76 replies to this topic

[Elepole]

Broceratops, on 20 December 2012 - 01:26 PM, said:

I dunno man I think that's mostly because they value their stats so much, so losing intentionally will still be pretty bad for them. I guess we'll see.

Also this, if the ELO rating is public they won't do it:

"Look at this noobfarmer, he have a ELO rating of 500 but 28 K/D, another one that can't fight like a man" and such. Don't underestimate how much people value their stats.

[Joseph Mallan]

hammerreborn, on 20 December 2012 - 01:01 PM, said:

The one counter I see to smurfing is the fact that they'll be rolling in trial mechs unless they win/lose their way to the mech of their choice. A fully custom mech for 8 man premades will run 10-20 mil, and thats a lot of games to be racked up, especially with the new rewards system (if the guy plays so bad to lose everygame at 25k a match thats 400 matches minimum purposefully throwing the game doing nothing). The best bet would just be tagging for assists all game but as we all know a guy doing nothing but trolling brings down the entire team.

OR they drop $15 buy a Mech and Premium time to quicken the Grind in the New Mech.

[hammerreborn]

Joseph Mallan, on 20 December 2012 - 01:29 PM, said:

OR they drop $15 buy a Mech and Premium time to quicken the Grind in the New Mech.

If people want to drop 15 bucks to smurf a f2p game I say let them waste their money stroking their e-peens.

[Teralitha]

Man this game has such a long way to go til its really ready for the public....

[Wormrex]

smurfing doesn't give the player any sort of advantage since everything is account bound at the moment, save for griefing newbies that is. Those whom do that are like those kiddies that kicks the puppy after getting bullied by some bigger kid. Can't do much about horrible human behaviour,

The way things are set up at the moment, there is no gain in smurfing besides griefing.

Mean mod median. The devs are obviously using statistics as a tool to maintain balance, so I think they are wise enough to compute a rather robust ranking formula to iron out spiky sample datas. That means the deliberate mixing of different rank players in a game, would bear a lower impact of affecting the team ranking. (I really do hope)

As for winning and losing streaks, those tend to balance itself out with the quantity of games you play, statistically speaking. It is a numbers game which again the dev could formulate a fairly robust formula in match making to foil this attempt.

The deliberate losing is a bigger problem though, since I can forsee them launching trials and going dc, the return of afk/dc warriors, That means if this happens often enough, high rank games might see a higher rate of d/c warrior than lower. Again, in time it will be obvious whom these wimps are.

So, essentially, you'll get :
Low rank newbie land. where we hold hands and sniff flower, everyone is a student driver and it is forgiving enough for most new players, of course in time you'll grow out of this when you get better, but if you are still here it tells you you're playing a little too reckless, yes so reckless a newbie can pwn you.

Middle rank hyenna land, Where newbies become seasoned privates, no longer green and can tell where their head and leg is facing. You'll get plenty of hyenna packs here, because they can't or don't want to advance to higher rankings for various reasons. Pretty much how ugly it is now. Casuals lone wolves kind of get stuck here as well, because there's little to no way to rank up when the hyennas prowl.

High Rank Elite land. This is where the aimbots live. Proper organization, superb handling skills, aimbot like accuracy. This is where the big boys live. Of course when they break groups it allows them to drop down to hyenna land to pug solo, However these guys are what we'd consider the champions of our game.

So overall, I think what CW will be in this scene is pretty much the reward system in our ranking system, the higher your ranks the better rewards your reap. I know it spins off topic at this point but I think that everything is interrelated, so plenty of things would balance out in the grand scheme of things, and in due time they'll be implemented accordingly.

Remember this is not a complete game yet, so it is a roller coaster ride at the moment.

[Jman5]

Joseph Mallan, on 20 December 2012 - 01:29 PM, said:

OR they drop $15 buy a Mech and Premium time to quicken the Grind in the New Mech.

Or they take advantage of the free 1-day premium from Penny Arcade and earn premium bonus + Cadet Bonus for their first 25 games. You could have 6-8 million after just 25 games.

Edited by Jman5, 20 December 2012 - 01:38 PM.

[Broceratops]

Joseph Mallan, on 20 December 2012 - 01:29 PM, said:

OR they drop $15 buy a Mech and Premium time to quicken the Grind in the New Mech.

if they to spent 15 bucks per smurf account, i think PGI would be pretty happy about it

[Bitslizer]

Published ranking, most people care about their ranking, winning against n00b won't raise their ranking

[Elandyll]

Mmmh ... Isn't loss-botting only interesting when there are matches with vastly more important stakes than others, like a championship/ tournament?

I mean ... forcing your ELO down by losing purposefully, in order to have your ranking tank and face weaker opponent ... It's all nice & good if you end up in a match with huge gains facing those weaker opponents. But if its for the same usual gain/ loss? No reason to do it frankly.

[Velba]

Jman5, on 20 December 2012 - 12:56 PM, said:

• 4 man premade rated the same as 4 pugs: If a team of 4 premades are rolling an 8 man pug and are treated the same as 4 random pugs, you're going to have trouble with fair matchmaking. There should be some sort of temporary boost to their ELO to face them against slightly tougher PUGs. Of course ideally the matchmaker would try to split premades in the search queues up evenly and against one another.

[Team Leader]

So if they suck, they will get grouped with other people who suck, and then win? Ok? Thats playing a game i guess, new players should expect to lose.

[Draxtier]

The only real reason to abuse the ELO system in the way which is being described is to create a more comfortable playing experience, according to the particular tastes of teams and individuals who want to be able to win more often than lose when they actually try their best, and do not mind artificially lowering their ELO rating by having games where they deliberately lose.

The net impact of this sort of behavior really isn't going to have that big an impact, since for every "try hard" game these people play, and are able to roll over opponents of lesser skill, there will be an equal and balancing number of games where they don't try at all and hand their opponents an easy(er) victory.

Overall, it will balance itself out and, though not ideal, will still be a HELL of a lot better than any of the matchmaking systems which have been in place previously.

I anticipate the exact sort of thing the OP describes happening to me, not because I will be trying to manipulate my ELO ranking, but because the described ELO rating system doesn't have any sort of checks and balances in place to address the way I choose to play this game, which is in PUGs part of the time and premades with VOIP and decent coordination the rest of the time. Just averaging ELO ratings doesn't address these factors, which will have a tremendous impact on the outcome of any given match.

So, with the ELO rating system in place, working exactly as intended, and as Paul has described, and with no deliberate effort on my part to "abuse" the system, it's to be expected that when I drop in premades, my team will perform better than the ELO system predicts, leading to a a good W/L rate which pushes my ELO rating up and when I drop in PUGs, the team will perform worse than the ELO system predicts, and my ELO rating will go down. If I only played in PUGs, or only played in 4 and 8 man premades, my results would be more consistent and the ELO system would have a much easier time doing its job and creating balanced matches, where both sides have a roughly equal chance of victory.

[BatWing]

This is quite shocking.

So all of this job to work on the PHASE 3.. However the main scope of the Phase 3 is to keep order still on total random Drops.

Random drops means after all of this planning and all of this thinking and all of this work, there is nothing yet talking about Community Warfare.

COMMUNITY WARFARE in their promises was going to provide Order to this Chaos. When you have Contract or Mission to accomplish in CW Units will be playing and in Unit A you have a roster of pilots and in Unit B you have a roster of pilots.

You cannot deny the right to Unit A to suscribe for a mission because their roster enroll very high skilled pilots.

If Unit B with less skilled pilots enrolls for a mission and meet on the other side Unit A, well i m sorry for their poor ***, they will probably lose.

However this would be CW

PHASE 3 is ordering random Chaos, meaning there is no light at the end of the tunnel showing me any step ahead related to Community Warfare.

This project is going more and more toward deep Crap.

[Garth Erlam]

Jman5, on 20 December 2012 - 01:28 PM, said:

You are putting too much emphasis on win percentage. These people don't care that their win percentage is 10%, 50%, or 100%. The point is to sink their ELO so that when they are playing to win, it's against bad players and beginners. When they start facing real competition, they lose on purpose to sink back down. Look, I'm not just pulling this out of my ***. I have seen this so many times in competitive online games. What is going to happen is that people who want to abuse it will most likely create an alternate account that is their "casual account" and use it to bully noobs. Or bring it along to lower their 8-man's average ELO.

Paul has mentioned after Phase 3 is out, we'll look at what happens and add additional statistics, like K/D ratio. So this team with a 50% win percentage and 50/1 K/D is going to stand out in our statistics gathering, right?

So then they'd have to not just lose, but die (often) to hide that. I'm fairly certain that the vast, vast, vast majority of players wouldn't bother.

[Wormrex]

Garth Erlam, on 20 December 2012 - 02:13 PM, said:

Paul has mentioned after Phase 3 is out, we'll look at what happens and add additional statistics, like K/D ratio. So this team with a 50% win percentage and 50/1 K/D is going to stand out in our statistics gathering, right?

So then they'd have to not just lose, but die (often) to hide that. I'm fairly certain that the vast, vast, vast majority of players wouldn't bother.

Still doesn't stop them afkbotting Boss, nor just running around in circles without actively participating ingame. Isn't that the main gripe we have at the moment about afk farmers? That they throw off the team's balance by taking up a spot but do nothing?

Still thank you for your input, you've confirmed that the ranking equation will indeed by multi-layer with multiple variable dependent, add in match statistics and performance and the ranking system might just very well reflect a player's competence.

[Garth Erlam]

As to AFK'rs in public matches, it's not that profitable at this point. People can still do it, but again, it's very slow.

[Jman5]

Garth Erlam, on 20 December 2012 - 02:13 PM, said:

Paul has mentioned after Phase 3 is out, we'll look at what happens and add additional statistics, like K/D ratio. So this team with a 50% win percentage and 50/1 K/D is going to stand out in our statistics gathering, right?

So then they'd have to not just lose, but die (often) to hide that. I'm fairly certain that the vast, vast, vast majority of players wouldn't bother.

Adding more stats to the ELO formula is definitely a good way to make abuse harder. The biggest concern I would have is a time frame. If the first pass for phase 3 comes in January and we don't get a second pass until 6 months later, it's going to be problematic.

[Major Cockburn]

Its only too easy to get an alt account and derp it up for 25 matches to get a set up mech and then troll noobs/low elos with it

[Ilwrath]

Jman5, on 20 December 2012 - 01:28 PM, said:

The point is to sink their ELO so that when they are playing to win, it's against bad players and beginners. When they start facing real competition, they lose on purpose to sink back down.

Sounds pointless and boring.

[Broceratops]

Major Cockburn, on 20 December 2012 - 02:24 PM, said:

Its only too easy to get an alt account and derp it up for 25 matches to get a set up mech and then troll noobs/low elos with it

this is a lot of work. other games you can do it right away. this game you have to spend a good 25 games in a trial mech to get your DHS hunchie set up. thats a lot more work than in most games, and if someone really wants to do that just so they get 10 games of noob beatdown ... meh.

they can always do things like make elo changes very quick at the start, so you quickly rise up if you're smurf winning.

in any case haters gonna hate and smurfs gonna smurf. it'll still be worlds better than what we have now, which is nothing.

Edited by Broceratops, 20 December 2012 - 02:31 PM.