Posted 21 September 2014 - 07:24 PM

There is no doubt that conversations about a games Match Maker are always hot topics with lots of opinions on how things are or aren't working as they should be, MechWarrior Online is no different.



Although we look forward to working closer with the community on ways we can improve the match maker's performance to provide the most competitive match's possible. I wanted to discuss the implementation of one particular change that should make an immediate impact.



One of the more common problems currently is that the match maker would be able to put together a very competitive game based on the players skill levels, however one or more of those players or groups have incompatible game modes selected. Therefore the match maker has no choice but to avoid that high quality match and continue to wait or even eventually put together a game that is significantly lower quality. This can result in a play experience that is less fun or even frustrating when lower skill players are set to play against highly skilled teams.



What I propose to do is change the functionality of the game mode selector window. Currently you select the game modes that you accept to play, and are guaranteed to avoid the game modes you do not select. The way the window will function after the change is that each box selected counts as a vote. Therefore the match maker will be able to put together the best game possible based on the players skill level then at that point will take a tally of all the votes, with the highest vote count determining what game mode you play. A tie will result in a random selection of the game modes tied.



A change like this should at the very least increase the frequency of competitive matches by a modest degree. At least we would like the opportunity to see just how much it helps with our live population numbers.



Also if the player base accepts this change and it works out well, we would consider putting this voting system in place for map selection. Players will have the ability in the front end UI to select the maps that they vote for, similar to game modes. The code will then tally votes to select the map the game will take place on.



The timing of the game mode selector change would be for the Oct 7th patch. The timing of the map vote selector is unknown as it would take additional UI work but we would push to deliver it inside of 2014.



Please let us know with your vote if you would give up the ability to guarantee your game mode for having a higher chance of getting in a competitive match.



UPDATE: See my next post below for a better explanation of the voting process for maps.

