66 replies to this topic

[MomOw]

I think that there are enough TDM servers to have some restricted to specific MMR range.

Also they could remove 7vs7 from normal queuing and make them "pubs" without MMR restrictions.

 

In addition make Laïla gives advice so that new players learn to check their FPS and ping. "To enjoy the Hawken experience check that your ping is below 90 and your framerate above 60" or stuff like that.

[DieselCat]

We've addressed the high and low, how bout the poor slob in the middle... the sub-1800 mmr player?

 

 

That's right..you're talk'in to me  

[Flifang]

There are times of the day where there are a good enough number of players in he 2k+ range to be playing, however they're all spread out. One or two here and there is a missed opportunity and at that point I and likely others have to pick the lesser of two evils. Which match will I affect the least with my presence? There needs to be servers within a certain range set aside so people won't funnel into the best game and end up diluting all of the mmr ranges of the severs.

[fAEth]

I've read through the thread, & just wanted to say I'm in agreeance about the "newbie/rookie server(s)"; it could go off pilot level + MMR so if you hit Pilot level 30 you can't play there any more, OR if you hit ... I don't know an arbitrary 1800 MMR before Pilot level 30 you can't play those servers any more.

 

This way everybody will get a chance to at least *experience* the game, which is the important thing. This game needs more players. Plenty of these new people probably come from other FPS games & COULD end up being really good ... if they gave HAWKEN a chance. Thing is, HAWKEN is so different from other FPS games that if they're good at L4D2 or UT they might try out HAWKEN but ultimately quit after one or even two matches of being stomped which eliminates that player from ever coming back.

 

The 1800 MMR is a random number & could be adjusted accordingly; but at least servers dedicated to Pilot Level 29 & below would be a great start. Up to Pilot Level 30 is basically the HAWKEN tutorial.

[wolfrock]

There are just not enough people playing SG or MA during off-peak (e.g., afternoon) hours, especially in North America, where it's just 24m TDM etc, to support more than 1 or two servers at the same time, especially at low times of the day. The game mix in Europe seems better during those times (makes sense).

 

There was this time I wanted to play some good sieges but the only one going on was the (almost full) 24m Bunker SG in Ashburn, SRD was 1000-2800. I didn't want to play bad enough, I guess. Could I have jumped on and typed in chat "hey, can we just break into 2 servers?" I guess I'll do that next time.

 

See ya WW.

[Hek_naw]

I apologize for bringing ideas up front. Please bear with me. 

 

A way to tackle MMR disparity temporarily (while there isn't enough activity) would be to prevent the matchmaker from sending all queued players to the same server. (The following is an overall plan for solving this particular problem)

 

I present you, Dynamic Capacity Servers!

 

How does it work?

- By default, such a server is low capacity (6 max).

- The matchmaker prioritizes sending higher MMR players to a dynamic capacity server.

- When server is full (6 players), game starts.

- The matchmaker notifiies it when it detects a high MMR player¹ in the queue. The server then increases capacity.

- If even players quit, server capacity reduces accordingly.

- Lower MMR players in queue aren't assigned to a server until all higher MMR players have joined the dynamic capacity server.

 

Pros:

- Prevents major MMR disparity in times of general low player activity.

- A player may still manually join such a server (MMR permitting) if there's an open slot.

- High MMR players are guaranteed to receive enough players to start a game ².

- These servers still set a theoretical maximum for when activity picks up (i.e. 12 players)

 

Cons:

- High MMR players aren't guaranteed to play in a populated server unless they are lucky.

- Low MMR players might have to wait longer or cancel the wait and try another game mode / server browser.

 

 

¹ Suitable to join the server as per current matchmaking rules.

² With the same matchmaking process we have so far, see IareDave's post.

 

 

Imagine if this had been at work in the case mentioned by Nightfirebolt (opening post). As said above, the matchmaker was working as intended. But now, with the temporary measure in place, the available top MMR players would be playing against each other, and the newbie plus the rest of the earthly players would be in their own server.

 

(I am sorry for this is all concept and theory, and not knowing the MM internals I can't present an actual algorithm which would be of more value to the developers, but this is the best I can do.)

Edited by Hek_naw, 08 June 2015 - 11:11 PM.

[Shoutaxeror]

Make 3 pvp leagues :

 

"Training" league (0-1600 mmr players) : Optionnal. New players should start with this, smurfs shall not.

"Battlefield" league (like, yeah, you fight for real) : Everyone can join.

"Expert" league : Only people with 2000+ mmr can join.

 

(1600 mmr cap and 2000 mmr cap are just random numbers ideas)

 

This way, new players would only play between themselves. Casuals would fight peacefuly in the "battelfield", sometimes facing one smurf farming xp to reach the third league, or one "expert" (yeah that sounds uncool) because there were not enough 2000+ mmr players.

 

Would it works ? Well, at least, make ONLY the noob league. It shall be clear that, even if optionnal, you HAVE to begin with this when you're a new player.

[talons1337]

OK why are there not 2600+ ONLY servers? Then they would have all the matches they want.

Haha yes on that one day where they happen to all be on at the same time and then they'd never be seen again lol smart idea amirite guis. And then consider people with, say, 2000 MMR. They can easily clean any low level match but they'd not be able to join the 2600+ server or whatever. Mostly, high MMR players aren't on at the same time - certainly not enough to get a match going at even 2300+. Your idea would only make things worse for everyone, you'd have high range players not able to get into any games, and lower players would continue to get rekt because the change would undeniable force people into using smurfs.

[Nightfirebolt]

I'm bumping this thread.

 

Yesterday I was in a server that had two top-tier players in it (one was in the top 20, one was in the top 100). They were up against someone who had literally installed the game less than a week ago.

 

After getting his ass kicked over and over again, this new player said: "I can see why people don't want to play this game."

 

I tried to be as nice and courteous as I could to this new player, offered to give them tips and practice with them, but they basically said that they'd be quitting the game that night.

 

This needs to stop. The matchmaker needs to be fixed, or we need dedicated servers for new players.

Edited by Nightfirebolt, 22 June 2015 - 12:55 PM.

[CraftyDus]

I'm bumping this thread.

 

Yesterday I was in a server that had two top-tier players in it (one was in the top 20, one was in the top 100). They were up against someone who had literally installed the game less than a week ago.

 

After getting his ass kicked over and over again, this new player said: "I can see why people don't want to play this game."

 

I tried to be as nice and courteous as I could to this new player, offered to give them tips and practice with them, but they basically said that they'd be quitting the game that night.

 

This needs to stop. The matchmaker needs to be fixed, or we need dedicated servers for new players.

 

that guy was a smurf and said that sarcastically

[Nightfirebolt]

that guy was a smurf and said that sarcastically

 

1) Pretty sure you weren't there, so how would you know?

 

2) If he was a smurf, he was deliberately playing like crap and letting us slaughter him for several matches in a row,

 

And 3) Either way, I have seen new players get thrown to the top 20 dogs multiple times now, and in some cases they stick it out, in some cases they ragequit, and in others they outright say that Hawken sucks and that they're uninstalling,

 

Something still needs to be done.

Edited by Nightfirebolt, 22 June 2015 - 06:13 PM.

[Onstrava]

It really isn't that hard to come up with ideas but why make it complicated, just take an idea from a game that already does it well enough. LoL (League of Legends) for those who don't know. The players MMR matches them up in different leagues so you don't face the best of the best until you're ready. Of course smurf accounts will always be made but those account will be bumped up pretty fast, just like in LoL.

• Bronze: Between 0 and 1149
• Silver: Between 1150 and 1499
• Gold: Between 1500 and 1849
• Platinum: Between 1850 and 2199
• Diamond: 2200 and above

[Flifang]

I think if MM were updated so that extreme cases of preformance changes your mmr more. I have pretty bad cases where I just can't preform in game and when I do play at my best I play at around a 2400+ level. This as in the case of a match this morning screws with balance. I was in a match after a bad day before and was playing at a 2300 level at least and then my mmr was probably sub 2000. I know it's a unlikely thing to happen but I believe a more reactive and adaptive mm system would do wonders for this game

[Call_Me_Ishmael]

I think if MM were updated so that extreme cases of preformance changes your mmr more. I have pretty bad cases where I just can't preform in game and when I do play at my best I play at around a 2400+ level. This as in the case of a match this morning screws with balance. I was in a match after a bad day before and was playing at a 2300 level at least and then my mmr was probably sub 2000. I know it's a unlikely thing to happen but I believe a more reactive and adaptive mm system would do wonders for this game

 

Yeah, I go through cycles, too.  Mornings, after a good night's sleep, with coffee, I wreck.  Saturday and Sundays I can carry that wreckage through the early afternoon.

 

I wish that our current rating system did not penalize MMR so strongly for one or two bad matches, especially over your current level.

 

I think the easier fix is adding more MMR artificially for scoring in first place in a server below yours; this may lead to single instances of abuse, but anyone artificially inflating will either not find matches, or be 'corrected' by the top-ten.

[GalaxyRadio]

This all leads to just 1 thing, we have not enough player in hawken to fill the server in +/- 100 range only.

 

What we have, and i said that more then enough are just New Player or Old Veterans playing this game, there is almost nothing between this. Because of this almost every game is unbalanced and Misse Assault/Siege more then TDM could be.

 

We just need much more player, at least 10x more then NOW, then and only then Matchmaking could work. If we use a correctly matchmaking systen NOW, we would end in trying to get into a game 1 time in a Hour, maybe.... Therefore New Players and Veterans would stop playing.

 

Another problem is, if someone is sitting out, he is loosing mmr (like i do very often), so my mmr drops and don't represence my real strength, which is another problem add to thosse above.

 

What we need in frist place is more marketing, new maps, mechs, stuff to buy in the shop and in the end, with some hope, more players because of new exiting content. Until then we have to live with what we have and dont frequently destroy new players, even if that means to loose the round. But i can understand people, playing only 30min a day don't want to be nice or sit out just to play the game for maybe 10min a day...

 

So, the main problem is still the lack of player population and i don't want to hear "hawken has this and this and sooo many accounts" It dosn't matter if not a bunch of it is playing. We don't even have 1000 player and they are spreading already into 4 regions, so they can't play together....

 

Galaxy Radio

[CraftyDus]

1) Pretty sure you weren't there, so how would you know?

 

2) If he was a smurf, he was deliberately playing like crap and letting us slaughter him for several matches in a row,

 

And 3) Either way, I have seen new players get thrown to the top 20 dogs multiple times now, and in some cases they stick it out, in some cases they ragequit, and in others they outright say that Hawken sucks and that they're uninstalling,

 

Something still needs to be done.

 

1) I was there for your entire exchange with him he played the assault, it was on wreckage

 

2) He played fine and "we" wern't "slaughtering" him for several matches in a row

 

3)  What needs to be done is the eradication of a match making system altogether

[StubbornPuppet]

 

- punish high MMR players for pubstomping (negative effect on MMR or implement a pubstomper rating)

 

 

I really like all of your post, but you really don't want to do that^.  That will just give them access to increasingly lower and lower ranked matches and exacerbate the problem. ;)

[HHJFTRU]

I really like all of your post, but you really don't want to do that^.  That will just give them access to increasingly lower and lower ranked matches and exacerbate the problem. ;)

Meanwhile I myself learned that this wouldn't be the best solution, and pubstomping that is carried out on main accounts is not happening so often as I felt back then when I posted this.

However, I think that people who do pubstomping on their main account do care about their MMR and don't want to intentionally join lower MMR servers if they lose MMR. But this would also impact players who just use the Queue because there is no other option for them to get in games so that's why I think this soulution would be bad.

On the other hand, new accounts (no matter if they are smurfs or just skilled new players) should get their MMRs increased real fast (like 5x faster than normally) if they appear to be MVPing all their matches.

[hoghead]

I'm just glad I'm as good as I am!     Upper 700% yea baby!!!

Edited by hoghead, 25 June 2015 - 02:38 AM.

[Nov8tr]

LOL, Hoghead. It was fun playing with you the other day. Thanks for the match. :D

[thirtysix]

Most of the suggestions here are great. But I believe the bigger picture needs to be addressed before hand.

 

WHAT IS HAWKEN?

 

Is it a FPS, is it a MECH shooter, is it supposed to be a combination of those... something different?

 

Since I started playing Hawken the meta has changed 4 times, good, bad or indifferent.

Hawken needs to find it's niche, embrace it, build it from there...

I believe once this has been done we will see our beloved game flourish and prosper.

[StubbornPuppet]

I disagree.  To H. E. Double Hockey Sticks with "labels".  Hawken doesn't need to decide what it is, IT IS WHAT IT IS.

[(KDR) SethUK]

All we need are some rookie level TDM servers with a max MMR in place. If there was a higher player count I would also suggest this for the other games modes but it hard enough to fill MA/SG server at the best of times on EU.

[Pumapaw]

Me being the evil cat that I am always point out that a super high MMR is on the server.  But whats the difference with all the smurf accounts damage has been done for over a year. Games population is again on a decline.

[HHJFTRU]

I again have insight on the 1300 servers as my son created his pilot and started to play the game. 8 out of 10 matches has a smurf in it. I saw several times players chat 'I suck at this game' and leave. It makes me real sad.

I think that the solution was pointed out on this forum many times and it is not hard to implement.

Rookie servers + fast MMR adjustment in the first few pilot levels.

Devs, please.

[thirtysix]

I disagree.  To H. E. Double Hockey Sticks with "labels".  Hawken doesn't need to decide what it is, IT IS WHAT IT IS.

 

Unfortunately Hawken is a business and does need to labeled, if for nothing else marketing. Sorry if this disappoints but face it, they gotta make money or it's gonna go bye bye.

[KarlSchlag]

It reminds me something...
 

I can tell ya people: Life as a seabird sucks... hate these crabs.