17 replies to this topic

[JuiceBox]

Could we get word from Meteor on this please.

It seems the current way it works is that "Hey if a server is empty, we'll stick you here"

But this isn't the best idea as you'll get low level mechs going against high level mechs and making the game to challenging and not fun for people.

[z121231211]

I've heard from Meteor employees that post here that it does match you up with people of similar skill level. I guess if it finds that all the servers are full or have too many high level players it'll just dump you in an empty server. I don't see how this would cause higher level players to join though since the average skill level in the new server is now pretty low, causing more low level people to join.

[Ferret06]

Ok, After a bit of digging around (with the help of google) I managed to get hold of a second beta key and created myself another account.

I had been scratching my head about the match making so wanted to see what it put me up against as a fresh out of the box mech pilot.

So with my new pilot in hand i set out on the battlefield.

This is what is in the garage to prove all i had was low lvl stuff.

http://i.imgur.com/jZjh0.jpg

One match stuck out in particular.

The pilot topping the scoreboard on the opposite team was head and shoulders out gunning anything and everything our team had to throw at him!

So the question was asked in chat what lvl his mech was_

14 was the reply!

So matchmaking working as intended_

Level 1 fresh out of the box mechs being pitted against mechs 3/4 of the way to max lvl.

[JuiceBox]

z121231211, on November 10 2012 - 04:24 PM, said:

I've heard from Meteor employees that post here that it does match you up with people of similar skill level. I guess if it finds that all the servers are full or have too many high level players it'll just dump you in an empty server. I don't see how this would cause higher level players to join though since the average skill level in the new server is now pretty low, causing more low level people to join.

I was just in a match being a level 8 mech playing with level 20 mechs Fair to you_ Not me.

[JuiceBox]

Ferret06, on November 10 2012 - 04:43 PM, said:

Ok, After a bit of digging around (with the help of google) I managed to get hold of a second beta key and created myself another account.

I had been scratching my head about the match making so wanted to see what it put me up against as a fresh out of the box mech pilot.

So with my new pilot in hand i set out on the battlefield.

This is what is in the garage to prove all i had was low lvl stuff.

http://i.imgur.com/jZjh0.jpg

One match stuck out in particular.

The pilot topping the scoreboard on the opposite team was head and shoulders out gunning anything and everything our team had to throw at him!

So the question was asked in chat what lvl his mech was_

14 was the reply!

So matchmaking working as intended_

Level 1 fresh out of the box mechs being pitted against mechs 3/4 of the way to max lvl.

Precisely! And this is what I figured out today and had a sneaky suspicion about. For people like yourself and everyone else joining you can understand the "This mech is so overpowered mentality" because if a level 1 is trying to win and keeps loosing to a brawler.. well its not the brawler its the user.

[z121231211]

Ferret06, on November 10 2012 - 04:43 PM, said:

Ok, After a bit of digging around (with the help of google) I managed to get hold of a second beta key and created myself another account.

I had been scratching my head about the match making so wanted to see what it put me up against as a fresh out of the box mech pilot.

So with my new pilot in hand i set out on the battlefield.

This is what is in the garage to prove all i had was low lvl stuff.

http://i.imgur.com/jZjh0.jpg

One match stuck out in particular.

The pilot topping the scoreboard on the opposite team was head and shoulders out gunning anything and everything our team had to throw at him!

So the question was asked in chat what lvl his mech was_

14 was the reply!

So matchmaking working as intended_

Level 1 fresh out of the box mechs being pitted against mechs 3/4 of the way to max lvl.

That's what happens when you have both matchmaking and manual server joining. You may have used matchmaking and got into a low-level server, while he joined using the server browser bypassing the whole balancing system.

[Beemann]

Remember that it could also be that it's drawing from a small population to make these matches
If you're one of maybe 4 level 1's, and everyone else in queue is a level 20, it's gonna put you in with 20s instead of giving you nothing
These sorts of things are pretty much unavoidable

[Gestankfaust]

Beemann, on November 10 2012 - 05:14 PM, said:

Remember that it could also be that it's drawing from a small population to make these matches

^This

When it goes live (or even OB), you'll see it even out more....IMO

[h0B0]

If the matchmaking is based on skill then mech level is no matter.

Plus i have only 29 games played in my profile. i would guess it is pretty hard to acurately gauge my skill which such low amount of games.

On the other hand i have been dominating games i have a 2/1 w/l ration and 2.38 kd. rarely get placed 2nd or 3rd. And i am the first one in front most of the time juking people left and right with my berserker.

I would enjoy if the game would have dedicated low level servers for newbies ( but this might lead to exploitation ).
and a matchmaking based on skill and not mech level. also if players group up before a game the opposing team should have an advantage if they arent previously grouped.

[Beemann]

I've said it before but HiRez actually has a pretty good system for this in Tribes and SMITE
First 6 levels (which is a few matches, depending on how good you are initially) are "newbie queue"
After that you get to play with the big kids
They also try to set it up so that by the time you leave you'll have earned enough (insert currency here) to purchase something good (like a new class/weapon/god)
There's a few things I don't like about some of the design decisions in both games, but I can't really say that their treatment of newbies is one of them

[Aelieth]

I'm about done with this beta, after several games of either totally stomping or totally being stomped. The skill level and experience level difference is way too drastic. People will go up to 30/# in a game, just decimating the other team. Unfortunately I try to stop the process (because it frustrates me) but I usually end up against 2 of these players on the other team and things just snowball from there.

The other problem is, if I want to use a new mech the system matches me to high level opponents. It forces me to pull out my level 20 mechs, else I have to randomly join a game hoping I can get in a good one.

[Beemann]

The problem is that often matches are down to one team being stacked players-wise or skill-wise
It's hard to convince everyone to swap in the lobby, particularly when you don't know everyone's output until you've played a few matches with them

Even with a matchmaker though, the extreme skill discrepancy and brutally low population both in terms of single matches and in terms of matchmaker queue population, means that one player on the wrong team = steamroll

Honestly I'd love to just start a custom server and invite people into it, and then form balanced teams using good old human brainpower like what used to happen in Snorlax and PugAgenda in Global Agenda
I'd also advocate playing Sahara Missile Assault only in said server, because Titan gives me framerate drops, and I keep getting stuck on invisible walls and tiny bits of terrain
Also because Missile Assault is still my favourite gamemode, if only for the fact that it's objective based AND your victims drop delicious health nuggets

[defekt]

Matchmaking has been stated (by the devs) to factor in various aspects of a player’s details, including the level of their mechs.  Given how dramatic the difference between a lvl0 and a lvl16-20 mech is¹, and that the matchmaking system has no way of knowing which of your mechs you intend to use, I really don’t see how this system can work.

For example, if I’m matched with the big kids based on the three lvl20+ mechs I have parked in my garage that are being polished by a troupe of semi-clad eastern European valet girls, and on my three years of game experience, but I want to start building up a new mech I’m going to be facing off against a tsunami of lvl20+s in my plodding, creaking lvl0.  I would be forced into playing well over 100 games² that I am being artificially outclassed in before I can even begin to start fighting back on mechanically level terms.  By any stretch of the imagination, how is that good matchmaking_

I don’t envy the developers on this one.  They’ve designed a game that in many respects defies adequate matchmaking and is going to end up pitting starting mechs against fully specced ones; it’s unavoidable, even with a huge player base.  This is going to affect how popular this game becomes.  To my mind the only way to mitigate these obvious disparities of matchmaking is to stop rewarding progress with straight buffs; this issue sits at the core of the problem.  If progress was rewarded with aesthetic baubles and sidegrade options then reliable and effective matchmaking could then be performed using career stats alone; let the game be decided by skill, not by partly comparing the height of players’ stacked buffs.

¹ Personally, a fully specced mech roughly doubles my score line.  The people who say that the bonuses are too small to notice clearly haven’t gone from a high level mech back to a starter one.  (I suspect such people are likely reflecting on the nigh on unnoticeable effects of gradual acclimatisation.)
² The current level curve indicates that it will take the average player, earning roughly 2500 XP per game, about 150 games to reach lvl 16 (being the level at which you get your full set of Skill Tree points).

[The_Silencer]

I vehemently suggest to take pings into consideration as well.

Edited by The_Silencer, November 12 2012 - 07:23 AM.

[Makhaon]

I noticed that a majority of games I have played have been unbalanced with one team dominating the other. It's hard to believe that it's always skill related. I assume that it has to be lower mechs and new pilots vs those who have been playing a while and have better gear.

Nobody likes to always be killed over and over. I don't think that's going to help people stick around. If you're always being picked off and don't have the dmg power to kill mechs on the other teams, then it's going to take forever to level up. They'll just find something else to do.

I know it's probably rough for matchmaking during Closed Beta, but at some point there has to be a cap or limit on what levels can be in the same match.

[The_Silencer]

An Auto-balance by Rank feature_ Sounds cool!

[Gestankfaust]

I played in three separate servers that were full 90% of the time. Played around 5-6 maps on each and only once or twice was it ever really lopsided. All found through the match maker. It's like it has been said. The more people playing, the better it works. Usually, for me, it only gets bad when there's only 6 or so on a server. So maybe the problem is in how it spread people out_ I dunno....

Edited by Gestankfaust, November 12 2012 - 11:25 AM.

[bacon_avenger]

What about having a cap on the mech level allowed to be deployed into a match along with the rest of the criteria_  I've not seen this floated out yet.

If a pilot doesn't have a mech of a low enough level, or they do and try to deploy a 20 in a match with a limit of 10, the game simply doesn't let them, or doesn't make the higher level mechs available in the garage.  I do think this would eliminate any perk-based advantages.