Feedback: Escalation

[BlatMan 702]

23 hours ago, Darkzero3802 said:

If only we had about 100k players actively playing. Maby this could be an option. But alas we are but afew hundred in a game that has been dying for the better part of a decade

 

Thats not how it works. In escalation the only way backup is called is if both party leaders call for backup. If one side requests it and the other side doesnt nothing happens and neither side gets more ppl

I'm not talking about escalation, I'm talking about the one sided backup when the team threats are unbalanced. It calls in backup for both teams. It's broken.

[Heal 57]

2 hours ago, BlatMan said:

I'm not talking about escalation, I'm talking about the one sided backup when the team threats are unbalanced. It calls in backup for both teams. It's broken.

True

[Darkzero3802 598]

On 9/9/2024 at 11:58 PM, BlatMan said:

I'm not talking about escalation, I'm talking about the one sided backup when the team threats are unbalanced. It calls in backup for both teams. It's broken.

Yea. That part they changed to keep the number of players even on each team. Bad idea when theres an imbalance

[Y2Venom 219]

On 9/9/2024 at 5:16 AM, Darkzero3802 said:

If only we had about 100k players actively playing. Maby this could be an option. But alas we are but afew hundred in a game that has been dying for the better part of a decade

 

Thats not how it works. In escalation the only way backup is called is if both party leaders call for backup. If one side requests it and the other side doesnt nothing happens and neither side gets more ppl

We all know that if this were to happen, the PUG servers would be full.

 

 

 

 

[Darkzero3802 598]

Playing another hundred matches or so I can def say that games are more imbalanced now then they were before. You get any sort of 2v2 where one side has a player with a threat lower you cant call backup to even it out. You can only requesrt escalation and if the other side doesnt agree to it you remain at a disadvantage and pretty much have a guaranteed loss. A silver and gold vs 2 silvers. 2 silvers vs a silver and bronze. These are imbalanced matches that you cant call backup on to balance them out. If its mismatched like that there should be a 3rd silver or bronze on the imbalanced side to even it out.

[Berkshire 38]

Anyone else experiencing excessive waiting times for missions? Its really putting me and my mates off. 

[Hexerin 1134]

4 hours ago, Darkzero3802 said:

Playing another hundred matches or so I can def say that games are more imbalanced now then they were before. You get any sort of 2v2 where one side has a player with a threat lower you cant call backup to even it out. You can only requesrt escalation and if the other side doesnt agree to it you remain at a disadvantage and pretty much have a guaranteed loss. A silver and gold vs 2 silvers. 2 silvers vs a silver and bronze. These are imbalanced matches that you cant call backup on to balance them out. If its mismatched like that there should be a 3rd silver or bronze on the imbalanced side to even it out.

2v2 shouldn't even be possible to matchmake. 3v3 should be the absolute minimum, and only happen if the matchmaking is taking at least 5+ minutes to find a match. 4v4 should be the baseline. 5v5 should also only be possible if it can't find a suitable 3v3 after searching for a few minutes beyond the baseline. 6v6+ shouldn't be possible.

Edited September 20 by Hexerin

[Darkzero3802 598]

18 hours ago, Hexerin said:

2v2 shouldn't even be possible to matchmake. 3v3 should be the absolute minimum, and only happen if the matchmaking is taking at least 5+ minutes to find a match. 4v4 should be the baseline. 5v5 should also only be possible if it can't find a suitable 3v3 after searching for a few minutes beyond the baseline. 6v6+ shouldn't be possible.

Well guess what. I get 2v2 roughly 80% of the time and that imbalance issue is still the same problem wether 2v2 or 3v3. MM doesnt seem to take threat into account as if it did the side with less threat should have an extra player (of same lower threat) to compensate for the lesser threat. Also remember when 1v1 wasnt possible yet routinely happened?

[BlatMan 702]

On 9/20/2024 at 4:56 PM, Berkshire said:

Anyone else experiencing excessive waiting times for missions? Its really putting me and my mates off. 

Unopposed missions are no longer created, and there needs to be an equal amount of players ready per side to start a match. They also dropped the district population from 50/50 to 40/40.

[Heal 57]

6 hours ago, BlatMan said:

Unopposed missions are no longer created, and there needs to be an equal amount of players ready per side to start a match. They also dropped the district population from 50/50 to 40/40.

That makes sense then, thought it was still a thing and I was just lucky to get opp that fast...

[Hexerin 1134]

On 9/21/2024 at 8:42 AM, Darkzero3802 said:

Well guess what. I get 2v2 roughly 80% of the time and that imbalance issue is still the same problem wether 2v2 or 3v3. MM doesnt seem to take threat into account as if it did the side with less threat should have an extra player (of same lower threat) to compensate for the lesser threat. Also remember when 1v1 wasnt possible yet routinely happened?

The problem with 2v2 is that it's effectively 1v1. If one of the two goes down, the other one will inevitably go down as well due to 1v2 being effectively impossible if all four players are of reasonably similar skill level. Compare this to 3v3, where if one goes down it's still 2v3 which is possible to stall out long enough for the downed player to return.

[Darkzero3802 598]

On 9/23/2024 at 1:03 AM, Hexerin said:

The problem with 2v2 is that it's effectively 1v1. If one of the two goes down, the other one will inevitably go down as well due to 1v2 being effectively impossible if all four players are of reasonably similar skill level. Compare this to 3v3, where if one goes down it's still 2v3 which is possible to stall out long enough for the downed player to return.

Well 2v2 still happens frequently and with the new matchmaking the teams are even worsely balanced then before. Just came out of a 4v4 with 3 golds, one gold blatent botter (who wont get banned cause LO tolerates cheating) and on my team 1 gold and 3 silvers. This game was an insta loss the moment mm made it. The blatent botter was just an exclamation point to how poor mm is and a middle finger. LO needs better servers and larger districs for better mm quality. Which they should have done before rolling out these changes

[Yapopal 161]

To eliminate the problem of unbalanced missions, it is necessary to speed up player rotation and increase the pool of available players. Escalation reduces the pool of available players and causes a problem with a long search for tasks. A disorderly escalation challenge breaks the mission. Escalation is not able to balance the mission. Escalation brings practically no benefit, but causes major problems. It gets to the point that the game becomes simply unplayable. It is impossible to ignore and delay the decision. Escalation is not viable and only causes harm.

[Darkzero3802 598]

7 hours ago, Yapopal said:

To eliminate the problem of unbalanced missions, it is necessary to speed up player rotation and increase the pool of available players. Escalation reduces the pool of available players and causes a problem with a long search for tasks. A disorderly escalation challenge breaks the mission. Escalation is not able to balance the mission. Escalation brings practically no benefit, but causes major problems. It gets to the point that the game becomes simply unplayable. It is impossible to ignore and delay the decision. Escalation is not viable and only causes harm.

It doesnt reduce the pool of players if theres no pool to begin with lol. LO didnt take that into account.

You have a district that has a small 40v40 max. This is way too small to properly matchmake off of especially when the amount of a certain threat varies due to there being no segregation. One side may have 15 silvers while the other only half that. Not only will there be a long wait but matches will be imbalanced. Districts need to be at a bare minimum 50v50 and some sort of threat segregation.

The current threat system has been completely destroyed beyond repair thanks to dethreaters and cheaters and needs a complete overhaul and fresh start. What is currently in place cant be salvaged.

[Yapopal 161]

There is always a pool of free players. One player or ten - it doesn't matter. Escalation, cancellation of district threats, reduction of the maximum number of players in the district - all these are negative factors that reduce the pool of free players. 
The first factor, escalation, has been added to the game to balance missions. But in fact, escalation has the opposite effect. She randomly changes the balance of power and does not strive for balance. There is also a high chance of a complete breakdown of the mission.
The second factor is the cancellation of district threats. The cancellation occurred due to the outflow of population on the American server. The administration did not bother and canceled the threat on all servers. The result was a decrease in the population of the European north, which led to an even greater collapse. It was a wrong move. It was worth changing the deterrent factor - the multiplier of experience points. The multiplier of experience points and currency should be much smaller. That is, a conditional gold player in the bronze district cannot earn anything because of the experience point multiplier equal to 0.1. It is also necessary to change the player's search system. Upon receiving five stars, the player is hunted for a certain period of time, the death of the player does not cancel the hunt. 
And the third factor is the decrease in the maximum number of players in the district. This decision was made due to the heavy load on the servers or the game. The result is lags, stuttering. I do not know what exactly lies at the root of the problem. But perhaps optimization will be the solution. For example, canceling the download of prints of clothes of third-party characters. Blocking part of the traffic packets responsible for the shots (you don't care who shoots at whom not in your mission?) 

If something does not work correctly, it must be destroyed, turned off, redone from scratch. I'm annoyed by such a dumb approach to things.  
If you have a system that does not work well, you need to understand why this is happening. To do this, you need to make small adjustments to the system and draw conclusions from the results obtained. Based on the findings, make new adjustments until the desired operating mode is obtained. If changing the system becomes unprofitable, then only then it needs to be deleted and a new system built. 
For example, the fundamental problem of the game is the imbalance of the opponents. The imbalance is caused by a low pool of available players who match each other in terms of playing skills. The quality of the player pool depends on the presence or absence of district threats. District threats are a great system, but it didn't work like shit! And it didn't work because of the crappy setup! At the heart of this system is the deterrence factor - the multiplier of experience points and currency. That is, the efficiency of the system depends on the change of this multiplier. Just a few numbers in the code. 
What is the administration doing? The administration ignores the system settings, simply turns it off. Without offering any alternatives, it disables one of the main game systems affecting its quality. The inter-district selection of rivals is wet dreams. With a reasonable approach, this system should have been ready before shutting down the old system. Its production required too many resources...
why am I writing all this? I want to explain to the administration why they fail so often. And I want to explain why this is happening.

Edited Friday at 08:47 AM by Yapopal

[Hexerin 1134]

On 10/3/2024 at 9:11 PM, Darkzero3802 said:

What is currently in place cant be salvaged.

The current system is fine, they just need to adjust it and then reset everyone's threat so the system can start fresh. As for what needs to be adjusted, that's simple:

 

Remove green threat, so that there's only three threat levels (gold, silver, bronze). Make gold and bronze account for the upper and lower 25% of players, with silver being the 50% in between. This makes it much easier for the system to matchmake smartly, since there's less variance to consider. It also allows for the matchmaker to be tightened up, such as removing the ability for bronzes to be in the same match as golds. This will, over time, smooth out matchmaking and result in healthier matches overall.

 

Then, have the system soft reset everyone's threat level every 3 months, with soft reset being defined as "threat is reset, but the system is temporarily more inclined to move a given player's threat level towards where they were before". This will account for the issues that plague the current system, such as existing players quitting the game and new players joining.

 

Once those adjustments are in place, perform a hard reset on the entire account database. Every single player's threat information being completely deleted/reset, making everyone start as if they were brand new accounts (as far as threat level is concerned). This will result in outright chaos at first, possibly even for the entire first soft reset cycle (aforementioned 3 months). However, once past that initial stretch, the system as a whole will be good to go and matches going forward will be significantly improved.

 

Also, it goes without saying, but the districts need to be put back to 50v50 and LO needs to get the game hosted on actual servers instead of the 20 year old laptop they've got it on currently. Ideally, they should also just remove the factions from matchmaking, so that all 100 players in the district are available for consideration of both sides in every potential match.