277 replies to this topic

[arghmace]

p4r4g0n, on 18 February 2013 - 06:10 PM, said:

And this is an issue because the player can no longer manipulate the odds by various means so that he wins 90% of the time all the time thereby ensuring he always earns more than any else?

What? What I and 80Bit wrote was that skilled players should earn a bit more xp and credits. You twist this so that skilled players should win 90%. That is a completely different thing.

Quote

If I want to earn more I should maybe try to improve my game

Sigh. You will be moved to tougher battles and thus won't earn more.

[arghmace]

80Bit, on 18 February 2013 - 08:07 PM, said:

The distribution is not true random and is not producing quality matches, because of the grouping system.

Unfortunately even with ELO the 4 man premade groups are gonna continue stomping to clear victories unless groups are separately taken into account by the match maker. I hope they are.

[FiveDigits]

Grits N Gravy, on 18 February 2013 - 07:07 PM, said:

[...] The time would have been better spent doing a Battle value system, to ensure better mech parity in matches [...]

A (static) BV system is ill fit for a dynamic online game environment. You'd have to manually adjust BV values all the time to account for balance changes and shifts in the meta game.
What works for players can work for mechs as well.

[RussianWolf]

If only win/loss is used then I can see the abuses now.

Team kills all but one pug and losses match intentionally to artificially deflate their w/l average. All the while maintaining their precious k/d stats.

The cbills would still be good as they would be getting bonuses for kills, component destruction, assists, etc.

I'm starting a new account so that I can test the system from the new player perspective. granted I'll be a decent player from the start in terms of skill, but We'll see where I fall in the ELO spectrum compared to my Founder account.

Edited by RussianWolf, 19 February 2013 - 07:05 AM.

[JPsi]

RussianWolf, on 19 February 2013 - 07:03 AM, said:

If only win/loss is used then I can see the abuses now.

Team kills all but one pug and losses match intentionally to artificially deflate their w/l average. All the while maintaining their precious k/d stats.

The cbills would still be good as they would be getting bonuses for kills, component destruction, assists, etc.

I'm starting a new account so that I can test the system from the new player perspective. granted I'll be a decent player from the start in terms of skill, but We'll see where I fall in the ELO spectrum compared to my Founder account.

Considering your Elo will be hidden and stats reset, making the comparison may not be easy.
Artificial deflation will for the most part be counterproductive to any player that engages in it.

[FiveDigits]

RussianWolf, on 19 February 2013 - 07:03 AM, said:

If only win/loss is used then I can see the abuses now.[...]

• Rating will be hidden (for now). How many games do you intentionally lose befor you start "pwning"?
  
• When rating is not hidden it is the most important stat you have. Nobody in their right mind would tank their rating. It's like beating up kids at the play ground and then bragging about it.

[RussianWolf]

JPsi, on 19 February 2013 - 07:10 AM, said:

Considering your Elo will be hidden and stats reset, making the comparison may not be easy.
Artificial deflation will for the most part be counterproductive to any player that engages in it.

Same player, piloting identical mechs. How I do in the match will be a pretty easy indicator (not perfect granted, but the best we can do with the limited data). Unless my Founders Account ELO starts off at the same place as a Newb, then I should see a difference in the competition.

I'll believe that people won't abuse it when I see it. The ELO is hidden, so people won't be trying to max it. That leaves K/D and W/L. Since W/L will be targeted at 1 by ELO, that leaves the K/D for the stats seekers. It will be abused for that reason alone in my opinion. Add into the fact that the Teams begged for 8 man only, then bailed when they couldn't hack it. The 4-mans that can't dominate other 4-mans will do it to get back to pug stomping.

[RussianWolf]

FiveDigits, on 19 February 2013 - 07:13 AM, said:

• Rating will be hidden (for now). How many games do you intentionally lose befor you start "pwning"?
  
• When rating is not hidden it is the most important stat you have. Nobody in their right mind would tank their rating. It's like beating up kids at the play ground and then bragging about it.

If you kill all the opposing team but one (and severely mangle him for component destruction cbills) you are still stomping. Allowing the lose by cap just allows them to keep stomping without going up to the level where they can't stomp. How do you know when? When you stop being able to stomp in every match. Some will do it.

But as you said, ELO is hidden and the W/L ratio will be targeted at 1 by ELO, so that leave the K/D ratio for the Stat seekers as I said above. There are already those that think K/D is the end all stat, now it will be more so.

[JPsi]

RussianWolf, on 19 February 2013 - 07:25 AM, said:

Same player, piloting identical mechs. How I do in the match will be a pretty easy indicator (not perfect granted, but the best we can do with the limited data). Unless my Founders Account ELO starts off at the same place as a Newb, then I should see a difference in the competition.

I'll believe that people won't abuse it when I see it. The ELO is hidden, so people won't be trying to max it. That leaves K/D and W/L. Since W/L will be targeted at 1 by ELO, that leaves the K/D for the stats seekers. It will be abused for that reason alone in my opinion. Add into the fact that the Teams begged for 8 man only, then bailed when they couldn't hack it. The 4-mans that can't dominate other 4-mans will do it to get back to pug stomping.

Its pretty hard to aim to lose and still keep that nice K/D ratio, even when following the method you suggested. I won't say its impossible, but it is difficult.

Edited by JPsi, 19 February 2013 - 07:32 AM.

[Mackman]

Grits N Gravy, on 18 February 2013 - 11:46 PM, said:

In MWO Elo scores go up and down based on the probability of victory as predicted by elo scores with a maxium loss and gain of 50 points per match.

https://mwomercs.com...79-matchmaking/

Inverse the results and you can see that the win only grants the higher ranked player 20.5 points in that match win. When facing lower ranked players you always risk more than u can gain. Thus for every loss to a lower ranked opponent, you have to win a number of consecutive games that is propitiation to the predicted margin of accuracy of the Elo system. In order to get your Elo score to go back up to it's pre loss level.

It's much easier to drop a score than to raise to it. In order to raise it, u need to either beat a lot of lower ranked players consecutive, a few equally ranked players consecutively or couple of higher ranked players. Depending where you are on the bell curve of skill and population size, it may be hard to see higher ranked players. Thus a low risk strategy of getting your score up (facing higher ranked players, you don't risk a drop in score when facing high ranks) may not be feasible. Thus a bad night of play is not evened out by a good night, this is what I refer to as Elo hell. For every bad night you need 1.5 to 2 nights of good play to come out even. This the direct result of the Elo formula and K factors and is one of the fundamental reasons why Elo system can feel unfair.

I have never experienced that in League of Legends. A loss will lose me ten or 15, then a win will put me literally right back where I was, plus or minus 1-2 points depending on the Elo differential. If I lose to someone I was supposed to beat, then beat someone I was supposed to lose to, the results even out exactly. So I really don't see the problem you seem to be sure exists in Elo.

Edited by Mackman, 19 February 2013 - 07:52 AM.

[SociopathicSquirrel]

RussianWolf, on 19 February 2013 - 07:03 AM, said:

If only win/loss is used then I can see the abuses now.

Team kills all but one pug and losses match intentionally to artificially deflate their w/l average. All the while maintaining their precious k/d stats.

The cbills would still be good as they would be getting bonuses for kills, component destruction, assists, etc.

I'm starting a new account so that I can test the system from the new player perspective. granted I'll be a decent player from the start in terms of skill, but We'll see where I fall in the ELO spectrum compared to my Founder account.

Really, good players losing to PUGs on purpose to tank their ELO rating? Are you paranoid or what? What kind of drooling, moonpie ****** would do that? By that logic, what stops Russian Chess Grandmasters to lose on purpose so that they can play 1400-rated patzers and win all kinds of amateur tournaments?

Three answers : the will to win, be among the best, and lord over other Mechers as their master; such people will be immediately identified and shamed, trolled, and ridiculed in public (and rightly so) as their identity in-game and in the forums is both public knowledge; the ELO matchmaking will seldom, if never, pitch people who are at the extremeties of the ELO bell curve. We know who are the best players, we'll see their win/loss, kill/death ratio as we can right now. We can also know who the moonpies are (vert high k/d ratio, very low w/l ratio) and report them to PGI who will decide their fate.

Players stomping then losing on purpose... WTF is that kind of silly?

Edited by SociopathicSquirrel, 19 February 2013 - 07:58 AM.

[Bguk]

SociopathicSquirrel, on 19 February 2013 - 07:52 AM, said:

Players stomping then losing on purpose... WTF is that kind of silly?

Some will abuse the system. There are those in the world that like to abuse any system available to them. It will happen. How often? Probably not as those people who do so in a game are in the minority.

[SociopathicSquirrel]

Bguk, on 19 February 2013 - 07:57 AM, said:

Some will abuse the system. There are those in the world that like to abuse any system available to them. It will happen. How often? Probably not as those people who do so in a game are in the minority.

They can be banned, however, ir reported to PGI. Even if they come back with new accounts, they will eventually give up and find another game to gimp if repeatedly shut down from the game.

Edited by SociopathicSquirrel, 19 February 2013 - 08:02 AM.

[Bguk]

SociopathicSquirrel, on 19 February 2013 - 08:00 AM, said:

They can be banned, however, ir reported to PGI. Even if they come back with new accounts, they will eventually give up and find another game to gimp if repeatedly shut down from the game.

Totally agree. Was just pointing out there are people in the world that do this sort of thing.

[80Bit]

Grits N Gravy, on 18 February 2013 - 11:04 PM, said:

It was around 5k before they took the info out of the game. You need at least 20,000k players to have a sample size of 2000 for a decent que. 2000 is considered the minimal pool size to have an acceptable margin of error in polling. I doubt it is at 20,000 now. In reality neither of has exact figures as to the population size. Though the fact of the matter is Elo systems have minimal population thresholds necessary for them to work. From anecdotal experience I don't think MWO has the population to support a Elo system that will work well.



You over state the effect of grouping on win rate of a pure pug dropper. A pug player doesn't only play matches against and with premades. His chances of facing a premade are relative to the number of players in the que and what percentage of those players are in a 4 person premade. Which is probably at most 15 percent. If you noticed in my OP I stated that win rate for an average player should be 48 +-5%. 5% more than accounts for the effect of facing pugs have, as realistically 5% of a que at a given time is a 4 premade.

I pretty much only pug, or run with 1 other person. My win rate is 75% and I don't own an ECM mech, k2 or atlas. The only evidence to support your claim that the match making fails to deliver is as anecdotal as my win rate. Win rates won't always reflect potions of damage boards. As playing for wins is different than playing for damage and kills. A more accurate statement is that Matchmaking does not always deliver fair matches to all players. Going to an Elo system won't make it any better because of population size, and a distorted standard deviation of Elo scores. It's a no win, Elo scores in > 6v6 games have proven a low predictive accuracy.

I argue the time would have been better spent doing a BV system to insure better mech parity, ie reducing play advantage based on mech type, and coming up with a dynamic leader board system where people could stat brag. Because this time would have more effect on player retention and draw than an Elo system which only accurately predicts wins 40% of the time.
http://research.micr...t.aspx?id=67956

Correct me if I am wrong, but the last time population numbers were visible were at the end of the closed beta period, was it not? And I think you are overstating the population requirement to have Elo work. 90% of the players in an Elo system occupy a fairly narrow range of Elo ratings. 2000 being a minimum size for polling has nothing to do with Elo match making. For the majority of players the Elo system should have little problem finding fair matches. Outlying players do face a new problem, of either high queue times, or frequently being places in matches out of their range. You are correct that population size will affect the system, but mainly for the fringe, not the bulk of players.


I disagree that a BV system would work better than an ELO system. In a BV system, you are trying to make predictions based on the equipment's performance instead of the players performance. But it is clear that a K2 in the hands of an unskilled player is vastly different than one in the hands of a skilled player. It is folly to try and predict results by equipment when you have a much better indicator, past performance. Even better, they appear to be narrowing it down to past performance by mech or at least by class, which will match make based on your performance in a mech, rather than by the mech itself.

[Signal27]

I won't deny that players with some skill will try and abuse the Elo system, but even if they do I don't believe it will be as bad as everyone makes it out to be. After all, in order to flush your Elo rating down the toilet you have to lose. Yes it will suck to encounter one of these people when they are playing to win, but you stand just as much of a chance of encountering them when they are playing to lose. Which means they are handing you a free win, c-bills, and EXP on a silver platter.

[JPsi]

80Bit, on 19 February 2013 - 08:05 AM, said:

Correct me if I am wrong, but the last time population numbers were visible were at the end of the closed beta period, was it not? And I think you are overstating the population requirement to have Elo work. 90% of the players in an Elo system occupy a fairly narrow range of Elo ratings. 2000 being a minimum size for polling has nothing to do with Elo match making. For the majority of players the Elo system should have little problem finding fair matches. Outlying players do face a new problem, of either high queue times, or frequently being places in matches out of their range. You are correct that population size will affect the system, but mainly for the fringe, not the bulk of players.


I disagree that a BV system would work better than an ELO system. In a BV system, you are trying to make predictions based on the equipment's performance instead of the players performance. But it is clear that a K2 in the hands of an unskilled player is vastly different than one in the hands of a skilled player. It is folly to try and predict results by equipment when you have a much better indicator, past performance. Even better, they appear to be narrowing it down to past performance by mech or at least by class, which will match make based on your performance in a mech, rather than by the mech itself.

Elo in itself also to a certain extent, involves BV. Players aren't exactly going to get a high Elo playing with subpar builds or equipment. Its an indirect relationship, but it is there.

[Elandyll]

If some pre-mades start to throw games (e.g. telling the last surviving ennemy mech to go ahead and cap, or obviously letting him unharmed) it will become pretty obvious fast, and screenshots will start getting sent to PGI.

Now, will they be ok with it or bring the hammer down? We'll see.

Edited by Elandyll, 19 February 2013 - 08:55 AM.

[BigJim]

Elandyll, on 19 February 2013 - 08:54 AM, said:

If some pre-mades start to throw games (e.g. telling the last surviving ennemy mech to go ahead and cap, or obviously letting him unharmed) it will become pretty obvious fast, and screenshots will start getting sent to PGI.

Been there - In one 8-man a single guy from the enemy team wanted a 1v1, he was in a Dragon vs a Wang from our team, and we agreed not to shoot the Dragon & let the 2x guys duke it out unmolested while the rest of the match went on.

The match went our way, and it was 7-0 (with our guy fighting, and me watching, so we were 2x players down vs their 1x player down).

Because the Dragon won the fight, we just stood there and asked him to go & cap, thus giving his team the win.
Underhand ELO-manipulation, or just a bit of sportsmanship to break up the unending "zomg-zomg i want all the killz cos jesus made me leet" attitude?

Edited by BigJim, 19 February 2013 - 09:10 AM.

[xDeityx]

Couldn't get through the first page without making this post.

Elo is a man's last name, not an acronym.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arpad_Elo