Please remove premades from reg pvp

[KendraP]

 

Jebez can't people just "Shut The Fock UP" about this topic, unless they got a carefully thought out argument.. I mean seriously..

 

 

hypocrite much? you're the one that revived the thread.

[Mannok]

Nice, trying to frame it like that. Edited December 8, 2018 by Mannok

[Mannok]

@ Kissingaiur /deleted post.

 

Hint. Don't bite off more than you can chew.

 

Yeah people are repeating things alot (including yourself) and ignores 2-4 posts (or multiple pages), that cleared misunderstandings and arguments on previous pages. Like separate que and the not defined "Premade" term, that was just used ad libitum. All of which, was cleared out of the way like 3-4 times. Some might say, that some seem to be doing it on purpose to insult and instigate, rather than contribute... So this thread has been diabolic (including most of your posts and the previous post above). FYI - https://www.swtor.com/legalnotices/rulesofconduct

 

We don't know how the matchmaker works in any real detail? We know how they want it to function and that is it. I will re-affirm what I know and make up my own mind anyway. So take the hint...

 

 

My 2 ideas are still around.

max 3 man Premades for Regz and max 1 Support per Premade. To make it harder to bypass the matchmaker (and create 2+ Support advantages) and to avoid the worst situations with 4-man facestomping.

 

Both with the goal to make Regz more friendly to New and more Casual players and that is it.

 

 

I am off, this is like willingly getting the flu.

- Michael Jackson Edited December 9, 2018 by Mannok

[VaeVictis]

Aside from try-hard voice com fotm trinity premades

 

Do these really even exist anymore? I mean certainly up until roughly the start of 4.0 I ran in these crews...fotm builds, gear requirements, grenades, voice coordination, player rankings, theory crafting, practice sessions...

 

The last year or two though premade for me has been me and whatever friends happen to be on drunkenly teaming just having fun. If voice comms are involved it's just conversation. I mean the overall talent level of PvP these days simply doesn't justify the old school level of premade commitment while the hyperbole in these threads make it seem like there are dozens of adderall'd up kill squads out there hunting pubbies.

 

Nowadays I usually don't even bother with grabbing a healer much less a tank and still win >90%.

[Seterade]

Do these really even exist anymore? I mean certainly up until roughly the start of 4.0 I ran in these crews...fotm builds, gear requirements, grenades, voice coordination, player rankings, theory crafting, practice sessions...

 

The last year or two though premade for me has been me and whatever friends happen to be on drunkenly teaming just having fun. If voice comms are involved it's just conversation. I mean the overall talent level of PvP these days simply doesn't justify the old school level of premade commitment while the hyperbole in these threads make it seem like there are dozens of adderall'd up kill squads out there hunting pubbies.

 

Nowadays I usually don't even bother with grabbing a healer much less a tank and still win >90%.

 

the issue with it is, lets assume you queue solo and have a good idea of every dcd/rotation in the game, you are maybe 1 out of 8, 2 out of 8 if you are lucky and then 2 dps and a pocket tnk and hlr spawn kill your entire team. you cant do anything about it. its not a question of comms, or talent, or comp. its the fact that its a full comp team in max gear (gear disparity is a problem but thats for anther day) and all 4 of them have above average coordination and counter knowledge.

 

a pug cant even begin to dent them, let alone "farm" them.

 

this games solidarity/you cant kill me is designed around 4 man hlr/tnk/2dps. its this way in pve too, in fact if it wasnt for certain mechanics and rage timers, ops could be done with 4 people

Edited December 10, 2018 by Seterade

[KendraP]

What are we arguing over now?

 

If we like dev notes, from the patch notes themselves:

-Matchmaking will more strongly take player skill into account when making teams.

-Premade groups queuing for Ranked and Unranked Warzones and GSF will now have their matchmaking skill based on the highest rated member, not the team’s average rating.

https://www.swtor.com/patchnotes/872018/game-update-5.9.2-galactic-legend

 

So now lets do some extrapolating. Assume there are at least 16 people on. Then, there are enough people for a warzone, not an arena. How does it distrbute them? Per the devs words:

-Under typical conditions, matchmaking will try not to place more than two tanks or healers on the same team in a Warzone or one tank or healer for an Arena.

-Matchmaking will always do its best to balance the number of tanks and healers on each team. If there are two healers, each team will receive one if possible; the same is true of tanks.

-In situations where there are an odd number of tanks / healers, matchmaking will do its best to place the combined number of tanks and healers evenly (example: there are three healers and one tank, matchmaking will attempt to make the teams two healers vs one tank and one healer).

 

It will not split up a premade BUT you can queue at MOST 1h + 1t, which follows the guidance they were giving us above.

 

For simplicity's sake, I assume they account for premade first (they have not yet been dumb enough to split it), then account for role (so my premade has 1T + 1H, the next 2 support roles go to the opposing team), Then it accounts for skill.

 

So assuming out of these 16 people there is my 4 man premade, AND an additional 2 support roles, each team has 2 supports (so 4/16). Then my entire premade gets the "rating" of my best player (this is apparently indisputable because it comes from on high -i.e. the devs).

 

Now the extrapolation - i assume the skill based balance is simplistic in nature, most likely a mere average. So because my 4 people all get the highest score, no matter whether i bring my main or my guild joke slinger, we are going to bring the average score of whatever team we are on up. How does the matchmaker, then, account for this?

 

Seemingly, by "accounting for skill", it matches us with the 4 lowest players out of the aforementioned 16, thus bringing the overall average down.

 

The problem with the strategy is there are too many outliers - good and bad - and not enough population to overwhelm the outliers with "average" players. Or, if we prefer more fancy sounding terms, i would bet the player skill distribution is not normal- i think it is skewed toward either extrema (there are a lot of good and bad players). This distinctly contradicts using the average as a masure of central tendency because an average only works as a true measure of central tendency for a normal distribution.

 

As an example, taking an average damage value off any ability is meaningless, because sometimes it crits and sometimes it doesn't. This means ability damage values tend to be distinctly non-normal (i.e. they do not follow a normal distribution) so you need 2 measures of central tendency - an average crit and an average non-crit, essentially.

 

To ranked players, i would ask - if i was to take all the ranked scores off the leaderboard and make a histogram, what would it look like? Is the distribution of rankings normal? How do they do matchmaking for ranked? Assuming its a similar sort of average elo system, it is meaningless if the underlying distrbution of player skill is not normal. If you are to be believed, a large number of bad players queue for mats, which results in a large number of outliers, thus skewing the player skill distribution, and thus contraindicating their averaging tendency.

 

To summarize, matchmaking based on averaging only works for a population that tends to normalcy (obedience to a nornal distrbution). If the population is small enough such that outliers have a substantial impact on the distrbution, the average is a bad measure of central tendency, and their entire matchmaking system falls apart. In short, an average is statistically meaningless for a non-normal distribution.

 

Thus, again, at its core, the issue comes down to POPULATION. There are simply not enough people to GUARANTEE a fair match, and all any further restrictions to average - above average players is going to do is run more people off.

 

And thus, it comes down to again - your choice is to deal with it, or get no pops at all.

 

Edit: for the mathematically challenged https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_tendency

Edited December 10, 2018 by KendraP

[kissingaiur]

What are we arguing over now?

 

If we like dev notes, from the patch notes themselves:

-Matchmaking will more strongly take player skill into account when making teams.

-Premade groups queuing for Ranked and Unranked Warzones and GSF will now have their matchmaking skill based on the highest rated member, not the team’s average rating.

https://www.swtor.com/patchnotes/872018/game-update-5.9.2-galactic-legend

 

So now lets do some extrapolating. Assume there are at least 16 people on. Then, there are enough people for a warzone, not an arena. How does it distrbute them? Per the devs words:

-Under typical conditions, matchmaking will try not to place more than two tanks or healers on the same team in a Warzone or one tank or healer for an Arena.

-Matchmaking will always do its best to balance the number of tanks and healers on each team. If there are two healers, each team will receive one if possible; the same is true of tanks.

-In situations where there are an odd number of tanks / healers, matchmaking will do its best to place the combined number of tanks and healers evenly (example: there are three healers and one tank, matchmaking will attempt to make the teams two healers vs one tank and one healer).

 

It will not split up a premade BUT you can queue at MOST 1h + 1t, which follows the guidance they were giving us above.

 

For simplicity's sake, I assume they account for premade first (they have not yet been dumb enough to split it), then account for role (so my premade has 1T + 1H, the next 2 support roles go to the opposing team), Then it accounts for skill.

 

So assuming out of these 16 people there is my 4 man premade, AND an additional 2 support roles, each team has 2 supports (so 4/16). Then my entire premade gets the "rating" of my best player (this is apparently indisputable because it comes from on high -i.e. the devs).

 

Now the extrapolation - i assume the skill based balance is simplistic in nature, most likely a mere average. So because my 4 people all get the highest score, no matter whether i bring my main or my guild joke slinger, we are going to bring the average score of whatever team we are on up. How does the matchmaker, then, account for this?

 

Seemingly, by "accounting for skill", it matches us with the 4 lowest players out of the aforementioned 16, thus bringing the overall average down.

 

The problem with the strategy is there are too many outliers - good and bad - and not enough population to overwhelm the outliers with "average" players. Or, if we prefer more fancy sounding terms, i would bet the player skill distribution is not normal- i think it is skewed toward either extrema (there are a lot of good and bad players). This distinctly contradicts using the average as a masure of central tendency because an average only works as a true measure of central tendency for a normal distribution.

 

As an example, taking an average damage value off any ability is meaningless, because sometimes it crits and sometimes it doesn't. This means ability damage values tend to be distinctly non-normal (i.e. they do not follow a normal distribution) so you need 2 measures of central tendency - an average crit and an average non-crit, essentially.

 

To ranked players, i would ask - if i was to take all the ranked scores off the leaderboard and make a histogram, what would it look like? Is the distribution of rankings normal? How do they do matchmaking for ranked? Assuming its a similar sort of average elo system, it is meaningless if the underlying distrbution of player skill is not normal. If you are to be believed, a large number of bad players queue for mats, which results in a large number of outliers, thus skewing the player skill distribution, and thus contraindicating their averaging tendency.

 

To summarize, matchmaking based on averaging only works for a population that tends to normalcy (obedience to a nornal distrbution). If the population is small enough such that outliers have a substantial impact on the distrbution, the average is a bad measure of central tendency, and their entire matchmaking system falls apart. In short, an average is statistically meaningless for a non-normal distribution.

 

Thus, again, at its core, the issue comes down to POPULATION. There are simply not enough people to GUARANTEE a fair match, and all any further restrictions to average - above average players is going to do is run more people off.

 

And thus, it comes down to again - your choice is to deal with it, or get no pops at all.

 

Edit: for the mathematically challenged https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_tendency

 

Your post is thought out and constructive to this thread. I think your last statement is something I also have been echoing this whole time, to deal with these changes or get no pops. Majority will BabyRage over this statement forever.

 

I think everyone should be appalled in general at players here bluntly lying (or under educated about the facts) and arguing semantic. It does nothing but make this whole thread more less creditable or worth reading. Just because some players aren’t a developer or see the code for themselves, they think they can use the cop out that “we dont reallllly know what’s really happening”. While there is a lot of evidence to support what *is* happens using what developers given us and what’s is realistically happening within the game community; player base and population. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see why things in pvp are as they are.

Edited December 10, 2018 by kissingaiur

[Stellarcrusade]

Pretty much all MMOs allow matches to be ruined by premades mixed with non-premades. Some are a better at balancing them out with equal premades on each team, but none are very good at that because even with a huge population that is nearly impossible.

 

The first major MMO to split premades in pvp to achieve balance will immediately have the BEST PVP in the gaming universe. Really sad that 3 out of every 10 wars is a waste of time as it isn't a match at all.

[Rion_Starkiller]

The problems I see with the current "matchmaking" in pvp based on my experience as solo queuer below:

 

 

• Matchmaking puts generic PvE guilds against ranked-titled pvp guilds.
  
• When someone leaves a match, the game backfills anyone of any skill level.
  
  • People are leaving the match because they searched to see what players they are against.
    
  • People are leaving the match because they hate the map.
    

 

Maybe pvp should be completely random

Edited December 10, 2018 by Rion_Starkiller

[KendraP]

The problems I see with the current "matchmaking" in pvp based on my experience as solo queuer below:

 

 

• Matchmaking puts generic PvE guilds against ranked-titled pvp guilds.
  
• When someone leaves a match, the game backfills anyone of any skill level.
  
  • People are leaving the match because they searched to see what players they are against.
    
  • People are leaving the match because they hate the map.
    

 

Maybe pvp should be completely random

 

It all comes back to the probability distribution. What is the probability that, if you lost a healer, another one is waiting to backfill?

 

What is the probability that if your top 5 ranked guy leaves, another top 5 ranked guy is avaliable to replace him.

 

I have already addressed the other points:

Matchmaking is probably based on an overly simplistic averaging system that doesn't account for the underlying probability distrbution, and even if it did, there are only so many ways to deal with low population while not running off a substantial minority of the player base.

 

Chasing the premades out of regs would not result in us doing ranked. I have neither the people, compostion, or desire to compete in a format where i am guaranteed to get arenas. I want to tske whatever 4 people i have around and go, not worry about the fact that my guy that plays xxx class isn't around.

 

If i am grouped with a bunch of morons or get my 5th vandin in a row, I will probably leave. I have 2 hours or so. I'm not going to waste it being miserable.

 

The only solution is impossible - for there to be more players in the queue.

[Seterade]

/popcorn

[Totemdancer]

If the matchmaking system wasn’t so ****ed up, then premades would less of an issue.

[Severith]

If the matchmaking system wasn’t so ****ed up, then premades would less of an issue.

 

100% agree. Just match the premade with the worst geared/worst win ratio players, and don't let backfill put any extra tanks/healers in there.

 

As for measuring gear, the game should tabulate the best gear ever worn by that toon, and not the current gear.

[KendraP]

Strawman.

 

Anyone can look up Newton's universal gravity formula, and the ensuing 350+ years of science since then, and see exactly how it applies.

 

No one can look up Bioware's formulas, or see in what manner they are being applied.

 

Calculating gravity requires science. Believing in Bioware requires "faith".

 

Gravity is actually a very interesting example, as it is perhaps the least understood of the 4 fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetic, and the strong and weak interactions.

 

The most commonly known formula (Newton's) is (of course) F=G(m1×m2)/(r^2) where G is the "gravitational constant" (6.674×10^−11 N×kg^(–2)×m^2), m1 and m2 are the masses of the objects of interest, and r is the distance between them.

 

This works very well for the majority of applications, but it has been largely superseded by Einstein's general relativity in applicstions that require high precision or involve particularly strong gravitational fields. (Mercury's orbit, for instance, is so close to the sun that Newton's Law mispredicts its gravity!)

 

The point is, no we do not know the exact formulas BW uses by and large, but that does not stop us from taking what we do know from their claims and put it together with our experiences to form a hypothesis of our own and attempting to inprove our individual experience based on observation and experimentation.

 

If the matchmaking system wasn’t so ****ed up, then premades would less of an issue.

 

Per their own claims, they are largely trying to deal with premades in regs. These threads existed before the matchmaking was a thing, now they exist after it.

 

As someone who used to run up to 3 premades a night (and no, no one ever left a match just because we werent together, its as simple as I had that many people online), the new system is a hard nerf.

 

My formerly 10 person a night guild now has maybe 4 on a given night.

 

And now there's a massive population problem the matchmaker can't deal with by design, and probably any other matchmaking system would struggle with. And again, because there is no objective based ranked play, and if there was it would be too dead to run because of the nonexistent population, the only solution i have is to premade regs.

 

The pops have already decreased substantially. Want to get even less? Chase off more guilds like mine.

 

100% agree. Just match the premade with the worst geared/worst win ratio players, and don't let backfill put any extra tanks/healers in there.

 

As for measuring gear, the game should tabulate the best gear ever worn by that toon, and not the current gear.

 

This already happens, see my discussion on averages and matchmaking on the last page. My premade gets put with all the 116 geared sorcs with tank stims and maras running one lightsaber, etc.

Edited December 11, 2018 by KendraP

[TrixxieTriss]

100% agree. Just match the premade with the worst geared/worst win ratio players, and don't let backfill put any extra tanks/healers in there.

 

As for measuring gear, the game should tabulate the best gear ever worn by that toon, and not the current gear.

 

It’s not just the premades. The whole system is borked. They need to make public what the hidden ELO is and how match making is really “supposed” to work because the skill/gear part doesn’t work. Only the role of tank/healer limitation sort of works (but not well)

 

I’m still under the opinion and have been since it was added that the skill based matchmaking is faulty somewhere and needs adjusting. But we can’t determine where that is and let Bio know if we dont have all the facts on how it works.

 

Musco was vague for a reason (besides people trying to exploit the system). They just haven’t put enough time and testing into to how it is actually supposed to be working live.

 

After many months of this system they should now have enough data to look at and realise it’s not working as intended. All we need to do is get them to listen to community feed back and discuss with us why we think it’s not working so they can check their own data.

 

I’ve seen many good ideas on how to adjust the system (not premade related) and I’ve seen many examples of why it’s not working as Musco described (in a vague way).

The system they have in place to rate the whole premade on the best player is pointless if the system that rates a single player skill isn’t fixed and working 100%. Otherwise it’s a pointless exercise trying to match premades in any match.

Edited December 11, 2018 by TrixxieTriss

[Severith]

Gravity is actually a very interesting example, as it is perhaps the least understood of the 4 fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetic, and the strong and weak interactions.

 

The most commonly known formula (Newton's) is (of course) F=G(m1×m2)/(r^2) where G is the "gravitational constant" (6.674×10^−11 N×kg^(–2)×m^2), m1 and m2 are the masses of the objects of interest, and r is the distance between them.

 

This works very well for the majority of applications, but it has been largely superseded by Einstein's general relativity in applicstions that require high precision or involve particularly strong gravitational fields. (Mercury's orbit, for instance, is so close to the sun that Newton's Law mispredicts its gravity!)

 

The point is, no we do not know the exact formulas BW uses by and large, but that does not stop us from taking what we do know from their claims and put it together with our experiences to form a hypothesis of our own and attempting to inprove our individual experience based on observation and experimentation.

 

 

 

Per their own claims, they are largely trying to deal with premades in regs. These threads existed before the matchmaking was a thing, now they exist after it.

 

As someone who used to run up to 3 premades a night (and no, no one ever left a match just because we werent together, its as simple as I had that many people online), the new system is a hard nerf.

 

My formerly 10 person a night guild now has maybe 4 on a given night.

 

And now there's a massive population problem the matchmaker can't deal with by design, and probably any other matchmaking system would struggle with. And again, because there is no objective based ranked play, and if there was it would be too dead to run because of the nonexistent population, the only solution i have is to premade regs.

 

The pops have already decreased substantially. Want to get even less? Chase off more guilds like mine.

 

 

 

This already happens, see my discussion on averages and matchmaking on the last page. My premade gets put with all the 116 geared sorcs with tank stims and maras running one lightsaber, etc.

 

So all we have is personal experiences to see if it's actually working as intended or not....and....almost no one seems to think it's working as intended. In my experiences, 90%+ of all matches are extremely one sided. That's not fun for anyone in the long term.

 

Pretty much every WZ has 1-3 people leave it before the match even starts. Since there's no punishment, people are free to do so. Then the backfill occurs, and the entire system is moot.

 

You can't even properly test the system unless you know for a fact no back fill happened on either side.

[Severith]

It’s not just the premades. The whole system is borked. They need to make public what the hidden ELO is and how match making is really “supposed” to work because the skill/gear part doesn’t work. Only the role of tank/healer limitation sort of works (but not well)

 

I’m still under the opinion and have been since it was added that the skill based matchmaking is faulty somewhere and needs adjusting. But we can’t determine where that is and let Bio know if we dont have all the facts on how it works.

 

Musco was vague for a reason (besides people trying to exploit the system). They just haven’t put enough time and testing into to how it is actually supposed to be working live.

 

After many months of this system they should now have enough data to look at and realise it’s not working as intended. All we need to do is get them to listen to community feed back and discuss with us why we think it’s not working so they can check their own data.

 

I’ve seen many good ideas on how to adjust the system (not premade related) and I’ve seen many examples of why it’s not working as Musco described (in a vague way).

The system they have in place to rate the whole premade on the best player is pointless if the system that rates a single player skill isn’t fixed and working 100%. Otherwise it’s a pointless exercise trying to match premades in any match.

 

The whole "Hidden Elo" system is broken, simply because it punishes players who put in genuine effort to win. As they gain the elo, they get put with worse and worse players, theoretically. On the flip side, people who ignore objectives get lower and lower elo, and then get grouped with people who actually try to win.

 

By design, it's miserable and frustrating for people who actually care about the game.

[TrixxieTriss]

The whole "Hidden Elo" system is broken, simply because it punishes players who put in genuine effort to win. As they gain the elo, they get put with worse and worse players, theoretically. On the flip side, people who ignore objectives get lower and lower elo, and then get grouped with people who actually try to win.

 

By design, it's miserable and frustrating for people who actually care about the game.

 

But we don’t know what the ELO is based on. I don’t think it’s only wins because wins don’t = individual player skill (at least not in my experience)

 

I’ve theorised that it’s based on Valor, medal and how many matches you’ve played across your whole legacy. Musco said gear was a factor too. But I’ve yet to see that.

 

They need to just come clean with the whole system.

 

I know I am sick of being stuck with so many noobs on my teams vs premades or with much better players.

You can see how broken it is when a team wins and all of them have double or triple the dps and healing than the other team.

 

One or two good players cannot carry a team of noobs against a whole team of adequate players. That’s how it seems it is often averaging out skill and match making.

Then you have to lose 10 in a row till your hidden ELO reduces enough to be put with better people. Then you win a couple and your ELO is back to being too high and you have to lose another 10 till you get better player again.

 

Pvp at all lvls is now a joke when I can play. In lowbies and Mids (4v4) I get all noobs on my team (even when I’m the lowest lvl in the group) and the other team gets one noob. I’m not kidding when I say this happens in 9/10 matches. At level 70 it happens too, but not as much. Usually at level 70 the other 4v4 team gets 1 heals, 1 tank, Merc, Mara or Sniper. While my team gets no healer or tank and a PT, Jugg and Sorc dps. A vast majority of the time it’s also 4v3

Edited December 11, 2018 by TrixxieTriss

[Seterade]

listening to so many forum regulars about how supposedly the elo system is cucking them over 9/10 times is really depressing.

 

stop wondering about the elo system. just stop. no more conversation. you know 0 about it. nothing. you dont even know if it exists, you just think it does cause it seems like your teams cant dps their way out of a paper bag.. I hate to break it to you but all the good players are gone. gone. or they are farming alll the new kids in farming premades. its been 2 and a half years. no one who gives 2 craps will care until 6.0 happens. no one. get used to losses and 1k dps. its here till 6.0

[TrixxieTriss]

listening to so many forum regulars about how supposedly the elo system is cucking them over 9/10 times is really depressing.

 

stop wondering about the elo system. just stop. no more conversation. you know 0 about it. nothing. you dont even know if it exists, you just think it does cause it seems like your teams cant dps their way out of a paper bag.. I hate to break it to you but all the good players are gone. gone. or they are farming alll the new kids in farming premades. its been 2 and a half years. no one who gives 2 craps will care until 6.0 happens. no one. get used to losses and 1k dps. its here till 6.0

 

I know we don’t know what the hidden ELO is. I’ve said it over and over in every post. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to know or that my theories are all incorrect. But you are right that none of us know what it is and most of its speculation.

 

So I guess your solution is we just follow the rest of the players who gave a crap and leave or put up with it?

I’m sorry but that’s not how I roll. If I’m going to stick around I’m going to fight for Bioware to fix it.

 

All we can go on is what we experience and I know if I’m losing 9/10 games at a time it’s because the match making is borked. It doesn’t matter if I’m a good player or a crap player, the match making should balance the teams better.

Even when I win matches there is no competition from the other team. Matches just aren’t close anymore. They are complete white washes where the winning team steam rolls the losing team in a big way.

 

But I guess I’ll be gone if it isn’t fixed and 6.0 takes too long to arrive because I won’t play something I don’t give a crap about.

 

I would even be willing to bet that 6.0 won’t fix it either because no one will be left who gives a crap or have the confidence to come back because we’ve all been burnt too many times by Bioware promises.

[Seterade]

I will try to explain in as short as I can and not make a wall of text.

 

the first thing you need to realise is how elo actually works. elo does not take 1400 jerry and match him with 2400 jake and pit jerry and jake vs 1950 jack and jill. a proper populated elo system creates several "pocket" elo brackets. so our jerry friend with enough players will never even meet jake. or jack and jill. he will play with people between 1300 and 1500. there is a huge "lack of population" factor in all of this. the massive rifts in elo tiers is caused by lack of players. not by "how elo works"

 

now why does 6.0 matter in this regard and why is it important. to understand that you need to know how big of an impact a new meta is. no matter how much content a game puts out, no matter how many wzs, how many fps, how many ops or chapters you cannot make content faster than the player can binge out of playing it. it takes longer to make than to pplay/replay. so.... if this is true why are MMOs successful? because meta change. most games have a meta change at least once a year. a meta change takes an entire game, every content, every chapter/op/fp you name and makes it replayable. 6.0 is that new meta. it will bring a tangable number back, a viable change to elo systems. because.... population

 

right now, the queue are stagnant with bored vets who dont care anymore and new star wars movie fans who just want to play a star wars game. most of them dont even have a "tier" because they barely pvp. which means they end up in every tier but the one they belong in. this is the reality of the state of this game. nothing will work "as intended" until a new meta brings in a viable amount of players. because elo systems require population to operate.

Edited December 11, 2018 by Seterade

[rambolnet]

Without evidence to the contrary, we can reasonably assume the matchmaking system is working as described.

 

I think hidden MMR is a red herring. The small population is the simplest explanation for the matchmaking issues we're experiencing.

 

I doubt there is anything more BioWare can do to make matches fairer and more fun... other than attract more players to the game and keep them playing.

 

Yes, there are problems with the netcode/HeroEngine that may not be fixable or would require a lot of investment/development hours to fix. Yes, there are balance issues (to quote Yahtzee, "Cows go 'moo', dogs go 'woof', MMO players go 'the PvP is unbalanced'"). However, I still think SWTOR's PvP is fantastic and that its enormous potential has never been realised. Had the game been more polished at launch and had EA invested in the game's continued development, SWTOR could have had a competitive scene to rival WoW's.

 

I hope BioWare can turn around the game's fortunes and revitalise PvP in particular. Unfortunately, EA seems less interested in developing games than in developing ingenious ways to monetise them.

Edited December 11, 2018 by rambolnet

[KendraP]

I will try to explain in as short as I can and not make a wall of text.

 

the first thing you need to realise is how elo actually works. elo does not take 1400 jerry and match him with 2400 jake and pit jerry and jake vs 1950 jack and jill. a proper populated elo system creates several "pocket" elo brackets. so our jerry friend with enough players will never even meet jake. or jack and jill. he will play with people between 1300 and 1500. there is a huge "lack of population" factor in all of this. the massive rifts in elo tiers is caused by lack of players.

 

right now, the queue are stagnant with bored vets who dont care anymore and new star wars movie fans who just want to play a star wars game. most of them dont even have a "tier" because they barely pvp. which means they end up in every tier but the one they belong in. this is the reality of the state of this game. nothing will work "as intended" until a new meta brings in a viable amount of players. because elo systems require population to operate.

 

This is all exactly what I said yesterday. Were there enough people so that the player skill levels seemingiy followed at least a unimodal probability distribution, an averaging based system would work.

 

But becsuse there seem to be "gaps" - a possibly bimodal probability distribution - an averaging system is meaningless.

 

But then the population is too small to seperate the two groups, so what do we want them to do?

[_Sage_]

It's not needed in regular pvp, premades work best with ranked pvp only.

 

As someone who does PvP daily in this game i feel like you are someone who hasn't gotten far enough in the system to understand that PvP is flawed. the existence of "premades" in a warzone are now mostly to blame on bioware/ea for cutting up PvP even more and i will bring open world PvP in as well but we have been placed into cookie cutter boxes we don't want to que 1 tank 1 heal 2 dps. we have lost the freedom to choose our spec and play how we want. if we don't swap toons or change spec we cant play with our friends and then to say we have to do ranked is absurd

[Stellarcrusade]

The whole "Hidden Elo" system is broken, simply because it punishes players who put in genuine effort to win. As they gain the elo, they get put with worse and worse players, theoretically. On the flip side, people who ignore objectives get lower and lower elo, and then get grouped with people who actually try to win.

 

By design, it's miserable and frustrating for people who actually care about the game.

 

I think real PvPers do not want one sided games. That means the better I get, I hope I get a slightly worse teammate in relationship to the skill level of the other team. Meaning, if I was the best pvper any game has ever seen, I wouldn't want to be rewarded for all my hard work by having 7 super uber teamates such that I never have a challenge again. Instead I would hope I would have as close to an even match as possible, even if that means I need to have one player of newb status on my team. So really, by getting better you ARE rewarded by having slightly worse players with you, not the other way around. The greatest reward is even battles.

 

Remember, no pvp war that is completely one sided is worth playing, even if you are on the winning side. If you want a completely one sided battle with no chance of losing, go fight npcs.

Edited December 11, 2018 by Stellarcrusade