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Pgi: Matchmaker Needs To Disable Sync-Drops


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#21 Yokaiko

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Posted 21 December 2012 - 03:00 AM

We had sync drops happen twice today.


It was just dumb luck, chatting in team and found out it was two groups.

#22 Zylo

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Posted 21 December 2012 - 03:11 AM

View PostRushin Roulette, on 21 December 2012 - 02:56 AM, said:



You really did not read his post at all did you? Go back and read the first and second paragraphs again. The drop/success rate is very low.

First, youve got to be able to drop in the same match (Sometimes very dificult as this is probably the same as trying coordinated 8v8 matches against a second full 8 player team).

Secondly, once you do manage to land in the same match, it is not guaranteed that you will also automatically land on the same team. Mostly this isnt even wished for (eg. the comment on getting 9 players in the same game which would be impossible on one team) as many want to play against each other , but cant field a full 8 player team because they only have 5-7 players.

Until you can 100% tell if your opponents are all in premades, then whining that PGI should nerf players who are better than you is pointless. These threads have been around since before the Matchmaker phase 1 was implemented. A developer even posted his findings on how many premades he faced while pugging back then... the result was, out of about 20 games he was aginst full 8 man premades in only aproximately 25% of those matches, but still lost around 50% of the overall matches. Not every match against 8 player premades was a loss either.

Actually the sync-drop rate becomes better as fewer players are online. With a smaller player pool to draw from at the time of launch the chance of ending up in the same match is far greater. Sure it's still possible the groups won't end up on the same team but it happens often enough to be a serious problem.

Player names are all the evidence you need though. Next time you suspect a sync-drop of 8 is on the other team, screenshot the post-game scoring screen and look up some of those players here. You'll find many with matching merc corp sigs, sometimes all 8 even match. It really is that easy.

This isn't about pointing out which groups are doing sync-drops for easy wins. This is about fixing a problem with matchmaker. It seems the only players who should be against fixing matchmaker problems are those who are abusing the system...

Edited by Zylo, 21 December 2012 - 03:13 AM.


#23 LarkinOmega

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Posted 21 December 2012 - 08:33 AM

"If you're not with us, you're against us." Up until then, your points were mostly valid. Yes with fewer on, the chance goes up, both to be on the same team, as well as to fight your compatriots.

I wish we still had 8 man drops. I wish the matchmaker did BV and discounted trial mechs so we could have 20 v 8 matches. I'm hopeful for tier 3 matchmaking so that I can reliably count on my teammates.

Reliably count on my teammates... hrmm, maybe THAT could be the reason for sync dropping, since I know it is mine. You also haven't explored what happens when teams are forced to play seperately and with people of questionable skill. Would PGI rather lose 1 or 2 people who are just trying the game out, or a whole team of 8 who have filled their 4 mech slots? I know a number of the folks I play with are annoyed that we have to go to such great lengths to play together, and several of them have quit in the meantime.

As far as our sync dropping being a problem, my win rate has been holding steady at 2 to 1, and my k/d is 1.44. We lose 1 out of 3, and often thats with a sync dropped team of 6 or 7. Maybe we're just unlucky and are getting super organized teams dropping against us, or maybe the problem isn't.

#24 Thirdstar

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Posted 21 December 2012 - 08:39 AM

View PostLarkinOmega, on 21 December 2012 - 08:33 AM, said:

"If you're not with us, you're against us." Up until then, your points were mostly valid. Yes with fewer on, the chance goes up, both to be on the same team, as well as to fight your compatriots.

I wish we still had 8 man drops. I wish the matchmaker did BV and discounted trial mechs so we could have 20 v 8 matches. I'm hopeful for tier 3 matchmaking so that I can reliably count on my teammates.

Reliably count on my teammates... hrmm, maybe THAT could be the reason for sync dropping, since I know it is mine. You also haven't explored what happens when teams are forced to play seperately and with people of questionable skill. Would PGI rather lose 1 or 2 people who are just trying the game out, or a whole team of 8 who have filled their 4 mech slots? I know a number of the folks I play with are annoyed that we have to go to such great lengths to play together, and several of them have quit in the meantime.

As far as our sync dropping being a problem, my win rate has been holding steady at 2 to 1, and my k/d is 1.44. We lose 1 out of 3, and often thats with a sync dropped team of 6 or 7. Maybe we're just unlucky and are getting super organized teams dropping against us, or maybe the problem isn't.


Seriously, you're mad that you can't have your whole 8 man team together? That's your excuse? At least make a bloody effort to see the point of view of the 8 poor schlubs you drop against. And if you're losing against a PUG team with sync dropping then im sorry, you're really not very good at this game.

#25 TVMA Doc

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Posted 21 December 2012 - 10:03 AM

View PostIlwrath, on 21 December 2012 - 02:51 AM, said:


A game that let people join matches solo must be design so it is fair for those soloers or the game will ******** die.
Its that simple. WoT was fair to everybody. WoT had like 100k people online at the same time. You would see it
because they let you see it ingame with a population counter.

They have one more phase to fix this or they will face the consequences.

Edit; removing solo joining and forcing people into a pre-match screen where you can chat a little before it starts would also be "fixing the problem".


While removing repair/resupply may have its downsides (more suiciding from players, etc.), it DOES serve to balance the unfair matching. Unless you are very thin skinned, what harm is it to get placed into a game here and there where your team gets stomped if you don't have to pay ludicrous amounts to repair the damage?

Sure, you get less EXP, but you probably still had fun even getting stomped. I know I still have fun, even when I get a group where EVERYONE immediately runs off in a different direction right off the bat. I'll get a few damage points in on a couple mechs before their wolfpack descends upon me and I die in a flurry of AC fire. It's still a Mech sim and it was fun while it lasted.

#26 LarkinOmega

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Posted 21 December 2012 - 10:38 AM

View PostThirdstar, on 21 December 2012 - 08:39 AM, said:


Seriously, you're mad that you can't have your whole 8 man team together? That's your excuse? At least make a bloody effort to see the point of view of the 8 poor schlubs you drop against. And if you're losing against a PUG team with sync dropping then im sorry, you're really not very good at this game.


Congradulations, you made it to the third sentence in my post before replying. Hopefully next time you'll make it a bit further!

And lets take a look at your final sentences, just to be fair. So I'm good enough to completely shut down 8 schlubs and make their lives miserable, but I'm also so terrible that I lose against PUG teams while sync dropping with elites.

I applaud your mental gymnastic ability. That was a complete back flip in the space of 42 words!

Edited by LarkinOmega, 21 December 2012 - 10:43 AM.


#27 Vernius Ix

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Posted 21 December 2012 - 10:45 AM

You know what? I play this game a LOT! We are talking tons here. I do not think I have ever seen a sync dropped eight man group. Ever.

#28 Kraven Kor

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Posted 21 December 2012 - 10:58 AM

View PostVernius Ix, on 21 December 2012 - 10:45 AM, said:

You know what? I play this game a LOT! We are talking tons here. I do not think I have ever seen a sync dropped eight man group. Ever.


Then you are not looking hard enough.

Believe me, they are there.

Sometimes, it is accidental. Sometimes it isn't.

#29 Thirdstar

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Posted 21 December 2012 - 11:00 AM

View PostLarkinOmega, on 21 December 2012 - 10:38 AM, said:


Congradulations, you made it to the third sentence in my post before replying. Hopefully next time you'll make it a bit further!

And lets take a look at your final sentences, just to be fair. So I'm good enough to completely shut down 8 schlubs and make their lives miserable, but I'm also so terrible that I lose against PUG teams while sync dropping with elites.

I applaud your mental gymnastic ability. That was a complete back flip in the space of 42 words!


Yeeesh. My point, which so clearly sailed over you head it might as well be in orbit, was that you losses are probably because you're facing another premade, not an actual PUG. In fact you said it yourself. You have a 75% win rate by your own words (lets be honest here though, it's much higher than that isn't it?) with sync dropping and keep talking about how people can't play together which I find very strange because you seem to have completely ignored the new 8vs8 mode. Did patch notes somehow pass you by and you believe that the only way for you and 7 friends to play together is sync drop? Your prayers are answered friend, the 8vs8 queue is -------------> that way.

Also, if I referenced your 'unlucky losses' I clearly got past your first three lines. Well done with the outrage though.

#30 Zylo

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Posted 21 December 2012 - 01:40 PM

View PostVernius Ix, on 21 December 2012 - 10:45 AM, said:

You know what? I play this game a LOT! We are talking tons here. I do not think I have ever seen a sync dropped eight man group. Ever.

There could be a few reasons why you don't see a sync-dropped team of 8:


If you play mostly during hours that the sync-drop groups aren't playing.

If you drop in small groups with an uncommon choice of mech weights that lowers the chance of meeting sync-drop teams due to matchmaker finding that your small group won't match up with the sync-drop group.

Or there is the chance that you really aren't looking at the names of the other team to see that sometimes all 8 are part of the same merc corp and they show up multiple times together.

#31 Zylo

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Posted 21 December 2012 - 01:49 PM

View PostLarkinOmega, on 21 December 2012 - 08:33 AM, said:

"If you're not with us, you're against us." Up until then, your points were mostly valid. Yes with fewer on, the chance goes up, both to be on the same team, as well as to fight your compatriots.

I wish we still had 8 man drops. I wish the matchmaker did BV and discounted trial mechs so we could have 20 v 8 matches. I'm hopeful for tier 3 matchmaking so that I can reliably count on my teammates.

Reliably count on my teammates... hrmm, maybe THAT could be the reason for sync dropping, since I know it is mine. You also haven't explored what happens when teams are forced to play seperately and with people of questionable skill. Would PGI rather lose 1 or 2 people who are just trying the game out, or a whole team of 8 who have filled their 4 mech slots? I know a number of the folks I play with are annoyed that we have to go to such great lengths to play together, and several of them have quit in the meantime.

As far as our sync dropping being a problem, my win rate has been holding steady at 2 to 1, and my k/d is 1.44. We lose 1 out of 3, and often thats with a sync dropped team of 6 or 7. Maybe we're just unlucky and are getting super organized teams dropping against us, or maybe the problem isn't.

There are 8-man drops still but many pre-made teams of 8 are instead choosing sync-drops instead of facing another pre-made team of 8.

What is your reason for sync-dropping when you do have 8?


All I see here are excuses as you try to defend your sync-drop abuse of the small-group/lone-wolf matchmaker system.

BTW what merc corp do you belong to? I'm curious about this as I'm sure others are as well.

Edited by Zylo, 21 December 2012 - 01:51 PM.


#32 Mechwarrior Buddah

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Posted 21 December 2012 - 01:58 PM

View PostParticle Man, on 21 December 2012 - 02:35 AM, said:



it seems more like it's the pugs that are mad that they have to try. Once PGI got rid of 4+4 drops, they would be crying about 4mans, then they would cry about something else. Thats what they do, cry about everything. Notice the threads crying about lrms, or streaks, or just about everything else? They're all from pug players. But you know that, you post in most of them.


the reason for that is in my sig. Its a twofer

#33 Zylo

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Posted 21 December 2012 - 02:02 PM

View PostMechwarrior Buddah, on 21 December 2012 - 01:58 PM, said:


the reason for that is in my sig. Its a twofer

Still, the only counters for sync-drops are playing only in organized 8vs8 matches or trying to sync-drop like other teams.

Would the average lone wolf player even bother doing that or would they just quit to play another game?

#34 LarkinOmega

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Posted 21 December 2012 - 07:48 PM

We generally don't sync drop when we have 8. WE generally don't have just 8, as I said in one of my earlier posts, it's usually 2-7 or 9+.

I also clearly stated my W/L ratio at 2 to 1. It's actually slightly less than that. That's with group dropping and sync dropping and all that, along with dropping in the 8v8 mode when we have them. Again, reading comprehension, as all this has already been stated.

So since I'm being attacked and my clearly stated facts are being exaggerated (I'll provide a SS of my stats if you're interested Thirdstar), let's do a little bit of math real quick, to find out how much my little group is actually hurting the game.

Earlier I stated that we have a 1 in 4 success rate for sync dropping when we're in groups with different weight classes. This is probably a bit high, but it makes the math really easy, so we'll go with this. I also stated that we tended to drop against each other at least as often, so another 1 in 4. So let's take a quick look a how many PUGs got ruined by our sync dropping.

We'll assume we're dropping 4 and 4, just to make it easy. We'll also do 4 games due to the 1 in 4 rate as stated above.
1st game, we drop together and likely wreck the entire other team 8-0 since we big meany heads. Those 8 people quit right away since if they can't win, they never will.
2nd game, we drop fighting each other. Now my team can barely restrain from shooting allies, and it's very, very pleasing to get instant feedback in TS, so we gun for each other. We try and organize our teams with primary targets and will generally have a hard fought match ending in 8-6 or 8-4 or something like that. Good old fashioned brawl. These 8 people are happy with the game, they had fun and learned something about teamwork and mech piloting.
Game 3 and 4 we drop in separate matches, work with the pugs or just try and win the match. Let's assume we're amazing and are able to win both those games, on both teams. That's 16 more people who had a good time, and potentially 32 who might not have, but probably didn't have much of a worse time than normal.

So to tally, that's 24 positive, 8 negative and 32 normal. If you want to argue about those 32, you're not arguing about sync drops, you're arguing about regular 4mans, so we'll ignore them.

24 positive experiences, 8 negative experiences.

Honestly, I really don't see a problem with sync dropping.

#35 Penance

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Posted 21 December 2012 - 08:01 PM

Not sure what to make of it. It's the first time I've experienced this, so, I'll chalk it up to griefing (but...). Beginning of a match about 10 minutes ago as of this posting, there was a tk, and in chat the dead player was asking about it, and general one person mentioned "oh a tk", then another "cool'. I'm fairly positive they were not on the same team. at the same time my mech was being damaged by the same player. i took some shots back then disconnected.

Vague I know, so take it for what you will.

Not for nothing PGI, I think all of us want to play the game based on skill and teamwork. I hope that come round 3 of the matchmaker upgrade you consider warnings followed by hardware bans (or just outright banning depending). Your game is free, so it's easily accessed again by someone who had to buy new hardware.

I wonder if one of the only ways to prevent things like this, would be to have either more people in a game (so groups get places with some randoms), assure all groups drop together, remove groups entirely (not an option i know), or have a combination of larger matches, combined with owned/hosted servers PGI/IGP could also rent them ala bf/cod so teams can just play on the same side.


Edited by Penance, 21 December 2012 - 08:03 PM.


#36 One Medic Army

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Posted 21 December 2012 - 08:03 PM

I will group myself up with myself, a group of 1.
I will then launch, to see if PGI coded the restrictions intelligently enough that I am counted as a solo and not a group.
If I am counted as group: member 1 I will be at most facing a group of 2 on teamspeak on the opposing side.

#37 Bloody10th

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Posted 21 December 2012 - 08:43 PM

Failed to find match--that thing that made me finally cave and leave the match mode selector set to "Any". I suppose if you have 2 turds, it's better to take a bite out of both as opposed to just stuffing the entirety of one into your mouth like you're playing chubby bunny. As if the simplest and most minute form of "variety" somehow lessens the undesirability of said turds by some quark-sized percentage. I think this leads into an area of mathematics beyond the capabilities of my 96.7% chimp brain (or whatever that % is supposed to be for humans).

On that note, based on the way some of my PUG matches seem to go--I'd say I run into sync dropped teams 1 out of every ~15 matches, sometimes more often if there's not a lot of players online. When there's not many people online, the majority of the people who ARE online do seem to be premades (same old 800 money-chuckers from months ago playing this game like they're chinamen with tents set up outside the e-cafe). I think the difference between "a lot" and "not a lot" online feels like about a difference of 500-750. Given the rate I see some of the same players (and I always wait ~10 seconds before re-queuing after a match), I don't think there's often more than ~1500 people playing. With the lows being around 3-500.

And like I said, the majority of those probably being the SAME OLD DUDES squatting on the game for the last 3 months straight. On that note--I feel bad for anybody who built a "sim-pit" for this game, lol. If you want to build a sim-pit for this game, it should have Call of Duty: MOPs on the side. And the box/cockpit should be designed after the Raven 3L cockpit.

#38 Thirdstar

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Posted 21 December 2012 - 09:03 PM

View PostLarkinOmega, on 21 December 2012 - 07:48 PM, said:

We generally don't sync drop when we have 8. WE generally don't have just 8, as I said in one of my earlier posts, it's usually 2-7 or 9+...............snip


Let me redo the math a little since you're so fond of it. Your group has a sync success rate of 1/4. Several other players have stated in this and other threads that it is much much more reliable than that if you know what you're doing and/or drop during offpeak hours.

So lets say the rate in my scenario is 3/4.

1st game, 8 Stomped PUGs

2nd game, 8 Stomped PUGs

3rd game, 8 Stomped PUGs

4th game even teams on both sides, enjoyable match (With the caveat that your team that 'can barely restrain from shooting allies' doesn't TK some poor PUGs for ruining your 'fun' then points will have to be deducted)

24 unhappy PUGs, 8 Happy premades, 8 lucky PUGs. Say you have 8 more games with similar results, the numbers are now 72 unhappy PuGs, 8 Happy premades and 24 lucky PuGs. My math is just as valid as yours based on what other Sync droppers have reported.

Also what's stopping you from getting a few people from the unofficial TS servers to fill out your team for 8vs8? I was told very often that if I didn't like being stomped I should go make some friends and/or get on the TS server. What's stopping you from doing the same?

"Honestly, I really don't see a problem with sync dropping." how about some tiny bit of pride? or are wins, KDR and Cbills your only concern?

Edited by Thirdstar, 21 December 2012 - 09:06 PM.


#39 Aaren Kai

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Posted 21 December 2012 - 09:05 PM

Why not just have the game randomly assign (x) seconds to when it begins looking after you press launch? Take the sync out of sync that is. People will never notice if the value is low as they will just think the game is looking to match.

#40 Corvus Antaka

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Posted 21 December 2012 - 09:11 PM

easier solution is to 1 allow only 1 premade 4 man or less per team, or force 2 premade 4 mans per team, but never allow 2 premades on 1 team, and none or only 1 on the other.





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