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Matchmaking


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#1 Bryan Ekman

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Posted 30 October 2012 - 03:56 PM

Phase 1: November 6th

Pre-made groups will be limited to a max of 4 players when playing in random public forums. This is a quick fix to ease the PUG vs PRE issues. We do not consider this a final, nor complete fix to matchmaking.

Phase 2: December 4th - 80% (Delayed due to testing)

Pre-Made groups will be able to match against other pre-made groups.
  • Min/Max group size: 8 players - Updated
  • 8 player group matchmaking will not take into consideration Light, Medium, Heavy, Assault classes.
  • All other forms of matchmaking will still use the current class matching rules.
  • 2, 3, 4 player groups will be matched against other groups and solo players per Phase 1 rules.
Phase 3: December TBD


Full implementation of our modified ELO matchmaking solution. Details forthcoming.

#2 Paul Inouye

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Posted 30 November 2012 - 05:07 PM

THE NEW 8-PLAYER GROUP SYSTEM (Release to Live Dec 4,2012):

The new 8-player group system will allow players to create groups of 8-player and match up against other 8-player groups. The following is a guide on how to do so.

Begin by clicking the SOCIAL button at the bottom right of the client.

Upon doing so, you can 1) click the Group Tab at the top of the Social Panel and then click 2) Create Group.

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A new dialog box will appear on the screen that will ask you what type of group you’d like to create. Your choices are 4-Player Maximum or 8-Player Required.

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4-Player Maximum means that you can create a group from 2-4 players. These groups will be launched against the general player base as per the current Match Maker system. Groups using this system will be bound to equalization of Mech Chassis balancing (for every Mech of a specific weight class on one team, there is another of the same weight class on the opposing team.)

8-Player Required means that you MUST have 7 more players join your group to make a total player count of 8. When in this type of group, you cannot launch the group until all 8 positions are filled.

For the purposes of this post, select 3) 8 PLAYER REQUIRED.

Note that when selected, the 4) group information changes to show the requirements for launching in this manner. Click Create.

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An 8-player group has now been created and you are listed as the group owner.

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Recently we started to allow players to use the 5) READY and NOT READY buttons in the Social Panel to indicate to your group owner what your status is in terms of being prepared to launch. This is will not change and business is as usual.

What’s new is that there is now a 6) player counter that indicates the number of players required before being able to launch the group. There is also a new header 7) Launch Mode which will have additional functionality in the near future (hmmm... what would a “Mode” be?). But for now, this is where the group owner can launch the group once it is full and everyone is ready.

What happens beyond this point? The Match Maker now goes out and tries to find another 8-player group looking for a game. If found, the two 8-player groups will be matched together and the game will commence.

The new 8-player group system DOES NOT have a Mech weight class balance requirement. It will be up to the player base to determine what Mech classes they wish to drop with.

That’s all there is to it! Now get out there and start making your way to becoming the most powerful Merc Unit in MechWarrior Online!

#3 Paul Inouye

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Posted 18 December 2012 - 03:19 PM

Match Maker – Phase 3 – Update

Summary:
Phase 3 incorporates a variation of Elo and is undergoing testing against the telemetry data the servers have been providing us. Below is how Elo calculations are being processed and giving us an indication of how Match Making Phase 3 will match players of relatively even skill against one another.

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Figure 1

In Figure 1, you will notice the highest score a player can have is 2800. The lowest score a player can have is 0. When a player first starts playing MWO, they are assigned an Elo score of 1,300.

The maximum amount a player’s score can change in a single match is ±50.

One of the key calculations that needs to be done is to determine the probability of a lower ranked player beating a higher ranked player.

An example of this is, if two players of the same ranking have a 50% chance of winning each. The bigger the gap between the two player’s scores, the less probability of the lower score player beating the higher scored player.

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Figure 2

A player’s new rating, after a match is complete, is calculated using the probability value determined in Figure 1’s formula. In Figure 2, we take a look at a sample of how a player’s score changes between matches.

In the example, one player has a rating of 1,350. Another player has a rating of 1,410.

The first step is to calculate the probability of the 1,350 rated player beating the 1,410 rated player. The rating difference between the two players is found by subtracting the lower player score from the higher player score. In this case it’s 1410 – 1350. There is a difference of 60 points between the two players.

Filling in the formula from Figure 1, we find that the 1,350 rated player has a 0.41 probability of winning (or 41% chance). This is where Elo starts to determine the outcome of a match and the result of player scores after the match is complete.

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Figure 3


We now use the probability value of 0.41 to determine the change in player ratings.


Case 1: 1350 Player WINS over 1410 Player

Since the lower rated player won despite the odds against him/her, they are rewarded a much higher change in score than the higher player is. The higher player score will actually be reduced.

One variable that is set by winning or losing is the WinFlag (as seen in Figure 3). The WinFlag is a binary (true/false) value of either 1 (Player has won) or 0 (Player has lost). In this case, the WinFlag value is 1.

Let’s begin the calculation:

Old Rating = 1350
Maximum Change Allowed = +50 for a win, -50 for a loss (as seen in Figure 1)
WinFlag = 1
Probability of Winning = 0.41

1350 Players new ranking = 1350 + 50 x (1 – 0.41)
= 1380

1410 Players new ranking = 1410 – 50 x (1 – 0.41)
= 1381

A player’s rating will only go down if they are beaten by a player who has a lower rating than theirs. In this case, if the 1350 player lost, their score would not change since the Match Maker was correct in its prediction.

So how does this affect Match Making – Phase 3?

This formula and scoring system is run against match data that the current dedicated servers are giving us. Basically it’s being tested on real world numbers generated by you, the community.

Once we get a full understanding of how accurately the Match Maker is working, we are going to add some additional parameters to the mix. These include a more defined player skill rating and a Mech weight class balancing system. More info on these when the first pass of Elo testing is done.

#4 Paul Inouye

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Posted 20 December 2012 - 10:39 AM

CLARIFICATION:

I've been asked to clarify the Elo system above. It makes sense for a single player but not for teams. Does a player on 1 team get rated against a player that he beat on the other team?

Here's how a team works:

At the start of a match, all player's on ONE team have their Elo ratings totaled and divided by 8 (max players). You may realized that this is simply the AVERAGE of a team's total Elo. Team 1's average and Team 2's average are then used to calculate the probability of win (as per the formulas above). If Team 1 beats Team 2, then the appropriate math as above is applied to each player using the probability score calculated by the team averages.

Some people also asked to have the description simplified. Here's the summary:

  • The Match Maker uses a scoring system to determine if your team is more likely to win or lose based on your team's average Elo rating.
  • If the Match Maker determines that you're going to lose, but you actually win, then your Elo score is going to go up and the enemy's score is going to go down.
  • If the Match Maker determines that you're going to win and you actually win, then your Elo score isn't going to change very much (if at all). The same applies to a prediction of loss and you actually lose, your score may drop but it will be slight.
  • The more games you participate in, the more accurate the Match Maker becomes and you will start seeing that you are playing against people of relative equal skill.


#5 Paul Inouye

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Posted 19 February 2013 - 10:36 AM

About Elo and Competitive Play

As you know, Elo is now a functioning part of Match Making. We are aware that this is going to cause problems with tournament/community organizers who rely on sync-drops to play against specific teams. While not officially sanctioned by PGI, we do appreciate the effort these organizers are putting in to run these events.

That being said, we are not intentionally trying to disrupt your ability to do so but at the same time, this side effect of Elo helps curb the problems associated with sync dropping. Elo is meant to balance the Match Making mechanic for the entire community.

As mentioned before in other avenues, there are numerous competitive players here at PGI, in all types of game genres, and we fully understand the need for features and tools that support this style of gameplay. We DO plan on bringing in the functionality to run PGI controlled tournaments/special events, and Community Warfare will fill in the rest of player's needs.

#6 Matthew Craig

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Posted 19 February 2013 - 01:03 PM

ELO Tuning

We just wanted to notify the community that we are aware the new match maker can take a while to find a match. We're actively monitoring the data coming in from the match maker and we are planning to tune it to ensure that the average time to find a match is acceptable. Even with pre-seeding there is a degree of balancing that needs to occur over the next day or so.

Please bear with the match maker and don't Alt-F4 etc. as that will only make the issue worse for now. We will keep you posted as we make updates.

#7 Matthew Craig

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Posted 19 February 2013 - 03:55 PM

Servers will be coming down momentarily while we push an update to the match making service. This is to attempt to reduce the queue times for lone wolf players.

We will monitor it over the next few hours should the lone wolf queue times not come down we will temporarily turn off MatchMaking Phase 3 while we analyze the data and look at how to correctly reduce the lone wolf queue times.

So servers coming down momentarily, few hours with the new change to see if it helps, if not we roll back to the old system temporarily.

Thanks

#8 Matthew Craig

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Posted 19 February 2013 - 05:11 PM

Our data shows that the lone wolf queue times are still too long so we are rolling back to the previous match making system while we analyze the data and debug why lone wolf queue times are too long.

We have to starve out the current matches so you'll likely notice that games are even harder to find for the next 15 minutes while the system cycles but should then be back to the same times as before this patch.

Sorry for the inconvenience and we hope to have the ELO match maker back to you as soon as we can address the lone wolf queue times.

#9 Matthew Craig

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Posted 20 February 2013 - 12:46 PM

So as most of you are aware yesterday’s rollout of Matchmaking Phase 3 ran into a couple of issues:

· The lone wolf queue time was too long
· 8 man groups were incorrectly mixing with lone wolf players

These have both been confirmed to be bugs, both have now been found and addressed. We were using the right scale of internal data to test the match maker but the pattern encountered on live was not anticipated, with the telemetry from the time ELO was enabled yesterday on production both issues were reproduced and solved. These issues had nothing to do with player pool size.

This confirms a well-known maxim that there is no perfect substitute for live data, we have been working internally towards addressing this by opening up public tests during our staging process and we will likely accelerate these plans to ensure we’re getting better scale testing for future patches.

For those of you that experienced ELO briefly yesterday we know you had a great time, the changes are now back in test and we hope to have ELO back up and running sometime later today if both issues clear testing, to get everyone experiencing the quality of matches we had for a while yesterday.

Thanks for your patience while we work to resolve these issues.

Testing confirms both issues are resolved servers are coming down at 2:30pm PST to turn ELO back on.





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