Soft Matchmaking Suite
Radix
Join Date: 2005-01-10 Member: 34654Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2005-01-10 Member: 34654Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">Toward More Holistic Matchmaking</div><!--sizeo:35--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->1. Weighted Kills:Deaths<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
First of all you can't set up any statistics with a pure K:D ratio in a game even remotely resembling NS. In order to even attempt to quantify the skill of a player, environmental factors must be considered, namely:
- Statistical skill of the fragger and his victim
- Upgrades active on the attacker vs upgrades active on the victim, including items, weapons, and lifeforms
- The game state, specifically focused on the number of players marked as either dead or alive on respective teams, likely also representing the frequency of frags on each team
- Many other elements are addable here, this is a very inexhaustive and temporary list to give a rough idea of what could be used, and for what purpose
Once you assign a statistical weight to each upgrade, it's easy to calculate how difficult a given kill was, and therefore how much of a subtractive multiplier to assign to it in order to accurately weight it. I would suggest storing all upgrade/downgrade times in memory in order to save cpu cycles. Once they were stored you would line up the timeline with the recorded weights at given points in time, which would allow you to calculate the proper weights after the game ended, so that gameplay impact of this rating system was minimized during the actual game.
<!--sizeo:35--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->2. Integrated Reserve Slots<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
As Firewater has suggested, giving admins a way to control who they favor on their server is another "soft" way to regulate both skill and enjoyment while allowing as much player freedom as possible for both administrators and clients.
<!--sizeo:35--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->3. Admin Controlled Arbitrary Skill Expectations Per-Server<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
Simply, I would recommend that administrators be allowed to assign an expected skill level, on an arbitrary scale (say 1-5 or 1-10) with suggested anchor points such as "1 - just installed" "5 - been playing a couple of months, know all the mechanics but need refinement on the deep technical play and hardcore strategies in the game" and "10 - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfgkZ4FzXNE" target="_blank">dreaming fairy</a>"
<!--sizeo:35--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->4. Server "Values" Descriptions, Also by Administrators<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
Tactical Gamer has a very different set of core ethics than does Guns 4 Back 2 School. It should be apparent to a player browsing for servers what a server at least presents itself to stand for, it would function similar to a brief "info" synopsis on a cable TV show, and would, if nothing else, present the game as extremely polished to prospective players, as well as investors.
<!--sizeo:35--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->5. Mouse-Over Browser Icon For Server Matchmaking Information<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
You could easily overload the "locked server" icon in the steam browser into a more descriptive "server information" icon, or simply add a second icon next to it if you wanted to preserve the locked-server search heuristic (which I personally use at times).
The most important element of this icon is that it would react to a mouseover event, so that if you hover the cursor over the icon it would display:
- The expected skill level of the server
- A graph showing the different skill levels of all the players on the server, probably mixed on the plane with a curve showing the overall average - this exists as an acid test to be used in combination with the server's arbitrarily-defined skill expectation
- The given server's values, as defined above
- Other information could easily be added at the developer's discretion, as it was needed
<!--sizeo:35--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->6. Unobtrusive Skill-Broadcast on Join<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
Finally I propose that a small hud item be added to an extremely benign area of the player's screen which shows the statistical skill (as defined above) of the joining client. The advantage of adding this feature would be enormous, as it would give players and active admins a heads-up view of an incoming clan stack (or simply of an incoming spike in player skill), which they could then either choose to allow (if it were a more advanced server) or regulate with admin privileges, if the server catered more to the casual-or-novice player.
This item could be turned on or off with the cvar cl_showskill (boolean).
First of all you can't set up any statistics with a pure K:D ratio in a game even remotely resembling NS. In order to even attempt to quantify the skill of a player, environmental factors must be considered, namely:
- Statistical skill of the fragger and his victim
- Upgrades active on the attacker vs upgrades active on the victim, including items, weapons, and lifeforms
- The game state, specifically focused on the number of players marked as either dead or alive on respective teams, likely also representing the frequency of frags on each team
- Many other elements are addable here, this is a very inexhaustive and temporary list to give a rough idea of what could be used, and for what purpose
Once you assign a statistical weight to each upgrade, it's easy to calculate how difficult a given kill was, and therefore how much of a subtractive multiplier to assign to it in order to accurately weight it. I would suggest storing all upgrade/downgrade times in memory in order to save cpu cycles. Once they were stored you would line up the timeline with the recorded weights at given points in time, which would allow you to calculate the proper weights after the game ended, so that gameplay impact of this rating system was minimized during the actual game.
<!--sizeo:35--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->2. Integrated Reserve Slots<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
As Firewater has suggested, giving admins a way to control who they favor on their server is another "soft" way to regulate both skill and enjoyment while allowing as much player freedom as possible for both administrators and clients.
<!--sizeo:35--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->3. Admin Controlled Arbitrary Skill Expectations Per-Server<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
Simply, I would recommend that administrators be allowed to assign an expected skill level, on an arbitrary scale (say 1-5 or 1-10) with suggested anchor points such as "1 - just installed" "5 - been playing a couple of months, know all the mechanics but need refinement on the deep technical play and hardcore strategies in the game" and "10 - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfgkZ4FzXNE" target="_blank">dreaming fairy</a>"
<!--sizeo:35--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->4. Server "Values" Descriptions, Also by Administrators<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
Tactical Gamer has a very different set of core ethics than does Guns 4 Back 2 School. It should be apparent to a player browsing for servers what a server at least presents itself to stand for, it would function similar to a brief "info" synopsis on a cable TV show, and would, if nothing else, present the game as extremely polished to prospective players, as well as investors.
<!--sizeo:35--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->5. Mouse-Over Browser Icon For Server Matchmaking Information<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
You could easily overload the "locked server" icon in the steam browser into a more descriptive "server information" icon, or simply add a second icon next to it if you wanted to preserve the locked-server search heuristic (which I personally use at times).
The most important element of this icon is that it would react to a mouseover event, so that if you hover the cursor over the icon it would display:
- The expected skill level of the server
- A graph showing the different skill levels of all the players on the server, probably mixed on the plane with a curve showing the overall average - this exists as an acid test to be used in combination with the server's arbitrarily-defined skill expectation
- The given server's values, as defined above
- Other information could easily be added at the developer's discretion, as it was needed
<!--sizeo:35--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->6. Unobtrusive Skill-Broadcast on Join<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
Finally I propose that a small hud item be added to an extremely benign area of the player's screen which shows the statistical skill (as defined above) of the joining client. The advantage of adding this feature would be enormous, as it would give players and active admins a heads-up view of an incoming clan stack (or simply of an incoming spike in player skill), which they could then either choose to allow (if it were a more advanced server) or regulate with admin privileges, if the server catered more to the casual-or-novice player.
This item could be turned on or off with the cvar cl_showskill (boolean).
Comments
Let the admins ban baddies if they want a skilled server and randomly ban people who kill life forms if they want an aimless server.
This not only saves development time, but allows admins to continue to power trip. Win-win.
The stat system would still be very difficult to develop to make it work properly - something to do after the game's release if UWE is bored, has no projects, or if somebody really wants to build the system. It shouldn't be something that holds back the release of NS2.
If any stat system is developed, it would probably be better to do it after the initial release for the reasons you've mentioned. Although I would prioritize it higher than you've described.
Here is the catch though, IMHO, a server's label of Novice/Moderate/Advanced should be decided by what is actually in the player base at the time, that is why I would support stat tracking made by the Devs. It doesn't matter one iota to me as a player if I go to join a server with a symbol/icon and description of Novice and find myself in a match against a Advanced player, my first impression of that server and possibly the game is ruined, I didn't get the time to explore and experiment, I got OWNED. Not fun at all. Admin enforcement of their label does not cut it, they can't be online all the time unless they happen to have a Admin group that is there 24/7 and consistent - do you know how rare that is? No, if a Advanced player joins a "Novice" server, that label needs to change to "Moderate" and the current Novice players need the information that a bad ass walks among them, so they can ooo and ahh or head on to greener pastures or vote kick so they can get on with their game, so the server goes back to its "Novice" label.
How does one quantify "skill" within a server which is its own contained system. If either side stacks, that means one side will have a very high K:D ratio, and the other a low one. The only way for servers to get their stats boosted then would be to have their regulars terrorize lesser skilled servers. Even self labels would be distorted, as who would want to label their server "low skill"?
Labeling servers competitive, casual or open is really the best way to give the player a heads up as to what the server community expects of him or her.
I think it's doable. The forum's discussed this several times so I'll leave it at you have your opinion and I have mine.
<!--quoteo(post=1676539:date=Apr 22 2008, 09:36 AM:name=Firewater)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Firewater @ Apr 22 2008, 09:36 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1676539"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Labeling servers competitive, casual or open is really the best way to give the player a heads up as to what the server community expects of him or her.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think it should be "beginner", "competetive", and "open", and that once you give competitive a distinct arena, open becomes varying forms of "casual". Also, IMO, new players are the only one's that need to be separated from the competitive side. Once they have an idea of how to play the game they can join open/competitive servers to try and get better.
Furthermore, there are players who don't care at all about their K:D ratios, but focus on helping their team. As aliens, they spend their resources on chambers, RTs, and hives. As marines, they spend their time building, welding, and interacting with the commander. Sure, they might not be able to kill an enemy to save their lives, but they are still very useful. It will be necessary with a stat system to track both teamwork contributions and the ability of a player to cause damage. It would be nice to have two bars that show a player's normalized levels of teamwork and individual capability.
I actually liked your system, but I didn't recall it when I made the post. Can you elaborate on the meanings of "Competitive" "Casual" and "Open"? Specifically I don't understand what you mean by Open.
Server will cater to competitive players, and the "play to win" style that is favored amongst CAL and other cyberleague players. Also to players who do not want to play in a league, but want to play a serious game.
<b>Casual</b>
Server will have a more relaxed enviornment, more concentration on the process of having fun, rather than pure winning. Will cater to newer players as well as experienced players who do not take the game too seriously.
<b>Open</b>
Server will have no preference in players, a sort of Lazze Faire sort of attitude. This would be the default setting as well.
Renaming Open would probably be a good idea if that's the case, though at the moment, I need to get to class and I can't readily think of a title that's both more descriptive and preserves the idea.