not a random encounter and more of a last resort, matchmakingwise.

Tbh, I am pretty bewildered as to why there is no informative post about how MM works exactly . As it stands, there are people around actually telling other people "I don't believe you are getting matched against t1 as t5"...and thats just not what happens .

In my epxerience over the last 2 weeks, reality is I am routinely ending up in Matches with 3, 4 people piloting trial Mechs desperately trying to figure out the Map being farmed by 2 highly skilled premades who setup MapControl and then proceed to roll over the OpFor with fast movers .

I dont mind much honestly . Tiersystem/PSR is broken as it values dmg. over anything else, resulting in abysmally bad matches where people simply "farm damage" to whatever end ( mostly not caring what happens to their Team ) and still end up not going down in tier much, while others play to support their team with positioning, support fire etc. end up getting farmed with low dmg numbers and PSR going down .

I just don't subscribe to the general vibe of "Nah, as a low skilled player, you don't meet high skilled players too often"...because simply put, its not true .

Edited by Besh, 20 November 2023 - 04:49 AM.

[ScrapIron Prime]

Besh, on 20 November 2023 - 04:23 AM, said:

In my epxerience over the last 2 weeks, reality is I am routinely ending up in Matches with 3, 4 people piloting trial Mechs desperately trying to figure out the Map being farmed by 2 highly skilled premades who setup MapControl and then proceed to roll over the OpFor with fast movers .

Sure, but those "highly skilled" premades could just as easily be T3 players who have played for a long time. Talking and coordinating is an amazing skill multiplier over wordlessly following the flock of lemmings.

[Besh]

ScrapIron Prime, on 20 November 2023 - 05:53 AM, said:

Sure, but those "highly skilled" premades could just as easily be T3 players who have played for a long time. Talking and coordinating is an amazing skill multiplier over wordlessly following the flock of lemmings.

Well, you don't know, I don't know . How does MM work ? Can a group of 3xt1 1xt5 end up fighting mostly t5, 4, 3 teams ?
I can tell you with absolute certainty that I see t1s, in Groups, wrecking t5s routinely .

Edited by Besh, 20 November 2023 - 08:19 AM.

[martian]

Besh, on 20 November 2023 - 04:23 AM, said:

I dont mind much honestly . Tiersystem/PSR is broken as it values dmg. over anything else, resulting in abysmally bad matches where people simply "farm damage" to whatever end ( mostly not caring what happens to their Team ) and still end up not going down in tier much, while others play to support their team with positioning, support fire etc. end up getting farmed with low dmg numbers and PSR going down.

How useful are those players who "play to support their team with positioning, support fire etc. end up getting farmed with low dmg numbers and PSR going down." ?

I mean, if their supposed "support fire" does not result in killed enemy 'Mechs or at least badly damaged enemies ... What good is such "support fire"?

[Hagen Zwosta]

How is there always one team that forms a ball and sits in a hole. I mean the WHOLE team. While the other team has only aggressive players.
One team always has the ones who run away at the sight of an enemy, the other team is eager to engage any red.
At least that is how it looks. I can say right from the start who will win.
Not the ones that form a blob and sit in Timbuktu.
Literally right after I wrote this the next one happened. All our mechs were only sitting and waiting.

Edited by Hagen Zwosta, 20 November 2023 - 09:42 AM.

[Besh]

martian, on 20 November 2023 - 08:58 AM, said:

How useful are those players who "play to support their team with positioning, support fire etc. end up getting farmed with low dmg numbers and PSR going down." ?

I mean, if their supposed "support fire" does not result in killed enemy 'Mechs or at least badly damaged enemies ... What good is such "support fire"?

You are seriously questioning how usefull players who play with their team in mind are . Interesting .

Sometimes, all it takes is one Mech holding a corner for your team not getting shot in the sides . Many people simply run away if they see enemies around a corner though .

Support fire means exactly that : helping another Mech taking an enemy down faster by shooting into open CTs or STs . That kind of stuff . Or surpressing people from ganking on that one out of Position Mech .

Edited by Besh, 20 November 2023 - 10:36 AM.

[Void Angel]

It depends on what they're doing. Because a player can be mindful of the team's positioning and fully intent on securing the flanks, or scouting the enemy - and still be doing the wrong thing and caught out of position. There's also times where the guy who held out against the enemy's flanking move long enough for the team to win gets no damage, and loses PSR. I've been that guy - both times. It's true that PSR doesn't perfectly reward good play; it focuses on damage, kills, assists, etc. to determine match score, because those are the most quantifiable measures. It could give more rewards for spotting, scouting, etc. But that has tradeoffs. If you make scouting just as good for match score as murdering enemy Battlemechs, then match people at random

As for the matchmaker... There should be a pinned post on the Developer Outreach forum that tells us how the matchmaker works. But that doesn't mean the devs haven't talked to us about it. People are saying "the matchmaker works like this," because we've talked to the devs about it and we know from them. For example, Tier 1 players will not be matched with Tier 5 under any normal circumstances. The matchmaker has "valves" that can be opened to allow greater spread in matchmaking, but normally these valves are closed (groups that contain a Tier 1 are a different matter.) We just had a thread about this where people posted screen shots of their suspected T1 opponents - and in every single screenshot, the player either wasn't likely to be T1 (based on their MWO leaderboard performance as aggregated by the Jarl's List, or they were clearly grouped with a (much) lower-skill player. This is a known effect; I think the game averages the PSRs of group members, but I cannot recall if that's correct. Regardless, this does happen for a reason: people want to play the game with their friends, so you have a devil's bargain: do you match groups at their highest group level, resulting in punishing, unfun play for everyone? Or do you allow some compromise so that existing players can group up with friends and help them learn the game.

So the matchmaker isn't perfect, but it does the job fairly well, given its constraints.

[martian]

Besh, on 20 November 2023 - 09:42 AM, said:

You are seriously questioning how usefull players who play with their team in mind are . Interesting .

The best way of being useful for your team is to kill or damage enemy 'Mechs.

Besh, on 20 November 2023 - 09:42 AM, said:

Sometimes, all it takes is one Mech holding a corner for your team not getting shot in the sides . Many people simply run away if they see enemies around a corner though .

Holding the corner against attacking enemy 'Mechs should give you a good opportunity to dish out some damage and maybe some kill(s), thus earning you good PSR and the green arrow.

Standing idle behind a corner, waiting and doing nothing gives you the red arrow. Perhaps you should find some other spot from where you can actually engage enemy 'Mechs.

Besh, on 20 November 2023 - 09:42 AM, said:

Support fire means exactly that : helping another Mech taking an enemy down faster by shooting into open CTs or STs . That kind of stuff . Or surpressing people from ganking on that one out of Position Mech .

Sounds good. In such case you should be dishing out a lot of fire and getting kills, assists and damage, thus having no problem with "with low dmg numbers and PSR going down." One pot shot every five minutes is not enough.

[Mechwarrior2342356]

Void Angel, on 19 November 2023 - 07:38 PM, said:

That's not correct. You do not want to fight me if you're a Tier 5 beginner. I'm not Comstar's gift to combat or anything - but I've got solid skills, my builds work, and I know the ropes tactically.

I suspect you might be seeing the results of the attrition-based combat inherent in this franchise (Battletech, not just MWO.) This game boils down to a contest of skilled attrition. Everything from basic trading at range to Light wolfpacks to flanking skirmish builds all have one goal in a fight - to neutralize the enemy by wearing down their armor and structure on critical components. Understanding this is key to understanding the deeper levels of the game.

Now, if your team wears down the enemy at more or less the same rate, you can have matches that feel fairly close, but that doesn't always happen. What can also happen is that some yahoo makes an error that gets him killed fast; now you might be down an 85 ton 'mech with 85 damage dealt to the enemy team - and the other side has more 'mechs and more guns, which makes it just a bit more likely that they'll get the next kill, too.

Or maybe your team managed to focus fire well, and killed the first enemy 'mech, while the enemy scattered their fire all over your team. Well, they may have done the same amount of damage, but your damaged 'mechs are still fully or partially combat effective, and you're now ahead of the attrition game.

I haven't been Tier 5 for a while, but it tends to be... chaotic. Which is what you'd expect from people who are learning a pretty complex game. It can be frustrating, and it gets better at higher Tiers - but I don't want you to think too badly of the matchmaker. Throwing random players, piloting random 'mechs, into a game like this one is going to lead to chaotic results, even if everyone has roughly the same level of skill.

Tentative objection on the basis of more tier more better - I've seen some straight up headass maneuvers in matches with T1s. (Quit running into that Canyon deathpit and stalling jesus tapdancing christ guys)

[Hagen Zwosta]

I do not complain that I can not rank up. I can. I am only in my second month, but somehow since a week or so I am climbing. Soon I am out of T5.
Does not change the fact that random matchmaker would work better imho. Yes you might get better opponents, but also on your side. Or maybe I am wrong and the experienced players like sitting in holes too, doing nothing.

[martian]

Hagen Zwosta, on 20 November 2023 - 01:13 PM, said:

I do not complain that I can not rank up. I can. I am only in my second month, but somehow since a week or so I am climbing. Soon I am out of T5.

Congrats!

[Hagen Zwosta]

If only I would stop buying new mechs and playing them without skills
Somehow I always want new stuff.

Edited by Hagen Zwosta, 20 November 2023 - 01:36 PM.

[Void Angel]

the check engine light, on 20 November 2023 - 12:44 PM, said:

Tentative objection on the basis of more tier more better - I've seen some straight up headass maneuvers in matches with T1s. (Quit running into that Canyon deathpit and stalling jesus tapdancing christ guys)

Oh, you're totally right - though remember Tier 1 commonly includes down to T3 - that not everyone is exactly a genius, tactically speaking. Some people get by simply running optimized builds and following the team around. Or ignore the guy telling them where the enemy is literally shooting them from right now... or respond to "we need metal over here" with a pedantic mini-lecture about being clear on coms - when the location of the enemy team had been called out 15 seconds ago, pay attention. There's also the Premade Effect, where players dropping in a premade lance seem to assume that they'll carry the day without coordinating or talking to the team...

And then you have people playing experimental builds for fun, like a full lance of SRM Locusts, or experimenting with new or unorthodox builds, different/unfamiliar weapons, etc. And then there's the random composition of actual chassis and builds, coupled to the semi-random selection of a map... There's a ton of confounding variables that all conspire to make match results really "swing-y."

But overall, the teammates are going to be better in Tier 3, even if they're sometimes guilty of not thinking where they are on the map. Even though the range of skillsets in a given tier is wider than we'd like (not enough player base to stratify it, sadly,) there's still a noticeable difference between total beginners and experienced players at the top. So at the end of the day, it's still better to have skill-based matchmaking, even if the player base means that the skill range in individual tiers