So what's your experience the last weeks? I got the feeling that i get more balanced games, less Stomps (PUGs). This is very satisfying. Stomps were rather due to DCs. Also now i often meet veteran players, which i usually used to play with in private groups in the past, not getting mixed by the MM. And many games were close ones! Great E.g. this one - enemy team was moving in formation, also very good at caps, plus having a very scary Atlas Pilot. Battle started early, both teams lost pilots, and the second half looked like they were going to capwin. But we could turn the table and finally i could clash against their Masterkiller - epic Assault VS Assault Fight till the very last drop of blood. haha Thx all for the good match!
Its still about 50:50 for me, I get games like this: Which seem a bit one sided and the teams unbalanced. But that could be because I play in Australia and the population at our peak time is smaller.
If PGI has balanced out the MM a little bit then they finally deserve some kudos from me as MM was not very intuitive (in my opinion, put away your torches white knights). I usually ended up being on the side that stomped the other side and so was not really affected with a poor MM however I can appreciate what others would go through getting stomped regularly. Once I move to the new place in the next few weeks I might install MWO and see what it can actually do and do an updated review on it on the channel.
My opinion is, that there are many stomps but also many close ones. Neary all matches end 12:10 or 12:1 (both sides) and the before usual 12:6 isn't seen very often. I think the stomps are not only the reason of a bad matchmaker (ok, if one side has 4-5 DWFs and the other side 4-5 ZEU, AWS and GAR its really the MMs fault^^), but the result of a tactical mistake that was taken advantage of by the other team very quick (more good players in every team (in my tier) which makes a small mistake quick fatal)
I've also noticed that the matchmaking times have vastly improved. I don't think I waited for more than a minute for any game this past week, even when dropping in heavies which previously had very long queues.
PUG gaming in the solo queue is vastly improved, the group is way worse and not satisfactory in the same way at the moment. Make sure you read PGI's post on it; http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/207849-state-of-match-making-in-mwo/page__pid__4664843#entry4664843 Spoiler: Long text by Paul The purpose of this post will be to primarily discuss the state of the Group Queue and if any major changes will be made to address both wait times and quality of matches. In order to do that we need to first discuss the solo queue so we have something to compare against. Another main item to keep in mind as we discuss this is to keep mindful that for a smaller online game when compared to the big monster products, we have an awful lot of options for our players. Certainly more than we ought to have if our number 1 priority is the competitiveness of matches weighed against wait times. These options across solo and group queue consist of the server selection, game mode, PSR, group size, and group weight class composition. Another thing to keep in mind is that the NA and EU population peaks are very similar and remain at least 2.5x higher than our low population point, which puts further strain on the MM during those low hours. During the past couple of weeks we have been playing with a lot of settings while trying to allow PSR to settle. This has allowed us to find what we feel is the best MM options for the current feature set and population of the game. Below I will discuss the current state of the solo queue and then the group queue, in each case I will list the main stats that matter to players the most. Solo Queue: Average Wait time: 142 seconds Average Skill Diff between teams: 153 Teams always match the same weight classes per side no exception. This currently has created the best feeling public matches in MWO we have ever had, very happy with this and even at the lowest population point of the day with current settings it should hold up fairly well. We still encourage players to keep multiple servers selected wherever possible and to keep all game modes selected for the best matches. It is still true that even solo queue could be improved noticeably further if the game modes were not hard stop options for players. However in solo queue things work well enough it does not become a huge issue. I am loathe to do anything to the Solo queue that will degrade it to any degree, I feel group queue needs to solve it's own problems not join or take players from the solo queue. Group Queue: We have been doing a lot of playing around with values since both the new servers and PSR came online and we feel we have found settings that work best. Unfortunately for group queue this means fairly heavily loosening of the valves and criteria to keep wait times down. Here is where the current stats of group queue sit: Average wait time: 190 seconds. Average Skill Diff per team: 405 At first blush it seems pretty good on the wait time, and the skill difference although more than double the solo queue seems reasonable for group matches. Unfortunately there is more to the group queue story as there are still two other ways matches can be imbalanced. First off is the amount of groups per side is very hard to keep even, we will frequently have 4 groups vs 2 groups and 3 vs 2 and so on. Also currently after waiting 240 seconds it will give up on trying to match the weight classes per side and you can be further uneven by having more heavies for instance on one side. Sometimes this can be made up for by having more assaults on the other but it's quite random. So here is where we are at and what we propose. You play with these new settings for group queue and see how they feel to you. Basically the question will be is the wait times vs quality of matches acceptable enough to you. If the answer is overwhelmingly yes then we can keep our current feature set of any size groups and the weight class restrictions on how you create them. Perhaps if the wait times are 190 seconds on average you will accept the quality of matches in order to keep your large groups and so on. If on the other hand you are unsatisfied with the quality of the games, here is what we are going to do. - Shift back to a maximum group size of 4 or less. - Each group needs to be created in a 1/1/1/1 fashion. This will remove a significant amount of jig saw puzzles from the MM. Imagine no longer needing to deal with odd sized groups like 5, 7, or 9. This is helped further by all the smaller groups of 2 and 3 not being made up of primarily one weight class as is the case now where we see a group of 3 heavies. This would be our first point of action. If we need to go further than we will look at the game modes. So please provide your comments in the feedback thread. We will be monitoring it and making a decision shortly. TLDR: "If on the other hand you are unsatisfied with the quality of the games (edit: group), here is what we are going to do. - Shift back to a maximum group size of 4 or less. - Each group needs to be created in a 1/1/1/1 fashion. This will remove a significant amount of jig saw puzzles from the MM. Imagine no longer needing to deal with odd sized groups like 5, 7, or 9. This is helped further by all the smaller groups of 2 and 3 not being made up of primarily one weight class as is the case now where we see a group of 3 heavies. This would be our first point of action. If we need to go further than we will look at the game modes. So please provide your comments in the feedback thread. We will be monitoring it and making a decision shortly." Feedback thread http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/207850-state-of-match-making-feedbackcomments/
Very interesting. It sounds like that would murder the game from a company combat standpoint and almost a little bit of a threat on the part of the developer "If you don't like it, we will take all your toys away". Am I reading that wrong?
I have actually been a long standing proponent of that solution. Look at most, if not all, other MO shooters. Random drops occur with small groups or PUGs only. And the CW is for companies. That is the way it should be. Currently group drops are just good for the K/D ego of roflolstompers.
That is very true however, the last time I played, MWO did not have a rich enough community warfare to really shoulder a differential over PUG drops. If they fleshed that out a tiny bit more then they could do that with random games. I could be wrong. I'm trying to get everything moved over to the new house and maybe sit down and get some MWO time on a weekend to see where they are at in terms of changes.
We've started to play again Grimm. There are some improvements but it is still too early to tell! I see they've added more sales (no surprise there) so hopefully they do something with the infusion of cash and balance things out. If they nuke the groups though and make it a max of four that will be the death knell for this game. Community Warfare isn't robust enough to carry it. Still, it was nice to see the Swarm back in action and stomping PUGs.
Once they add the scout drops to CW there should be enough variety do have CW be a good alternative for players wanting to be play as big groups. I fail to understand why having only smaller groups being able to PUG would be that much of an issue. Most, if not all, other shooters do it. Are we seriously that much a bunch of whiny kids?
Personally I don't find it an issue at all at least in terms of a mechanic for a game mode. I think the issue here is what it signifies. "We couldn't make 12v12 work so we took it away".
Agreed, and a lot has to do with population imo. Still interested to see what the steam release will do,...
Yes, a Steam release will bring fresh blood in hopefully. Not sure how much they will spend (I know as a steam player I tend to be notoriously cheap) but it will be nice to see what happens. Despite me trashing on MWO and PGI I really hope the game stays around long enough that someone else has a Battletech game out before it dies. Being without battletech would be like... well... I don't want to live on this planet if that is the case. LOL
