20 replies to this topic

[IronClamp]

In short: don't rely on MMR.

How I would perform this match making would be to have three variables: Pilot Rank, Mech Rank and MMR.

Steps:
1) Pilot Rank filter: this would get your Pilot Rank, and slide you in a range (0-10, 11-20, 21-30, etc.) Then the game would find a list of servers with the appropriate range.
2) Mech Rank filter: Get's average Mech Rank and assigns an integer (1 - 6). Then the game would find a list of servers in the Pilot Rank server list that had the corresponding AMR (Average Mech Rank).
3) MMR filter: This would be used as it is now, except it would be used to select a server from the server list in step 2.

Now this doesn't alleviate all problems (noobs will still have a problem with smurfs), but there could be a greater reduction in badly balanced servers.

Of course now you need a couple hundred servers.....

[hendman]

Both pilot and mech rank are poor indicators of the "quality" of a player. Over time both will rise, regardless of how poor or well the player is actually doing.

The MMR system on the other hand is pretty good at determining how good a player is, but certain conditions need to be met before it can perform its magic and create well-balanced matches for all players. The most important condition is a large enough playerbase, and that seems to be missing at the moment.

[IareDave]

Pilot rank and mech rank are not indicators of player skill, they are indicators of playtime. Currently mmr is the best we have for skill level, and in my experience is accurate.

[EM1O]

yup. playskill mmr balancing is accurate. it's best evidence is when a CRT noob can spank a lvl 30 Raider with a full loadout. not pretty, but gets a grin.
it gets out of balance when the lack of available player-base forces the software to "take what it can get" to fill out the teams numerically.

[IronClamp]

Thank you for pointing out the difference between Rank and MMR, but too many high rank, high MMR players get slotted into low level, "noob" matches.

I just came up with an alternate system:
1) MMR sort
2) Player Rank sort
3) AMR sort

It's not very different, but you can at least do more to get skill rather than experience+skill to win matches (changing the goal_ yes I am).

And yes, this is very dependant on player base, 1) because it requires a great multitude of servers and 2) a large population to make each sort group substantial. So I guess that I'm just suggesting in the case that Hawken actually gets its feet back underneath it.

Edited by IronClamp, August 31 2014 - 04:56 PM.

[LRod]

My problem with this would be; what happens in a TDM when - due to either your team's tactics or the opposing team's tactics - you want to change to a Mech that is not as familiar to you_  Scenario being, I'm breaking in a new mech, I get "assigned" to a server with less experienced players, but shortly into the match I decide to switch - because it makes sense for the match - to a mech I have a higher AMR for.  That could potentially unbalance the entire match.  At this point, IMHO, I think MMR is the better way to weight the system.  At least for now...

[Draigun]

Just like EM10 mentioned once, in order for the MMR system to truly be effective, there must be a rather large (more than 3,000) population base supporting it. If you fall short to 200, 300, 500, etc.., mathematically speaking, the wide skill deviations in servers will almost always promote unstable matches. The chances of getting a good match has been reduced greatly, and even looking at the Quality feature that HAWKEN has, will not protect you from it.

That being said, IronClamp's suggestion would probably do more harm than good.

Edited by Draigun, August 31 2014 - 08:14 PM.

[EM1O]

The present balancing engine was created to hopefully work as well as possible with the community and playerbase present at the time (~1000), and utilize this numerically restricted pool in it's calculations. bear in mind, that when the filtering and player assignment occurs, if 500-1000 are logged in, that does NOT mean the engine is actively drawing from that pool. what it's using is the 5-10% of the population that are available for balance assignment because they are not actively ingame nor server assigned to a game player list.
if you have as many as one tenth of all servers actively seeking players to assign, your polling is mathematically reduced to a maximum of 1%, or 5 to 10 players for each server to ulitmately select. if your server has an average mmr of say, 1800-2000, and has 2 2100s, 4 1400s, and 2 1600s eligible in the pool and selects 4 of them to fill out the 12, you now have a game that is going to be, shall we say, "interesting".
Either accept the wide variation, or have 2 to 4 member, unsatisfying/unfun games.
Until we have a 5,000 member pool, it's gonna suck.

Edited by EM1O, September 01 2014 - 05:38 AM.

[FateLovely]

Personally and my friends, will just play it casually if thrown into a lower MMR match. I've seen a few people do it as well. Instead of coming in and smashing less talented players, they just kinda set back and poke a few people with rockets here and there. A lot of the time right now people are almost forced to make a smurf account If they want to continue playing. And that needs to be fixed as well. Or forced to lose matches on purpose. Quite honestly banging on lowbies isn't really all that fun, I enjoy competition more dont get me wrong. But a PvP game is a PvP game. And someone being better than you or I doesn't or shouldn't be something to complain or request fixing about. New players sure, but honestly if you've been playing for awhile and you just aren't the best, or a 2000 and up tier player. come on its a pvp game get used to it. There's always people better and there's always people worse. That's part of the reason I haven't always agreed with the system t begin with outside of keeping experience out of new player matches

I rather try my best to deal with a higher MMR player, than force him to hang dry waiting for a match because he's "too good" to be in the same room as me.

Edited by FateLovely, September 01 2014 - 05:49 AM.

[EM1O]

Actually, I prefer to get thrown into a match populated with vastly outbalanced members.
If I'm low guy, I get a true challenge and am forced to hone my skills to survive. It's an opportunity to plunge into a true survival training/test.
If I'm high guy, it's an opportunity to "lead by example", and if the noobs or whoever are paying attention to chat, just maybe leave someone with a similar feeling to the Low Guy situation. Both produce a positive outcome if done correctly.
I have my old MajyckToad (~1400 lvl 30) smurf for drunk driving and general mayhem, and IronRoach smurf for low mmr Welcoming Committee stuff (~1600 lvl 22).
And of course, not being naive, we have those that just want to pop in and sadistically ruin it for everyone. Stuff Happens.

[IronClamp]

LRod, on August 31 2014 - 05:35 PM, said:

My problem with this would be; what happens in a TDM when - due to either your team's tactics or the opposing team's tactics - you want to change to a Mech that is not as familiar to you_  Scenario being, I'm breaking in a new mech, I get "assigned" to a server with less experienced players, but shortly into the match I decide to switch - because it makes sense for the match - to a mech I have a higher AMR for.  That could potentially unbalance the entire match.  At this point, IMHO, I think MMR is the better way to weight the system.  At least for now...

AVERAGE Mech Rank: You have three mechs, a Raider with Rank 6, a Fred with Rank 6 and a Reaper with Rank 2. You add those ranks together and divide by 3 to get an AMR of 5. You get slotted with players who all have an AMR of 5.

@EM10, FateLovely, Draigun

IronClamp, on August 31 2014 - 04:53 PM, said:

And yes, this is very dependant on player base ... 2) a large population to make each sort group substantial. So I guess that I'm just suggesting in the case that Hawken actually gets its feet back underneath it.

Edited by IronClamp, September 01 2014 - 09:53 AM.

[IronClamp]

Sorry, double post.....

Edited by IronClamp, September 01 2014 - 09:01 AM.

[Odinous]

As many stated already at the moment its not the code as it self having any problem,we would see completely different matches with higher player base.To be honest I believe its the best matchmaking system I have seen in a game,the software it self though cannot predict ragequitting or players being greedy hunting the kill and getting wasted in team games..

[FateLovely]

I would almost like to see the match making be based on player or mech ranks for the reasons stated in my last post. That way new players won't be bothered and a specific part of the community won't have to make multiple accounts just to continue playing.

[IronClamp]

Read the rest of your post (why I didn't before, I don't know), and I'm not complaining about the imbalance, I've just spent some time thinking about it and thought this would be a decent solution to that experience gap some newbies find themselves 'victim' of.

[EM1O]

FateLovely, on September 01 2014 - 09:53 AM, said:

I would almost like to see the match making be based on player or mech ranks for the reasons stated in my last post. That way new players won't be bothered and a specific part of the community won't have to make multiple accounts just to continue playing.

No.
Because of the small population here, this format would pitch my 170 hrs, Rank 6/level 30 garage full of fully loaded mechs at a scrubby 1523mmr, against a skilled "noob" with say, <24 hrs,and a choice restricted among a CRT, Brawler, or Tech, all Rank 6/level 30 at 1800mmr.
One team is going to get stomped.
Something like this has been tried, and it really didn't work well.

Edited by EM1O, September 01 2014 - 12:45 PM.

[IronClamp]

which is why I suggested adding player rank and mech rank filtering to fine tune the match making, because that 1523 v 1800 MMR wouldn't happen.

Though this is all right now hypothetical since 1) this isn't implemented and 2) player base isn't big enough for this to work well.

[Draigun]

I think when the devs will look at balancing the game, they will probably start with re-building the MMR calculation code/parameters from the ground up. I made a post about the assumed calculations, but as it turns out, it only depends on something very simple, i.e. a 50% hard skill cap for in favor of increasing or decreasing your value, depending on the score comparison for the match.

The balancing system is entirely dependent on MMR values. Rather than making a new system, we should reimplement the way MMR is calculated. The game may even benefit from it now, since the Quality would be dependent on your MMR value. We would no longer see outliers of 2600+ MMR or 1600- MMR, since that is unrealistic in real world terms, and for all who play.

Then again, who decides what is a "true" MMR value_ The only reason why people have incredibly high or low MMR, is because it is not accurate in the way it is calculated. If the system was revamped, we would see less 'outliers', statistically speaking, and an increase in balancing effectiveness globally.

For those that have issues reading the strikethrough text (had to do it, since the information wasn't accurate):

Spoiler

• Kill/death ratio calculations per match
  
• Damage ratio calculations per match
  
• Accuracy rating for global weapons
  
• Misc match stats
  
• Pilot level (a lower pilot level amplifies the rating incremental change % more than likely)
  
• Amount of kills per match
  
• Amount of time played
  
• Damage/combat efficiency rating
  
• How "well" you do against MMR values that are greater than yours
  
• Survivability

Edited by Draigun, September 01 2014 - 07:08 PM.

[EM1O]

All things considered, the matches I've played tonight have been enormously satisfying.
The only cash I paid for this marvelous game, is what I got to spend on MC for my new lovely CLR-LTBLUE skin.
Try it. It's nice, and envelopes the entire mech, not just "splotchies" on it.
The fun I've had is invaluable. At mmr of 1523 I got thrown into a server that SRD'd at 1632. It was a rippingly good bunch of fun. Next round it jacked to ~1740. I actually came out in 3rd place (playing my marvelous Tech), twice!
And lost both games. O well...
If I had gotten matched to 1450-1550 where I belonged, this would likely have been an uninteresting, and not nearly as exciting evening.
My personnal opinion.
edit: btw, the final match I just did, was a very hotly contested round on a 1600 group, and won it. I placed 2nd. I like the matchmaking just the way it is. It's working for me, so far (and yes, I get crappy games too--everyone does)!

Edited by EM1O, September 01 2014 - 07:31 PM.

[nokari]

IronClamp, on September 01 2014 - 08:55 AM, said:

AVERAGE Mech Rank: You have three mechs, a Raider with Rank 6, a Fred with Rank 6 and a Reaper with Rank 2. You add those ranks together and divide by 3 to get an AMR of 5. You get slotted with players who all have an AMR of 5.

Still not good. Someone could play with only a couple of mechs they've fully ranked up and then go buy a bunch of mechs to manipulate the average. And that average would remain the same forever until that person decided to start grinding their unused mechs, seeing as how we still can't remove or sell mechs.

There are plenty of people here with enough leftover HC and MC to buy 20+ mechs too... I personally have 36 mechs in my garage, but only 18 of them have been leveled up. The rest are all duplicates from the Ascension update and a bundle I purchased, and I will probably never play with them.

Edited by nokari, September 01 2014 - 07:47 PM.