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Is the matchmaker drunk?

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#1
Nightfirebolt

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Am I imagining things, or is the matchmaker a little sketchy now?

 

I understand that MMR restrictions no longer apply when using the queue, and that's fine - we need high MMR players to be able to get into matches.

 

I also understand that all bets are off when it comes to mid-match leavers and joiners ruining the team balance.

 

What I don't understand is why the matchmaker will decide to stack one team or the other at the beginning of a match when no smurfs or parties are present.

 

This happens all. the. freaking. time. I've seen matches where three or four high MMR players are pitted against six fresh noobs. As far as I can tell, the matchmaker just puts people on teams completely at random, now. This did not seem to be the case back when ADH was still in control. I've noticed this change specifically since Reloaded started making changes to the queue.

 

Seriously, is the matchmaker code really this broken? If so, can anything be done about it?


Edited by Nightfirebolt, 26 October 2015 - 06:21 PM.


#2
GreyFa1con

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Agreed.

Sometimes feels like the code sometimes decided to just see how amazingly stacked it can make it.

And of course, it does this in the regular when the round starts 3v3.

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#3
OdinTheWise

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you might be encountering people using smurfs with mmr that dont reflect their skills 


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#4
Nightfirebolt

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you might be encountering people using smurfs with mmr that dont reflect their skills 

 

Read my post again.



#5
Kopra

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Two 1250 mmr players = one 2500 player. 

It's just logical.

Everything working as intended.™

 

????????


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#6
JeffMagnum

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#7
Pleasure_Mortar

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Aha! so i'm not crazy. I had a couple of matches, where we had only a few after match leavers so the teams should have been balanced well and the matches would have been really fun.

The matchmaker however dumped all the 2200+ players in one team repeatedly and put the rest 1500-1800 rated players in team target drone. The server was full. 6 vs. 6.

I knew from the begining how the matches would end. The only question was if we'd be beaten at a 1.5:1 or 2:1 ratio.

No smurfs were present.


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#8
Pumapaw

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Makes for a pointless game.  But i guess anything for the over 2100mmr players.


Edited by Pumapaw, 26 October 2015 - 04:57 PM.

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#9
kaiserschmarrn_

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Makes for a pointless game.  But i guess anything for the over 2100mmr players.

Stop bitçhing

 

If i want to play I'm just gonna play.

 

'Whoops, I have nowhere else to play and definitely chose to que into this match!'



#10
GreyFa1con

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I have no worries about smurfs, where I play.

Just wish they'd find a way to have smurfs represent their true MMR much more quickly.

And then have a more solid auto-balance.

TRIBES: Developed a server mod with 40 servers, 20 clans, and competitive league play.

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#11
Dawn_of_Ash

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If i want to play I'm just gonna play.

 

 

I laugh at this.

 

I'm sorry but...

 

Ha. I just wish.



#12
Dew

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Low-level parties (even just pairs of players) seem to be weighted far more heavily than they should be. If your server keeps dumping multiple 2500+ players on one team, you can probably be pretty certain the other team has a party.

 

Weighting parties is extremely tricky. High-MMR parties can be a real menace, but low level parties are basically equivalent to three random people and don't warrant any additional weighting.

 

EDIT: It would be neat if sub-1500 parties received no additional weighting and from 1500-3000 the weighting scaled with the average MMR of the party.


Edited by Dew, 26 October 2015 - 06:12 PM.

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#13
Nightfirebolt

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Low-level parties (even just pairs of players) seem to be weighted far more heavily than they should be. If your server keeps dumping multiple 2500+ players on one team, you can probably be pretty certain the other team has a party.

 

Nope. I've seen gross team imbalances like this happen plenty of times without any parties present.

 

Edited my original post to reflect this.


Edited by Nightfirebolt, 26 October 2015 - 06:21 PM.


#14
PsychedelicGrass

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The opposite happens to me most of the time.. it's me and the lower mmr players on one team and everyone with a higher mmr on the other :/

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#15
Rei

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A lot of times it'll put me into rooms over 1k under my MMR. It's also been doing that for about a year or more now anyway.



#16
M1lkshake

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I feel as if public games ending up uneven or unfair should be considered normal at this point in Hawken. People have been complaining about team balancing issues in Hawken for as long as I can remember playing the game. I'm not about to say that they aren't unfounded or justified complaints, but the dead horse has been beaten so many times it's practically a pulpy mess in the barn by now.

 

I won't speak for the current developers, but it's more likely than not that they're aware of it. Whether or not a working solution is possible, or if it's a high priority for them, or if they're just plain ignoring everyone is a mystery to me. At the same time, it doesn't matter very much to me.

 

Seeing as the game as is won't be changing for a while, it might be useful to consider changing your view of public games. I understand most people want to play in a game where both teams are evenly matched in skill and the final score is as close as it gets. Unfortunately, the odds of this happening are against you - even in many games besides Hawken. If a perfect solution exists, it hasn't arrived yet, so you might as well accept it for the time being.

 

My advice is this: lower your expectations for public games. Don't set your sights on victory and complain when you lose because you've been put on a team of random people you've never played with before. Most of the time it's just out of your control.

 

I think you have two options. Firstly, you can make the most of it. Personally, when I realize that my game is unbalanced, I put my focus into aiming or positioning myself as well as I can, regardless of which side is getting destroyed. It may not be as satisfying, but by the end of the round I've gained something that will carry on into the next game and onward.

 

Secondly, you can play Hawken competitively. Yes, this is obviously biased, but the point still stands. While I can't guarantee balance in every game, you can at least be sure that your victory/loss isn't the result of who you were or weren't randomly paired up with. Instead, it depends on you and your team's skill and ability to work together - a team that you spend a whole season with, as well, and not just ten minutes.

 

One way or another, I think these sorts of threads are more common than is productive. It's understandably frustrating, but instead of sitting around expecting someone else to do something, you should just do what you can yourself.


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#17
Dawn_of_Ash

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I feel as if public games ending up uneven or unfair should be considered normal at this point in Hawken. People have been complaining about team balancing issues in Hawken for as long as I can remember playing the game. I'm not about to say that they aren't unfounded or justified complaints, but the dead horse has been beaten so many times it's practically a pulpy mess in the barn by now.

 

I won't speak for the current developers, but it's more likely than not that they're aware of it. Whether or not a working solution is possible, or if it's a high priority for them, or if they're just plain ignoring everyone is a mystery to me. At the same time, it doesn't matter very much to me.

 

Seeing as the game as is won't be changing for a while, it might be useful to consider changing your view of public games. I understand most people want to play in a game where both teams are evenly matched in skill and the final score is as close as it gets. Unfortunately, the odds of this happening are against you - even in many games besides Hawken. If a perfect solution exists, it hasn't arrived yet, so you might as well accept it for the time being.

 

My advice is this: lower your expectations for public games. Don't set your sights on victory and complain when you lose because you've been put on a team of random people you've never played with before. Most of the time it's just out of your control.

 

I think you have two options. Firstly, you can make the most of it. Personally, when I realize that my game is unbalanced, I put my focus into aiming or positioning myself as well as I can, regardless of which side is getting destroyed. It may not be as satisfying, but by the end of the round I've gained something that will carry on into the next game and onward.

 

Secondly, you can play Hawken competitively. Yes, this is obviously biased, but the point still stands. While I can't guarantee balance in every game, you can at least be sure that your victory/loss isn't the result of who you were or weren't randomly paired up with. Instead, it depends on you and your team's skill and ability to work together - a team that you spend a whole season with, as well, and not just ten minutes.

 

One way or another, I think these sorts of threads are more common than is productive. It's understandably frustrating, but instead of sitting around expecting someone else to do something, you should just do what you can yourself.

 

You raise good points and I agree with you in many of them. However, I also disagree.

 

Yes, this subject has been beaten too much and frankly there's no right answer as you have mentioned - I am also against similar threads where there is no real result achieved through heated debate. But I think we should keep in mind, that this is not a game like COD where you could be like "oh well, I did bad that time, at least I had fun", this is a game one where, when you lose, it is incredibly frustrating. What you have mentioned is viable for 90% of people who check this forum, however the 10% who do check are also new players who quit the game after one incredibly frustrating game of bad matchmaking.

 

I think we can see where I'm going with this...

 

I still think the devs should just release servers where no one over 1700/1800+ can enter. It seems to be one of very few options which can keep us happy while also not destroying the game for newer players an giving them a false view of the game before they even truly play it. It also should be a high priority. 


Edited by Dawn_of_Ash, 26 October 2015 - 11:51 PM.

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#18
Grizzled

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A symptom of the problem may be that unlike COD or other twitch games, a lucky or random shot alone wont kill an experienced player. There are no one shot kills, and with the play style that is predominant, you will only rarely get a lucky one.

 

On the other hand, the health has been reduced from where it was in beta, so its not primarily a tactical game, twitch matters, its just not king. 

 

Increase health or reduce it, increase damage or reduce it. 

 

These things will have positive and negative effects on the game.

 

As for trying to shut down the discussion? too many of these threads? don't read em! you actually have better things to do than get pissed reading a thread you don't like. Who am I to tell you what to do? No one do what the hell makes you happy or unhappy, whatever the hell you want!



#19
Rei

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I also understand that all bets are off when it comes to mid-match leavers and joiners ruining the team balance.

Also I wish more people would realize this. I see so many people complaining about balance after joining mid-match.


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#20
Nightfirebolt

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I feel as if public games ending up uneven or unfair should be considered normal at this point in Hawken. People have been complaining about team balancing issues in Hawken for as long as I can remember playing the game. I'm not about to say that they aren't unfounded or justified complaints, but the dead horse has been beaten so many times it's practically a pulpy mess in the barn by now.

 

I know that the matchmaker has always been a little broken, and no, I do not expect every match to be perfect. My point was that the matchmaker has gotten far worse since Reloaded made changes to it (maybe you didn't read my whole post?)


Edited by Nightfirebolt, 27 October 2015 - 09:57 PM.


#21
awtc

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Matchmaking might just as well be completely random or based on player names (maximum distribution of starting letters) at this point. On the same day, I'm in matches where I dominate the entire other team (me!), and next up the only match I'm allowed to join (because the rest is supposedly out of my skill level) is against players waaay out of my league. Maybe one out of ten matches has a well-working balancing in it and finishes rather close, but you'd get similar rates with random distribution. :sad:

When you see that the best players from the previous match are put in one team and the worst ones are put into one, there's something downright wrong with the mechanism. What is MM even supposed to be based on?


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#22
(P:B)Augmentia

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I was placed in a 1600 match yesterday while streaming. I got something like 27 kills average for the next three games. Then I felt bad/got bored and left, and re queued for another match.


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#23
Term___

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its been months since I had an evenly matched game,  most are 40 - 5   etc,

I either get myself on the winning team and its so easy its untrue,  or on a team of noobs against top players, where u are constantly overwhelmed, and stand no chance at all

I left Hawken once before,  but came back,  this time i just cant see enough promise in this game to sustain my interest.

 



#24
The_Silencer

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Sometimes it works well whilst other times it seems to be not performing so well.. nevertheless, that's my personal impresion; here at my end.

 

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#25
GreyFa1con

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It works semi-decently.

However it certainly seems to have some bias for keeping the majority of the same players together.

Routinely, if things do get unbalanced, it often takes 3 or 4 rounds for it to kick in.

Often leaving the 3 best players on the server, on the same team, over and over.

-

But the main problem is that there's literally no balance applied to late joiners.

Which can such when things are balanced, then after chatting for 30 seconds, the best player on one teams drops. Some newb takes his spot. Then some genuinely good player joins the other side, stacking things like crazy.
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#26
Pleasure_Mortar

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IMO it's not only the match maker screwing up. I played good matches with high tier players in mid tier servers, because the knew they could waste the enemy team singlehandedly but they either held back and/or used mechs/loadouts they are not too familiar with.

Then there are those who seem to intentionelly seek out lower ranked matches to show the how amazing they can tear throught everyone with their scout, despite higher ranked matches being available.

What a show; a 2200+ player shredding players that barely know how to dodge and the server is then rated 1800. 

I encountered those tpye of games way more often than good games lately so I decided to take a break from Hawken.


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#27
Sorroritas

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Then there are those who seem to intentionelly seek out lower ranked matches to show the how amazing they can tear throught everyone with their scout, despite higher ranked matches being available.

Are you playing in EU Pleasure_Mortar?

The last 2-3 days there's been 2 (higher mmr) pilots I know of that intentionally joined and left every game after a stomp to join into another low mmr match in progress to destroy balance and stomp. (Yes, the one pilot I analyzed joined lower mmr servers while higher mmr servers where available)

 

Apart from those deliberate attempts to destroy balance manually, I have been noticing that the matchmaker also distributes higher mmr players evenly across servers. Meaning instead of having 1-2 servers full of higher mmr players, we get like 5-6 servers with 1-2 high mmr players each and the rest being way lower mmr players.

It might only be me but I did notice this happening after we loosened the server restrictions.

 

In addition to that even in a perfect environment of almost nobody (1-2 players max) leaving a match that was nicely balanced the autobalancer just seems to look at its deck of player cards and, instead of trying to balance it for the next match, just plays 52 Pickup throws them into the air and doesn't care where they will land.

 

All in all balanced matches are a rare sight regardless of game mode. (at least on EU servers)

And regardless of what measures anyone will take there WILL be someone unsatisfied with the results.


Edited by Sorroritas, 03 November 2015 - 05:33 AM.

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#28
Pleasure_Mortar

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yup I'm playing in EU.

 

I think it has gotten way worse since the tinkering with the match maker and it's still going downhill.

 

There seem to be a new fad; destroying scrubs in large numbers, or lets see how many scrubs do I have to waste to keep my MMR up even in a match 600 below my rating?


Edited by Pleasure_Mortar, 03 November 2015 - 07:48 AM.


#29
StubbornPuppet

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Well, to respectfully contradict an earlier comment:  Yes, new players joining the match are considered by the balancer... in the most simple and efficient way possible.

 

Incoming players are either placed on the team with the fewest players or, if teams are even, placed on the losing team.  That is the only way to do it without forcing all players who join a match in progress to sit in limbo until a sufficient number of other players are also waiting in limbo for it to create balance.  Nobody would sit for that, they'd leave and start a new match.


To be serious for a moment this is just a joke

 


#30
Nightfirebolt

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I think it has gotten way worse since the tinkering with the match maker and it's still going downhill.

 

There seem to be a new fad; destroying scrubs in large numbers, or lets see how many scrubs do I have to waste to keep my MMR up even in a match 600 below my rating?

 

This may be the reason why Hawken's average players are the lowest they've been in over a year and a half.

 

How do we expect to retain players when they are repeatedly curbstomped after signing up?

 

The answer is: We can't.

 

In my opinon, we still need dedicated servers for new players.


Edited by Nightfirebolt, 03 November 2015 - 01:15 PM.

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#31
Hyginos

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error. wrong thread.


Edited by Hyginos, 03 November 2015 - 01:30 PM.

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#32
GreyFa1con

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This may be the reason why Hawken's average players are the lowest they've been in over a year and a half.

How do we expect to retain players when they are repeatedly curbstomped after signing up?

The answer is: We can't.

In my opinon, we still need dedicated servers for new players.


Can't happen, given smurfs.

What you can do however is assume all newbie pubstompers are smurfs, and shoot their MMR up to 1800 in two rounds, then requeue them in a different pub after the second round ends.

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#33
Nightfirebolt

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Can't happen, given smurfs.

 

Not all pubstompers are smurfs, though. I've seen plenty of pubstompers who are on their mains. Since Reloaded adjusted the matchmaker, anybody can get into a match with anyone if they use the queue.

 

I agree that dedicated newbie servers wouldn't stop pubstomping completely, but it sure would go a long ways to reducing it and thereby help retain new players.


Edited by Nightfirebolt, 04 November 2015 - 03:10 PM.

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#34
GreyFa1con

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Not all pubstompers are smurfs, though. I've seen plenty of pubstompers who are on their mains. Since Reloaded adjusted the matchmaker, anybody can get into a match with anyone if they use the queue.

I agree that dedicated newbie servers wouldn't stop pubstomping completely, but it sure would go a long ways to reducing it and thereby help retain new players.


Do both then.

And like said, I see no problem in kicking low level pubstompers up to the big leagues.

If they can't cut it, then they'll fall back down in MMR.
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#35
Pleasure_Mortar

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Today I joined a TDM match, score 0 : 27
They didn't even get one kill in 5 minutes.



#36
MomOw

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Played a few games yesterday with the top of the EU leaderboard, even with no bad players games can be one sided


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#37
Pleasure_Mortar

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Yesterday must have been the day of unbalanced games.






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