It would really help to have a "user story" for A and B. There are some players who are so good just having them on your team virtually guarantees a win unless there is a very solid squad on the other side.

Don't worry about the A/B thing too much, I was just wondering. Maybe I should have put it differently.

If you want to win a battle, would you prefer the squads of A or B on your team?

what I am trying to see is when does relative quality outweigh the "multiplying" power effect of a squad

Don't worry about the A/B thing too much, I was just wondering. Maybe I should have put it differently.

If you want to win a battle, would you prefer the squads of A or B on your team

what I am trying to see is when does relative quality outweigh the "multiplying" power effect of a squad

Don't worry about the A/B thing too much, I was just wondering. Maybe I should have put it differently.

If you want to win a battle, would you prefer the squads of A or B on your team

1A vs 2B - 1A
1A vs 3B - 1A
1A vs 4B - 4B
1A vs 5B - 5B
1A vs 6B - 6B
2A vs 4B - 2A
2A vs 5B - ?
2A vs 6B - ?
3A vs 5B - 3A
3A vs 6B - 3A
4A vs 6B - 4A

what I am trying to see is when does relative quality outweigh the "multiplying" power effect of a squad

Hey players,

this is more of a chat and sharing session than anything else, so please treat it as such.

To recap some of the things I have shared in the past.

We actively calculate each players rank based on the result of every match, and we lovingly call that rank "Mu". Before the first battle, the player is given a rank of 25. That rank is updated after the battle, based on the weighted average of the persons duration in the battle and whether he won or lost. Simplified (the calculation is considerably more complex)

NewMu=OldMu+"Player seconds in Battle/Battle Duration" * Win/Loss

So if you lose, your Mu goes down, and if you win, your Mu goes up.

This is a modified version of elo ranking, used in many competitive sports such as chess, major league team sports and esports. Eventually your Mu will converge and stabilize around your "true skill", which is where you will win and lose equally against either players with the same Mu. However, since this is a team game, convergence will happen slower and you may find that even having the best game of your life, will not influence the match enough to secure a win. I will, however, demonstrate that it works very well to predict player skill.

The underlying problem is that after one match, everyone is very close to 25, and 2 battles, even 10 battles in, only the very best (and worst) have begun to be different from the pack.

That's why it's imperative to find a proxy for Mu for the first battles, which is what comes next in our findings.

Now to the data. I have been working with a big sample of player data, testing multiple theories, some from the forums (WP/Death), the ever classic K/D of course and a time based WP/second and the results are very promising.

DATA

By creating buckets of Mu, I can calculate the three ratios of the players within each those Mu buckets and create a correlation table against Mu. That Correlation is then shown graphically on the top Chart.

Seeing that two of them are obviously logarithmic in nature, I normalize with the log function and get the bottom chart, Normalized Correlation.

Calculating and also just analyzing the graphs, we find that the correlation between WP/s and Mu is a towering 99%, and a bit lower for the other two, but still statistically very relevant. It basically means that all of them could be used in place of Mu in the beginning while Mu converges, and even in place of Mu overall.

Now, our next step is to implement a better use of this data. One simple way would be to say, instead of exiting the Academy at an earned WP basis, it's not until you actually reach a minimum threshold of WP/s. It is also imperative to utilize this information more during the teambuilding part of the matchmaker. In any sport, if the two best players are on the opposite side, everyone, even the bad players, can have fun and be inspired by the good players. If both of them are on the same side, nobody has fun.

I hope you enjoyed this little insight piece

P.S.
Those with eagle eyes will notice a weird anomaly in the two lowest Mu brackets for the both WP/Death and K/D ratios, but not for WP/s. My theory, is, and not based on prejudice at all, is redline snipers. My reasoning is that they are able to avoid death rather easily, they will be able to pick off stragglers and low hitpoint suits on a regular basis but sadly, have little to no relevance to the battle result, as they do not hack nor defend objectives effectively. Why their WP/s does not show that, I theorize, is because they spend quite some time getting to a mountain top, and or with a dropship to a tower, and if they die, they are forced to do so again. Feel free to burn me at the stake, and/or voice your alternative theories.

Looking good Rattati.

As a registered protostomper, any improvement to the matchmaking algorithms (or logarithms) will be greatly appreciated, and will make this game much more enjoyable

Why not just a win loss ratio?
this will promote team play squading and running with your corp.

Because you'll get douchbags trying everything they can to make their team loose just so they can have easier matches.

-snip--snip--snip- I want to implement a punishment for ... leaving battle ...

Please do not punish us for leaving games that are just about to end. Some of us just wants to skip the victory screen and scoreboard so that we can quickly get into the next match.

Maybe we can get an option to opt out of the victory screen and scoreboard?
Maybe it would be easier if Scotty put us right back in the queue as soon as the match ended? That way we could go from the victory screen directly into the next match.

Edit: Perhaps you could change ambush to have a "continual queue" which skips the Merc Quarters and holds you on the victory screen until Scotty can put you into the next ambush match?

Makes sense to me. Lots of good points on squads too. I think using Mu will probably be a big improvement on the current system regardless of how it's implemented.


The only thing I don't see any of these proposed solutions fixing is this situation. A player quits game or loses connection when their team is doing badly (MCC is nearly destroyed, team has almost no clones or team has objectives). I get deployed to this game. In this situation I'm basically being handed a loss that affects my stats but also isn't my fault.

I'm not sure how to fix that besides just letting the losing team lose. I don't mean for all games but if they have 4 clones left and the winning team has 150 there is no way I should be put in that battle. Most of my time will be spent connecting, earning a loss before spawning, viewing the stats, going back to headquarters and having to get into a new match.

Little bit of a tangent but it's directly related to "Player Statistics, their Rank and Matchmaking" so I thought I'd add it. It would also help improve Mu since Win/Loss ratio would be more accurate.

Very happy to see matchmaking being addressed, Rattati. :)

Regarding how much squad size effects the squad Mu multiplier, I feel that there is (as others have pointed out) a geometric growth for how many people are in the squad, but only for the first several members.
That is to say, while the value from the 4th player is a lot more than the 3rd player, a 6 person squad is only a bit better than a 5 person squad.
(Keep in mind I mean this as "How good is a 6 person squad vs a 5 person squad with a 6th unsquaded player of same skill in Team?").

If I had to guess at the curve, it'd be something like this:

(100-¦ level players, for easy math)

Sqd count x 100-¦ = Total squad -¦ = -¦ per member = -¦PM difference between tiers
1 x 100-¦ = 100-¦ = 100-¦ = ...
2 x 100-¦ = 240-¦ = 120-¦ = 20-¦
3 x 100-¦ = 450-¦ = 150-¦ = 30-¦
4 x 100-¦ = 800-¦ = 200-¦ = 50-¦
5 x 100-¦ = 1150-¦ = 230-¦ = 30-¦
6 x 100-¦ = 1500-¦ = 250-¦ = 20-¦


My presumption about the underlying dynamic is less that the 6th person isn't useful, and more that there is a critical-mass event at about 4 people.
2-3 people in squad is just a voice chat for buds playing a game. But at 4-5 people, the squad firstly has enough people to have a mixed-arms/mixed-roles effect, and secondly has a moral boost (players stop "playing for fun" and start "playing to win").

A final note: I'd postulate there's a sliding scale to when the "squad effect" happens, depending on player skill.
Like, I've seen vets become M'F'ers as early as 3 people; while newbies seem to sometimes need 5 or even 6 people before any large benefit from the squad shows.


This is all gut-think/experienced-guess, though; I have no idea what the metrics show. :\

wow instead of getting good yall waste your time doing math. I like match making getting addressed for new players but others that have been here longer since uprising have no excuse and some are just flat out shielding themselves away from competition.

wow instead of getting good yall waste your time doing math. I like match making getting addressed for new players but others that have been here longer since uprising have no excuse and some are just flat out shielding themselves away from competition.

I assume you mean ++?
Over all this looks better than I expected, I'm surprised by those correlations.

Is it possible to factor the meta level of specific gear over a small window? Say 2-3 hours? Or maybe the last 5 matches within that window (so it doesn't carry over day to day)?
Somebody who generally runs cheap fits may just decide to splurge or be squadded with proto stompers and go nuts for a few hours. Depending on the Mu window (is it lifetime or what?) that person or a squad doing something similar may be able to completely unbalance the system.

End of match screen shows favourite weapon and suit, is that based on time carrying those items, or kills using them?
Either way you could use the meta level of the favourite suit from the prior 4 matches to tell if they're on a proto stomping binge (which I'll admit I do at times) but those outlier periods may not be picked up and dealt with as it gets buried in the total average.

e.g. When annoyed and just in a "dont give a F" mood I have gone from 0 to cap using all proto in every match. And looking at the weekly leaderboard stats my KD has been quadruple or more than my total KD, which didn't move by even so much as 0.01.

Perhaps add a multiplier: If mean favourite suit meta level from prior 4 matches is >7 -> Mu * 1.25
Though that could have the effect of Nyan San ending up with a permanent +25% to their Mu. Oh well

In my IRL job I deal with some terribad data bases and so never get to do any of the interesting analysis stuff as all I'm ever asked to do is "fix" it, so I'm getting rusty from my uni days. From what I can tell you have a massive but well organised set of data and for over a year now I've been wishing I could take a look and play with it XD
+1 to you good sir.

Edit: just noticed you said Mu is lifetime. That's maybe not a good idea. Playing sentinel and scout for so long during uprising left me with disproportionally low stats. I could now proto stomp to my hearts content and not even make a dent in my stats before xmas.
Also if I was some very high KD etc player, making some "lol fits" (NK sentinel etc) would be unnecessarily punishing.
A short term multiplier could help off set this. Perhaps you could game it but if designed well you could have it so you'd have to throw 3 games to stomp in 1. e.g. If you go down in Mu and then immediately dominate Mu is reversed back to prior value.

Bayeth, Duke Noobiam, both excellent contributions to the conversation. In particular the worry that a graduated Academy player will have inflated MU compared to post-academy MU's.

Something to keep an eye out for, I will see what can be done about resetting the MU to a lower MU.

Here is a hilarious question, since I suck at reading statistics...

What is the average WP/D range for most players, what is the average WP/SEC?

Where do the high performers start to pull away?

How much does fitting type seem to affect either?