dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
edited February 2016
The "shuffle" should split atleast the 4 players with the highest skill points to each team and shuffle the others around them.
Thats what i did on the HBZ server, splitting the carrys to each team.
Another issue is:
If you join a team fast, the chance is very high that the shuffle dont touch you.
So two >3000 players join a team first and after the shuffle they are still at the same team.
To counter 2 >3000 marines you need very good teamplay on alienside wich you nearly never have on pub.
Thats where the nonstop marin wins come from and thats why >3000 players prefer the marineside.
The "shuffle" should split atleast the 4 players with the highest skill points to each team and shuffle the others around them.
Thats what i did on the HBZ server, splitting the carrys to each team.
Another issue is:
If you join a team fast, the chance is very high that the shuffle dont touch you.
So two >3000 players join a team first and after the shuffle they are still at the same team.
To counter 2 >3000 marines you need very good teamplay on alienside wich you nearly never have on pub.
Thats where the nonstop marin wins come from and thats why >3000 players prefer the marineside.
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
edited February 2016
Split the carrys
Force a autoshuffle if the skill difference is to high (over 300 maybe after roundstart)
Introduce a cooldown for people who just reconnecting after a shuffle and roundstart (5 min maybe) and temp ban them for 1 hr if they reconnect multiple times within 1 hr.
This should solve some of the issues shuffle has.
CS:Go has similar mechanism.
If you kick too much players ot got kicked too much, you receive a temp ban.
Looks like some people need some sort of punishment to learn it the hard way.
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
I believe I may have mentioned about a million times in the past, that the only way to actually solve these issues is with a big enough playerbase...
but that then gets us into a player retention discussion, which has about as much impact as this discussion has.
i.e. none..
We have to hope that the new player retention ideas from UWE work, so that we have enough players to separate on skill. Otherwise, this whole post and following topic is destined to be repeated forever.
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
edited February 2016
@GhoulofGSG9 - I may have to take back that awesome I gave you, it seems you will have to create a low skill server for me to play on, as the skill level of your 'casual' server is too high for me.....
If I am not even good enough to be considered casual, one wonders why I bother playing this game...
---Edit---
I did just play 3 rounds to try and improve my hive score. Lost all three, and am now further away from playing on your casual server than ever. Now 406 skill..
Basically, the skill system is telling me that the reason I am on the losing team every time is because I am playing. The skill system is telling me to quit NS2.
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
edited February 2016
You had the >3000 players before the update on the "rookie friendly" servers and you still have them on "normal" ones now.
So nothing has changed here.
Like i said in another post: If a player has left the rookie state, he didnt become a pro magically. Where are all these "pros" you talking about?
I see the same people with high skill levels like before.
I have lost so many rounds after the update, cant count them cause "white" players have no clue what they are doing, having bad aim, etc.
You sound like all the white servers are full of pros now.
This is not true.
Even rookies can play there. So nothing has changed here compared to the pre "rookie friendly server" aera.
Basicly only the "rookie friendly tag" is gone and rookies cant command there anymore.
Thats all. Thats the only the change to servers.
And about the low skill servers. We had them in the past but noone was playing in them.
Why?
Cause people dont care about servernames and restrictions, they join a server with people on it.
But now suddenly people care?
Cmon.
One of these servers left:
Russia # 4 | <1300 skill
Noone is playing on it.
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
edited February 2016
@dePARA - I don't know if it is just timing, but you always manage to make a post attacking someones comment, right after I have made a comment. So I feel your comment is directed at me, and yet, when I read your comments, they are absolutely nothing to do with anything I have ever said. If you are posting right after me, but not talking to me, please point out who you are talking to.
In case you are talking to me, riddle me this, until about a year ago, I had a skill score of around 1200-1300, it would up and down, sometimes hitting 1100, sometimes 1400, and yet, now I am rated at 408.
I am not complaining about pros or anything of the sort. For the last year, everytime I have played this game, I have been on a straight decline, which shows no sign of abating.
I am not blaming pro players, I am not accusing noobs of magically becoming pros, I actually said that those people leaving rookies status are arguably those MOST LIKELY to leave the game.
As I said before, if you are not talking to me, please advise, and if you are, get at least one point I have made correct.
Your last posts sound like this "Im losing all my games now, the skill system is broken (wich is kinda true, aka 1000 and 0 point rookies) and its the fault of the rookie only servers (cause you post it here)"
But then you say you where going down from 1100 to 408 within the last year.
That was my point:
You lost most of the skill points BEFORE the rookie only servers.
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
edited February 2016
I have never complained about this, as I said, nothing will make me leave this game. However the people who I am talking about, the LOW-SKILLED players, will not be people like me with hundreds of hours in the game, but the people migrating out of rookie status.
My point is rookie only servers are only delaying the time before the pounding is received by these players.
I have said multiple times, look at the low-skill player churn rather than rookie churn to see if the rookies are now leaving after being beaten up once out of rookie, rather than just monitoring rookie only churn.
All my arguments are being made from the point of a NEWLY PROMOTED low skill player. It just so happens, I am an experienced player, who has a similar skill so can demonstrate what they will experience.
So for the last time understand - I am not arguing this point for vets like me, but the newly promoted low skill players. Now can you see why your answers are completely nothing to do with what I am saying.
I don't give a shit, about losing in NS2, but those newly promoted rookies surely will.
While before this was an explicit operation, this is now a consequence of balancing by standard deviation. Having multiple "carrying players" on a team would skyrocket the difference between standard deviation of both teams (because maintaining the average will mean putting all the low skill players with them) and be immediately rejected.
Force a autoshuffle if the skill difference is to high (over 300 maybe after roundstart)
I can already hear the complaints coming: "I want to play on <x team> but it keeps shuffling us around". This is more swapping one disgruntled set of users for another.
Introduce a cooldown for people who just reconnecting after a shuffle and roundstart (5 min maybe) and temp ban them for 1 hr if they reconnect multiple times within 1 hr.
This punishes players who disconnected legitimately, for example having to go AFK for a few minutes, game crashed, temporary connection problems etc.
I think it's also not realised how people are demanding two completely opposite things from shuffling systems at the same time. They want to be able to play on the team they choose, but they don't want games to be unfair. When the system starts to bias towards letting people play the team they want, people complain it doesn't produce fair enough teams. When it biases towards optimal teams, people complain they get put on the same team over and over and want to be able to choose.
Balancing these two requirements is very hard, and can't be done to the complete satisfaction of both. With that said, I've actually just completely rewritten the way team optimisation is done in Shine's shuffle plugin. It's a lot better tested from a code point of view, and from my testing against a load of random team data (where it added a few high skill players, a few low skill, and the rest randomly around the middle) it's producing pretty good results.
Lastly, regarding the use of sh_teamstats, it hasn't been indicating all the server settings that affect the outcome of a shuffle, which it will do after the next update. Servers that disable standard deviation based sorting, or impose an average tolerance value will result in much worse team compositions for the sake of letting people choose their team with more weight.
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
edited February 2016
@Soul_Rider
You are right.
A game with a high poluation can find players for each skill level via an matchmaking system.
This only works cause the ammount of players.
So a system like that would never work in NS2.
In the past rookies joined a server, facing the best players in NS2 and got slaughtered without any clue about any gamemechanic or mapknowlege.
Just imagine new CS:Go players have to play against Friberg and co in every round. Would CS:Go still successfull then? Dont think so.
The rookie only servers adress exact this, and only this:
Let the new players learn the maps and basic gamemechanics on there own against there level.
Did this help them to survive against the high skill players later?
I dont think so.
So everyone wants more players while F2P is not really an option cause things discussed here also.
The upcoming tutorial revamp + the rookie only servers are just a try to raise the playercount a bit.
Maybe it fails like the mentor programs in the past.
But the devs atleast try something. This is more than other games doing.
In the end NS2 will never going to have many players cause its just not made for the typical casual.
There seems to be many in UWE and many fans who believe compitition play is more important and relevant than casual play.
The servers that get populated and the players that new players play against are of great issue.
The perception of new players on the game and why it may seem lame to them is the perception that must be targeted.
The hidden mechanics, the lag disparity, the mysterious icons, advertised skins...What ever else other treatment you are placing on new players to give them a sheltered approach may just be met with a perception that there's so much more to it.
I also asked you to stop looking only at the average skill, but also at the standard deviation showed by sh_teamstats. So for that game where the averages were close, what were the standard deviations of the teams? This is a serious question.
Ok Nordic... How's this. Pulled this from a game I played this morning.
Aliens
3169
2701
1125
1079
538
90
Average 1450.3 Standard Deviation: 1113.9
Here you have a 3100+ player, who is almost double the hive score of anyone on the other team, and shuffle has placed the 2700+ player on his team... In addition the "average" for each team is only off by a little over 100 points... which would lead most people to think that's "balanced" (especially on servers configured like IBIS where it shows the average team score at the top of the scoreboard)
It doesn't matter in this case what the standard deviation is, because the system is saying that it's "balanced" when it is clearly not. Not even remotely close to being balanced.
Now if shuffle worked, there would NEVER be ANY circumstance where the 3169 player and the 2701 player ended up on the same team... The teams in that game should've looked something like this.
Marine
3169
1632
1125
1079
358
90
Alien
2701
1846
1840
1436
846
538
This splits the skilled players onto each teams, giving the team with the lower skilled "pro" slightly higher skills across the entire team to make up for how much the 3169 player will be carrying...
Of course you still have the problem of people who have a hive score that is nowhere even remotely close to their own skill level. (usually WAY lower than it should be) but that's a different problem.
I had another idea for controlling the "pros always stomping everyone" problem without segregating the population... A handicap mod..
Something that would work like this... When a player enters who has either a skill score that is 1000 points above the server average (or double down arrows) or a kdr that is a certain % higher than everyone else in the server.. then they get a handicap. Either by reducing the damage they do, reducing the ammo/energy they have, or reducing their health/armor (or all 3)... Something of that nature that would weaken them to the point where they can go all out and won't have to hold back, yet they'd still be on par with everyone else in the server (no god-like stomping)
Ideally it would be something that would handicap them more the further above everyone else they are. Like if they're 1000 above the average have it be 25% 1500 above = 35% etc..
I don't expect the pro level players to like that idea (since they do so enjoy stomping) but it would be a solution that wouldn't segregate the community... thoughts?
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
That's exactly what I have been saying for a long time. It's not that they aren't trying, but they are trying to make something which is only ever going to really appeal to a small number of players stick with more people, and that is always going to be a hard ask.
I honestly think NS2 needs an average concurrent playerbase of around 500 to begin to offer even the faintest glimmer of rough skill matching, and I honestly feel that is about the best target that can ever be achieved, but it will not be easy.
The things is, NS2 has more than enough sold copies, what it really needs is a way get some of the people who already own the game playing again. I have done this recently, and one of my friends is quite good at NS anyway, so didn't have much trouble, the other, more around my skill level, was inherently put off again, although out of rookie status.
I keep saying, there is no magic answer to NS2 problems, and I applaud what is being done, but I find all too often, a lot of focus gets put on whether results are being achieved based on certain metrics, but invariably, no-one had the 'negative' foresight to focus metrics on the potential problem areas this could create.
This is unsurprising, and a common factor of the way the world is, people don't recognise the power of looking at the negative. It's discarded all too often as hate, rather than a contribution to a balanced discussion.
This splits the skilled players onto each teams, giving the team with the lower skilled "pro" slightly higher skills across the entire team to make up for how much the 3169 player will be carrying...
Of course you still have the problem of people who have a hive score that is nowhere even remotely close to their own skill level. (usually WAY lower than it should be) but that's a different problem.
Actually those two are very much related. When the skill system does not account for standard deviation, the probability of outcomes won't be correct and thus the score won't be correct. That's just a minor point I wanted to make tho.
If I remember correctly, such was done with intent... Perhaps to keep two fanboys playing together and stomping pubs. I don't know, but when you choose to program where it's a 'good' option to balance the teams by allowing the strongest to stick together instead of the weakest... i mean I'm trying to be nice.... here's my silence.
I didn't realize this was something that had been suggested before. However in that thread it's more of a "stop the vets from stomping rookies" thing and not a "stop the god-like pros from stomping everyone and ruining games" thing... They were also suggesting giving the rookie more damage/health, changing the way pres worked, and making the handicap optional. (which would completely defeat the reason for having it in the first place) My suggestion is more subtle (simply lowering the power of the god-like player) and for the most part it would feel like nothing was changed. (except the god-like player wouldn't be getting 20-30 kill streaks with mind numbing ease..)
I still think that it could work, simply because it would only affect one or two (maybe three) high skill players in a server, and they'd have to be SO far above everyone else in ability for it to even kick in. I may make a new thread (or necro that other one) .. thanks for pointing it out...
Here is a correlation table I got out of SPSS today with all the data, no subsets. I was playing with killrates and winrates when I made this instead of W/L and K/D.
random thought after lunch based on your data:
KDrate slightly more related to WLrate than SPM. But SPM and KDrate similary related to Skill.
You can infer a high KDR player is more likely to win a match but that player will not necessarily have a high skill.
So, hypothesis:
1. are those matches netting skill points? Likely not. Is it the result of ill balances or deliberate stacking? We should look at how often and much a shuffled match net points vs non-shuffled.
2. or something else?
3. Score points for killing and destroying is well balanced because of similar correlation to Skill (wins that net skill).
Haven't played in 2 days. I login to play and gee, here is my typical server browser since bootcamp.
Let's see, which server do I want to get raped on tonight?
Here is my typical server browser since before bootcamp. Let's see, which server do I want to experience a lack of teamplay and coordination on tonight resulting in boring gameplay?
We have the same problem but from opposite sides. You know what fixes it? Nice updates like bootcamp are a start.
Haven't played in 2 days. I login to play and gee, here is my typical server browser since bootcamp.
Let's see, which server do I want to get raped on tonight?
max ping 177? are you even trying to find a server?
You still have a wide mix of players on each servers on your list.
It goes from rookies to div1 clanplayers.
So NOTHING has changed here compared to the time before the last update.
If you add the time you spend on posting here about all the pro players who pop up suddenly after the last update, how about using this time to improve certain things from your gameplay?
You cant hit shit?
Grab a friend and and do some 30 min 1v1 aimdrill.
With a friend this is very funny and you can improve much here.
You missing some gamesense?
Watch some commentated clanwars.
And dont tell me you dont have the time todo this.
So instead of nonstop complaining about non existent 80% "pro" players its up to you to improve.
Was it ever mentioned what the arrows actually indicate? Like instead of one arrow/two arrows/equal, what is it in actual numbers? I assume it is compared against the average skill on the server, but how many hundreds difference is an arrow?
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
Ah and btw. @MrChoke
By doing your 1v1 training on Ghouls casual only server with the pregame plugin.
You can train and seed the server you want at the same time.
MoFo1 with his KDR of 2 blaming "competitive" players ruining his rounds... ironic.
Just out of curiosity @Nordic do you know the percentile of players with >2KDR ?
Haven't played in 2 days. I login to play and gee, here is my typical server browser since bootcamp.
Let's see, which server do I want to get raped on tonight?
Good for you. You are no longer allowed to stomp on most rookies and you finally realize that you are below-average when compared to non-rookies.
MoFo1 with his KDR of 2 blaming "competitive" players ruining his rounds... ironic.
Just out of curiosity @Nordic do you know the percentile of players with >2KDR ?
I don't have a kdr of 2? Where do you get that? My kdr is around 1.7 and that's playing alien for the majority of my time in NS2... If I played both sides 50/50 my average kdr would probably be around 1.2...
The 2+ kdr players I refer to primarily play marine (where my kdr is almost always below 1.0) and have kdr's of 2.5, 2.7, 3.4, 4.3... Plus they end up with double the kills and score of anyone else on the server in the majority of games I see them in..
Was it ever mentioned what the arrows actually indicate? Like instead of one arrow/two arrows/equal, what is it in actual numbers? I assume it is compared against the average skill on the server, but how many hundreds difference is an arrow?
I know for the fact that in his server browser that the ghouls casual server has a single player with 1000 skill. So even 1000 skill was double up arrow for him.
MoFo1 with his KDR of 2 blaming "competitive" players ruining his rounds... ironic.
Just out of curiosity @Nordic do you know the percentile of players with >2KDR ?
2.2% have a KDR with 2 or greater recorded in hive. There are players, like myself on a rare occasion, who will get 2 KDR or more in a game but it does not show in hive because it is balanced by all the times I play poorly.
As you can see in this histogram, it is quite rare actually.
Comments
Thats what i did on the HBZ server, splitting the carrys to each team.
Another issue is:
If you join a team fast, the chance is very high that the shuffle dont touch you.
So two >3000 players join a team first and after the shuffle they are still at the same team.
To counter 2 >3000 marines you need very good teamplay on alienside wich you nearly never have on pub.
Thats where the nonstop marin wins come from and thats why >3000 players prefer the marineside.
Take a look at this thread.
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/comment/2264349#Comment_2264349
Force a autoshuffle if the skill difference is to high (over 300 maybe after roundstart)
Introduce a cooldown for people who just reconnecting after a shuffle and roundstart (5 min maybe) and temp ban them for 1 hr if they reconnect multiple times within 1 hr.
This should solve some of the issues shuffle has.
CS:Go has similar mechanism.
If you kick too much players ot got kicked too much, you receive a temp ban.
Looks like some people need some sort of punishment to learn it the hard way.
but that then gets us into a player retention discussion, which has about as much impact as this discussion has.
i.e. none..
We have to hope that the new player retention ideas from UWE work, so that we have enough players to separate on skill. Otherwise, this whole post and following topic is destined to be repeated forever.
If I am not even good enough to be considered casual, one wonders why I bother playing this game...
---Edit---
I did just play 3 rounds to try and improve my hive score. Lost all three, and am now further away from playing on your casual server than ever. Now 406 skill..
Basically, the skill system is telling me that the reason I am on the losing team every time is because I am playing. The skill system is telling me to quit NS2.
So nothing has changed here.
Like i said in another post: If a player has left the rookie state, he didnt become a pro magically. Where are all these "pros" you talking about?
I see the same people with high skill levels like before.
I have lost so many rounds after the update, cant count them cause "white" players have no clue what they are doing, having bad aim, etc.
You sound like all the white servers are full of pros now.
This is not true.
Even rookies can play there. So nothing has changed here compared to the pre "rookie friendly server" aera.
Basicly only the "rookie friendly tag" is gone and rookies cant command there anymore.
Thats all. Thats the only the change to servers.
And about the low skill servers. We had them in the past but noone was playing in them.
Why?
Cause people dont care about servernames and restrictions, they join a server with people on it.
But now suddenly people care?
Cmon.
One of these servers left:
Russia # 4 | <1300 skill
Noone is playing on it.
In case you are talking to me, riddle me this, until about a year ago, I had a skill score of around 1200-1300, it would up and down, sometimes hitting 1100, sometimes 1400, and yet, now I am rated at 408.
I am not complaining about pros or anything of the sort. For the last year, everytime I have played this game, I have been on a straight decline, which shows no sign of abating.
I am not blaming pro players, I am not accusing noobs of magically becoming pros, I actually said that those people leaving rookies status are arguably those MOST LIKELY to leave the game.
As I said before, if you are not talking to me, please advise, and if you are, get at least one point I have made correct.
Yep, i was talking to you and to OP.
Your last posts sound like this "Im losing all my games now, the skill system is broken (wich is kinda true, aka 1000 and 0 point rookies) and its the fault of the rookie only servers (cause you post it here)"
But then you say you where going down from 1100 to 408 within the last year.
That was my point:
You lost most of the skill points BEFORE the rookie only servers.
And i dont see where im attacking someone here.
My point is rookie only servers are only delaying the time before the pounding is received by these players.
I have said multiple times, look at the low-skill player churn rather than rookie churn to see if the rookies are now leaving after being beaten up once out of rookie, rather than just monitoring rookie only churn.
All my arguments are being made from the point of a NEWLY PROMOTED low skill player. It just so happens, I am an experienced player, who has a similar skill so can demonstrate what they will experience.
So for the last time understand - I am not arguing this point for vets like me, but the newly promoted low skill players. Now can you see why your answers are completely nothing to do with what I am saying.
I don't give a shit, about losing in NS2, but those newly promoted rookies surely will.
While before this was an explicit operation, this is now a consequence of balancing by standard deviation. Having multiple "carrying players" on a team would skyrocket the difference between standard deviation of both teams (because maintaining the average will mean putting all the low skill players with them) and be immediately rejected.
I can already hear the complaints coming: "I want to play on <x team> but it keeps shuffling us around". This is more swapping one disgruntled set of users for another.
This punishes players who disconnected legitimately, for example having to go AFK for a few minutes, game crashed, temporary connection problems etc.
I think it's also not realised how people are demanding two completely opposite things from shuffling systems at the same time. They want to be able to play on the team they choose, but they don't want games to be unfair. When the system starts to bias towards letting people play the team they want, people complain it doesn't produce fair enough teams. When it biases towards optimal teams, people complain they get put on the same team over and over and want to be able to choose.
Balancing these two requirements is very hard, and can't be done to the complete satisfaction of both. With that said, I've actually just completely rewritten the way team optimisation is done in Shine's shuffle plugin. It's a lot better tested from a code point of view, and from my testing against a load of random team data (where it added a few high skill players, a few low skill, and the rest randomly around the middle) it's producing pretty good results.
Lastly, regarding the use of sh_teamstats, it hasn't been indicating all the server settings that affect the outcome of a shuffle, which it will do after the next update. Servers that disable standard deviation based sorting, or impose an average tolerance value will result in much worse team compositions for the sake of letting people choose their team with more weight.
You are right.
A game with a high poluation can find players for each skill level via an matchmaking system.
This only works cause the ammount of players.
So a system like that would never work in NS2.
In the past rookies joined a server, facing the best players in NS2 and got slaughtered without any clue about any gamemechanic or mapknowlege.
Just imagine new CS:Go players have to play against Friberg and co in every round. Would CS:Go still successfull then? Dont think so.
The rookie only servers adress exact this, and only this:
Let the new players learn the maps and basic gamemechanics on there own against there level.
Did this help them to survive against the high skill players later?
I dont think so.
So everyone wants more players while F2P is not really an option cause things discussed here also.
The upcoming tutorial revamp + the rookie only servers are just a try to raise the playercount a bit.
Maybe it fails like the mentor programs in the past.
But the devs atleast try something. This is more than other games doing.
In the end NS2 will never going to have many players cause its just not made for the typical casual.
The servers that get populated and the players that new players play against are of great issue.
The perception of new players on the game and why it may seem lame to them is the perception that must be targeted.
The hidden mechanics, the lag disparity, the mysterious icons, advertised skins...What ever else other treatment you are placing on new players to give them a sheltered approach may just be met with a perception that there's so much more to it.
Ok Nordic... How's this. Pulled this from a game I played this morning.
Marines
1846
1840
1632
1436
846
358
Average: 1326.3 Standard Deviation: 548:9
Aliens
3169
2701
1125
1079
538
90
Average 1450.3 Standard Deviation: 1113.9
Here you have a 3100+ player, who is almost double the hive score of anyone on the other team, and shuffle has placed the 2700+ player on his team... In addition the "average" for each team is only off by a little over 100 points... which would lead most people to think that's "balanced" (especially on servers configured like IBIS where it shows the average team score at the top of the scoreboard)
It doesn't matter in this case what the standard deviation is, because the system is saying that it's "balanced" when it is clearly not. Not even remotely close to being balanced.
Now if shuffle worked, there would NEVER be ANY circumstance where the 3169 player and the 2701 player ended up on the same team... The teams in that game should've looked something like this.
Marine
3169
1632
1125
1079
358
90
Alien
2701
1846
1840
1436
846
538
This splits the skilled players onto each teams, giving the team with the lower skilled "pro" slightly higher skills across the entire team to make up for how much the 3169 player will be carrying...
Of course you still have the problem of people who have a hive score that is nowhere even remotely close to their own skill level. (usually WAY lower than it should be) but that's a different problem.
I had another idea for controlling the "pros always stomping everyone" problem without segregating the population... A handicap mod..
Something that would work like this... When a player enters who has either a skill score that is 1000 points above the server average (or double down arrows) or a kdr that is a certain % higher than everyone else in the server.. then they get a handicap. Either by reducing the damage they do, reducing the ammo/energy they have, or reducing their health/armor (or all 3)... Something of that nature that would weaken them to the point where they can go all out and won't have to hold back, yet they'd still be on par with everyone else in the server (no god-like stomping)
Ideally it would be something that would handicap them more the further above everyone else they are. Like if they're 1000 above the average have it be 25% 1500 above = 35% etc..
I don't expect the pro level players to like that idea (since they do so enjoy stomping) but it would be a solution that wouldn't segregate the community... thoughts?
I honestly think NS2 needs an average concurrent playerbase of around 500 to begin to offer even the faintest glimmer of rough skill matching, and I honestly feel that is about the best target that can ever be achieved, but it will not be easy.
The things is, NS2 has more than enough sold copies, what it really needs is a way get some of the people who already own the game playing again. I have done this recently, and one of my friends is quite good at NS anyway, so didn't have much trouble, the other, more around my skill level, was inherently put off again, although out of rookie status.
I keep saying, there is no magic answer to NS2 problems, and I applaud what is being done, but I find all too often, a lot of focus gets put on whether results are being achieved based on certain metrics, but invariably, no-one had the 'negative' foresight to focus metrics on the potential problem areas this could create.
This is unsurprising, and a common factor of the way the world is, people don't recognise the power of looking at the negative. It's discarded all too often as hate, rather than a contribution to a balanced discussion.
Already alarm bells are going off!
In short, it's a terrible idea.
I didn't realize this was something that had been suggested before. However in that thread it's more of a "stop the vets from stomping rookies" thing and not a "stop the god-like pros from stomping everyone and ruining games" thing... They were also suggesting giving the rookie more damage/health, changing the way pres worked, and making the handicap optional. (which would completely defeat the reason for having it in the first place) My suggestion is more subtle (simply lowering the power of the god-like player) and for the most part it would feel like nothing was changed. (except the god-like player wouldn't be getting 20-30 kill streaks with mind numbing ease..)
I still think that it could work, simply because it would only affect one or two (maybe three) high skill players in a server, and they'd have to be SO far above everyone else in ability for it to even kick in. I may make a new thread (or necro that other one) .. thanks for pointing it out...
random thought after lunch based on your data:
KDrate slightly more related to WLrate than SPM. But SPM and KDrate similary related to Skill.
You can infer a high KDR player is more likely to win a match but that player will not necessarily have a high skill.
So, hypothesis:
1. are those matches netting skill points? Likely not. Is it the result of ill balances or deliberate stacking? We should look at how often and much a shuffled match net points vs non-shuffled.
2. or something else?
3. Score points for killing and destroying is well balanced because of similar correlation to Skill (wins that net skill).
Let's see, which server do I want to get raped on tonight?
We have the same problem but from opposite sides. You know what fixes it? Nice updates like bootcamp are a start.
max ping 177? are you even trying to find a server?
You still have a wide mix of players on each servers on your list.
It goes from rookies to div1 clanplayers.
So NOTHING has changed here compared to the time before the last update.
If you add the time you spend on posting here about all the pro players who pop up suddenly after the last update, how about using this time to improve certain things from your gameplay?
You cant hit shit?
Grab a friend and and do some 30 min 1v1 aimdrill.
With a friend this is very funny and you can improve much here.
You missing some gamesense?
Watch some commentated clanwars.
And dont tell me you dont have the time todo this.
So instead of nonstop complaining about non existent 80% "pro" players its up to you to improve.
By doing your 1v1 training on Ghouls casual only server with the pregame plugin.
You can train and seed the server you want at the same time.
How awesome is this?
Just out of curiosity @Nordic do you know the percentile of players with >2KDR ?
Good for you. You are no longer allowed to stomp on most rookies and you finally realize that you are below-average when compared to non-rookies.
I don't have a kdr of 2? Where do you get that? My kdr is around 1.7 and that's playing alien for the majority of my time in NS2... If I played both sides 50/50 my average kdr would probably be around 1.2...
The 2+ kdr players I refer to primarily play marine (where my kdr is almost always below 1.0) and have kdr's of 2.5, 2.7, 3.4, 4.3... Plus they end up with double the kills and score of anyone else on the server in the majority of games I see them in..
I know for the fact that in his server browser that the ghouls casual server has a single player with 1000 skill. So even 1000 skill was double up arrow for him.
2.2% have a KDR with 2 or greater recorded in hive. There are players, like myself on a rare occasion, who will get 2 KDR or more in a game but it does not show in hive because it is balanced by all the times I play poorly.
As you can see in this histogram, it is quite rare actually.