Matchmaking (2017)
SantaClaws
Denmark Join Date: 2012-07-31 Member: 154491Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Denmark Join Date: 2012-07-31 Member: 154491Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Topic discussed to death? NO! This is the current year, so it's time to bring it back up damnit!
I'm bringing this up partially because the A bright future of NS2 or Death? thread hinted about it a little bit.
But I'm also bringing it up because Reflex just launched their matchmaking system. Reflex is an arena shooter in early access similar to Quake. If you think that NS2 has a small community, then take a look at Reflex steam charts.
The way that Reflex matchmaking works is by you adding all the game modes that you are interested in being matched for in the menu. Then you press play. You immediately get put in a warmup mode game lobby, with other players also waiting to be matched - not necessarily in the same gamemodes. When the system has found a match for you, you get pulled from the game lobby and play your match.
Now this is not the first time this kind of idea has been suggested for NS2. But what has changed, and the reason I think it is time to bring it up again, is that I think we now have a good example of how it would work - in Reflex.
The warmup mode idea is crucial for a small community like NS2 or Reflex, you don't want to sit idle in some game lobby like in Starcraft or CS;GO. That said, my experience with the Reflex match system, is that it actually doesn't take very long at all to find a match, in spite of the tiny community.
Of course, take this with a grain of salt. Reflex benefits from the fact that it primarily matches 1v1's, not 6v6's - and that you can search for more than one gamemode at a time.
Matchmaking would be such a powerful tool for NS2, because it would help with one of the most damaging problems that I think NS2 has had throughout its lifetime : Lack of skill segregation.
Matchmaking would not just offer a method to organise games with groups of players with low skill disparity, which would inarguably produce better balanced games. - but equally importantly it would unlock the ability, to match friends so that they can play on the same team. A guy called SnarfyBobo last night talked about what a shame it was that NS2 didn't have a way to queue with your friends last night to an audience of 300 people.
There are a lot of challenges to implementing matchmaking to NS2, I get it. Like what do we do about commanders? What do we do about the 3k+ elo players, who likely don't have a lot of players to be matched against. I could add a 3 page monologue on these subjects, but I think I'll release here before the thread gets too long to read
I'm bringing this up partially because the A bright future of NS2 or Death? thread hinted about it a little bit.
But I'm also bringing it up because Reflex just launched their matchmaking system. Reflex is an arena shooter in early access similar to Quake. If you think that NS2 has a small community, then take a look at Reflex steam charts.
The way that Reflex matchmaking works is by you adding all the game modes that you are interested in being matched for in the menu. Then you press play. You immediately get put in a warmup mode game lobby, with other players also waiting to be matched - not necessarily in the same gamemodes. When the system has found a match for you, you get pulled from the game lobby and play your match.
Now this is not the first time this kind of idea has been suggested for NS2. But what has changed, and the reason I think it is time to bring it up again, is that I think we now have a good example of how it would work - in Reflex.
The warmup mode idea is crucial for a small community like NS2 or Reflex, you don't want to sit idle in some game lobby like in Starcraft or CS;GO. That said, my experience with the Reflex match system, is that it actually doesn't take very long at all to find a match, in spite of the tiny community.
Of course, take this with a grain of salt. Reflex benefits from the fact that it primarily matches 1v1's, not 6v6's - and that you can search for more than one gamemode at a time.
Matchmaking would be such a powerful tool for NS2, because it would help with one of the most damaging problems that I think NS2 has had throughout its lifetime : Lack of skill segregation.
Matchmaking would not just offer a method to organise games with groups of players with low skill disparity, which would inarguably produce better balanced games. - but equally importantly it would unlock the ability, to match friends so that they can play on the same team. A guy called SnarfyBobo last night talked about what a shame it was that NS2 didn't have a way to queue with your friends last night to an audience of 300 people.
There are a lot of challenges to implementing matchmaking to NS2, I get it. Like what do we do about commanders? What do we do about the 3k+ elo players, who likely don't have a lot of players to be matched against. I could add a 3 page monologue on these subjects, but I think I'll release here before the thread gets too long to read
Comments
Roadmap trello - https://trello.com/b/njrpasjl/ns2-roadmap
Nordics suggested card - https://trello.com/c/Zk5778Qu/28-match-seeding-system
My problem with matchmaking is NS1&2 has always had a large degree of server loyalty (and hate) due to the independent server ownership. In a small community I know that if I join XYZ server, someone I recognize will either already be there or soon join up even if we're not stream friends.
Additionally does segregation of skill on a server level make sense? Do we want to play with only players of comparable skill? Personally I like mixed games where there are those better, equivalent, and worst then me (feels good to get the easy kill and good to clip a skilled player in different ways)... to me Having teams well balanced within a server is more important then having servers balanced(always room for a <1000 or >2500 hive server).
I would prefer efforts be made to improve hive instead of matchmaking. If hive could account for the difference in skill of alien, marine and commander... to create more balanced games within a server of wide range of skill... then all we would have to do is join an active server with the desired player count and latency.
Absolutely not. It has been tried before and has not really been all that successful. The no rookies pub server was the most successful attempt in my memory, and it no longer exists.
Are you familiar with the concept of diminishing marginal returns? In terms of the hive skill system, there are more things that could be done to improve the system. The problem lies within the return, or gains of such an improvement. Further improvements to the hive skill system would have increasingly marginal returns. Basically, improving the system would not be a large improvement.
Separate skill values is the next logical improvement. As I was describing above, the returns would be marginal. It would not make a big difference, but it would be a nice improvement. Furthermore, implementing separate skill values has some consequences. It would likely decrease player team choice. It is also not easy to implement in a feasible way. To work on separate skill values, would take time away from other goals UWE has.
Team balance on individual servers is about as good as it is ever going to be. Matchmaking by skill is the next best step to increasing team balance quality. I could go into a longer explanation, with a sports analogy, and some math but I don't think anyone is really interested in that. I have posted it before.
Nobody really knows what this match seeding system UWE is making will turn out to be. Given the small playerbase, large skill differences, and community servers I do not think UWE can implement a traditional matchmaking system. I think they will have to be more creative than that.
I know you guy's said you might end up re-launching NS2 depending on how things go, but I doubt it'd be a good idea.
Rookie only servers are also pretty much the only real reason the "no rookie" servers all died off. It's also when the community became more toxic (really high skill players always getting upset at the "useless rookies" coming out of rookie only)
If they made the "rookie only" servers into "rookie/casual" servers with a limit based on hive skill/kdr instead of score/time played, I believe it would go a long way toward improving match quality for everyone. Having really low and really high skill players on the same server would become much more rare, because rookies/low skill players would have to get good enough to reach a high enough hive score. Which would in turn prevent rookies from being suddenly locked out of their favorite servers and kicked into a pit of sharks that they have little to no chance against.. (thus eliminating the annoyance you mention) Plus it gets rid of all the "worthless idiots" and "useless rookies" that the high skill players consistently complain about.
As far as matchmaking, in my experiences matchmaking systems can't even match people together properly when you have a playerbase of 100,000+, so there's virtually no hope of one ever succeeding in matching such a small community with such a wide gap in player skill like NS2. In literally every game I've tried matchmaking in (which has been a helluva lot over the years) I have never seen one where it matched people successfully (equally skilled and playable ping levels)
As long as they don't fubar the existing dedicated servers and server browser, then it couldn't hurt, but neither will it magically create balanced games like people seem to think it will.
I understand the issue with diminishing returns, I was contending that the "returns" from a match making would be less then the "returns" from further hive development. As such IF efforts were to be spent towards balance improvements then improving hive improvements would yield better returns. (Assuming similar levels of difficulty in implementation)
I am of the opinion that matchmaking is a gamble. It could either yield amazing returns or minimal. I think improvements to hive have a predictable yield, and that yield is low. We seem to disagree on this.
I want to post an in depth explanation of my reasoning for this, but I don't have time. The second half of this linked post is part of my reasoning. The other part would be some examples of the extreme skill differences found on the typical pub server.
If it works maybe only update hive score when using the matchmaking system. Let community servers become the place people practice.
The hive score is used for balancing, they could however make a new competitive matchmaking score and keep the current hive scores "private" for community server balancing.
Basically, the competitive score would update only during competitive matchmaking games and the hidden community score would be affected by both comp and community games so they're still balanced in a community setting.
Also I think prioritizing balanced maps with a competitive map pool like csgo would be the way to go.
I agree with this completely, I have a lot of friends who would play but they don't want to play against me.
because fuck it. sometimes you just want to gorge. and spit at people.
the trick will be to keep it from getting over 1600 i think.
stupid hiveskill.