22 replies to this topic

[Broceratops]

Just wondering!

[Kodiak Knight]

Obviously there would have to be a matchmaking system in place...how exactly it works is probably under NDA if anyone except the Devs knows yet...

[Reoh]

Details haven't been revealed. I'm hoping for something that incorporates Battle Value.

[Ranek Blackstone]

Battle value is only so usefull though. Sure you can balance based on metrics like tonnage and load out, but pilot skill is far more important then what BV is designed to take into account.

It doesn't matter what the BV of your atlas is if you suck and run up against a commando with a better pilot. He will kill you.

Edited by Ranek Blackstone, 01 July 2012 - 01:13 PM.

[Reoh]

Ranek Blackstone, on 01 July 2012 - 01:12 PM, said:

Battle value is only so usefull though. Sure you can balance based on metrics like tonnage and load out, but pilot skill is far more important then what BV is designed to take into account.

It doesn't matter what the BV of your atlas is if you suck and run up against a commando with a better pilot. He will kill you.

That is a good point, but at the least it puts them on the similar potential hardware-wise. If they have some sort of player skill gating mechanic as well then you'd be playing against (and with) comprably skilled players. Some sot of win\loss value adjusted by game performance. If you win against a higher collective team score then you get more for that win, than the other way around. Could even factor personal scoreboard stats\accolades of both sides into the equasion to gauge how well they played.

[light487]

Yes.. at first I thought the same about BV.. that it only takes things so far.. but then if you think about it, what would be the point of being skilled if you only ever play against other people with equal skills? I think it is important to feel "powerful".. so that if you are a really skilled player, you can take out a light or medium mech and still feel powerful when playing against the enemy team.

So I think a combination of BV and pilot skill would be better.. and also a tiered system, such as leagues, that can be optioned during match selection.

1. BV + Pilot Skill: It looks at the global pilot ranking and takes into account the BV and "rates" the combination at a certain total value that is then used in the matchmaking.
2. Leagues: Here you can opt to join any league higher than your ranking and maybe one or two levels lower than your ranking. If there were 10 levels of ranking, someone who is only level 5 ranking could join games up to level 10 but could not join games below rank 3.

I hope that there is more than one way the player can option for matchmaking rather than it being just one or the other.

[Reoh]

If you wanted to get right down into it, you could even base it per chasis. An awesome X class pilot might be awful while piloting a Y class 'Mech.

[Doom Puritan]

They way I was thinking of this was you gain "Rank" in each individual mech that you pilot. ie: You are an utter elite uber Hunchback pilot, but a crudtastic Jenner pilot...You would go into a "higher rank" game when in the Hunchie and a "lower rank" game in the Jenner. This way you would not have some freak of nature Commando pilot trashing all the newbies in a "lower rank" game.

I would also like to see a way to make a "Lance" with your friends to join a game as a preset lance together.

[Bodha]

I'm hoping for Battle Value with a slight weight for pilot skill. A complete noob in any mech is not as valuable as a veteran in the same mech. You toss in the veteran likely has some unlocks in that mech and things get even more stacked.

Ideally that weight for pilot skill should take into account unlocks in that mech, and pilot record for that mech. Completely new players should get a modifier to reduce their value and players who simply hurt the team's chance to win should also get a modifier to reflect that. A player who is practically godlike in any mech he touches should also get a modifier to reflect that as well. I also think those modifiers should cap out at something like +- 20%.

Last but not least teams should all receive a small modifier to reflect they are on a team. However the modifier should only kick in if the player's basic skill modifier is positive. A group of 4 bad players may play better as a group, but just as often its 4 bad players, so modifying their BV isn't a good idea. To be clear this means if base BV is 500 for a mech and your skill is pushes that below 500 you shouldn't get an upward modifier for being grouped, but if your skill pushes that 500 to lets say 550 then you should get an upward modifier when group to lets say 560.

[SinnerX]

My reaction to this topic:

Spoiler

Fighting against people of varying skill levels goes part and parcel with online gaming. You will never get a completely fair match. It doesn't matter how many scoring metrics you track or how many filters you put in the matchmaking system, someone will have an advantage. It's best to just accept that and move on, rather than trying to force some artificial measure of fairness.

Here's what matchmaking by "skill level" achieves:

• It divides the community. It doesn't matter if it still matches "noobs" vs "pros", the division comes when Joe Q. Casual with a bronze bar(or some other appropriately humble rank symbol) next to his name sees himself getting killed time and time again by xXxPhelanWard69xXx with a golden star(or other appropriately extravagant rank symbol) next to his name.
  
• It will lead to unfairness. There's no way around it once you start trying to quantify "skill". Either the lower skilled players will feel it was unfair to get matched against higher skilled players, or the higher skilled players will feel it's unfair that they get matched against more lower skilled players(e.g. 8v12 to compensate for "skill")
  
• It will slow down matchmaking. Unless the game keeps up a massive population after launch, you can look forward to long queue times if you ever try to play during a non-peak time. Either it takes forever to find players at your level, or you get stuck into a game and deal with point 2.
  
• It will not balance anything. This is what gets me the most. I could put up with the flaws if it actually worked, but it doesn't. Even if you ignore points 1-3, there's one thing that will still throw a monkey wrench into the whole works: griefers. There will be people who will intentionally lose matches to drop their perceived "level" so they'll be able to stomp noobs later. At worst, they'll do so by FFing their teammates, and at best they'll AFK during the match. The nice ones may decide to make new accounts, since this is a F2P game after all. They'll ruin the game for their teammates on the way down the skill ladder, then they'll ruin the game for their opponents, probably mostly newer players still trying to learn the game, as they claw their way back up.

I didn't even go into the other reasons, like switching roles/weight classes, clans verses pubbies, and whatnot, but I don't feel like continuing this rant. Matchmaking based on skill level is the death of online gaming and hurts way more than it helps. If you can't handle the fact that you might fight someone who's better than you, perhaps competitive online gaming isn't your thing.


And if you're one of the "pros" who only wants to fight against the best of the best of the best: just deal with it. Fight some newbs, go easy on them if you want, then whisper them some tips on how to get better. Gaming should be about more than just ego stroking.

[Bodha]

SinnerX, on 07 July 2012 - 02:30 PM, said:

My reaction to this topic:

Spoiler

Fighting against people of varying skill levels goes part and parcel with online gaming. You will never get a completely fair match. It doesn't matter how many scoring metrics you track or how many filters you put in the matchmaking system, someone will have an advantage. It's best to just accept that and move on, rather than trying to force some artificial measure of fairness.

Here's what matchmaking by "skill level" achieves:

• It divides the community. It doesn't matter if it still matches "noobs" vs "pros", the division comes when Joe Q. Casual with a bronze bar(or some other appropriately humble rank symbol) next to his name sees himself getting killed time and time again by xXxPhelanWard69xXx with a golden star(or other appropriately extravagant rank symbol) next to his name.
  
• It will lead to unfairness. There's no way around it once you start trying to quantify "skill". Either the lower skilled players will feel it was unfair to get matched against higher skilled players, or the higher skilled players will feel it's unfair that they get matched against more lower skilled players(e.g. 8v12 to compensate for "skill")
  
• It will slow down matchmaking. Unless the game keeps up a massive population after launch, you can look forward to long queue times if you ever try to play during a non-peak time. Either it takes forever to find players at your level, or you get stuck into a game and deal with point 2.
  
• It will not balance anything. This is what gets me the most. I could put up with the flaws if it actually worked, but it doesn't. Even if you ignore points 1-3, there's one thing that will still throw a monkey wrench into the whole works: griefers. There will be people who will intentionally lose matches to drop their perceived "level" so they'll be able to stomp noobs later. At worst, they'll do so by FFing their teammates, and at best they'll AFK during the match. The nice ones may decide to make new accounts, since this is a F2P game after all. They'll ruin the game for their teammates on the way down the skill ladder, then they'll ruin the game for their opponents, probably mostly newer players still trying to learn the game, as they claw their way back up.

I didn't even go into the other reasons, like switching roles/weight classes, clans verses pubbies, and whatnot, but I don't feel like continuing this rant. Matchmaking based on skill level is the death of online gaming and hurts way more than it helps. If you can't handle the fact that you might fight someone who's better than you, perhaps competitive online gaming isn't your thing.



And if you're one of the "pros" who only wants to fight against the best of the best of the best: just deal with it. Fight some newbs, go easy on them if you want, then whisper them some tips on how to get better. Gaming should be about more than just ego stroking.

So you would prefer to see pre-made companies always curb stomping new guys and random pugs?
You would also like to see matches that are wildly imbalanced?

games w/o some degree of balancing usually die off quickly once the community's "elite" get done pushing noobs out of the game. What matchmaking should do is make a modest effort at balancing the games. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it should make it so curb stomping matches are rarer.

As for fighting someone better than me.. not a big deal. Fighting match after match where one team is full of elite players and one team is full of new players mixed with a few intermediates? Not a good idea. Basically you sound like you would want little league baseball, college baseball, and mlb teams to all be in the same league. Anyway I got a feeling some form of matchmaker will be in the game so speculation about it is ok.

[Homadais]

Quote

Basically you sound like you would want little league baseball, college baseball, and mlb teams to all be in the same league. Anyway I got a feeling some form of matchmaker will be in the game so speculation about it is ok.

Mmmmmm not a fair analagy.
Hands down though if you start ranking buy skill it will creat elitism. If you are so worried about nebs then teach them, train them then you will have skilled pilots. Then you just(oh heaven forbid) might just have some fun.

[Bodha]

Homadais, on 07 July 2012 - 03:11 PM, said:

Mmmmmm not a fair analagy.
Hands down though if you start ranking buy skill it will creat elitism. If you are so worried about nebs then teach them, train them then you will have skilled pilots. Then you just(oh heaven forbid) might just have some fun.

You do realize this game is going to allow full company pre-mades?
If you by chance play WoT imagine having to play all pub matches in a pool where you never see top tier tankers running solo, instead they are in a clan where they all get in pre-mades. So these guys will have 15ppl who know what they are doing and do it very well... you will have you and 14 other random people of which several will likely be bad players (nothing against them, but some people just don't play some games well). w/o some form of match making you will constantly see this and quite quickly people will leave the game. No one likes losing all the time to a bunch of pre-mades. Some people are willing to put up with it, but many adults are not. This game has a huge adult following I suspect and they will not put up with that kind of thing for long. Oh and if you don't think that's how the world works and you do play WoT check out tank companies in the champion level sometime. Usually when the organized groups get in a match with the randomly built tank companies they steam roll them. After a few steam rolls the randomly built companies disband.

[Ranek Blackstone]

I imagine a full company pre-made will only be allowed to drop against other full company pre-mades.

Otherwise it should limit you to only being able to drop with lance pre-mades to make shuffling them around easier when balancing teams.

You get 2 pre-made lances and 4 nubs, I get 2 pre-made lances and 4 nubs.

[Freakiie]

SinnerX, on 07 July 2012 - 02:30 PM, said:

Here's what matchmaking by "skill level" achieves:

• It divides the community. It doesn't matter if it still matches "noobs" vs "pros", the division comes when Joe Q. Casual with a bronze bar(or some other appropriately humble rank symbol) next to his name sees himself getting killed time and time again by xXxPhelanWard69xXx with a golden star(or other appropriately extravagant rank symbol) next to his name.
  
• It will lead to unfairness. There's no way around it once you start trying to quantify "skill". Either the lower skilled players will feel it was unfair to get matched against higher skilled players, or the higher skilled players will feel it's unfair that they get matched against more lower skilled players(e.g. 8v12 to compensate for "skill")
  
• It will slow down matchmaking. Unless the game keeps up a massive population after launch, you can look forward to long queue times if you ever try to play during a non-peak time. Either it takes forever to find players at your level, or you get stuck into a game and deal with point 2.
  
• It will not balance anything. This is what gets me the most. I could put up with the flaws if it actually worked, but it doesn't. Even if you ignore points 1-3, there's one thing that will still throw a monkey wrench into the whole works: griefers. There will be people who will intentionally lose matches to drop their perceived "level" so they'll be able to stomp noobs later. At worst, they'll do so by FFing their teammates, and at best they'll AFK during the match. The nice ones may decide to make new accounts, since this is a F2P game after all. They'll ruin the game for their teammates on the way down the skill ladder, then they'll ruin the game for their opponents, probably mostly newer players still trying to learn the game, as they claw their way back up.

1. This already happens anyway. The slightly competitive gamers(which usually are the above average ones) want some sort off rankings so they can fight above average people. The averages are afraid their e-peen will get hurt by not being in the #1 league (where they in no way belong, but try telling them that) and the horrible players are braindead, so no chance getting their opinion. People WILL find a way to divide the community into classes. Might as well divide them yourself. That way you can actually make use off this and it saves us from 30 topics a day on "how to properly divide the community".

2. Again, this will always happen. It doesn't matter how the matches are made, not even you fighting a clone of your own team would be fair. Why not? The other team had the better starting position! People will find things to complain about, enemy team having 3 pts more BV, their match up suited the map better, their match up was more balanced, their match up had an "OP" mech etc etc.

3. And again pointing at WoT. People actually didn't mind a slightly longer queue if it gave them a decent match. WG however ignored said poll and went for a superfast matchmaker which results in every day 50 topics spawning about horrible match making and 49 off them ARE horrible. Multiple top clans have shown multiple times just how messed up the WoT matchmaker is simply by getting 50 players into a TS server and counting down when to click battle. I myself have multiple screenshots off matches with 1 T10 as topdog, my team than 5 T8 against 5 enemy T9. Does that in any way sound fair to you? To me it doesn't and that's what happens when you create a MM with the idea that a match must be made within 3 seconds.

4. Again griefers, afkers and other exploiters will exist no matter how the system works. It's up to PGI to properly act against them and make sure these people are caught fast and are dealt with. Of course it's a free game and a lot of people will start over, but do you really think someone is gonna get an account banned he invested lots of time into by doing something as obvious as continuous afking/FF? I hope this does not turn into a WoT #2 where the report system inplace is nothing but a placebo and the devs not giving a damn about leechers, exploiters and FF as long as the money rolls in. Does it really matter in the end if somebody afks because he still gets a slight amount off credits and exp or because he wants to lower his ranking? No, what matters is that somebody is afking, which ruins the game for his teammates and that kind of behaviour should be dealt with asap.

Basically you're just pointing out a whole load of stuff that will happen anyway and completely ignore the positive effect ranked match making can have.

[SinnerX]

Bodha, on 07 July 2012 - 02:54 PM, said:

So you would prefer to see pre-made companies always curb stomping new guys and random pugs?
You would also like to see matches that are wildly imbalanced?

games w/o some degree of balancing usually die off quickly once the community's "elite" get done pushing noobs out of the game. What matchmaking should do is make a modest effort at balancing the games. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it should make it so curb stomping matches are rarer.

As for fighting someone better than me.. not a big deal. Fighting match after match where one team is full of elite players and one team is full of new players mixed with a few intermediates? Not a good idea. Basically you sound like you would want little league baseball, college baseball, and mlb teams to all be in the same league. Anyway I got a feeling some form of matchmaker will be in the game so speculation about it is ok.

Pre-made vs pubs is a completely separate issue and has nothing to do with player skill. Just because 12 people decide to coordinate outside of the game doesn't magically mean they know the best builds, have the best aim, and know the best methods of a map control. I'm not arguing against matchmaking itself, I'm arguing against this silly idea of quantifying player skill. Match tonnage against tonnage, battle value vs battle value, lance against lance, company against company, anything except "undefinable and ever changing representation of skill" vs "undefinable and ever changing representation of skill."

All I'm saying is look at the most popular online action games of all time. How many have ranked matchmaking? Now look at every failed F2P game and flash-in-the-pan FPS and tell me how they do matchmaking.

Freakiie, on 07 July 2012 - 03:33 PM, said:

-snip-

Basically you're just pointing out a whole load of stuff that will happen anyway and completely ignore the positive effect ranked match making can have.

Okay, I'm willing to hear you out, what are the positive effects of ranked matchmaking?

[Doom Puritan]

How about this possibility (just throwing out ideas here with no idea of how hard it would be to implement via code and whatnot);

-Give a player the opportunity to choose a "challenge" level game. 1=Noob through 5=Uber Elite. And make it so that "ranked"/"tiered" players can only go up or down one lvl. Determine "rank"/"tier" by earned XP in the selected mech (and after a certain total XP you are no longer a "noob" no matter what mech you select). ie: A "veteran" ala "tier 3" could play in a Chllenge 2,3 or 4 match.
This way the brand new to inexperienced can still have a challenge without some Overfiends ripping them apart with maniacal laughter. And make it so that rank/tier 5 Uber Elite is a true feat and accomplishment (think: big name famous Btech Heros/Villans your 0 gun 0 pilot guys)

And if there are no games in the que in which you selected then bump it up and down a notch. Imagine if you will, some random gamer trying out MWO who gets in his first game, stumbles around a bit, shoots some rocks, and then gets cored from the rear in less than a minute of play time...He tries again and the same thing happens...And then again with same results. Yes, there are some that take that as a challenge to get better and do the same to some other poor noob. BUT, many will say, "Forget this." Uninstall/delete. Some of you need to look past our BTech drooling fanboy mindset (oh yes, that would be me craving with an intense passion for my WVR-6M), and look further afield.

After all, if a House is paying for a veteran/elite Merc company. They probably won't be doing garrison work on Disney Planet expecting to do battle with Winnie the Pooh and the Hundred Acre Woods Rebellion.

Thoughts?

[Doom Puritan]

Addition. I do not think this would work for "team"/"Lance" games, but just random pickup matches. You join a team match, prepare for slaughter...

[Solarisjock]

BV 2.0 modified by the players K/D ratio. with some tonnage limits, otherwise you might get super skilled lights facing of crappy assaults where a firepower imbalance is all sorts of bad. it is pretty much the most balanced way i could really think of, it also follows the piloting/gunnery modifiers from the TT rules decently as well.

[Mead]

I like the modified BV... how about basing it on a one-way K:D ratio.. that is, your general 'rank' is determined by your highest historical K:D - that way you can't curbstomp too many noobs and you never have to worry about dropping back if you have a run of bad luck.