Neat!

FWIW, last night wait times went +3mins and into 5 most times. NOT complaining, just noting.

Also, it felt matches were fairly even compared to averages a week or more back. That happens from time to time though so who knows. I did get in a match that started full but ended with my team sitting with 5 players only. The other team had way more than 5 players ;) By the end I was wondering why the hell I kept facing entire squads on my own. Odd thing was though, it still wasn't a one-sided match. Sure, it was hard to face 5+ players at once, but even as bad as I am, I was holding my own. My point: it wasn't protostomp mode. We did get them to armor, so I'm not sure why everyone jumped ship.

Life is a funny funny mystery.
+ for the post!


- me (lazy solo-pupper)

Well at least now the new players have a chance.

The current theory is that the leaving squads were looking to stomp people, not that they were afraid of being stomped

This sounds good but punishing people who are getting stomped sounds a little rough. I like to go rewarding those that stick out losing fights better. Why not make each kill add 5 WP until the next death. Then killing that super merc is a big pay day. Also, make capping a point work similarly but with time. If it hasn't been capped for 10 minutes, when you cap it, WP from the sky.

In my experience, this simply doesn't happen.

Even against small proto squads they are usually using a fitting DESIGNED to get quick kills against teams that simply don't have the gear to compete. Core grenades are a BIG thing. If you're in a militia suit and get tagged by a core you're done, end of story. Normally best bet in combat is to simply AVOID the people pubstomping and try to damage lower tiered suits.

Still, that's not as easy as you make it sound. They get around the battlefield incredibly quickly, and if they even catch a glimpse of you any starter fit will take significant damage even from peeking. Once they get their eyes on you they will chase you down with an unbelievable amount of bloodlust. They don't let people go.

And this is if there aren't any proto snipers around. Good luck "bleeding" anything but the inside of your own suit in those scenarios... I'm beginning to think you may be a bit of a masochist, Rattati.

FW logic isn't touched, and no plan for that in forseeable future either. So enjoy it as always

And as far as getting vet to play vets, man I don't know what's up. But I can tell you, just maybe everyone and your own line of reasoning is a bit off. It's just so unbelievable to me that people leave cause they think there might be a fight involved. It's just too crazy to me, there's gotta be something else going on. I don't know. I personally NEVER check who I'm fighting before hand. A fight's a fight, good players play bad and bad players play good. Never know what you will actually get.

I just can't believe that people are leaving because they are up against a fight. Dom and skirm are the worst, ambush tends to keep pretty even team numbers. Yes, though, get that figured out, then figure out how to encourage using a tier of gear worthy of your skill.

No rush (cough cough, hurry up fool!) Splendid job in any case thus far! You are doing great Mr. Wheaton.

I'm loving this discussion.

I've proposed inverse differential payout for players based on mu ratio before, my experience was that the pub protostompers piled onto the topic in a frothing rage. Proposing the same inverse mechanic with meta level may engender the same response.

Now when i propose something i make sure to add a cuttoff to the mechanic so as to protect the cowardly stompers, but it leaves me feeling compromised.

From the point-of-view of the corporations paying out on our merc contracts, i feel they would push for a payout structure that rewarded destruction of higher tier resources and also higher mu opponents.

A corporate recruiter is not hiring a high mu player to harvest noobs, but rather to stop the harvesting of friendly noobs. The big dogs are there to stop the big dogs and this is certainly how the merc contracts would be written & performance reviewed.

DUST WAS THERE

I AM REAL

I'm not condoning the mentality behind this behavior, but your level of shock and disgust is really surprising. You realize you're working for the same company that produced this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgvM7av1o1Q

[...]

Stop using language meant to stereotype. There is a ton of insidious "us" vs. "them" rhetoric going around currently, and I feel like the posts I've seen from you have perpetuated it non-stop. This language is making good conversation about matchmaking and its effects completely impossible, and instead turning into a mutual whine-fest. I'm a "vet", and I've never "cycled alts" to stomp academy players. Nor has the vast majority of people I've ever associated with in Dust, and that is quite a large number. The observation that some tiny insane fragment of the playerbase do something awful is literally the essence of New Eden.

[...]

This quote has similar themes, and really the theme is similar to all of your posts. If I were playing right now, I would probably be leaving matches- not for my KDR. My KDR has been ticking down for years, IDGAF. Rather, it's because there's absolutely zero fun to me to have to "escalate" my gear and tank my ISK efficiency while still potentially losing a match, all so that I can scrape together the resources to have an enjoyable match.

The mountain of confirmation bias coming from MM supporters is monstrous. It's like the preference is to stick fingers in ears and create this rich internal narrative about the "awful veterans" and their "KDR bias" while the "simple player" just tries to "make in-game ends meet". Matchmaking isn't a political jousting match about social inequality. People leave matches because they're not having fun.

I've said it once and I'll continue saying it until I'm blue in the face. There are a gigantic mountain of factors which culminate into discouraging players to finish out a Dust match that they're losing. Even if you try to force people to stay in match, they're going to end up sniping. Here are just a few on that list:

• Gear tiers with far too much additional effectiveness as one goes up in tier
• Lack of secondary objectives, which allow entrenched defenders to easily gain and maintain a lead in matches
• Lack of proper dynamic spawning, again allowing entrenched defenders to maintain their positions. Additionally exacerbates the pain of dying, since finding a safe spawnpoint near to the action is hellish
• Map designs that emphasize defensive, CQC play
• Mostly very short range on all credible anti-infantry weaponry

These things are, and have been for the last two years, crippling, glaring flaws in Dust's in-game, public match (even PC match) experience. Their combined effect is to discourage losing teams to fight back if they don't have a sincere chance of turning the match around. Typically, turning a match around takes far more coordination than any public match team is going to exhibit. Even in PC it takes an incredible effort with very low chances of success.

Dust is a game that encourages snowball matches in general, and in public matches the gear tiers and incentives further reinforce the issue. Thinking that matchmaking can make up for that is like thinking if you have some really good glue, you can put a shattered pane of glass back together.


@Rat in particular, your "I can make the proto guy go 20/1" mentality is incredibly uncommon, and even further it's not even backed up by facts. For years I played with that theme, thinking "man, I'm taking ISK off this high roller" whenever I killed a proto guy. Fact is, there are plenty of people out there who can easily eat the cost of hundreds of proto suits due to PC glitches. It really doesn't matter to them. Meanwhile, spending the match trying to outplay someone not just a little bit, but gigantically so that you can overcome their suit's natural advantage...that's not fun gameplay. Frankly, that's real life. I come to play games for balance, and if I wanted to grind against inequity I would just chalk up those hours to activism instead.

Carrot + Stick! That'd probably work on me.

Edit: Though it'd still be great if you guys addressed the root causes of players leaving battle.

why don't you try to answer my tickets about that .....

No. **** that. I personally take offense to that coming from a dev. I was going to cut into you AquarHead, but I erased all of scathing remarks... I have always played this game having a full squad for a myriad of reasons. Would you like me to list some? 1) A well organized squad can single handedly win a skirmish. No question. If you say I'm wrong, your squading with unorganized one or your squad in just terrible 2) Squading with people is a lot of fun. It creates comradeship in your team. 3) Team work is extremely effective in battle 4) this game DC'd people so much that I want to have some people with me in the event that 1 or 2 players gets DC'd, ect. The list goes on, there are no disadvantages to running a squad.

I feel that a bunch of the really crappy players that have no corp, no friends, no tactics complain to you devs endlessly that they are facing proto all the time or using some other BS excuse for why they suck and you nerffed matchmaking for these people that don't know how to play, use the same scrub tactics over and over, get countered, a whine and cry when they repeatedly get killed, and can't see this game for what it is: a tactical wargame that requires dicipline, situational awareness, some skill, and a thrist to win a ****ing game that a lone Ramboesqe mercenary cannot win. Now I'm being told to play solo?!?! Is this guy serious?

GǪUmmm. I know we live in a world obcessed with the "transparency" ideal. But I think the ultimate proof of the matchmaking experiments the Devs are coming up with (and, yesGǪthey seem to be a fun improvement) will be for the final structure of the "matchmaking" to be JUST LIKE THE "Aim Assist" system. Meaning,

---It will be SO fluidly "in the background", that players no longer will sense that it's working for them, and how well it's working.

--It, like the "Aim-Assist", will work better when players DO NOT learn the full details of what it's measuring-----so as to minimize any players starting right away to try to circumvent it.

No offense, Devs, but please don't give it all away. You have a promising mechanic going on here, and I'd like to see it succeed. We are PS3 Dust Players, and we're not at all as benign and harmless as you think we are. Seriously, sometimes keeping your lips closed about some areas of a new invention is BETTER. Pretty-Pleeeassee

Yes they deserve a balanced battle, but if that is not possible inside an expected duration, surely they deserve a battle instead of an error and then having to queue again, without any idea how long it's going to take. At the end of the day they want a fight, and Scotty has to serve up the best opposition he can find.

Also if I've read you right, the Scotty error is not actually an error on these occasions, it's that a timer elapsed. That message should reflect what just happened - right now I bet everyone thinks it's a bug rather than there's nobody of your rank to fight.

With that knowledge, if that is the case, then shouldn't that squad be able to split into two equal parts (how the mercs in squad are going to know what that is I do not know) and guarantee a battle? Albeit against each other? Perhaps then there's some options that could be suggested there.