91 replies to this topic

[Bloody Moon]

So i may have missed it and if it has been said before then sorry for asking again.

We'll have separate ELO ratings for premade and solo battles or they will use the same ELO rating?

[p4r4g0n]

Based on what's been said so far, it does't sound like there will be separate ELO ratings for when you play with a premade and solo. However, they might put in a modifier for a premade when calculating a team ELO rating ( to account for its inherent advantage) i.e. team ELO rating + X%.

Apparently, LoL does this (source: extract posted by Joseph Mallan, not sure which thread I read that in though).

[Jonathan Paine]

Read through elo article on Wikipedia, and it sounds like a great way to let players of a more equal skill duke it out. Any single game is unlikely to be perfectly balanced, but for those of us who have played hundreds of games, it will be scarily accurate.

I'm curious on how people imagine that some players will intentionally tank their ratings to pug stomp. Losing on purpose is not pug stomping, it is just losing.

The elo system might actually save the 8 man group. Why? Groups won't have to deal with being beaten into the ground repeatedly by the same groups. A couple of losses and they will no longer be matched against the super elite hive minds described earlier in the thread.

Of course PGI will need to add some kind of incentive for the top groups to square off and risk losing their super elite rating.

[p4r4g0n]

Jonathan Paine, on 04 February 2013 - 12:52 AM, said:

Read through elo article on Wikipedia, and it sounds like a great way to let players of a more equal skill duke it out. Any single game is unlikely to be perfectly balanced, but for those of us who have played hundreds of games, it will be scarily accurate.

......

The elo system might actually save the 8 man group. Why? Groups won't have to deal with being beaten into the ground repeatedly by the same groups. A couple of losses and they will no longer be matched against the super elite hive minds described earlier in the thread.

Of course PGI will need to add some kind of incentive for the top groups to square off and risk losing their super elite rating.

QFT. Waiting for ELO before I try 8v8 with a casual group. Right now it is too under populated to avoid the l337s (or wannabe l337s).

Jonathan Paine, on 04 February 2013 - 12:52 AM, said:

......

I'm curious on how people imagine that some players will intentionally tank their ratings to pug stomp. Losing on purpose is not pug stomping, it is just losing.

........

For pugstomping, just make a new account. RInse & repeat when account's ELO rating goes too high. However, this does require the stomper to actually have skills since he / she has to do his stomping in trials for the first 25 matches.

Tanking your "real" account for pugstomping makes no sense to me either. Tanking it for CW or a tournament that uses ELO for matching up against opponents on the hand may make sense.

[Karl Marlow]

Znail, on 31 January 2013 - 02:33 PM, said:

But my point is that the ELO system isn't really ment for juding how bad a player is. It's ment to measure how good one is and thus it works fine in the upwards scale, but not downwards.

No, It is supposed to be a measure of how much better you are. By contrast those who have a lower ELO are worse. Like it or not that is the sole purpose of letting us ever see the ELO number to begin with. WE don't need to see the number for the matchmaker to do it's magic. The second We can see ELO we will begin to compare.

[jay35]

I don't see the need or point in ELO outside of official sanctioned competitive matches for registered clans/parties/whatever you want to call them.

What we need is a proper game configuration interface that allows selection of map(s), by environment type or name, select which gamemode(s) are desired, and determine a max combat rating allowed per team, so that you don't wind up facing 8 Heavies and Assaults with a pair of scout lances.

Most of all, the first thing we need is to know what map we're going to drop into before we drop so we can select the appropriate loadout for the environment. Once we get that fixed, everything else will flow from that.

Edited by jay35, 04 February 2013 - 06:59 AM.

[Zyllos]

jay35, on 04 February 2013 - 06:58 AM, said:

I don't see the need or point in ELO outside of official sanctioned competitive matches for registered clans/parties/whatever you want to call them.

What we need is a proper game configuration interface that allows selection of map(s), by environment type or name, select which gamemode(s) are desired, and determine a max combat rating allowed per team, so that you don't wind up facing 8 Heavies and Assaults with a pair of scout lances.

Most of all, the first thing we need is to know what map we're going to drop into before we drop so we can select the appropriate loadout for the environment. Once we get that fixed, everything else will flow from that.

This is what PGI is thinking. They do not want your mech choice to ever be hindered. Everybody should be allowed to choose whatever mech you want at any time and get to play it.

Since they thought they could balance all mechs with each other, they just allowed open selection. But they are beginning to notice that your choice of mech just effects your game so much that there must be some outside mechanic which limits random team placement but do not want a mechanic to have a factor in your choice of mech. Thus they center the mechanic around the individual player's skill with a certain mech.

But, I do not think PGI sees that the whole ELO system only works for random pick up games. ELO does not work in a structured setup for MechWarrior. You need a system which balances both a mech to other mechs, then players to other players. ELO is very arbitrary in a structured system.

Hopefully PGI will see that ELO is only useful in games with just a random selection of the readied players and not place a lot of emphasis on the ELO system in the grand scheme of things. Ideality, once Community Warfare comes into play, ELO will all but disappear and instead a system which balances mech vs. mech will be in place, like a combination of tonnage and BV.

Edited by Zyllos, 04 February 2013 - 07:15 AM.

[Elkarlo]

ELO will have another effect: Single Players with bad Elo will be invited to play in 2-3 man Teams with very good Players.
And they will teach the Bad Elo players how to be better.

The Reason why a Pro should bother with a Lowskilled Player: The whole 4 Man Team is averaged.
So the only real good way to go from 2600 to 2800 in Elo is having a bad average Elo.

Either they make up Trash accounts and swap them through... or they invite Newbies to play with them.
Both Ways would be possible, the later would be good for MW:O.

Edited by Elkarlo, 04 February 2013 - 07:50 AM.

[Karl Berg]

In fact we do keep multiple ELO's for each player. For the moment at least it's based off the properties of the mech you're dropping with, rather than your teams structure.

[MischiefSC]

Karl Berg, on 06 February 2013 - 04:41 PM, said:

In fact we do keep multiple ELO's for each player. For the moment at least it's based off the properties of the mech you're dropping with, rather than your teams structure.

See? That easy.

Thank you for answering that. Will Elo be info we can see in our stats or will it remain hidden?

[Karl Berg]

As far as I'm aware it's just going to remain hidden. Design might eventually decide to make it visible to the player somehow and in some form; but right now it has a very narrow focus: improve the quality of matches that our matchmaking server is producing.

[Tikkamasala]

Thank you.

[Ontos Mcree]

You guys are also ignoring how chess ELO's gain or lose points. If you are evenly matched with your opponet you may only lose a point or 2. Large number jumps only occur if you either lose against someone way way lower than you or win against someone with a much higher score. USCF ratings run a gauntlet from 800 as a beginner and 2600 for grandmasters. Every 50 points is considered a class. Now if they happen to match your mech class against someone in same mech class with pretty close ELO you would need a great deal of losses to drop a class.

[MischiefSC]

Karl Berg, on 06 February 2013 - 04:50 PM, said:

As far as I'm aware it's just going to remain hidden. Design might eventually decide to make it visible to the player somehow and in some form; but right now it has a very narrow focus: improve the quality of matches that our matchmaking server is producing.

So here's a question - if you're a competitive player with a high Elo rating is there a way for you to easily get into less competitive matches? Suppose someone who's part of the best possible team and plays only against the best, most competitive teams because of their high rating but one day decides he just wants to go mess around. Wouldn't he inherently get dropped against highly skilled competitive opponents no matter what he does? Hence being trapped in a situation where his only choices are 'go big or go home'.

If that's not a detail you want to share feel free to answer with 'there's more to it than that' and I'll go away happy.

[Tikkamasala]

MischiefSC, on 06 February 2013 - 04:58 PM, said:

So here's a question - if you're a competitive player with a high Elo rating is there a way for you to easily get into less competitive matches? Suppose someone who's part of the best possible team and plays only against the best, most competitive teams because of their high rating but one day decides he just wants to go mess around. Wouldn't he inherently get dropped against highly skilled competitive opponents no matter what he does? Hence being trapped in a situation where his only choices are 'go big or go home'.

If that's not a detail you want to share feel free to answer with 'there's more to it than that' and I'll go away happy.

It seems you could use a different mech and therefore elo value if you just want to drop for fun:

"In fact we do keep multiple ELO's for each player. For the moment at least it's based off the properties of the mech you're dropping with, rather than your teams structure."

[p4r4g0n]

Karl, I and I think many of those reading this thread really appreciate your input here. Just FYI in case you haven't noticed, too many people are conflating Elo rating = combat score = global ranking = e-peen contests.

Been sharing your input where I thought it would do some good but would urge some expeditious attention vis a vis earlier suggestion about putting this info in Command Chair or something

[Coolant]

didn't read most of thread, but was thinking today of a potential issue. What if a player is really good and really tries and is focused some games, but just goofs off or not pays much attention to some. I know I am often running a game on my laptop while MWO is running on my desktop at the same time. Sometimes my attention is 100% on MWO and at other times it's divided. TO be honest, my enthusiasm waxes up and down depending on patches. I'm very bored with the game currently, and waiting on new content. So, that also would affect my gameplay. So a player theoretically could get knocked down in ranking making it appear that a player is average or even poor when in reality they are pretty decent. I think it would be a mistake to think that when the game is fired up and a player is in the game that there aren't distractions that is affecting any player at one time.

[p4r4g0n]

Ontos Mcree, on 06 February 2013 - 04:55 PM, said:

....... Now if they happen to match your mech class against someone in same mech class with pretty close ELO you would need a great deal of losses to drop a class.

Which I believe is how Paul Inouye pretty much explained it here.

[Broceratops]

im sure its been pointed out, but getting 10 matches in a row where you lose at 50% win is not something that 'happens every day'. its more like once in 200 years.

[MischiefSC]

Tikkamasala, on 06 February 2013 - 05:01 PM, said:

It seems you could use a different mech and therefore elo value if you just want to drop for fun:

"In fact we do keep multiple ELO's for each player. For the moment at least it's based off the properties of the mech you're dropping with, rather than your teams structure."

Possibly. I know that I suck on ice in my Jenner most of the time but do alright in my Atlas. I'm curious though if that'll be by Chassis or variant?

Essentially, if someone is part of a team and has a high Elo but decides he's in the mood to one-off for the day is he stuck? What does he need to do to relax and have fun. Conversely if he decides to do so with 3 or 7 of his friends are they essentially still going to be able to go romping over less experienced players?

Just curious.