Profile of Doomlord52

I'd be interested in a decent working way of calculating a good ratio of elo handicap AT vs randoms. What would be a good way to do that?

It would probably take a fair bit of work and testing; my initial suggestion of
Team ELO = ((arranged team size) / (game size)) * 1.2
might work, but it also means that if your entire group is in the top ~10% of players it'll take ages to find a match, as your team ELO will end up being higher than any actual players. It also doesn't work too well with large skill ranges.

After looking at it some more I think there are two other adjustments I'd want to make. Firstly, the 'penalty' needs to increase with raw number of players on the pre-made team. While a pre-made 2v2 is better than a random 2v2, coordinating with 1 random player (and getting a good random player) is a lot easier than 3 - so I would suggest a 4-stack in 4v4 should be penalized more than a duo in 2v2. Similarly, I also don't think taking a "raw average" is entirely valid, either; 3 'ok' players and 1 'top tier' player all on voice comms will do much better than 4 slightly-better-than-ok players, even if their average ELO is the same, as the 'top tier' player will be able to coordinate and advise the lower skilled players on builds, counters, and what to expect/do. As a result I'd suggest a weighted average where we estimate a group's skill to be slightly higher than the numbers suggest.

After a bit of work, this formula might do the trick; or at least work as a starting point.

Group ELO = (((Combined ELO / Group Size) + ((Highest ELO - Lowest ELO) * 0.15)) * (1.05 + (0.10((Group Size)/4)))

That's kind of a mess and maybe someone who's a math expert can clean it up. However, what it's doing is weighting the average ELO slightly towards the better player(s), and then scaling the "group penalty" up by 5% per group-filled player slot (i.e. 10% for 2 players in a group, 12.5% for 3, 15% for 4).

In the case of "mixed" teams (i.e. 2 groups, 1 group and a random, etc.) we multiply each "Group ELO" by the percentage that the group makes up; so 0.75 for a 3-stack in a 4v4, 0.5x for 2x2-stacks, etc. This is done instead of taking a simple average, as we want to put slightly more weight on having a large pre-made team.

Let's use an example of a 4-stack: 2200 ELO, 1500, 1300, 1200.

First half of the equation:
((2200 + 1500 + 1300 + 1200) / 4) + ((2200 - 1200) * 0.15) = (6200 / 4) + 150 = 1700 ELO average

Second half of the equation:
(1.05 + (0.10(4/4)) = 1.05 + (0.10(1)) = 1.15

Combined:
Group ELO = 1700 * 1.15 = 1955 Group ELO

By comparison, their average ELO is 1550 - so playing as a "4-stack" in 4v4 penalized them by 20.8%. Their best player will still be better than the opposing team by a slight amount (by 245 elo), but the remaining teammates will be facing strong opponents for their skill level (455, 655 and 755 elo higher).

Here are some other examples (and the work):
Show Spoiler

I'm sure there are better systems to use, and there might already be some out there, but this is what I can think of right now.

if you do such stuff, half of the players will drop in the loading screen

If the matches were made evenly, and there was a punishment for leaving, that wouldn't happen though. People leave in the loading screen right now because it's often top 50 vs. 2000+ rank players.

I don't think "ELO-hell" is a real thing, at least from my experience; I've never had a problem getting to my usual "top 200" rank in 4v4 (or any mode), on any of the factions I've tried. The only advice I can really give is to "not leave games". Leaving games almost always results in a loss, which of course lowers your rank. As a result, even if you win every match you think is "fair", you're still probably taking a lot of losses due the games you've left, cancelling out any wins. In my case, I only leave if one player on my team is clearly afk (no movement for the first 2 minutes), or if the game has clearly been lost (getting base-pushed, facing tanks when we've never held any fuel, etc.).

With that said, the match-making system desperately needs an overhaul in CoH3, for many of the reasons listed already. The biggest change, in my view, would be to limit the possible "range" of ranks within a match. As pointed out in the Legendary Team Game Matchups thread, you can currently get into some incredibly one sided matches, especially if you wait long enough in queue, or matches where the skill levels don't make much sense (top-50 players matches with ~5000 ranks).

This needs to be limited, as it creates an awful experience for everyone involved; the lower-rank players aren't going to be able to compete, and even worse, won't learn anything from such a one sided match, and the "pro" players are going to either find the match incredibly dull due to how one-sided it is, or incredibly frustrating as their teammates won't be able to play at their level.

Other changes would also be great, like leaver penalties, or adding a "skill bonus" to pre-made teams so they face "random team" players of a higher level (to compensate for the pre-made team's better communication), and of course a "ready check" when a match is found; but I think all of those are a much lower priority.

*They have the safest bases that prevent infantry and light vehicle base-rushes.
*No-tech AT guns so you never get rushed with vehicles without an answer
*AT gun with retreat - much less likely to lose them if you missmacro
*No weapon drops for mainline inf so you are not feeding the enemy your weapons if you lose squads
*Free-ish weapon and nade unlocks (baked into tech and cheaper overall)
*Strong nondoc elite inf lategame that can replace volks losses (less punishing to lose inf)
*Extra support and protection if you build shwere outside of base sector
*Nondoc super heavy tank that can be build even if you lose strutures

Is there a faction that is better or similarly good for a new player?

I'd probably put OKW pretty high on "hard to learn" list, mostly because they have so many strange and unique "features" that don't carry over to any other faction. In a vacuum, sure, they're fairly straightforward to learn; but as soon as a new player tries a different faction, they'll need to learn a lot more. Regarding your points:

1. Only if you're playing 1v1, otherwise you'll probably get OST bunkers. Also, relying on base defenses isn't a great plan, and realistically, base-rushes aren't all that common.

2. While Raks are more forgiving, it can also teach you 'not-ideal' ATG usage (pushing too far, etc.) and reliance on camo, which no other ATGs have (non-doc). I also find they're frustratingly inaccurate.

3. Yes, but you also can't pickup weapon drops on mainlines once you get STGs, so it's sort of a trade-off.

4. This is the same on OST.

5. They're strong, but tricky to use; they'll show up quite squishy and be competing with Vet 2 or 3 upgraded infantry, which will force them to retreat quite quickly if you're not careful. Once they get vet, yes, they're very powerful.

6. I find that the KT is a bit of a "beginners trap"; the only time to build it is if you're winning by an incredible margin already. Otherwise, you've spent an incredible amount of resources on a single, slow, tank that can be countered (or at least, held off) quite easily by pairs of TDs. I find that it's much better to get a JP4 and P4, or really any other combination of stock tanks.


Overall, I'd recommend learning OST first. They have a linear tech order (unlike OKW) which means you'll never miss standard units, simple base healing, and a generally strong roster of units. Except for LV rushes, they generally don't have a downside for beginner players, unless the player has trouble preserving squads. Learning OST will also tech the fundamentals of every other faction in the game, which OKW might not.

Not sure if this is a recent issue, or just one I'm noticing more and more - but it seems like replays are often corrupt, and disproportionately so if I actually want to re-watch a key moment (i.e. save the manually).

I just had a game that was either against a very skilled player, or someone cheating, and I wanted to review it - to see where I went wrong, or to report it. But both the "last played" replay and the replay I had manually saved at the end of the match were corrupt. It then occurred to me, that this has happened quite a few times.

Is this a new issue, or one I can fix? It's hard to improve (or report) when I can't check replays.