What this game needs
Mindstorm
Join Date: 2012-12-17 Member: 175356Members
Join Date: 2012-12-17 Member: 175356Members
One word: Matchmaking
I've had my fair amount of NS2. Since day one I've had a lot of fun playing this game but every time a steam sale starts I basicly stop playing. And why? You join a server only to see almost every server imbalanced and stacking. It's true when a rounds ends decent player check out other decent players and stack.
So my last 5-10 games basically consisted of 4 greens + 4 normal vs 8 normal. Guess the outcome. In each case after a 1-3 rounds the greens exit-ed, and I can only presume they will never return because the game cannot have been any fun for them.
So for the love of god, please download World of Tanks and learn from their matchmaking system. Short version:
-if you join a game singly handed you get auto-matched.
-you can form a platoon with max 3 and can queue for match-making as well, but they will be either 1: placed in higher tier games or 2: if another x man platoon is queued vs-d against them.
-if you want bigger team-joins you get sorta clan-wars or pub-ensl kinda matches.
And the player is base is not "too small" for this. Last 48 hours player numbers have been around 1000-3000. Even those 1000 should be enough to get some balanced games going on. And I for one would rather wait 10min in queue and play a decent game instead of stomping/being stomped for 5 rounds in a row.
(U)we need to realise that with a asymmetrical gameplay you need some sort of match-making in order to compensate the skillgaps. It's not a marine vs marine game where rines only have grenades and 100 "different looking but shooting the same" guns like in bf/cod.
I've had my fair amount of NS2. Since day one I've had a lot of fun playing this game but every time a steam sale starts I basicly stop playing. And why? You join a server only to see almost every server imbalanced and stacking. It's true when a rounds ends decent player check out other decent players and stack.
So my last 5-10 games basically consisted of 4 greens + 4 normal vs 8 normal. Guess the outcome. In each case after a 1-3 rounds the greens exit-ed, and I can only presume they will never return because the game cannot have been any fun for them.
So for the love of god, please download World of Tanks and learn from their matchmaking system. Short version:
-if you join a game singly handed you get auto-matched.
-you can form a platoon with max 3 and can queue for match-making as well, but they will be either 1: placed in higher tier games or 2: if another x man platoon is queued vs-d against them.
-if you want bigger team-joins you get sorta clan-wars or pub-ensl kinda matches.
And the player is base is not "too small" for this. Last 48 hours player numbers have been around 1000-3000. Even those 1000 should be enough to get some balanced games going on. And I for one would rather wait 10min in queue and play a decent game instead of stomping/being stomped for 5 rounds in a row.
(U)we need to realise that with a asymmetrical gameplay you need some sort of match-making in order to compensate the skillgaps. It's not a marine vs marine game where rines only have grenades and 100 "different looking but shooting the same" guns like in bf/cod.
Comments
Found it.
Well we'll hopefully see in time.
Are you talking about that thing they thought they named after a device for firing arms:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabot
but really it is named after the object that was first used to sabotage a system:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabotage#Etymology
Isn't UWE shooting itself in the foot with this name? Or, to put it differently, aren't they sabotaging themselves with this?
Left 4 dead used user servers in matchmaking, as long as the server operator enabled a server variable to true; then it would be searched for in matchmaking, however it had a special tag to it so it would be marked as not official; so people could filter them out and only matchmake on official servers
The new counter-strike matchmakes with official servers and has user servers in the browser as well, so people who want to just play casually; or do a jump map can, while people wanting to do some competition can as well and the playerbase for matchmaking is really small, I rarely see more than 200 people searching at a time but still get matches and honestly that's the worst version of counter-strike yet but that's off topic
I agree, I'd love to see it in this game; I love the game, but I hate the servers in the server browser
But it needs to be implemented correctly.
Firstly you need a vast amount of servers to actually matchmake on. in this case we can probably use the official uwe servers, lots of them have run into disuse (at least in aust)
Secondly we need a system of ranking, how, exactly do we do it? We could do something similar to what we have at chess.com But that's made for 1v1, chess games, so we'd need to find a way to balance out kdr to score ratios. if done incorrectly, matchmaking may aswell be useless (see dota 2)
Or better yet, a server config to give admins the ability to limit the number of experienced players (200+ or whatever defined hours) to a ratio per team. For example, 4 experienced players in a 18 slot server, 2 per team.
May or may not work depending on how many new players are playing at any given time, but it's worth a shot I guess. (shrug)
**edit, I think it is crucial that *some* experienced players should be mixed in with rookies, so they can pass on essential game knowledge at a good pace. After all, having experienced players answer my questions and give me suggestions was awesome!
The "randomize readyroom"-function should then simply try to distribute the sum of the index-points of all players equally to both teams.
Possible simple formula: index = score/min + (10 * kills/min) + (wins - loss)
Example: average I can make 25 points/min + 2 kills/min and i have won 116 games and lost 86
So my Skill-index would be 75. A new player would start with 0.
It sure isn't perfect. But it is optional (by vote for randomize readyroom) and a lot better than simple "random".
But the devs would need to implement something that track this stats persistent. The rest would be possible in a very easy mod.
With matchmaking you don't have to restrict team joining. It's just there to make sure people of the same "level" get matched in the same server.
And about metrics, I'm sure some formula can be thought of. It could consist of all sorts of factors and can also be applied to the asymmetric gameplay. SC2 has asymmetric gameplay (in a way) and they one to.
Best Marine Comm is on your team, but doesn't comm the current game
Best guy in the game using the jetpack / shotgun combo is on your team, but you don't get shotguns till late game and never get jetpack tech
Best overall Alien player jumps on Marines for a game and is really bad with most of their guns
I could list dozens of these and on top of it the most essential skill checks like looking at the map and making an intelligent decision about where to go isn't even something you can even write code for
(Note this isn't accurate)
Levels 1-10 (Win 2 consecutive matches up one rank, lose 3 consecutive down one rank)
Levels 11-20 (Win 2 consecutive matches up one rank, lose two consecutive matches down one rank)
Levels 21-30 (Win 3 consecutive matches up one rank, lose two consecutive matches down one rank)
Levels 31-40 (Win 4 consecutive matches up one rank, lose two consecutive matches down rank)
Levels 41-50 (Win 5 matches up one rank, lose one match down one rank, every match won at rank 50 results in an extra loss needed to rank back down, essentially this is where the high skilled players will be left at to face each other)
Sounds brutal, but hey it's an idea and doesn't promote, hey look we lost but I went 45-2!
Is more cowbell.
While definitely matchmaking is a huge deal for fighting uneven games, I don't think we should forget other possibilities that can be worked alongside the matchmaking. There should be more work towards making the rounds play well so that they are filled with meaningful content even for the losing team and finish in timely manner when the clear winner is found.
I by no means want to downplay the importance and possibilities of matchmaking, but I think it's getting too much attention in some sense. There's only that much to be said about it until it boils down to the limitation of development time and community size. Meanwhile little game design adjustments can make those less even games a lot more enjoyable and meaningful.
While I agree in principle, in practice I find the type of game adjustments needed to make losing still enjoyable either 1) reduce the games reliance on skill for determining victory (e.g. dumb the game down or add in more chance) or 2) require compressing the difference between the skill ceiling and floor, making the game less interesting.
The only option I've seen to get around these issues is to better match players based on their skills, so newbies can play poorly against each other but have fun doing so while skilled players can explore the depths of the game without pubstomping. Its why many of the biggest games (see SC2, LoL, dota2, etc) use some form of matchmaking to balance fun across all skill levels with gameplay depth.
To further quote on this non ELO based system (sorry ELO does not work) and can be very easily abused
Optional:
Force solo only Q or duo, this prevents carrying (but this is not necessary)
Have a 7 day decay, for every 7 days you are inactive from matchmaking will decay you 1 win, so if you're rank 48 and don't play for 7 days you will become rank 47, however if you were rank 35 you would not decay to 34 until another 7 days have passed or if you lost your last match then you would decay to 34. But adding losses into the equation probably makes more math required; so the regular decay would be fine
There is no way to smurf this system or do anything that will boost you to the top ratings, which is the major issue with ELO; also ELO seems to become very inaccurate because sometimes you do in FACT get rank locked due to poor team mates; and having to win 50 matches before moving up one rank is excessive, especially when you're in a bracket/skill level where you're better than the people you're facing. This is why ELO doesn't work in team games, never has, and never will.
The only way ELO could ever work in my mind is a utopia
1) Regular ELO based systems
2) You cannot enter a matchmade match unless you've actively played in matches for over 100 hours; this does not include idling (would prevent smurfing on separate accounts)
3) The game needs a playerbase of 500,000+ active players
4) The game will only find people for both teams of equal level, never try and add up the elo ratings and assume even teams (ex: One guy with super high rating and 4 guys with bad rating, vs 5 guys with good ratings) the game assumes this match even because the numbers for both sides add up, this is incorrect and one person cannot carry 4 bad players (this is what happens in a small playerbase situation using ELO)
So it would only work in a perfect environment, which will likely never happen for any game. I've yet to play those moba games with insane high playercounts, so possibly it's working in those games but I doubt it
My method, is simple; you can't get rank locked, you will decay over time, and you rank up by playing the game normally; you must win as a team. Nothing more, nothing less, no individuality
Source: Years of gaming on trueskill/elo based systems, including smurfing on them, and getting rank locked at inappropriate ranks. The system does NOT work in team games, period.
Hey thats such a funny post, have an Awesome.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. It's no secret, that a perfect system doesn't exist and isn't possible. But this doesn't mean that we can't have a good system that works at least better than the pure "randomize readyroom".
We are not talking about a system that can make 100% of your games balanced and fun. We are talking about a system that battles the amount of unbalanced games you will play. And even with the complexity of NS2 it is possible to have some variables calculated in an easy formula to achieve a better distribution of players to the two teams than a random one.
This summed it up very nicely. Most of the examples you guys have posted are games that don't impact the individual players choice on how to play, as in they have symmetrical teams and still allow the player to choose their play style. Counter Strike, Halo, League of Legends all do this to a degree of success but again, I don't think it would work for NS2.
So let's say a guy really good with marines gets matched up, joins a server he was assigned, teams are even, but he doesn't get to play marines because he's good at marines and that would imbalance the teams. Also, this would screw over people who want to play with their friends as they would likely have decent scores (because of wins as a result of teamwork!) and they would have to be split up which would be a negative reinforcement of that.
Now looking to the rookie's side of things, some of the examples you folks gave are Team A has more "Greenies" than Team B, therefore Team A looses. While this may be true is most cases (and for good reason), there are plenty of non greenies who recently got their Green Cherry popped and are "white" but still haven't grasped the basics of the game because players ability to learn are as unique as they are.
I've played with green players who were attentive, both had/didn't have mics and tried to be a productive member of the team. aaannnd I've had "Non Rookie" players play like drooling air heads who would prefer to blame people for hacking than seeing how they measured up.
I personally feel that the Rookie status is too easy to be promoted from, I think right now all they need to do is play a few games, which may by circumstance be won by a strong team. My goal for the community has always been trying to raise the knowledge level of our rookies by helping to inform and to negotiate the steep learning curve that Natural Selection has always been a victim of since the original NS. This is apparent through all my videos I have produced for this game https://www.youtube.com/user/Abysmalnight
UWE have acknowledged this and have made strides in this direction with the inclusion of those nifty mini videos you see while you respawn, rookie mode, explore mode, training vs. bots. I feel there is more than can be done, not so much on the "here's some random unprompted stuff, figure out how it all fits" But, say for Rookies to pop their green cherry, they need to complete some milestones on comprehension of the game that they can track much like achievements that actively engages them every time they join a server.
For example, they join a server when they approach a team's door, perhaps there is a display that says something along the lines of (Hey, we see that you're learning the game, try doing these activities as you haven't done them yet, they can be done this way...)
Obviously this probably takes a fair amount of coding to make this sort of "hand holding" setup, but it may help. The explore mode sort of has this, but it's more like "Oh you looked at an armory, here's some info on it, but you're going to havet o figure out how it factors in"
Perhaps someone should make a linear interactive tutorial accessible within the game that can be played solo?
My CDN $0.02,
ISE
win/loss will, over time, demonstrate who the better players are with no other variables
the reason matchmaking probably won't work in a game like ns2 has to do with the pool of players being too small. A matchmaking system could perfectly rank everyone in skill, but if there are not enough people, the possible teams will likely be highly variable in terms of aggregate skill
Also, to achieve an accurate indication of player skill can take quite some time in large team games (as opposed to 1v1 games).
Best of all, such features would deliver greater benefits to the NA/EU communities.